777 Means Nothing to Me

If only if the dow had dropped 666 points yesterday, I could be blogging about this being yet another harbinger of the apocalypse. But alas, there was a last minute speech from House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and over 100 Republicans helped to put an end to bailout package 1.0. So in turn, the fiduciary gods decided to punish the markets for congress' unwillingness to prop up the now failed money markets.

Personally, and this is really only from the standpoint of greed, I have absolutely no interest in this bailout coming to fruition. Now, thats not to say that I don't understand why it may be necessary, but the realities of my personal financial situation make this impossible to agree to. Isn't personal fiscal freedom the most important aspect of a free market economy?

The markets are volatile, yes. Perhaps this is a sign that we may need to rethink some of our most basic tenets of modern banking. Maybe all of this fictional borrowing and trading has finally gotten the better of itself. But on the same note, the last major (by that I mean on the scale of only this and the great depression) government interference with banking institutions came with the New Deal, which helped to lay the foundation of sixty years of almost uninterrupted American prosperity and wealth.

I think that the urgency that all this has been carried out with is tantamount to its failure. Our lame duck president has only brokered another deal to bail out those to whom he has already helped so much through his blindfolded economics policy. I think that this can wait until a more nuanced, rational president is in office.

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More reasons to love Roku

Especially now that I've forced it to always stream at 2.2mbps! During my struggle to keep up with my google reader today, I found this gem, a mortal combat-esque button combo that opens a debugging menu! The only options that are available relate to streaming and a debugging mode, but you can set your default streaming speed. This is great because my internet connection can usually always deliver the full 2.2mbps (thats 4 netflix quality dots / 480p 4:3 and 16:9), which is consistently better than my comcast cable, and having this as a default option is great.

I can't say enough how satisfied I've been with the netflix roku player. Now that they've announced that a SDK and plans to open the player up to other streaming services, there's lots of hope for not only HD quality streaming, but also potential for making it a front end for a home streaming-media server (sort of like the one living in my home office).

Opening this device up would really be a big move for Roku, and I hope they stick to the language in their press release, that "everyone" could develop streaming for this thing. I knew that there was good reason to invest in this, because its more and more becoming the center of my television consumption.

On the note of streaming media servers, my linux box is coming along quite nicely. Now I've got all my interface tweaks up, a reliable smb.conf file and firefly streaming my backup'ed itunes library. The only real drag is making my macbook act as the frontend when I want to connect my tv to the sever.

My ugly, ugly setup for watching everything:


Also, the time has come to properly wall mount my tv and condense my tangled mess of cables and components into a proper shelving unit. Although it doesn't really bother me that my setup is messy, which it is, because it all works beautifully. The next addition is a ps3 or xbox 360, obviously.

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Production Stills

At the wrap party for Breathless, the movie I worked on a few weeks ago, I got a dvd with all the production still on it, and there are some really great photos. It was a lot of fun despite the long hours and night shoots. We got some really good looking footage, and Mr. Koester is going to have a pretty hott little movie at the end of this.

Here are the stills:

Pedestrian bridge we lit:


Some pretty big guns:


There are innumerable pictures of me texting during downtime on set:


Ride that dolly:


Yeah for genny-powered sets:

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Presidential Debates Tonight

Gonna watch? Its been a really interesting week, with the federal bailout and the sitting lame duck looking silly. To top that off John McCain "suspending his campaign" to deal with the financial crisis, which didn't really do much other than paint him as a politicking distraction.

Go Obama!

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Permanent Record is straight from Big Brother

Last night my friend James pointed me to this site, permanentrecord.com, and its actually really scary. Culling bank records, magazine subscriptions and other public information, this thing is literally a directory of almost everyone in America, with detailed demographic information and "guesses" about certain personality traits, even religion. The site is simple enough that anyone could use it. Even though its captcha protected, I don't feel any more comfortable about it.

