The Must-See Film of 2008

Is it WALL-E?
Well, yes, do go see that. And The Dark Knight, too. Definitely see WALL-E and The Dark Knight. And, if you haven't already seen Iron Man, that's worth a gander, also. I'm sure there will be some excellent dramas and Indie films coming down the transom as well, and perhaps a few interesting documentaries. Yes, all that is great stuff.

But what is the hidden gem must see film of the year?

The title alone is worth the admission. It is the Russian action comedy called:

Hitler Kaput!

This trailer is hilarious even if you have no idea what anyone is saying:

The mixture of stupid comedy and the offensive made ridiculous through absurdity has worked well in the past with films like Top Secret! (an obvious precedent for Hitler Kaput!) and Blazing Saddles (and, of course, The Producers), so here's hoping that Hitler Kaput! manages to be as good as the best of its predecessors.

Donate to a "Help Todd Blair" Event

Anu and I have signed up to sponsor a gear for The Wall, a sculptural installation being created to benefit our dear friend Todd Blair.

As some of you know, Todd was involved in an accident involving a large metal structure falling on him after a performance in Amsterdam last September. He suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and his recovery time is going to be long and unpredictable. Todd and his wife Alex need help to survive financially through this next chapter of their recovery.

Todd was Anu's co-Associate Producer on ZeroOne 2006, and over the five months they worked together and the two years since they have developed a close friendship and a strong professional relationship. Stephan has known Todd through SRL for quite a while. Todd is a great guy, and a good friend, and we are doing everything we can to help his doctors and Alex nurse him back to health.

Alex has been tireless in her efforts to bring about his recovery, staying by his side constantly and working closely with his doctors and physical therapists to develop and implement challenging treatments over the last six months.

We believe in Todd's ability to make a full recovery, but right now he is a long, long way from that. Todd and Alex need financial support to make it through to that day, which may be a year or more away. It's a tough row to hoe and they need ongoing support.

We are reaching out to the people closest to us and asking that you contribute toward our beloved friend's recovery. Every little bit is needed -- even $10 or $20 is helpful. We have supported various folks' causes over the years, including charity marathons and cycling events, organization benefits, and similar "help a friend" type of causes. Now, we hope, you can pitch-in to help us out.

We are committed to raising $500-$1000 (or more!). Every little bit helps, and we cannot think of a person more deserving of kindness than Todd, whose own kindness and compassion is legendary here in the Bay Area and throughout his international network of friends and collaborators.

Donations can be made via PayPal through our fiscal sponsor, The Luggage Store, and are 100% tax deductible thanks to their fiscal sponsorship.

It is easy to donate. Please indicate via either method that you are contributing to the Gear sponsored by Anu Vikram & Stephan Bugaj, and email me at svbugaj@gmail.com to let me know you have done so so we can keep track.

Pay by PayPal at: http://srl.org/shows/events/toddwall/wall.html

If you need to send a check, e-mail me and I'll get info to you on how to do that.

The unveiling of The Wall will be July 20th (please save the date!)

Rhythmix Cultural Art Center
2513 Blanding Ave
Alameda CA 94501
3:00 - 9:00 pm

Details about Todd, the accident and his progress are here: http://toddblair.wordpress.com

Please feel free to contact Anu or I if you have any questions about Todd, the event or how else you might help.

Thanks so much!

Cool (I hope) New Blog, Stupid Old Hosting Company

I've just launched my new filmmaking blog.

I had always intended to have how-to and craft sort of stuff separate from this blog, and now that site is launched.

However, Yahoo! is just about the worst hosting situation I've encountered. I've submitted three help requests and received zero answers (including one request using their suggested candy-colored, headache-inducing community help system).

If you go to www.indieauteur.com you get a different version of the page than if you go to www.indieauteur.com/blog (they're supposed to be the same). At first I thought it was always older than the /blog one, but actually they alternate between which is older and which is current. There is no apparent way to fix this (I tried deleting and recreating the site -- entirely from scratch -- three times, and it persists).

Despite my utter lack of enthusiasm for system administration tasks these days, my current plan is to try to install Word Press myself on the colocated host that bugaj.com lives on. But, if you know of a better pre-installed Word Press host, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Motherfuckin' Fuck

R.I.P. George Carlin

Awesome, offensive, say-it-like-it-is comic and social commentator George Carlin, heir to the throne of Lenny Bruce, passed away today. It's a fuckin' tragedy, that's what it is.

