Sunday without rain

Yeah. Today was good. Beautiful weather. I fixed my lawn mower just enough to get through mowing most of the lawn before the motor seized up. A trip to Costco and the library. I fixed a chair and the railing to the public stairs next door. Crap I am boring.

Saturday, June25, 2011

A day we will never see again. Unique and magical. Mundane and long. It featured mowing the lawn with a truly shitty broken electric lawn mower, lunch with in laws at "APPLEBEE"S" , voluntary giving of blood at the blood mobile, a Mariners loss, Ned completely dazed from the lack of sleep from a sleep over at the Milodragovich's house, excellent homemade soup and I made oatmeal cookies.

There was a nap in there too.

Random image from last xmas

Day 2: Summer Vacation drags on....

So day 2 of vacation (now that the teenager is now on vacation...) Kids slept in on a cold, rainy Seattle June day. I drank coffee and thought about lawn fertilizer and contemplated my lack of parenting skills. Tom got up and ate toast, followed by a long round of Wii. Ned eventually got up and we decided to go see "The Green Lantern" as that is one of Ned's favorite comic characters and it is never too soon to be completely disappointed in filmic adaptations of something you like.

Actually Green Lantern was kind of fun. The 3D was great and while there was a scary soul sucking space octopus, Tom was brave. He did not like the kissing however. It was expensive ($39.00) but a great retro throwback to see it at the immortal Cinerama. It's still the best way to enjoy a film.

Disolving into my base elements

Hi. As the clock winds down and the infinite joke of humanity builds to a really lame punchline that will offend everyone, I spent day 2 of summervacation going swimming with a seven year old at a plush retirement home in Suburban REDMOND Wa. The nice oldsters are my parents. Tom appears as my 7 year old. I was portrayed by Sir Ian McKellan. Pizza was served. There was no harm to anyone participating. Ned finished middle school today.

Ned is "Promoted"

Ned (in the skinny tie) and three of his oldest and best friends, Drew, Raphael and Paulson (Nat was in the audience) play the steel drums at the 8th grade "promotion" ceremony. It was long, filled with speeches and awards for most improved catagories, but I could not help but feel proud of my son and his friends who are all becoming interesting humans. Ned and his friends are an actual functioning group of individuals that are autonomous and no longer in need of us, their parents, in many ways. It's fun to watch them try out their new personalities. It was disturbing how overdressed, glammed out and uber sexualized 14 year old girls can get. High School for 4 years now. Work towards scholarships boy.

1ST DAY OF SUMMER VACATION!

Tom and I have the rest of the week together. Ned's school ends tomorrow. We went to the ID today and walked around and then had Hawaiian food. It's awesome to be a dad. Spent the rest of the day in the garden, using my beloved weedeater. Could God in heaven have created a finer tool?

Half Day at good place where civilization is intact.

I spent a half day ( the hated bane of the freelancer ) at a school for developmentally disabled kids on the Eastside, interviewing a couple of the founding parents from 50 years ago. They had a need, saw a need in others and acting in their own interests left behind a mitzphah for thousands of others in their same situtation. They were really ordinary people who did something simple but utterly necessary, and did it with out wish for gain. That places that are created solely to help those who really need it, families with kids who are disabled, fills me with hope. The infinitely various evils may be growing like cancers across our land but there are still pockets of kindness left. The story of one of the children of one of the early parents is amazing: his son did not crawl, roll over, walk or talk until he was four. One day he started to say "horses" because he liked them, and it was the trigger to his development. He then quickly caught up and is now an Admiral in the US Navy.(Results are exceptional, Your results may vary)

Today was Tom's last day of 1st grade. I wish he could remain small forever. Ned is "promoted" tomorrow night from middle school. Life is passing quickly, as trite as that sounds.

Running Shoes and the creeping darkness

So, it is my expressed intention to use this server space to try and remember the unremarkable activities of my professional life. I spent five days on the stage shooting 46 web catalog videos for a major running shoe manufacturer. The people were nice, the food okay and the commute not so good (the viaduct has begun it's long goodbye by becoming an annoying two lane). The most disturbing feature of this shoot was the fact that I was asked to do 12 hour days instead of 10. This is the beginning of the long goodbye to my freelance career? The shoot never even came close to 12 hours but if it had, then OT would have been off limits. Crews are changing and my position may be one of the first to go. I didn't mind agreeing to the 12s since it was more to support Geoff in his new role as a freelancer himself. If the studio folds there goes 40% of my business. Crumby photo from crumby phone. Insert iPHONE ENVY HERE.

Crawling past 50: adolescence can no loger be used as an excuse.

"Metastasizing the despair and disappointment of my life..." is the rather self aggrandizing answer I gave when a friend asked what I was doing on my 50th birthday. It was both very true to me and a complete fabrication on most levels. I have a home, a wife that loves me and kids who, when they can be pried from their amusements are very pleasant and who also love me. In that "It's A Wonderful Life" scenario, I am a very lucky Jimmy Stewart. However... My life's work has been a disappointment to be sure; what started out as daring and interesting, has evolved into a mundane service to corporate ego. What ever excitement I had hoped from living a life in film has been squandered on mortgage payments, watching TV and quietly drinking mediocre beers in my living room with the shades drawn. I watched a video on a 23 year old girl from New Jersey who has created a school and orphanage in Nepal through hard work and clear eyed optimism and I suddenly realized that I have lived the last 30 years in a haze of low expectations and minimal risk. I created one unwatchable "independent" (read "crappy") feature film in the 1990s and gave up. The end of the beginning? That was long ago. That was the slogan of my high school graduation, and many of those people I graduated with, once young and full of potential, all play golf in flip flops now, pretending that they have made it or not caring. What we have now is the end of the middle portion. The shut down of hope and pure joy due to dietary concerns over constipation. It is the inevitable evaporation of my potential. I fear for my soul. When the rapture of Harold Camping approached a week before my birthday I watched closely, not knowing why. I know now: I feel as though the end is much closer than it ever has been (lets face it, every day is closer) and I want to make a contribution more than making Microsoft execs look and sound human.