I searched for the obvious: my name, my family's names, my friends--it had nearly all of them in its database. Not all of the info is correct, but it could potentially be enough to steal someone's identity. Here's part of the site's official statement:

Your bank. Your cell phone provider. Your water company. Your government. Your gas station. Where you buy your music. Where you buy your frozen dinners. That timeshare pitch you suffered through a while back. Pretty much every organization you can name. And a few you probably can't.

Amazingly, everything you see here is stuff that other people make public about you, right or wrong. A lot of it can be found with just a few minutes with Google. We bring it all together for you to see. We're going to shake things up a bit.

See, they've been selling your information to each other for years. It's a big industry. So fine, at least now *you* can see what they think they know about you. Of course, invariably some portion of it is wrong, so don't take this too seriously. But like it or not (and who would?) this stuff is part of your Permanent Record because this is what thousands of people and companies use to classify you. Shame, isn't it?

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We are so proud of him...

So my older brother, Max, was mentioned in the New York Times today. Its pretty exciting stuff, here's the blurb:

Maxwell Breed, a lawyer for Ms. Escano’s landlord, Mon-Rose Realty Corporation, said: “Our policy is not to comment on pending litigation.”

Way to get our family name out there bud! Despite being generally construed as being on the side of evil, my brother's foray into the tabloids was largely successful. Little else relating to my kinfolk was mentioned. Here's the link to the article:

Despite New Law, Subsidized Tenants Find Doors Closed

via Nytimes

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Day Off

Spent most of today being punished for going out last night, but was interesting productive as well. I worked on my bitchin linux server for most of the day and am pretty satisfied with what I was able to accomplish. Not only did I get my BOINC client up and running, but I got awm and conky to work finally. And I increased my screen resolution for increased productivity (even if it means ctrl-+'ing every time I open a new tab in firefox).



All suitably nerdy, esp. with the screenshot.

I bought a few more used books today from bookworm, as per usual. Find of the day would have to be Joyce Images by Bob Cato and Greg Vitiello--dozens of great pictures of James Joyce and neat forward by Anthony Burgess.

I attempted to make some nice hi-res scans, but my scanner software was refusing to behave, so I had to settle for slightly lower quality than I wanted. I plan on posting some more of these, but only when I can get a bit better quality out of my scanner, because it can definitely do it.

Also I got a Norton Critical (my favorite edition of pretty much anything) of Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad and Voltaire's hilarious Candide, a nice paperback Great Gatsby from the 70s and a copy of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which has lots of juicy crit in it. Nothing new, per se, except the Conrad, but all great editions of books that I tend to read ad nauseum.

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Sometimes, it takes a while: LOTR extendo edition box sets review

So LOTR is old news in 2008, unless you're talking about The Hobbit. But I finally purchased the Extended Edition DVDS (second hand and at a severely reduced price, of course) and after a hell of marathon viewing, watched all of the features and good deal of the special features. I'm already like 16 hours in and I don't know if I can hang on for the commentary tracks unfortunately.

As far as each of the features extended scenes go, I'm all for it. I always hated it when people bitched about how long the theatrical cuts of these movies, because it really takes all the meat off the bones when you're doing an adaptation and have to cut it down. The bits and pieces that weren't in the original edits are generally seamlessly integrated, and often explicate continuity across the films of the series.

Aside from the deleted scenes, the thing that sticks out about these movies is just how damn good they are. Well made movies have so much more staying power than their b and c-movie counterparts. Thank god that Troy happened in response to the Lord of the Rings trilogy instead of in place of it. The care and technical perfection that went into the final product is astounding--and its really well documented in the special features discs. As below the line memeber of the film industry, I know how much work it takes to make something look as good as these films look, and I can't imagine the endurance it took for a production on such a grand scale as this. I think its safe to say that shooting three films concurrently is feat saved for the most badass of badddassss crews and production team.

That's all I'm going to say about the movies, because by now if you haven't seen them I doubt you'd be reading this or know what the internets is.

