Pawk ya caw in Watertown

Fill your mouth, you son of a bitch

2011-02-27T16:19:00.007-05:00

9th Annual McKenzie Academy Awards Dinner Party
February 27, 2011

As conceived by Christopher and Bridget McKenzie

Appetizer
     Eggs Benedict

Main Course
     Deer Stew

Side
     Bread Braids

Beverage
     Water, colored yellow and served at 98.6º*

Dessert
     Black and white cookies

*We are also serving plenty of California red wine, but that would have been too obvious to put on this year's official menu.

Now all restaurants are Taco Bell

2010-03-07T16:14:00.001-05:00

8th Annual McKenzie Academy Awards Dinner Party
March 7, 2010

As prepared by Christopher and Bridget McKenzie

Hors d’Oeuvres
     Jellybean Skewers

Appetizer
     Various purées and patés served in Fancy Feast tins

Main Course
     Variety of Mexican staples, served with Taco Bell wrappers

Beverage
     Milk

Dessert
     Slice of Banana Cream Pie with a Cherry on Top

Our Final Answer

2009-02-22T18:32:00.002-05:00

7th Annual McKenzie Academy Awards Dinner Party
Feb. 22, 2009

As prepared by Christopher and Bridget McKenzie

Hors d’Oeuvres
    Caviar and Aged Cheddar Cheese

Appetizer
    Potato and Leek Soup

Main Course
    Rainbow Trout with Lemon-Shallot Buerre Blanc Sauce and Risotto

After-Dinner Beverage
    Chai Tea

Dessert
    Vegetarian Spotted Dick, sprinkled with Powdered Sugar

The day the universe changed

2008-04-11T16:44:00.004-04:00

STIPIMM: "Take Me Home Tonight," by Eddie Money

James Burke is one of the heroes of the McKenzie boys. His documentary series on scientific history are incredible looks at how knowledge builds upon knowledge; very inspiring stuff. Before I get too far off the reason why I'm posting, let me say that one of Burke's series, "The Day the Universe Changed," looks at moments in history that fundamentally altered the way the human mind looks at the world -- things like the publication of "The Origin of the Species," the first run of the Gutenberg press, etc.

Although they are not nearly as significant in the grander scheme of things, there are moments in our individual lives where our universe fundamentally changes. And I don't mean grand moments like graduation or even marriage... though they are significant, by the time those things happen, we know they're coming. I'm talking about the turn-of-the-tide moments. So not the day I married Bridget, but the day I met her. Not the day my father died, but the night I found out that he was dying. Not the day we moved to Boston, but the day Bridget found out that she got into Boston University.

Today, we had such a day.

Bridget got her dream job.

I can't go into the details online right now (I wouldn't want to ARTISTICally ASSOCIATE Bridget with a premature online revelation about her new company), but it is the job she had been hoping would become available and exactly the type of job that she is most qualified to do right now in her industry. More details will come soon, I promise.

What does this mean for us? For a while, we've been questioning whether Boston was really the place we needed to be for our respective careers right now. There was a big question about whether, once Bridget graduated, she'd be able to get a job in this area where there are only a handful of professional theatre companies. We've done a lot of thinking and a lot of stressing over what was going to happen next if Bridget wasn't able to find something worthwhile in her industry here.

All those worries instantly vaporized when I got Bridget's message this morning telling me the news. Immediately, our family's direction and security for the next few years became wonderfully clear.

It's a rainy day here in Boston, but as far as I'm concerned, the sun is as bright as it can be.

I drink your milkshake!

2008-02-24T18:30:00.002-05:00

6th Annual Academy Awards Dinner

Feb. 24, 2008
as cooked up by Chris and Bridget McKenzie

First Course: Oil Fondue with various breads, cheeses, fruits and vegetables, and several sauces for dipping

Main Course: Southwest Chili

Side Dish: Baguettes, served in a brown paper bag

Beverage: Frozen Blue Margaritas
(non-alcoholic alternative: Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-Aid with Crushed Ice)

Dessert: Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bars

Barack the Gardener

2008-02-07T12:33:00.001-05:00

STIPIMM: "Bulls on Parade," Rage Against the Machine

Yes, I voted for Hillary Clinton. But first, let me tell you about a great movie from the late ‘70s.

“Being There” is one of Peter Sellers’ last films, and certainly one of the greatest films he ever made. It’s about a simple-minded fellow named Chance the Gardener (he later becomes known as “Chauncey Gardiner”) who has been taken care of his whole life in solitude by one person. When that person dies and leaves him alone, others find out about him, but have no idea of his disability. And as it turns out, people take his polite, aloof demeanor as introspection and seriousness. When people talk to him, and he barely (but politely) responds, people see a quiet intelligence in him, when in fact, there is none. And no one (except Shirley MacLaine) ever figures out that he’s a blank slate. Eventually, he rises through the ranks of society, going on television, completely without ambition and oblivious to what’s happening to him.

Of particular interest to people are his words on gardening. They think he’s being cleverly metaphorical, but instead, he’s literally talking about his gardening, having no idea what the heck a metaphor is:

President: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President: In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President: Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President: Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we're upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President: I admire your good, solid sense. That's precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.

I’m sorry to have to give away the end of the film, but at the end, a group of political fat cats decide that Chance would make a fantastic presidential candidate, and they start to make preparations for him to run. And it’s made very clear at the end that he stands a very good chance of winning.

No, I’m not saying Sen. Barack Obama is a simpleton. He’s obviously a very intelligent, well-educated man. But as I’ve seen his rise in the campaign, and hear people talk about him, I just can’t help but think of Chance. Obama’s campaign is purposely putting him in the same role that Chance unwittingly plays – a blank slate onto which individuals can project their hopes and aspirations. We’re told over and over that he and Sen. Clinton have almost identical positions on policies. But ask a supporter about a specific issue, be it health care, the environment, or European relations, and you’re likely to get a sizable explanation as to why they think Clinton is decidedly wrong in that area. Did they get that explanation from Obama himself? Probably not – he’s too busy talking about how similar they are on everything except Iraq, or at least their opinions about Iraq five years ago. The widespread notion that Republicans are supposedly very comfortable with Obama, at a time when he’s leaving college-educated liberals in thrall, speaks volumes to me not about the ability to be bipartisan, but about the ability to be all things to all people.

In other words, Chance the Gardener.

Of course, all politicians speak in platitudes while stumping on the trail. There’s little time to go into excessive policy details when you’re trying to make your case succinctly. But long before I settled on a candidate, weeks before the Iowa caucuses, I made of point of watching all the major Democratic candidates stump speeches. Obama definitely takes it to a new plane. I liken it to a popular kid running for student council president – “If you elect me, I promise more recess! Less homework! A modern type of school for a new type of student!” You’re either getting the same kind of feel-good talk you get from other candidates, or pie-in-the-sky promises that a candidate has no real way of attaining. I had liked Obama at first, but then began my slow path to not liking him.

Yes, I said it: I don’t like Sen. Barack Obama. It seems that most Clinton supporters do so because of a fervent belief in her abilities and promise as a leader. I personally have plenty of my own problems with Sen. Clinton, and in the presence of a better candidate (e.g., Dodd, perhaps even Edwards…), I might not have voted for her. In a lot of ways, I’m not really voting for Clinton so much as I am voting against Barack Obama.

And it’s not because he’s a scary black man or something. It is foolish, short-sighted and frankly un-American for someone to decide to vote for or against Clinton primarily because she is a woman, or for or against Obama because he is African-American. And people on both sides who either say it is a liberal’s responsibility to vote for Obama so we can have a black president, or say it’s a woman’s responsibility to vote for Clinton to break that final glass ceiling, are really missing the point of civil rights at all. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said it better that I ever could: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

And frankly, so far, I find Obama’s character lacking.

A couple of friends of mine have asked, incredulous, “How can you not like Obama?” Besides the time I heard his stump speech, I can tell you the exact time and place I started to actively dislike him. It was his speech right after winning the Iowa caucuses.

Now mind you, this was a speech that was hailed by the media and his supporters as being a landmark American speech. And yet, I kept laughing to myself during the final parts of it. It started off fine enough; I was even very moved by the image of the black family on the stage, poised to enter the highest office in this country. But then he started talking. And he sounded… strange.

“Does he sound different to you,” I asked Bridget after a couple of minutes.

Bridget paused, “Yeah, sort of.”

It took me another couple of minutes to realize what was different: “He sounds like a southern preacher! He’s trying to be Martin Luther King!”

Having seen Obama speak on TV several times before, I knew that he hadn’t spoken with this type of inflection before. And several pundits the next day noted the change as well, although they saw it in a more positive, inspiring light. I saw it as being as phony as a three-dollar bill.

When Clinton was in a black church in Alabama some months ago and added a bit of a southern accent to her voice (something that has been known to happen to those of us from the South who return back home), she was excoriated for being phony. What Obama did after the Iowa caucuses was no less fake. And it pretty much ruined forever any chance that his oratory will ever inspire me like seems to do others – because hearing his preacher voice now just makes me laugh.

So thereby comes the first reason I don’t like Barack Obama: He’s just as fake as any other politician, but his campaign is able to fool people that he’s not (then again, maybe I’m just bitter that he’s so good at doing what he’s doing, or maybe I’m just bitter because I can’t fall for it too).

And speaking of the media, there comes my second reason not to like him. A colleague of mine at the New England Institute of Art who used to be a producer for CNN told me about a campaign reporter who spoke at a student event at Northeastern University. He asked his audience who they thought was the most accessible candidate to the media on the trail. Just about everyone thought… assumed… that it was Barack Obama. “Not even close,” was his reply. In fact, he said, Obama has been more stingy about interactions with the press than any candidate he’s ever covered.

It’s something that has been written about more and more lately. Howard Kurtz wrote about it a week and a half ago: “All traveling campaigns have a bubble-like quality, but Obama seems unusually insulated.”

And it’s not just that way when dealing with reporters. That same colleague of mine said that there’s a growing sense in the press corps that Obama is at his most comfortable giving prepared speeches, while Clinton is at her most comfortable in intimate extemporaneous sessions (witness their respective performances in debates). This colleague also said, “He never goes into the crowd and talks to people, never does town halls; his press conferences, if there are any, last a couple of minutes.” I don’t know if what she said is all true, but it certainly fits the general sense I have been getting of him, and feeds the second thing I don’t like about him: I know very little about him as a human being, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to come out of his public bubble to let us know anytime soon. To me, that’s hubris, and why the hell would I ever like that?

Hillary Clinton has plenty of hubris as well, I know. But then, there’s no shortage of media coverage ready to tell us how entrenched the Clinton machine or how angry they are at Obama, blah, blah, blah. All this as though Obama’s campaign is just made up of some good-hearted folks who really aren’t political people. And Obama himself is entirely genuine – what we see of him when he gives speeches is entirely what we’ll get. Well, if that’s all we’re going to get are the platitudes he has in his speeches, that scares the crap out of me. But I know that isn’t true… the Obama campaign is no less a machine at this point than the Clinton campaign. It is no less as calculating and conniving, but they’re counting on people to be naïve enough to believe that they’re not. The idea that Obama is some sort of political messiah meant to lead us into the mythical promised land of post-partisanship is an idea that has been carefully cultivated by his handlers in both his speeches and their (limited) interactions with the press. And the media has just eaten it up. So yeah, that’s reason number three: the media treats him like the second coming. Obama is leading a “movement,” Clinton is leading a “campaign.” But whether or not they’re treating Clinton fairly or unfairly in their coverage is beside the point. Whatever the case with anyone else, they’re giving Obama a free pass. It’s almost taken as a given in the punditocracy at this point.

The fourth reason is about experience. But it’s not that he’s inexperienced – that in itself isn’t a sin. Nor do I think that a person has to be experienced in national governance to be a good president. But to believe and contend, even implicitly, that legislative and government experience is worthless as a measure of someone’s abilities is not only irresponsible, but it’s immature – something I’d expect a 22-year-old to say instead of a serious presidential candidate.

At the college I teach at, I have a lot of problems with some of the decisions the dean has been making lately. But does that mean if he leaves that I should presume to be able to replace him? No – I have only a few years of teaching under my belt, and I’ve never been in any position of authority in academia. What’s more, I don’t know much about navigating the rather intricate political situations in my school nor do I have the background to be able to assimilate myself into them like a dean should. Someone like one of my department chairs would be perfect; they’ve already led in an academic environment, they’re already part of those political webs and they would know how to navigate them. Even if the college's board believed that most of my ideas about what the college should be doing academically were better than my department chair’s, it would be irresponsible – nay, ridiculous -- for them to pick me over her. But that’s essentially what Obama is purporting to do – claiming that he has enough experience and background in national or executive governance to be able to do the job – or worse yet, that such experience is a liability. And this isn’t just about Hillary Clinton – it’s about any of the other candidates, Democratic or Republican, who have aspired to the highest office in the land. I have little respect for someone who denigrates experience out of hand because, frankly, he has none (and let’s be honest, saying “the right experience” or “being right on day one” are pithy political covers for not having experience). So… reason number four.

Until Obama’s bubble bursts and the media finally starts vetting him like a real candidate and stops treating him with kid gloves (what Bill Clinton got in trouble for was for suggesting that the media was doing this because Obama’s black; which is true… but Bill, you’re not supposed to say that out loud!!) then there is no chance of me having respect for his candidacy. And I’m not pussy-footing around it like other Democrats seem to be doing (“oh, I’ll vote for whomever my party picks… blah, blah”). If he gets the candidacy for the Democratic party, then he’ll still have a lot of convincing to do to get my vote (don’t worry, I wouldn’t vote Republican, I just wouldn’t vote at all). And if, even without my vote, he is elected president, I will hope that I'm wrong about him. He is a Democrat after all, and he does agree with me on most issues. He might very well turn out to be a good president for all we really know. I just know that, right now, he’s not the kind of person right now I can believe in as a leader.

Mom's new house

2007-12-27T23:20:00.000-05:00

Ten years without Bill

2007-10-30T17:44:00.001-04:00

R.E.M.'s last group shot, Oct. 30, 1997. (l-r) Michael Stipe, Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills

STIPIMM: “Die Hard, by Guyz Nite

My friend Justin and I used to have this joke about the band R.E.M. Our flight of fancy was that Bill Berry, the band’s drummer, was the group’s weak link, and that all the other members of the band – Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, and Mike Mills – wanted to get rid of him. But they never could get up the courage to do kick him out, so they would just find ways to make him so miserable that he would quit the band on his own.

Little did we know. Ten years ago today, they got their fictional(?) wish. On Oct. 30, 1997, the Associated Press and MTV reported that Bill Berry was leaving R.E.M. Not because he was angry at all the wet willies that Michael Stipe had been giving him, but because he was tired of the rock-star life and wanted to live a quieter life.

The news rang out like a shot amongst the scattered morass of R.E.M. fans. For most popular music fans, the news was not particularly earth-shattering; the band said they would stay together, so they probably are just going to find someone else to drum, right? But hardcore fans knew better. For years, all four members of the band had sworn up and down that if any one of them died or decided to leave, then R.E.M. would disband. Despite the remaining three’s insistence that they would soldier on together, the devotees feared that the band would get into the studio or on the road, realize they couldn’t continue without Bill, and end it.

Well, that fear proved to be unfounded. But even with the band ostensibly intact, the past 10 years have shown that the band fundamentally changed that day in Athens, Ga.

Strange to think that though. After all, a drummer is just a drummer, right? Ringo was great and all, but still, if he had left the Beatles in 1966, are we really to think that he was such an element in the songwriting that the albums would have been fundamentally different? Okay, John would have had to sing “A Little Help from My Friends,” but still…

In fact, unlike the Beatles, R.E.M.’s songs (pre-1997) are all credited to Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe in recognition of the sizable contributions of each of the four members of the band to the songwriting. That could have been just feel-good equality on the part of the band, but there was never any reason to doubt it.

Indeed, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that Berry, more than just being a drummer, was a vital part of the band’s direction. One telling quote (that fueled Justin’s and my theories about his place in the band) was something Berry said after the release of Monster in 1994 (paraphrasing): “After two albums of softer music, I wanted to get back to playing harder stuff. I told the rest of the guys before we made this album, ‘If this one doesn’t rock, I’m quitting the band.’” And indeed, Monster did rock. It was the bastard child of R.E.M. and grunge and relied heavily on good ol’ fashioned distorted guitar. Their next album, New Adventures in Hi-Fi (1996), continued the return-to-rock sound, but showed a hint of return to the softer direction the band had pursued in Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), their most successful albums.

Did the inevitability of the band going soft help Berry decide to leave? Perhaps; we’ll probably never know. But whatever the case, it’s clear that once he left, the band went in a markedly different direction (and not just in the fact that they started printing their lyrics in the album notes…). Their first post-Bill album, Up (1998), was melancholy and slow, pretty much the polar opposite of the hard and angry Monster. The album’s sound, much like the sound of its successor, Reveal (2001), seemed to be somewhere between Automatic for the People and OK Computer (Radiohead’s seminal 1997 album). It’s a sound that hasn’t really caught the popular music imagination. Their latest album, Around the Sun (2005), is a little bit further removed, but along the same lines. It’s probably my favorite of theirs since 1997, and yet, I can’t help but wish they’d pull another Monster out of their hat, going back to roots that are a little bit harder.

As for the band members themselves, they’ve decidedly older versions of their previous selves. Michael Stipe, even if he’s as cool as ever, sometimes seems like he’s approaching “old-guy-in-the-club” status. Mike Mills dyed his hair and has shown that he desperately wants to be Elton John. And Peter Buck’s contributions to the public eye have all appeared to be alcohol-soaked (throwing crockery, anyone?).

And as for Bill Berry? As Stipe once jokingly said, he’s enjoying riding his tractor out on his farm (Berry is also an avid antiques collector, oddly enough). Fans like myself were so glad to see him back playing with the band on a couple of rare occasions in recent years, most notably at R.E.M.’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

R.E.M. is currently working on their next album, which they’re hoping to release this coming spring (or so we’re told). And of course, I’ll be there the day of to get us a copy. But unless their sound has fundamentally altered, I’ll probably be thinking that it would be nice to have that steady rock beat back in the band. I can’t help it: I miss the unibrow.

XXXIII

2007-10-13T13:04:00.001-04:00

STIPIMM: The theme from The Naked Gun

It seems I’ve lost whatever small ability I had to tell ages amongst my peers. Yesterday, when speaking to a couple of co-workers, I learned that one of them, who I had assumed was in his late 30s (because of gray hair and the look of his face), was actually my age. And another co-worker, who -- because of his demeanor, knowledge and look – I thought was several years older than me, was in fact quite the opposite; he’s 30.

I’m getting carded less and less 12 years after becoming legal, but I still look considerably younger than my 33 years. It’s both a blessing and a curse, of course. I have the gift of long-lasting youth, but it means that, in the subconscious of many peers and elders, I’m still but a whippersnapper. It was sometimes a social obstacle; it’s hard to get a woman to take you seriously for a date if you look like you’re five years younger than she (even if she knows otherwise). In teaching, it makes it easier to relate to students, but at the same time, it makes it harder to create the important distinction between professor and student. I tell Bridget that sometimes I feel more like a graduate student who happens to be teaching more than I feel like a professor in how I talk to students.

But, truth be told, I’m in no hurry to grow up visually. Looking young has kind of been my thing for the past 10 years or so. It’s a way of lowering expectations and blowing people away when they find out either how talented I am or, more superficially, how old I am. My dad used to say that he was a babyface when he was in his 20s; for him, it changed when he was 30. As he described it, when he was in his 20s, he looked like a teenager, but when he turned 30, he suddenly looked 30. I’ve always assumed that the same fate would befall my boyish looks. But so far, I’ve managed to beat his aging by three years.

Of course, now that I’ve put that informational nugget down in print, I’m sure by my next birthday, I’ll look like I'm in my late 30s. Such is life.

Office Hours: T, 2-4

2007-09-19T20:50:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Because I Got High,” by Afroman

Here I am at my new desk at NEIA yesterday, looking all professional like. Several things to say about the picture:

- I was talking to Bridget on my cell phone at the time it was taken.

- It was taken in the afternoon, with the windows open on a sunny day, and with all the fluorescents on. It looks dark because the primary lighting was with flashes, and the flashes were significantly brighter than any other light in the room.

- Speaking of flashes, the picture is not actually one picture -- it's a composite of five different pictures that were taken with the flashes held in different places. Thomas, one of my colleagues, went around holding the flashes at different spots while Lucas, one of our students, snapped the pics. Thomas then Photoshopped the five different images together. That's why my head and back are a little fuzzy -- making them blend with the background wasn't easy.

- This may be the most interesting picture anyone's ever taken of me... which almost sounds sad.

- The last couple of times Bridget has seen this picture, she's said, "It's my angel-boy."

Everyone hates a sad professor…

2007-09-14T22:06:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Sad Professor,” by R.E.M.

For the past several years, whenever anyone’s asked me what I do for a living, I’ve never quite known what to say. Since we moved to Boston, all of my jobs have been designed to be temporary. Sure, I did layout for H&R Block, but it was only on a contract basis; I could never bring myself to say I was a “graphic designer.” I tested software for Avid, but calling myself a “software tester” would have been silly, since I only did it for a few months. I’ve been editing Commit to the Line since we got to Boston, and I’ve been paid for that, but it certainly hasn’t paid the bills enough for me to call myself a professional editor.

And then there’s teaching. I started doing it again a year ago at two, and eventually three, different schools in and around Boston. However, since I was being split between different locations, it still felt weird to say I was doing it full-time (even though, time-wise, I was well in excess of what most would call full-time). And then again, there’s the “professor” issue. My title at all these places was “adjunct professor,” which technically gave me the right to call myself professor; indeed, plenty of students used that title whenever speaking to me (when they weren’t calling me “Dude”). But to me, a professor is something completely different than what I was. A professor is someone who has office hours in an actual office, not at an adjunct desk. A professor is someone with a permanent presence at a college, someone with institutional authority. Even though I was working at it 50-60 hours a week, I could never bring myself to tell people that I was a “professor.” Usually, I would say, “I teach at a couple of colleges in town,” or, if I needed to give a title, I would often just say “instructor.”

No more. Today I signed a contract with the New England Institute of Art making me a full-time faculty member in the departments of Digital Filmmaking & Video Production and Photography. I am now officially, with no asterisks, a college professor.

Okay, one asterisk: my title is “assistant professor,” as it is with all starting out full-timers across the country. But still, I can now bring myself to answer the question “What do you do for a living?” with “I’m a college professor” without a little voice in the back of my head saying “Well... you’re kind of a professor…”

Truth be told, in most respects, I’ve already been a full-time assistant professor at NEIA. I’ve been teaching so many classes per semester that HR already thought I was full-time by default. And at NEIA, unlike at other colleges, the title of assistant professor can also be given to adjuncts; I received that title earlier this year. However, even then, I never quite felt like a professor. And now I can.

But… I don’t. The idea that I’m a college professor hasn’t quite sunk in completely. My mental image of what a professor is, or at least should be, is hard to shake. They’re supposed to be especially distinguished in their field, having done a large amount of research or creative work, and carry with them a wealth of knowledge that is undeniable. I do know quite a bit, but I hardly consider myself an authority on anything. I know it’s hard on myself to say so, but knowing what I do about myself, I’d be peeved if I had me as a professor – “This guy’s making it up as he goes along!” “Have you seen his last movie? It’s totally unwatchable!” I’m reminded of the Groucho Marx quote: “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”

On the other hand, knowing this about myself has made me think a lot and look back on the professors I used to have. One of my favorite film professors hadn’t done anything particularly distinguished in his area for almost 10 years, while still another hadn’t had one of his screenplays fully produced in over a decade. This makes me feel a little bit better about my prospects as a professor, but it also makes me quite sad and a little worried. How easy it would be to get settled into this nice job, which pays me more than I’ve ever made in my life, and just ride the wave, doing some video work for the college here and there, performing service for the school in general, and never achieve anything else in film and video. And when I say achieve, I mean success in independent filmmaking.

Fact is, I don’t want to be a professor forever. And I’m sure many of my colleagues also would much rather be able to make a living doing their art rather than having to spend 40+ hours a week teaching their up-and-coming competition. But the economic realities of life demand that we find something that pays the bills, and while it’s not the same as producing films, teaching in my fields is an exceptional way for me to stay current in my field, talk about movies and photography on a daily basis, learn something every single day, and yes, share in the excitement (when all works well) when people learn how to do the art for the first time.

But I will continue to work in my off hours to get that outside success I crave. And indeed, one of the nice things about colleges is that they want their faculty to succeed, and usually bend over backwards to help them out. Even so, I long for the day when I can do some brand of filmmaking full-time, and I hope I never settle for my cushy teaching job just because I’m tired of trying. As Bridget points out, I’ve achieved a hell of a lot after being out of grad school for just two years. Maybe so, but there’s still a lot left to do.

A word

2007-08-06T00:53:00.000-04:00

friend shui -- n. redecorating one's home in advance of the arrival of friends or loved ones in order to increase the prominence of pictures of or gifts from the guests-to-be.

My girlfriend drinks that when she's having her period.

2007-02-25T14:43:00.001-05:00

5th Annual Academy Awards Dinner

Feb. 25, 2007
as cooked up by Chris and Bridget McKenzie

Appetizer: English Muffins with various toppings

Opening Course: Wakame Miso Soup ("Weed Soup")

Main Course: Bento Box of Assorted Sushi, Chicken Tortilla Roll-ups, and Chicken Couscous

Beverage: Cranberry Juice

Dessert: Vanilla Ice Cream with Chocolate Syrup

He was delicious

2006-12-27T08:40:00.000-05:00

Ten years off, but still.

Senseless.

The new face of evil

2006-12-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: "Ironic," by Alanis Morissette

It has been my favorite drink for the better part of a year.

It has caffeine.

I didn't know that until today.

I'm very unhappy.

XXXII

2006-10-13T20:40:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Well It’s True That We Love One Another,” by the White Stripes

As of late, my mind, when not focused on one of the umpteen tasks at hand, has been focused a lot on the future. There’s been a lot going on that has all been pointing at the direction my life is going, particularly career-wise.

When I was at American University, I had little idea of what I wanted to do with the degree in film and video I was earning. It was a feeling that was at once disconcerting and exhilarating — lots of possibilities, lots of opportunities.

As the relationship between Bridget and me solidified, we talked a lot about what we wanted from our future (sounds romantic, eh?) and our careers. We charted out goals and paths to get there — she would earn an MFA in directing, which would jump-start her professional career in theatre, and I would pursue college teaching, possibly leaving summers open for personal projects and maybe bigger productions.

Our plans have already begun to bear fruit — Bridget, of course, is having the time of her life learning at BU, and I’m, well, teaching. I have six classes this semester—a tough schedule—along with editing a documentary when I can fit it in (editing “Indian Girl” is still on hold until things settle down).

And now, today, coincidentally on the 32nd anniversary of my birth, I laid another piece of our future firmly in place: I agreed to teach three courses at Emerson College—one of the best film and video schools on the East Coast—in addition to courses at the New England Institute of Art, where I’m teaching this semester. The photography and video departments at NEIA wanted to make me full-time this coming semester, but budgetary concerns delayed that. I’m confident, though, that they’ll try to make full-time (the closest thing the Art Institute has to an assistant professorship) sometime during the next school year.

In some ways, it boggles my mind that I would be at this level this soon after earning my MFA (granted, Emerson’s always desperate for adjuncts, and NEIA is a for-profit institute, but still…), particularly without a large body of professional work (larger than some, but still…). But in other ways, this is exactly what I wanted and expected—for someone in my industry, I am unusually comfortable in the academic environment, and I have the knowledge, ability, and willingness to teach both production and media studies, another rare commodity (or so I’m told). Luck had a lot to do with where I am now, but still… I felt that I could start earning a living in teaching, and I was right.

But still…

Now that things are starting to happen as Bridget and I envisioned it, and things are no longer as uncertain financially as they have been, the disconcerting and exhilarating feelings have been replaced something at once comforting and worrisome—worrisome because even though teaching is a good career that I’m lucky to be starting, it’s not the only part of our plans. A major part of our goals is for me to be able to do projects, both large and small, in addition to teaching. But careers have a tendency to eat up all one’s time, and I could easily rest on my laurels if I’m not too careful.

Fortunately, teaching institutions encourage and even promote the work of their faculty; indeed, if one is ever to get tenure, you pretty much have to be doing work nonstop. I’ve already been offered loads of resources by NEIA to complete “Indian Girl” and whatever other projects I have. But even so, it’s up to me (with Bridget kicking my butt every now again) to make sure I’m not just doing what I need to do to make a living, but doing those things that I got into film, video, and photography to do in the first place.

Here’s to another year, and here’s to Phase II…

QED

2006-09-12T18:55:00.000-04:00

Let X equal the quantity of all quantities of X. Let X equal the cold. It is cold in December. The months of cold equal November through February. There are four months of cold, and four of heat, leaving four months of indeterminate temperature. In February it snows. In March the Lake is a lake of ice. In September the students come back and the bookstores are full. Let X equal the month of full bookstores. The number of books approaches infinity as the number of months of cold approaches four. I will never be as cold now as I will in the future. The future of cold is infinite. The future of heat is the future of cold. The bookstores are infinite and so are never full except in September.

Off we go...

2006-08-06T16:33:00.000-04:00

Our two weeks in Oklahoma to shoot "Indian Girl" has begun...

Posting here has and will be sparse until we're done... but I'll be updating the blog on http://www.indiangirlmovie.com everyday until shooting ends on the 16th!

Electra under the weather

2006-06-29T09:41:00.000-04:00

As promised, here's what Electra looked like when the problem was rampant. Notice the lines all over the background image. My Mormon zombie babes are supposed to be crisp and clear:

Life with Electra

2006-06-27T17:43:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: "I Should Be Allowed to Think," by They Might Be Giants

The life of a videographer/editor nowadays is completely wrapped up in computing and the digital world. Whether we like it or not, our ability to do our jobs is based in large part in the quality of our computers. Where people in my profession once oohed and ahhed mostly over cameras, lenses, film stock and the like, nowadays filmmakers are just as likely to go ga-ga for a new super-charged computer systems or some new features in editing software.

I am no stranger to this. I have regularly remarked to myself that it is strange that, as a film/videomaker, the only magazine to which I religiously subscribe is Macworld, not American Cinematographer, not Filmmaker Magazine, not even Entertainment Weekly (birthday and Christmas gift hints…ahem). And usually, reading Macworld is an exercise in wishful thinking -- my budget has no leeway for new systems or even souped-up new peripherals. But it does one good to dream, I suppose.

Besides, I have had pretty much all I really needed to do my work, from shooting to editing. At the center of this is my Apple G4 Powerbook, which goes by the name Electra. When I bought her several years ago, she was of course the top of her line -- fast, efficient, glitch-free. It was one of the best investments I ever made, second maybe only to my Canon GL2 video camera. She has served me well ever since the day she arrived on my doorstep. However, I fear that her remaining days with me are numbered, and this worries me and my pocketbook greatly.

