If You're Looking for Cosmo Kramer Pics...

You've come to the right place!

For the last week or so my lil' blog-thing here has been heavily trafficked by people from around the globe looking for pictures of Kramer from Seinfeld.

See, many moons ago (a year I think), I wrote a little story about my hair. To illustrate how my hair looked ten years ago I included a picture of Kramer.

So, I'd like to say hello to all you unsuspecting visitors from Uruguay or Poland or New Zealand or wherever.

Please, take your coat off and stay awhile.

For The Completist In Me

When it comes to my favorite directors I have always tried to track down every film they ever made, especially their early student films. I remember being very excited when I was in college and came across a VHS copy of Martin Scorsese's "Who's That Knocking At My Door?", his first feature-length film. At that point I had seen almost every film he'd made and this discovery brought me one step closer to seeing them all. Later in my college career I was able to find a VHS of "Italianamerican" and "The Big Shave". With the recent release of two Scorsese collections on DVD, I was ever closer. At this point the only two films of Scorsese's I hadn't seen were his first two student films. I figured that eventually, someone would put them out on DVD as an extra or something.

Luckily for me, there is YouTube. You can find just about anything on there. And, as luck would have it, I was able to finally see those two student films.

I am amazed at the density of these two very short pieces. He shows his talent very early. One of the common traits of the student films I've tracked down is that they're all pretty bad. Which always made me feel good. Because my student films weren't that good either, and I thought, "If they could eventually make it, so can I!"

On the other hand, Martin Scorsese was Martin Scorsese from the moment he picked up a camera, apparently.

What's A Nice Girl Like You Doing In A Place Like This?


It's Not Just You, Murray Pt. 1


It's Not Just You, Murray Pt. 2

New Schedule

Well, they've switched me to more "human" hours at work, coming in at 6pm rather than 11:30pm. Which means I will have to readjust to a new sleep schedule as well. Not bad though.

I am hoping to get more writing done in the wee hours after I get home. I am usually awake for a few hours when I get off work, and if I am getting home at 4 am rather than 10 am, there won't be anyone I know online to distract me. Started writing a few treatments for movie ideas I've had kicking around my head for the last year or so. Maybe I can finally focus on them and get some scripts written.

I've also been scanning old artwork and pictures and posting them to my Flickr account. Started putting together a series of "Bored At Work" drawings, since that is usually when I sketch the most anyway. The most interesting stuff, at least. If I sit down to actually work on something I don't usually tap into the same creative wells I do when I'm bored and killing time at work. I've collected pages and pages of stuff over the years, so why not put them all in one place, right?

Browsing through my collection I found some sketches I did in 1983. They are illustrations for a short story I was writing about a monster who killed kids in their sleep:




Yeah, I was fascinated by disturbing images from an early age...

Speaking of twisted stuff, I saw a great little movie this weekend: an old Swedish exploitation film from the 70s called "They Call Her One Eye". It's about a woman who is raped by an old man when she is a child, becomes mute, grows up, is kidnapped by a pimp who gets her hooked on heroin and has her turning tricks in his bordello, after he gouges out one of her eyes. He sends a fake letter to her parents, pretending to be her and tells them how much she hates them. They commit suicide and finally "One Eye" has had enough and goes postal. But only after she trains in sharpshooting and karate and how to race cars. This film was apparently one of the many inspirations for Tarantino's "Kill Bill". Good stuff.

After The Fact

Here's a cartoon that someone who attended the play "Jungle Woman of the Jungle" drew up after seeing it:



I am the mustached guy in the cage.

Bump and Grindhouse

Spike TV has a trailer for the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez '70s exploitation movie tribute Grindhouse online right here.

I wanted to see it the moment it was announced a year ago. Now...I can't wait!

Rose McGowan as a one-legged stripper with a machine-gun for a pegleg? I want to reserve tickets right now.

Punk Rock and Tofu

A few years ago I happened upon a Craigslist posting looking for an editor in Brooklyn who used Final Cut Pro to edit an episode of a punk rock-themed vegan cooking show. Well, I was vegetarian, I lived in Brooklyn, I used Final Cut Pro, and I'm more than a little familiar with the punk rock.

So I called.

And thus began a four month long disaster.

I had just moved to New York and this was my first editing gig here. In fact, it was really my first editing gig anywhere. Aside from my own films and videos (which were numerous) I didn't have much experience. I was just learning FCP. I'm still learning, in fact.

So it was a trial by error sort of deal. I was paid $100 for the episode. I figured it would take me a few weeks to finesse. However, my computer decided to crash, and I had to replace the hard-drive. Then my mini-DV cam, which I was using as a capture deck, didn't want to be left out and went on the fritz as well. I had to replace the camera's motherboard.

Eventually I had a pretty wobbly rough cut. They had grown tired of the delays and sent an actual editor friend of theirs to rescue the footage. I pretty much lost touch with them after they got the footage back and I never got to see the finished episode.

Last night I searched around to see if they had it posted anywhere. What I was able to find were the two music segments from the show, which were two of the parts I actually enjoyed working on. The band that performed on the episode I edited was The Cuban Cowboys and they have the "videos" posted on their website. The songs are "Mentiroso" and "El Jardin de la Verdad".

I also discovered, as you can see in the "El Jardin" clip, that I am listed as the editor in the credits, but that they spelled my name wrong!

But then...who doesn't spell my name wrong?

A Zombie Halloween

Normally, I am dead-set against remakes of classic horror films. Basically because they've all been disappointing. One of my favorite movies of all time, horror or otherwise, is the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And the remake that came out a few years ago was completely pointless and poorly made. I feel bad for younger viewers for whom the remake was their first introduction to the movie.

However, I am interested in seeing what Rob Zombie does with the Halloween remake, or "re-imagining", he has in the works.

I'll look the other way for some filmmakers.

Scorsese did a brilliant job of "re-imagining" a perfectly good Hong Kong action film. So...