Peter Jackson's other movies (that aren't King Kong) are simultaneously great, twisted and weird, and are all worth checking out. Meet the Feebles is one of the single most derogatory piece of anything with puppets in it. Dead Alive is a gory suspense-zombie-comedy with perhaps the most over-the-top violence ever. The lesser Jacksons are worth it too, but less notable.

And yay for another uninteresting post without pictures!

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What A Terrible Week To Be An I-Banker

Why...because the effing economy is collapsing, that's why! To recap: over the weekend, Lehman Brothers, one of the big 5 investment banks, was unable to wrangle the cash to keep from going bankrupt...so they went bankrupt; meanwhile, Merril Lynch was scrambling to do the same, selling themselves to Bank of America; finally, if that wasn't enough to make traders shit their pants, AIG also ended up in the dog house needing about $75b to get themselves out of it. Lucky for them, they're getting an $85b loan from the government. Huzzah!

Is it just me or is the fiduciary apocalypse drawing nigh? Survey says, probably. Now I'm not usually interested in Wall Street woes, but this is pretty serious and deserves attention. Especially with John McCain stating that the American economy is fundamentally sound on Monday, which is fucking ridiculous.

In other news, the film I was working on has wrapped, which is really exciting, but also means that I'm back at AA 40 hours a week, which isn't exactly paradise. Hopefully another gig will come soon though!

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"The Time of the Preacher"

Just finished Preacher. Now I own all nine anthologies! It only took six months to get through all of them. At first I read them one at a time, but after the fourth issue, I was compelled to buy multiple issues at once. It's turned into an expensive little habit, but I suppose it's probably about equal to what I used to spend at the bar, which I don't miss.

Preacher turned out to be just as fantastic as I'd been told it would be. It's great and surprising when you find things like this in sources that you wouldn't expect it from. I don't know how I managed to not turn into a comic book geek when I was a kid, lack of access is probably the best answer. Growing up in suburban florida was such a cultural letdown when compared to what's here, or how things could have been different. The grass is always greener, or something.

But back to Preacher. There were definitely some lulls in each volume of the series, but that's really unavoidable when you consider its original issue based format. While most issues flow together seamlessly with periodic punctuations of backstory, there are usually one or two issues in each volume that are, say, more forgettable than the rest. The sum does end up being the whole of its parts, etc, and the less adventurous episodes contribute to the novel-like feel of the series as a whole. Garth Ennis really gets into his characters, and by the end of the series you know an awful lot about everyone, which is a difficult thing to do.

Looking back at the series as a whole, the writing just stands out as being so tight and ultimately conservative but at the same time retaining a vast amount of character density and intertextuality. Hitting on a broad range of topics from Irish history to 90s grunge rock parody, Preacher masterfully Garth Ennis' prowess as writer.

Tonally, Preacher proudly stands on the broad shoulders of John Wayne. A fantastically modern take on the difficult questions the duke managed to answer without ever having to say too much, Preacher applies the allegory of westerns to the "comic book" universe. (Granted, Jesse Custer isn't by any means a superhero, but its use of the fantastic elements grounds it secondly as genre-piece. The question of comic books being there own genre is a difficult one, and something to be approached with trepidation. Comic book fans are nothing if not thorough and loyal to the extreme, so marginalizing "comic books" into a single genre term is unfair. The myriad examples of comics that don't rely on what I would call "comic book" conventions stand as a direct rebuttal of the term previously used. But as a casual fan of comics and a scholar of literary criticism, the distinction must be elucidated.) The level of textual maturity is matched by that of the tone. I really wanted to avoid the "comics aren't just for kids anymore cliché," but Preacher is not for children. God only knows how cool I would have thought this was when I was 13, but any younger than that and it probably would have been a bit scarring.

Its funny to read other bloggers opinions of the series too, because its now being called a classic. I guess I don't really realize how fast the comic book cycle moves--the last issue of the series is less than ten years old!