Even though she's worked well overall, life with Electra hasn't been all peachy. Indeed, sometimes I think she's held together with baling string and duct tape. Here are some of the problems that Electra has had and continues to have:

1) About a year after purchasing her, for no reason that I could figure, the DVD drive stopped working. Whenever I tried to insert a disk, it just spit it right back out at me. This was an especially bad problem because I burned a hell of a lot of CDs and DVDs in my time. Instead of buying a new drive and paying for installation, I found a cheaper work-around and bought an external DVD burner. That solution's worked very well ever since, although it is sometimes still a pain.
2) About half a year after the DVD drive went kaput, the Airport card slot stopped working. Now, for those of you who don’t know Macs, the Airport is Apple's wireless system. The Airport card is what the laptop uses to communicate with a wireless Internet connection. And now that wasn't working on Electra, so I couldn't connect wirelessly to the Internet. Again in this case, instead of paying for a repair, I went the cheap and inconvenient route -- I connect to the Internet through an Ethernet cable, just as one would with a desktop computer.
3) When I first bought her and ran Final Cut Pro on her, she was fast and furious. But, as software inevitably does, further editions of Final Cut Pro (the video editing software I use most [don't tell my employer!]) got more complicated, and thus ran more slowly on my computer. It begs the question, why didn't you just stick with the older version… and well, there's an argument to be made for that. However, with "Commit to the Line," and other stuff, it was beneficial to update the software, and (especially with "Commit") I had the opportunity to upload the software for free, which was a hard offer to pass up.
4) I took Electra all sorts of places, even on vacation sometimes, and the physical wear and tear has taken its toll. Beyond cosmetic nicks and abrasions, the latch that holds her shut finally stopped closing late last year. Then, one day a few months ago, she fell out of the car (making my heart stop for a few seconds), and damaged (but didn't break!) one of the hinges that holds the screen to the computer. Now, opening her up is a delicate process, lest I damage the hinge further.
5) Her battery, having gone through more charge cycles than I can count, is next to worthless. You can't use her without plugging her in for more than 15 minutes at a time.

Electra has become more of a desktop machine, i.e., I don't really take her around too much, in part because it would add to the wear and tear, and in part because of the issues above (especially the battery). But all these issues, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively minor. She still runs all the software that's on her very well.

A couple of weeks ago, however, a new issue arose that couldn't be as easily glossed over and worked around. Electra's screen began getting these funky looking striations on them, all over the screen. It started pretty mildly, with only a little bit of problem here or there, but it progressively got worse over the course of a day. Rebooting didn't help. Shutting her down for a day didn't help either. None of the standard troubleshooting techniques helped.

I was going to load up a picture of this problem, but for some reason I can't find the one I took last week… I'll have to load it later. But trust me, it was bad. My best guess as to the source of the problem was a dying video card, which as any computer person can tell you is not an easy or cheap thing to fix. I was able to do some things with Electra, but photo and graphics work was impossible, and perhaps most importantly, doing video work was an eye-strain-inducing ordeal.

Indeed, it was this last point that was really the most worrisome. Electra is my lifeblood when it comes to editing, and without her, some of the projects I'm working on would pretty much be dead in the water. With the problem getting worse with no signs of improvement, I sat Bridget down and introduced her to a grim reality -- if Electra died outright or this problem continued, we'd have to start looking at getting a new computer.

And getting a new computer that can do the things I need it to is almost as big a deal (money-wise) as buying a used car. If you're going to get a new computer, you better get a darn good one, because buying something lower on the ladder of quality will just make it obsolete that much quicker. And a darn good computer in my industry costs anywhere from $2,500 to $3,500.

There's the obvious question: do you really need a computer right away? Short answer, no, but soon. There's just no realistic way I can do editing, graphics work and all the various stuff I do without a good computer. It's like my friend Imogen's recent issues with her car -- if it were up to her, she'd make do with her broken car or just doing without, but because she has to travel around in her job, it's a necessity to have a reliable car. So too with filmmaking and computers.

But of course, we don't have $2,500 just sitting around -- if we did, it would be going straight to the still-not-fully-funded "Indian Girl" film project. We'd have to tap into credit once more, which is not a last-resort option, to be sure, but a necessary one.

But then, just as I was starting to despair over the situation and preparing myself for the necessity of a major purchase (and yet secretly relishing the idea of a powerful new machine), Electra started showing signs of improvement late last week. Out of nowhere, applications that were once illegible were showing up crisp and clean. Pretty soon, everything was back to looking normal. The picture at the top of the post was taken this morning and shows how Electra looks now (you'll be able to compare it to how she looked when she was sick when I post the picture).

So, what happened? Hell if I know. The only thing that I can figure might have happened is that I downloaded some intensive database software a few weeks ago (it was for the nightmare film project I blogged about last week). I removed it last week thinking maybe, just maybe it was causing the problem. And so… now the problem's gone. Could it have been that software? Maybe…but I still don’t know how it caused it. Of course, Andrew and Marianne's computer (which used to be mine) has recently had a different kind of screen problem that seemed to magically work itself out over the weekend. Did the laptop fairies finally get around to visiting Massachusetts and sprinkling their pixie dust over all the computers of all the good boys and girls of the commonwealth?

Now that she's back to running normally, I'm handling her very delicately. I've told Bridget not to shut her down outright, for fear that it might trigger a relapse. Basically, it's a wait-and-see approach for the time being, tiptoeing around her, keeping my fingers crossed, and trying not to do anything to piss her off (kind of like how I handle my marriage…). With any luck, she'll last until next year when we can make a plan about buying a new machine. In the meantime, I'll keep reading Macworld and dreaming…

"I have nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion..."

2006-06-22T17:10:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Stuck In a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” by U2

My nerves were relatively smooth throughout the day Monday. I had an occasional moment of stomach-tightening, but for some reason, I was able to compartmentalize the performance and not think about it much while I was at work.

This changed once I got home to get ready and pick up Bridget to go to the show. The jitters were definitely there, but they were still very manageable. Performance anxiety has never been debilitating for me, but it has certainly tapered off in recent years. A large part of that is certainly my experience in teaching, which is essentially a performance of another kind in front of an easily bored audience. Nonetheless, the nerves started to mount, so much so that I forgot my headshot, which I had spent an inordinate amount of time procuring (since I didn't really have one before).

We zipped in Phoebe to the theatre and got there with plenty of time to spare. The theatre itself was ImprovBoston, a tiny little black box space that, surprise, primarily housed improvisational comedy groups. At its maximum, it could hold about 100 people. When we got inside, Courtney, who was both producer and actress in the show, was running herself ragged trying to get last-minute things in order. She had warned us that she was a terror before a show, so Liz and I both respectably kept our distances and let her do her thing. Bridget often says she's a pain to be around before a show, but Bridget never threatened to sue a tattoo parlor before a show of hers premiered.*

The three of us actor-types settled down in the green room, which was essentially the low-ceilinged basement below the theatre. The gals did their makeup while I lounged about on the couches. It was at that time that I got the only decent photo I was able to get that evening. I had brought my camera in the hope that there would be time before or after the show to get some pics of the play, but alas, the green-room shot was all I really got.

The actresses prepare (Liz on the left,
Courtney on the right).
Anyway, at 15 'til 8, the fact that we were about to go on stage really sunk in and we started our own little nervous preparation idiosyncrasies. Liz and I wandered around the basement; I managed to find a door that led outside (separate from the one that led to the stage), which made me chain-smoking Courtney's best friend for a while. Courtney alternately smoked and went up to check on the audience. The sales had gone pretty well, and I suppose the audience was half-full (strangely enough, despite being in the room for an hour and a half, I never once took full stock of how many people were there -- I was acting, dammit… if you want details, ask Bridget).

Finally, it was time to get up to the stage and ready to go. Courtney gave us a last thanks and an order to "have fun." Liz did some goofy-cool superstition thing in which she touched all our noses with her thumb (you had to be there to understand). And up we went, down went the lights, and out we scurried to perform.

The play opens with Jonas (me!) and Nona (Liz) sitting in a row of five chairs in the middle of the stage. Nona's in the middle reading** a National Geographic Magazine, and I'm on the far right (looking from the audience), doodling on my arm with a pen. This last detail in the script had been causing me some trouble, because Jonas is supposed to have been apparently doodling on his arm "for some time," which meant there had to be a lot of stuff already on his arm when the lights went up. So, I spent much of my day at work on Monday doodling on my arm, trying various sorts of pens (FYI, Bic ball-points are horrible for writing on your skin!) and all sorts of images. By the evening, I had everything from a sketch of a girl in a bikini to a guy hanging himself in a tree. Bridget also wrote her Kiowa name (Thol-ma) on my arm along with our wedding date.

But I digress. So the two of us are sitting there and out comes Abby (Courtney), fresh out of the snow and looking for a place to sit. She sits on the other end of the chairs (far left) and proceeds to try to strike up a conversation with the rather asocial Nona. I sit listening for six pages (approximately six minutes) continuing my doodling.

And finally, it's my time to speak. According to Bridget, it was clear that I was nervous in the first minute of my dialogue (which basically means that I stumbled over my lines a little bit at first, which I do remember doing), but once it got going, I was fine. And like I said last time, I pretty much don't shut up the entire time. In the first act, I regale the two girls with lots of tall tales about my cross-country adventures, confront Nona about the cold feet she has over her pending nuptials, get the naïve Abby drunk, and after she passes out, I make a concerted pass at Nona, which I abandon just as it's about it bear fruit, earning me a slap in the face at the end of the act.

The first act went very smoothly, if I remember correctly. There was only two areas of dialogue that we missed -- unfortunately one of them was one of my favorite parts of the play, in which drunk Abby gives Jonas a lap dance ("Abby, Jonas wants you to stop." "No, actually, it's okay. She's making a point; let's see where she's going with this. She wants people to know she's not boring."). But missing that part didn't trip us up any.

The other part we missed did trip us up, but according to Bridget and others, it wasn't noticeable from the audience. It happened just as Abby passes out from her drunkenness and Nona and Jonas have to carry her over to sleep it off on the chairs. The carrying is what threw us off -- it's a complicated little procedure in the first place, but it got a little bit more complicated by pure chance: we put her body down on the chairs just such that her head fell between two chairs. And so, we spent an extra few silent seconds (which seemed like an eternity to Liz and me) repositioning a chair so her passed-out head would have some place to fall. Sounds silly, but it did throw us off a bit. I said my line a little bit differently than I had before, and as a result, Liz omitted a key part of her next line, a part that was necessary for my next line to make any sense at all. So… we looked at each other, sticking to the flabbergastedness our characters were feeling, and tried to figure out what to say next. I finally found it, but it ended up omitting a page of dialogue. Not crucial, but still. And that was the only moment in the entire performance where I felt any panic, but I think we both handled it just fine. And most importantly, the audience (or so says Bridget) didn't notice.

During intermission, we were relieved we got through the bulk of the play in one piece (2/3 of the play is in act one), but we went over the first part of the dialogue of the second act. In rehearsals, act two had been our Achilles' heel -- one or more of us (and all three of us were guilty) would forget our lines or lose our place. It's easy to understand why -- there's a lot more going on in terms of action and interplay in the second act, and a lot more to keep track of.

We did it as well as we ever had, though. The first part of the act revolves around Nona's and Jonas' revelations to the others about their feelings about their lives (Nona doesn't really want to get married, but is afraid not to; Jonas doesn't know what the hell to do with his life, so tries out different identities to find one he likes). After Abby staggers off to "throw up everything I've eaten since I was twelve," Nona and a reluctant Jonas go through Abby's luggage to see if there are any clues as to why she's so weird. They find five Ziplock bags full of some mysterious gray powder that Nona quickly determines to be drugs. She convinces Jonas to try some, going so far as to shove a handful of the stuff in his mouth (thus creating a very humorous mess on my face and shirt). When Abby returns and catches Nona and Jonas red- (or gray-) handed, we find out that they weren't drugs at all, but the ashes of her dead boyfriend which she wanted to spread out in every state in the country (she had five states to go). Nona pretty much knew that they were cremains, but had decided to feed them to Jonas anyway to get back at him for his act-one manipulations. Abby screams at Jonas, Jonas faces the realities of barbecue cannibalism, and Nona sits back and gloats. However, with all that's going on, Abby (of all people) has finally put the pieces together: why Jonas and Nona have been stuck at the bus station for weeks; why none of them can really remember how they got there; and why they all seem to be in the same "going-nowhere" situation in their lives. They're dead, and they're stuck together in what they can only guess is a purgatory or limbo. However, just as they all make this realization and start to come to terms with it, their reality shifts, and they return to their positions at the start of the play: Jonas doodling on his arm, Nona pretending to read, and Abby trying to start up conversation. The dialogue is the same as the beginning of the play, and indeed, we are led to understand that the trio are in a perpetual loop of re-examining their lives, realizing their hopeless fates, and then starting it all over again. And they lived happily ever after.

And like I said, we did act two very well. There was only one hiccup, and it was easily pushed through, just as the first hiccup in act one. I had the last line of the play (at least the last line before the cycle began again), and it's a quote of Jack Kerouac's. The line is in answer to Nona's imploring questions about what the heck they're supposed to do now that they realize that they're stuck in this purgatory. Jonas says, "I don't know. I have nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion."*** I spent a while during rehearsal trying to figure out how to say this damn line, and I never quite figured it out. Well, it showed. I didn't nail the line, like I had been hoping to do. As Bridget put it, "You were trying too hard," and she was quite right. Instead of just saying it, I tried to say it. Lesson learned.

But despite a problematic last line, the production overall was a success. After Abby says the real last line of the play ("Abigail Marie Fenton. What's yours?"), the lights went down, we got up, and the lights went back up for us to take our quick group bow. We hurried off stage and down to the green room where we cheered and celebrated. Courtney pulled out a bottle of champagne for a tradition that her theatre company has of having a champagne toast at the end of the final performance of a show (and since this was a one-night-only gig…). After some hugs and some post-show milling about, Bridget and I went out for dinner with Liz and her boyfriend, Mike. After that, we went home, and I slept something fierce.

It was an exhausting experience (though not nearly as exhausting as it was for poor Courtney), but I enjoyed every minute of it. Like I said in my last post -- it was a fulfillment of something I wanted to do for years. Ever since I was in a tiny little role in "Oklahoma!" at Rice, I felt that I had the drive and ability to hold my own starring in a theatrical show, and now I know it for a fact. I hope I get to do it again sometime soon…

* Courtney said that she suspected that this tattoo parlor, one of the places that was selling tickets to the show, had been selling photocopies of tickets and pocketing the money. Not sure if it turned out to be true…
** Actually, she's holding it, but not reading it. Jonas had been staring over her shoulder for a half-hour and she's been on the same page the whole time. So he's thinking to himself, 1) this chick's really into Bengal Tigers and wants to get the full effect of the article; 2) she's completely illiterate and it takes her forever to read; or 3) the most likely option, she's not reading it at all, she's just staring at it and thinking about something else. Or 4) her parents didn't give her enough affection as a child.
*** "I had nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion." is from "On the Road," part two, chapter four.

Pretending

2006-06-21T14:52:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Yesterday,” by the Beatles

This past Monday night, June 19, I got to do something I’ve essentially wanted to do since I was in college – act in a play. It was a play called “Gin, Love & Kerouac,” by a young lass named Courtney Baia. She also produced the play through her theatre company, Peripitus Theatre Co., and played one of the three roles.

I first got involved with this play, just as I get involved with everything these days, through a Craig’s List posting for an audition. I prepared a couple of short monologues (with the help of my patient wife) and went to the audition, which was held in Courtney’s apartment (such is low-budget theatre). I really wasn’t expecting to get the part, not because I didn’t think I did decently, but because I figured there was probably someone who did better. Turns out, they offered me the role two days later, and I quickly accepted.

Well, let’s back up a second here. Some of you are probably surprised that I was seeking out being in a play in the first place. Truth is, I’ve been fascinated with theatre and acting for as long as I can remember, long before I met a certain girl who was particularly involved in it. Theatre have long been this pseudo-sacred area for me – a near-ritualistic gathering to watch people re-create or completely invent a reality. It was only in the past seven or eight years or so that I began to recognize the importance and respect I attached to the performing arts, and the disdain I feel when people half-ass it, disrespect it, or treat it like a second-class pursuit.

Indeed, when I met Bridget, it was a large part of the mystique that I felt surrounding her – she was a Director with a capital D, not like the technicians I was working with in my film program, but someone who took acting and the art of theatre seriously. Even as she did small productions to occasionally spartan audiences in Washington, DC, there was something that elevated it in my mind above anything anyone at AU’s film program was doing.

A couple of years ago, when Bridget took a directing class at Studio Theatre, I decided to try my hand at a basic acting course. I enjoyed it a lot and did fine in it. I certainly did better than most of the people in the class, which wasn’t necessarily saying much, but still made me feel good about the thought of actually acting in something. But one thing that the class showed me that I hadn’t fully realized before was that I had something in me that has been in me since… oh… I was in middle school: the ability and willingness to turn off my self-consciousness in the interest of performing for an audience. It’s one of the more basic things about acting – being willing to look stupid – and I seem to have it. Now, it’s a big leap from there to Brando, but at least I had that much. There were plenty of people I had seen in college and community theatre that didn’t even have that.

So anyway, that was the seed of confidence that allowed me to 1) perform in Day Old Plays over a year ago in Washington, DC; and 2) try out for a play in a town I had only lived in for seven months. I try to have no illusions about my abilities – you won’t see me trying out for anything more than small theatre stuff anytime soon. But it seemed like “Gin, Love & Kerouac” was something I could do… and I was right.

So anyway, back to the play at hand. This being a brand new play, there wasn’t much of a way to know exactly how good the play was going to be before I accepted and got a copy of it. I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that it turned out to be pretty darn good. The entire play takes place in the course of an evening in a bus station in Illinois. There are three characters, one young man and two young women, who are stuck at the bus station by an extraordinarily heavy snowstorm. They get to talking, as should happen in any decent play, and the things they reveal about themselves eventually point to a common thread between their lives. In between, they flirt, dance, get drunk, ingest biohazardous materials, and debate the merits of Jack Kerouac.

I played Jonas Ashley, a 19-year-old (go ahead, get your laughter out now) who dropped out of college and decided to travel across the country like his hero Kerouac. He is constantly playing with his identity, telling stories that would more befit a seasoned world traveler than a minor-aged wannabe beat. Besides these notable aspects of his character, he also really, really likes to talk. Once he starts talking on page 7 of this 97-page-long play, there are only a few places where he’s not intimately involved in the dialogue. Indeed, I ran a digital copy of the script through my script analysis program, and Jonas has 40% of the dialogue of the play, along with three near-page-long-stretches that count as monologues.

So, here I was, a 31-year-old introvert being asked to play a 19-year-old garrulous, flirty guy. A bit of a challenge, but I accepted it and memorized my lines well.

There are two other roles in the play, both played by young women. The first one, Abby, who is a throwback to the 50s in how deferential she is to the men in her life, was played by Courtney herself. The other, Nona, an anti-social conservative gal who’s on her way back home to get married, was originally going to be played by a friend of Courtney’s, but she had to drop out a couple of months ago (for whatever reason), and Courtney had to scramble to find a replacement. She asked me if I knew anyone willing and able to fill in, and I turned to the theatrical resource I had in Bridget for advice. I ended up asking one of the actresses in Bridget’s production of “Crave,” Liz Rimar, if she would play Nona. And to my surprise, after she met with Courtney, she said yes. This was both good and bad – it was good that we found someone good to be in the play, but it scared the bejeezus out of me at first, because she is someone who I respected and already knew could… well, actually act, and here I was, a wannabe, going to be trying to act next to her. A little bit daunting, but still, I like Liz a lot, and she’s about as stuck up as Jesus, so the initial worry didn’t last long.

The rehearsal process and the performance was a bit different than a typical theatre run. In that way, it was more in line with what is known as a “workshop” production, in that there were limited rehearsals and only one performance night (Bridget’s productions in D.C., for instance, had weeks of performances). Even as a workshop production, our timeline was a bit compressed; we only rehearsed this past Saturday and Sunday for 10 hours each day.

Another unusual (or experimental, as Courtney put it) aspect of the production was that there was no director. The actors were to essentially create their own roles and characterizations from their own work and the rehearsal time with the other actors.

Bridget still smarts a little from the characterizations of directing made by Brian Friel, the playwright of her last play, “Dancing at Lughnasa” (he said something akin to: directors aren’t really necessary; all you need are good actors and a decent stage manager and you have what you need for good theatre). And as someone who is studying directing, it’s understandable that she would be skeptical about a theatrical process that eschewed a formal director. She grumbled about it some, but she was overall very supporting and helped me in the long process of memorization and trying to develop some character for this Jonas fellow.

The rehearsals were long and hot; most of them were done in Courtney’s living room (again, theatre on the cheap!), which had no air conditioner. But it was clear by the end of the first day that we were well on our way to getting this thing together, and the second day was focused on particular gaps in our memory, our blocking and our characterizations. It was whirlwind and exhausting, but a lot of fun nonetheless.

And then, we were as ready as we were going to be for Monday night…

more tomorrow...

A sketchy film project

2006-06-19T14:40:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “How Much is That Doggie in the Window,” by Bob Merrill

A month, huh?

Last weekend, I extricated myself from what was becoming a very frustrating film situation.

Early this year, when I was still working at H&R Block, my slate was pretty much clear as far as doing films was concerned. I was seriously worried about my ability to get work in my chosen industry, even if it didn’t pay much at first. Now that I have two teaching gigs lined up, am working for the biggest film editing software maker, and am directly or tangentially involved in several different film projects, it’s kind of hard to remember how worried I was, but I was indeed concerned that I was going to be stuck taking various ho-hum jobs in graphic design or layout.

It was in this worrisome environment that I first answered to an ad on Craig’s List looking for a production manager and editor (two separate positions) for a feature-length film that was being produced in New Hampshire. It was advertised as a “paid job,” which made it all the more attractive. So, I answered the ad, offering my services for both positions and looking to find out more about the project.

The producer called me back the next day and, to my astonishment, was ready to hire me on the spot. I was not entirely committal, but I did express interest, wanting to know a little bit about the film and the details. She told me that it was a low-budget horror picture* and would be filming this fall. Other details were yet to be determined, and I tentatively agreed to be on board. We didn’t talk about pay or anything like that, because well, I’m used to waiting until a face-to-face interview or follow-up phone call to ask things like that when you’re looking for a job. I had no idea that this phone call was going to encompass the entire hiring process.

As I hung up the phone (can we say that anymore – I pushed “end” on my cell phone…), my spidey sense was tingling like crazy. I had been a production manager on a feature film before and was intimately knowledgable of how all this worked, and there were several things that made the red lights flash:

-- She was willing to hire the production manager (PM), perhaps the most important position in the pre-production of a feature film, after only having seen my resume and talked to me for a minute on the phone. I’ve had cases where someone was hiring for a one-day gig and talked to me on the phone for half-an-hour before even hinting that I was hired.
-- The details of the movie itself were sketchy, and a script wasn’t expected until summer (it’s hard to plan for something when you don’t know what you’re planning for…).
-- In general, the producer was not interested in discussing details. Indeed, she talked at a mile-a-minute, and always seemed to be ready to get off the phone (even if she wasn’t actively trying to get off the phone)

But I went along with things anyway. Such is me, especially at that time when things, like I said, were so uncertain. And more than that, I was happy to have a chance to be a production manager again on a feature film. The first time I was a PM was for a movie in D.C., and as Bridget can tell you, it was one of the more painful and stressful (albeit educational and ultimately rewarding) experiences of my life. I was looking forward to being able to apply what I had learned from all my mistakes in the previous film to another film.

The producer called me a couple of days later to ask me a couple of questions about my editing system and if I was on board. I said I was, and we talked a little more about details. Not to overuse the word, but they were sketchy. There were going to be meetings with crew in the summer, and the filming itself was set for such and such weekends in fall. She was assembling cast and crew (a task that usually falls on the production manager to organize, and with good reason). That should have sent up another red flag, but more on that later. And then, almost in passing, as we were about to hang up, she mentioned that I would get separate deferred pay points for the PM and editor jobs.

And at that moment, I should have turned down the gig and ran. For those of you who don’t know how these things work, a lot of independent films choose to, for obvious budgetary reasons, defer the pay of cast and crew by giving them “points,” which is to say, percentage points of the film’s profit, if there is any. So, for instance, if this film had made $10,000 in profit, and I had 5 points, then I would have received a check for $500.

Deferred pay is not an unusual situation in indie filmmaking and no one usually has any illusions about the reality of getting paid – in most cases, the film you’re working on will not make a profit and you’ll get nothing except an entry on your resume and a DVD for your collection. But there is one unspoken rule about it: you are always upfront about it, and you NEVER claim it’s a “paid gig.” When a professional reads “paid” without the word “deferred” before it, he/she assumes that there is a paycheck at the end of the day. Such is what I assumed, until I was told, in passing, that it was deferred.

Were I thinking clearly then, and were I not so desperate for work and a chance to redeem myself, I would have spotted this obviously unprofessional behavior and dropped it all. But I went along with it, since I really wasn’t doing it for the pay anyway, and it still sounded like a fun project.

Time passed, seasons changed…well, one season… and then the time for the first meeting rolled around – early May. Now, to this point, the producer had not included me in any discussion of things, and I didn’t think too much of it, because I didn’t think the production was getting started until this first meeting. I didn’t know what to expect at this first meeting, but I trusted that the producer and her assistant had some plans for it.

Well, that was a “sketchy” assumption. When I got to the meeting, the producer took the cast off to the side and we in the crew were pretty much just left there to, well, fend for ourselves. As production manager, I quickly recognized the chaos and took control; after that the meeting found some semblance of order. But still, I had not been informed as to the nature of the meeting, and had I not stepped up or hadn’t been able to attend (which was a real possibility), the crew members would have just sat around twiddling their thumbs until they finally decided to leave. Even with me calling things to order, I wasn’t in any position to really lead a meeting – I had to improvise on the spot, and since, like I said, details were “sketchy,” I was basically winging it. Under the circumstances, I think I did a superb job, but I’m sure most of the crew, some of whom had traveled from over 100 miles away, felt like they had wasted their time in coming… and I didn’t disagree.

After that meeting, it became clear that the producer wasn’t going to be telling me when and how to get things going, so I had to take it upon myself to basically start the thing from the ground up. And so I did. But what I was faced with was a mountain of chaos – principal crew members who had been hired with even less an interview than I had, and who had no contact or information about the film beyond a 1-minute phone call; some positions for which the producer had unwittingly hired multiple people; and perhaps most disastrously, professionals who were originally under the same impression that I had been – that this gig was truly “paid,” not deferred.

And my efforts were an overwhelming success. The second meeting, which was held two Fridays ago, was infinitely more organized and on track than that first debacle. I feel confident saying no one left that meeting with any major questions unanswered and feeling that the production wasn’t in good hands.

But while this meeting was successful overall, severe cracks were starting to appear. To take the next steps in the production, I was going to have to start keeping track of the budget and overseeing the script breakdown. On both these points I was stymied – first off, the script wasn’t freakin’ finished (and that script that was there was in serious need of trimming), and second, the producer was reticent to release any expenditure and budget information, and so there was no way I could speak knowledgably about the budget and make plans for spending (a fundamental aspect of being a PM). And to fill in the downtimes during the meeting, we put on a DVD of the last movie this producer did. I had not seen it before, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

But the real kicker that finally put me over the edge was the fact that the producer was planning on spending $20,000 on this project, but had only raised $1,000 thus far. Whenever asked about the discrepancy, she would point to the script and say that once that came in (it was being written by someone I never met), then the fundraising could begin in earnest and the money would come in. Now, I like optimism as much as the next filmmaker, but this was beyond the pale ridiculous. I think it’s just a cardinal rule of business that you don’t count on money that’s not in the bank, and this was as fundamental a violation as you could get – even if the script winds up being great, there’s no immediate guarantee of funding, despite whatever contacts she thought she might have.

After the meeting was over, I told Bridget that, even with my working to get the thing organized, the movie had only a 50-50 chance of ever getting off the ground, simply because of the money situation (you can plan and be as optimistic as you want – if there’s no money, there’s no movie). The next morning, it struck me that I was working my ass off for a production that I wasn’t even confident was going to happen, and if it was going to happen, would wind up looking like the not-so-good movie that we showed at the meeting.

And so, I quit. The day after the meeting.

And it surprised the heck out of the producer, who struggled to understand why I was leaving, but finally accepted it. And I’m sure it’s going to surprise a lot of the crew members who saw me confidently leading the production just the day before. But it had to be done – for my own sake. Before, I was looking forward to several busy months of frustrating planning and orchestration, followed by a few fun weekends, and then editing a lackluster product. Now, with that weight off my shoulders, I can focus on the projects that really matter to me – Indian Girl and Commit to the Line (the documentary I started editing work on last year). And I learned an important lesson – no matter how desperate you are for work, never say yes until you know all the details to your satisfaction. Let’s hope I can apply that lesson from here on out!

* I am omitting any specific references to what the film was, because having been the victim of a “Google-byte” in the recent past, I’m trying to be careful. (Google-byte is my own little phrase for a situation where someone who is mentioned disparagingly on your web page or blog stumbles onto the offensive post after typing their name into Google. I’m sure there’s another word for it out there, but this is the one I like. [The past-tense verb form: Google-bit… which I guess is one-eighth of the noun form…])

My first film festival award

2006-05-17T15:46:00.000-04:00

Okay, not really. This wasn't so much an award as it was a booby prize, but I thought it was cool, so I'm sharing. A short film of mine, "Art Piece," was shown at the Jilted Film Festival, a very low-profile, fun annual event that features comedy shorts that had been rejected from other festivals. I didn't get the main prize, which was not particularly a surprise, but it only consisted of $25 and a tiara. What I got was what everyone else in the festvial got, which was the "It's Not You, It's Us" award. The booty from that award consisted of what you see above: a packet of microwave popcorn, the books "The Power of Positive Thinking" and "Chicken Soup for the Soul," and most importantly, a small bottle of cheap vodka. Everything a despondent filmmaker needs! I was disappointed I couldn't go to this fun event, which took place in Manhattan. Such is life.

Through the Sallyport

2006-05-11T16:50:00.000-04:00

That's me on the far right. I had a great seat
for the graduation, up close, right on the aisle,
so I wound up in a lot of the pictures of the event.
STIPIMM: “With a Little Help From My Friends,” by the Beatles

Ten years ago today, I graduated from Rice University. It was a red-letter day, not just because that was the day I ceased to be an undergrad, and not just for the fact that I had reached the point of my “expected” education.* Though I would have been loathe to admit it at the time, it was a significant day for me emotionally, a day in which a lot of things about who I was were made clear, and a day that put an end to what was, in retrospect, the first big failure of my life.

Yes, folks, I consider my three years at Rice University (junior year was in France, and a much different picture) to have been, overall, a failure. Yes, I earned a degree at one of the better schools in the country. And yes, I had an eventful three years, full of all sorts of individual ups and downs. Late in my senior year, I had distinguished myself both in terms of writing (for the school paper and my residential college’s publication) and (pseudo-) leadership (among other things, I saved the French Club from extinction…whoopee). However, these individual feats didn’t add up to a successful three years.

Before I go on, let me state that I know this looks like a big pile of bitterness and regret. But it really isn’t – when I left Rice, I was indeed pretty damn bitter and I ruminated and griped about it a lot. I’m sure my friends loooooved it. But Rice U. doesn’t even register as a blip anymore on my “things I care about” screen. The only reason I’m bringing it up now is because it's the anniversary and, thus, I’ve been thinking about it lately. And in that thinking, I’ve realized that I learned quite a bit from my first failure.

Now back to the reasons I saw it as a failure. There were three big ones:

1) I was just a face in the crowd. During my long complaints about my life at Rice, I would often lament that I had few, if any friends. In retrospect, that just simply wasn’t the case. I had plenty of friends, even at the times when I was alone in my room only because I didn’t have anybody that I just hung out with. During my freshman and sophomore years, but best Rice friend was Wynn, who was an alum, and thus only tied to the school in spirit.

My lack of a group to be around was just a symptom of something else, which was the fact that I did not stand out in any way from the pack during most of my time at Rice (or if I did, it was for a bad reason, which is another story altogether). Much of that, I admit, was my own fault; I came to Rice already in a bad state of mind because deep down, I didn’t want to go there. And I was hundreds of miles away from Norman, Okla., where my girlfriend at the time was. But the truth is, even if I was in a bad temper about being there, I tried very hard, or at least as hard as an introvert can, to make friends; I went to every party, every college-wide event, every college** government meeting. I hung out incessantly in the college commons, sat at different tables with people during meals (half the time…I do often like eating in silence). I rarely holed myself up in my room just because I felt anti-social; even when I lived off-campus sophomore year, I spent an inordinate amount of time on campus. Indeed, during my second year, a senior told me that while I was a freshman, people who knew my face but didn’t know my name would refer to me as “the guy who’s always around.”*** That pretty much sums up my first two years of Rice – the guy who’s always around, but nobody knows.