"We're all fucked. It's important to remember that." -- George Carlin

As the reigning king of bitterly sarcastic cynics, Carlin's bullshit detector was always ferreting-out the world's idiocies and hypocracies for ridicule. Like Mark Twain before him, though, Carlin knew that he himself was one of the flawed morons we call humanity. This willingness to stand amongst the thronging crowd and observe its foibles from within are what made his acerbic wit all the more honest, biting, and incisive.

"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done." -- George Carlin

As with Bukowski, George Carlin was an inspiration for all drunken, misanthropic atheists held back by a world overrun with the foolishly optimistic. Carlin made people laugh in order to make them think, to question assumptions, to not just take consensus reality at face value. He didn't purport to have all the answers, but he asked a lot of hilarious questions which cut to the quick many of our most foolish sacred cows. He will be missed.

"Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time." -- George Carlin

Update: Anu pointed me at a really interesting, extensive George Carlin interview, seemingly the last one he ever did. The Onion AV Club interview is decent, Salon did two interviews with him, and a fan page has a reprint of a vintage Playboy interview that is quite interesting.

Cats: All Your Base Are Belong To Us!

When I am angry or depressed, one of the things that most helps me get back into a more productive mindset is our five cats. I've pretty much always had cats, and always will. In other words, all my base are belong to Cats.

My mother adopted (I prefer the term "swindled") my last two cats away from me, Ragnarok and Thelema, when we moved out of New York (she claimed she was going to watch them until I got settled-in back in California, then guilt tripped me into letting her keep her "grandcats"). Prior to Ragnarok and Thelema, I had cats named William Gibson Nyarlathotep Haynes (Gibby), Fuzzbass, Matey, Molly (and her eight kittens, who were born on top of me as I slept, and who all died before I could name them, tragically), and Daisy (people who don't know me very well don't realize that I'm also a huge fan of flowers).

I miss all my previous cats, deceased or living with relatives, but thankfully Anu and I now have five wonderful cats to help keep us company. Originally, when we married, I thought we wouldn't be able to have cats, because Anu was allergic. I planned to secretly keep cats, buying them a fancy home in the country like an investment banker's mistress. However, after introducing her to cats (she'd had only dogs as a kid), she decided to try to get treatment for her allergies. Fortunately, it worked.

To keep up with all the latest Internet memes of 1998, I present the latest of my traditional lame Net Nerd postings of "pictures of my cats." Like record and comic book collection lists, absolutely nobody cares about pictures of other peoples' cats -- except the Japanese, preteen girls, frumpy female clerical workers, Cat Fancy subscribers, and all manner of other people like myself who regularly visit sites like Kittenwar, Cute Overload, Cats In Sinks, Lolcats, (the sometimes mean) Stuff on my Cat, both competing Cute Cats, etc.

People who aren't familiar with cats often don't believe that our cats are capable of affection, enjoy the company of other cats, or have distinct personalities. Unfortunately, these myths about cats continue, even though cats are now the most numerous pet in the US. Cats are in fact quite capable of affection, and are not destructive or aloof if properly nurtured and cared for. Most types of cats do exhibit cooperative group behavior in the wild, though males will indeed fight over females (a behavior that is reduced by spaying and neutering, though my experience has also borne out the wisdom of the folks who say the most harmonious multi-cat households are all-male ones). Properly cared for cats are affectionate and well behaved, though they do indeed not like to be forced into a behavior, and will resist doing so. Badly behaved cats are almost always the result of bad cat owner behavior.

Here, then, are our well behaved cats and a brief description of their individual personalities:

Cthulhu

Cthulhu is technically our first cat, though Sim actually made it into the house first. We adopted him privately, from friends at work. His name comes from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos, as do all our black cats' names. In those mythos, Cthulhu reigns as the "great priest" of the Great Old Ones, waiting to awake and devour the universe. Our Cthulhu is nearly blind, with some kind of cataracts on both his eyes. No vet has been able to tell us why (the theories range from losing a fight with another animal to some kind of congenital defect), but it doesn't effect his ability to jump on me, climb me like a tree, and snuggle (his favorite things). Cthulhu is an utter affection hound, and will sit on a lap indefinitely so long as you're paying attention to him and petting him. He'll chase other cats away to get lap time, and often makes rounds from lap-to-lap if several people are around. At 18lbs, his proclivity for jumping on my head and shoulders can be a bit dangerous, so I try to grab him and put him on my lap before he gets a chance to leap.

