I don't write much on here - I guess because I don't really know anyone personally on this site.
So I'll just write to fuckin' write.

Life is good. Still editing at Digital FX here in Baton Rouge. Going to be working on the new Avid Symphony very soon, all the while a new studio will be built in our existing parking lot, as well as adding on to the building (new editing, sound, and animation suites and a pretty sweet screening room).
This means that we should be the biggest and the most capable production/post house in the region. We should be getting a lot more movie work because of that.
I was also due a pay raise about now but because of the afore mentioned construction the boss said we'll have to be living lean for the next year 'till we start getting some even bigger jobs rolling in (we already do pretty well and have some very high-profile clients - one of which is Steven Soderbergh's [the director of Traffic, Erin Brockovich, The Limey, Out of Sight, Sex Lies & Videotape, Ocean's 11, etc.] old producing partner).
Anyway, that's about all I can muster.

Once again, if anyone happens to stumble across this blog, just go ahead and respond with whatever you please. I just like to know that someone is out there.

(Again, I'm sure no one reads my blogs, but whatever. If you do happen upon this, hope you enjoy - and feel free to let me know anything - I'm a glutton for attention!)


Several years ago when Rolling Stone magazine listed the 500 greatest albums of all time, they had the good sense to place Rum Sodomy and the Lash by The Pogues at number 445. About a year-and-a-half later I decided to list my own personal top ten favorite albums of all time and without hesitation, added the afore mentioned record. Looking back at my top ten I realize that the majority of the artists that comprise said list are either long dead (Robert Johnson, John Coltrane, Nick Drake) or there are bands that either cannot and/or will not reform (The Band, Zeppelin, The Beatles). So needless to say, seeing these artists perform live will be an impossible feat. Sure I have seen all of the SURVIVING members of Zeppelin perform - separately - as well as the son of the deceaced member. I have seen Levon Helm, the fantastic drummer for The Band, perform on his own and even had the good fortune to chat with him. And I saw a Minutemen performance with Mike Watt and George Hurley paying tribute to their fallen commrade, the great D. Boon.
Anyway, long story short, there are really only two entries who I can really see perform live - Tom Waits, who I had the extreme good fortune to see play last August, and The Pogues, who I finally managed to see this past Tuesday nightt. As they say the circle is now complete.
It has been a dicey situation with The Pogues over the years. Despite everyone in the band being incredibly proud to have been involved with the band, they just couldn't continue dealing with frontman Shane MacGowan's insatiable appetite for booze and drugs.
However, ole Shane has managed to be a good boy lately, so reunion performances have been popping up sporadically in England and Ireland and finally in the U.S.
So of course when I found out they were playing in Chicago it was a no-brainer. I immediately purchased a ticket to the show and a plane ticket up, and called up some old friends who now live in the area to stay with.
And might I say it was money well spent - to say the least. Even with Shane being a bit over baked, boiled, and stewed he still managed to come across as a vibrant front man while snarling out his wonderfully written lyrics. But whatever energy has been burned out of MacGowan, the rest of The Pogues made up for in spades. They were fucking brilliant! And boy how did the crowd feed off that energy.
They opened with Streams of Whiskey and then went right into If I Should Fall from Grace with God, then tore through such numbers as The Boys from the County Hell, A Pair of Brown Eyes, and The Repeal of the Licensing Laws, just to name a mere few. They even played several of my favorites Kitty, Poor Paddy, and The Star of the County Down, an obscure B-Side that was an added track on the Peace and Love re-issue.
And when the show was over, I went to the coat-check room, bundled up and walked out into the cold Chicago night which now had snow added into the mix. Being from Louisiana where snow is about as common as a Dodo egg, I always find such weather to be kind of fun, despite the extreme cold. I also realized way after the fact that the last time I walked in the snow was when I was in upstate New York with Maria the Christmas before last. I would have thought that those memories would have made me a little blue, but thank God The Pogues were there to make me green instead.

Aaron, a co-worker of mine at Digital FX (he is our absolutely brilliant 3D animator and all-around reservoir of information on just about any subject), today, told me that today is the first day of the rest of my life. And, you know I have to agree with him - although I guess technically it could have been last year about this time when I decided to stroll into the Digital FX offices and apply for any job Greg saw fit to saddle me with.
Anyway, the reason for such statements being exclaimed is that I had my first hands-on Avid tutorial today, with Aaron overseeing. I have had some brief experiences working on the system before, however that was years ago and I couldn't quite recall the exact procedures. But there really wasn't too much to it and I managed to pick it right back up. Aaron was impresessed and told me that as long as I got used to working the system I would make a damn fine editor because of my instincts and incredible wealth of cinematic knowledge.
Also a couple of my other co-workers, Carolina, our present and sole Avid editor, and David, our videographer, have both talked positive to Greg about my filling the editor position and both have reported back to me that his interest was piqued and that he thinks I would fill the position ideally.
Needless to say I am rather excited. And a bit nervous. But mainly excited. This is what I have always wanted to do. And now I am going to be paid to do it. My passion has become my job. I don't think I have ever met anyone who could say that. I am learning a valuable trade that will allow me to move anywhere I want and make a great living doing something that I love.
Who would have thought that a category 5 hurricane would have inadvertently led me to my career of choice.
Strange.