My senior year was different. But even there, I was starting with a bit of a handicap, because I had been gone the entire year before. I might as well have been a freshman, and indeed, probably because I was in the same outsider state of mind at the start of the year, most of my friends would wind up being freshmen. However, I managed, though a combination of better luck and senior’s prerogative, to make a name for myself, if only for a little bit. It came very late in the year, though, and was the equivalent of making a basket from half-court at the buzzer when your team is down by 50 points. To make it worse, during the last few weeks at Rice, I finally began to fall into the groups I had wanted to fall into since my freshman year… just in time to say goodbye and be forgotten.

I only recently realized that my relative anonymity was at the center of my malaise at Rice. There were plenty of students in my college who were quite fine with going about their studies and not standing out socially. I was not one of those people. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t need to be BMOC; but I would have liked to have been something other than “the guy who’s always around.” Until Rice, I had stood out among my peers throughout my life, both academically and creatively. I never quite got used to the idea of being a face in the crowd.

And when I say "face in the crowd" I mean that literally. For all the times I was "always around," the only time my face appears in the college’s section of my senior yearbook is in a group shot during graduation.****

2) I got nothing out of it academically. Here’s all you need to understand this: I majored in English, French and Medieval Studies. Today, I still get Wordsworth and Longfellow confused, I can’t speak French anymore worth a damn, and I can’t tell you a damn thing about the Middle Ages anymore, save a few interesting tidbits that add up to little. I fell into my majors mainly because I took a bunch of humanities courses when I started at Rice as a backlash to all the study of math and science I had done in high school. Once I had accumulated all those credits, it was too easy to just finish it out, especially when I had no idea what else I would have majored in. I know I’m hardly alone in that (sounds like 90% of humanities majors), but still. There is one thing I’m proud of: I was probably the only humanities major in years to take Quantum Mechanics I… just because I wanted to.

3) I didn’t get laid enough. This is probably the one area that I’m still residually bitter about (as Bridget can attest) – that I went through my college years with a pathetic sexual record. There was a brief spurt my sophomore year, but otherwise, I was one very frustrated undergrad. Now, I know that some perspective is called for in this subject, and I can look back on my lack of female companionship with some wisdom, but still.

Let me set up some context, and maybe you’ll understand. At the beginning of my senior year, I had just come back from a year in Paris, the city that embodies romance, where I succeeded in getting…absolutely no romance. So I come back to Rice, a senior, with his OWN room. When you’re a freshman and you’re not getting any, you’re always told that just wait, they’ll be throwing themselves at you your senior year. How much sex did I have my senior year at Rice? ZERO.

Why? Partly my own introversion, sure. But also because I was never really comfortable socially at Rice (see section 1); I had plenty of crushes, but no situations in which a shy boy like me would have been comfortable enough to act on them. And the times when I got brave enough to act? They never turned out well. The best example is when I asked another senior to some dance (I forget what the hell they were called). This gal was quiet, but not unsocial. A bit granola and odd, but straight and cute as all get go; I’d had a crush on her since freshman year. We were friendly acquaintances, and I knew she wasn’t going out with anyone, so I got a bit of “carpe diem” going and asked her. Her answer, which because of her nature I could totally believe: “I don’t really go to those sorts of things.” Not mean at all, but a rejection nonetheless.

I did date one freshman girl my senior year… another odd gal who liked to wear a gigantic hat during the day. But in that case, I ran up against an obstacle that no seniority or room situation could overcome: prudery.

Like I said before, it did get somewhat better in the second semester of my senior year. People knew me for the few columns I wrote for the paper and the humorous publication I put out late in the year (The Phoenix). Indeed, the day I released the Phoenix, something strange and neat happened that stands out in my mind – it was probably a week before finals, and senioritis was hitting big time. I had just returned to my room from lunch and found that someone had put a small paper bag in front of my door. In the bag, there were three colored index cards and a tangerine. Each of the cards had something nice written on them (in lovely female handwriting) with black marker. I believe one was “Hope you’re having a great day,” and another said “Someone thinks you are très cool!” Meanwhile, the tangerine was decorated with a smiley face and the word “SMILE.” My friends swore it wasn’t them who put it there (and I had just seen them at lunch, so it couldn’t have been them anyway), and we couldn’t figure out who it would have been. I kept that tangerine until it got moldy, and I probably still have the index cards buried somewhere. One the best, silliest, most uplifting gifts I’ve ever received. And I’ll never know who gave it to me.

But 10 years ago today, under the blazing Texas sun, the small victories at Rice were far from my mind, and I was quite ready to leave for good. At the end of the graduation, the graduates walk ceremonially through the sallyport at the head of the academic quad, outside, symbolically leaving the school (when we enter as freshmen, we ceremonially walked in). On the other side of the archway, the graduates all celebrated with each other, hugging, taking pictures, etc., all while they waited for the ceremony to end, when their families could join them. But this graduate had no one to celebrate with. I stood there for over 10 minutes, uncomfortably and somewhat painfully alone, and watched other people celebrate themselves and their friends. It was one last rub-in of the failure to find myself and find my place at Rice University. But despite the vitriol that may be oozing from this post, I didn’t sulk, I didn’t let it weigh me down. I left Rice behind and, having learned something from my experiences in Houston (lesson #1: never date a prude...), I made my own way, as convoluted as it has been so far.

But I still do get a quiet joy every time I get a request for money from my alma mater and get to throw it in the trash.

* “Expected” education: From the time I was little, because my parents were of a particular economic class and because I was at least decently intelligent, it was always taken for granted that I would go to university and get at least a bachelor’s degree. After that, it was all up to me, in terms of decision-making and financing.

** When I say college, I mean residential college. It got confusing, especially since my college was named Will Rice College.

*** Vintage. Scout's honor.

**** I don’t mean that to sound as pathetic as it does…

Alone

2006-05-10T14:35:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “’45” by Darren & the minorities

So, even though everyone knows by now that my last post was misleading, it was still technically accurate. Bridget has indeed left Boston for a few weeks while she serves as an assistant director at the Olney Theatre in Maryland, back in the D.C. area. She’s working under the director of BU’s theatre program, Jim Petosa, and it’s a great opportunity for her.

Unfortunately, since I’m bringing home the soy bacon and have a day job, I could not go with her. I will be traveling down there this month, which will be my first time back to the old stamping grounds, but for the time being, I’m all alone in our apartment. For the first time since 2002, I’m living all by myself.

New STIPIMM: “All By Myself,” by Eric Carmen

In some ways, it’s not too much different than when Bridget was around. During her rehearsal time, and just when she was very busy, she often wouldn’t get home from school until 11 p.m. or midnight. Thus, during much of February and April, I spent my evenings alone.

Those tended to be the times when I got the most work done; I’m notoriously bad at being able to keep my mind on work when my sweetie is in the apartment with me. Thus, having her out of the apartment is good for my work ethic. Indeed, after all the necessary running around I did for Bridget at the end of her school year (all of which I did gladly, mind you), it’s nice to be able to set my own schedule every day for a few weeks, with no immediate demands on my time save the ones I choose to put on it.

So, I don’t like not having Bridget around when I’m home, but I can deal with it. The time I really feel her absence, every single night, is when I go to sleep in an empty bed. A significant part of that is just her physical presence, which I miss terribly. I’ve tried to fill in that absence with the help of our two body pillows, one on each side, providing an almost crib-like barrier I can snuggle against (paging Dr. Freud…). But of course, piles of fluff are no real substitute for Bridget, and so, every night, I miss just feeling her close by.

But there’s more to her absence than just her physical presence. Bedtime has always been a significant part of our relationship (insert dirty joke here) in that it’s a time, no matter how busy our day has been, when we are both together, lying down, going nowhere, neither of us rushing to get someplace or get something done. It’s a time we use to talk, to commiserate, to comfort, or to discuss, until one of us informs the other “I’m fading…”. It’s especially important those days when we don’t see each other once one of us leaves in the morning (like the times Bridget is in rehearsal) – it is a guaranteed daily moment together, and we both guard it jealously.

Bedtime phone calls substitute for face-to-face conversation. But now, instead of one of us fading off to sleep, it’s usually the phrase, “My battery’s dying…” that brings our conversation to an end. I like dropping off to sleep at the sound of Bridget’s voice, or (more often, I’ll admit) her dropping off to my somnambulant voice. I don’t get to have that this month, but there is comfort in knowing that, at the end of May, I will have it back again.

It sounds silly to say after only half a week, but I do miss Bridget dearly.

Bad news

2006-05-06T22:17:00.000-04:00

Bridget left me today. She's going to stay with some friends in D.C. for a while. I'll have more details later. In the meantime, I'm alone.

Bridget's first great play

2006-05-02T17:10:00.000-04:00

The shrieking strangers (left-right):
Rose, Maggie, Agnes and Chris
STIPIMM: "It’s Time to Say Goodnight"

Over the past few years, several people have told that I’m a good audience member. Perhaps so; whether or not it’s a good thing, I tend to have a higher tolerance for suspension of disbelief and more willingness to be drawn into a story than other people. I do have my limits (I’m looking at you, [name removed]), but in general, I’m willing to watch just about anything, on the stage or on the screen.

That said, I have pretty high standards to be truly moved by films, and even higher standards for plays. The number of stage performances that have really left a lasting impact on me can be counted on one hand, and yes, I’ve seen quite a few in my time. The impact doesn’t have to be particularly profound: one of my select few is “Kenneth, What is the Frequency,” which was a humorous docu-play about the mugging of Dan Rather. But there are a couple, including a surprising production of Ionesco’s “Man With Bags,” that just knocked me out emotionally and psychologically (in a good way!), sticking with me for weeks and months after seeing it.

Add one to the list.

Bridget’s production of “Dancing at Lughnasa,” which took place two weekends ago, was a beautiful work of theatre. Yes, I am a biased observer, but I am objective enough to know the difference between being proud of my wife and being drawn into a exceptionally well-done production of a damn good play. I had read the play twice before I saw the production, and I had seen various aspects of the rehearsal process; I knew plenty about the story and what Bridget had in store for the audience in this production. I saw the finished product three times, and I wept twice during each one. And not just “tear-in-the-eye-‘cause-a-good-Hallmark-commerical-is-on” kind of cry, but a soul-wrenching, “try-hard-not-to-sob-out-loud-in-a-quiet-theatre-you-wuss” kind of cry.

“Dancing at Lughnasa” was a triumph on many levels for Bridget. It was easily the best production she’s ever done, in terms of staging, lighting, performances, and yes, direction. It was her first production in many years that was done in a space* that was actually designed for theatre, and she made it look like she’d always worked there. It made a strong impact on the people in her program, both students and faculty (one staff member said it was “the most professional-looking production” he had ever seen in that space), thus setting her up as the resident “bad-ass” going into her second year. Bridget herself said that she senses that people (mainly underclassmen) who had their doubts about her look at her in a different way. She had a lot of excellent help in her production, not just from the cast and crew that were assigned to her, but also help that she sought out and got (Bridget’s people skills at work), including a great set designer and a very handsome, ingenious sound consultant. But no one can doubt that at the center of it all was the sure direction of one Bridget Kathleen O’Leary. As I write this, she’s getting her official critique with two of her professors, and I have no doubt that, other than constructive criticisms and general suggestions, there will be nothing but praise for this production.

Opening of the play
So, what was so great about this? Let’s start with the basics. The play, written by the leprechaun-looking Irishman [name removed], centers around a poor Irish family during the summer of 1936 (in Ballybeg, in present-day Northern Ireland). The five Mundy sisters, all unmarried, ranging in age from mid-20s to 40, eek out a meager living to support themselves and the illegitimate seven-year-old son of the youngest sister. It is this son, Michael, looking back as a grown man, who narrates the play, starting from the quotable line “When I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me.” Michael is remembering that particular summer because of the significance it held for both him and all his aunts: his lovable rogue of a father, Gerry Evans, returned to Ballybeg to visit his mother; the sisters’ older brother, Father Jack, returned from a long mission in Africa as a greatly changed man; and the family purchased their first wireless radio, the music from which, as Michael puts it, turned his sober aunts into “shrieking strangers” and injected the dancing of the title into the home.

The play, just on the page, is a superb piece of art. All of its characterizations run deep and shine clearly through the dense idiom and accent of Northern Ireland. The plotlines are at once specific and universal. It was first performed in 1990, and then on Broadway in 1991. It won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1992. It was made into a movie (which Bridget and I will have to see sometime) in 1998 with [name removed] playing Kate, the family matriarch.

Marconi, the "goddamned,
bloody useless set"

By my reckoning, there are two primary themes running through and driving the action in “Dancing at Lughnasa,” both of which are laid out clearly in the Michael’s opening monologue. The first of these themes is a tried and true one: the struggle between old and new, nature versus industry, humanity versus technology. The dichotomy is set up in Michael’s juxtaposition of the two things that changed for his family during the summer of 1936: the return of Father Jack, and the purchase of the wireless set. Father Jack, a Catholic priest who had spent the past 25 years in a leper colony in Africa, came home a changed man, one who was not so much a priest but a spiritual hybrid who had assimilated the native rituals of the people he was missionary to into his own personal beliefs. Throughout the play, he speaks with glee about the pagan rituals that he witnessed and helped perform while purportedly serving the Church in Africa. As the play goes on, it becomes clear that he didn’t just come home to visit, but that he was sent home by his superiors for good. His mind appears quite confused, forgetting basic English words (most notably “ceremony”), but in fact, he is quite at home in his own mind and his own beliefs. He represents an embracing of nature, of ceremony, of ancient tradition and the imperfections therein. As for the wireless set (which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t), which the family has dubbed “Marconi” (“the name emblazoned on the side”), it represents the inevitable surge of modernity into what is otherwise a poor little shack of a household.

The Mundys: Rose, Agnes, Jack, Maggie, Chris and Kate
At the intersection of these two symbols, Father Jack and Marconi, are the Mundy sisters themselves. Each of them is affected in their own unique way by the arrival events of the summer. There’s the youngest, Chris, Michael’s mother, who is hopeful, despite all evidence to the contrary, that her son’s father, Gerry, will finally settle down and marry her. There’s the simple-minded Rose, whose reckless embrace of love and life is looked on warily by her other sisters. There’s Agnes, whose meager livelihood (knitting gloves) is threatened by the arrival of a factory. Then there are Maggie and Kate, the two richest characters in the play, but who I can’t manage to introduce separately, so intertwined are their fates. Maggie is “the joker of the family,” who is eternally optimistic and fun-loving, while Kate, the puritanical oldest sister, struggles to keep the family from falling apart both materially and spiritually. They are at once opposites and equals, both fighting for the same thing (the strength of the family) and doing it together, and yet both going about it in vastly different ways. Both of them alternately serve at the other’s antagonist and confidante.

One of the most powerful moments of the play (one of the two that made me cry without fail) takes place in Act One. To this point, Kate has forbade the rest of the family from going to the Harvest Dance, saying it was not something that respectable women of their age should do. This despite the fact that all her sisters are desperate to go out and dance. The act of dancing is one that we quickly see is representative of their youth and promise, and nowhere is this made clearer than in Maggie’s monologue in which she speaks longingly about a dance contest that she and her best childhood friend had gone to. Right after this monologue, in which Maggie reveals the pain she feels in the memory of her childhood, Kate offers to break the silence by having Marconi turned on. The song that comes on is a rousing jig that quickly inspires Maggie to…well…go a little batty for a minute, smear flour on her face, and dance wildly around the house. Her sisters (other than Kate), all join her in a raucous, crazy dance. The combination of the music, the movement and most of all, the memory, finally push Kate to let go. She leaps up, screaming like her sisters, but much more from the gut, and dances a measured, but intense dance, by herself. As she dances, she reaches up to the sky, as if begging God to both forgive her and allow her to embrace this bodily pleasure one more time. It’s a beautiful, powerful moment, where the breadth of both Kate and Maggie’s characters are revealed at once. And needless to say, Bridget’s staging of this scene was incredible.**

Agnes (Liz Palin),
looking for a man."

The other major theme of the play is the bittersweet quality of memory. You can see how important memory is in the scene I just mentioned: it is memory that sets off both Maggie and Kate into their ecstatic motion. But from the first line of the play to the final moment before the lights go down, memory is the paint in which Michael, the narrator, makes this canvas. He freely concedes that all memory, especially his own, is imperfect. Indeed, more than imperfect, it is something that transcends any notion of “truth” or “reality.” Memory creates its own world, where feeling and atmosphere is as important as anything that is actually said or seen. As the play comes to a close, you are left with the feeling, that is both unsettling and comforting, that nothing that you have just seen happened quite like it is remembered. Indeed, after seeing it as many times as I did, you kind of understand that so many of the details or conversations that we see might not have happened that summer at all, but may have happened before or after the summer of 1936; the only things we know for certain are the limited things that Michael tells us as an adult. But what unites all the disparate events into that timeframe of 1936 is solely Michael’s memory, and that is all that is important. I was regularly reminded of a line from the end of the movie “A River Runs Through It” (high on my list of the best movie endings of all time): “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.” In “Dancing at Lughnasa,” it’s not a river, but the Mundy household, and most importantly, his aunts, that run through and shape his memory.

There were never
such devoted sisters.
Or maybe there were...

One area in which this shaping of memory is clear is how he remembers his aunts. Michael clearly remembers interactions with his aunts Kate, Maggie, and his mother, Chris, each one displaying the deep love they feel for the boy in very different ways (note that there is no one actually playing the seven-year-old Michael, in this production or any other; the adult Michael says the boy’s words, but the aunts play to a child that isn’t really there). But Michael never once speaks to his aunts Agnes and Rose; his sole interaction with them is a kiss that Agnes blows to him through a window. Later in the play, we come to find out why they don’t hold as a strong place in his childhood memory – the pair left at the end of the summer, never to visit or contact their sisters again. The characters of Rose and Agnes are not roughly drawn, but it is clear in how [the playwright] created all five sisters, that the detail of their characters depended on how important a role they played in Michael’s life.

And as we near the end of the play, the impact that his mother, Aunt Kate and Aunt Maggie had on Michael’s memory, and on his life, comes to the foreground. His final monologues are almost confessional – talking about how he hid from his mother the knowledge that his father had another family that he was devoted to, and how, “in that selfish way of young men,” he left the household of spinsters as soon as he became an adult. You get the sense that he didn’t cut himself off from his family, as his Aunts Agnes and Rose did, once he left, but there is deep guilt buried in his words, guilt that he left the women who raised him behind as he went off to pursue a new life.

But what is reawakening this guilt, and what is causing Michael, as an adult, to revisit his childhood memories? This was an important question for Bridget to answer going into the process, one that she labored over. My own take, after seeing the play, was that Michael was looking back after the death of his mother, presumedly after Kate and Maggie had died as well.

The final monologue
The last moments of the play point to this more than anything else. The final scene consists of all the characters in the play gathering right outside the house to have a small dinner as the sun goes down. In this moment, nothing is really resolved, nothing climactic has actually happened. Michael has told us, in his monologues, what *will* happen later: his father will be injured in the Spanish Civil War; his mother and aunts will never marry; Father Jack will die less than a year later; Rose and Agnes will leave for good in less than two weeks. But at that moment, during that sunset in the summer of 1936, even though things were about to fall apart, the Mundy household was together. And as the family watches the sun go down, Michael chooses that moment to hold in his mind as the feelings wash over him, just as the red of the sunlight is washing over the family. He turns the radio on, and a melancholy song comes on. The family begins swaying subtly to the music. Michael ruminates over how this moment plays in his own mind – not really an image, per se, but a feeling, where there is atmosphere that transcends the need for words and descriptions. And after he says the final lines of the play, the song “It’s Time to Say Goodnight,” rises over the speakers and fills the room. Michael walks over to where his family is sitting, watching the sunset, and moves to sit down on the blanket, where his mother, and his Aunts Kate and Maggie are waiting for him. Note that, to this point, the adult character of Michael has not been a part of the interactions of the play, save as the voice of the seven-year-old boy. But now, while all the other characters (Jack, Gerry, Agnes and Rose) are sitting apart from them, looking off in their own directions, Michael sits down with the three women who loved him best. And without a thought, the three women welcome him back into his memory, his mother reaching out to touch his shoulder, while his aunts look to him with strong, quiet love. It is a moment of supreme forgiveness and release, a moment (not explicitly called for in the original script) in which Michael forgives himself and allows himself to relive this treasured moment. The four of them sit back, together, and watch the sun set as the lights fade to black.

I’m sitting here at my desk with tears in my eye just remembering this beautiful moment, and you can bet I was balling when it was actually happening. Yes, I cry at just about anything, but even I was surprised that, even though I knew what was coming by the third time I saw it, I kept being brought back to that emotional place. Bridget created a theatrical event that, while imperfect in minor ways (no art, after all, is "perfect"), will live in my memory for a long time to come, and not just because she’s my wife, and not just because I had some part of the sound, but because it was truly a wonderful piece of theatre.

* Note to laymen: When I say “space,” I mean the actual room/theatre the performance took place in.

** A very funny accident happened during this scene on the final performance night. Maggie, played by [name removed], smeared the flour on her face and then proceeded to dance wildly. At that moment, the fastener on her skirt gave way and fell fully to the floor, exposing her legs and a very pink, non-1936 pair of panties. She quickly grabbed her skirt back up and her stunned co-stars recovered, joining what was suddenly an even wilder dance than usual. The audience roared and applauded as Maggie danced with abandon, holding her skirt to her waist as best she could. And poor, poor Kate had to keep a straight face while the rest of the room (including the cast) was doubled over in gleeful laughter. She only partially succeeded, which made her transformation into one of the “shrieking strangers” doubly interesting, if not as sudden. What was perhaps the most wonderful thing about this random theatre moment is that it was totally within Maggie’s character for something like that to happen and then continue to dance, skirt askew, around the room. Well… besides the pink panties… but then, maybe that was something about Maggie we never knew before…

Back to being a productive adult

2006-04-11T22:52:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “I’ve Got Rhythm,” by George Gershwin

The current period of employment uncertainty is about to come to an end. Not a permanent end, mind you, but a two-and-a-half month hiatus. It’s been a big mess: working here and there, a day or two at a time at all kinds of places. Keeping track of it has not been the easiest thing in the world. I think I’ve already filled out three W-4 forms this year, and that’s not counting the several I’ll probably end up filling out by year’s end. Let’s look at some of the places I’ve worked in the past couple of months, almost worked at, or will be working at in the near future.

1) Avid — This is the big fish that finally landed in my boat. I’ve been itching to work here in some capacity since I got to Massachusetts. For those of you who are uninitiated in filmmaking, Avid is one of the biggest makers of video editing software in the world. Indeed, before Apple’s Final Cut Pro began making inroads, it was pretty much the only game in town. Most editing professionals still use Avid in their daily work. Avid’s clientele tends toward big corporate clients looking for proprietary software, so they’re always working on new software at Avid. I will only be working there for two and a half months (while someone is on maternity leave), but while there, I’ll be doing quality control on a few specific aspects of their software. Essentially, I’ll be looking for bugs in the software by putting it through its paces, over and over again. Probably won’t be the most exciting thing in the world, but it will be interesting enough, makes excellent use of my new degree, and gets me in the door at one of the best places to work in this area for people like me. And they pay pretty darn well too. Not H&R Block well, but well enough. The only negative: they’re HQ’d in Tewksbury, MA, which is about a 45-minute drive from home. It’ll be worth it.

2) AVFX — This is a company that sets up audio-visual-lighting equipment for corporate clients. Usually this means they work in hotel conference centers, but sometimes they do bigger work (like the 2004 Democratic National Convention**). It’s a really cool little company and they are very good at what they do. I answered an ad on Craig’s List in which they were looking for various types of people. I didn’t fill the bill on any of their full-time jobs, but I was more than qualified to help out on some of their crews, which involved hauling around equipment, setting it up, tearing it down, and loading up the truck to take back to the company’s HQ. Not the brainiest work around, but I did learn plenty from it and if anyone ever looks at my soft, uncalloused hands and says I never did a day of manual labor in my life, I can always point to AVFX. The main negative of this place was that the work was scattershot; I was hired as needed for various crews, and I ended up working maybe once or twice a week. Had I really wanted to, I probably could have stuck it out and after some months I probably would have moved up to larger positions, but it’s not really my bag in the long run.

3) Houghton-Mifflin — Actually, I was technically working for a temp agency, but Houghton-Mifflin was their primary client and the one I worked with for two days. Another valiant attempt on my part to fill my empty schedule with temporary work. There were two nice things about working here: 1) it was Houghton-Mifflin, which is perhaps the biggest publisher of textbooks in the country; if you’re in book publishing in Boston, that’s the place you probably want to work; 2) it wasn’t just typical temp work; I was doing graphic production work, right in line with my background. But it was temp work, and it was few and far between. Moreover, the temp agency seemed to expect me to be at their beck and call at the drop of a hat. That got old quick.

4) Professional Staffing Group — Another specialty temp agency where I spent the better part of a day filling out paperwork… only this time with no resulting work. I miss the days where I actually applied for the place I'd end up working at instead of some impersonal assembly line of workers.

5) Borders Books & Music — After a while, Bridget and I decided that I might have to bite the bullet and get a brainless retail job or some kind. Borders was the first of a couple of places that I almost ended up working at. I had applied online not really expecting a reply, mainly because I’d never gotten a response from any of the previous times I’d applied to big chain bookstores like that (in D.C., particularly). But lo and behold, they gave me a call and I interviewed there. Turns out though, they were mainly looking for someone who could, at first, work a couple of weeks during the wee hours of the morning, helping renovation during 12-hour shifts six days a week (that’s 72 hours a week for all you mathophobes). I tentatively accepted at first, but then backed out. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can start saying no to things that will drive me crazy to do.

6) Home Depot — Another online application that I didn’t expect to bear fruit. But sure enough, they called me not once, but twice to try to set up an interview. As much as I like touching the wood at Home Depot, and as interesting (if physically difficult) the work might be to a handyman like myself, the offers for interviews came after I’d already gotten the job at Avid. No discounted tools for me.

7) Hollywood Express Video — Not to be confused with the nationwide chain with a similar name, Hollywood Express is a small local chain of video stores that falls into the category of “good” video stores, i.e., ones that have a good selection of foreign and independent films. I was originally set to have a second interview today, but because of Avid and editing “Commit to the Line,” it would have been waaaay too much to try to add this to the mix. It kind of broke my heart though… it really was a cool store, with surprisingly good benefits for their employees, and they were looking to possibly make me a full-time manager sooner rather than later. But on the bright side, I’ll never have to encounter one of those irate customers who doesn’t think they should have to pay a late fee.

8) The crappy interviews — I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the insultingly bad interviews I had at two places where I was applying to be an editor. One was an interesting web site that markets the “lifetips.com” name to various businesses (e.g., “taxes.lifetips.com” goes to H&R Block) and then develops the tip sites for them. The other business was a small journal and book publisher for various businesses. In both cases, I wound up with an interviewer that decided it was his job to give me career advice, advice that invariably led away from their companies. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so insulting. However, they were doing me a favor, though not for the reasons these assholes thought. Avoiding these jobs kept me open for something much better. (N.B.: Remember that any comments involving "one door closing, another door opening" or any Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of crap will be made fun of.)

9) New England Institute of Art — Rachelle, the woman for whom I’m editing the documentary, was hired a few weeks ago as the head of the new Photography department at the New England Institute of Art. Because she has been pleased with me and my work (I didn’t say she was sane… 8^), she asked me if I’d be willing to teach a class or two in her new department this fall. Needless to say, I told her to take a flying leap, teaching is beneath me. Okay, no… I gladly accepted. Then, Rachelle told me that she was recommending me to the places she already taught at but wouldn’t be able to continue at (Emerson College, Art Institute of Boston). No word from them yet, but Rachelle also recommended me to the Digital Media Production department head at NEIA, and that head was very interested in me. Indeed, I went in today to meet her, and she seemed very pleased with my background and all but signed me up to teach up to three classes this fall, all in film and/or video! (these are in addition to whatever I’d teach for Rachelle) I was very impressed with the facilities at NEIA (much better than those to be found at American University) and I’m extremely excited about teaching there. The only question mark is enrollment; Mary, the head of the department, seemed confident there would be enough enrollment in their ever-growing department to need to hire me this fall, but the possibility is always there that it won’t be. Whatever the case, this is big.

10) Newbury College — This fall, I applied to several colleges and universities that had openings in their film and video faculties. None of them bore any fruit, until today. Literally five minutes before I was due to meet Mary at NEIA, a department head at Newbury College called and asked if I was available to teach a Video Field Production course there this fall. Just like I told Rachelle, I told this woman to go away and leave me alone. Not quite… I said I was absolutely up for it. And so, I’ll be going into meet with this department head on the 23rd. Another potentially big coup.

And so, my period of unemployment will end next week after two and a half months. Then, I will have one full-time job until the end of June, after which I’ll probably try to do some more temp work, maybe at AVFX, until the fall, when hopefully I’ll get to teach. And if not… there’s always H&R Block…

Whew!

** When I found out that AVFX did the Democratic National Convention, I jokingly asked their manager if they were responsible for the balloon fiasco (“We need more balloons! ... What the fuck are you guys doing up there?!”) on CNN. No, they weren’t to blame, but he did have a theory as to why it happened. He noted that security concerns led to a lockdown during major speeches (like Kerry’s), during which no one could go up or down between floors; once a speech began, you were stuck on that floor. He believes that the people who were in charge of setting off the balloons were caught on the wrong floor when the speech began, and thus there was no one to release them when the time came. Thus, a very angry director became immortalized on CNN.

Phoebe burped

2006-04-07T16:38:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: "Sad Professor," by R.E.M.

Well, that was weird.

I am sitting in Bridget's office at B.U., waiting for her to finish a meeting with two of her classmates. I was originally just supposed to drop her off and return home whence I came. But, fortuitously, Bridget invited me into Starbucks (where her meeting was going to be...those college kids and their coffee) to get something. Thus, I parked at a meter, plopped in a quarter and went in to get a Vanilla Bean Frappuccino (Is that spelled right? I don't care.).

When I came out, however, to take myself and Phoebe back home (well, first to Target, but that's neither here nor there), I put the key in the ignition, turned it over like I have 1,000 times, and... nothing. Well, I take that back -- the radio did come on, and the dashboard lit up all "let's go!" But the car itself did not start; indeed, the starter didn't even turn over, which told me pretty much right away what was wrong. Entreaties to "Phoebe, don't do this to me" were futile. Phoebe wasn't starting.

My first thoughts in these situations is always practical. We got a problem, how do we fix it, or at least get it to someone who can fix it? But, for the first time in this situation, I had a wife who was sitting not 75 feet away idly drinking her coffee. So I went in and told her so I could share the worry. And of course, she wanted to see what was happening, and out she came, only to watch me repeat the same things I'd already tried to get her started (I'm not blaming Bridie here... I just think it's funny).

Now, starts the worry. We're gonna have to call a tow truck, right? And my day is ruined. And so is my bank account. All that. Fortunately, two of these things didn't have to happen. You see, 99% of the time that a breakdown happens, you're nowhere near a service station. Had I gone to Target and shut down the car in the parking lot, or had I gone home and stopped the car in front of our apartment, we would have been in trouble, and a tow truck would have had to be called. But, by some great luck that I don't know I deserve (maybe Bridget deserves it...), there's a service station on the corner opposite from where I parked the car.

And so, I go over and see if they can take the car. Sure enough, if we can get it there. All that would take is pushing it across the street, which is no small feat in Boston traffic, but still not too bad. As far as getting people to push it, why, Bridget was meeting with two strapping young lads who were more than happy to put their backs into getting Phoebe across the road (to get to the other side...).

Thus, Phoebe was eased into a service bay less than 15 minutes after she wouldn't start. That has to be a personal record. Of course, since I planned to come back here to work on sound for Bridget's show anyway, I'm sticking around to see what the damage is to fix the starter (told ya so) and, well, to hang out. But also, thanking my lucky stars, because this could be much, much worse.