Narasimha, aka Sim

Sim, he of the Pyothorax story, was the first cat in our San Pablo home. He came from Berkeley Humane Society, and is our resident chatty, cantankerous cat. His name comes from Hindu mythology, which is how we name our orange cats. Narasimha is a half-man, half-lion incarnation of Vishnu who outwits the the demon Hiranyakashipu and destroys him. Narasimha is considered a "god" of protection. Our Narasimha frequently follows us around the house, and often meows. Apparently he has a lot to tell us, if only we'd pay attention. He's also an affection hound, and especially likes to be petted on our living room bean bag chair (his chair), and in our home office (his room). Sim is the only one of our cats who is calm enough to sit on my lap while I write (I try with Cthulhu, and about once a month, he calms down enough that he'll stop climbing me and just nap while I write). Sim has staked out a cardboard box in our garage as his box. Definitely our most territorial cat, when he's healthy he still loves playing with the other cats and they often all sleep in a big pile, so he's not ornery to the point of being antisocial.

Shub Nuggurath, aka Shub

Shub came to us at the same time as Yog, both from Tri-Valley Animal Rescue. They were originally to be adopted by our friend Mattbot, but his landlord balked. Shub's name comes from a character popular with Cthulhu aficionados, despite not being described very clearly in the stories (more so in the so-called "revision tales"). Our Shub is very shy and skittish, and peculiar in that his favorite time to be petted is while he's eating (in fact, he occasionally won't eat at all unless one of us pets him). His favorite activity is hiding somewhere and watching over us, and the other cats. He doesn't like snuggling very often, and when he does, usually not for very long. But, when he does want affection, he demands it by running around us, rubbing against us, and then flopping over and showing his belly.

Yog Sothoth, aka Yog

Yog, arriving on the same day and from the same place as Shub, is our resident space cadet. His name comes from an "Outer God," said to be coterminus with all time and space, existing outside our known universe. Our Yog was probably weaned too young, and likes to try to nurse from Cthulhu, even now that he's an adult, and also follows Cthulhu everywhere. Despite our constant efforts to provide a good home, good food, and preventative medical care for our cats, Yog also almost died once from illness (a blocked urinary tract). Fortunately, he seems to be fine now. Yog is skittish and easily confused, and often freaks out and runs away when you give him the attention he's just requested by nuzzling you and then flipping over to show his belly, or by jumping on your lap. Other times, though, he will sit still long enough to be quite sweet and loving, before a bug, cat fight or Cthulhu's presence distracts him. With his short attention span, though, he'll usually be back over for another round of petting before too long.

Manashthala, aka Ash

Ash was the most recent addition to our home, and he came to us because someone at work who fosters cats for Hopalong / Second Chance Animal Rescue e-mailed out his photo. I forwarded it to Anu, with a message saying that it had been a mistake for me to open the mail in the first place as we were now doomed to a fifth cat. She resisted mightily, for about an hour. In Hindu mythology Manashthala is the lion steed of Durga who helps her destroy the demon Mahishasura. Our Manashthala is a hyperactive ball of energy who perpetually bounces around playing with other cats, his own tail, cat toys, boxes, the laser pointer, and pretty much anything else. However, he doesn't destroy stuff that's not given to him as a toy. None of our cats do (Yog used to eat fabric but has stopped, and they all scratch the couch now and then, but it's covered and we don't really care much anyway). Ash rarely sits still long enough to be petted, but sometimes he'll cuddle up on Anu's lap for the duration of a movie. Like Shub, he prefers to be petted while on the floor, especially in the hallway. He also employs the nuzzle-and-show-belly technique, and enjoys trying to wake us up in the morning with rather incessant meowing (a problem we solved by putting an old quilt behind the bedroom door to block the sound).

If you made it this far, (a) you're a total cat nerd (welcome, brethren), or (b) you're one of those reading addicts who can't stop reading a piece once they start and now you know much more about our cats than you ever wanted to.

My Week of Chaos

The last week or so has sucked.

