The Firing Squad

The short documentary I’ve spent the past three months on with Mr. Corey Vaz - Agreeing to Disagree: The Battle to Define Free Speech - is finally done and online. On Tuesday ACTV gets a copy, so expect to see it soon on the air! Here’s a Vimeo embed:

This weekend I had the pleasure of working with Ethan Siegel, Andy Rines and Jen Wanamaker on a 48 Hour Film Project in Boston. Our short, Stay Positive, will be screened this coming Wednesday.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Kendall Square Cinema
370 Binney Street
Cambridge, MA
7:00 PM
$9.75 per person

I wrote this short story for a creative writing class a few years ago.

Floyd had a thing for fruits. His parents had fed him nothing but junk food as a child and eating almost nothing but richest, ripest fruits was his way of getting back at them for essentially destroying any chance he had at asking Ashley Pickens to the eighth grade dance all those years back.
I met him one afternoon at a supermarket not too far from here. My first glance of him was from a distance. I was inspecting the overpriced wheels of cheese and he was suspiciously loitering by the melons. To tell you the truth, I had never even thought about buying a wheel of cheese until I saw one that day and I apologize for jumping to the conclusion that it was overpriced. I am not a connoisseur of cheese nor am I an economics expert.
Floyd began readjusting the produce in question and although he wasn’t wearing one of those signature green aprons I assumed anyone paying that much attention to detail must’ve been a produce manager or a stock boy with high hopes of one day becoming one. I snuck up behind him as quietly as I could. You all know how those part-time stock people are – they see a customer with a curious expression and they walk the other way. I should know, I did it all the time when I worked at my uncle’s department store. I poked his shoulder and asked, “Hey buddy, do you work here? I got my eye on that wheel of cheddar over there.”
He shrieked and flung himself around. It was probably the first time someone had talked to him in ages. The whole ordeal caused him to knock over his pyramid of cantaloupe. “Do I look like I work here?!” he snapped.
I said, “Calm down, pal, it was an honest question. Give the melons a break and get some fresh air or something. Christ.”
He picked a cantaloupe that had fallen to the ground and held it tightly in his hands. He stared at it with discontent and chucked it clear across to the far end of the produce aisle, nearly striking a poor old woman in the face.
“I like your style, buddy. What’s your name?” I asked him.
“It’s Floyd and I never want to see you here again! My parents ruined my life by feeding me nothing but junk food and ruined any chance I had at asking Ashley Pickens to the eighth grade dance all those years back and now you’ve ruined my day by destroying my masterpiece!”
At that point mothers began to usher their children in the opposite direction so I left. Why make a scene, right? I went across town to another supermarket. They actually had a larger selection of cheese wheels and it sort of made me wish I had gone there to begin with. I swear to God the one I chose on must’ve weighed twenty pounds and it ended up costing well over two hundred dollars. You’ve got to pay top-dollar for quality, that’s what I always say.
Two weeks later I saw Floyd downtown while I was driving the cross-town connector bus. I had just pulled in to the West Ave. stop to pick up some punk-looking teenagers. They actually ended up being very courteous and I later regretted jumping to such a harsh conclusion about the future generation. I pulled out of the stop and accelerated. I could see him a bit further ahead, walking along the sidewalk carrying a bag which I assumed at the time to be full of fruit. He began to cross the street when I suddenly realized I had fallen ten minutes behind schedule. His collision with the bus caused substantial body damage, but listen to this. The bag he was carrying was full of vibrant green pears! When they began to shower down on that small stretch of Seventh Street, I knew it had all been worthwhile.

Carolyn Mellick’s documentary Cruzando Fronteras will be screened publically for the first time in less than two weeks!

If you’re interested in checking out a great documentary on illegal immigration in the United States and want to check out some fancy camera work by yours truly, then feel free to stop by. I sat down with Carolyn earlier today and checked this film out and it was fantastic. I didn’t exactly do a lot of the camera work but it was great to have the opportunity to work with someone who is as talented as Carolyn is.

Sunday, April 26, 2009
Hampshire College
Franklin Patterson Hall
8:00 PM
Free

I finally had the chance to dust off the ol’ hard drive and upload Noah’s Ark and The Immaculate Conception to You Tube.

You can check them out here.

Maybe this is just because I live in the world of StumbleUpon, but I have been bombarded with articles and blogs filled with “I’m Atheist and I consistently need to prove to Christians they are wrong” for the past year.