Old friend

2006-04-04T17:09:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Surfer Girl," by the Beach Boys

I wrote a friend of mine from Houston, Wynn Martin, an e-mail on March 12, trying to catch up:

Are you still at this address, old friend? If so, let me know!
Chris Mc.

I’ve written him an e-mail like that every year for the past 10 years or so, ever since we both lived in Houston, Texas, while I was going to Rice University. Since I left undergrad, our friendship has been limited to these occasional e-mails, which one of us will send checking in on the other, followed up with a couple of friendly e-mails back and forth. And then, for another bunch of months, we wouldn’t write, for how much is there really to say when you’re not involved in another person’s life anymore?

When I was at Rice University, however, it certainly wasn’t that way. He was the only real friend I made in my freshman year of college, and I would go on to become his housemate sophomore year. Indeed, he would be the last person I would ever share a room with until Miss O’Leary came along. Many of my best memories of Rice involve him in some way: he was my lookout when I stole the head of the school mascot from the keeper’s wide-open dorm room; he and I together waged an unsuccessful campaign to have Beavis and Butthead elected homecoming queen and king (respectively). He was the first person to comfort me when my high-school sweetheart broke up with me, and he vociferously protective of me when I was dabbling in the dating waters of Rice during my sophomore year. So many memories, some good, some not-so-good, some awful, but all fundamentally involving Wynn. I spent my junior year overseas, and when I returned, we had both sort of moved on. Nevertheless, we have remained friends ever since, and my memories of Houston and Rice University will always be vitally linked to him.

Wynn’s an odd cat, though; anyone who meets him will figure that out in about 30 seconds. He’s as outgoing and outwardly comfortable as anyone I’ve ever met. He has a sense of humor that only a few people, including myself, really completely get. He has a tendency (that many thought was weird) to seek out friends who are considerably younger than him; for instance, when I met him, I was 18 years old, and he was 24. I guess he was one of those people who didn’t quite like the fact that he had to leave campus once he graduated from Rice. Another unusual thing about him: he prides himself (sometimes a bit too much) on being an expert on the life and work of Theodore Geisel (he once taught a class at Rice on the subject). I should also mention that he's always been a very bendy fellow, in part because of a childhood injury that left one leg shorter than the other and his skeleton just in a general state of flexibility. The thing about his bendiness of which he was most proud? Auto-fellatio. He came out of the closet while I was away in France, which was a relief to all of us who knew that there was something awfully repressed about his sexuality. After that, though, he was fiercely proud to be gay; coming out was clearly a turning point in his life, and those who cared about him were very happy for him.

I’ve lost track of a lot of the details of his life post-1996. I know he worked in a small computer business (which I think he partially owned), and then, several years ago, he changed course and went into nursing (he just became a registered nurse earlier this year). I stayed with him in 1999 when I went down to Houston for Beer-Bike, but since then, it’s just been those scattered e-mails that have kept us in touch. When I wrote him on March 12, I was looking forward to telling him about my marriage to Bridget and moving up to Boston. I was sure that the e-mail address I sent my latest message to was good (it has worked for the past 8 years), so I was surprised when he didn’t write back.

Every so often, I do what I call my “stalker searches,” when I get nostalgic or curious or whatever and do Google searches on just about everyone I’ve ever known. I did one of those today for people I had known at Rice; for some reason, today I was remembering the failed homecoming campaign and it triggered curiosity into where everyone I knew from those days was at. Wynn was first on the list.

And as you can probably guess by the tone of this post, I found an obituary. Wynn died on February 22, three weeks before I sent my e-mail, and just a month after he became a registered nurse. I’m not sure what the cause was, but it seemed to be a natural death, perhaps related to some chronic problems he had.

The feelings I have are new to me. I do feel very sad for Wynn and his family. He was still a young man, and he was certainly someone who deserved happiness, because he was so free about giving it to other people. But what I'm feeling is not out-and-out grief, per se, for this loss of an old friend. Like I said, our remaining contact was fleeting, and I won’t pretend that he was an important part of my life any more. But he was a very important part of my memories, and as all of you who know me know, I’m nothing if not excessively nostalgic. I can remember my great-uncle Hank reading through the daily obituaries in the Daily Oklahoman, looking for people he knew when he was a kid; I always wondered what it would feel like to find someone you knew from your childhood, someone who was perhaps important to you back then, and then learn that they were just gone. Now I know.

It feels weird to say this about someone whom I haven't seen in over seven years, but I will miss Wynn dearly.

Environmental scourge

2006-04-01T13:26:00.000-05:00

Dihydrogren monoxide. Donate what you can!

Actual conversation

2006-03-16T14:00:00.000-05:00

Me: So, it's my brothers' birthday.

Bridget: Today?

Me: Yep.

Bridget: Which one?

long pause

Happy birthday, Andrew!

Actual conversation

2006-03-16T12:21:00.001-05:00

Me: So, it's my brothers' birthday.

Bridget: Today?

Me: Yep.

Bridget: Which one?

long pause

Happy birthday, Patrick!

A great night comes crashing down

2006-03-05T23:42:00.000-05:00

It was such a good Oscar night. Jon Stewart was funny. Several fun surprises, like the "Pimp" song getting Best Song. Great dinner. Good company. Nobody undeserving getting any acting Oscars. Life was good.

And then, it had to end with shit. I thought Jack had to be joking when he said "Crash" had won Best Picture. He even looked apologetic, like "I'm just reading what's on the card, people, don't blame me." The people involved with the picture couldn't believe it either. Paul Haggis jumped up totally surprised. He knew what should have happened...

Let me just say, for the record, that "Crash" was an overrated mess of a movie. To steal my good friend Amanda's metaphor, it was "Higher Learning" (a melodramatic race film from the 90s) for adults. Add to it a lot of the faux significance of coincidence that you had in "Magnolia," and there's "Crash." Melodramatic, annoying, overly precious, and generally predictable (Bridget got mad at me a couple of times because I laughed at the movie during several of the supposedly tense dramatic moments...). Bad. Bad, bad, bad. I was pissed that this self-important crapfest even got nominated over something worthy like "Walk the Line," but this... this....

At least with other ridiculous picks of the past (e.g., "Forrest Gump" in '94), we kind of knew it was coming. But in this case, it came out of fucking nowhere. Ang Lee won director, and the movie won Adapted Screenplay. It looked like a lock. "Brokeback Mountain," a beautiful, emotional masterpiece, deserved Best Picture like few movies in the past several years have, and instead it got shafted by a crappy little feel-good race picture set in Los Angeles (and you know damn well that's what put it over the top).

And so... another undeserving movie gets the top nod. C'est la vie. It has been a fun night though; good food, good friends, lots of wine, lots of fun. Just one really bad note at the end. There's always next year...

But, really, "Brokeback Mountain" got assfucked without so much as a dollop of spit for lube.

And the dinner goes to...

2006-03-05T18:02:00.001-05:00

4th Annual Academy Awards Dinner

March 5, 2006
as cooked up by Chris and Bridget McKenzie

Opening Course: Arabic Salad

Main Course: Lamb Cassoulet

Palate Cleanser: Bottle of banana baby food

Beverage: Red Wine or Big Red soda

Dessert: Chocolate fondue with angel food cake

Lordy, Lordy, look who's 100,000...

2006-03-05T15:48:00.000-05:00

On Highway 43 in New Hampshire at around noon, Phoebe turned 100,000.

I pulled into a gas station right as it flipped from 100,000 to 100,001 (as you can see, we needed gas). Curses!

Come forth from the womb

2006-03-04T07:02:00.000-05:00

The cast of Crave. Clockwise from upper left: Liz Rimar (C), Alex Mickiewicz (B), Duke Doyle (A), and Heather Anderson (M).
STIPIMM: “Wish You Were Here,” by Incubus

Perhaps I’m not the most objective observer to be commenting on Bridget’s plays, but dag nab it, I’m extremely proud of what Bridget’s done, and what she has in store for her in the fourth quarter. Quite a swing in topic from Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show, which was fun, but ultimately fluff; there’s nothing fluffy about either Crave or 4.48 Psychosis, both by Sarah Kane.

The production was obviously a milestone for Bridget: her first production at BU; the first one that students and faculty would see; etc. But, as I told her on a day when rehearsals were going poorly, this production is even more important as a turning point in Bridget’s understanding of theatre. She has been in love with 4.48 Psychosis since she read it several years ago. Throughout all her theatre work, it has been lingering in the back of her mind, out of reach in terms of production, but always there. Now that she’s done it, it’s as though she had completed writing a novel; she didn’t have to or want to think about the subject or the play anymore. Her mind is free of the lingering pull of 4.48 Psychosis and Sarah Kane, “Happy and free.” It is truly a turning point; pre-4.48 Bridget will be distinctly different from post-4.48, and in a good way.

I got to see both Crave and 4.48 Psychosis a total of five times. Two of those times, I was busy behind a camera, but the other times (especially the last time I saw in on Saturday) I got to enjoy it fully. The productions inspired a lot of feelings and a lot of thoughts. It makes me very proud that my Bridget has created something that has really made me think about what I’m seeing. These are two productions that are worthy of serious analysis, and so I’d like to share some of my thoughts on them.

When I first read Crave, I was worried for my girl. Not because the material was too difficult, but because of the form of the play: scattered dialogue that can at times appear random mixed with no stage directions. In all honesty, I dreaded Crave because it seemed like one of those plays that people who don’t like modern theatre make fun of: people dressed in black, Dadaistically talking and moving around stage. The play has four characters, labeled as A, B, C, and M, sometimes interacting in the dialogue, other times seemingly speaking to themselves or having their own one-person conversation.

Here’s a telling sample:

C If she’d left—
M I don’t want to grow old and cold and be too poor to dye my hair.
C You get mixed messages because I have mixed feelings.
M I don’t want to be living in a bedsit at sixty, too scared to turn the heater on because I can’t pay the bill.
C What ties me to you is guilt.
M I don’t want to die alone and not be found till my bones are clean and the rent overdue.
C I don’t want to stay.
B I don’t want to stay.
C I want you to leave.
M If love would come.
A Let it happen.
C No.
M It’s leaving me behind.
B No.
C No.
M Yes.
B No.
A Yes.
C No.
M Yes.
B Let me go.
C I don’t want to have to buy you Christmas presents anymore.

It’s not too hard to imagine this done overly expressionistically, with C and M doing a movement piece as they belted out their first lines. In short, I had a bad feeling that I was going to have to pretend to like whatever came out of Bridget’s work.

I didn’t feel too much better about it when Bridget first told me how Crave was originally performed in Britain. Avoiding any semblance of over-expressionism, the staging was non-existent; the four actors sat in chairs, facing the audience, never directly interacting with each other. Very Vagina Monologues. Very artificial. Very easy. Very boring. Almost as worthy of making fun of as the Dadaland described above.

Bridget, mercifully, chose something in between these two ridiculous extremes, choosing instead to have the actors embody the characters fully and interact with each other as realistically as possible. Bridget’s emphasis as a director has always been on character and the actors’ creation of them; just because Crave was a seemingly disparate mess wasn’t going to stop her from trying to fully realize these four characters.

Let’s be honest, though: Sarah Kane would have hated it. It’s the kind of realistic (if that’s the right word for it… there’s nothing “real” about it, per se) production that she sought to avoid. Well, in the words of Death in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: “Well, you’re dead now, so shut up.” If her plays were really that important to her, she shouldn’t have killed herself. Too bad, so sad. Rest in pieces and roast in hell, for all I care. Because guess what, Sarah dear, Bridget’s production works.

The Abuser gets abusive with C.

It works for two primary reasons: first off, the characterizations are strong and clear. The names of the characters have connotations that we’re supposed to acknowledge (A = “Author/Abuser”; B=”Boy”; C=”Child”; M=”Mother”). In the production, these roles are clearly laid out by the actors, particularly by Duke Doyle and Heather Anderson, who play A and M, respectively. None of the four roles are characters, per se, but are instead living embodiments of the pure urges (craves, if you will) of each character. A, the desire to control, to manipulate. M, the desire to create, to nurture, to educate. B, the desire to explore, to be loved. Kind of Platonic ideals in the flesh, or perhaps a better comparison would be the Freudian id and superego: distilled versions of pure urges, and all their trappings.

If A, B, and M are the equivalent of the id and superego, then C (played wonderfully by Liz Rimar) is the ego. Her journey is the one we experience in the play, an experience that culminates in the opening of the box that occupies the center of the stage. The other characters seem to exist for her and perhaps by her. She soaks up everything they say, everything they throw at her, until finally she is able to step away from them.

Which brings me to the other reason Bridget’s production works: 2) she succeeds in creating the sense of “another world.” Bridget contends in her process paper (which she has to write for each production detailing how it progressed) that she didn’t think she had succeeded in this, but I disagree. There is a distinct sense, from early on, that we are in a unique world, someplace that is decidedly different from our own. It sounds like such a silly thing (“Of course it’s not our world, it’s a freakin’ play!”), but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Indeed, I think she succeeded in Crave in this area more than she did in 4.48 Psychosis, and so much the better for Crave.

And what exactly is this world? Bridget talks in her process paper how she feels it is the world of a bad dream, i.e., a mental world. If that is the case, then the mind we’re looking into would have to be C’s, and we’re watching her nightmare. But what’s the point of this nightmare? What exactly is happening to C as she’s dreaming this, and what will happen when she wakes up?

"I want a child." And if her contortions
are any clue, she means it.

The metaphor of birth runs throughout the play, particularly from the character M, who repeatedly tells C, “I want a child.” Two very significant passages occur early on in which both B and M relate experiences that were passed to them inside the womb (B inheriting his father’s broken nose; M having a memory that only her mother could have had). These passages hint at what is going on in C’s metaphorical birth in this play: she is subsuming the urges, the craves, that are embodied in the other three characters. Indeed, from the metaphorical womb, she is inheriting experiences, urges, ideas, pains and pleasures from the other three, sorting them out until she’s ready to step out from her mind.

The play represents a major life change for C, a fundamental shift in perception and understanding. It’s a life change that can really be going on at any time in the character’s life, but as I watched the play five times, I personally came to understand the play as a literal birth, sensing what is going on through the child’s mind right before the moment of birth. You think, sure Chris, I’m sure what’s going through a baby’s mind at the moment of birth is “A fourteen year old to steal my virginity on the moor and rape me till I come” (one of C’s lines). But remember, much of the play revolves around the idea that C is absorbing the experiences from outside, and the dialogue is not something to be taken fully literally, but experientially. It’s not impossible to imagine that C is expressing experiences or urges felt by her mother or father or whatever. “We pass these messages faster than we think and in ways we don’t think possible.”

"Into the light."

But, of course, like all good plays, it’s not just about one thing, and it is probably more about metaphorical birth than literal birth. But that’s what I came from it with, and how I came to see the play by the fifth time I watched it. And even if my interpretation is miles off, it says something about the quality of the production that I can come away from it with a distinct interpretation that is probably quite different from other people’s. Forget C; this is Bridget’s rebirth as a director. “Come forth from the womb,” indeed.

Next up… 4.48 Psychosis, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Suicide. (Although I may have an Oscar post before then)

Note on the photos: I’m sorry about the quality; I didn’t have an opportunity to take production stills, so I just did screen captures from the video recordings I made.

...and after

2006-02-13T16:52:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: "Let it Snow," by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn

18 inches, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes, Phoebe is somewhere under there.

Bridget

2006-02-11T22:25:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: Roman Catholic recessional song: "Whatsoever you do, to the least of my people, that you do unto me."

A couple of weeks ago, I helped Bridget put together a video for her mother’s 50th birthday. It consisted of Bridget telling the story of her mom’s life in pictures, most of which were taken from her mom’s photo albums. And of course, since Bridget plays a major part in her mother’s life, I got to see a lot of pictures of my dear wife as she was growing up.

And by golly, she was such a cute kid. (Almost) always smiling, always cherubic, always looking like Bridget. Since shortly after we met, I’ve always teased her about her tendency to tilt her head to one side as she’s posing for a picture, and sure enough, she’s been doing that since she was little.

But as cute as she was (and is!), one thing that she was not was skinny. Looking at the pictures, she was never fat, per se (there are plenty of kids who look like that, but she wasn’t one of them), but she definitely had more to her body than other kids her age. And of course, kids being what they are (i.e., mean), that made her fat.

School was hell for Bridget. She’s been told by therapists that her history qualifies under the clinical definition of traumatic childhood, and it’s hard to disagree with that: mean, vituperative, nasty, undeserved behavior directed toward Bridget, ranging from name-calling to outright social sabotage. Girls who essentially made it their mission to make Bridget’s life miserable through rumors and other petulant behavior.

I myself didn’t have a terrible time in school. I certainly wasn’t popular, but I didn’t need validation from my classmates, so if ever a social problem presented itself, I tended to keep my head down and try to remain invisible. Gregarious loudmouth... I mean, people person that she is, Bridget didn’t really have that option. And she did seek out validation, because her own self-esteem was already so low.

Hearing Bridget’s story sometimes reminds me of a girl who was in my grade in Mustang. Her name was Penny Willoughby and she was in my 5th grade class with Mrs. McLaughlin. Like Bridget, she wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t skinny, and she talked a lot, so she stood out. She was often singled out for teasing and picking on by the rest of the class, and though I don’t remember it, I was probably guilty of it once or twice. I know I thought of her as an annoying loudmouth, so even if I didn’t pick on her, I certainly didn’t go out of my way to be nice to her.

But at the same time, I often felt sorry for her, because she didn’t deserve the treatment she got from the class. No kid deserves it.

And so, I look back on Bridget’s childhood, and I look at those pictures of her, and think of all the crap that was being flung at her on a regular basis by people her age, and it makes me want to cry. There’s my Bridget, smiling with pride, holding the very first cake she had ever made. When I see the picture, it makes me happy. God knows what the kids at school would have said if they had seen that picture; they probably would ruined what was a deservedly proud moment for Bridget. An enormous amount of pain is under the surface of those pictures, even if wasn’t in Bridget’s mind at the time they were taken. If I reflect on it too much, as I am now, I get very sad and angry.

Anyone who was ever picked on or faced teasing as a child holds a special place in the darkest part of their souls for the people who tormented them. Even as time and maturity heal most of the wounds, there are still some scars that never fully heal. I don’t have anybody on my “kill” list from my childhood, but there are only two people (from high school and college) who the black part of my heart would love to see suffer. Bridget, though she’d probably never admit to wanting to kill them, has a much longer and more painful list (indeed, my two are rather petulant choices, hers are visceral).

She actually ran into one of those on her list by total accident a couple of years ago on the streets of Silver Spring. I won’t go into the whole story here, but suffice to say, it was a conversation full of pleasantries and, of course, no recognition from the other person of the suffering she had placed upon Bridget. It was as though two people who were in the same class but never talked to each other had bumped into each other years later. Not for Bridget. No, no, no. It didn’t dredge up all the old feelings of childhood, but it did dredge up some, and Bridget had a lot of thinking to do in the days thereafter.

What I’m about to say will sound strange, but knowing what I know about Bridget’s childhood pain, and the people who did such terrible shit to her, if Bridget had come home that day and asked me to help her stalk and ruin the life of this woman she bumped into, I would have unquestioningly agreed to do so. Especially if it was going to be something as benign as the “Friends” episode where Chandler, as an adult, gets his clothes stolen by a girl he tormented in school (who, as an adult, was very hot), but even if it was something more vicious. Yes, yes, revenge is not mature and healthy, blah blah blah... We Kiowa are patient people and are particularly fond of long-awaited revenge.

But I’m not writing today to express my willingness to inflict pain on my wife’s tormentors. I’m here to celebrate her. I’m here to celebrate that little girl who endured so much, cried so hard, and felt so alone, and yet still managed to smile her bright, beautiful smile. Her life improved as she moved to South Carolina, and her friends and family have kept her grounded ever since, all leading up to the time when she walked through the snow one February morning and met a very lucky graduate student near his home in Tenleytown.

I wish I could have known her as a child. I wish I could have been her friend and stood up for her when the assholes started being mean. I wish I could have given her some of the validation she so desperately sought (and deserved) from her peers.

But I have her now, and I may not need to stand up for her in the face of others any more, but I would be glad to do so. And every day, when she flashes me that smile, the same smile that was recorded onto film so many times as she grew up, I feel at home – comfort just emanates from her and I am so lucky, so, so very lucky, to be the recipient of that love. I hope that, everyday, I am able to show her just how much she means to me, how much she makes me happy, and how glad I am just to have her around.

I love you so very much, Bridget.

Happy birthday, my love.

(And what happened to Penny Willoughby? She got addicted to meth and spent two years in jail. No, I'm not making this up.)

We pawk our caw in Brighton

2006-02-09T19:09:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Sisters,” by Irving Berlin

We finally broke down and did it. Bridget and I are 100% legal in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. We both have our driver’s licenses, and perhaps more importantly, we registered Phoebe, our beautiful gray Saturn, with Massachusetts tags.

It took some teeth-pulling to get to this point, and indeed, all the wrinkles haven’t been ironed out. But we’re pretty much there. We had been doing so well for several months, taking the T wherever we needed, walking to places that were within range. But then, it became clear that once H&R Block was through, I would have to have a way to get to all the various places I wanted to interview at, and if I ended up getting a job, I’d have to have a way of getting there. So, early last month, we began the process of making Phoebe legal. In Massachusetts, that’s a four-step process:

1) Getting insurance: The whole reason we didn’t want to get the car registered in the state to begin with. It turns out that, despite all the boo-hooing you hear from people about how bad the rates are up here, they’re not really that much worse than what I was used to down in the Delmarva area (that’s the first time I’ve ever used that stupid word!). Once we figured that out, and were ready to dip our toe into the frightening world of Massachusetts insurance, the next problem was where to get it. Because the state regulates insurance so heavily, there are only a handful of insurers available (boo hoo to the insurers), and none of them are as easy to spot as a State Farm agent would be in other parts of the country. Instead, we pretty much had to throw a dart on the map of the insurers in the area and just walk into their offices.

The one we picked (the main criterion was that, instead of some funky business name like Windmill Insurance or Viking Fidelity [made-up names], it was actually someone’s name: John Ryan Insurance, which of course, screams folksy, and mom-and-pop [which it turned out to be!]) was just down the road from our apartment, which is nice. More importantly, they made the process extremely easy, walking us through what we needed, and what our options were. No pressure, no nothing. Moreover, they made the next two steps of the process easier by preparing all the materials we’d need for it and telling us exactly what we’d have to do. [Paid for by John Ryan Insurance]

2) Registering the car: More standing in line at the MVA or the DMV or the RMV or whatever the hell they call it up here. Not very exciting, just handing over the title and a hefty chunk of change in exchange for new license plates and registration. The title came in the mail yesterday, which sparked this “all-official” post.

3) Getting Phoebe inspected: There were actually two inspections we had to do, both of which got done at the same time. One was the usual state inspection, which I’m always paranoid my cars will fail, even though they never have. The other required inspection was one asked for (and paid for) by the insurance company to make sure the car was in one piece before they insured it. Easy and straightforward. Indeed, where states like Maryland and D.C. (yeah, I called it a state... fuck you) have complicated inspections that could take hours at a time, the Massachusetts one was done in about 10 minutes. I think the commonwealth still has a way to go if it wants to uphold its reputation as having the worst bureaucracy in America.

4) Getting a resident parking sticker: Had to go to City Hall for that, which was a pain for parking purposes (downtown Boston – not fun for driving). But since I had actually read the website in advance and knew what I needed to bring to prove my residency, it was a fairly easy task. Again, Massachusetts falling behind on the red tape. As a new resident of the commonwealth, I just have to say: we can do better.

And so, with the tags on, the inspection done and the resident sticker affixed to the back window, Phoebe became a resident of the city of Boston (or Brighton, however you want to look at it). We now get to park her virtually wherever we want on the streets of our neighborhood, which is a nice change from the 10-minute walk we used to have to endure to park her in the non-resident areas. Even so, we’ve still learned one key thing about parking in our neighborhood: don’t go anywhere Friday or Saturday night unless you want to do some walking from the parking spot you’re able to find. Are all those extra cars party-goers who are just parking illegally? I dunno, but they sure do fill the streets. Nevertheless, the walk home from those parking spots is still much better than the hefty trek we used to have to take, regardless of what day it was. It’s good to have a car again!

Bank error in your favor

2006-02-08T23:53:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “(What’s So Funny About) Peace, Love and Understanding,” by Elvis Costello

The nascent McKenzie household has faced a number of financial woes since August. Of course, if you’ve read any of my whining about it lately, then you know all about it. We’re actually not that bad off though; Bridget’s loan money has provided a bit of cushion in the post-H&R Block days, and I will be getting a nice chunk of bonus from them in a couple of weeks. So we’re not eating Ramen noodles yet, and we’re confident that things will pick up.

But it is true, we have been living paycheck to paycheck, and it has been rough at times. In all this, though, there has been one bright light, one that has little present-day impact, but has added to our Net Worth in Quicken and given me something to do other than look at all the debt we have piled up. When Bridget and I got married in August, she unwittingly brought a sizable dowry with her in the form of a 401(k) pension from her last employer in D.C.

Now, when I say sizable, different people will have different ideas of what that means. Well, it’s not chicken scratch, but it certainly isn’t gargantuan; I mean, Bridget was there for five years and didn’t contribute a dime to it, so you know it can only be so big. But, since she was there for five years, the money that the company put into her fund is fully vested to her. And since her troth is my troth and all that... ka-ching!

We found out about it... nay, I found out about it when we got a quarterly statement from the fund company with details about her holdings. I didn’t quite understand at first what it all meant – I had a similar arrangement with the first company I worked for in Oklahoma, but since I had only worked there for two years, none of it was vested, and it was gone when I left, so I figured this was the same. But no, there was that line saying that it was 100% vested, and so, well, it was all hers... um... ours.

This was a boon, but an inconsequential one. First off, we couldn’t touch the money right now even if we wanted to. Well, I suppose we could touch some of it, but the tax and penalties would make it very not worth it. And second, it really isn’t that darn much, so what would be the point? As far as Bridget and I are concerned, this money is almost like Monopoly money right now. It’s just there theoretically and someday, in 30+ years, it might matter.

But since it is an investment account, that means we get to be investors! Suddenly, Bridget and I are players on the seas of international finance! Yes, our stake on that sea amounts to little more than a life-preserver, but it’s still something. Most importantly to a financial nerd like me, it gives me a chance to move the Monopoly money around into different investment accounts.

Because Bridget knew nothing little about the fund before I filled her in on it, it was fully invested in the default safe, low-yield trust fund account that the company had. I only know so much about 401(k)s and mutual funds, but I know enough to know that young folk like us are advised to put a fair chunk of their money in higher-yield accounts that can endure the long-term ups and downs of the market. And so, the first thing I did after getting online access to the fund, was to move them into “growth funds.”

In doing so, I got to learn about one part of Quicken that I had never used before: investment portfolios! I can track the daily progress of our investments there with cool graphs and charts, which show how much Monopoly money we’ve gained or lost.

Of course, as any day trader will tell you, watching the progress of your money can get addictive. Fortunately, these funds only update once a day, so it’s not as though I can sit at the computer constantly hitting Update watching the minute-by-minute fluctuations. But you can bet that most evenings, after the markets have closed, Chris goes into Quicken to get the daily quotes.

Lately, however, the evening quotes have me wondering if Bridget and I have invested in Baltic and Mediterranean. The past week since all the funds have been put in different higher-risk accounts have seen steady declines in the funds. But even losses are kind of fun for this financial geek; Quicken gives you detailed lists of exactly how much Monopoly money you’ve lost or gained. Kind of cathartic in a strange way.

But either way, to both Bridget and I (especially Bridget), the money’s not really there in the first place, except as a theoretical entity. So all this doesn’t really matter; but in 30 years, it would be better if this nest egg had been fruitful and multiplied instead of being run into the ground. We shall see...

God bless America

2006-02-07T15:41:00.000-05:00

Umemployment

2006-02-06T15:21:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” by Irving Berlin

Last Tuesday, I walked out of the offices of H&R Block for the last time this season, officially unemployed. It is the first time in almost 10 years (since July 1996) that I have been without employment, without income, and without prospect (not counting the transitional phase of this past summer). (The biking documentary is still on, but it’s been delayed for a couple of reasons, which I shan’t go into here.)

I’ve been looking for jobs pretty much every day on the usual sources online. And there have been a variety of things that I’ve gotten nibbles from those hunts. But for my two months of searching (actually, I’ve been searching since October, but who’s counting), I’ve gotten absolutely no nibbles from the kind of jobs I’m looking for: long-term, decent paying, and film/video-related.

What about the Avid software job I interviewed at? Not long-term; it was a two- to three-month contract job. And besides, I didn’t get it – it’s a large company, with lots of internal moving around; i.e., if I wanted to get a job there, it would have to be all the way at the bottom working up.

I interviewed at another place last month that was looking for editors, but they were only paying $10/hour (one of those lame places that hopes that the passion you have for the work will stifle the hunger you have at not being able to pay for food). There are a couple of other things that wanted me for various things, but don’t want to pay me much or anything. I’m past the point of working just for experience or deferrals.

Everything else... no go. No responses for teaching jobs. No calls for interviews for openings at production houses. I haven’t even been called back for grunt A/V kinds of places.

In somewhat of desperation, I’m going to a meeting at a freelance booking agency that books gigs for professional film folk in the Boston area. I’m trying to be hopeful, but I’m realistically pessimistic for two reasons: 1) I’ll probably end up only able to get jobs at the bottom end of the totem pole; and 2) god only knows how many people are in line for booking.

Truth is, Boston is just not a good town for my kind of work. I slowly came to this realization over the past few months, and as much as I try not to get glum about it, it’s very true. Not a lot of films get made in Boston, and it’s not just because it’s cold: a combination of local ordinances, fees and permits (including paying for police service that, gee, comes free in other localities), mixed in with a corrupt web of unions, makes it a very inhospitable place for both film and video production, be it narrative, documentary or whatever. David Mamet is one of the only filmmakers who likes to regularly brave the system and make movies around here (e.g., “Spartan” and “State and Main”), but that’s about it.

Bridget broke my heart the other day when she told me that “you should look for the kind of jobs you want for a month, and then look for the jobs you’d settle for after that.” Truth is, I’ve been looking and applying for both of those since December, and the latter category ain’t looking too hot so far either.

And again, I will make the exhortation to all readers that any comments that include anything about "something will come along" or "if one door closes, another one opens" or anything similar, will either be promptly deleted or openly mocked.

The richest man in town

2006-01-27T16:55:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”

As you may recall, I’ve been reading a hefty biography of the director Frank Capra. Very good read. I just finished the chapter that examines the time during which he made the classic It’s a Wonderful Life, one of my favorite of his movies.

According to the book, It’s a Wonderful Life (IAWL) was made at a turning point in Capra’s career. World War II had just ended, and the movie marked his return to Hollywood after making propaganda films for the Army. Before the war, Capra was coming off the peak of his career, which lasted from 1934, when he made It Happened One Night until 1939, when he made Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Trying to get back into the swing of his career after the interruption of the war was tough for Capra; indeed, IAWL was the last great film he made. It wasn’t until I read this book that I realized how it represented not only the beginning of the end of Capra’s creative powers, but also his last coherent statement on the kinds of values that we today call “Capraesque.”

There were lots of reasons for this precipitous downfall: the Red Scare made Capra hesitant to make films that supported the “little guy;” Capra ended his partnership with his longtime collaborator, Robert Riskin (who wrote most of his best films of the 30s); he left Columbia, a smaller studio where he had a fair amount of freedom, for Paramount, where he had more resources, but less wiggle room. But fortunately, before his style became a parody of itself in the 50s and 60s, he made one last great film, one that will live on longer than any of his others.