Really, the last two weeks have sucked, but this week a dollop of feces icing on little slab of hatecake. As the two or so regular readers of this blog already know: Anu lost her job. It was known that there were financial difficulties at the organization, but Anu had been working extremely hard to help make the place viable (see the HCA 08 Auction post below for one example), and was very excited to work with the incoming roster of artists that she and her colleague Holly Blake had organized for the following year. Since it seems non-profit arts organizations are unable to thrive in the current economic and political climate (Anu got laid off previously a couple years ago as the once venerable Richmond Art Center withered into poverty and irrelevance), perhaps the best thing for those interested in the arts to do is vote for Barack Obama. He is the only candidate with a sensible arts platform that explicitly addresses contemporary art, and his desire to curtail war spending and put that money back into the domestic economy is another potential boon for both for-profit and non-profit organizations.

As also mentioned below, one of our cats (Sim) nearly died. He developed a condition called Pyothorax which led to a long and expensive vet visit. It also led to us getting very little sleep, as we nursed him back to health. Today is the last day of his medication routine, thankfully. He is doing better now, but he's still too skinny and a bit lethargic (and he has ridiculous looking shaved spots on him, from IVs and the suction tube for removing the fluids from around his lungs -- which leaves him more vulnerable to the other cats, and thus quite irritable with them). It didn't help in dealing with the shock and disappointment of Anu losing her job to pile-on lack of sleep and worry about Sim (yes, he's "just a cat" -- but he's our cat and we love him).

Narasimha, aka "Sim"

It's also been a bit stressful at work. I'm finally learning something about our effects pipeline (which I've wanted to for a while), and have been doing modeling and set dressing as well. Shading has taken a back seat for a few weeks. I thoroughly enjoy learning new things and having new challenges, but doing it on the timeline and budget of a short film rather than a feature makes it a bit tense. My lead and manager are great guys, it's me who is putting the pressure on myself since I like to get things right, not merely completed, and I also like to feel like I'm working at an equal or greater pace as my peers -- which I'm not when I'm reading manuals and exploring new systems, but that time spent learning gets lost in the noise on a feature project.

Finally, I was supposed to be in Poland right now. However, due to a mistake I made, that is now unable to happen until July. I was very excited for the trip, and anxious to see friends, give a few presentations about my work (including a preview of the SIGGRAPH talk I'm giving this year with my fabulously named friend Max Planck), and have meetings with some folks. It was going to be a great trip, and I have been beating myself up about the dumb mistake that prevented it from happening (and at the last possible minute). I can't undo the mistake, but I hope my friend Marcin who organized the trip will forgive me for screwing it up, and I also hope that the folks I'm supposed to visit still find it worthwhile when I come in July.

There was some other nonsense as well, best forgotten about. All in all, I'd just as soon this last week hadn't happened. It's a bummer that life doesn't come with "save", "redo" and "undo" options (and a "healing brush" would also be quite keen). Many years of computing has warped my expectations of the ease with which stupidity can be ameliorated, causing a lot of cognitive dissonance not just in my own life, but in dealing in the corporate and political arena as well.

HCA 08 Auction

The 2008 Headlands Center for the Arts auction was Anu's second, last, and best auction for that organization. Thanks to her hard work, and that of her colleagues, it was quite a bit more successful than their best estimates had projected. Attendance was high, the food was excellent, and the atmosphere was lively.

Ed Gilbert and Anu

Having attended last year's auction as well, I can definitely say this one had better artworks on offer and a more energetic mood amongst the attendees. Even in the current economic climate, the compelling work resulted in a very high percentage of works selling compared to previous HCA auctions.

Owen Seitel introduces the live auction

A number of folks were there that I am friendly with (besides the Headlands Staff), including artists Fred Loomis and David Maisel; curators and gallerists Kimberly Johansson, Svea Vezzone, Jennifer McCabe, and Maria del Carmen Carrión; Lawrence Lohr and Emily from the excellent winery J. Lohr; and Headlands trustees Ed Gilbert and Owen Seitel.

Lawrence and Emily

Anu and Svea

Kimberly

Jennifer and Maria Del Carmen

As I did last year, I purchased some work, hoping to support Anu and her colleagues in their endeavors. She had done a great job with programming, and I was very excited to meet and continue to get to know past and future AIRs under her tenure such as pre-Headlands friends Phillip Robertson and Shahzad Ismaily, as well as David Maisel, Fred Loomis, Zak Smith, Ken Goldberg, Will Oldham, Mads Lynnerup, Ant Farm, NPR, and many others.

