Burning Elf 2012 : New Traditions

Laurie called this video "melancholy" and I suppose she is right. Christmas is a strange and somewhat depressing time. Nothing is ever quite perfect. Nothing makes any one as happy as you hoped (or as unhappy as you expected thankfully). And even the most ridiculous events and most meaningless rituals designed just to make you laugh, eventually make you sigh and look the other way. Burning Elf is strictly an offshoot of silliness, but now is an institution. Our attendance is slipping but devoted. It was about 60 this year and featured video projection on the elf during the lead up.  It was a fun night preceded by pressure to make it all work, pressure to be perfect or at least competent.  I watch this now from my children's eyes and think what kind of oddball traditions I am establishing and hope that they can salvage something from this mess. Ned is an observer and is slowly formulating something profound about this all. Tom will continue the Elf until 2099, no questions asked.

The Mayans were wrong (or mis-translated)

What the Mayans meant to say was that I would be involved in a car totaling collision in Laurie's car at 7:00AM on the last day of the Mayan long count calendar. This sucks.

No one hurt. Both other vehicles were drivable and driven by nice people.

UPDATE 12/29/12

TOTALED!

Several Days of Work During Which Civilization Proves it is Crumbling

Three days of unexpected work: this time of year usually means that the work for the year is over. I suddenly had three days of talking heads: Explanation of electron microscopes, the history of a defibrillator company, and finally a green screen case study of a data storage sale. Generally they were boring but harmless and possibly beneficial since they involve research and live saving.  During the last shoot the word came down that there had been a massacre of children in CT.  This news has lead to a moral depression that is hard to shake. Like climate change, we will not have the backbone to change anything about guns and mental health. We are a spineless race.

Portlandia

Never underestimate the wonderful power of taking your girlfriend to another city for the weekend. Laurie and I had a great time in Portland together sans children. All the frustrating nuts and bolts of married life, kids, house, pets and work issues disappear nicely on a train excursion to PDX. It's nice to remember all the reasons we married each other remain semi-intact.

Create a world wherein all heads talk beautifully

Standard talking heads day at the hospital. Also the days to Burning Elf are now dwindling.

I wish I could throw like a girl

A 4.00 GPA Math and Economics Major and student and pitcher on a National Championship Division 3 Softball team was our subject.  It was a video for the NCAA awards banquet about a woman named Stacy, who was the NCAA Scholar/ Athlete of the year. People achieve great things. I provide adequate audio levels for them when they talk about it, and move awkward c-stands and lighting around. Life is awesome.  I am amazed at her pitching.

This is the general level of this kind of production. It ain't art.  It was interesting to note that te director (John, in town from Minneapolis) still clings to the feature film dream and he and his wife make features still.  Most of us have given it up because it's easier to have the second beer and see what's on Netflix.

Yea Julie Hunt starts new production Co.

Ms. Julie Hunt of Willmington NC has thrown off the chains of servitude and started her own production company. We have worked together on Holland America videos for a while, for her old employer, and she has taken the client over and wrested control in the name of Good Nose Productions. Huzzah!

No Sleep Country for Old Men 3 and Coffee Confessional with Tante Ricky

Not much to see here: Morning shoot on the stage with the Mattress sales robot and then coffee with Rick. We talked about all the scalding disappointments that construct our middle ages. People my age sometimes seem more awkward than teenagers. Rick counsels that regular exercise fights despair. This seems likely, but I seem to run (well, more like, waddle ) in the opposite direction. It is nice to be working again. Still using borrowed 744T recorder,  which is awesome.  

Bud is out of the hospital and not-so-ominiously starting hospice care.  Everyone at my house is sick, just been sick or potentially sick.  

The post thanksgiving spiral

Following our Thanksgiving, (where the family came to our house and a good time was had by all) Bud began to feel weak. Through the weekend, my mom said that he began coughing during the night and by monday morning she was concerned enough to call 911. He didn't want to go, of course but couldn't walk or stand. I met mom at the ER.  I had a cold and spent the day with mom at the hospital wearing a mask. It appears that Bud had a minor heart attack and is suffering from congestive heart failure. It's hard to know what to do. It's a story that is being repeated by most people I know who are my age. It's difficult to try and get people who have been making their own decisions for 80 years to let you start to make them. These are not people who want to give anything up that they worked so hard for. I don't blame them.