But as I read about the movie, I kept asking myself, “Why do I love this movie so much?” It is, as the author of the biography contends, one of the sappiest pieces of supernatural fiction you’ll ever have the pleasure of seeing. On the believability scale, it falls somewhere between “A Christmas Carol” and “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The last 10 minutes pull on every known heartstring this side of a Hallmark card commercial.

And yet it works. It works exceptionally well. I cannot watch the ending of that movie, even if I haven’t watched the rest of the dang thing, without crying. No chance. Even if I fight it, the tears will well up without my consent. Hell, I don’t even have to watch it to get choked up. When I was talking about the movie with Bridget a few nights ago, just thinking of the key moments started to get me weepy.

There are lots of reasons that the film is so effective. First and foremost is the story, which takes an uncommonly good man, whose lifetime of dutiful self-sacrifice finally catches up to his underlying ambition and throws him into a deep despair, before lifting him back up through the supernatural revelation of how much an impact his sacrifices have had. In terms of character development and story arc, they don’t get much simpler and purer than that.

And then there’s Jimmy Stewart’s uncommonly good performance in a role that could have easily been overdone and sappy. The story goes that Stewart, who like Capra, had given up a lot of career momentum by serving during the war, had to be convinced to return to acting after his discharge. After the seriousness of the war, he thought it odd to be returning to something that was, in essence, so trivial. Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter) convinced him otherwise and Stewart went on to continue a long, illustrious career.

But to my mind, IAWL will always be one of his best performances. Everything from the enthusiasm he shows as a young man, to the moments when he breaks down in front of his family, saying that his wife and children kept him from living out the life he wanted, to the heartbreaking moment (the one that starts the tears up for me) when, captured in beautiful closeup, he begs God to bring him back to his family. In this potentially sappiest of movie moments, Stewart sells it, and sells it big.

Another level that makes this movie work is that quintessentially “Capraesque” element of David vs. Goliath. You’ll note that I avoid saying rich vs. poor, because it’s not really about that. Indeed, none of Capra’s films outright criticize wealth in and of itself, it criticizes the affectations and attitudes of those who happen to have that wealth. Several of his greatest heroes, be they Longfellow Deeds or Jefferson Smith, are actually well-off men (yes, even Jefferson Smith was a bumpkin businessman), are men who use their power or wealth to benefit the poor. So too with George Bailey; in the eyes of the Bedford Falls Chamber of Commerce, he’s just as much a business-owner as Mr. Potter. But he’s not a self-centered capitalist; he’s an enlightened capitalist who believes that the best gains are brought by spreading the wealth as much as possible.

It’s funny that today, we consider this movie to be a celebration of American ideals like community, because in the 40s and 50s, after this movie was made, Capra was paranoid about how the Red-baiters would look upon it. He needn’t have worried too much; after all, the hero is a banker. But several of Capra’s friends who testified under subpoena to the House Un-American Activities Committee made a point of defending the film even if it wasn’t being attacked. Those were dodgy times to be making movies where businessmen were the villains.

But besides all the plot points and arcs, it’s really the ending that slams you in the gut. Every plot element that precedes it leads up to the climax that occurs in the Bailey living room, when half the town shows up to rescue George in his time of crisis, just as he had helped them when they were in trouble. My three favorite moments of this (neither of them the “bell rings” stuff):

1) “Remember, George: No man is a failure who has friends.” Bad Yoda-like grammar, but a snappy moral that says it all.

2) The moment when Sam Wainwright’s telegram is being read in which he forwards George more than enough money to cover the lost cash. And it’s all in the oh-so-cinematically-perfect look that George and Mary exchange at that time – remember that Wainwright was George’s rival for Mary and, when he lost her, ran off to live the big life in the city that George longed for. Living thereafter with residual envy and bitterness over Sam’s success, it all drains away from George as the telegram is read. “Hee haw and Merry Christmas.” He looks over at Mary, who looks back at him, and he recognizes that this longtime foe was a friend all along.

3) And the capper to end it all: Harry’s toast to his brother. Realize that throughout the entire film George’s measure of his own worth has been through money. He needs it to get the things he wants, whether it be leaving Bedford Falls to pursue his dreams, or to go on his big honeymoon, or just in comparison with Potter. And there, amongst all the real riches that his life has brought him (family, friends, joy), his little brother, the winner of the Medal of Honor whom everyone, most of all George, admires fiercely, raises his glass in admiration to “my big brother George: The richest man in town.”

See… just typing this stuff has my eyes watering. Damn good movie.

Intellectual impatience

2006-01-20T16:42:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: U.S. Marine Corps Hymn

As regular readers of this blog (all four of you) will notice, it’s been over a week since I’ve blogged about anything, and even then it was about something no one but me cares about (underage poontang). Truth is, my mind has been quite scattered all week. I’m in that annoying state of mind that happens when you haven’t quite finished one project, but have long since mentally moved on from it. Specifically, I’m in my last couple of weeks at H&R Block, and the tax form grind has slowed down to virtually nothing; I’m basically having to scrounge for things to do (So, I can’t hide behind the excuse of “I was too busy to blog,” but I will just say instead, “I didn’t freakin’ feel like it.”). I’ve been calling it senioritis, and it certainly feels like it. The end date for this job (the 31st) is fast approaching and it can’t get here soon enough.

The problem is, I don’t know what I’ll be doing afterwards, and that has me jittery and restless. I’m applying for jobs, but it’s not like any of them that would start soon are dream jobs or anything. Part of me doesn’t want to get a job right now and be able to dedicate myself to something of my own. But unfortunately, I don’t have any money to pay myself.

But part of me feels like if I really wanted to do other things on my own (e.g., writing scripts, ramping up for “Indian Girl”) I’d do it on my own time anyway. If I freed up all my time, it would only mean that I’d find more ways of wasting time instead of applying myself. I want to do these things, but a large part of me is too lazy to actually do the work required to get there.

Sorry to bring him up again, but Ibsen lamented this intellectual impatience as well. At one point he wrote something akin to: “By the time I start actually writing a play, I’ve gotten tired of thinking about and working on it.” And so it is with me; the process of writing and creating is oftentimes like pulling teeth. I find that, in general, I don’t like creating as much as I like having created.

Related to all of this is another kind of intellectual impatience, and that’s been tied to the reading I’ve been doing, or trying to do. Right after I finished my Ibsen biography, I picked up a hefty biography of Frank Capra that Susan Loving gave to me some time back. I’m giving Capra the full treatment: reading the bio and watching his major movies as they appear in the book. I’m loving it, and I’ve been trying to squeeze in as much reading as possible (so far: Capra, contrary to his image, was a royal, class-A asshole.)

There have been a few things standing in the way, and it’s only heightened my frustration. Bridget has been off of school up until this week, and so I’ve felt guilty about reading when I could be spending time with her in the evenings. She’s back in school now, but I have a special project I’m editing for her in the evenings, and that’s been keeping me from what I really want to be doing… reading. Also, since we split up our Netflix so that I only get two movies at a time (and she gets one), the turnaround for watching the Capra movies has been painstakingly slow. In the book, I’m already in the 1940s, while I’m still waiting on a movie from the early 30s. Again… frustration and impatience. I need to learn some Jedi meditation tricks or something.

But not being able to read is a minor thing. In the grander scheme, it’s my impatience with having something constructive and interesting to do with film and video. It would be one thing if I really felt that I was sure to have something in the next couple of months, something other than a crappy support job at some video house or something equally uninspiring. Or, if I could be sure that I would have enough money to do “Indian Girl” this summer (still a very questionable proposition). Or just anything. Anything other than sitting at another desk all day, writing in my blog…

(And just to head it off now, any comments including the phrases "something will come along" or "if one door closes, another one opens" or anything similar, will either be promptly deleted or openly mocked.)

The furry Norwegian

2006-01-09T18:07:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Sit on My Face,” by Monty Python

I finished another 650-page biography of a playwright last week, so I suppose it’s time for another book report.

Oh, quit your damn whining.

Actually, although I do have plenty to say about Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright, I will try my best to keep it short. Which means it should only take an hour to read this post. Ahem.

When I read a nice hefty biography of Bertolt Brecht in support of Bridget’s Brechtian Brouhaha last summer, I found myself surprised by how much I enjoyed the glimpse into an artist’s personal life, and how it related to his work. It inspired me to seek out and read another playwright’s biography while reading his plays as they come up in the book. But when I told Bridget that I wanted to find and read a book about Henrik Ibsen, her natural reaction was, “What the hell for?”

I didn’t really have a good answer. My only real reason was that I knew virtually nothing about him but suspected that he was worth knowing about. Before this fall, the only thing I knew about him was that he was a Scandinavian playwright; I couldn’t even tell you definitively what specific country he was from.

That changed when Bridget was assigned to read A Doll’s House for her Modern Drama class and asked me to read it with her. The play is probably Ibsen’s most influential and famous for a lot of reasons: in a time of strict roles for men and women in the home, it portrays a woman who strikes out on her own, abandoning her family; it is one of Ibsen’s best examples of the realist style he championed. After reading it, my interest in finding out about Ibsen was solidified, and so I sought out and bought the definitive biography on him, written by Michael Meyer – a hefty 650-page tome.

Two or three months later, I finally finished it. And here’s what I got to say about Henrik Ibsen.

1) He was one ugly motherfucker. And yeah, it’s all about those damn muttonchops. I can only be thankful that I did not live in a time when those furry extensions were fashionable. It’s not as though he couldn’t grow the rest of a beard – in his youth he had a big full bushy thing that buried most of his face. But later in life, he wanted to be able to see his chin and mouth. Perhaps he got tired of cleaning food out of it. Perhaps the missus didn’t like the itching on her naughty bits. Who knows? The biography gives no clues as to his facial hair motivations.

2) He was a snob. His family started out relatively well-off, but then his father was “ruined” in the Victorian sense and the family had to live meagerly. And after he left home, he certainly wasn’t living high on the hog for a while. He started out as an apothecary’s apprentice, making a pittance, and then worked as the artistic director of small theaters in Norway. No great salary there either. But even then, and especially as his star grew after his plays began to get noticed, he was an aristocrat without an aristocracy. He distrusted what he considered to be the under-educated masses. One of my favorite quotes of his is from his play Enemy of the People:

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority.

Though it will certainly pain my democratic and socialist friends to hear me say it, I can’t help but agree with him. I guess I’m becoming a snob too.

3) He was a crusty old grouch. He didn’t like being in large groups of people, even when he was famous, and his mood reflected it. He much preferred being in smaller, intimate groups, and even then he preferred the company of younger men and women. He was very big on the energy of the youth, rightfully believing that it was they who appreciated his plays the most. He also had very set rituals in his day that he liked to follow, such that his friends and family would joke that they could set their watches by him. And yes, go ahead and think it, him being a grouch is another thing he has in common with me. Go fuck yourself, you damn proletarian.

Emilie Bardach,
the first hot young piece of ass
to get Henrik's dick hard

4) For most of his life, Ibsen lived within the sexual mores of the time. Indeed, with the exception of a fling with a maid that begot an illegitimate child when he was a teenager, he didn’t seem to do anything untoward or deviate from his marriage. The (for the time) frank content of his plays belie his true sexual nature, which was quite repressed. Oddly enough, it all changed in his 60s, when (prepare ye for an “Ewww”) he fame brought him in contact with women in their upper teens and early twenties who were all too willing to return the affections of a furry old man. He had three major “affairs,” which weren’t so much affairs as they were severe flirtations. At least, that’s all that the biographer can find – none of his young “mistresses” ever admitted that anything beyond kissing happened and even then, only one admitted to kissing at all. The biographer doesn’t definitively have an opinion whether these women were being modest in their advanced age, but he does speculate that Ibsen’s self-control would have stemmed from his genuine devotion to his wife, who was around his own age and to whom he had been married for decades. This gives me an out when, thirty years from now, Bridget finds the letters my way-too-young groupies have written to me: “But Bridie, I never touched them… just look at Ibsen!”

5) Plays? Oh yeah, when he wasn’t fantasizing about fucking 20-year-old Swedish stewardesses (or whatever they had in the late 1800s), he wrote plays. What was so special about them? Well, two primary things: 1) he was one of the first to write about "regular people" in a prose that reflected the way that "regular people" really spoke; 2) his subject matter was often controversial and took directions that other plays hadn't taken (e.g., the aforementioned A Doll's House, and Ghosts, which was much banned because it (gasp!) talked about venereal disease) Rather than give you an extensive history, let me just share a couple that I liked:

a. Peer Gynt: One of his earlier plays, it was a hefty piece that in a lot of ways reminded me of Brecht’s free-wheeling Baal. In it, Peer Gynt, a young libertine, basically lives life to the fullest, shirking responsibility, and using family, friends, and lovers, to get the life he desires. It’s a very episodic play, moving from year to year, locale to locale, with an imperfect character arc. But it is certainly interesting and, at times, fun. Two favorite moments: one where he escapes being forced to marry a troll princess through a little bit of luck (guys, haven’t we all been there?); and another when, after a shipwreck, Peer and a cook cling to a capsized lifeboat, and Peer decides to literally kick the cook off because otherwise the boat will sink. This play, because of its visual elements, would make a very fun movie – it was made into a film in the 50s, but I doubt then they had the visual sense or the filmic sense of humor needed to make it really take off.

b. Enemy of the People: A very political piece that revolves around a public crusader’s efforts to expose a town’s primary source of income – a public bath – as being dangerously polluted. While the liberal elements of the town at first rally to his side, the politicians who want to shut him up (including his brother, the mayor) demonstrate that the news getting out would ruin the town, including the businesses of the liberal folk. After that, the crusader’s support dries up and he’s painted as a loon who’s only trying to destroy the town. Painfully topical and fully of juicy and fun quotes, including the one above and another favorite, which will be a perfect way to abruptly end this post: “One should never wear one’s best trousers when going out to fight for freedom and truth.”

I have measured out my life with coffeespoons

2006-01-02T16:53:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Battle Flag,” by Pigeonhed, remixed by the Lo Fidelity Allstars

Today is the one-year anniversary of my giving up caffeine. From Jan. 2, 2005, to now, I have had only five caffeinated sodas (including a celebratory Dr Pepper I had yesterday), and one was a rum and coke, so it doesn’t quite count (maybe?). Yay for me.

It was only accidentally a New Year’s Resolution: Jan. 2 coincided with two things that made it easier (if only marginally so) to give up the sauce: 1) it was the end of the holiday season, during which it would have been hard to resist delicious caffeine; and 2) it was during a break in school. So, after returning from Texas, I went through two weeks of headache hell, just in time to be pain-free for the first day of the my final semester at AU.

Now, it’s Jan. 2 again, and both Bridget and I find ourselves facing another accidental resolution. Sometime in November, we both decided to hunker down and try the Weight Watchers program again. We had done it once before when we lived in Maryland, with mixed results, and now, tired of our paunches, we were going to go for it again.

We did pretty well, I think. We allowed ourselves 1,000 Flex points (more on those below) for Thanksgiving, so that was okay, and we were able to keep it up, more or less throughout December. But the holidays were too much temptation, and we pretty much knew that going into it. And so, plied with cookies and candies and all kinds of yummy foods, we let our diets fall by the weigh-side during the holidays.

The holidays are now over, and it’s time to go back on the diet. Accidental resolution number two.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with how Weight Watchers works, I’ll give a brief explanation. The entire concept revolves around the idea of points: different foods are assigned a set number of points per serving size. There’s a formula to it (more on that below), but it basically translates to 1 point for every 50 calories you eat. Because of our weights, both Bridget and I are allowed 24 points of food per day. In addition to those 24 daily points, every week you are allowed 25 Flex points, which you can use any time you want, in whatever combination you want. For instance, you can spread your Flex points out over the week, adding three or four points to your daily total; or you can save them up and then go out Saturday for McDonalds and ice cream, using all 25 points at once.

If you’re a good Weight Watchers person, and pay their fees and all that, you get the benefit of weekly support groups and a weekly weigh-in that helps track your progress. Bridget and I have each other and we own our own scale, thank you. Moreover, since Bridget has done Weight Watchers off and on since she was a tween, she’s got a veritable library of books and guides, which allow us to do it all without feeding the WW industrial beast.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of diets. When I was growing up and watched my parents diet, I could always detect the misery in my father at having to eat a grapefruit every morning or other such wonder diet. It was one of the early promises I made to myself as a teenager that while I would certainly not mind consciously curtailing my food intake, I would never, as an adult, go on an outright organized diet.

But then, I promised myself I’d never get rid of cable either…

My decision to go on WW this time and last comes from two motives: 1) the desire to, yes, weigh less and be slimmer; and 2) to support Bridget in her striving to be good about food. Besides, how could I, in good conscience, slop down on greasy food, while my beloved has to sit across the table from me eating lettuce?

Diets are supposed to make it easy to make good eating choices. But of course, being an intellectual (defined by Bill Cosby as being a person who thinks about and analyzes things that normal people do naturally), it’s not enough for me to just do the program and smile. I have to break it down to brass tacks. And so I did.

The first thing that made me intellectually engage with the Weight Watchers program was mathematics, believe it or not. The tallying of food using numbers just lends itself to mathematical analysis, and me being me, I was happy to oblige. When one is trying to find out the amount of points a particular food has, there are two resources: 1) one of several books showing the point values of common food items, as well as the point values for name brand foods and stuff you’d find at popular restaurants; and 2) a paper sliding scale (that I call “the slide rule”) into which you input calories, fat grams and dietary fiber grams to get a point total.

For all you math-literate people out there, the presence of a slide rule suggests a simple linear relationship between the three variables and the point result. And indeed, there was. It took about, oh, 30 seconds to figure out the points formula once I sat down to figure it out. It’s actually disappointingly easy:

Points per serving* = (Calories / 50) + (Fat grams / 12) – (Dietary fiber grams** / 5)

*rounded to the nearest whole number
**for purposes of the formula fiber grams can be no higher than 4 per serving

So now, with this simple formula in mind, I no longer need the slide rule to figure out a point value. Bridget will often use me by calling out the variables from the kitchen. It gives the program a geeky element which provides me an itty bit of satisfaction while I’m starving away.

Of course, it’s not enough for an intellectual to just break down a simple linear formula. Bah! Now it was time to analyze the whole program and how it works. Here’s what I determined:

1) The Weight Watchers program is really little more than a psychologically cushioned way to literally count calories. Look at that formula again: the big swing element in that formula is the calories. Fat grams rarely get up that high, and even if they did, it would only make one point of difference. The same with fiber. If I ate a low-fat diet with a daily intake of 1200 calories, I would be doing pretty much the same thing as what I’m doing with Weight Watchers. The difference, like I said, is psychology and convenience. Not only is it easier to count points up to 24 and keep track of foods based on small number amounts, but it also makes it not quite as daunting when one thinks about numbers like 7 points or 3 points, instead of such monstrosities as 365 points/4 grams of fat/6 grams of fiber.
2) You might look at the formula (like I did) and wonder “why are the fiber grams limited to four”? Through a little online research, I found out that it actually used to be unlimited. But sometime in the late ‘90s, they changed it. Why? Think about it this way: fiber grams are the only way to bring a point total down in a particular food. What’s to stop an clever dieter from mixing a can of Metamucil into his ground beef to bring that bacon cheeseburger down to a total of –4 points?
3) Having a mathematician in the house to figure out the Weight Watchers program is a mixed blessing for Bridget. Sure, she may like to get instant point values from her human calculator, but that human calculator has taken his mathematical examination of the program a bit too far for her tastes. The WW program works on estimation. The types of foods that can be, say 4 points, range from those with 176 calories to 224 calories (assuming no fat and fiber). Now, let’s say we wanted to triple our serving of whatever that four-point food was. According to the program, that would mean simply tripling the point value to 12 points. Okay, fine, but Mr. Mathematician points out that tripling the calorie value gives you a different result: ranging from 528 to 672 calories, which (by the formula) ranges from 11 to 13 points. So, instead of keeping it simple, having a guy knowing the formula in his head just complicates things and, frankly, frustrates Bridget when I go questioning the basic principles of the program. Indeed, Bridget is right: the program works on estimation because the rounding up of points (on average) will even itself out over the course of a day. You either have to break down everything you intake to point values out to two decimal places, or you have to surrender to the logic of the system. And so we generally do the latter.

So far so good. One thing from the program that we don’t do is weigh ourselves every week, partly from superstition, partly from the desire not to simply measure success in terms of pounds. The real end goal, for both of us, is feeling better about the way we look, and, maybe, fitting into smaller clothes a little better. In the meantime, we will continue to measure out our lives, one point at a time.

The haul

2005-12-30T18:33:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: "Girl," by Beck

The Sopranos, Season 4 DVD set

A cool Timex to replace my old and busted Osama watch

Seven long-sleeved shirts

A 30-pack of individual Frito Lay chips bags

Two pairs of gloves

A set of socks meant for someone else in Bridget’s family

Two $50 giftcards to Best Buy

Two sets of thermal underwear

A T-shirt that says “Good grammar costs nothing!”

Mouse pad with an Arabian carpet design

Two pairs of pajama bottoms

A Dilbert tie with Christmas colors

“Un Chien Andalou” DVD

A tiny sea shell from Inishmore, Ireland

Shared with Bridget

Cool picnic/outing cooler/diningware set from the good folks at Williams-Sonoma

Holder family memory book

Peppermint bark

$275

Humidifier

Sweater drying rack

Basket of homemade candies

Set of homemade jellies

Potpourri

All is darkness

2005-12-23T17:44:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Let it Be,” by the Beatles

A good friend of ours passed away today; one of our best friends and one that’s stuck by me ever since he came into my life in five years ago. His passing was not unexpected; both Bridget and I had known for a few weeks that this was going to happen, but it doesn’t make the loss any less difficult.

His name: Standard Cable.

In some wicked bastardization of The Night Before Christmas, a jolly fat man in a suit came into our apartment complex, and instead of giving us toys and goodies, he brought only woe and despair as he switched off our digital cable service.

Yes, we asked for him to come. Yes, we wanted him to turn it off. But no, it does not make us happy, even knowing that we’ll save a lot of money on our monthly bills. Consequence #46 of living on a budget in Boston.

One of the more difficult things about all this is that I promised myself this would never happen. Back in the early days of this millennium, when I got cable in the first place, I was flush with money… well, not flush, but I was alone and bringing home a darn good paycheck every week. And so, I promised myself that I would never lose cable; it would be one of my priorities to maintain that primary font of news and entertainment.

I failed.

The fact is, we didn’t use most of the channels we had (we had the Premium Super Platinum Duplex Cable Package), and even paying for standard cable is too much of a burden on our wan budget. Bridget first suggested the idea months ago, but I fought it, going back to that promise I had made myself. But eventually, I did something that Congress can’t do: I realized that budget cuts would have to be made and that they would be painful.

Bridget’s original thought was to get rid of all the things which we relied on Comcast for, which included both cable and high-speed internet. One look at the fire that shot out of my eyes, and she realized that losing high-speed internet was a non-starter. The compromise was to go to Verizon DSL, which would have been an annoying transition with slightly slower speeds in the end, but significantly cheaper. Well, turns out Verizon doesn’t do DSL in our area, so we were stuck trying to figure out how to keep it with Comcast, and yet lose the cable without too much hassle.

Fortunately, Comcast, in its effort to get people on as many services as possible, makes it cheaper to get internet access if you’re a cable subscriber. The end result is that it was cheaper to keep basic (and I mean basic) cable and the internet than it would have been to eliminate all cable TV and keep the internet service. And so, we still have basic cable, allowing us to watch local channels and C-Span in crisp color. Whoo-hoo.

When Bridget called me today and let me know that the service had been switched over, I got a little melancholy. Not for too long, because I had a pile of forms on my desk to do, but for a little bit. What went through my mind were all the things Bridget and I were losing:

The Sopranos (new season in March)

CNN… CNN for fuck’s sake! This one will hurt the most when there’s a big breaking news story that’s not quite big enough for the big four networks to cover.

The 8,500 weekly episodes of Law and Order that we had access to. Now we only get three a week on NBC. What is this, the Dark Ages?

Deadwood

Huff (new season this spring)

The L-Word (Shane! Come back Shane!)

Entourage

Curb Your Enthusiasm

ESPN (ha! yeah, right. Like I give a damn.)

Bravo/Sundance/IFC/other snooty hip film channels

Comedy Central (sob!)

The Daily Show (sob! sob!)

VH1 and MTV (it pains me to say it, but I only really care about the former… age is a bitter mistress)

Did I mention CNN?

There is one net positive in this list: I will never have to be flipping through channels and see Faux News come up.

But overall, it’s going to be rough. Part of our compromise budget cut was resubscribing to Netflix, which has already started. It feels good to be back on that gravy train.

But I’m going to miss cable. God damn, am I ever going to miss cable.

Everyone chill the fuck out

2005-12-22T13:07:00.000-05:00

Deep breath, everyone.

I think we’re all realizing that this is, in the end, a tempest in a teapot that came from poor communication. I think we’re all in agreement that Andrew should have let us know before now that he and Marianne weren’t coming. I sympathize with Mams’ plight here; I’m likewise one to procrastinate in the sharing of bad news, and it’s gotten me in trouble more than once in my life. The thing that finally sank in after years and years of making people angry: the consequences of delay always worsen the negative impact you were fearing in the first place.

Both Bridget and I understand the predicament that Marianne finds herself in with regards to work, and no one blames her for not wanting to travel umpteen hours for a couple of hours holiday, only to have to turn right back around.

Please understand that Bridget’s getting upset is not because she feels that Andrew or Marianne meant to snub us or anything. She’s more upset with how it affects her family; now that she’s had the evening to sleep over it, she realizes that the real impact of this whole shenanigan on her family is negligible, and her attitude has been tempered by this. As for me, I’m sorry that I dragged Mom into this, but as I pointed out to her, I have no ability to bring my brothers to task for anything, and I would have certainly crumbled from hearing Andrew’s helplessness had I called to relate our grievance (I don’t miss the irony, by the way, that I was unwilling to make a potentially difficult phone call…we McKenzies are all the same).

Invitations will continue to be given to family events; Andrew and Marianne should know that they’ll always be welcome regardless of circumstance.

Please note that the reason this whole thing bothered us wasn’t because they couldn’t come; that happens, especially among those of us who struggle paycheck to paycheck. What bothers us is that we didn’t know about it ‘til now. That’s all—and in the end, we know it’s not much. We have no intention of tearing Andrew away from Marianne this Christmas; it would completely ruin the point of inviting them to have them separated on the holiday—it’s not what we want. Please, please, please, stay in Amherst.

Let’s please just get past this, because it’s not really worth the bother it’s causing. We’ve all vented in our various forums, and so now let's just shrug our shoulders and have a Merry Christmas.

Please?

The critics have spoken

2005-12-15T21:49:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “I Like Mike,” by Jay Spears

It’s been a nerve-wracking couple of days for Ian Allen (the director of Trapped by the Mormons) and me; tonight, the film opens for a week-long run in New York City, which earns it the cred to get reviewed by the big boys. And so, we’ve been waiting anxiously for those reviews.

The anxiousness came not from the need for validation. Ian has the thickest skin of anyone I know, which came from years of enduring the barbs of the Washington, D.C., press. As for me, having been a movie reviewer myself, I know how these things work, and I can easily take whatever they say about my work with a big grain of salt. What we were anxious about was the potential impact these reviews would have on the audiences. A good review in a prestigious publication can bring lots of people into the theatre. A bad review can shy people away, but that’s only a net negative if your movie was well known to begin with. In our case, even a horrible review is still publicity our movie wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Still, good reviews are better, of course.

They started trickling in on Tuesday. They were all good, but none of them were effusive with praise. The Village Voice was certainly the most interesting, including the line, “…this must be the first movie in which an LDS pamphlet is used as a masturbation aid.”

Then, late Tuesday, came surprise word that the New Yorker magazine (of the snooty commercial: “the best magazine in the world… probably the best magazine that ever was”) had put a paragraph review of the film in its calendar section. Huge and unexpected. What was even better was what they said:

This silent film tells the cautionary tale of Nora (Emily Riehl-Bedford), a dutiful young Englishwoman who jilts her officer fiancé for Isoldi Keane (Johnny Kat), a Mormon proselytizer who is also a hypnotist and a vampire. The film is a conceptual gag (the director Ian Allen based it on a 1922 silent film of the same title and substance); if it occasionally falls flat, it nonetheless plays for high artistic stakes—for who has not at some time been possessed by love, religion, or some other passionate delusion? Allen and his D.C.-based theatre company, Cherry Red, prove that the silent cinema derives its deepest inspiration from the dance: the startling gesture repertoire with which Allen invests his performers makes even a faked resurrection seem true to life.—R.B. (Pioneer Theatre.)

Wow! The most intellectual mainstream magazine in America not only took our film seriously on its own terms, but gave it its approval. We were bowled over with glee.

The glee got diffused a bit the next evening when the New York Times review went online. Let’s just say it was… negative:

These are (for some reason) vampire Mormons whose baptismal ritual transforms nice English girls into furious face-eating zombies. No, it doesn't make sense. And no, it isn't as fun as it sounds.

I actually surprised myself in my reaction to reading the review. I wasn’t sad, morose, self-defeatist, deflated, whatever… in fact, it made me laugh in a morbid sort of way. I shook my head and thought, “Man, you just don’t get it, do you?” In contrast to the reviewer from the New Yorker, the Times’ reviewer had taken it seriously for about five seconds, formed an opinion early on, and let the rest of the movie inform that opinion. It’s how it works, for both positive and negative reviews – you don’t know what side of subjectivity you’re going to get.

The only thing that bothered Ian and me, and indeed the only reason I would be mentioning it, is the fact that it is the New York Times, the paper of record and the cultural touchstone for the city. All the other reviews could have been negative, but if the Times had come through, we would have been dancing. As it was, the Times was the only negative review (unless you count the New York Sun, which I don’t; long story why), and that significantly dilutes the positive effect of all the other reviews in the public eye.

But, like I said before, it’s still a review in the paper of record. For that reason, I’ve still been trumpeting the review to everyone I know. “Look, the Times hates us! Isn’t it awesome!” And the review fulfilled a long-time fame fantasy I've had (along with winning an Oscar and bagging Kate Winslet): it referred to me as "Mr. McKenzie." It's a silly little thing, but it's the Times' unique policy to call people by a formal title on the second reference to them in a story, and it's kind of a snooty "I've arrived" thing for me to see myself referred to in that way by the Times.

Today, however, came an even bigger surprise than all the rest of them. We got reviewed on Salon.com, which is a nationwide daily Internet publication, one that I and lots of people I know have read for years. It was part of their weekly “Beyond the Multiplex” feature, and was very positive. A sample:

Director Ian Allen (a longtime playwright and stage director) has lovingly re-created the look and indeed narrative style of silent film -- and he's from Salt Lake City, so if he says Mormons are vampires with hypnotic powers, who am I to argue? I suppose this is a one-note joke, more in the style of '70s avant-garde camp than anything else. But, hey, at least it's a funny joke.

And so, with the exception of the New York Times, our movie has been “hailed by critics” (if you will). Go to our pages on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic and you’ll see the way the reviews are leaning. And if you want to read the reviews themselves, here are some helpful links:

New Yorker (only good ‘til Tuesday the 20th)

New York Times

Salon.com (scroll down to the bottom of page 4 [you may have to watch an ad to see this])

TV Guide Online (huh? really?)

New York Post

Village Voice

FilmThreat.com

Wicked cold

2005-12-12T15:25:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Exquisite Dead Guy,” by They Might Be Giants

It got cold last week. And not in that sissy, shut down every school in Oklahoma kind of cold. It was Boston cold. Sub-freezing highs, bitterly sharp winds, bundled up to the point of immobility. In other words, a typical New England winter day.

And did I, the boy who hates winter, who dreaded moving north because of this weather, complain? No. I wrapped myself in layers of cloth and sucked it up like the rest of the city. When I had to stand at a T or bus stop for up to 15 minutes in that frigid environment, did I gripe? Pfft! You call this cold? Did I whine and moan when the shower didn’t have any hot water in the morning because all the radiators and the morning shower-takers in the building had used it all? Well, yes, a little, but then I moved on and starting taking showers at night.

