Another reason for change

Many thanks to Jennifer Jajeh for bringing this to my attention.

Fulbright scholarship winner denied access to U.S., and his education.

Let's stop with the spook show, people. If you're going to screw someone over, let's at least let them know why. This kind of seemingly random douchebaggery doesn't do any good for anybody.

Palin

I have to admit, I'm a bit baffled by McCain's decision to name Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The obvious answer is that he's hoping to lure Clinton supporters. For some people who were only going to support Hillary because she was female... that might work.

But McCain's campaign has relied heavily on pointing out Obama's lack of experience in Washington, and Palin is a first term governor with only two years experience in that office. If experience is a key point of McCain's campaign, then why bring on someone with no national experience to be your running mate?

Obama is heavily stressing the environment in his campaign, and Palin is married to an oil production operator and vocally supports drilling in the Alaskan wilderness.

McCain keeps trying to distance himself from the image of continuing business as usual in Washington, and he chooses a running mate with direct family ties to the oil industry.

Palin won the Governorship based on ethics reform, and yet a staff member of hers tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired off the police force during a bitter custody trial. She claims that she had nothing to do with it, but the whole thing rings of "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest" to me.

Of course, this doesn't even begin to raise the point that Alaska, saddled with deeply corrupt politicians, finally elects someone who promises to turn the state around... and essentially jumps ship on the state during her first term to run for Vice-President.

Other Fringe goodness

For those of you in town, Sweetie Tanya songwriter Thessaly Lerner will be up here doing a show for the Fringe Festival.

Here's the info:

Dear Friendsies!
Thessaly Lerner, The Ukulady and her Russian Nanny, played by Jayne Entwistle, are coming to the San Francisco Fringe Festival in The Ukulady's Ponyshow!!!!
WHAT:
The Ukulady's Ponyshow, a variety extravaganza which ran for 9 months in Hollywood! Every show has a different Special Guest and theme, such as Fake Moustaches & Corndogs! Nanny carves a different award-winning potato every show & The Ukulady sings songsies!!
WHEN:
September 5th, Friday at 7pm SHARP! Featuring Susan McCollom & Don Seaver
September 6th, Saturday at 1pm SHARP! Featuring The NeoSurrealists!
September 7th, Sunday at 7pm SHARP! Featuring Gerri Lawlor & Sam Shaw!
September 12th, Friday at 7pm SHARP! Featuring The Whistleaires & Don Seaver!
September 13th, Saturday at 2:30pm SHARP! Featuring OPM & Don Seaver!
September 14th, Sundat at 4pm SHARP! Featuring Gerri Lawlor, Don Seaver & Sam Shaw!
WHERE:
EXIT Theater, San Francisco Fringe Festival! 156 Eddy Street in SF, between Mason & Taylor!
NO LATE SEATING!!! ZERO Late-seating-policy! BE EARLY!!!!
Tickets available at:
www.SFFringe.org
$9 at the door, $11 online

www.ThessalyLerner.com
www.myspace.com/TheUkulady
www.youtube.com/ThessalyLerner

iScan rush

I haven't actually written much here lately. It's been mostly the link thing.

This is mostly because this week has been more of the same. Work has been busy, rehearsals for iScan have been going well, and everything has become a bit of a blur.

It's actually a good confirmation that I need to take a break from theatre for a while. It's not that I don't still really enjoy it. I do. But the wake-work-rehearse-sleep pattern becomes something like a trance state. This week just ... vanished.

The show, however, is turning out VERY nicely. I'm extremely pleased with the cast and am growing to like the depths of the script more and more as we explore it.

Come on opening night, if at all possible. We have a show opening weekend, and then we have three shows at the end of the festival. So, word of mouth has to happen on that first show. If people see a big crowd moving into Exit on Taylor on opening night, we've got a better chance to get good houses for our last three shows.