Personally, I do not believe there is a God, but I do not consider myself to be Atheist because I don’t care enough. If some crazy Christian comes up to me telling me I’m going to go to hell because I do not believe, I laugh and I walk on. Not that this ever happens to me… Maybe I just do not live in an area where people care?

The Bible: Fact or Fiction? Who cares? Whether you believe any of it is true, you cannot avoid the fact that the book is filled with some awesome tales. A suggestion for you hardcore Atheists is to read the Bible without regard for whether or not anything in it is true. Look at it like it is piece of literature. Whenever I am feeling like crap because of something that happened on a particular day, all I have to do is think of some ridiculously shitty thing God did to Job and I say to myself, “Well, at least my life doesn’t suck that much,” and then I feel better about myself!

And then there is the Book of Revelation. What an epic ending! Do not even try to deny it. Do I believe the world would really end this way? Hell no! It is too good of any ending. When the world ends (if it ever does), I doubt  anyone is even going to realize it.

It seems like most Atheists publish their unoriginal arguments in an attempt to be sensationalistic. But does sketching out terrible comics about Jesus being a zombie really help anyone? Yeah, it was funny the first time I saw it but after a while someone has to step up and say, “O.k., everyone, now let’s go talk about something new and meaningful.”

Earlier I said I do not consider myself to be Atheist because I do not care enough. I’d like to make an amendment to that statement: I do not consider myself to be Atheist because I do not wish to be associated with a bunch of self-righteous pricks and I do not feel like I should waste my time bashing people who have every right to believe what they want to believe whether or not it seems absolutely absurd to me.

You feel oppressed by Christians because you’re Atheist? Then stop making it a point to go out of your way to be oppressed.

“Dental records,” he said, “are the only way anyone’s gonna figure out who you fuckin’ are when I’m through with you, asshole,” as he took he first swing at me. I walked away with seven broken teeth and we spent the rest of the night digging him a grave in the middle of some state forest I had never heard of. Carlos slashed off his head and hands with a bowie knife and threw them off a bridge on the way home.
A week later I started to miss the ability to chew food so I saw a dentist. He asked what the hell happened. “What the hell happened?” (I told you so.)
“I fell down a flight of shtairs.”
“This isn’t going to be cheap.”
No shit, I thought. “Jusht do the besht you can.”
He performed several root canals and told me to come back in a week for the crowns.
“How am I shupposed to eat?”
“You like apple sauce?”
“Not really.”
“Get used to it.”
I was under the impression that creativity was key to survival. I stopped at a department store on the way home and bought a blender.
Once I got home, I grilled a few burgers, put some cheese and lettuce on them, along with some ketchup and mustard. I plugged in the blender and watched two of the burgers plop on top of the blades. The puree setting worked wonders but it left me with a disgusting-looking brown sludge that was much too thick to even attempt to drink. I added half a cup of water to the concoction and pureed it all to my heart’s content. I poured it into a glass and sucked it through a straw. Once I got passed the texture it wasn’t so bad. Apple sauce, I thought, laughing. What a con.

Today JESUS CHRIST! went live to the few thousand students who happened to be watching UMATV and UVC19 in the Campus Center, Student Union and in their dorms. Many thanks to the cast and crew for doing a fantastic job with all of their specific duties.

I’m directing a television production that’s going to be cablecast live at the UMass Amherst campus. If you have nothing better to do on Tuesday, tune in to UVC19 at 3:00PM and watch the screenplay I wrote come alive.
Doing a rehearsal tonight. I’ve had the pleasure of watching these actors and actresses doing their thing for other episodes of Playhouse 433, and they’re all top notch. Hopefully all goes well. I’ll post the screenplay here after the live broadcast.

Anyone out there know if there is any way to recover the time code of a DV tape that’s been collecting dust for a while? I’ve been trying to capture some footage and Final Cut goes nuts ’cause it thinks (or maybe it actually is) the time code is corrupt.

I’ve tried capturing with iMovie instead and it captures all the footage but large portions of the audio track are supposedly silent, even though I could hear it loud and clear through the monitors as I captured. Any ideas? Someone? Anyone?

How screwed am I?

While we’re on the topic of capturing footage with no audio tracks, here’s an outtake of me in a wheelchair from Goessman’s Revenge (it’s much funnier with audio.)