Indeed, Bridget, the proud New Englander, did more complaining about the cold than I did, and the entirety of her complaining consisted of one utterance: “Brrr! It’s cold out there!” And when Bridget complains like that, bundled up in her scarf and big red coat, it’s just cute, so calling it a complaint doesn’t do it justice.

Boston cold is, yes, bad, and last week was, yes, miserable. Not a complaint, just the truth. But Friday was the icing on a week of bad weather. The winter storm that dumped feet of snow on the northern U.S. finally showed up in New England, and we got our fair share of the white stuff. This isn’t the first time that snow has fallen here this season; indeed, we got over an inch on Oct. 29, the record for the earliest snowfall ever in Boston. But Friday left all that behind; the day was just snow, snow, snow and more snow. It started in the early morning and by the time the city was waking up, it was causing problems with traffic, both car and foot. Even the T was affected (though that doesn’t take much); one stop on our line had to be abandoned because it was on an incline the trolley couldn’t stop there without slipping.

But of course, this is Boston, and if there’s one thing Boston (the city) handles well, it’s snow. In Washington, D.C., heads rolled in city government a couple of years back because officials in the snow removal department didn’t do their jobs well. When a city gets shut down by snow, the citizens are very vocal about their anger toward local officials. Getting to work on Friday, I got the feeling that any such citizen discontent got into the system and ironed out in Boston years ago; if Boston’s municipal crews did a poor job of clearing the snow, one could imagine an angry (but progressive) mob storming City Hall and lynching the head of the roads department. As a result, snow removal is a high priority, and it shows. By the time I headed to work, around 8 a.m., most of the major streets were already well plowed, and every smaller street had gotten at least one pass. When I got to Harvard Square, the snow was still coming down strong, but traffic wasn’t nearly as snarled as it would have been in D.C. in the same conditions; people were moving slower, but they were still moving steadily. Indeed, so together was Cambridge’s public works that they were plowing the sidewalks by the time I was there. Ask D.C. to plow a sidewalk and they’d just tell you to buy yourself a shovel.

Once inside the warm confines of my office, I was able to watch the continuing blizzard in comfort. And continue it did, well into the afternoon. And then, something happened to endanger the warm confines I was in: the power went out in my office around 2 p.m. It was Friday in a blizzard, so not many people had come into work in the first place (“working from home,” my ass), and most of those who had come in left after the outage prevented any work from happening. I, an hourly worker, had no choice but to stick around and wait until my eight hours were through (if I wanted to get paid for them). And so I sat and read, and talked to Bridget on the phone, and read some more. The power did come back on after a couple of hours, but by then, who really wants to work? So, I diddles around for another hour and left to meet Bridget to see “The Tempest” (which in D.C., given the same conditions, would have been cancelled).

By the time our wintry tempest was all said and done, it dumped 8.6 inches of snow on the city, which is a record for that date in Boston. It left the city cold, but beautiful, pretty much how I expected it would be.

A tree grows in Brighton

2005-12-11T18:50:00.000-05:00

Our new tree
The 2005 ornament
(we couldn't find cute animals)

O Tannenbaum, where art thou?

2005-12-07T16:54:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “O Canada,” the Canadian national anthem

It’s December, and in the McKenzie household, that means the apartment gets decked in all sorts of Christmas paraphernalia. Trinkets, hangings, lights, ornaments, all brought out from storage to make their annual showing. It’s mostly Bridget’s doing; she’s got a stronger sense of personal holiday tradition than I do. So last week, when all the decorations went up, it was mainly Bridget who did most of the hanging. That doesn’t seem to bother her too much, but then, she could be hiding a simmering rage.

One tradition that Bridget and I have that we will duplicate again this year is buying a dated tree ornament, i.e., a cute decoration that has the year prominently stamped on it. It started when we bought a “Our First Christmas together, 2003” ornament with two cute mice cuddling together on it. And since then, it’s something we’ve just decided to continue, going to Target and getting a nice dated ornament. We haven’t made the trip this year yet, but we’ll probably do it this weekend.

However, once we get the ornament, we have a larger problem that will have to be overcome: we don’t have a Christmas tree. Both years we’ve been together, we got a live tree down the street from where we lived in Silver Spring. Now, we want another live tree to put in our living room, but unfortunately, there aren’t the abundance of Christmas tree vendors that we had in Washington, D.C. The main reason, of course, is that in D.C., we lived in a suburb, where there was actually room for small vendors; in Boston, temporary retail space is harder to come by.

That said, we were finally able to find a nearby vendor, but only through some Internet sleuthing. Now, there’s another problem. We don’t have a car here in Boston. My car, Phoebe, is vacationing up in New Hampshire until her parents can afford to have her in the city. Bridget had dreams of carrying our tree home ourselves, like they did in “When Harry Met Sally.” But, the nearest Christmas tree seller to our house is over a mile away, and the idea of hauling a tree that distance in the blistering cold we’ve been having this week quickly extinguished that dream.

So, for the past week and a half, the area we cleared in our living room for our Christmas tree has remained woefully empty. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however; Bridget will be going home to New Hampshire this weekend and bringing Phoebe back with her for a few days, so we’ll be able to cart the tree home that way. And then, once we decorate the tree with ornaments new and old, it will truly feel like Christmastime has really arrived once again at the McKenzie home.

These are her stories

2005-12-01T17:23:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Knights of the Round Table,” by Monty Python

This July, when Bridget and I did Day-Old Plays with Cherry Red Productions in D.C., Bridget was assigned to a play that was a parody of Law & Order, focused on the Michael Jackson case -- two subjects that are ripe for ridicule. But after all was said and done, and we were talking about the creation of our separate projects, Bridget confessed to me that she had to have her cast explain to her the significance of the show’s “chung-chung” sound (which, of course, was featured prominently in the play). Here was Bridget being asked to direct a Law & Order parody with only a passing knowledge of the show she was targeting. Granted, she still did a great job with sub-par material, but it was still a surprise to learn that she didn’t much about what is (whether we realize it or not) one of the cultural institutions of our time.

My oh my, how that has changed.

Bridget has become a Law & Order addict. She watches it whenever she can, which, because of the ubiquity of the show in syndication, is essentially any time she is home. I don’t know when it started, but it has been a slow transformation. At first, she only watched it when she happened upon it while flipping channels. Now, at least twice in a TV-watching evening, she will cruise over the on-screen guide, looking for when and where Law & Order will be on. And it’s not just the original Law & Order. She’s checking for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And since there doesn’t seem to be an hour of the day when there isn’t some version of Law & Order on TV (be it on NBC, Bravo, USA or TNT), her wishes are often fulfilled. (For the record: her favorite of the three is Criminal Intent, but she enjoys all of them.)

I’ve never been a Law & Order “fan,” per se. I sometimes will catch the show by accident if the storyline catches my interest (usually some hot chick has to get murdered or be the lead suspect). But it has never been must-see TV for me, and Law & Order has never been the anchor to any night of TV. Now that Bridget’s taken a strong interest in the show, I find myself watching it with her, and enjoying it quite a bit.

But even before Bridget’s foray into watching the series, I knew quite a bit about it through osmosis, and the episodes I had watched. I could talk along with the opening monologue (“In the criminal justice system,…”) years ago, and (like so many people) instinctively knew the plot formula that typifies the original series (murder, investigation, focus on suspect, arrest, arraignment, haggling, trial [sometimes], resolution). Now it’s getting a little deeper than that, and I’m sure Bridget’s getting it too; as time goes on, you start to realize that you’re developing a keen sense of the Law & Order universe: criminals from past shows; long-departed detectives; ongoing plotlines; etc.

Of course, Bridget has a thing about discovering shows, devouring them in the span of a few weeks (thanks to OnDemand), and then throwing the carcass into an ever-growing pile of shows (Sex and the City, Huff, the L-Word…), waiting for the next season to start, if any. Law & Order is a completely different animal than these other shows, however. It’s been around for 15 long years, each of which had a full season of about 22 shows, for a grand total mid-way through the 16th season of 360 shows. And that’s just the regular Law & Order. Law & Order: SVU has 153 episodes, Criminal Intent has 98. Needless to say, even if Bridget had access to all 611 episodes, and watched three episodes a day, it would be almost seven months before she had finished the Law & Order canon. Of course, in those seven months, there probably would have been 30 new episodes made… Needless to say, Law & Order is an elephant compared to the turkeys of other shows whose bones Bridget has picked through. Of course, how do you eat an elephant? One episode at a time.

Murder by cat

2005-11-29T17:25:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Thank You,” by Dido

I don’t hate cats, and I never have. I’m a bit disgusted with the whole urinating-and-defecating-into-a-box-that’s-usually-not-too-far-from-the-kitchen thing, but all in all, I’ve always thought cats were on the whole very interesting, comforting creatures. At least when they’re declawed.

But as most of you probably know, I have a problem with cats. A big problem. A problem that’s only gotten worse with time. I’m allergic to the Felis domesticus, more specifically the dander that they shed all over people’s houses. It’s an allergy I seem to have inherited from my father, whose disdain of cats was something I never quite could understand as a kid. I understand now. My dad, however, was able to be careful in his avoidance of homes that housed a feline; I don’t remember too many people my family knew (with a couple of exceptions) that had cats.

I don’t have that luxury. Of all the people I know, and all the places I often visit, there are only two places that do not currently house a cat: my brother and sister-in-law’s apartment in Amherst, Mass., and my grandparent’s house in San Angelo, Texas. That’s it. All my friends, all the rest of my family and Bridget’s family have cats.

Keep in mind that this isn’t some nuisance allergy that just causes a bit of sneezing or itchy eyes for a while. The first time I had a major allergy attack from a cat was in San Antonio, Texas, several years ago; it became so difficult to breathe that I was actually being driven to the hospital when it started to clear up. Why did it start to clear up? Because I had left the offending house, of course. But even though the life-threatening part of the attack had passed, my breathing was labored for several hours, and the fearsome wheezing in my lungs lasted a couple of days.

I have a steroid inhaler now that is a vital part of my travel toiletries, so I should never have any near-hospital visits over cats anytime soon. But still, after spending a day or two in someone’s house, I will be afflicted with wheezing, congestion and all manner of respiratory discomfort for days. Indeed, as I sit here, I’m still coughing up gook that built up over Thanksgiving weekend, which was spent shuttling between two houses that contained all manner of cats. It’s tough to really enjoy oneself when one is constantly aware of the reactions one is having to the environment. I can’t even relax in my childhood home in Mustang, Oklahoma, for god’s sake, because there are two cats living there now. Indeed, it doesn’t feel like home anymore.

Of course, there are other things that make it feel less like home – the absence of Dickens, our dog, and especially my father. Besides my allergies, there’s another thing I seem to have inherited from him: two days ago, while watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and enduring the results of my latest allergic attack, I coughed every time I laughed hard (which, with that show, is often). My dad used to do that too. The respiratory parallels come to mind every time I hear my lungs wheeze in a way that sounds like paper crackling or every time I cough up something that tastes like ash. And yes, it does scare me. Quite a bit.

Mercidonnant

2005-11-24T16:23:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Sailor’s Hornpipe,” traditional

Thanksgiving is an unusual holiday for an agnostic to celebrate. After all, to give thanks implies that there is someone or something to give thanks to. Without that, Thanksgiving boils down to sitting around and reveling in your luck – luck that you weren’t born poor; luck that you are healthy; luck that were born with the capacity to build skills and knowledge that allow you to earn a regular wage that leaves some left over for luxuries once all the bills are paid; luck that family members are still alive; luck that you stumbled upon someone who understands you and is willing to tolerate you for the rest of your lives. Thankgiving’s mascots are still the Pilgrims and the Indians, only now it’s the Pilgrims sitting at a craps table at an Indian casino.

But despite my lack of connection to the idea, I do like Thanksgiving, just as I like Christmas and don’t subscribe to virgin births (be it Leda or Mary), even if the former holiday represents the last moment of comity between whites and Indians for hundreds of years.

That said, Thanksgivings, on the whole, don’t stand out in my memory so well. All the Thanksgivings spent in San Angelo or Mustang kind of blend into one. There are a few notable exceptions:

-- In either 1999 or 2000, I spent Thanksgiving with the extended family of a friend in Virginia. What was most memorable was not the food, but the older couple who railed on Bill and Hillary Clinton for most of the meal. “They’re evil. Evil!” was one enlightened gem. I almost bit my tongue as much as I did my turkey.

-- Last year’s Thanksgiving was truly something special for both Bridget and I, as both our immediate families all got together and squished into our apartment for Thanksgiving weekend. Now, it wasn’t the most exciting of festivities – none of us are very wild people – but it was quite wonderful to have everyone there.

-- On Thanksgiving 1994, I was in Paris, France, taking part in a year-long academic program sponsored by an American university. There isn’t even a word in French for “Thanksgiving,” and the fourth Thursday in November is just like any other Jeudi for Parisians. And so, with this American holiday in our heads, our program arranged for all of the students to get together in a nice restaurant and be treated to a full Thanksgiving meal – turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (not canned!), stuffing, the works. The restaurant did a superb job of preparing the meal – indeed, it was some of the best damn turkey I’ve ever had (part of that surely is the proud feeling that an American living in Paris would get in celebrating an American holiday abroad). And the addition of good French wine didn’t hurt either. Two of my best friends in town, Stacey and Susan, were seated with me at the dinner, and we had a grand old time. After the meal, we sat around writing dirty limericks about each other and people we knew. A strange way to give thanks, perhaps, but one of the best.

Doing my part to help breasts

2005-11-21T18:38:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: Theme song to “The Tom and Jerry Show”

My dad always told his sons to “always take pride in your work.” Actually, that’s crap; he never said any such thing. Or maybe he did, but I don’t remember it. My dad said a lot of pithy things, some of which I remember and try to live by, with questionable success (“Never get married and have kids!” or “Change the oil!”), but “take pride in your work” wasn’t one of them. I just thought that sounded like a good way to start this post, which involves taking pride in a particular aspect of my work.

I tell people that I’m a “graphic designer for H&R Block,” which is incorrect in two ways. One, I don’t technically work for H&R Block, but one of their subsidiaries. And two, there’s isn’t much “designing” to my job. Perhaps a better job title would be “graphic imitator.” I’m supposed to take state and federal tax forms and duplicate them as closely as possible using our very limited software. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, this simply involves laying text boxes, straight lines, and boxes down on a page, basic layout stuff. As a result, the software we use limits us to a very small palette of tools: text (that can only go horizonally), horizontal and vertical lines (no diagonals), rectangles, circles and ovals and isosceles triangles. And we have three colors available to us: black, white and mid-gray.

But every once in a while, there’s that one time out of a thousand, when we have to use a little bit more than simple duplicative skills to make the form look like the original. Many times the states put various logos or images on their forms. And because of the primitive quality of our software, we can’t import image files or the like. Most of the time, as in the case of state seals, we don’t have to try to duplicate them and all is well. But sometimes we do, and sometimes it’s not so easy. Some examples of things that had to be drawn in the past on tax forms: a mailbox (with the flag up), an eagle flying, a hand signing a signature. If we were able to use such software as Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, these things would be a snap. But no, we are stuck using that limited palette. It’s hard to really describe, but try to imagine having to draw a duck with only rectangles, ovals and basic triangles (none of which can be rotated). But someone did last year, very well I might add:

Here’s another way to think of it: Imagine if I asked you to draw a black diagonal line using only what I described. How would you do it? You’d first draw a triangle, one of whose edges would end up being the diagonal line. Then you’d draw another triangle, this time all white, and cover up the rest of the first triangle, leaving only a black diagonal line on a white page.

Now image having to compose something with lots and lots of diagonal lines.

Added to the difficulty is that we can’t scale the images. That is, they have to be drawn to actual size; we can’t draw them big and shrink them down later. It’s like doing microscopic surgery… well, nothing like that really. But the principle of working in a very small area with limited tools applies.

Up to now, I’ve never had to really drawn any intricate logos. The most complicated things I had to draw were a smiley face and a frowny face (yes, there are sadistic state tax agencies that put emoticons on your tax forms next to your refund or the amount you owe, respectively). Today, that changed. The state of Wisconsin informed us that we needed to include a tiny breast cancer ribbon next to the “Breast cancer research donation” line on their main form. Now, consider your average lapel ribbon: not a straight horizontal or vertical line on the damn thing. So it would be tough. And tough it was.

I started creating the logo around 2 p.m. this afternoon. At around 2:45 (oh, I probably took a break to check e-mail or something), I finished a rough version that I could copy on the form to see if it would fit. Of course, it didn’t; it was about 50 percent too big for the space allotted. And remember, I can’t scale the thing down, so I basically had to redraw it from scratch. It didn’t take as long the second time, but still. By the end of it, once all the fine-tuning had been done, I had used almost 40 boxes/ovals/triangles to create that ribbon. For the convenience of my audience, I made a copy of the draft and changed all the graphic elements to transparent boxes with black lines, so you can see just how complicated a graphic it really was:

Of course, that’s not what you’d see on the page. What you’d see is a nice little ribbon. And when I mean little, I mean little:

That’s actual size, folks (forgive the resolution and image noise; you'll just have to trust that it looks good in PDF format). A tiny little logo, but I must say, I am particularly proud how well this sucker turned out. Doesn’t look complicated, and none of the customers in Wisconsin who see it will think much of it, but then, that’s the point isn’t it? Besides, once they get to that part of the form (close to the end), they’re too busy being happy that they’re getting a refund, or pissed off that they owe.

Or, I can tell myself that they will see the logo and be inexpilcably inspired to give money to breast cancer research! Feh.

One thing my dad did say was “If you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life.” He certainly loved his job, unless he was particularly good at hiding the demons that torment FAA managers. I don’t love my job, but I certainly do like it enough to keep coming back in a good mood. And today provided an odd little satisfaction. That’ll do for now.

Dreams, they complement my life

2005-11-17T18:20:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Destination Moon,” by They Might Be Giants

Something strange has been happening to me the past week or two. It started gradually, and now it’s developed into what is quickly becoming a habit. I am waking up on my own at the crack of dawn. My alarm clock hasn’t gone off once this week, because I’ve woken up before it was time.

I have long been a proud denizen of the night, fighting the despised urge to sleep in an effort to pack more hours into the day. Granted, I made up for that time sleeping in until noon, but I could just not bring myself to put an end to a day without getting some extra hours of darkness in.

And now, I go to bed between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., often staying awake to talk to Bridget until around 11:30 or midnight. Seven hours later, I’m rousing. Ordinarily, I would look at the clock and roll back over, but I’m not quite tired enough to back to sleep. What an odd feeling it is.

I very excited about the prospect of having a normal sleep cycle. I’ve tried numerous times in the past to fight my urge to stay up late in order to try to follow the natural rhythms of the sun, but there was too much standing in my way. Now, the stars have aligned and all the obstacles are out of the way:

1) Caffeine. I gave it up after Jan. 1 of this year. I never drank coffee, so it wasn’t as though I was blowing my wad at Starbucks or anything, but I was definitely addicted to caffeinated soda. It took a lot of willpower and tolerance of two weeks of headaches to get through it, but I did.

2) I got a day job. I’ve had plenty of day jobs before and I still had the same problems with sleep, but with caffeine out of the way, being forced to get up early just put me into that cycle and kept me there.

3) My wife is a light sleeper. This is actually key, because without the emotional incentive to get up, I probably would have kept trying to sleep in. But when your beloved starts kicking you because you’ve hit snooze twice, waking her up three times, you know something’s going to have to change.

4) I switched the time I took my medication. This was the last piece that had to fall in place, although I didn’t realize it until last week. I have a medication that I have to take every day, and usually I’d been taking it every morning. Well, maybe I should have paid attention to the warning on the label that said that the drug might cause drowsiness. Hmm, maybe I should take it at night. And so I started taking it before going to bed. And the rest is history.

The next test for my new sleep cycle will be when my seasonal job at H&R Block ends for the year, which will be in a couple of months. I hope I can keep it up; it feels good to wake up with the sun.

Finally, the improv post

2005-11-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Conga,” by Gloria Estefan

I don’t know why I’m having such a problem writing about improv. I promised a post over a week ago about our recent experiences with live improvised comedy. I think I intended to pontificate proudly on comedy and its creation, but never really got around to forming a coherent idea in advance. So, I never started. So, forget the diatribes. Let me tell you about these three evenings.

Two weeks ago, on Nov. 1, I was invited to participate in a special event called “The Director’s Cut” at Improv Asylum in downtown Boston. The idea of the event is to get local filmmakers to show short films before an audience and get the director to interact with the improv actors. At its best, it’s a win-win situation: the improv hopes to attract a new audience with movies and the filmmaker gets a venue to show his/her film.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. In reality, that Tuesday was only the second time they had done it, and the word obviously had not gotten out. Only three people showed up for the event, and they were all co-workers of mine. I was grateful for those three, but when they have to use the ushers and ticket-seller as seat fillers, it’s hard to get overly excited.

That said, I had a blast. There were two film that evening: mine (which played second) and a 48-Hour Film Festival entry that a former member of the Improv Asylum troupe had done. It was actually one of the best 48-Hour Film Fest films I’d ever seen; it was a musical (imagine having to whip together a musical in 48 hours) and they did a good job with what they had. But, the 48-Hour Film Festival is a breeding ground for mediocrity (with scattered moments of brilliance), so saying it was the best of its kind I’d seen is not saying much. Still, it was impressive what they were able to do.

After my film, which was painful to watch almost three years after it was made, I got to “direct” the improv troupe, which basically meant assembling the random details they were supposed to start with (a character named Smith Bill, in a shopping mall) and then inserted random deviations from the course they were going on. The end result was a Westside Story throwdown between the Pretzel Hut and Cinnabon, and a rapper named Frosty McClean who peddled jewel-encrusted thongs to high schoolers. Bizarre and hilarious; the actors were quite good.

In other improv news, Bridget and I went together to two performances of one of BU’s student improv groups, Spontaneous Combustion (commonly known by the abbreviation Spon-Com). The first time we went contained the aforementioned visit from the diaper-clad Lear. The second time was more sedate, with 2/3rds of the house filled. But both times were exceptionally fun. In my limited experience with seeing college improv groups, they tend to be funnier in concept than in reality. College students who think they’re good at being funny on a dime are a dime a dozen, but it’d be tough to find one of them who’d be worth… um, a dime.

Spon-Com was much sharper and smarter than any student improv I’d ever seen before. Several of the actors consistently demonstrated an impressive comedic range and speed. Of course, both the good and only so-so actors were helped by safety in numbers; it’s easier to find the funny when there are nine people contributing ideas than it is if there are only three or four. Even with a nine-person cast, Spon-Com had quite a few dull moments in their performances, but that’s not necessarily unexpected. Improv is hard stuff to sustain for long periods of time. They benefited from having a friendly audience, not to mention a few audience members (namely me) who will laugh at just about anything. So eliciting laughter from me is not necessarily a trophy to crow about. However, last Saturday’s Spon-Com was the first time in ages that a live performance had made me laugh so hard that I cried. Two tear ducts up.

Yay IRS!

2005-11-09T13:10:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “All You Need Is Love,” by the Beatles

Monday and Tuesday were very big days at work, thus my breaking of my promise to tell you about the improve events of the past two weeks. Fear not, I’ll get to it soon, but first I’ll tell you why Monday and Tuesday were so important and busy for me.

Most of you know that I currently work for H&R Block in Cambridge (our fair city), right across the river from my town of Brighton. I’m in their TaxCut division, which is the software that consumers can buy to do their taxes. I’m one of the people who take the tax forms that the IRS and the states create and convert them into electronic versions for our software – essentially layout and editing. I’m in charge of keeping track of the forms for 20 states, including Oklahoma and Maryland, as well as all the forms that come in from the IRS. In most cases, the IRS and states first submit draft forms and later make final revisions.

Monday: Up until the first of November, federal forms had been stuck in draft mode; usually, they are made final during the first weeks of October. But in August, some bitch named Katrina visited the U.S. and created a whole lot of homeless people in need of tax credits. Congress had to enact these credits, which they eventually did, and they had to be integrated into this year’s tax forms. But as anything in D.C., it takes time, so there were delays in the forms. And since just about every state has something on their tax forms which references line numbers on the federal forms (especially form 1040), until the fed forms went final, the states weren’t going to go final either.

It all rose to the level of emergency in our office, because it basically hamstringed us from progressing with our work. It got so that they created a Katrina Task Force which meets every week to talk about ramifications of the hurricane. I’m proud to say that I’m a member of that task force. No, we do not get a jacket.

Last Tuesday, now that all the possible legislation for tax year 2005 has passed, some of the lesser federal forms began to be posted for public use on the IRS webpage (that’s my cue that those forms are final): Form 3800 – General Business Credit; Form 8814 – Parent’s Election to Report Child’s Interest and Dividends. Exciting stuff, sure, but for me, who had been twiddling my thumbs with the federal forms for weeks, it was a gust of fresh air.

And then, on Monday, the granddaddy of all the forms went final: Federal Form 1040 for the year 2005 was released on the IRS website that morning. And that broke the floodgates, both for the feds and the states. Where once it was piecemeal, the work is now steady and quick. States going final, forms flying everywhere, dogs and cats living together.

That was Monday.

Tuesday: Yes, I did vote, but that’s not why it was important (two governor’s races and a few mayors? Puh-lease). Tuesday was known to us at H&R Block as FCS Day. FCS stands for First Customer Ship, meaning the day when our product first gets created to be put in boxes and sent to stores. It is really the turning-point day here at TaxCut: before FCS Day, everyone’s working to improve and perfect the software; after it, all we can really do is tweak.

And there is a lot of tweaking to do, especially in my department. Like I said, we were just getting the final versions of some forms the day before – no way were they going to be up-to-date for the FCS. So the product, as purchased, ends up having lots and lots of draft forms. Only if you were lucky enough to live in South Carolina and Arizona would your state have all its forms ready for you, and even then, you’d have to wait for an update to the federal forms.

Why ship out a product when it’s obviously not ready for full use? Ask Bill Gates. Actually, for us, it’s a matter of racing to get the product on the shelves for customers to purchase. If our competitors get their products on the shelf before we do, then we might lose a lot of customers to them. So the idea is hook them with the purchase, and then get them to download the updates in January.

As yesterday came to a close, congratulatory e-mails from the bigwigs were sent around to everyone. The worst of the tax season is behind us, or at least for the software developers. This afternoon, after work, all employees are invited to a bar next door for a company happy hour. I’ll be there for sure… as soon as I finish up Alabama.

Old man in a diaper

2005-11-07T15:41:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Games Without Frontiers,” by Peter Gabriel

Imagine, if you will, an auditorium packed to the aisles with young adults. They’re all in a festive mood; it’s Saturday night, after all. Many if not most of them are drunk, and still others are high. Lots of laughter, lots of noise, much rejoicing. Then, on the stage, a performance begins. A troupe of actors sets out performing short humorous sketches. The crowd eats it up.

Just then, in the back of the auditorium, there’s a shout. Into the room strolls a man in his 80s, clad only in a loincloth. The crowd silences, but twitters at the sight. The man is angry, he shakes his fists and yells at the crowd to be quiet. After he’s said his peace, he strides back out of the room and the students are left bewildered.

Another dream of mine? Nope, folks. This actually happened.

This weekend, Bridget and I went to a performance at BU of a student improv troupe called Spon-Com. We were there early, so we got to sit in the front row, and soon the place was packed to standing-room only. As I said, most of the people in the room were probably intoxicated in one form or another… of course, Bridget and I being the old-fogey exceptions.

The performance got started shortly after 10 p.m. with another local improv group opening up for the student act. It was just starting to rev up when the aforementioned shout came from the diaper-clad elderly man in the back of the room.

Why was there an old man wearing only a loincloth? An eternal question, indeed. The answer was quite simple. Across the hall from the auditorium where we were, there was another production going on, a professional, high-quality production of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” (that Bridget and I got to see the week before). Last Saturday night was the last performance of this production, and it was to last until 10:30 p.m. You can start to see where this is going.

For those of you who don’t know much about “Lear,” it involves an old king who goes crazy right before your eyes over the course of the play. This role was played by Boston acting legend Alvin Epstein, who, among other notable things, once played the Fool to Orson Welles’ Lear. The man has cred and as Bridget and I saw last week, a hell of an actor. Sometime during the fourth act, Epstein’s Lear is so nuts that he takes to wandering around in his underwear, i.e., just a loincloth. It’s actually a powerful image in the context of the play – this once-great king, withered by time, exposed and virtually naked.

Alvin Epstein berates a member
of the improv troupe after
cutting his eyes out.

Outside the context of the play, however, it’s not quite as dramatic. Indeed, it’s quite funny. So when King Lear came striding into the auditorium in his skivvies yelling for people to quiet down because it was interfering with their performance, people (including Bridget and I) at first thought it was a brilliant part of the improv event. I mean, could you really plan something better than that? One of the best actors in town comes into this student performance looking ridiculous (and yet dressed in a seminal role) and pretending to throw his weight around?

But after a few moments, it was clear that Epstein wasn’t playing. He really did want everyone to shut the hell up. It remains to be demonstrated to my satisfaction that the noise from the auditorium really was disturbing “Lear” (I could hear the T car come by from where we sat when we saw it). However, even the drunkest among the bunch (all theatre people) were able to grasp the gravity of someone like Epstein coming in to dress them down, so people were suitably cowed.

Problem is, of course, there was an improv performance going on. The actors, at first, were as befuddled as the audience, but they helped enforce the quiet rule (drunk people have to be constantly reminded) and even made light of it, as quietly as possible.

After that first troupe had their set, everyone sat to wait for Lear to finish. When it finally did, a huge whoop and holler spread over the room and the student-led group, Spon-Com took the stage. More on that, and last week’s event at the Improv Asylum, in my next post.

Red-letter date in the history of science

2005-11-05T22:04:00.000-05:00

Just a short weekend post: I wanted to point out that today is the 50th anniversary of the invention of time travel by Dr. Emmett Brown. Raise a toast!

I heart the Constitution

2005-11-04T14:41:00.000-05:00

STIPIMM: “Time is On My Side,” by the Rolling Stones

From the Congressional Record, August 18, 2024:

CHAIRMAN: Well, it seems we’re now ready. Mr. McKenzie, it is customary at this time that you be sworn in. So. Could you please rise and raise your right hand. Watch out for those flashbulbs.

(laughter)

CHAIRMAN: Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before this Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

MCKENZIE: Ain’t no thing.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you. You may be seated. After our long-winded speeches, Mr. McKenzie, the floor is now yours.

MCKENZIE: Thank you Mr. Chairman. Senator Jolie, thank you for that kind introduction. I also want to thank the wife of the late Justice Alito for being here today. He has truly left big shoes to fill.

I would like to once again extend my heartfelt appreciation to President Obama for putting his faith in me with his nomination. It was a surprise in so many respects, and not only to me and my wife, Bridget, but to many people in the country. There has been much speculation over my credentials and my judicial philosophy, and today I seek to answer those questions once and for all.

Supreme Court confirmation proceedings have been tinged with politics since the beginning of the Republic. It is what the founders intended in the separation of powers and, even if it has become more heated in the past several decades, it is not necessarily unhealthy for our country.

As I look around the room today and listen to the statements of the senators, I am convinced that that tradition is alive and well.

(laughter)

One could probably predict the line of questioning from each of you based upon the philosophical and political statements you have all made today. And there are many who have looked on my record, which consists almost solely of my 18 feature films, several of which starred the good senator from California, for some clue as to my outlook on the judicial branch and how it should work in our Constitution.

Senators, you’re in for a surprise.

Ideologically, yes, I am a liberal. I believe that Americans should expect their government, THEIR government, to not only “establish justice,” “provide for the common defense” and “ensure domestic tranquility,” but also to actively “promote the general welfare.” I believe government is a good thing so long as it represents the interests and desires of its people. The answer to bad government is not an end to government, but a change in it.

