"And the Dead keep it."

I really dont like to speak ill of the dead. Yes I agree the way Dime-Bag died was tragic and terrible. I would never wish a death like that a upon anyone even someone who was responsible for a band like Pantera. This is what sets me off, I'm a no news-media hound by any means, but when Dime-bag died I could'nt escape images of people mourning him. People coming up to me "sux about Dime-Bag." People lined up around the street to his house. I'm halfway convinced his death was responsible for me being late to work one day. Blogs everywhere mourning him.

But the news I have to actually go looking for is about the 60,000 dead. 60,000 dead almost just like that. Where are the fucking memorials for them and the mournings. We dont half-ways give a shit. I mean sure almost 500 million has been donated to aid. But I mean really is that a whole hell of a lot. I'm sure we've spent that much in a week on homeland security after the towers went down. We're spending 60 billion a month on that ridiculous ass-fuck of a war in Iraq.

Now some people would say that the Dime-Bag comparison isn't fair because that's a local thing he's from my hometown. Well that's my fucking problem. That's my fucking point. Since the 60,000 dead dont live within driving distance of an SUV's full tank a gas we dont care all that much. Sure we care, aww that's really sad. But for fuck's sake Priorities are so fucked here. If it happened to Americans it would be a national tragedy people would be putting some stupid sticker on their car or tying some flag to their tree. Instead a real global tragedy is treated with less emotion than a fuckin Super Bowl.

I've grown tired of politic discuission and the like but this is just one of those things that really shows what's important to the typical American lifestyle that says we take care of our own. What happend to caring about humanity and not nationality. fuck..

Kabbalah 1

I've been casually studying some Kabbalah works, recently. My interest was piqued, like many things by a guest on Terry Gross' radioshow Fresh Air. Arthur Green has recently put out A Guide to the Zohar. Hear the interview.

I'm currently reading Daniel C. Matt's Essential Kabbalah. He was interviewed by Gross as well as he has been recently charged with translating the Zohar to english. Quite a daunting task to be sure that will take an estimated 15 years. Interesting enough is that Matt is not a himself a kabbalist. But is one of the most educated on Jewish Mysticism in general. The Zohar is the primary text of the kabbalists.

The scary thing about all this is, is that the new age community as gotten a hold of this stuff, so there is a lot of bullshit to sift through. I generally stick to authors who have strong ties to the Rabbinical communities.

I'm particularly intrigued by Kabbalah for its inclusion of the feminine side of the deity and of existence. It is pantheistic in nature which in someways I think I've agreed with for a while now. But it could also be said to be Transtheistic. My spirituality has been pretty much stagnant for the past couple years. I generally shift into autopilot, and let the decent set of morals and compassion that was result from my "walk" take over general thought. But seeing as how I'll have 12 hours at a time to keep my mind busy. I might decide to take over the wheel again and see if there's any life left in some of the higher gears.

Holidaze are finally winding down. One last big hurrah tomorrow night, and I hope to enter a bit of a spartan like existence. I start the new job wednesday, so long as the piss test show up as clean as it should. I'll be driving a forklift around for 12 hours at a time. I'll work 4 days in a row then have 4 days off. I'll be working nights 5:30p to 5:30a. This change will be good, I think. I'll be spending my 4 day breaks picking up shifts as a waiter and kicking up production on the shorts. And the occasional traveling. It will be nice to have money again.

My pseudo-relationship is pseudo-killing me. It's like the best and worst kinda drug. Heaven when its available, hell when it's not. But this is just today. Eventually a conversation will come along and shoot my mood through the clouds. At least that's the way it's worked in the past.

New Year's will be bittersweet, another celebration with a hell of a lot of people I love. But not the one I love the most. The wait goes on..

The Arrival

I'm proud to anounce I have a name and a blog: Tussle. My first video endeavor which I'm writing/directing and acting in. Watch Tussle come to life. Also We still got The Black-Eyed Productions blog going on.

Finished first season of Deadwood today, great show. I particularly enjoyed a scene in the last episode in which the incredibly vicious Al Swearingen, showed mercy by bringing death to a person, when it is in the act of killing that Swearingen mostly appears so heartless.

Incoming.

I had the pleasure of seeing my friends' movie on the big screen last night at the Angelika. There were things I really liked and things I didn't which I hope shows at least some objectivity about it. I of course felt most attached to Yen's room, since that was the one set that I actually worked on and saw get shot. Deadroom will be showing at the Angelika again on the 27th of this month at 7:00 p.m. I'll be there.

One of the actors that was in the movie and that was at the screening played a small part in the upcoming Sin City movie where he gets his arm broken by Marv. I did by best to hide my geekafreak-out, when the actor was talking about the experience.

I've taken in a couple of movies these past couple days: La Dolce Vita, The Maltese Falcon, Notorious, and last and least Blade 3. I'll probably get around to commenting on them (if I haven't already.) And if your familiar with the cutest dog in the world, Honey Rose it's worth your 6 dollars to go see B3.

On another note. It feels really nice to put time and thought into something for someone very special. And have them call with a somewhat weepy voice and tell you how perfect it is. It makes me feel like the damn Heavyweight Champion of The World. It makes me want to make more things for more people. It's time to get to work.

Adaptation

I'm currently watching Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Bogart is good as Spade. The guy they got for Wilmur is uncannily like what I pictured in my head. Granted I heard the audiobook version of it. It's no doubt the reader was heavily influenced by the movie as much as the book. So far I'm pretty happy with the inclusions and omissions of the book. Recent book adapters should take note. Hell I'm not a Tolkien fanatic, but I still thought there were some huge things missing from Return of the King. I just don't know what was going on with that epilogue.