According to the Christian calendar we have entered into a new year, and in said wake arises a slew of high-profile athletic matches (i.e. "the Bowls") as well as entertainment awards (Oscars, Golden Globes, ten best lists, etc.). Now everyone knows my feelings about sports (actually it's not really the sports match in and of itself that sends me into a murderous rage - it's the goddamn rabid fans who act like nothing else in this world matters), so how do I feel about the whole entertainment awards brouhaha? Being a connoisseur of the cinematic arts, following them comes with the territory, so I do enjoy them to a certain extent, but merely being a watcher and not an actual participant eventually removes any real satisfaction in the experience as a whole (although if Martin Scorsese does manage to take home an Oscar this year I will crack open a bottle of champagne and drink a toast because it will have been a long time coming).
Well, I think this year may be a little different. For the past couple of weeks clients have been requesting copies of commercials we shot for them during 2006 so that they may enter them into the Addy Awards, our local awards gala honoring excellence in advertising, both print and moving picture. One of our clients is Our Lady of the Lake Hospital, for whom we shot several spots for over the past year. They requested several of those, some of which were a few ten second spots out of a campaign for their after-hours clinic Lake Primary Care. Now the reason a great sense of pride overcame me, as well as a genuine sense of anticipation for the awards ceremony in Febuary, when I recieved the dub order, was that one spot in particular was my own brain-child.
Maybe you have seen it, maybe you haven't. It's a simple spot. A young girl of about seven is on a swing, swinging back and forth, in and out of frame, thoroughly enjoying herself, when suddenly we hear a crash off-screen and a cry of "OWWWWW" followed by an empty swing coming back into frame. Fade out. That was mine.
We were asked some months back to come up with a campaign of simple, clever spots for Lake Primary Care, that emphasized their open-late hours and the fact that it was more for minor, rather than major, medical problems. So as a few of us were sitting around the conference table, semi-focusing on the assignment at hand, I threw in my stalwart saying of, "Use violence. Violence is funny!" That led me to recall an incident I saw occur that happened to a classmate of mine in grade school. She was swinging really high on a swing, lost her grip and somehow flew backwards out of the seat, hit the eaves of the roof behind her and hit the ground with a thud. This of course mangled her pretty good (although it probably wasn't as bad as I remember it - after all, a child's imagination paints a much more vivid picture), and off to the hospital she went. And thinking about that incident outloud made me lay out the outline of the afore mentioned commercial, shot framing and all, which met with the humorous approval of all.
So, even though I may not have a definite credit, I still have the satisfaction of knowing that a grisly memory from my silly and twisted mind gave rise to well-regarded local commercial. From here, I guess the sky is the limit.

p.s. I can't believe an entire year has passed since...

How things change in a year's passing. Last year, my top-of-the-list home entertainment provider as well as former employer, and haven for all-around useless French Quarter dregs, Tower Records was rebounding from the square-to-the-jaw punch of Hurricane Katrina, espcially being that the Virgin, the primary source of competition in the immediate market of home entertainment, had been sent packing. Now, one year later, I walked through the empty shell of the split-level space that once housed the mighty music chain and thought to myself that there may possibly be no hope now for real music anymore. That thought was later reenforced by my reading the obituary of Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun. For those of you who don't know, Ertegun, a music fanatic with impeccable taste, headed up Atlantic Records with his brother Nesuhi, and shepherded such acts as Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, Cream, The Rolling Stones (just to name a mere few in a field of thousands) into their career highs. Needless to say, if it were not for this man and his company, recent music history may have turned out quite different, and probably for the worst - as things seem to be headed now.
But I digress...

postscript:
It was also a year ago on this very day that I flew north to meet my... Oh fuck, why can't I just let this fucking go?

post-postscript: Does anyone read this or is it tantamount to trying to shout above the thunderous roar of a crowded banquet hall? If anyone does read this will you at least post something so I don't feel like the one guy sitting alone in a corner at a party where he knows not a soul?

Something that I have been meaning to do for a while (actually, it really hit home when I was doing the shoot with Dan Rather) is get a still camera and document some of the more interesting shoots that I go on. Finally, I got my mind straight and borrowed my Mom's old 35mm film camera (by choice - I'm old-school and I like the texture and the happy accidents that happen with film) and shot a roll a few weeks ago while we were shooting a couple of Lee Michaels Jewelry spots at the LPB studio off of Perkins Rd. here in Baton Rouge. For those of you in the area, the ad should be hitting a television screen near you very soon, if not already, seeing that I made the dubs and shipped them off to the stations last week.
Anyway, this is my job... Enjoy! I certainly do.