I managed to win three very nice works in the silent auction:

Kathy Aoki - "Right on Schedule"

Kathy Aoki's work, consisting of cutesy Japanese pop culture images in sometimes gritty, everyday scenes, is especially popular here in the San Francisco Bay Area. My nerdy love of Japanese pop culture and construction machinery made this piece quite a natural fit for me.

Lead Pencil Studio - An Intimate Momentum

Lead Pencil Studio are nationally renowned architects and artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo. They are West Coast favorites, and there was a lot of twitter amongst some buyers after the closing of the silent auctions that they hadn't seen this work (hello, it's pretty hard to miss) and would have bid it up higher if they had. I found the intertwining of architectural elements with romantic figures to be oddly compelling, and enjoyed the piece on its own merits.

Seher Shah - Black Star Project (Cube 18)

I had been completely unfamiliar with Seher Shah's work prior to the auction, but Anu had seen her work at Miami Basel. Fortunately, Anu got a catalog of Shah's work at the Miami Basel show, because it is all quite excellent and I wouldn't have gotten to see it at all otherwise. Her use of either monochrome or muted color palettes, and intricate geometric detailing, often combined with interesting figurative elements, especially appeals to me. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this piece was my biggest "score" of the auction in terms of international reputation, and upon further researching her work I must say I am quite impressed with it. I'm glad to own one of her pieces.

Fred

What I didn't buy this year was a piece by my friend Fred Loomis -- I figured it was good to let someone else have a chance this time. That, and many other wonderful works that were featured this year went home with others, including a stunning piece by Matthew Cusick that I would have loved to have, but couldn't.

Matthew Cusick -- The Course of Empire (Mixmaster II)

However, this tale of a joyful, successful night ends tragically. Two business days after the most successful auction in the organization's history, Headlands Center for the Arts laid-off the artistic organizer of the event -- their Program Director, my lovely wife Anu. Her hard work, extensive connections, and great eye all contributed substantially to making this auction quite excellent (an obvious fact to anyone who had attended previous auctions, such as last year's, which happened before she had really settled-in to the job). Despite the better-than-expected returns on the auction, and an excellent (and financially net positive) programming season, financial reasons were cited for her termination. Apparently HCA is in direr financial straits than any of us had figured.

It is a shame that she will no longer be with the organization. The programming and artist roster she brought to HCA certainly piqued my interest in an institution I'd previously ignored, and I am rather difficult to please artistically. (You may think I'm biased, and to some extent I am. But Anu and I rely on each other for honest critique, so we don't cut any slack with regards to whether or not we think the other's creative efforts are engaging or not.) However, she will continue to curate, write, and otherwise engage the Bay Area (and national, and international) arts community so you'll continue to be able to attend her shows and programs -- only you'll have to do so at some other place(s).

Little Troubles In Big China

I just finished reading The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu. This collection of interviews with Chinese from the bottom heap of society, onto which Liao Yiwu had been flung by his government for being a dissident writer, is such a compelling read that despite coming home at eleven PM on average I barely managed to put it down each night, resulting in my getting about 4 hours of sleep a night for three nights.

The Corpse Walker by Liao Yiwu


The most compelling, and depressing, thing about The Corpse Walker is that each of these harrowing, Kafkaesque tales is true. Each interview reveals a litany of problems which may seem like small or distant problems individually (oddly, particularly to those interviewed), but which add up to a portrait of a society that badly needs real reform, not just an Olympian whitewash. Their little troubles add up to a big problem for Chinese society. Many of the interviewees have resigned themselves to matter-of-fact remembrances of various individual incidents which, to comfortable westerners such as myself, would seem crushing in their own right. Death and privation are discussed and written about in a tone that may seem disturbingly perfunctory to Westerners, but for these people who have experienced so much misery, resignation seems to be the only coping mechanism many of them have left. Most of those who ultimately succumb at all to any admission of their despair, frustration and anger only do so after recounting long stories of repeated abuse, and lives wasted by The Party on misguided ideological crusades.

Liao's status as a pariah gave him first hand access to other, usually less politically motivated pariahs in Chinese society. He has given these people their voice, and it is not always one which will find sympathetic ears in the West. It seems that his purpose in writing this book was both to give ordinary Chinese who aren't participating in the "economic miracle" a platform, and at the same time to put the lie to the global claims that China is a reformed, modern society whose leadership is worthy of praise, even coddling. The picture of China from Mr. Liao's view is quite different. Perhaps tales of The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward with their utterly devastating effects seem like relics of the past, but in this book you will hear not only of the impact those policies had at the time, but the legacies that still exist in China today. People destroyed by those policies are being forgotten all over again, and at the same time the government still detains people like Mr. Liao. The policies may be somewhat less brutal since Mao, but the underlying theories remain the same: power for the powerful, a dab of hope for those who toe the line, and little left for anyone else.

