Weed Demon

This little bugger lodged itself into the thin sole of one of my cheapie Target sneakers on my way home today. It's not that little actually. In fact, it's one of the bigger ones I've seen, about 1/2 inch from tip to tip. They look so evil with their big horns/thorns. This one looks a little like the evil Stripe from the Gremlins. I've had many a flat bike tire due to these little pricks.

Drink + Fire + Friends

There was me, that is Rudy, and my three droogies, that is Pachooee, Keems, and Dim and we sat in the Indiglo patio smoker trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The offerings of the evening began with the Absente. Absente plus Amaretto Silk, plus expired cold coffee mixed-in. This would sharpen you up for a bit of the the ol' political BeeEssin' and nonsensicals that would stretch the ol' gulliver to a gloopy eggiweg.

It had been a wonderful evenin', me brothers, and what we needed now to give it a perfect ending was an urgent yarble cloppin' bit of the ol' Foreigner and the aquatic and animal humping sounds of Sven Libaek. Oh, my brothers, it came. Oh bliss, bliss and heaven, oh it was gorgeousness and georgeosity made flesh...


Corrugated metal patio covering and ominous sky.

Obstruction Collection

As an attempt to get creative, I'm compiling a list of obstructions. Let me explain. In the Lars Von Trier film The Five Obstructions, the director challenges one of his film heroes, Jorgen Leth, to recreate his own short film The Perfect Human, five different times, each with rigid restrictions set forth by Von Trier. Check out the trailer here. The film is inspiring. Perhaps Von Trier was trying to see if his hero would fail with these restrictions, but he actually comes away with brilliant results.

I enjoy creating with limitations and some of my favorite projects have been from a result of having a limited pallet. So I'm trying to come up with a list of (hopefully) a couple hundred obstructions that can be applied to short film projects specifically. I was inspired by The Five Obstructions as well as Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies Cards. And my friend Senta does something similar on her blog every week where she makes an illustration based on a single word.

I've started a list of about 30 or 40. Here is a selection of some of the obstructions I have so far:

Tell a story in 10 seconds or less
No edits, all one take in camera
Use only shadows
Focus on something embarrasing
Adapt someone else’s dream

The idea is to pick 2 or 3 randomly and combine them, unless they contradict one another of course, then create something new on a regular basis. Maybe once every couple weeks. Who knows? I am still compiling the list, and I'm open to any of your suggestions. I would really like to hear them. So please respond. Thanks.

Autumn Song(s)

Ho hum, another 7 days of low to mid 80's weather. No clouds, just big round sun shapes (the news 7 day forecast graphic). Autumn is here, technically, but it keeps teasing us. Then summer keeps hangin' round like a subcutaneous pimple that won't go away.

I am so ready for Autumn, my favorite time of year. Not so much in the old days, when "fall" meant "school", and school was just something that took up too many hours of my days before being able to come home and watch cartoons. Now it's all different, everyday is 8 to 5, and Autumn is something to look forward to. If it ever gets here. Up yours summer.

Some great Autumn songs and albums to get me in spirit of the season:
Nick Drake (all of his albums, that's him up above)
The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society
Badly Drawn Boy - Hour of Bewilderbeast
David Bowie - Hunky Dory
'The Gnome' by Pink Floyd
Van Morrison - Moondance

There are lots more, and they're not all British, I swear.

Have you ever noticed how many movies set in New York take place in Autumn? Quite a few.

Here's a crummy compressed representation of a short vid my friend Christian and I made a few years ago, celebrating Autumn.

Pack Rat

I have a problem. I'm a bit of a pack rat...and I'm trying to get better. Once in a while, I'll feel like throwing almost everything out - pretend I have to live out of a suitcase. Yesterday we rearranged our house, and once again I found a bunch of things I forgot I had. But I can't get rid of all this shit, because what if I need it someday? Like this here shoulder strap case that holds a portable tape player. It's a bit bulky and dumb looking, and who uses tape players anymore? But what if I need it? Say, in the future my I pod quits and I so does my CD player? Or what if I need it to hold some batteries? I can use it to hold chapstick or sunscreen even - hey!

Anyway, it's this kind of thought that keeps me from getting rid of stuff. Plus, if it doesn't go in the landfill, what other person is gonna want it? What about VHS tapes? Once in a while I'll pull out a tape and watch it, usually home videos or stuff recorded off TV. But what about the hundreds of movies I have still? Most of this stuff is on DVD now. I can give them away, but thrift stores are full of VHS tapes that no one wants. Damn this new technology. Screw you digital! But some of these tapes I have to keep - for posterity. Like this one, which I have never watched all the way through.



This is the Magic Star Traveler, a budget store special I'm guessing. I'm guessing because it was a gift, which also makes it hard to get rid of. It's a gift from mi amigo Andy. How can I throw this out? It's so damn funny - just the cover alone, and like I said I haven't taken the time to watch it, aside from a few minutes. Andy and I used to have this challenge. This is the kind of drug-free fun we'd come up with in pre-digital age Utah. We'd go to the local video store and make up an imaginary line in the center of the store. Each of us would pick a side and try to find the best video cover possible. When I say best, I mean the funniest, cheesiest, you know. The best to date was The Revenge of Johnny Firecloud.




The cover was so bad, we just had to rent it. The movie was lame. The cover had it all, why watch the film? You might not tell from this blurry image (the only one I could find), but that trooper getting scalped looks like he's enjoying it. And Johnny Firecloud doesn't look like that dude on the cover by the way.