Here's the data:
EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street, San Francisco (between Eddy & Ellis))
FRIDAY 5 8:30 PM
THURSDAY 11 8:30 PM
FRIDAY 12 10:00 PM
SUNDAY 14 1:00 PM
TICKETS: $9

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No other news per se. I spent much of this weekend helping Radiostarlet Brianne Kostielney move into her new digs in the city, and got to visit Elizabeth and Jay Creeley's place last night. (What, Jay, you thought you got to keep your last name?)

Next week will be a blur, and then we do tech and opening. Keep me in your thoughts and come see the show!

Biden Ballyhoo

Thanks to David Austin-Groen for this link.

I don't know much about Biden, but I like what I see. He's not the most careful speaker in the world, but I like where he's coming from for the most part.

at least so far.

late the party

This has probably been passed around so much that it's passé, but I still found it pretty funny.

I'm not a huge Will Ferrell fan, but I really like the fact that he's producing his own internet content.

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

Hands off

Mike Sugarbaker drew my attention to this article about sexual harassment at Comic-Con. I'm linking to it here because, as small as my readership is, the more people who are aware of this kind of thing the more likely the folks that run the Con will institute a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment of attendees and guests and provide a means for people to report this kind of behavior and have it acted on.

Personally, I don't know if I'll go back to the Con. I enjoy it, but it's expensive as hell to stay in San Diego and the Con is geared towards a much more plugged-in kind of geek. I don't watch TV and most of my comics reading is purely online. I find myself on the fringes of fandom.

If I was more of a toy-buyer, anime-collector, or erotic fantasy art curator, there might be more of a draw for me. As it is, my experience if cons is directly related to who I am hanging out with while sight-seeing.

Basically, Comic Conventions are a lot like Vegas for me in that sense....

The Teen Wolf you never knew

Greg Ayers drew my attention to this.
It actually took me a few minutes to catch what they were doing, it's been so long since I saw the movie.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Bonnie Erbe is my hero

Got this off of David Austin-Groen's Blog (which looks a lot like Chris DeJong's Noticer, which makes them, like, twins or something).

I've been without television for several years now, and this is part of the reason why. Entertainment will come out on DVD eventually if it's any good, and the news coverage isn't news at all. We're literally watching two different conversations, and while she acknowledges him, the Fox news anchor doesn't give any indication that he's listening to a word she's saying.

Utterly pathetic.

and Bonnie Erbe is currently my hero.

Basement Brothel

I just found out that the hippie sex business in the basement got evicted.

Maybe I should explain a bit. When I first moved in here, I needed to track down the apartment manager but couldn't find her phone number. I did Google search on my address, hoping to come across the original listing for the building. I found it, but I also found other listings for my address. One of which was for a very Berkeley-esque massage service that offered tantric services and nude couples massage in "the womb". The Womb was what how they referred to their apartment, which was located in my basement.

I, of course, found this to be hilarious. I really don't care that there's sex workers working in my building. Catching the odd client looking nervous and befuddled in front of the building was a great source of amusement. It was they way they were marketing themselves as a hippie massage-spiritual healing center that really gave me the giggle-fits. I'm all for spiritual sexuality, but I've found people who use their spirituality as a pick-up line to be skeezier than jocks at Marina bars. Spiritual sex, for me, is something that takes place in the midst of a deep and meaningful relationship. It's not something you drop $300 on a stranger for.

I've been using the plural, because that was my understanding of the situation. It seems that it was just a guy working as a male escort, but he had a long string of "girlfriends" who were apparently there purely an a professional basis.

I never mentioned it to anyone else in the building. Really, how he makes his money is his business and I have friends who have made their living in similar ways. I didn't want to be the asshole who got him evicted. I did have a hard time keeping the smirk off my face whenever we ran into each other doing laundry (which he, of course, did all the time).

I noticed signs up for apartment showings, and as I headed out for an emergency grocery-get quarters for laundry run I saw the manager. This is when I found out which apartment was being shown. She gave me a tour. It's a nice place. The ceilings are low, as befits a basement apartment, but it has hardwood floors, and an enormous long room in the back that would be an ideal dance studio or rehearsal room. If it wasn't for my lease on the Off-Market rehearsal room, I'd rent the place simply as a rehearsal studio. My pockets aren't that deep, however.