Human Rights Watch has this to say about the author's backgroud: "Liao Yiwu (China), poet, novelist, film scriptwriter, has been arrested repeatedly over the past fourteen years. He was first arrested in March 1990 while working on a movie about the government´s persecution of persons involved in the June 4th Movement. Over the next four years, he was frequently confined to detention centers and prisons where he was subjected to abusive treatment, once being handcuffed for twenty-three consecutive days causing abscesses in his armpits. He tried to commit suicide twice. In October 1995, police searched his home, confiscated his writings, and held him under house arrest for twenty days. In September 1998, he was arrested because he compiled The Underground Poems of the Seventies in China. The book´s publishers were dismissed from their posts. In January 2001, the publisher of his latest book, Voice From the Lowest Rung of the Society, was ordered to recall copies that were already in the stores. Voice From the Lowest Rung of the Society was then published in Taiwan. In December 2002, Liao Yiwu was detained again after he posted his writings on the Internet and signed a petition to the 16th Party Congress."

Given his status, Mr. Liao had insider access to prisoners (political and otherwise), beggars, and others in Chinese society that had he not fallen from grace with his government, he would probably have never even noticed. The stories he relays are of desperate people trampled by the marche of progress as their country become prosperous either without them, or worse, at their expense. China, in the eyes of Mr. Liao and many of the people he interviews, is a place where life is cheap. The survivors of The Cultural Revolution are a "wasted" generation, malnurtured and discarded. Poor and dissident Chinese of today are little better off. Liao is not always sympathetic to his interviewees, and his stating so often leads to even more revealing responses -- particularly in the cases of unrepentant abusers such as the Human Trafficker who defends the practices of kidnapping and rape, and the former Red Guard who defends torture, murder and the annihilation of China's historical treasures.

The Corpse Walker is a fascinating look at a country that has garnered a lot of attention lately. While you may not find the picture of China that Mr. Liao paints to be very appealing, it is one of the realities of his society and without people like him to remind the world of this fact, there will never be any hope of changing the reality of China to better conform to the public relations image. The only disappointing thing about the book is that there are two other volumes as yet untranslated, a deficiency I hope will be rectified in the not-too-distant future.

Busy as a Bee

I've been quite busy. In addition to my day job I was busy rewriting and sending a feature script called "Welcome To Akron" to a wide variety of contests, fellowships, agents and managers. I've also been taking an advanced cinematography class, working on a new feature script, brainstorming ideas and writing treatments for a pitches to an interested producing partner, doing some event photography (which I don't really like doing, but it was a favor), and working on two short films. One of the shorts is a "making of" documentary for another short film (this weekend I think I finally re-focused on the idea that "cracked" the making of project in terms of making it not be as boring as most other making of docs), and the other is the next installment of a Noir comedy serial that I've developed with my friends Bill Zahn and Jason Topolski (and am creating with help from a whole bunch of friends). Here are a couple production stills:

Me and Bill Zahn, my directing and writing partner, on location trying to figure out
what the heck to do about the zillion production problems that cropped-up
in that grove of trees (the smiles came after we accepted compromise).

Jason Topolski, our star, looking noir as all get-out.

However, we won't be setting-up the site and releasing the first webisode until some time later this year. The plan is to have at least 3 (I'd prefer 4) in the can before we start releasing them. Thanks to a fantastic crew, we managed to get through some really rough patches and get most of our shooting done. We will do a pick-up day, but given the ambition of some of our set-ups, that was probably to be expected.

I've also been preparing for a trip to Poland next week. To cap it all off Sim, one of our cats, got very sick with Pyothorax (a potentially fatal condition). $4000 in vet bills later he is on the road to recovery, but Anu has now been laid off by yet another non-profit arts institution going down the path to destitution and cultural irrelevance (the timing of which, coming on the heels of such a large and unexpected expense, was doubly inauspicious).

I did have a couple minutes to "write" this review of Denon's absurd $500 ethernet cable (which some of you will recognizes as a riff on the Turbo Encabulator meme, with a few changes to fit the application), so I guess the chaos is subsiding a wee bit.