I've had this idea in the back of my head for a while now. I'd like to go find some old forgotten mystery novel and turn it into a movie. Maybe modernize it. Try my own hand at one of my biggest critiques of contemporary American cinema. I guess ROTK isn't necessarily American but you catch my drift.

I noticed David's mention of Oldboy over at his journal. So I checked out the trailer. It looks really cool. I'll have to figure out a way to check it out.

Gonna try to catch Blade: Trinity today. I don't expect much. Blade 2 was great, stylistically. Some of the best action in a while. I really liked it because it didn't rely to heavily on Asian fighting style which is really rare these days. Del Toro (the director) even managed to make a pro-wrestling style suplex look somewhat powerful. I don't expect I'll see so much in the third one but through the two mediocre-to-good movies I have become somewhat interested in the characters, one-dimensional as they are. I'm also not looking forward to the addition of the teen beat squad that apparently joins Blade on this adventure. But nonetheless I'm sure there are worst movies out there.

Jesus, Don't, Cry...: Now with (occasional) Torrent Links!

My latest bit of BitTorrent excess has been the D/l of Fade to Bluegrass: The Bluegrass tribute to Metallica (torrent). Now I'm no big fan of Metallica, and I dont have any other bluegrass in my Itunes partyshuffle. But Metallica's hits sound oddly enough very at home in this bluegrass rendition. Hell even the lyrics that somewhat intrigued me as a barely post-pubescent boy, make for a somewhat mythological romp through the old backcountry in this setting. If only the crooner would release himself from Hetfield's particular delivery even the ridiculous "Fuel" could be listened to without the required laugh at the MachoManSavageness of it.

I'm also rediscovering The Silver Jews (torrent). You should too (torrent).

I just finished watching the second season of The Wire. It was a great story once again and I cant wait to catch up with the currently running 3rd season. The climax of both seasons are very anticlimatic. Which leaves you emotionally frustrated but that's the point. It seems to me like Simon kind of gives you one episode at the end of the season which does'nt so much wrap things up, but still acts like an epilogue. It's great when a movie or TV show is willing to go beyond the credits rolling. In a way nothing really changes. Things move on. Life goes on. Somethings better. Somethings worse. It's the ocean returning to its natural state after, Moby Dick and Ahab have sunk beneath its surface. It reminds me of Tim's monolouge towards the end of The Office which I wont go into in case anyone reading this, hasn't seen it. Which brought tears to my eyes.

New Blogs

All development on the action trilogy will be soon available at the Black-Eyed Productions blog. I'm gonna try to work on some formatting for it tonight and hopefully it will be seeing some more action within the next couple of days. Certainly by the end of the week. Hopefully we will also be getting posts from my co-conspirators on the project Jason and Aaron.

Also I will be developing the Dirty Channel Radio blog into activity in the coming weeks. "What is Dirty Channel Radio?" you may well ask. Well I'll tell you. It is the UTA Radio show that I have been involved with the past year every wednesday night. We are currently on hiatus till next semester. This past semester was a bit of a struggle for all of us involved once again being Jason and Aaron. With my late arrival from my Beach sabattical and other high-stress events. But we ended on a high note. I was also struck by the idea to create the blog during the last show so we will have the opportunity to do live updates during the show including links to whatever content we will be talking about, since it is an Internet radio show after all.

I'm currently reading a lot of things. The two big ones right now are a new Bio on Cary Grant and the other is The Corner by David Simon and Edwards Burns (creators of The Wire).

Also a book on HTML. As I'm breaking down and finally learning a bit so I cant format these blogs a little better. I want to be able to add links and change the overall look. So we'll see.

On the personal side of things. Which BTW you will be seeing more of here since I'm moving two big creative endeavors to other blogs. Things are going well. I just need to hear back that I got this new job and I'll be set on my way to having a full go at this life thing and maybe with a bit of spoils from the fight hard fought.

This whole BitTorrent thing is a whole lot bigger than I ever could have imagined. I found it odd that I'm only know finding out about it. Considering I was a beta-tester for the first consumer ISP in the DFW back in the early 90s. I've really fallen out of touch with the whole telecommunications world. Not that this is necessarily news to me. Just the fact that something this big has gone completely unnoticed. I mean I was still there with the first IMing software ICQ. My email dates back to years before microsoft acquired hotmail. But I guess come to think of it I was a pretty late bloomer on p2p in general. I only napstered for maybe a season before it came under mass-scrutiny. But I digress...

The whole idea of BitTorrent presents some very interesting opportunities. I think about developing free content and distro through BitTorrent. Like the rest of p2p sharing most content is the popular stuff. Major labels and indies. It has I think definitely bolstered indie sales but that still has its roots in word-of-mouth. I think it would be cool to have this whole network of somewhat distinguished tastes and present my content and receive feedback. I think that in a way this is already in place. I've recently registered at LokiTorrent where the forum not only contains links to torrents but discussions about the content. Wouldn't it be neat to have a venue for guys like me who put out a film and be able to get feedback from such a large pool of interested viewers. I guess that would be the initial problem would be getting members in to the pool who were willing to take the good with the bad. I'm sure there's such communities in various form for various media. But I think something that harnesses a force as poweful as BitTorrent could make for a very interesting community.

Then there's the whole sneaky idea of just dropping a torrent of my content on a certain community like it's something big and hoping to get some feedback from people expecting next month's big blockbuster like most movie torrents with lots of seeds are.


Also I decided Neil Young's Cortez the Killer will have a huge influence on the look and feel of the trilogy.

I will also be soon creating a Black-Eyed Productions blog so I can separate content of my own personal views and the more objective work of the film. Of which Aaron Martin and Jason Mueller will also be able to post to.