Bowling Ennui

Bowling is a recurrent theme in my life. I attended a season end U-16 Soccer team event at the immortal West Seattle Lanes. I do not bowl, it is merely the temple of all things American. I watch. My son bowled and junior son sat next to me (with his true parent, Nintendo) while I polished off several beers. It was one of those moments that will be lost to time, a meaningless event that will slip away with the next tide. There I was, in leather jacket and Montana hunting cap (issued to the Montana Trustee Penitentiary Honor Farms in Deer Lodge) I am sure I looked sort of like a anachronism; a bit player sent from the wrong studio casting call.  I watched my handsome teenaged son bowl with out conviction. He has been wrestling with his responsibility to achieve good grades and a lack of social opportunity lately . It was like watching Morissey bowl with the cast of "Freaks and Geeks." His coach retired and we went home.

Huge houses in the deep hinterlands

I did an infomercial on a exercise program last Saturday. It was shot in some one's house in a very upscale housing development in the very far, way out of deepest Auburn (and then some). It was a community of 4000 square foot houses with 12 foot ceilings. The houses had originally sold for 800K and now due to the economy (or return to sanity) were going for 300K, so more middle class people were buying them.  The family where we were shooting rents out their house to shoots: a pretty common phenomenon.  Their furniture was big and substantial (as if the entire house's furnishings were bought from Costco in a single trip) and even though they had 3 kids, everything was perfectly arranged into a soulless motel art direction. Nearby there was a strip mall with all the accustomed chains and new (presumably excellent ) schools. I hated it, or possibly was at least jealous. Here was a completely insular retreat from the rest of the sordid, soiled jetsam of life.  A raft afloat in the sea where it's all okay. Why do the suburbs get everything? I used to think my hillbilly Seattle back street was out there (6 minutes from downtown) because my kids didn't have friends on the street. This place is beyond the asteroid belt. I am a bitter small man.

Quietly Inspiring

My job takes me into people's lives for the length of an interview. This was a video for robotic surgery at Swedish Hospital. The subject was a professor from the UW who had colon cancer.  His story was interesting but pretty common: he got sick and was "cured" through his surgery and was very happy. We do a lot of those. What was fun to see was the relationship between him and his wife. They had been married 42 years and obviously were a life long team. They referred to each other at their "buddy" and were obviously an extension of one another. We on the crew all saw that their relationship was pretty special. It's inspiring to see that kind of human commitment.

I did a couple other days of talking heads. Next week is thanksgiving and there will be no work.  I am probably headed into the dry spell.

Pacific Science Center / John Pai in a funny hat

I worked on a series of TV spots for the Pacific Science Center's new attraction "The Wellbody Academy" which replaces several crappy old broken and dirty exhibits at the science center. They will not be missed. The crew was great and the spots will be nice.

And John Pai in a funny hat.

Election

Glad that's over.

I am very happy with how it all turned out, however...I hope that the division and hopeless despair of disrespect and obstruction can be circumvented in congress. The last four years have been brutal. Never, in the modern era, has a duly elected president been treated with such contempt and disrespect. It has been astounding and disturbing the way all the wounded and neo-feral racists and  suburban trolls have come out of the wood work to lay impotent siege to the man. When he was elected I had  the naive thought that we could maybe put some of the racist past to bed, never did I imagine that it would only get worse. I hated Bush; I didn't hate him the way the right seems to hate Obama. Maybe that is naive too.  The president needs to act while the icky warm glow of the big hug he gave Chris Chistie after Sandy is still freshly seared into people'c collective unconscious.  There is a lot of shit to get done, a lot of nuts and bolts issues of government that need to be attended to, that have been left undone by the sideshow amusement of the election and by the unrestrained hatred of the Republican party.  I want some results.

Gay marriage, legal pot, now that's behind us, lets try and fix some stuff.