It seems that the combination of increased business for the basement brothel, combined with a routine fire code inspection, blew the lid off the operation and our friendly neighborhood sexworker got evicted. Apparently there was just a little too much velour to be perfectly safe... regardless of the context.

I'm a bit concerned that whoever we get to replace the last tenant won't be as colorful, but I'm heartened to hear that a couple of scientists are looking at the apartment. If I'm in luck, there will be explosions and abominations of nature lurking by the washer and dryer in no time.

Journals

More links than blog posts lately. Sorry about that.

Still, this is delightful. Animator versus Animation.

In other news, I saw 1000 Journals last night at the Roxie with my friend Maria. It's a very nice documentary about a remarkable project.

Basically a man sent 1000 journals out into the world. People were supposed to fill as much or little of them as they wanted, then leave them someplace for the next person to find and do the same. When the journals were filled, they were to be returned to the man who started the project. People could send unfinished journals back to be scanned and then sent back out into the world. As word rapidly spread, a tracking website was developed, and enormous waiting lists for the journals queued up.

Only a few of the journals have been sent back, and 95% of them are out in the world... unknown.

At the encouragement of people who have become tied to the project, 1001 Journals as been born. People can start their own journals and send them out into the world. Start a journal and it's your responsibility. You become the contact person for people who want to work in it, or want to send it in for scanning and you're the one that will get it back when it's done... if it's ever returned.

I was sitting in the theatre, thinking that I should make a journal, when Maria turned to me and said "I'm going to make one. I'll send it to you first."

I'm very excited about it, and I hope that she makes the journal soon. I suggested that the instructions in the journal indicate that the last person to fill the journal should return it to the person they got it from, and that person will to the same, so that everyone who as touched it will be able to see what happened, and hold it again. This also has the side benefit of encouraging people to give the journal to someone they feel will actually return it eventually. Many of the stories in the film talk about people agonizing over giving the journal to someone they didn't really know, and it vanishing from the system at that point.

Seriously, 1,000 journals, and only about 30 can be accounted for as of the making of the film.

It's super cool, and I'll post the link to Maria's Journal when she makes it, in case you want to be on a waiting list. (i.e. if there's a list, you'll be expected to send it on to the next person on the list, or the person you give it to has to promise to do so.)

Apart from that, things are moving along as they always do. I'm trying to find the lead for the show I'm directing for the Fringe Festival, but refusing to panic about it. I made a breakthrough on the 411 screenplay and got an hour's worth of writing in yesterday. I'm making the puppets in Flash for the next Radiostar cartoon (which will be 33% longer than the last ones have been, so it'll probably take an extra week to get it done). Work is going well, and I generally couldn't be happier.

Addictions

Ok, I got hooked on The Guild and Retarded Policeman this morning.

The Guild starts off a little weak, but is one of those shows that gets funnier and funnier the more time you spend with it.

Retarded Policeman seems like a one note joke, but almost every show brings something new to the formula.
I'm embedding what is, in my mind, the pinnacle of the show. Retarded Policeman versus Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan's Laybrynth)

New Cartoon

I'm down in San Diego at the universe's biggest Comic Convention (175,000 people today).

But I've got the new cartoon done!


Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAW

The Government Controls your Dreams

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I had a dragon. I was an independent "pilot" who was waiting for a client at a landing area. There were a lot of people who needed a flight, but there was a strike at the airport and I wouldn't cross the picket line... except for my client, because I had seen the future through some device that showed me taking the client to her destination.

Crazy stuff, but after I hit the snooze on my alarm, I went back into the dream.

I still had the dragon, but was trying to figure out a way to get FCC approval for flights, since I didn't have (or need) a pilot's license to ride my dragon. I needed portable radio for talking to air towers, and a way to get the license without turning the dragon over to the government. Dragons don't exist, after all, and they'd probably want to either dissect him or appropriate him for military use.

So yeah, I spent the rest of my dream trying to get around government paperwork.

