Blogaday: A break with tradition

Not committing to my usual tradition of Blogaday this year onaccounta all the stuff I gots to do. I do intend to try to post more often in November than I have in other months of this year though. 

I have tried to increase postings year-over-year here, but 2010 will kill that trend. A little sad about that, but I'm sure valuable lessons will be learned from this, whatever those are.

Blue Like Jazz movie: the hail mary works

A few months ago, I posted about Steve Taylor doing a Blue Like Jazz movie. Gonna do some sudden follow-up on this.

Today, while procrastinating on a freelance gig, I found this article at the Atlantic, Blue Like Jazz: The Quest to Get Christians to Laugh at Themselves. The article compares the Evangelical Christian community's pugilistically earnest film attempts with Jewish and Catholic films, and portrayals in said films. So, ok, interesting.

It also tipped me off to the late breaking news on the Blue Like Jazz movie. I don't really have the time to build this up like this story deserves, but it's a good story, so I'll just cut and paste from the Atlantic article:

After a year of fundraising, Miller—who's written a total of five Christian-themed books and is part of an Obama task force on absentee fathers—was still $125,000 short. He decided to give up. Last month, he wrote a post on his blog declaring the project dead. Blue Like Jazz would not be made into a movie.

But it didn't stay dead for long. Two 24-year-old Miller fans launched a page on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter to solicit donations, and within a week and a half, they'd raised enough money to make the movie. Miller and his supporters then set a new fundraising goal: $200,642, so the film would beat wannabe Facebook-killer Diaspora as the highest-grossing project in the history of Kickstarter. Late this week, with just three days to go before fundraising ends and filming begins, the movie surpassed this milestone—as of Friday morning, backers had given a total of more than $203,000.

Holy shit. $200k isn't a huge number in movie-making terms, but the solid gold nugget in the middle of this interesting bit comes later in the article:

The movie's inability to fit into a pre-existing category helps explain why Miller and his collaborators had so much trouble coming up with the money to make the film. "You're sort of pissing off both sides," Miller says. "Hollywood hates it because we don't have our head up our ass, and the church hates it because we don't have our head up our ass."

200k+ worth of Christian-owned dollars said they're tired of movies made by people with heads in asses. That's news, friend. The real test will be how many Christian-owned dollars show up at the theater/DVD outlet. But this is a fine score for a pre-test.

Reminds me that there's an audience for my projects too.

There's one day left to donate at this point. You can still get in on the fun. Only $3000 gets you dinner with Steve Taylor and Don Miller. As a lifelong cheapass, I'd fork out that money if I had it.

Also, just go visit Don Miller's blog because there's some interesting stuff there.

Efficiency is inefficient

If you're going to be efficient about efficiency, you need to be willing to be inefficient about it.

The readiest, most efficient people you know are the ones who live it, efficient at all times, in the smallest things, even when it comes to things that no one but that person will see or interact with. Organizing spice racks and watch collections and papers in stacks and such.

These small organization efforts are secretly, quietly done from force of habit, or, (more gently) for the pleasure of order. They're not done for any serious attempt at precontemplated efficiency gains. And these small efforts take an extraordinary amount of time.

The payoff for putting that much effort into practicing efficiency is that you're ready to organize larger things at any time, appearing very efficient in front of other people. But so much is spent being efficient in matters that don't really matter. There's a diminishing returns, a Planck's Constant of efficiency, below which, any more efficiency actually becomes less efficient.

But efficient people do it anyway.

P.S. This principle also works to anything else you want to be good at.

Movies September 2010

30 Rock
Watched a lot of scattered episodes this month from all three seasons, thanks to Netflix on demand. This show is so weird and funny and wonderful, and Netflix tells me it is going away from on-demand at the end of the month. I'm a little asea at the thought of it.