Anyway, this Magic Star Traveler would have been a contender had it been in the video store. As I was scanning the cover of this tape, I noticed the label on the actual cassette. Just a plain printed label that says Magic Star Traveler Vol. 1 - plain type on white. Then I noticed something printed underneath on the cassette. I peeled the white label off and found the true original identity of the tape: ESPN Fitness Pros, recycled into "Magic Star Traveler". By the way, it's an "Award Winner", just look at the cover.

Maybe I should just scan or take photos of these items, so I can just get rid of them once and for all. Then they can all go into the great landfill - like that Grandaddy song, Broken Household Appliance National Forest.

Did you ever hear the story about the landfill made up of E.T. Atari games? There were several hundred thousand game cartridges that wouldn't sell, even though the movie was huge. I guess the game just blew and no one bought it. So now there are tons of E.T. games buried somewhere in the New Mexico desert.

A Long Way Down

We've seen a bunch of movies this summer - a bunch. But I want to tell you about a couple that Em and I checked out at the Broadway Cinema, which is one of my favorite places in SLC to see flicks (generally no crowds, no kids, no a-holes showing up 20 minutes into the movie usually). We saw The Fall earlier this summer, on my birthday actually. Yes, that was a few months ago, but now it's on video (dvd, etc.) for you to check out. It's one of my favorite movies of the summer and I said to Em, "that's one of my favorite movies of the summer", and she said "yeah, I barely remember it". But, didn't you read this cuz you want to know what I have to say?

Let me tell you about this movie. There's this fella Tarsem, he's the director. You remember the REM video Losing My Religion? Well, he did that video way back in the early nineties. And since then, that movie the Cell with Jaylow. Not a bad movie, but this is much better. Synopsis: A girl with a cast on her arm meets a fella with broken legs in the hospital. He tells her a story, little bits at a time. But he's on pain medication, so the story is a little non-linear and messy. There's more to it than that, and I won't tell you everything. Just look at the trailer (link above). If you remember from the REM video, there were lots of people posed nicely in elaborate costumes and the photography was top notch. That's like this movie, but there's acting - and a story.

A couple things I'd like to point out that made it worthwhile: the little girl who is the star of the movie is so good. It's one of the best child performances I've seen in a long time. The opening and closing sequences of the movie are awesome. You really need to watch the ending of the movie - it makes everything else make sense in a way, and not in a cop-out M. Night Shyamalan kind of way.



We saw Man on Wire more recently. It's a documentary about this guy Phillipe Petit who successfully rigged and walked a high wire between the Twin Towers in the early 70's. You see, he was successful, he lived to tell about it along with all of his buddies who helped him plan this stunt for several years. Much of the movie is told in recreations and talking heads, but it's an inspiring story. Em liked this one a lot, as did I. Maybe that's worth something. In fact, there might have been some dust in the theatre during this movie, and in The Fall. I do get weepy in the movies. It's a family trait.

There was a power outage actually. There was a nasty storm that came through and shut off the power about 5 minutes before the end. But it came back on...whew.

This American Life T-shirt

This is a shirt design I created for the This American Life t-shirt contest. They announced the winner a few weeks ago, and this wasn't it.

This was one of two designs I submitted. When I realized they accepted up to 3 designs per person, I hurried and made a second design (both were done a few hours before the deadline). Strangely enough, the second design - considered by me to be a half-assed afterthought and my second favorite of the two, made it onto TAL staff choice shortlist. Here it is posted with the winners:

TAL t-shirt contest

I really like the winning design with the car radio. There are a few others that are quite nice too. The light blue shirt with the simple red text about halfway down: that's the other design I entered.

12 Years Old, and No 6-Pack?!?!

This is a section from an ad in the back of a comic book, circa 1978. I always wondered how all the cool kids got "ripped".

You See What Happens...?

Saw the Coen Bros.' Burn After Reading this weekend. Twas good, uneven and hilarious at times, with some great performances. Lots of people are comparing it to The Big Lebowski, another goofy and uneven Coen Bros. I'm sure most of you know the film The Big Lebowski. If you haven't seen it, and you know who you are, please give it a try. It's a classic that just gets better upon repeated viewings.

Some people are offended by the "F-bombs" in such films - I understand the aversions to foul language, and this one has lots. Which brings me to the wonderful alternate film version - the version you can see on broadcast television. The version without the swearwords. Although trying to edit the swearwords in a movie like Lebowski is like shaving the sideburns off of Neil Diamond. There would be an obvious lack of...something.

Below is a clip from the television edit of The Big Lebowski. If you haven't seen the original film, the John Goodman character, Walter, is yelling "you see what happens when you f**k a stranger in the a**! From what I understand, the ever smartass Coen Brothers actually approved, perhaps even wrote, the alternate tv edit dialogue in this scene. Check it out:

Balls and Chains

I'm no expert on classic hard rock. I was briefly a "rocker", as my fellow Jr. High students would say, in the late 80's (mullet included). But my hard rock education lasted only 3-4 years, then it was a downward spiral into so-called "queer music" like Prince, David Bowie and a bunch of other stuff.

I still like some good ol' rockers, like this one from AC/DC in the late 70's Bon Scott era. With the pre-fab rocker look all the rage now, complete with never ending tattoos, piercings, body waxing, Hot Topic accessories, etc, it's good to see some classic, dirty DIY rock and roll. At first glance, it appears Bon Scott has upper and lower arm hair, awesome!! But those are, in fact, tattoos. Oh well, his clothes are pretty BAD-ASS.

Cat got my Peeps.

Thanks for visiting my blog page. Here is the inaugural image. My cat got into a package of Peeps a couple years ago, but didn't make it far. Apparently, gouging out the one eye and gnawing on the face was plenty.