WW2 Vet, Rosie the Riveter and my @#$%ing Knee

I did a day with Boeing Historical Archives, which is to say that I am in awe of the human effort that went into strangling the German Reich and the Imperial Empire of Japan. It was a talking head of a historian and then two talking heads of regular folks who gave up some of their youth tho rid the world (temporarily) of fascism. One 89 year old man who had flown 30 missions in a B-17 over Germany as a pilot, his own brother a POW in Germany below him. One interview was a woman who at 92 was a stand up comedian and had been on the production line for Boeing during the war.  It was strangely life affirming to hear their stories as rambling and disjointed as they were.  They asked where they were when they heard the war was over: the pilot told the storie that he was in St. Paul MN being trained on B-25s when he heard: he recalled his room mate had a girl in their room and he was stuck in the hall without his shoes. He laughed as hard as any college freshman. He also went to Montana State.

Go Bobcats.

The worst thing about today is I screwed up my left knee again. It was almost to the point where I couldn't walk. I came home and iced it (Netflix "Ip Man") I have another big job tomorrow. I will hobble through it.

I still hate Halloween.

My least favorite day of the year. The day which all my monumental inadequacies as a parent shine with the brilliance of ten thousand suns. I have holidayaphobia: the marked inability to make a special day on the calendar even remotely special for my family. Tom refuses to trick or treat this year due to my past problems gathering friends for him to participate with, the strange nature of being a solo trick or treater and the fact I bought a house in the isolated hinterlands of humanity.

He did dress up for school as a obscure character from a Japanese Manga that he loves. (see above) I suppose I can rejoice that we are raising another generation of outsider nerds.

Cosmetics rule us all, so say the Dutch

Job for Dutch TV featuring an annoying digital hybrid phone patch (which was cheaper than flying a producer from Holland, but more frustrating) that only worked miraculously,  at the last second. The interview was strangely interesting, the message being- don't buy expensive face cream because it's crap. The subject was a fabulously successful woman who researches such things. This was obviously lucrative as it was an amazing house on the lake. Cosmetics makes some one lots of money. Worked with Been There Dunlap.

Barren Conquest 2

Still working on it. It's better but I still am unhappy. There is something going on here but it is not fully realized. Practice make muddy. Photographs always make the color look weird and the proportions distorted. I am confused as to why her eyes do not look the right direction in the photo but do in real life.

I need to move on, though I might like the instagram better than the real thing:

Graffiti War 3

It has been a crap fest at taggerville: so bad with the illegible tags that some one else (entity or individual) has painted out the graffiti instead of me. My latest proto-fascist, all seeing eye is pictured above.

http://evaporationofjim.blogspot.com/2012/06/graffiti-war.html

http://evaporationofjim.blogspot.com/2012/10/graffiti-war-update.html

The Cat of the Father of the Biggest Philanthropist in the World

Since no one actually reads this, I can say that Bill Gates Sr. is a nice, well accomplished person and his cat is hilarious. It was a three day shoot for the Gates Archives and I heard a lot about Bill Gates Sr.'s life, which as it would happen seems to be very similar to my parents' life. He was in the army, in the occupation of Japan, like my dad, in fact on Hokkaido at the same time.  He and his first wife were married at the same church that my parents were. His cat, who's name I did not get was a Manx who demanded my attention during the interview.

I voted. I have the Hives. And Yesterday I worked

I am about 90% sure that everything sucks. Since last Thursday I have had an annoying allergic reaction to my neoprene knee brace that resulted in the hives. While this crisis will be on the minds of all Americans for the next 48 hours, I am prepared to say: I am getting better, though my confidence in neoprene is a an all time low.  I sent my vote in, as did my luscious and wonderful mate. If only the election could be over too now, however it will drag on  and on, not unlike my allergic reaction to synthetic rubber.

I worked on talking heads for a company that books international private jet tours, presumably for people who are underserved minorities and people with low income backgrounds.

Photo depicts cats. Your results may vary. Consult your owner's manual for further options and solutions to cat infestation.

Hilarity of the Corporate Skit!

More fun with stuff that isn't funny. 

Made a video about office remodel possibly .07% more funny than compost.