Now here comes the inevitable comparison to Watchmen: Preacher ultimately accomplishes more than Watchmen because of how much longer it is. Watchmen is great because you can read it in nearly a sitting. Preacher is great because you can't. Watchmen will make a great movie; Preacher a great series. Why the comparison to Watchmen? I don't know, chalk it up to inevitability: it seems to me that Watchmen has come to symbolize everything positive in the realm of modern comics, and its becoming one of the most widely read comic by non-comic readers. I've seen more issues of Watchmen crop up in more and more unexpected places recently, and the buzz for the movie is really starting to intensify.

Even if you've never been interested in comic books, Preacher exists as an interesting and great piece of literature, and a great starting point for a comic collection.

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Google Reader, Or How Web 2.0 is Ruining My Life

After months of holding back from using a blog aggregator to serve my internet readings, I took the plunge and activate my Google Reader account. The choice was an easy one to make because I rely on google for pretty much everything, including this little blog. I've been familiar with RSS feeds for a couple of years now but I've never felt the need to make any use of them. The stand alone readers I've come across never really did anything for me, because I prefer staying in my browser if I can. I recall preferring Safari's take on in browser rss feeds over firefox, but never took advantage of it beyond the level of curiosity.

Enter Google Reader. This is something that I admit I completely missed the boat on. If I'd know the amount of functionality and stability present, I'd have been using it for months. One of the great things its doing is allowing me to keep up on blogs that are in my bookmarks menu that I look at seldom, if ever. Considering most of them are still active with multiple posts daily, there's a lot I'd be missing out on without Google Reader. Now those blogs live in a folder in my reader account, and its so much easier to look through the post titles in list view than it is to open 15 tabs in firefox to read the same amount of info.

It's easy to see now how the über-bloggers manage to keep track of so much information. So while I'm wasting my time on my computer reading way too many articles, they're being served to the nifty little applet over there on the side bar. See it, isn't it pretty.

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2 More Bowie Records

So I stopped in at Goldmine today on my lunch break and found two more Bowie records! Apparently they've been there about a week, but Matt couldn't get a hold of me to tell me since I wasn't at work all week. Luckily I only missed out on one that I don't have, Hunky Dory.

And yes, I'm blogging from work But it's slow and I'm not even doing it from my work pc, instead this is via email from my iPhone. It's a feature that I really enjoy, especially for posting pictures. The only downside is that it limits you to one picture per email (stupid iphone) and there isn't a way to tag your posts. But regardless it's some pretty cool functionality!

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Thomas Pynchon makes my head hurt.

So after finishing Ubik, I'm moving on to a book by the much maligned Thomas Pynchon. Don't get me wrong, I love Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49; I even made I through Against the Day--it's just that Pynchon always manages to kick my ass for months at a time.

But since this is a first edition, at least I'm not mangling a
paperback.

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22 Worst James Bond Movies - The Final Installment

8. Never say Never Again

While Never Say Never Again isn't a canonical Bond movie, it is pretty fucking bad. Getting Sean Connery to come back was a big coup in 1982, and it went head to head with Octopussy. What makes this truly a sad piece of crap is that its a remake of Thunderball, without all the pert originality which made the original fodder for proper entertainment. And on top of that Sean Connery's head had already started to spread out horizontally, but before he was white and bearded.

7. The World Is Not Enough

Denise Richards is a rocket scientist. Anything else?

6. You Only Live Twice

Is there anything more offensive than putting Sean Connery in asian-face?

Answer: No, no there's not. By far the weakest Connery Bond (not counting Never Say Never Again, but that's a whole different ball game), which by comparison makes it lower than perhaps it deserves to be. But I've never felt the need to placate anyone I don't know.

5. The Living Daylights

So people think that Timothy Dalton made an ok Bond, comparable to George Lazenby (who?). Not me. Not me at all, sir. He just doesn't have the charm necessary for Bond to be believably entertaining. He nails the first part of that description but not the second. He's just not fun to watch. Truth be told, The Living Daylights does have a better plot than its place on this list would lead you to believe, but I just don't enjoy it.