In short, I believe in the Constitution, what it stands for, and the ideals its sets out for our country. I also believe in its amendments, most notably the Bill of Rights, and the restrictions it places upon our government.

I also firmly believe in the clear divisions that the Constitution puts upon the three branches of government. The legislature legislates, the executive branch executes, and the judicial branch judges and interprets. Simple. Or at least it should be. In our Constitution’s 235-year history, the divisions of the branches have become blurred or in some cases erased altogether.

I believe that the Congress is the only entity with the power to declare war. Why? Because the Constitution clearly states that. Any law where the Congress cedes its power to some other entity is unconstitutional, and any war or act of war declared without the consent of Congress is unconstitutional as well.

I believe that the Congress is the only body with the authority to enact law. Why? Because the Constitution says it in black and yellow. Neither the executive nor the judicial branches should exercise that authority, and any such effort should be deemed unconstitutional.

I do not believe in giving deference to the executive in the application of punishment or torture, just because of the event of war. Why? Because the Constitution clearly states that “cruel and unusual punishment [shall not be] inflicted” and lays out NO exceptions. Justice Jackson famously said that the Constitution is not a “suicide pact.” Indeed, but neither should it be a flimsy document subject to the whims of the time.

Yes, senators, I am what we call a “strict constructionist.” Probably even more so than the late justices Scalia and Alito. And yet I am a liberal. How is this so?

My answer is simple: one’s personal ideology has NOTHING to do with one’s judicial philosophy. I believe in the ability of government to improve the lives of all Americans, but I do not believe that it is the judicial branch’s place, responsibility or duty to make that happen. Why? Because the Constitution says so.

It is not the Supreme Court’s place to decide whether it is moral or whether it is proper that a certain law be or not be in effect. It is not its job to measure the prevailing views of society in judging the constitutionality or legality of certain actions. And perhaps most importantly, it is not its job to bring the country’s laws up to a certain moral standard. The country already has an institution for that. It’s called the Congress. It is not the task of the Court to insert new interpretations or readings into the Constitution, altering its purpose or intent. We have a mechanism for that already, and it’s called amending.

Over the past 100 years, the Supreme Court has slowly bled away legislative authority from the Congress, in effect becoming a judicial plutocracy, perhaps limited in its scope, but not limited in its impact, and effectively answerable to no one. And while the decisions of the courts have led to progressive advancements in our country that I support, I cannot support the mechanism by which they came about. A benevolent tyrant is still a tyrant.

In essence, the strengthening of the court has allowed a certain political laziness in legislatures across the country. Instead of making the bold, responsible decisions, timid legislatures let the courts hand down rulings that were right on principle, but bad on law.

What happens when the courts refrain from exercising this power and strictly interpret the Constitution? Real change. Roe v. Wade is the textbook example. For years, its faulty premise of a Constitutional “right to privacy” was a finger in the dike preventing real debate about conception and the rights of women. When the decision was overturned by Holstead v. Planned Parenthood in 2009, suddenly the dike broke, and legislatures could no longer hide behind the judicial branch. As abortion laws went back on the books, women and liberal groups suddenly blossomed into real agents of change, effectively owning the 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016 elections in almost every state. By 2015, 46 of 52 states had laws protecting abortion rights, and then, in the true exercise of constitutional democracy, both the Equal Rights Amendment and the Privacy Rights Amendment were passed by the states in 2017. With a true “right to privacy” in the Constitution, the Supreme Court was within its bounds this time when it declared, in Doe v. Alabama, that bans on early-term abortion violated that right. That’s what judicial responsibility can bring, senators. Not band-aid changes, real change.

Now, I know that Doe v. Alabama was an exceptional case, and sometimes when the Court has reversed itself, legislatures have remained politically afraid to go against fringe voter blocs. But I believe that’s one of the prices of our freedom – the fact that we have to live with our own choices.

But as the men and women who are exercising their constitutional authority to advise and consent on judicial appointments, let me make one thing clear: I am a radical constructionist. I will not hesitate to overturn decades of legal precedent if I feel it was not created to legislate, not to interpret. A couple of years ago, a commentator expressed a fear that strict constructionists would go so far as to overturn Brown v. Board and other critical civil rights decisions. I can say with certainty that I would not, simply because, unlike other decisions, Brown v. Board had an interpretive basis in the 14th Amendment. It is true that (in the specifics of that case) I may not have ruled “separate but equal” laws to be unconstitutional, but that is not the fault of the judge, it is the fault of the Constitution. Again, I reiterate, it is not the job of the judge to decide what should be. I would have voted to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut. I would have voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. I would have voted to overturn Lawrence v. Texas -- all these decisions that championed liberal causes. Not because of my ideology, but because of my judicial philosophy. Would that provide a setback for the progressive movement? Perhaps. But I would consider it to be one step back, two steps forward. For every time judges force the legislatures to tackle the tough problems of the day, that makes our democracy that much stronger.

I may be too radical for this country. I may not be what this country wants right now in terms of its judicial leaders. That’s quite fair. But I would argue, particularly to you, the men and women who make the laws, that if that is what you want from your judicial branch, then that is what you should codify in your laws and in your Constitution. You should stop hiding behind the judicial branch to make the tough choices for you. And I guarantee that, if you confirm me as a justice, I won't let you. Thank you very much.

Do it like a monkey!

2005-10-28T14:11:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by the Backstreet Boys

Merry Fitzmas everyone!

I got some exciting news today. Improv Asylum, Boston’s foremost improvisational troupe, has selected my film, “Through the Window,” be shown as part of their weekly “Director’s Cut” event next Tuesday, the 1st.

The concept behind “Director’s Cut” is kind of unusual. Each week, the troupe shows two short films, one each from a local filmmaker. The directors then get the opportunity to “direct” the troupe’s actors in an improv game. Sounds daunting, but I’m sure it will be set up to be fun no matter what.

Bridget won’t be able to come, and that makes me sad (she has rehearsal that night). However, it seems that a few people from work will be able to go, which will be nice.

The only thing that I’m particularly uneasy about is the film itself. For those of you who don’t remember, “Through the Window” is the film-noirish 7-minute silent black & white film I did with Kenneth Tebo for our Film & Video II final project. It stars the lovely Jenny Morris as well as Kenneth and me. It has its merits, but it’s certainly not something that I hold up as my finest work. I will do my best not to wince while watching it Tuesday night.

Busting out the cherry

2005-10-26T17:31:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Circus Act” by R.E.M.

Our long-awaited furniture finally arrived to our home this weekend. Three pieces of furniture that sucked the wedding money from our account as quickly as we put it in are now providing a homey décor in our bedroom. Bridget’s mother did it one better by purchasing an end table as an additional wedding gift… four! four glorious solid-wood cherry furniture pieces! Ah ha ha! *lightning strike*

Getting them from New Hampshire, where they were purchased, down to Massachusetts, and then up into our apartment was a considerable chore. The pieces all fit in the cab of Bridget’s Uncle Ray’s truck, which was fine, but we opted to stuff four people (Ray, Bridget, her mom and I) and some additional luggage into his cab. It was a snug fit, but we did fit.

As luck would have it, though, it was raining, and Ray had to cover the furniture (still it their boxes) with a Lilliputian array of tarps and ropes, secured with the help of his impressive Coast Guard knot-tying knowledge.

Once in Brighton, it was still wet and nasty, so we had to move the pieces inside in the rain. But the water was the least of our worries. Our new furniture is in four pieces: one bed frame (headboard and footboard); one nightstand; one tall dresser; and one massive armoire. The first two things aren’t so bad, but those last two…solid-wood pieces… ye gods they were heavy. The narrow width of the doors on the first floor of our apartment building didn’t help matters much either. But we all put our backs into it, and eventually, everything was upstairs. Some assembly was required on the bed frame, but it really wasn’t too bad.

How we originally wanted it

So then we had our bedroom pieces. And just as soon as we did, we had a problem. In our purchasing, we had made a couple of assumptions about the width of our room. And you know what happens when you assume: it makes an “ass” out of Bridget. Needless to say, our original designs for how we wanted to arrange the furniture were not feasible because the dresser and armoire were too deep.

So, once we accepted that fact, we set out to figure out how we were going to arrange our suddenly crowded room. In the end, we hit upon an acceptable solution that requires a little bit of maneuvering on my part (though god knows I’ll impale myself on the corner of the dresser at some point), but leaves a lot of open space on either side of the bed. Not perfect, but very livable.

How it wound up

Of course, before the furniture was even finally in place, Bridget was itching to fill it up with our clothes. And so, in little time, we had arranged all our sartorial needs in our new furniture. It’s a set-up that will probably change incrementally over the years, but it works for now.

We spent a lot of money on this furniture. When Bridget first saw the set, she fell in love with it, but quickly noted that we probably could never afford it. She was probably right, but when I saw it, and fell for it as well, it was a given that we would put up the money to get what will hopefully be a long-term furniture investment. As many people have told us, this furniture is designed to last us forever, and so spending extra on it will be worth it. Maybe. But right now, there’s a gaping hole in the ol’ account, a 24p video camera that’s going unbought, and occasional nail-biting with regards to paying bills. But, hey, the furniture is fantastic. And it's ours.

And yes, we tested the bed frame thoroughly. No squeaks.

Survivor: Dreamland

2005-10-25T14:37:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by John Denver

It is a rare occasion anymore that I remember my dreams, so this morning, when I awoke from anxious dreams, I made sure to remember them as best I could. I thought I’d share one of them.

The setting of this dream was the reality show “Survivor.” It began with me and my team, called Fugali, at the starting line of a race for an immunity challenge. There were four people in total on my team: me and three women. I didn’t catch much about the other team, except that there were four of them as well. The women in my team were not smoking hot and clad in skimpy bikinis, as most of the young women on “Survivor” are; these women were “normal-looking” (which of course to me is hotter than “hot”) and clad in very non-Survivor clothes: jeans and T-shirts. I myself was wearing jeans and a T-shirt as well, but it didn’t seem a problem to us at the time.

Jeff Probst, the eternal host of “Survivor,” was there and called out the immortal words for our challenge, “Survivors ready? Go!” and we were off. The challenge consisted of a race through the jungle, not unlike the marathon trek the contestants had to take in the first episode of this season (24-hour trek through rain and night). But, for some reason, Fugali didn’t have too much trouble with it. We got though a mud obstacle (basically a pit) as though we were walking through water, while the other team got hopelessly mired in it. The rest of the race was easy, with no real obstacles until we reached the end.

The end was a hut with a large bamboo tower next to it. When we got on site, Jeff told us we had to climb said tower as a team. And so we did, each of us scaling one side of the tower until we got to the upper edge. When we got there, we somehow realized what we’d have to do next. On the top of the tower was a small platform, and at the middle of this platform was an envelope with instructions of what to do next. However, there was a caveat: if anyone touched the top of the tower (which was a small platform), that person would be forced to stay there for the rest of the challenge.

Well, we decided that one of the girls would sacrifice herself for the team, and she hopped up on the platform and opened the envelope. In it there were four problems of math and logic that would have left the usual “Survivor” contestants dumbfounded, i.e., they were very hard.

In fact, in thinking about them, they only made sense in the dream realm. I don’t remember them exactly, alas, but each of them were vastly different from the others. One of them asked us to calculate the “cone of influence” of the tower, whatever the hell that meant (I seemed to understand it just fine during the dream). I think that it had something to do with (believe it or not) four-dimensional space (as related by Stephen Hawking in “A Brief History of Time”) and how the influence of an event spreads out from it at the speed of light. Like I said, hard questions.

Another one called for us to take a matrix of the letters of our names (Chris; Carrie; Sharon; Karen) and convert it, mathematically into a matrix with the letters of the names of the other team’s members (Paul, Sam[antha], Grace, Bud) In words, change

C H R I S X
C A R R I E
S H A R O N
K A R E N X

into

P A U L X X
S A M X X X
G R A C E X
B U D X X X

using standard algebraic methods (note how many columns have letters in common, thus facilitating matrix math). What I don’t remember, however, is how the letters became numbers, or even if they did.

As for the other two questions, alas, I cannot remember them, just that they were unique and hard. Carrie, Sharon and I descended the tower as Karen took up her position, which was oddly hanging under the platform for the duration of the challenge. When we got to the bottom of the tower, I, being a misogynist, apparently, decided to go figure the problems out on my own. Now, any of you who have watched “Survivor” know that this would be a fatal mistake, and that I surely would be voted out next by my team for being such a self-centered jerk. But it made sense in the realm of the dream. Indeed, I think the other two split off to be alone as well. Apparently, Fugali was a team of loners.

So, I went into the hut and started working on the problems. And I got nowhere. I worked on each one of those bastards for god knows how long (in dream time, it probably wasn’t much, but it seemed like a lot). Meanwhile, I and my teammates are sweating the pending arrival of the other team. However, they never came, and I finally reached a point of exhaustion, having been thoroughly befuddled by the problems (gee, I can’t imagine why), but coming up with something approaching answers.

Another funky dream thing happened just then. My answers, like Moses on the mountaintop, became magically engraved into a bronze plate, which I’m supposed to place at the top of the tower. Perhaps Moses is the wrong analogy… it was quite like Joseph Smith, though no part of me would be contending that my answers were anything like gospel truth.

So, with my magically engraved plate (mounted on wood like an award plaque) in hand, I went back out to the base of the tower. There waiting for me were Sharon and Carrie, who each had their own answer plaques. They were quite a bit more excited than I was, and I soon saw why: Carrie had deciphered the questions and came up with the correct answers. Part of me was cowed by the ability of someone else to decipher these rubrics, but most of me was ecstatic that we were going to win the challenge. So, we scaled the tower and put Carrie’s plaque on the top of the platform. Jeff immediately raised his hands and declared, “Fugali! Winner!” We all got off the tower and celebrated. In particular, I was extremely turned on to Carrie after that. Yessiree… the rest of the dream shall remain my own private reverie, if you don’t mind.

Except that I want to comment on the fact that I was so turned on. Just as strong as any physical attraction for me is a woman who excels in doing something (mentally) that I cannot do or at least do as well. It’s one of the many things that attracts me to Bridget: watching her work in the theatre and hearing about her adventures and misadventures as director and acting coach simply makes me hot. She may not perfect at it, to be sure, but she has a natural excellence at working with actors that is just terrifically sexy. Without that, she probably wouldn’t be as attractive to me as a person as she is.

Bridget admitted something similar to this the other day, saying that she feels the need to have a boyfriend/husband who always excels in what he does. It sounds selfish on the surface, but it makes sense, too; both of us are attracted to the other in part based on our abilities, and any varnish on those abilities would possibly affect how we felt about the other. We both agreed, though, having both seen the other at their worst, that we’re able to look past the stumbles and focus on the larger picture. In other words, just because I mess up on a particular project doesn’t mean she looks at me any less as a filmmaker and a person; in like fashion, a mistake of hers doesn’t mean my image of her as a bright, talented director would crumble.

The only way, we decided, that our feelings could change is if the other failed and just gave up. Failure is an option, but surrender is not. In other words, it’s not the success of the other that we love and that turns us on, it’s the passion for the work. In both our cases, that has little danger of dying out anytime soon.

Would Brecht approve?

2005-10-24T18:20:00.000-04:00

Liz Palin, one of the finalists in the Best Ass contest,
portrays Buddha in "Brecht on Brecht"

STIPIMM: “Blind,” by Darren and the minorities

The text of the play “Brecht on Brecht” is rather long; indeed, the play, as written, is much too long to be performed in its entirety (of course, they say the same thing about “Hamlet,” and just ask Kenneth Branagh about that one). In fact, it really wasn’t ever intended to be done from beginning to end – it is more or less a smorgasbord of prose, poems and dialogue from which individual directors can pick and choose and make their own version with its own unique theme and outlook.

At first glance, the direction of the work taken by director Judy Braha doesn’t seem to be strongly thematic – the texts chosen range from light songs to thoughts on the theatre to militant political screeds – and it kind of meanders at times. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Braha has taken a more political direction with this play. Segments are anchored with real audio from Brecht’s HUAC testimony in 1947, and most of the text choices seem geared toward showing Brecht’s political philosophies, which were rooted in Marxism. The play itself is divided up into parts, among which are “Of Poor B.B.,” “Conversations in Exile,” and “Change the World, She Needs It.”

It’s this last title that seems to provide the center for the overall mood of the play; it’s a theme that is repeated not only in dialogue but during the curtain call, where the actors present the title card as the play’s enduring statement. Several of the texts in the latter half of the play are proletarian calls-to-arms, with some dialogue having particular resonance in today’s political climate. But despite the high ideals, there’s an undercurrent of despair; the “Questions from a Worker Who Reads,” which I quoted in a previous post, is damning in its view of history, but it doesn’t hold out much optimism of the problem being fixed. Indeed, as you hear Brecht’s high-pitched, heavily accented voice testifying before HUAC, with an actor as him sitting alone in the middle of the playing area, you really get a sense of the loneliness and futility that Brecht felt in his years away from Germany. Indeed, texts in the part of the play called “Conversations in Exile” demonstrate the isolation he felt in his flight to Scandinavia and his winding up in the “hell” of Los Angeles.

Another subject that is presented throughout this play is the issue of gender. I’ve described Brecht as a philanderer in a previous post, but as I watched the play, I was struck by the number of strong women depicted in both his songs and his plays. He seems to be particularly sympathetic to women – he calls for pity for a young mother who murdered her infant out of despair; in two separate songs, he shows women as the one’s in control of relationships; and then there’s the closest thing “Brecht on Brecht” has to a showstopper: Emma Greer’s rousing version of “Pirate Jenny,” a “Dogville”-like story about a tavern maid who gets revenge on all the people who mistreated her when it becomes clear that she is brethren to the pirates who are attacking the town.

The first time I saw this BU production of “Brecht on Brecht,” I thought the meandering of theme was a liability, but upon second viewing, I realized that it made a lot of sense. The play after all is called, “Brecht on Brecht,” and is not supposed to be about any particular theme, but about the man himself. And having read more about Brecht than I ever hoped or needed to, I can say that this production succeeds very well in creating a portrait of the author and all his passion, his attitudes, and his melancholy.

But beyond the academic analysis of the play, I must say that I enjoyed it much more than I had anticipated when reading it months ago. The energy with which the actors take on these disjointed segments serves to bring them together rhythmically. Several standouts in the cast: Rachel Rusch playing a Jewish wife forced by Hitler’s reign to leave her husband, played ably by Tim Spears; Liz Palin in several parts, including, of all things, Buddha; Veronica Barron as a Mr. Magoo-like Herr Keuner (“I’m preparing my next mistake.”) and belting out a song (whose name I forget) late in the play atop the scaffold; and the aforementioned Emma Greer, whose Pirate Jenny song was inappropriately placed as the penultimate piece in the show – it would have been better placed earlier in the epilogue.

The staging of the piece is faithful to many of Brecht’s philosophies of theatre, particularly the idea that the set and the staging should not be hidden from the audience. Bare incandescent bulbs hang over the stage; scaffolding provides a theatrical jungle gym for the actors; the assistant stage manager is deliberately called out on stage to clean up a mess; the actors warm up during intermission in full view of the audience. In fact, beyond just pulling the curtain back for the audience to see the workings of the theatre, the production goes one further, living up to Brecht’s demand that theatre should engage the viewer head on. At a couple of different points in the play, the actors go out toward the audience and interact with them; at several moments, the actors stare into the eyes of individual viewers, daring them to look back and be a part of the action on stage. The second time I saw the play, I decided to embrace the idea and allowed myself to be engaged. At one point, I got into a 30-second-long staring match with one actress that left me disconcerted, but thrilled.

Throughout the rehearsals, when Bridget (the gorgeous assistant director) talked about some aspect of the production, I would often come back with the question, “Yes, but would Brecht approve?” In the end, with a production that reflects both his life and philosophy and embraces many of the artistic ideas he held dear, I think we can safely answer yes.

Mormons take Manhattan

2005-10-21T15:27:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: "The Rainbow Connection,” as sung by Kermit the Frog

Within the past week, the movie that we shot a year ago, “Trapped by the Mormons,” has been shown in two different major cities, New York and Boston. The screening in Boston took place last Friday, the 14th, at the Boston Fantastic Film Festival at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. It was monsooning that night--miserable when you don’t have a car at your disposal. And yet, despite the bad weather, between 30 and 40 people showed up to watch our humble little flick. The director, Ian, his boyfriend Sung, and Judith, one of the zombie girls, came up from Boston to join in. Three of my co-workers from H&R Block braved the weather and the late hour to see my work; that meant a lot to me. It was a successful showing, overall, but who knows how good it might have been had the sky been clear.

Even if the Brattle had been packed to the rafters, however, it probably couldn’t have compared with Wednesday’s sold-out show at the Pioneer Theatre in the East Village. I made the trek to New York City that afternoon (via cheap-ass Chinatown bus) just for the event. Ian and I went to the theatre together about 45 minutes before showtime and basked in the success of our venture. When we first got the screening there, we were worried about filling seats; we said we could pack the house, and we wanted to deliver. Turns out we needn’t have worried as much as we did; the show sold out the day before, which meant walk-up traffic was turned away.

The lovely Miss Baicich

Johnny Kat and friends

Besides Ian and I, many of the major people involved in the project were there: Johnny Kat, the drag-king star of the movie; Emily Riehl-Bedford, the darling ingénue; Judith Baicich, who played zombie queen Tilly; and Emily Rems, who had a bit role in the film, but a big role in promoting it in NYC (Bridget couldn’t be there because she had to go to something for school that night; she found other ways to occupy herself, though). No big celebrity sightings at this premiere, alas, but the enthusiasm of the crowd made up for it. Packed into that theatre were almost 100 hipsters, wanna-bes, queers, dykes (spelled correctly, Mams?), and straight-laced-looking little videographers. During the curtain speech, Ray, the programmer at the theatre, announced to the public what Ian and I already knew, that “Trapped” will have a one-week run at the theatre in mid-December! So all those people turned away at the door will have a second chance in a couple of months.

The audience laughed, gasped and applauded in all the right places and seemed to genuinely enjoy the movie. Afterwards, about half of the attendees wound up at Mo Pitkins, a bar just around the corner from the theatre. There we reveled in the events of the evening and enjoyed the Stormin’ Mormon, a coffee/liquor drink concocted especially for that evening (actually, being a coffeephobe, I didn’t try it, but I heard [and saw] that it was potent). Several of us went over to the Two Boots restaurant across the street later and shot the breeze. Johnny Kat boldly took out his dick, or at least the disturbingly realistic rubber thing that provided a bulge in his pants; I didn’t get pictures of that momentous event, but you can be sure that Ian did.

Standing room only

That evening, as I went to sleep on Ian’s couch, I was struck with a bittersweet note. Leave it to me to find a cloud for every silver lining, but I couldn’t help think about a few things. Most significantly, I recognized that the success of this event was, in many ways, an anomaly. The marketing of “Trapped by the Mormons” had two big things going for it right out of the gate: the campy infamy of the original film, and the inherent hilarity of the idea of being trapped by anything Mormon. The movie attracts a hipster crowd that is, more or less, a specialty audience that is readily marketed to in the alternative publications and burlesque shows in New York.

Then I think of other projects that I particularly am interested in doing or care about – no ready-made audiences there. My dream project, “Indian Girl,” isn’t exactly the kind of flick that would get young people running to the theater. I see the quick (albeit minor) success of a specialty film like “Trapped” and the way that other good, but unquirky films trudge through getting screenings and festival plays, and I just realize that there will be nothing quick or painless about “Indian Girl,” or any other project I might have in mind. That’s not to be pessimistic or fatalistic about future film prospects, but just a dose of reality I gave myself that night. After that diversion into Dumpsville, though, I jumped back into reveling in the success of the evening and what promised to be great run in December. My first New York premiere… I swear it won’t be my last.

Brecht on Breast

2005-10-20T18:11:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Eight Days a Week,” by the Beatles

It is difficult for me to find a proper balance between art and sex. That is the very enlightened conclusion that I have reached after twice watching “Brecht on Brecht,” directed by Judy Braha, and assistant directed by my dear Bridget.

“Wow, an interesting revelation!” you may say. “The play must be quite dense with examinations on sexuality and the nature of art!” No such thing; if anything, the content of the play that deals with sex is rather pedestrian. No, I came to my hypothesis after having trouble concentrating for two hours while nine nubile young women, most of them clad in tight pants and delectable tops, danced, slinked around on the floor, and showed off their natural wonders. Sure, they were spouting off Bertolt Brecht’s poetry and dialogue, and I’m sure it had some important point or made sense on some level, but it’s hard to care when a gorgeous woman is crawling across the floor, her ass calling up to you like a baboon. Excellent staging? Sure, I guess. Insomuch as it called for one nymphette to rest on all-fours in a hungry, come-fuck-me, doggy-style position for, oh, about five minutes. Choreography? Superb, especially when all the young women were called upon to simultaneously lie on their backs, open their legs wide, and moan orgasmically. Costume design? Whoever decided that my favorite gal in the bunch should wear a top that made the nipples on her perky little breasts perpetually hard should get an award.

Yes, I’m a dirty old man at the ripe age of 31. Have pity on me; I have to endure these tortures for the love of Bridget, who, for all her beauty and talents, refuses to get up on scaffolding and sing and writhe around for me. The actresses in “Brecht on Brecht” did that in spades.

The winner of the Best Ass contest
leads the runners-up in a dance

Fortunately, Bridget makes up for this torture by playing along with me. Knowing that I’m an ass man, she challenged me, on my first viewing of the play, to determine who in the cast had the best behind. It was a tough contest, with a lot of fierce competition. But in the end (ha!), there was one clear winner (oh, shove off--like you’d even know the name if I told you; look at her pic instead). After the show, when Bridget and I caught the bus to go back home, three of the actresses from the show got on and sat with us. Bridget, discreet as ever, announced that she had tasked me with finding the best ass in the cast, and naturally, the girls wanted to know my decision. Now, none of the three actresses were my winner, but two of them were strong finalists. And I certainly didn’t want to hurt the feelings of the third gal (who probably only didn’t fare well in the contest because she was wearing a skirt), so I demurred and gave some noncommittal answer.

Here they were, Bridget giving me permission to physically evaluate these women, and those women earnestly wanting to know the results of my evaluation, and what do I do? I crumble. A chance to show my kooky sexual side, and I wither and hide. Bridget’s seen this happen to me many times in the time she’s exposed me to the zany theatre world. I suppose I’m the kind of dirty old man who is more used to being private with his dirtiness (that sounds foul…). Actually, the roots of it go deeper than that; since adolescence, I have operated under the assumption (picked up from seeing women of all ages kvetch about men) that women would rather have men be clean, faithful and modest, and that they perceive any man with an outwardly visible sex drive as something to be feared and reviled.

Like I said up front, it’s a public sexual balance that has been off-kilter for me for some time. One of the things I love about Bridget is that she embraces it and stands right with me as I blush my way through whatever cums our way. She’s told me that she too has quite a bit of problem concentrating on the goings-on in “Brecht on Brecht” at times. For god’s sake, it was her idea for the ass contest (or at least her idea to bring it up from the recesses of my filthy mind). I always feel it’s easier for her, because girls can be that way and get away with it; and those theatre college girls, they dig that whole bi thing. But god bless Bridget for her patience with my bumbling, fumbling sexual persona; she’ll turn me into a Leisure Suit Larry in no time.

--

I’ll talk about the artistic aspects of the production shortly (yes, I was lucid enough to evaluate them, at least the second time). But first, in tomorrow's post, I have to tell you what I did in NYC yesterday!...

The German philanderer

2005-10-18T18:02:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Georgia on My Mind,” by Ray Charles
(guess which state’s tax forms I’ve been working on this afternoon)

And now, to the second thing that set Bertolt Brecht off from the pack as both a man and an artist: he had a high-pitched girly voice. Okay, that’s not the second thing, but it is true, he did have a high voice.

Helene Weigel

The second thing that distinguishes him is his record of relationships with women. Brecht is hardly the first great artist to be a womanizer, but Bertolt integrated his affairs into his daily life in a way that many men dream of, but few men achieve. His longtime wife, the actress Helene Weigel, not only tolerated his affairs, but managed them for him. There’s an oft-cited story of how Helene, upon seeing one of Bertolt’s mistresses flirting with someone else, went to the other man and asked him to stay away, essentially saying that the mistress’ wanderings would distract Brecht and hurt his art.

Ruth Berlau

Elizabeth Hauptmann

And that seems to be the underlying power that B.B. had over his women: his art. Several women, particularly Ruth Berlau and the aforementioned Elizabeth Hauptmann, effaced themselves both sexually and literarily for this man. It was a power he exhibited early on in his life, wooing teenage women up to his bedroom with his songs. And until he died in his 50s, women, young and old, were drawn to Brecht’s charisma and artistic temperament. In his 40s and 50s, he had several lovers (mostly actresses) who were in their 20s. Poor B.B., indeed. How this homely fellow, who smoked big stogies and had poor hygiene, got so much tail is something to be marveled at.

But again, it’s not so much his power of attraction that set him apart, it was the way in which he made his women part of his life. When hopping from country to country after fleeing from Hitler’s Germany, he not only took his wife and child with him, but one or two of his mistresses, often traveling together. The things that Bertolt was able to get people to do is at times astounding. Later in life, he had an ongoing affair with the young wife of a German socialist reformer--with the husband’s outright permission.

Despite his own unwillingness to tie himself down to one woman, he was a fiercely jealous lover. From his teens on, he insisted that his woman remain faithful to only him, even as he was hopping from bed to bed. If he found out that one of his women was about to stray, he would redouble his efforts to keep her, just long enough to ensure that she remained true.

When we look at these incidents, and indeed as I read his biography, it is astounding how much he was able to get away with. And as I learned more and more about the man, it was evident that these women believed they were, in some way, contributing to his art by being his servile mistress or by coddling his neediness. The German film “The Farewell,” which depicts the last days of Brecht’s life (and a lot of the type of behavior I’ve described) portrays Bertolt as a child in a man’s body, whom Helene has to mother in order to keep him on track with his art. When a mistress’ outbursts threaten to upset his work, Helene struggles to put the woman back in her proper place: at Bertolt’s beck and call. The film, obviously, is a fictionalized account of Brecht’s life, but I think it correctly captures the essence of his many relationships with his women.

Looking at Brecht’s relationships through our current mindset, we’re liable to judge him unfavorably. The man was selfish, childish, and lived what was something akin to a polygamist lifestyle. Not someone to be looked up to? But the man created great art (or at least assembled it…) and sparked a revolution on the stage with his idea of “epic theatre.” And it could be argued that his body of work would have never emerged from someone a dutiful, faithful husband.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not one who is sold on the idea of monogamy (but I am sold on honesty), so it’s hard for me to judge him negatively. Hell, in some ways I admire the man for it. One could say that his women were victims, manipulated by a charismatic artist who made them believe they needed him more than he needed them; indeed, nothing particularly honest about that. But consider that these women, many of whom had the better part of a lifetime to deal with their love for Brecht, all were willing participants in his amorous web; in reading about his life, it seems that Brecht’s women were all to willing to give themselves emotionally in exchange for being a part of this great artist’s life, even a part of his art. I don’t think that these women would have agreed that they were victims.

The German plagiarist

2005-10-17T18:06:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” by Julia Ward Howe

This is the first of what will probably be several entries related to the play that Bridget was most recently involved with, “Brecht on Brecht” (I like to pronounce it as though I was hocking a loogie each time I say “Brecht.” First, I want to talk about Bertolt Brecht, the man.

Over the summer, I got to digest a fair percentage of the information that Bridget also had to take in as she prepared to be the dramaturge for the play. I read a biography of him by Klaus Volker and read most of his major plays. I cannot claim to be as sizable an expert on B.B. as Bridget, but I certainly know plenty about him.

