Moving out

Moving here

But what does it mean?

I came home from work this afternoon to discover this in my kitchen:



It appears to be a mass ant suicide conducted in the waters of my cat's green bowl.


Total ant carnage.

Arizona

My mother wanted me to go to school in Virginia

Since my trip to the border to deliver money to a friends deported nephew was cancelled yesterday I have been thinking about my last “most Arizona experience ever.” So I thought I’d go back and actually finish writing it out. (I like the way it starts so I’m leaving that part untouched. The real timeframe is about a month and a half ago)

....

Let’s talk about the most “Arizona” experience I’ve ever had in my life. Right now I’m working on JorDan and Justin’s film The Runners. This is the premise:

“When Jesus Sanchez came to the United States to find a better life, he didn’t expect to pay a young activist, Karen, to marry him for citizenship. Once money problems arise in their awkward trailer living condition, Karen convinces Jesus to go on a dangerous run to the border to pick up immigrants at four hundred dollars a head.”

So this weekend we had to shoot the bulk of the desert scenes. This actually meant driving an hour southwest (much of it on barely carved, dirt roads) into the notorious Three Points region of Arizona.

We roll up in our beat up, white panel van with a film crew of nine (including the most wonderfully stereotypical NRA representative you could imagine… I actually thought he was in the film playing the part of the dangerously racist rancher) and a cast of seven (four of which were chosen specifically to look as Mexican as possible). Anyway, we set off at 6:30, arrive around eight and are shooting by nine. Everything is fine until just before lunch.

Here is the situation:

There is a construction crew not too far off in the distance. This wouldn’t be a problem except every time the tractor backs up there is a piercing beep beep beep noise. You know it. Of course, the beeping is going to make any sound we record completely useless. This is a big deal. So JorDan tells one of the extras, Luciano, to go ask them (politely) to please not back up between the ‘action’ and ‘cut’ megaphone calls. This is almost never a problem on set; people like movies and make efforts to be extremely accommodating.

Luciano walks the short distance down the road, “Excuse me, I’m sorry but we really need to get this shooting done before sundown.” (He is a very polite boy)

“Oh really,” The construction worker is very drunk and slowly lifting the edge of his shirt up, “because we are hoping to finish before sundown too.” He shows off a pistol tucked in his jeans.




“Is that yelling?”

We all get very quiet because it is yelling. After a few minutes Luciano (he’s sixteen and works at JorDan’s mom’s restaurant) comes back white as a sheet.

We decide the sound can suffer.

A little while later we are shooting the hold-up scene. Three extras are crammed in the back of the van while the rancher and his son threaten them with ‘loaded’ shotguns. Suddenly there is a rumbling in the headphones. Behind us two of the construction workers pull up and rev their engines.

“Just keep shooting.”

Everyone is silent and JorDan calls action. “Rev…rev…”

We get about two lines in when the camera pans left onto a red and a black ATV. They are in the shot. JorDan and Justin head up the hill hoping to reason with the two men.

“Excuse me guys, I’m real sorry but…”

“NO!” The guy on the red ATV starts screaming no rather than letting JorDan finish a single sentence. To make matters worse, he is also lurching forward, closer and closer until he finally runs into JorDan. They turn their attention to the other man.

Black is more cooperative and even manages to convince Red to head back over. They turn around, Black making a tidy little u-turn while red rumbles straight through the center of our equipment camp, and head back to ‘work.’

We get about two solid scenes in before Black and Red come back.

“Hey! What’s your movie about?” Apparently, they are feeling chatty.

“An illegal immigrant run.”

“Oh really, well you need any extras? Cause I ain’t legal.” He is suddenly hilarious. Spirits are high for a moment until, “Do you know how much it costs me to rent that tractor? $600 a day, plus $25 dollars an hour for the guy who drives it.”

Nervous, JorDan starts adding dollars in his head. “I’m really sorry about this and I really appreciate all the help you have given us today. You can go back to work now, don’t worry about us.”

“Can’t work now, the crews already drunk.”

Things are tense until everyone agrees they can sit by and watch as long as they stay out of the shot. This holds their interest for a solid 15 minutes, before they finally rumble off into the sunset for the last time. We finish the last of our shooting and they finish the last of their drinking.


(Red and Black got a special thanks in the credits at the screeing.)

Arrgh

I finally got around to scrubbing Kitty clean this morning. It actually took two full body shampoos for the water to run clear.

I found him here 20 minutes later, just enough time for his fur to dry fluffy and beautiful for one glorious second.

More from my Arizona film portfolio

Final for documentary class. It's a documentary about my documentary production professor's band.


Online Videos by Veoh.com


This is a film from my introduction to video production class last year. It's a mocumentary about a guy with a debilitating fear of cats.


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Last year's experimental film final project. This is what I can do with eleven seconds of footage and extremely bad sound quality.


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Microcinema

This is the opening for our film screening. I filmed it on 16mm black and white highcon film and hand processed it. That's Hank outside the closed-down Catalina theater.