4. Die Another Day

This one wins the title of worst theme song, with Madonna's titular track. Brosnan's last outing is an attempt to mature the Bond character for him, which unfortunately backfires into absolute ridiculousness. You kind of forget about Bond the tortured and fragile POW when he starts driving around his invisible through an ice hotel to save Halle Berry.

While Die Another Day isn't the single reason for the franchise reboot, it is definitely one of the prime suspects. Pierce, we really liked you in Goldeneye, why did you let us down so?

3. Octopussy

Gypsies, for the most part, aren't very interesting. They just steal your stuff and ruin your James Bond movies.

2. License to Kill

Timothy Dalton on made two Bond movies, and this piece of trash is the reason why. The plot is weak, the bond girls are weak and Dalton is dismal. And it had to go up against the first Tim Burton Batman, Last Crusade and The Abyss. Needless to say, it didn't fare too well.

1. Tomorrow Never Dies

Now don't get me wrong, I'm down for the whole women's empowerment thing but not when it involves James Bond handcuffed to that one asian chick thats in everything riding a motorcycle through a stereotype. Especially because the whole effect really falls flat when you're able to tell that a) pierce brosnan has no business on a motorcycle and was only too happy to delegate this one to a stuntman b) said stuntman isn't actually handcuffed to a asian chick, but its a prop fake sleeve with the asian girl actually holding on to his arm, and c) why is James Bond handcuffed to anyone? Roger Moore would've never let that happen to him. Its just embarrassing.

James Bond is known for over-the-top set pieces which only exist for the stunts preformed around them, but some are definitely far inferior to others. And this has to be by far the worst example.

So that about wraps it up. This was done mainly in anticipation of Quantum of Solace, the 22nd canonical Bond movie and the second with Daniel Craig. Quantum will be unique in that it is the first direct sequel of the franchise. Expect Bond to kick some ass finding out who was really behind Vesper Lind's betrayal. I'll end this with my favorite Bond quote, one which doesn't actually appear in any of the films (to my knowledge), but rather the closing line of Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale: "The bitch is dead."

Here are the previous two posts:

Worst Bond Movies 22 - 16

Worst Bond Movies 15 - 9

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Spore for iPhone

So last night I broke down and actually paid for something in the
iPhone apps store. Wretch. I'm generally against paying for smallish
software (there's usually a superior open source alternative anyway),
but Spore seemed too good to pass up.

I grew up on SimCity 2000 et al., and I've been casually following the development process of Spore. Unfortunately for me, the creature creator demo refused to run on my macbook (lame!) and I doubt the full version of the game will be any more reliable. And it comes with some pretty nasty drm I hear.

My first impressions of Spore: Origins are fairly positive, although it is a bit frustrating that I haven't been able to add more crazy shit to my creature. But I tend to be impatient with games.

Anyway, Spore: Origins has already provided me with about three times as much gameplay as any of the free games I've downloaded from the app store, and I'm not even halfway through it. This is shaping out to be well worth the $9.99 I shelled out for it.

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Photoshop fun!

But I'm actually using Gimp, because its open source and has practically the same feature set as photoshop.

I've been using the spare time I don't have to teach myself how to photoshop pictures. I've already known how to do color correction and masking from going to film school, but I'm trying to expand my amateur repertoire. Practicing with faces has been fun, and provided a great deal of entertainment. I pulled the original pictures from this awesome blog Sexy People, which features tons of of glamor shots.

So here are some examples (thanks to Jim aka birdman for the final retouching!)

This wonderful shot of two cousins from 1990:


Becomes even more creepy with my head on Cousin #2:


This great photoshopping job by my former employee Willie (god I hope its photoshopped, that is) becomes even better when I get in the mix.




Trust me, it looks even stranger without the blond mustache and freckles.