Yojimbo
Had a Kurosawa day this month. I think I had seen Yojimbo before, but I didn't absorb it like I did this time. Seems like the first time I watched, it late at night, and slept through some of it. That seems to happen to me a lot. Anyway -- great movie. I recommend it, awake OR asleep.

Sanjuro
I watched this a few years ago, thinking it was Yojimbo and not understanding it. I read up on Akira Kurosawa's career after this viewing, and discovered that this was a script he had already written, but adapted to put Sanjuro in after Yojimbo was a big success. That makes sense to me, because Sanjuro feels like a different kind of movie, more of a caper flick than the wily anti-heroism of Yojimbo.

Jericho, season 1, disc 2
The compelling:annoying ratio drops on this disc as compared to previous efforts. But we'll keep watching, probably.

Popotan
A short anime series about three girls who live in a teleporting house for some reason? And every episode, they find some way to show a girl's naked anime boobs. The primary compulsion to keep watching is the mystery of why these women live in a teleporting house, but I'm probably not going to finish watching before I just look on the Internet and find the conclusion to the story myself.

The Girl from Monday
The Internet suggests that director Hal Hartley is an indie movie bigshot. This near future sci-fi dystopia ditty is maybe sort of a misfire. Sabrina Lloyd is pretty though.

Iron Man
What a fun superhero movie. Just a lot of fun.

Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman
Not a Timm/Dini/Radomski Batman story, and it shows.

SEPTA does something right

I know, I'm excited too!

People give the Nutter administration crap, but sensible, lawful things are happening on his watch. That's not saying this SEPTA thing is something he can take credit for, but it is under his administration.

What is it? As revealed in this Technology Review article, SEPTA's installing batteries at a subway substation to cash in on regenerative braking:

A massive battery installed at one of the authority's substations will store electricity generated by the braking systems on trains (as the trains slow down the wheels drive generators). The battery will help trains accelerate, cutting power consumption, and will also provide extra power that can be sold back to the regional power grid. The pilot project, which involves one of 38 substations in the transit system, is expected to bring in $500,000 a year. This figure would multiply if the batteries are installed at other substations.

Philadelphia, there's hope for us yet.

Vatican astronomer speaks out

This has been making the rounds recently. I usually avoid that, but I like this one.

The pope's astronomer, Brother Guy J. Consolmagno (wikipedia), made statements lately revealing once again that he is basically a cool dude. (In support, observe that the man looks like a cross between Stephen King and Jason Blood.)

Brother Consolmagno drops a smattering of choice ideas and statements in this short Guardian article which I will let you read on your own time.

The clever soundbite, which is seriously not even the lede, concerned Stephen Hawking's recent pronouncements regarding God's role in creation:

"Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist and when it comes to theology I can say he's a brilliant physicist."

I took away the subscription box

I don't want you to read this on RSS. I don't like the feeling of sitting at my command center and watching all the info drain down the pipe toward me. I want to go get it. I want to visit the content, not have the content visit me. I know you (and by "you" I mean most savvy Internet users) are different. But like any artist, I prefer to exert control over the art's delivery.

That's how I think of what I'm writing. I'm broadcasting art over an Internet channel. You must choose to tune in, to aim your attention at what I'm transmitting. It is not meant to be read amid the lolcats and foursquare squirts and other people's tweets. It has its own space, requires a separate effort.

My blog design is sparse, and not far from its original template. But still, I made it look like this on purpose. The white and the orange and the different fonts, they are meant to convey too. You miss part of the message when these words shoot down the pneumatic tube of your feed reader.


I don't think I can stop QT from appearing in existing feeds, and I don't plan to spend any time trying to figure it out. I'm not even sure that having removed the subscribe option means anything. You might be able to snag it with or without my permission.

And if that's the case, why dig my heels in? I don't know. This is something I haven't got named yet. There's an idea behind it I'm still excavating.

But if you're curious, that's what's happening.

Tales of meta-change

Tomorrow I start my new job.

