The Vegas McNuremberberg Ralley (In Denver!!)

I get it. I know why they have conventions. The team work issue, being all on the same page, the allegiance to the corporate hive mind, these are important things to do; to both reward the successful and indoctrinate the undecided. The scope is pretty amazing however, 16,000 marketing people, from ALL over the world flown to Denver, hoteled and fed, entertained and propagandized with company messaging. Millions spent on Vegas style keynote speeches and recognition. I went as an audio/editor on a couple small videos and spent five days and nights there. I traveled with and worked with the amazing "Sugar Ray" Woodhouse and the luminescent Abby Katzmann (who are also married, with offspring, I am told) . And the money and expense account did flow. There was a rumor of Lady GaGa playing the closing night. The miracle is that it comes off at all. The clients want full control but sometimes seem reluctant to give opinions until it's too late or want to give suggestions at the point of no return. Micromanagement and seat of your pants, hair on fire panic mashed up into a paste of confusion and stress. This actually according to the veterans of such things was calm and easy. I live in a small hole in hobbitown where this was considered strange and frightening. The whipping up of a crowd to support software and service sales is not all that much different than political or religious frenzies that we have witnessed. Is the cult to be feared or embraced?

The Denver I saw was nice. Food was good, people were friendly, downtown seemed vibrant. I rode home on my flight next to an Indian American (as opposed to an American Indian) who told me I had seen a rarefied version of Colorado, outside of downtown it was all redneck "cowboy" culture, and he was moving back to Seattle. I did meet up with old friend Frank Alli and some of his Denver family. I was adopted in to the Espinosa clan of Denver.

A Saturday in July spent in a car with Johnny the Boot

Johnny the Boot needed company. He had to go to his incredibly beautiful cabin on Orcas Island to fix the WiFi. His cabin is so beautiful he and his (lovely) wife Lorraine need to rent it out in order to own it. They spend about six weekend up there a year. The rest of the time people rent it and complain about weird things like the cutlery being inferior to the surroundings and the WiFi being substandard. I remember my Uncle Mal's cabin as being plywood and 2x4s and we loved it and it's mismatched cutlery. The trip up was beautiful on the ferry.(we didn't get on the boat until 4:00PM, returned on the 10:50PM making this the fastest trrip to the San Juan Islands ever) Tame deer were in his yard. It was idyllic and now because of economics, unattainable even for the owners.

Ghost on the canvas and mounting pressure to do something other than complain.

Geoff Dunlap is coming out wrong. He looks like Christopher Walken portraying Dracula. If I could do one thing, all the time it would be paint, but like most things I can not commit to it because every day life gets in the way. Making a living. Kids. Mowing my shabby lawn. I'm really not a very good painter; my style is common and cartoony, almost sloppy. I make continuous mistakes that I only half repair. In short I suck but I enjoy it and occasionally feel partially pleased with an outcome, more often I am fully embarrassed but unwilling to burn the offending canvas.

Things are stressful because I am working on some paintings for a friend's restaurant in Boston, and I have agreed to help teach a TV production workshop in Singapore, so it will be necessary to actually prepare and finish some projects in a timely manner as well as prepare lessons.

Four July. Parenthood. Swirling around the abyss.

The fourth of July, like all arbitrary holidays brings moments of self imposed, self conscious and obviously over wrought self examination. Specifically I am thinking of my marginal parenting skills. My kids are great, and are very much the individuals I want them to be, they are not automatons or pointless rebels, but they are sometimes frustrating. I want very much to give them the the sort of childhood memories that I had but the world is very different from my childhood (which frankly wasn't THAT great or interesting either) . The world is much more closed off and the lives of children are by the very nature of the world more interior than they were when I was a kid. I have been reading Michael Chabon's "Manhood for Amateurs" which colors these thoughts. Neither of my sons seems that interested in hanging out with friends this summer. In fact, I can not get Tom's friends to come over to play which is sad for a seven year old. His community center summer program child warehouse has no close friends in it and he prefers to sit outside of the activities and read. Ned just sits at his laptop and stews in his zombie killing video games. You want to make their lives interesting. They have to want to participate.

We were supposed to go to the boy's uncle Joe's lake house for the fourth, which would have been nice because uncle Joe goes on an extended all expenses paid central asian vacation to Afghanistan next month. Ned had a sinus infection that mysteriously disappeared the day we took him to the doctor. We did luck into the most amazing private fireworks show down the block from us. Drunken ex frat boys in one of the rental house on the block must have dropped $1000 on fireworks, lighting the sky in a most impressive way. It made my cheap roman candles look sad indeed. As usual Dad does not deliver. Laurie is patient. Kids do not know they are being gypped out of a decent childhood. The drunk ex frat boys are having a swell time and we watch.

Slow days in anticipation of slower days

Not much happened. Weather was nice. People were sleepy. Foods were eaten.

Three jobs and the bag where I work.

Three days of work. Two were corporate self love pieces: one for a soft drink distributor and the other a "private banking" (read "rich folks are not like us") training film for a giant bank that once famously held my mortgage and was a titanic pain in the ass. The other day was medical talking heads, which while it a stupid system, doctors at least personally want to cure, help and comfort other humans. Banks and soft drink distributors not so much. Most of my days are kindergarten field trips into the lives of others: jobs that I would not want for the most part. Cubicles and sales jobs. Doing things that require people to purchase things they may or may not need. I understand that most people do need things and are willing to buy them so offering it to them is no crime. I am just wary of the system and not very willing to sell them anything.

Hence I am a servant in the corporate video world, where I rarely spend more that a day working for any one company. I have very little responsibility. This is a blessing and a curse. That sounds amazingly trite, but even with the view, I do not want the desk.

I spend most of my work days in my porta brace bag gazing lovingly at my Sound Devices 442 mixer. The day at the supermarket was fun because my gear could live in a shopping cart. I don't typically have a sound cart as it is too reminiscent of the sound guys who show up with deck chairs and newspapers. I enjoy the lighting and the whole set up experience, so I am not the the first call for sound man, but I do get the two man band call when the DP does need a gaffer but the producer needs to not pay for one. I own a bunch of audio gear but like all earthly, material items they will all eventually fail you. Things far apart and entropy will not be denied. My kit reminds me of that fact every day I am out with it.