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Pet Photography

...is incredibly self indulgent. But here it is anyway! I really need to start using my camera more, because I really take for granted that I have such a nice piece of equipment. Coviello just got a D700, which is fucking ridiculous, and I'm psyched to see some of the pictures he's been taking on set over the past 2 weeks. And I think I've successfully talked him into getting the D90 too, because of the digital video feature, which is pretty rad. I wish the D70 could get that with a firmware update or something, but c'est la vie.

So here's my lame pet photography:



And here's another one from the shoot on friday, up flagstaff, in the rain.



Only a few more days before we wrap, and then my life can go back to normal for a few weeks. More pictures of Tom to come!

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22 Worst James Bond Movies Part 2

Trailer for the 1996 VHS box sets

14. The man with the Golden Gun

This is the one with the midget and christopher lee, right? Yep, that's the one, and its kinda crap. Not really bad, but just enough into the Moore-era Bond to seem pretty laughable. Oh, and Lee's villian, Scaramanga has a third nipple.

13. The Spy Who Loved Me

This is one of Roger Moore's better films, despite not being as memorable as Moonraker of Live and Let Die. Although it does feature a car with submarine mode, a feature only appreciate by the überüber-rich and super-spies alike.

12. From Russia with Love

Now don't get me wrong, there are a lot of reasons to place From Russia With Love higher on this list, and its got a lot of good qualities. But for me, the sillier James Bond is tops, and this cold war espionage tale can get a bit grating.

11. Diamonds Are Forever

Ahh, the return of Sean Connery after a disastrous turn from George Lazenby. 007 seems disinterested in the overly-ambitious plot and punctuations of over-the-top silliness that would soon become a staple of the series.

10. For Your eyes Only

I remember For Your Eyes Only being the first James Bond movie I watched a lot when I was a kid. For some reason this is the only one we owned on vhs before the box sets came out, maybe because the amount of skiing in it--but I can't be sure. Something about a greek shipping heir and him visiting his wife's grave. Snore.

9. A View To A Kill

This one has Christopher Walken acting extra crazy as a blonde in this post-Deer Hunter role with also-creepy Grace Jones as his sidekick. I can't really remember the specifics of the plot of this one, but I'm sure it has lots of explosions and shit to keep you midly entertained for 90 minutes. Too bad like most Bond flick this runs around 2 hours, leaving 30 minutes to sit on your hands (or dick around on the internets).

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Google Chrome Is Out!

Google released its browser today, Google Chrome. Its only available for windows currently, but mac and linux versions are apparently being developed. Now, I don't run windows because I don't want/need to. Using it at work is enough for my tastes. So, in the mean time, I'm running vmware fusion to emulate xp sp2. The nice thing about fusion is that it features "unity mode" which allows you to interact with windows applications as if they were running natively in os x.

I've been using chrome for about and hour and it seems pretty tight for a beta release. I've encountered a little weirdness with getting certain pages not loading properly (imdb, wikipedia-both of which I use constantly), but that's potentially because of the software emulation, not necessarily the browser. 

Although its quite impressive that google was able keep this under wraps until the day before it was released. Its a bit difficult to make an accurate comparison to Firefox 3, but at this point it would be hard to get me to switch from using firefox as my full time browser. Safari 3 is marginally faster than firefox at certain things (although I've never found them), but that hasn't converted me yet. I'll just have to see the benchmarks when they come out. 79 on the acid 3 test is pretty impressive! 

Hands down it'll be nice to see how Chrome will improve during the beta cycle.

On a personal note, I've been ridiculously busy working on Kris Koester's shoot this past week. Things have been going smoothely & I've definitely learned a ton being best boy grip. The downside is that I'm incredibly exhausted. Not tired, because I haven't been sleeping well, but just worn out from flipping my bodyclock on its head for 36 hours. On a the upside, the shoot is nearly halfway done. Here's a picture from the set this morning.

Hopefully I'll be able to post the trailer when its up (possibly the whole thing). Its a pretty good script, and the crew, cast and camera (courtesy of Uptown6) are all fantastic. 

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