There are two things that I think really set Brecht apart from others, as both a person and an artist. The first (I’ll tackle the second in tomorrow’s entry) is that he was, shall we say, a chronic borrower of other people’s ideas. Brecht habitually, from the time he was a teenager, appropriated other people’s works and incorporated them into his own, usually without any attribution or recognition. The most notable example is his most famous work, “The Three-Penny Opera;” it is almost taken for granted now that it was mostly written by his longtime collaborator and lover, Elizabeth Hauptmann. Not only did Brecht not give her proper attribution (which Hauptmann put up with for the sake of her beloved B.B.), but after he died, his true widow fought giving Hauptmann any proceeds from the royalties of the work.

A saying that got thrown around a lot this summer at the lake as we learned about Brecht was: “Good writers borrow. Great writers steal.” And it’s true that there’s little that hasn’t been done in one fashion or another sometime in the past. But there’s a line between being inspired by a text and outright lifting things from it. What’s the difference, you say? One requires a lot more work and thought. It's almost as though he was an editor, bringing disparate parts together into great works. A worthy effort yes, but hardly the work of genius. He has more value than say, the famous play “The Blue Room” by David Hare, which is essentially a translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s “La Ronde.” (sorry, but saying it's "freely adapted" from the original play doesn't let one off the hook; how he is able to hold copyright on a derivative work and make so much money off of it is something I can’t understand… but I digress).

One could say that Brecht’s casual attitude toward the notion of copyright and authorial ownership is simply an expression of his larger attitudes toward the world in general, which believed in socialism and collective ownership. That may be, but if Brecht were really so concerned about collective work, why was he so adamant about being the only writer credited on his plays?

In “Brecht on Brecht,” there’s a passage by B.B. called “Questions from a Worker Who Reads” which talks about how the wars and great monuments of history are always attributed to great men, who got to their position through the work of the people under them, often soldiers and slaves.

        Young Alexander conquered India.
        All by himself?
        Caesar beat the Gauls.
        Not even a cook to help him with his meals?
        Philip of Spain wept when his Armada
        Went down. Did no one else weep?
        Frederick the Great won the Seven Years War.
        Who else was the winner?

Brecht himself was guilty of this sin, and the hypocrisy of that passage made me smile both times I saw the play.

XXXI

2005-10-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Birthday,” by the Beatles

Someday, my biographer will begin his work thus:

“[The Boy] was born on October 13, 1974, at 3:10 in the morning at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, California. His parents were the 21-year-old Beverly Marie (nee Holder) and 25-year-old Michael Lewis McKenzie, a student at an L.A.-area junior college. The doctor’s recorded remarks after the birth note that although the child was delivered breech, he emerged from the womb with eyes open and lucid, calmly taking in the scene with a natural wisdom, while the nurses gasped at the disproportionately large size of his penis.”

Birthdays begin just like any other days. Lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling illuminated by morning sunlight, there’s that moment of solitude. Your partner is asleep next to you, your body not quite ready to move. It’s usually a nice moment, as it was today, punctuated by the recognition that, despite all the relationships and emotional connections you may have in your life, that you are still a single person. One mind. Not alone, yet pleasantly alone.

Today, as with other birthdays, the moment was different in that I was very aware of my age. And not in a creaky-bones, I’m-getting-old kind of way. Just a realization of what it means to be 31 and what it doesn’t mean.

Ever since I became an adult, I’ve sometimes compared my life to those of my parents, especially my father, noting what he was doing in his life when he was my age. Upon turning 31, I have now passed the age of my father when my brothers were born in 1980. As a 31-year-old, he had three children; I quake at the thought of just one. What’s more significant is that this is the first time that I am at an age that I actually remember my father being. That is to say, my first clear, long-term memories are from the time when my father was 30 to 31 years old. Now, thinking back to how I saw my father then, and what place he had in my life, it is almost as though I’m looking at myself, but through very different eyes. It is, to say the least, a strange feeling.

I love having a birthday; age is just a footnote for one of my favorite days of the year. I take celebrating my friends’ birthdays very seriously, because I know how important mine is to me. I hope I always will enjoy it as much as I do now, as much as I ever have.

Because Bridget has a tech run for “Brecht on Brecht” tonight, we celebrated my birthday last night. She made me fettucini alfredo with Italian bread, followed up by a birthday cake, yellow with chocolate frosting. Yum! Then we topped it off by sitting down to watch my favorite movie, “Dr. Strangelove.” Seeing that movie always reminds me why I got into films in the first place.

This morning, after my moment of solitude, my true love brought me breakfast in bed. I took the opportunity to reread something Bridget had written for me in a card the previous evening – a lovely poem, for me:

        I wake in the morning and begin to crave him
        The emptiness begins on my left
                and slowly burrows through me
        Sometimes he’s kind enough to leave
                a faint smell of him behind
        It is both splendid and cruel

        At noon I begin to forget who I am
        My left side still aches with his absence
        I tell myself… 11 hours to boy
        I don’t know if the counting helps much

The moment of solitude, punctuated by an overwhelming sense of love.

When it Mormons, it pours

2005-10-12T16:44:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Chain of Fools,” by Aretha Franklin

Some good news fell into my lap yesterday afternoon, in the form of a phone call from a Mr. Ian Allen, of Cherry Red Productions. Specifically, it was three pieces of news all regarding the my thesis film, “Trapped by the Mormons.”

First, it turns out that “Trapped” will be playing in Beantown this weekend. It will be shown as part of the Boston Fantastic Film Festival on Friday night at midnight. This is pleasing for a lot of reasons; most significantly, I’ll be able to exhibit some of my work to some of our new friends. It may sound kind of strange to an outsider, but imagine if I wanted to ask one of Bridget’s school chums to act in or help out with something of mine. It is leaps and bounds easier to convince them to participate if they already have a taste of what I do, rather than just going on Bridget’s word alone. That worked in D.C., where everyone knew Bridget well… probably wouldn’t work so well here yet.

Second, in addition to the one-time showing that “Trapped” will be getting at the Pioneer Theater in Manhattan next week, the theater wants to run “Trapped” for a full week in December. That means a lot of really good things: 1) just being able to say we had an actual run in NYC; 2) money, money, money; and 3) the very real possibility of a review in the New York Times (just the thought makes me orgasm spontaneously).

And third, what has to be the most surprising development of all, the owner of the Pioneer Theater, who apparently has a fair amount of background in all aspects of film distribution, wants to be the distributor for the movie. That could mean a lot or it could mean nothing – depending on how good of a distributor he is. But at the worst, nothing else could happen, and at the very best, we could have screenings in small theaters all over the place. Which, of course, means money, money, money. One can dream.

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the shooting of “Trapped by the Mormons,” and I must say, I’m very pleased with how post-production and distribution has gone. I can’t say that Ian and I didn’t imagine this kind of thing happening; we thought about and discussed a lot of the possibilities for growth of the movie. But we certainly weren’t counting on any particular result. So, every success the movie has seen has been a pleasant, if not entirely unforeseen, surprise. As Ian put it yesterday, we’re batting 1.000 so far in terms of venues and festivals he’s approached to show the film (and the irony of Ian Allen using a baseball metaphor didn’t escape me). All that’s left in our original high-hopes plan of action is to show in Salt Lake City, and that looks like that might happen soon. Beyond that, there’s the new distribution possibilities, and then the beauty of online DVD sales. We’ll see what happens.

Where my tuition went

2005-10-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Ages of You” by R.E.M.

The front page of today’s Washington Post says it all: Dr. Benjamin Ladner, the president of my recent alma mater, American University, was fired from his job, sacked, shitcanned, sent packing, given a pink slip, booted, ousted, deposed, laid off. Ladner had the post taken from him in the wake of a financial scandal.

In the world of east-coast academia, this is a particularly significant event for a number of reasons, most notably for the effect it might have on the hiring and spending practices of university trustees. The importance for yours truly is that it involves, oh, about $20,000 of money I spent to get a degree at this place.

The Post story can explain the details of the scandal far better than I could. But it’s important to know some of the particulars if you intend to read this long, boring post. First off, a few months ago, the board of trustees received an anonymous letter detailing how Ladner had been allegedly squandering school money on decidedly non-school events, including his wife’s social get-togethers, Ladner’s birthday party (at which, apparently, caviar was served), and their son’s engagement party. There were also lavish restaurant trips and unnecessary use of limousines and first-class airfare. The board initiated an audit which found and questioned these expenditures, while Ladner claimed that he was entitled to them under his contract.

There it gets kind of sticky, because Ladner apparently had *two* contracts with the university, only one of which was formally ratified by the board, but both of which had been signed by all parties concerned. It’s the non-ratified one, of course, that allowed Ladner a lot of leeway in how he spent discretionary funds. Ladner disputed the idea that his expenditures were problematic, but he agreed to repay all the questioned expenses and get the whole contract thing ironed out.

But by then, the taint of scandal had sunk in deep. The Post had been aggressively following this story, and for good or for ill, that threw a cloud over whatever was to follow. Both the students and faculty were up in arms over the high-life spending Ladner, who was already one of the highest paid university presidents in the country. The faculty boards of five out of the university’s six schools (including my School of Communication) overwhelmingly voted no-confidence in Ladner. A large group of students protested on campus, marching to the doors of a board meeting and basically raising holy hell over the issue (they march and shout when daddy's money is on the line, but do they fuck shit up for people dying in Iraq? Of course not - daddy might buy them a car, after all [AU has a deserved reputation as being the dumping ground for rich kids who weren't bright enough to get into the Ivy League])

Funny thing is, it seemed at first that Ladner had strong enough support on the board of trustees to remain, but with that kind of opposition in the ranks, the board had no real choice but to let him go. There was just no way the man could have restored his credibility in the eyes of the students and faculty.

And so, now he’s gone. And I could barely care less. I’m mainly interested in this as a news event that took place close to home; I’m certainly not really concerned about it as “a member of the American University community.” Whatever. As those of you who saw me hightail it out of the shadow of Rice University know, I’m not one to buy into the idea of the importance of the academic quality of your alma mater. If I ever encounter someone who would look at my degree and seriously be bothered with where I got it, then that’s not a person I’d want to work for anyway. Perhaps I’d feel differently if I’d actually gone to universities that I had more than a modicum of respect for, but that’s for another blog entry.

I do have an opinion about the whole fiasco, however (just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t *care*). I think what happened at dear old AU can be compared to the impeachment of W.J. Clinton, another chubby president. Political opponents, desperate to get rid of a president they don’t like, finally find a charge that sticks and milk it as much as they can. The trustees of AU are as political a bunch as any you’ll ever find, and Ladner had plenty of supporters and detractors, all equally firm in their beliefs. Ladner got hit by a witchhunt that finally found a witch.

That’s not to say I particularly approve of Ladner’s “imperial lifestyle,” as one of his opponents called it. But there’s a perfectly legitimate reason for a university president having some version of the high-life; just as our American president needs a big executive mansion and all the trappings of rich life to project the power of the country and woo the dignitaries that visit him, so do did our American University president need all that good stuff to woo money out of the pockets of wealthy donors. Ladner raised untold amounts of money for the university with his events, and now students and faculty are shocked, shocked to find out that getting that money required spending some first.

And I don’t think people are naïve of the needs of university presidents to spend money, but as soon as they saw what that meant, with the lavish dinners and limousine rides, etc., then everyone went bezerk. Guess what, American University, your next president will be more careful not to put all of his dinners out on the university tab, but he or she sure as hell will spend as much money as Ladner did.

I really think what it all boils down to, at its essence, is poor-man’s schadenfreude. Most Americans love the idea of being rich, living large and not worrying about money, but only so long it’s us that gets to do it. Having stories of grand living rubbed in one’s face while you’re having trouble making ends meet just makes one angry and hungry for blood. Just ask former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski.

So, yes, I think Ladner got scapegoated. Yeah, he could have been a little smarter about the spending, but the fact is, the board of trustees tacitly approved of that spending and all that it encompassed. If there is anyone at fault, it is the board of trustees for its lousy oversight and for its money-first attitude toward the institution. Because of this fiasco, the board was forced to put a faculty member and a student on the board for the first time. If any good can come from this, perhaps its that the atmosphere in the board room will have changed for the better.

I won’t hold my breath.

The password is...

2005-10-07T15:46:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: The “Wallace and Gromit” theme song

One of the few joys I get from moving to a new area is the opportunity to create a new password base. In a continuing effort to make the passwords to my account hard to figure out, yet easy to remember, I’ve taken to thinking up a password root that is based on the place I’m moving to. Something not quite so obvious, something that no one else would think up or attribute to me. From there, I use that root and a simple, but obfuscating, formula to come up with passwords for my different accounts in a new place.

The only drawback with my fun little intellectual exercise is that sharing my cute passwords is verboten for the simple reason that they’re supposed to be secret. And as Bridget can tell you, I tend to be obsessively secretive about my passwords. Well now that I’ve updated all my accounts to the new Boston passwords, I can reveal my proud password history.

The following are the password roots that I’ve used since 1992. Note that the actual passwords, once they’ve gone through the formula, look nothing like these, and knowing the roots wouldn’t do you any good without the formula. I’m not going to explain them to you just yet, so you have to try to figure out yourself what they mean. I’ll reveal the explanations in an upcoming post.

While at Rice (1992-1996):
Dartmouth

Pauls Valley, Okla. (1996-1998)
Pecan pie

Winchester, Va. (1998-1999)
Apple pill

Fredericksburg, Va. (1999-2001)
Dead arm

Vienna, Va.
Schnitzel

Washington, D.C.
Dangerfield

My password for Boston is one of my best yet; I’m quite proud of it… too bad I can’t share it.

Art Appreciation 101

2005-10-06T16:32:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Criminal” by Fiona Apple

“So what did you think?”

“I enjoyed it. I liked the guy who was playing Henry, but everyone else was not all that good.”

“Yeah, Henry seemed to be the only stand-out guy. What about the play itself?”

“Well, I’ve never really liked ‘The Real Thing.’”

“Really?”

“Yeah, the characters don’t really have depth. The story’s just kind of… fluff.”

“I didn’t know anything Tom Stoppard wrote could be considered ‘fluff.’ What do you mean when you say ‘depth’?”

“Well, layers, you know. Different aspects of character and of the story.”

“Example?”

“Like ‘Boy Gets Girl.’ The stalker only appears in the first scene, but his imposing presence is felt throughout the entire play because of how it’s constructed. It’s brilliant how they did that.”

“Well, you could say that ‘The Real Thing’ has layers too, I mean the whole thing with Henry’s trying to look intellectual, the parallels between Henry and Brodie.”

“Yeah, but those aren’t that interesting. They’re just kind of there. They don’t really signify anything.”

“Anything interesting, you mean.”

“Right.”

--

I’ve been thinking about theater quite a bit over the past week or so. Makes sense, since my wife regales me every evening with the stories of drugs, debauchery and mayhem that she experiences daily at rehearsals for “Brecht on Brecht.”

Okay, that’s a lie. There’s not much drugs and debauchery (though some, I’m told). But it’s not a lie that I’ve been thinking about theater, and art in general. It started when Bridget and I had the conversation with is (badly) paraphrased above this past weekend. It got me to thinking quite a bit about the nature of art.

Something about our conversation stuck in my craw that evening. I finally realized (just a couple of days ago) that it was this: it is taken as axiomatic that having layers of meaning (i.e., “depth”) is one of the measures of good art. Perhaps that’s a good thing; the last thing we need is someone calling “The Berenstain Bears” art. But it’s taken too far in most discourse, to the point where just having layers of any kind is a praise-worthy achievement.

I would contend that we’ve watered down the idea of “layered” work. What we mean when we say something has “depth,” is not really that it has “layers.” I mean, I could take the Steven Seagal movie “On Deadly Ground,” and find what could be called “layers” (capitalism vs. Nativism; man finding redemption through revenge; “What does it take to change the essence of a man?”; lots of arm-breaking). What we really mean when we say “layered,” is 1) that it has layers of meaning that we think are worthy of note; 2) that they’re brought out well in the execution of the artist. “On Deadly Ground” might have layers worth examining, but with an action-focused story, not to mention Steven Seagal’s Oscar-worthy acting, the execution isn’t worth spit. “Debbie Does Dallas” may have well executed sex scenes, but the lack of story depth beyond the premise of nubile teenagers trying to raise enough money to go to cheerleading camp makes the movie fall flat… at least after the climax(es).

Sounds pretty “Art Appreciation 101,” right? Fine. Here’s where I go off-track: in terms of number 1, where we value art based on the quality of its layers, I think we art-goers are quite easy and forgiving when we’re presented with something that is excellent in execution, but otherwise lacking in depth.

Let’s take “The Princess Bride,” one of my favorite movies. But what the hell is so good about it? Depth of story? Give me a break. We like it solely for the execution: silly, snarky, anachronistically funny, and smart (whatever that means). It’s entertaining. There are a host of films that are of questionable depth that our dear Gen-X/Y culture loves anyway. And it would be okay if it wasn’t for this: when we like a film or a play or a book or whatever for its execution, we subconsciously search for and find meaning even where there isn’t one, or at least one that we would otherwise give a damn about.

My personal example for this is “Pulp Fiction.” Here’s a movie that basically wears its lack of depth like a badge. It’s a great movie simply for its narratives: putting interesting (yet mostly one-dimensional) characters through extraordinary circumstances. And yet, we’re tempted to try to make it more important than it is. “Ooo, what’s in the briefcase? Marcellus’ soul? Is that why he has a band-aid on the back of his neck?” “Harding vs. Coolidge… is that some political statement?” “By going to a nonlinear format, he’s trying to shake up our notions of time.” Oh please. He did it because it’s cool. Leave it at that.

But even when something does have layers, are we really that much better off? Is the story of “Chinatown” really that much better than that of any other hard-boiled noir thriller? Again, it seems it’s the execution that we admire as much as any layers.

Indeed, I’m discovering something about my artistic outlook that I’m not too happy with at the moment: the range of the kinds of layers that I find “worthy of note” (as I mentioned in ‘1’ above) is very small. So small in fact, that as I think about most of the films/plays/art I like, two words keep coming to mind: “So what?”

“Hey, you should see ‘Manhattan!’ It’s got a lot of layers about the nature of love and desire.”

“So what?”

“I really like Manet’s painting ‘Olympia.’ The way she stares back at the viewer, daring you to look at her naked form, making you a part of the scene.”

“So what?”

“Boy, that Shakespeare knew how to write ‘em. Especially ‘Hamlet,’ which is just has layers upon layers of meaning.”

“So what?”

It’s revelatory that the two movies that I’ve long considered my favorite (“Dr. Strangelove” and “Crimes and Misdemeanors”) have themes that are harder for me to say “So what?” to (the insanity of nuclear war; the amorality of life). Maybe I’ve been reading too much about Brecht, who thought that art without any practical importance or use was just that, useless. Does art have to speak to something important for me to really consider it worthwhile? More to think about.

The family accountant

2005-10-04T16:52:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “Downtown” by Petula Clark

Those of you who know me probably have some inkling of my proclivity to keep track of my finances. Most of you probably don’t know, however, exactly how deep it runs. My dearest Bridget is finding out these things first-hand, with mixed results.

Almost 10 years ago, my friend Justin wrote a song about me called “The Diarist,” in which he examines my then-desire to keep a written record of every day, trying to keep it fresh in my mind.

“When you think of all the wasted time
The days we lost in the traffic lines
Of pen and page and worn-out rhymes –
Oh God, I’m going to lose my mind.”

In other words, if you spend too much time trying to keep hold of the past, you’ll sacrifice living in the present.

After I graduated from college, I stopped journaling quite so much, and the need to record daily life seemed to fade.

But in fact, it only transformed. It started when I lived in France, when I kept a detailed ledger of all the francs I spent and what I spent them on. I still have it; thumbing through it is one quick way of reliving some of the experiences there, or at least the materialistic experiences.

After college, faced with the actual necessity of keeping track of my personal finances for the first time, I followed my father’s example and purchased Quicken, a software program that basically serves as an electronic ledger.

I was quicken-ly hooked. It wasn’t the recording of the income and expenses that really got me addicted, it was being able to track everything through categories and reports and graphs. And the addition of features to subsequent versions of Quicken have only fed that addiction. It may sound crazy, but I like the fact that I can tell you exactly how much money I spent on Dining in all the years between 1997 and today (quite a bit…).

At first, living meagerly in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, it was pretty easy to track all my expenses. I didn’t have that many, so keeping track of my cash expenses wasn’t that hard either. However, as I started to move up in salary and expenses, so did the complexity of my finances. If I were a rational man, I would drop the need to keep finely detailed accounts of my expenses, but no, I still like to track my cash expenses as well as electronic ones.

And so, it requires almost daily upkeep to keep track of things, whether it be balancing the bank account or reconciling credit card statements. In actuality, the total time I spend on this stuff per month would probably not be terribly more than a normal person would spend if they just paid bills and balanced the checkbook once or twice a month. But it would still be more time, nonetheless.

The end result is that I always feel comfortable with my finances. Even if I know that I’ll be eating ramen until next month’s paycheck, I feel better knowing that than I would not knowing.

On Aug. 21, 2005, I merged my finances figuratively and literally with my lovely wife. Since then, I’ve been working almost daily to try to get her records entered and merged into my accounts, and getting back to the level of comfort with our finances that I had before.

It’s been hard for Bridget to understand. Her previous version of bookkeeping consisted of throwing her bills (sometimes unopened) into an accordion file and checking her balance on an ATM to make sure she didn’t bounce any checks. My desire to not only pore over these bills and statements and keep regular track of how our financial picture is on any give day is something she can’t comprehend.

To her credit, though, she recognized early on that it would be better for me and easier for her if I kept track of all our finances (calm down feminists: I give her regular updates…). However, she’s learning what that entails for me: entering in statements from before we got married so we can track spending trends; poring over her bills and scanning them into my computer for digital archiving. She admitted to me a couple of nights ago that it “weirds” her out a little bit, and I can understand why.

But what I explained to her, and what she understands (I think), is this: Bridget felt the need to unpack our apartment as soon as we moved in and continues to work tirelessly to get things organized and keep them that way. In the same way that she needs that level of “organizational comfort” at having merged our two lives together in Boston, so I need the “financial comfort” of being able to understand where our position monetarily. And just as she didn’t feel quite at ease until things had settled down in our apartment in terms of moving in, so it will be with me: I won’t ever feel quite at ease in our new life until I have our financial picture fully drawn for me to see and understand. I’m almost there, I promise…

Tuesdays are always difficult

2005-10-04T10:13:00.000-04:00

Since school began the boy and I have been in a pattern of saying good-bye in the mornings and then not seeing each other until about midnight that evening. I am enjoying everything I'm doing, but the goal all week is to get to Saturday night when I can spend time with him. We get Saturday night, all day and night Sunday and then Monday night. Then Tuesday morning comes and the routine begins again.

This weekend was particulary nice. Saturday I had rehearsal and the boy finished editing a promotional trailer for the documentry he's been editing (and he got major props from the director...lots of exclamation points after statements like: You rocke!). Saturday night the boy packed us some PB&J's and met me at the theater where we enjoyed a fluffy realism play. Sunday I had a lot of work to do but I mixed up with some play time with the boy. Last night we did our usual Monday night laundry-thon, dinner and a movie (mixed in with Paper Writing 101 for me). They were perfectly wonderful days. It's both bitter and sweet. On the one hand it is a great head space to start the week off with. On the other hand it makes Tuesdays a bit more difficult.

Jesus and Biff

2005-10-03T14:41:00.000-04:00

STIPIMM: “The Smartest Monkeys,” by XTC

I just finished a very interesting book, loaned to me by my good friend, Amanda, about the life of one Jesus of Nazareth.

Damn, that sounds like something from a Vacation Bible School skit. “It’s called the Bible. It ain’t bad – you should read it sometime.”

No, Amanda did not loan me a Bible, thank Allah. The book is called, “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.” It is a humorous novel whose primary conceit is that Jesus of Nazareth had a best friend named Biff (or “Levi who is called Biff”) who accompanies him throughout his travels up to and including those chronicled in the New Testament. However, it purports (tongue-in-cheek) to portray all the events that are missing from the Gospels, namely Jesus’ childhood, adolescence and ascent into manhood.

Being a lover of this kind of thing, I starting reading Amanda’s copy while they were up for the wedding, and she generously sent it along for me to read when she had finished.

It was a fun read, to be sure. The book begins with Biff meeting Jesus and them becoming fast friends. They both fall for a pretty young thing named Mary Magdalene (“Maggie”) who becomes “the one that got away” for both of them. The stuff about Jesus’ childhood, up until the time he turned 13, was my favorite part of the book.

Most of the rest of the book involves Jesus and Biff’s journey to find the three wise men from the East who came to witness Jesus’ birth. Jesus wants to know exactly what they knew that led them to him and what it means for his destiny, which he’s still trying to figure out. They find each one in turn, spending years with them as they (or at least Jesus) learn the philosophy of love and kindness.

It is an interesting historical speculation to send Jesus east to learn about philosophy. Indeed, there are plenty of parallels between what Jesus taught (as opposed to what most Christians purport to believe now) and eastern philosophy. Moore tracks those parallels quite well.

But this part of the book is also where it starts to get a little hokey. The book is at its best when it tries to sound true to history; at times, despite the crazy narrative, you think, yeah, it could have happened that way. But when it freely takes in anachronisms, such as Biff’s supposed invention of sarcasm, or his (believe it or not) development of an early form of the law of evolution, it just stands out and just makes me think, “Oh look, trying to be clever. Hardee har har.”

The book gets back on track once Jesus and Biff return to Galilee to start Jesus’ ministry. It tracks through events portrayed in the Bible, but adds certain twists, yet staying true to the Gospels. My favorite aspect of this is the focus on the idiosyncracies of the twelve Apostles, from the delusional Thomas to the dense, but loyal, Peter.

As I look over what I’ve written so far, I realize that this sounds like a book review. I didn’t mean it to; I’m basically just writing it out to kind of work out what I think about it.

The main reason I started talking about this book at all, however, is because I was thinking about what kind of film it would make. Me being a film person, I’m always considering how a particular piece of intellectual property would convert to cinema. It’s me practicing to be a producer. (“This is a great story! Get me this Bill Shakespeare on the phone!”) Several of you out there may remember that I had previously considered doing a version of the Book of Jonah, and so imagining this as a film was a logical extension of that. And besides, can you imagine the controversy/publicity that could be garnered from this kind of story, even if it fundamentally remains faithful to the spirit of the Gospels?

My simple answer about it’s translatability to the screen is… it could work. The first and last parts of the story (those parts that take place in Galilee and Judea), could be wonderfully done, much in the spirit of “Monty Python and the Life of Brian.” But the middle part of the story, the main meat of the entire book, which is set in what is now Afghanistan, China and India, would have to be retooled. There’s just too much philosophizing and internal struggle for a film to deal with (sorry, we can’t make “My Dinner with Jesus” here) and not bore the pants off the audience. Granted, there is a very exciting part with a demon killing some Chinese concubines, and another part where Jesus and Biff save children from ritual sacrifice a la “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” but other than that, something would have to be reworked.

Of course, this is just an intellectual exercise. No doubt some like-minded producer has snatched up the option to this story and is developing it as we speak. I’m curious to see if they can come up with something film-worthy.

He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston

2005-09-30T14:58:00.000-04:00

Song That’s Incessantly Playing In My Mind (STIPIMM): “Good Morning, Good Morning,” by the Beatles

Bridget came by the office today and had lunch with me. Such a simple pleasure to have lunch with the person you love, but well worth it. She brought me what amounts to my usual brown-bag lunch: sandwich, bag of chips, and a cup of pudding. She augmented that with a piece of string cheese. Yum!

In order to get out to my office, which is in Cambridge, and since we don’t have a car here in town, she had to subject herself to the same route I have to follow every day. This is not a commute I would wish on anyone; there are several different ways to get here, but the complexity of the route is inversely proportionate to its speed. So unless you know what you’re doing, even if you take the quickest route, you’ll spend so long trying to figure out where to go that you’ll eat up the time you would have saved.

All in all, for the uninitiated traveler, it takes an hour and 20 minutes to get from our apartment to my workplace, a distance (as the crow flies) of less than five miles. Since I know how to do it and what times the buses come, I can usually get that down to between 50 to 65 minutes, but if I have bad luck, waiting for buses can easily stretch it out to the 80 minute mark.

There are basically two options for traveling to and from work, and Bridget tried them both today: 1) by subway (the “T”) or 2) by bus.

The good thing about the subway is that we have a T stop very close to our apartment. And generally, since our stop is toward the beginning of the line, I’m able to find a seat in the morning.

The bad thing about the subway is that it doesn’t run straight to Cambridge. In order to get to the Alewife station, the closest T stop to my workplace, I have to go all the way into the heart of Boston, switch trains and then ride out again. And because the line that runs near our apartment has a lot of stops, it takes quite a long time to get into town.

On the other hand, there’s the bus. The primary advantage of the bus are that it’s more direct; instead of going all the way into town and out, I just cross the river on the 66 line to Harvard Square and then take another bus (the 78) which runs right in front of my workplace. Sounds great, eh?

Well, it has its drawbacks. The main one is the fact that I have to actually get on the T (the subway, stay with me here) to get to the 66 bus line. So that’s three different vehicles I have to get on, which means three chances for waiting for it to come. Then there’s the humanity factor; the buses tend to be pretty crowded during rush hour. I’ve become pretty good at finagling seats though, so that’s not too bad a problem.

Bridget got to try both methods today; she took the subway to get here and took the buses back. Knowing which stop to get off at, however, can be tricky, and she overshot it and had to hop on the T to get home. My poor girl.

After a month of experimentation, I came to the conclusion that I have a better chance of getting to work quicker if I take the bus. The fastest I have ever gotten to work that way: 45 minutes from our apartment door to my desk at the office. However, with bad luck, the longest it’s ever taken: an hour and 25 minutes. It’s a crap shoot twice a day. Good thing I take a book.

So it begins

2005-09-29T16:00:00.000-04:00

Bridget and I meant to start this earlier this month, upon our arrival in Boston, but as is wont to happen to young urbanites, we got sidetracked. My intentions were good; I started a new job on Sept. 1, the day we moved into our new apartment, and I figured I could do like Bridget did when she worked in D.C. and write a blog entry during the day when I had a down moment.

Of course, I forgot about new employee jitters. That’s the tendency for an office rookie to be hyper-vigilant in the first weeks of their employment as they try to feel out how much they can get away with in terms of coffee breaks, Internet browsing, and just plain ol’ goofing off. And so, in the first few weeks, there was no way in hell I was going to risk being seen doing non-work-related activities while at my desk.

Now that I’m coming to the end of my first month here, the jitters are slowly wearing off, and I feel comfortable (especially since the boss is working from home today) taking a few moments to get this damn thing started.

Much like Tommy Jefferson started the Declaration of Independence with an explanation as to why they were writing it, I suppose I should explain why Bridget and I felt the need to start this thing. There are three main reasons:

1) It’s a nice way to keep in touch. The blog of my brother and sister-in-law is a regular destination on the World Wide Web for me exactly because it keeps me updated with what’s going on in their lives. Now, I suppose I could pick up the damn phone and call and get the same thing, but us McKenzies have never been one for talking on the phone. We have a lot of friends in D.C., Oklahoma, Texas and elsewhere, and blogging’s part of our strategy to keep those connections alive.

2) It provides Bridget and I with a way to keep track of our history. Now, it’s not going to be a complete history, but I think it’ll be nice to have something like this to look at in 20+ years. Granted, we won’t be writing some of the more intimate things that are going on in our brains, but it will provide some nice guideposts to our memory.

3) I miss writing for an audience. More on this later, but suffice to say, I long for the glory days when I wrote a column for the Pauls Valley Daily Democrat. That’s why you’ll probably not see too many “update” blog entries, i.e., entries that consist of a sentence or two: “Hey y’all. Having a blah day! Wish me luck on the interview! Peace out!” Once I get started, I go on and on.

Bridget will ostensibly be writing in this blog as well, although she already has an excellent blog of her own that she’s still writing in. We’ll see how this develops; I’m sure it will morph into something unique within no time. Enjoy the ride.