Once I woke up fully, I decided this wasn't as odd as it seems. Most of my "fantastic" fiction take a concept like, say, owning a dragon, and taking it to it's logical conclusion in the real world. All good things become bad things over time, just as many bad things can become good things over time. Also, even as a kid, my dragon fantasies where always grounded in practicality. Ever since reading the Pern books, I had daydreams of dragons... but they mostly revolved around how I would feed the thing.

It seemed very expensive.

Irony? You're soaking in it!

While I worked today, I listened to the latest mixes of the Sweetie Tanya soundtrack. Some of the songs are about as near to perfect as I can imagine them being. Others are very good, but still on their way. It's a thrill and a half to listen to these. They're so damn good, and I think it'll be a real treat for fans of the show, and will hopefully result in our being able to sell the show to other companies and make even more fans.

I did take a break to head down to the DMV and not only renewed my driver's license (55 minute wait, 5 minutes of interacting with the personnel) and got a parking ticket at the same time. I drive once a month, and boom.

Well, there you go.

Man in a suit

I saw Hellboy 2 last night and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I was quite stunned today to find out that the character of wink wasn't done with CGI. I've gotten so used to amazing creatures on films being done that way, that it never occurred to me what I was really seeing.

Headlines and statements

Like a lot of people I was appalled when I heard that Obama was supporting the bill that grants telecoms retroactive amnesty for wiretapping.

So I went looking for more information. Here's the full statement.

In particular, this phrase struck me. "It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. "

So, yeah, Obama is supporting what he considers a flawed, sub-optimal bill but acknowledges a major problem with it that he will continue to try to get fixed. Unfortunately, that's about all he can do right now. I am glad to hear that he still acknowledges that allowing retroactive immunity is wrong and will continue to strive towards something that meets our ideals and get something on the table that ends Bush's violations NOW.

This situation reinforces, more than anything, my distrust of our own media. The headlines I saw suggested very strongly that Obama was supporting amnesty for telecoms, but that's not the case at all.

From Cranky to Mushy

Feeling less curmudgeony today.

In fact, I'm even going to post this link that Sam Blanchard sent me.

Awwwwww

grouch

I think I need to change some gears somewhere. I went to bed grouchy last night and woke up cantankerous.

Objectively, I can understand it. I've had a lot of frustrations lately, most of which of an organizational nature, but also some of an artistic origin. Last minute reschedules that throw a carefully balanced day out of whack and even threaten to scuttle the work of a half dozen people, too many things on the same day so that I barely see the sun, hours spent reviewing material that ultimately isn't fruitful... it's not wonder I'm a bit cumudgeony. Still, I look at my behavior, and my mood, and know that I could be handling things more gracefully.

I'm too invested, if such a thing make sense. I take my own challenges and frustrations too much to heart. I feel responsible for everything, so when I encounter an obstacle to things working properly I feel that it's my fault or my job to make it right immediately. When people behave in a way that upsets my sense of order, or courtesy, I seethe but attempt to maintain a politic front because I feel that venting my spleen will damage the work.

My world is becoming very narcissistic. I have the power to make it work, or I have the power to destroy it all. This is making for a very grouchy Dan. Also a hypocritical one, at least artistically, as I had pointed out to me last night after Radiostar.

June and July are supposed to be my vacation months, but I'm not feeling particularly refreshed right now. Ironically, I have a lot of things to be happy about. The Sweetie Tanya CD is coming along nicely, and in truth Steve Kahn is the mastermind behind making it all work right now. As producer, most of what I've been doing is trying to assist with scheduling and people wrangling to make sure that the work can get done smoothly. The new animated version of Radiostar is eagerly embraced, and I really enjoy doing them. The short piece I've agreed to direct for the Fringe Festival in September is half cast (as opposed to half-caste, which would be a whole different kettle of fish) with my first choices, and the script is shaping up nicely.

But despite it all, I'm feeling surly.

I need to re-embrace the idea of vacation in July, and find the fun again.

Video made sweet love to the Radiostar