Click images for desktop size: "Strength" by ZipanguStrange day. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow but I had to make another one for Monday about the tooth, head and arm pain.
I guess it pays to specialize.
I had a small fantasy that my bones were having the calcium leeched out of them. So that instead of hard shiny billiard ball looking things my bones were shrinking and showing frayed wires poking through the gristle while the manufacturer's labels were being gently eroded.
Daydreams like that are why I read a lot.
I got a notice about a package I received from the Post Office. I went to pick it up before work and they couldn't find it. Oddly, to redeliver it means I couldn't get it until Monday!
I called the 800 number on the ticket and was told everything I had was wrong - the wrong station, the tracking number was too short etc etc.
So I called the right station and they couldn't find it either.
I keep wondering what it is.
I sent my friend some books and stuff via UPS. It was kind of fun being able to follow the details of the package via the internet.
Creepy comparing the Post Office to UPS.

A young friend came to visit me. I can't call him one of my kids. He's a fine young man. He surprised me. It made it feel like it was a holiday.
I got a surprise gift. Flowers. That made it seem more like paradise was creeping in around the edges of my puppy's and my steel gray world.

I've gotten several emails asking about the little movies I made when I was a kid. I forget that the people who made them with me are mostly dead now.
Is it supposed to feel tragic being a survivor?
They weren't much, just things I had to do to get my Masters. They seemed important at the time, because they were. they were just student films - no, this doesn't mean it was endless minutes of a horse running through a field or a vain attempt to get my girl friend to take her clothes off in the name of art (A laudable purpose for student films, in my opinion).
“The Gladiators” was well received. Mainly for the carefully choreographed fight scenes and the soundtrack. I take credit for the sound. They weren't as impressed with the music but with the quality of the foley, sound effects and recording.
I got a 10 k grant to make my next movie. For me the main point was to have fun. When your crew is made up of surfers and football players fun is the one thing you never run out of.
We decided we needed “real” actors, instead of the usual stable of friends. We put an ad in Dramalogue.
This was exciting. Actors are crazier than stunt drivers and cliff divers combined. We actually got head shots that the actors made by pressing their faces against the glass of a Xerox machine . . . we got resumes from names we recognized but realized the actors hadn't worked in 30 years. We got resumes that were felonious in their intent to defraud.
We had a lot of fun meeting these people.
They never behaved in the same way and they were always amazing, charming or at least fantastically annoying. I started to love actors then.
One memorable guy showed up dressed as Harpo Marx. He entered and did a pantomime that ended with him pulling out a ukulele and performing “Whole Lot Of Love”.
I loved it, but as this was a western I really didn't see how I could work him in.
I don't think we used any of the Dramalogue actors, much to my continued regret. Instead we got people from Equity Waiver shows.
For the female lead we found the most singularly incredible looking woman any of us had ever seen: light red hair with green eyes, swimmers figure and a smile that would make you spend a months salary in hope of seeing it again, even if the smile wasn't meant for you.
Problem is she couldn't act.
She was beyond bad. Her voice was entrancing but every time she said a line she sounded like an illiterate asked to read Hamlet in order to spare the executioner.
No problem - I made her a French Woman, who spoke no English! She didn't speak French, none of us did. She just made French sounds. Surprisingly no one ever seemed to have noticed that she spoke nothing but gibberish.
On a surf trip to Mexico we found a rundown old Western set. It was large, busted up and beautiful. Rattlesnakes hid in the shadows and scorpions got upset when you entered any of the buildings.
It gave us a huge edge. We argued about what movie it was built for. Most of us wanting to think that it was constructed for “The Wild Bunch” but in reality it was most likely for “The Master Gunfighter.”
So we were ready. We camped in the Mexican desert and shot for two weeks on a refuse-to-die-Old Mitchell. I had a friend at CFI and he scrounged up 12 hours of 7256 for us, and could process it at night when we got home.


Click images for desktop size: "The Coldest day" by Christopher J AndersonThe plot: Billy, a mixed race half caucasian half hispanic, was five years old when he watches his parents shot down in a senseless bungled bank robbery. He's taken in by a deranged blind uncle, his mothers white brother, who teaches the little boy to be a dangerous gunfighter. Billy is trained and loaded with hate until he is 16.
Problem is Billy is dangerous with his guns, a marvelous athlete but he has no rage or anger in him. Billy befriends a stray puppy. His new friends leads to some troublemakers trying to have some cruel fun with “the kid!”
Billy ignores the insults but reacts in the only way he knows how when one of the gunfighters kicks the puppy. It's a terrifying demonstration of speed and accuracy. The four men don't have a chance.
Billy doesn't kill them. He shoots the holsters from their legs before they have a chance to draw, His 6 shots sound like one quick roar. Billy backs out as the hard cases stare at him in awe, relief and in disbelief. The puppy follows Billy home.
Billy's uncle is enraged. He exhorts Billy for not killing the 4 gunmen. He sends him out into the world to kill the 3 bank robbers. He sends him out with no preparation for life other than 2 dangerous guns.
When Billy goes out on his killing mission the puppy, who followed him so faithfully stops and sits down in the dust, watching him ride out to become a killer.

I'll tell you how it ends later.

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