I've been working at Circle Thrift for six or seven weeks part-time as a way to stave off unemployed anxiety. I sorted clothes and ran the register and behaved cheerfully toward customers.

I loved it. The situation was unsustainable, but if it hadn't been, I would consider making a career of it. There were colorful characters and bizarre goings-on every day I worked. I could have told a story every day.*

So at first it seems strange to me that I didn't. Didn't write or draw or sew during this time. I composed blog entries some days, but they never left my neurons. I didn't even track the movies I watched last month. (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and some other stuff.)

Instead, I volunteered. Since July, I've further embedded myself in responsibilities among my church. It's been surprisingly non-creative. Attending meetings, returning phone calls, head down, concrete, task-oriented, unreflective. Combined with a hang-clothes-handle-money retail job, there was lots of do, little doo-dah. Not my style or strength, but there kept being one more thing that needed doing. So I kept doing it.

Now I'm starting a new job, a shift from anything I've ever done professionally. Not writing. Not editing. It involves mental health clients, so I don't know how much I'll even talk about it here. Probably lots of stories, but discretion will be at a premium.

I'm also starting to read tips and lists and crap that I won't link to about blog posting. I'm spontaneously looking at new ideas for monsters. The YA novel I lost track of a couple months ago has wandered back in. Creative ventures seem to be re-emerging.

Things are changing around here. That's probably the takeaway. I'm excited by recent prospects, yet for all the change, it seems like no relief from the pinball life. The categories of change seem to be the things changing now. My change is changing.

I think I'll have more to say about that soon.

*Slumming it is underrated. A job you exceed grants a marvelous attention surplus.

Monster shirts

Man, I need about 10 of these. Wish I'd thought of this.

Movies July 2010

Chocolate
Maudlin, but the final fight scene was worth the price of admission. I don't even know how you'd plan a fight scene on the side of a building... it was fantastic to watch, and eminently stealable for D&D.

Battlestar Galactica (2003 miniseries)
This has ageda little? But it's still quite good. Looking forward to watching the first couple of seasons again with M,

Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths
Dwane McDuffie keeps knocking these out of the park, scriptwise. Every other aspect is also quite good!

The Last Airbender
"Your exposition is here, Mr. Shyamalan. Where d'ja want it?"
"Oh, just put it anywhere."

Shiri

A Korean action movie that was pretty good! Recommended.

Superman Doomsday
Pretty disappointing.

Inception

Christopher Nolan does movies I want to see, so I wanted to see this. I enjoyed it, but I didn't just loooove it. It was a smidge too intricate for movies, too much expository work. That level of plot intricacy works in novels, but movies have a ceiling, I think. Also, Lady or the Tiger endings have been frustrating since immediately after "The Lady, or the Tiger?". I think Cobb never made it back out. But maybe... maybe he did?

Jericho, season 1, disc 1

A short-lived, pretty good TV drama about life post-nuke attack in the U.S. of A.

Observations:

• Jericho is far too racially integrated to truly exist in Kansas.
• The black guy's character is so aggressively mysterious I want to punch him through the television.
• This show seems to have the same curious hiccup that other genre-esque dramas have: The writing staff appears to have more show to fill than quality to spend. Some storylines and arcs are suspenseful and challenging, while others in the very same episode are dumb as doorknobs.

We'll keep watching though.

Helvetica

I like fonts, but this documentary failed to hold my interest. This seemed pitched more at insiders than outsiders. Every once in a while, a moment of "oh, that's interesting," would take you off guard, but then it would switch to some aged German or Swiss man saying something dry.

Surrogates

Relentlessly mediocre. I was sort of interested in seeing this last year in the theater, but not interested enough to do anything about it. Now I know why. This movie spent all its money on Bruce Willis and marketing, not necessarily in that order. It had scenes that in all senses -- script, acting, lighting, camera work, scenery, and more -- looked like were lifted from the "how to shoot an '80s action TV series" handbook. The story was workmanlike in its conventionality.