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I finally did this

This is the fine cut of my fiction production film. It's made from 16mm film, handpainted clear leader, vhs tape, cassette tape, and mini dv.
Online Videos by Veoh.com

Ugh, Match.com has such a brilliant marketing scheme. I am home alone the other night (my family has just left town and someway or another all my staples have managed to be out of town or occupied with their significant others) so I put on some music, turn on my computer, and break out that case of Tecate leftover from the Café’s Cinco De Mayo picnic.

The evening starts out simple enough, I make this:

and a little blue tank, check my email and catch up on some of my Livejournal readings. Then I run into this:

And perhaps it is because the music has drifted to Bright Eyes, or because I am sitting all by my lonesome in my two bedroom apartment, or because I am drunk sitting alone in my two bedroom apartment, but I think to myself “Yeah, it is ok to look.” So I look. Or I try to look because there is a catch, in order to look at profiles you have to set up one of your own. At a lesser drunk I would have given up, but at this point I am determined to prove that I can overcome the social taboo and freely and shamelessly browse the modern day brothel. Tonight I will prove that IT IS OK TO LOOK. I sign up for an account.

In my new profile there are places where I am supposed to fill in short blurbs: “what my job is,” “what I do for fun,” “where are my favorite hot spots,” and a much longer “about me and who I am looking for” section. This is what I type:

“I live in Tucson and enjoy the artistic side of the community. I like experimental and documentary films, writing, and coffee. I am very good at darts and risk. I like people with strong political opinions.”

Now, this can be read two ways. I am an asshole and pretentious to boot, or I am drunk and struggling make the 200 word minimum. Naturally, my new Match.com friends are not privy to the latter interpretation, but I don’t care because now I have suddenly and powerfully lost interest. I toss up a picture and sign out. I manage not to look at a single profile.

The next morning I wake up and discover fifteen new emails. “Dav4u has winked at you!” “Photographynerd has winked at you!” “Itsjustme23 has winked at you!” I am starting to wish I had come up with a better alias than my standard Amycarina (sorry Amy). I’m excited anyway. I am convinced that my Match.com profile must be unusually good and popular because it got fifteen hits in one night. I am suddenly interested again.

Back at the site I try to figure out how it actually works. Alright, so winking is free, but to email you need to subscribe ($$) and that’s very fine by me. I love Match.com.

I check my account again the next day. There is only one new wink. I am shocked and disappointed. I do, however, have two emails. Somebody actually PAID to send me an email. Two people, actually. I click to read.

“The email feature is for subscribers only.”

Goddamn you Match.com.

So this is where I am now. I have my free Match.com profile which allows me to look at other people’s profiles which I have discovered I really don’t care about. Hovering in the expensive Match.com vaults are two emails certainly containing lots and lots of compliments for me and other means of giving me attention so I will immediately like and want to date the sender. Naturally, these two emails are everything I want in the world right now.

Goddamn you Match.com.

Apple Update

Getting there.

Maybe it's because my own mother fell asleep during my final film screening.

I graduated this weekend. I now have a BA double major in Media Arts and Creative Writing with a focus in poetry. At the end of the month I am leaving for grad school in Iowa to get my MFA in film production, specifically experimental work.

I made this fish to assure myself I can always fall back on a paycheck as a clip artist.

I don't know why I'm so persuaded

Driving up to my parents hotel yesterday I passed by an interesting collection of curbside protests. The first was two older men, both holding up large signs. One read: “THE BIBLE IS BULL.” The other: “RELIGION IS A DISEASE.” It was just the two of them, on a street corner, in front of a Texaco.

A little ways down the road, I ran into my second propaganda effort. One very old man and one very old woman were pacing the side walk holding up “Abortion kills a child” and “Stop murdering babies” signs. Propped up against a streetlight, an additional sign tried to convince me to “Stop the Murder! Close Planned Parenthood!” Across the street there were about six high school girls in bikinis. They each had their own sign reading “CARWASH!” (I admit I may have been a little less inclined to act on the whole Planned Parenthood issue).

I drove back down the same road a few hours later. Now all my original protesters were gone, replaced with a single middle aged woman, standing on the Bible-is-bull corner waving a “HONK IF YOU LOVE PEACE” sign. It was pretty quiet out there.

Postsecret: I like almost everybody

I have a habit of picking through the money in the drawer at the cafe. I try to keep track of wheat pennies, bicentennial quarters, Canadian coins and you know. It's not because I have any burning interest in coin collecting, I just like knowing they are there.

Anyway, a man came in the other morning (comes in all the time, but not someone I know well)and I pulled out a bicentennial quarter with the rest of his change.

"Here, I've been saving this for somebody... and it's you." (and it was actually kind of true)

He looked at the quarter, confused for a second, then at me. "Wow, I've been collecting these for years. Thank you."

I think I gave him a nonchalant (well as nonchalant as I can pull off) "sure," but inside I was just as excited as he looked walking away.

Caliente