Cosmetics Sharecropping

I shot a "College Make Up Event for Gen Y" today.  The audio was challenging. Why do 19 year olds need make up? It was a room of beautiful girls being introduced to multi-level marketing make up that famously offers pink Cadillacs to the top earners. It was like school for trollops.

 I worked with Bruce Hutson and crushed him with a giant bowling ball.

My knees both hurt.

Where the money grows

More corporate love feasting. It looks more ominous than it really was. No goats were sacrificed
.

No Sleep Country For Old Men 2: The Reckoning

Sleep Country Android can drive a forklift.  Obama can get up in Romney's grill.  I made mediocre yakisoba. The world is still spinning.

Update to Earth

Orwell was only off by a couple of degrees.

I have this elaborate conspiracy theory, that started as a joke but is becoming rapidly real. What "they" (the 1% let's say) really, really want is to actually own us all. Under slavery and before that, the various feudal systems, those in charge (the "owners") held deeds to the subjected classes' souls. This is the one thing they now lack: ownership. The one possession that is denied them is the human being. John Hubbard, a Republican State Legislator from Arkansas said recently that Slavery was a Blessing in disguise".  In times past that would have ended his career, now he is a just a guy with a strange idea. Statements like this are laying a ground work for future acceptance of of some kind of "corporate soul mortgage" (they will never call it "slavery" again), wherein, your vote, your life decisions, every thing that you count as your very own will be owed to some person or entity- and it will not be on any kind of strictly racial lines either, every one will be up for grabs. It will take a while, but eventually they will try and use the biblical references to slavery to their advantage. We won't be called slaves or serfs, we will be "long term contracted employees" and they won't be "masters", they will be "Job creators"  or "Beneficient Lords of the Universe." Think about jobs in a world without pensions or Social Security or medicare, how essential it will be to have that privatized support.

It's a really bad Kilgore Trout Sci-Fi novel theme but just watch it happen.

I screwed up my knee by just walking across my driveway.

Like an elderly person, I mysteriously destroyed my left knee through the dangerous stunt of trying to walk upright across my own driveway. Being old sucks. The brace is almost worse than the feeling of there being shrink wrapped golf balls inside my kneecap.

No Sleep Country for Old Men

 

This is frequently my view on a studio shoot. I found it funny that the two shots lined up. Sleep Country is a factory shoot, with multiple versions recorded one after another. "The Sleep Country Lady" is actually a fairly normal person, until she turns on the lifelike, on camera android. She never flubs a line reading and is always perfectly modulated. It's kind of scary and impressive.

The Strange Machinations of Industry and our Sorrowful Part to Play in Their Video Rituals

Two days of making lemonade. Payday loans are here to stay, they are the "banking" of the future. They also need their "skits" committed to video by professional  crews. These are not usually our finest hours. The actors are usually employees who are not professional talent. Audio sucks. Things go wrong.  Shame ensues. Our shame circus is lead by Jai Suh, who always keeps the train moving and stays positve. He also buys the beer upon completion.  Frankly, he pulled a rabbit out of a hat on this one: there were at least one hundred ways it could have gone wrong and they didn't.  One could not ask for a better ring master. Pictured top to bottom: Mr. Suh, Ray, Nacime, Ryan and John. 

Graffiti War Update

Latest installment to baffle my taggers:

The thought that I have too much time on my hands has crossed my mind.

http://evaporationofjim.blogspot.com/2012/06/graffiti-war.html

10/12/2012- Just drove by and it has been majorly defaced. A bit of an intellectual disappointment , as it looks like a lame magic marker tag rather than a witty riposte.

Fight Club

Inducted Beth and Jai into fight club. Not gonna talk about it.

Barren Canvas

Not sure, but I think it's close to done.

I kind of like it, I kind of don't.

She is a hybrid of my lovely Laurie and Joey Heatherton ( and maybe Uhuru.) I was thinking about a planet of belligerent humanoids who,  after misusing their own females, set out to repopulate with the earth's women. Sort of Republican nightmare world where enforced reproduction is mandatory. Earth women called to action and not being doormats, kick their alien asses and save the day. As written, of course, by Johnny the boot. I may have one more sic-fi cover in me before I cut and run to the next idea.