I did a job in New Orleans this past Saturday that probably alot of poeple in my profession would love to have been a part of - I ran teleprompter for Dan Rather. He was in town doing a story on the people affected in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita. We shot down in the lower 9th Ward just over the canal near where the levee broke. It was quite incredible because the place is STILL a wreck. It looks almost the same as it did a year ago with the exception of a few houses that were bulldozed. We shot in front of a house that had floated off of its slab and on top of a pick-up truck. It looked like a redneck version of The Wizard of Oz. The only people who were down there besides us were tourists just gazing at the destruction. I thought that was kind of callous but I think maybe people should see the destruction first-hand in order to see what a bunch of child-raping fuck-ups run this country!
Anyway, the crew couldn't have been nicer (my past experience working with out-of-town crews hasn't been very pleasant), and Rather was incredibly nice. He even took the time to come over and compliment my job teleprompting. He said he's worked with countless operators and many of them don't adapt to the rhythm of his speech as quickly as I did. What an honor! Then he asked me about where I was from and began to talk about all the work he had done in New Orleans and Baton Rouge during the Civil Rights Movement in the early 60s. I tell you, I could sit and listen to him tell stories all day. He was a real gentleman and one helluva journalist. I only hope Karl Rove gets bone cancer for many reasons, but also for fucking over Rather as well.
... And no, I didn't ask him what the frequency was. Ha Ha.

Been busy as hell of late, although things might be slowing down a tad thankfully.
Been working on filling my new iPod with the remaining CDs in my collection that wouldn't fit on my previous one (right now I am ripping this Tony Joe White box set I just got in the mail - great stuff). I'm nearing the end and I still haven't filled the thing yet! Technology. It's a wonderful thing.
I just got back from a New Orleans Film Fest screening of an old Jean-Pierre Melville film from 1969, called Army of Shadows, a kind-of thriller set amidst the French Resistance of WWII. The picture has never been formally released or available in any form in the US, and seeing that Melville is an exceptional filmmaker (he is an absolute master when it comes to the cool, deliberately-paced gangster thriller), this particular screening was not to be missed. The film following it was Terry Gilliam's new picture, Tideland, which I normally would have stayed for, however I watched a bootleg DVD copy that was sent to me, and thought it was one of the worst films I have seen this year, or in recent memory. I love Gilliam too! I even stood by The Brothers Grimm, which even he has no real love for, but this film is ugly, pointless, boring. I really don't know what the hell Gilliam was thinking making this shit, or even what he saw in the book (which I read, by the way, and thought the book was one of the worst things I have ever been subjected to).
Oh well, here's to hoping he gets to resurect The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
This wed. I think I will make the drive back for the screening of Sketches of Frank Gehry, mainly because the director, Sydney Pollack, will be there. I think I'll bring my DVD copy of Jeremiah Johnson to sign.
And thurs. I think I'll go ahead and catch Babel, mainly because Zoe, an old Tower co-worker wants to go, and following that film there will be a screening of This Film is Not Yet Rated, which looks interesting.
So, obviously I will be doing a lot of driving. As long as my car can handle it, I have no problem with that. Hell, that's what my iPod is for - keeping me company.

p.s. It was exactly a year ago that I got a message from a certain someone on myspace telling me they liked the fact that I listened to The Yardbirds and knew who The Velvet Underground were.

So I just got myself an 80 gig iPod to replace my little 30 gig. The 30 did it's job but I only managed to cram around 8,600 songs into it - and needless to say I needed WAY more than that.
When I went to go buy the 80, the salesman tried to steer me toward a Nano or a 30 to which I politely replied (with a wry grin pasted across the southern portion of my face) that I, a) already owned a 30, and, b) needed the 80 in order to accomodate the 2,500 CD's I own (not including box sets). The guy was quiet for a moment then agreed with my purchase.
So, I have now transfered all songs from my previous iPod into the new one (which I affectionately named "My Bigger Dick") and am now in the process of putting the remainder of my collection in. And what do you know? I have already managed to put 13,000 songs into it and have almost filled it halfway.
iPod makes me happy.

It was a year ago this past Saturday that I came to Baton Rouge from New Orleans to avoid any unpleasantries from a certain Category 5 Hurricane called Katrina; and only expecting to spend a week or so here too. Well, here it is exactly one year later and I am still here. I know my Mom likes having me around (I never did make it into town too much because I worked so goddamn much and the last thing I would have wanted to do during my precious little time off would be to drive an hour to a town that I left in the first place because it bored me cross-eyed) but still, it's Baton Rouge!
Aw fuck it! I guess things could be a helluva lot worse.
In other news, I have been blazing through the Flashman books by George MacDonald Fraser and absolutely loving every single page. Not only are they just plain terrific (and hilarious) adventure stories (featuring the ultimate anti-hero - and I do mean ANTI, for Harry Flashman is a scoundrel, coward, liar, cheat, womanizer, and any other non-heroic trait that can be thrown in) but thoroughly interesting history lessons as well (this is what the Young Indiana Jones series tried and failed at doing - incorporating a fictional character within actual historical events). I highly recommend them to anyone - especially if you have lost your sense of childish wonder and spirit of adventure - filtered through wise-ass British Humor, of course.