02.16.07
Posted in Movies at 11:55 pm by Rob Schultz
Today was a longish day, ended prematurely.
Started off at the classy and luxurious Buena Vista branch of the Burbank Public Library. Checking some internets, reading some wikipedia. Google maps advised that a drive to Santa Monica should take half an hour. Turns out it’s almost three times that.
First I had a meeting with some people called Crossbar. They’re making a documentary about celebrities with backyard ice hockey rinks, and we were discussing whether I might be a good choice to edit it for them. The meetings here are so strange, like the people with the money are auditioning for me. I watched a promo and we talked a bit and less than fifteen minutes later I was on my way. There were a couple lines in there that I wondered about, whether they were trying to trick me into proving I don’t know my televised NHL. I don’t, but at least I didn’t lie about it.
There was time before my second appointment, around the corner, so I found some lunch. Lunch came with not one but two eggrolls, and the first wasn’t very good. I gave the second one to a beggar. Usually in Cleveland they hate that, because they want money. Later on I saw the beggar in the alley between the restaurants and the parking garage, smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone. I wonder what she did with the eggroll.
I went to my second meeting a bit early, and I think it went well. Here’s hoping this isn’t an ‘unskilled and unaware‘ sort of deal.
I couldn’t find a place to park near my building after driving the ninety minutes (or twenty-five miles) back, so I drove some more and went to the Anderville hostel where I had been staying for a while. I was hoping to go ‘out’ anyhow, so that seemed a likely entrée.
Russell returned home, and so did his most recent guests. Russ took all manner of phone calls and text messages to arrange his social calendar, and his guests took down 2 liters of Mountain Dew, a bottle of vodka, and an unspecified amount of pot. Each spent around half an hour primping, and then they went out to meet the other QU folk, whose company is too exclusive for the likes of me. I never saw that one coming.
I even got a trademark Russman lie that doesn’t explain anything, which he delivers with a matter-of-fact-tone used to mean “let’s tell ourselves this other thing, so we don’t need to state the obvious truth.” Oof.
If I was really good at this, here is where I would illustrate a moral similar to “you can’t change who you are in the minds of people who…something something” with the themes of Dark City. It feels kind of like it should be possible, but I’m not sure I got everything that movie had to offer on the first go-’round. It seemed to me to be made up entirely of cut scenes from those FMV adventure games Russell likes so much. Like watching an hour and a half of “Previously, on Dark City” recaps or something. And for years, people have been telling me about the “twist” at the end, so it’s good to have finally gotten that out of the way, I guess.
Instead, I’ve come home to tell a text editor about my day, since there was some kind of foul-up with the phone company and it’ll be another week before we get any internets around here. I’m told the phone company was generous enough to not charge us the enormous fees they usually stick to customers whose accounts they’ve mismanaged.
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02.13.07
Posted in Life at 8:01 pm by Rob Schultz
Saturday night (practically Sunday, in fact) is when one might find the Tomorrow Show, as hosted by Brendan Small and Ron Lynch and Craig someone. They’re joined by a number of acts, in this particular case a fistful of standups who each had at least something I liked, a musician who sang a few songs (not all of them in french), and a magic act. I don’t think it’s supposed to be free, but it IS three hours long. I got there late and nobody took my money until I took a Coke.
Sunday nights is a night for ASSSSCAT, an improvisation provided by the Upright Citizens Brigade. I was worried it would be extremely unfunny, and this worry was entirely unwarrented. There were things I especially liked, but I promptly forgot them all. I do know that my successors to the Anderville Hostel in Hollywood, CA were improvisationally shat upon repeatedly. I threw a hotel key into the Bucket of Truth. I think it was leftover from my work on Three Short Stories About Suicide, the production that unrepentantly stole the scarf I got for Christmas one year.
And last night. Well, last night – and this isn’t every Monday, but it was last night. That’s when the How To Be A Megastar 2.0 tour rolls through Universal City. It’s really like 2.2 or something, since it’s been rejiggered since I saw the first leg of the tour in Cleveland. I bought my seat about an hour before the show and got a reasonably close (maybe as far out as the back of the NY venue) seat, centered. This is what the second tour is supposed to be, and it did a fine job of rocking the Gibson Amphitheater. The Current and White Rabbit are gone, Piano Smasher is back, there’s a new version of paintcheese (at the expense of a $4,000 joke), some arrangements have been adjusted – in some cases to make up for a change in vocalists. Tracy Bonham is gone, and so is her violin. The new opening act is Mike Relm, a DJ with the gimmick of scrubbing videos that sometimes coincide and sometimes drive the audio. I didn’t like his set much, and although he worked well with BMG on Your Attention, I’m glad they didn’t really call attention to his return to the stage. The energy and pacing of this version of the show is much better than last time. The impression is that the show is really going on forever (in a positive way), as each flow ends and the next begins. There are some other new places where music is played in addition to the video displays, and some of the video parody segments have been cut, which is probably for the best.
Also, in a nice bonus, I met some of the Blue Man Message Board members who were attending. I jotted down some seat numbers before I left so I was able to visit with them before the show, and by trailing them afterward, I got a sticker and the chance to go back to the performers’ cafeteria and look at the Blue Man for a couple of minutes. The sticker implies that some people paid money for that opportunity, which seems silly to me, because aside from the Coke I nicked backstage, it’s probably not worth a lot of money to just get to look at them some more. I guess it’s a photo op / signing thing, which people dig. All that said, I’m very grateful for the chance to enjoy a little free bonus like that, which BMG does a fine job of doing for their fans and MB members, and I usually miss out on enjoying due to my own ineptitude. I heard Chris Wink was wandering around, and I saw Matt Goldman (the Blue Man Founder, not the Time Lord) after the show. I spoke to neither.
In ‘relevant’ news, I got my street parking pass yesterday, my Burbank Public Library card, and a sign for the candidate I’m supporting in the upcoming 8th district councilman elections (Go BRIC!). I don’t totally mind that now that Tobin’s car has arrived he gets the garage parking, because I don’t like parking in our garage much. It does suck cruising around for a spot on the street late at night when everyone’s home though.
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02.10.07
Posted in Life at 11:28 am by Rob Schultz
Seems I’ve been giving all the update typing to specific people in their E-mail instead of this thing here.
So we were turned down for the fancy expensive two-bedroom Hollywood apartment. Then a cool cheap three bedroom place with lots of space and a private patio and built in bookcases and other fine things was found. We got applications and prepared to fill them out.
Then Mr`Death decides that he doesn’t like to move and wants a place to live for years. Except that he’s worried he might not like any roommate for as long as he would like to not move, so he’s going to find a place to live alone and should not Tobin and I find our own place?
So we did. That same day. It’s in ‘tha ‘Bank,’ which is how I imagine all the cool kids refer to Burbank. Don’t trust those kids from the “(hol)LyWo(od),” they don’t know what’s up.
The next day was about finding money somewhere. My bank isn’t quite so populous in this part of the world, so I was slow and wasteful in my attempts to change my American Dollars from one form to another. I did not solve the puzzle before it was time to rush off to an interview that didn’t happen and then to beta test the new DVD game Simpsons Trivial Pursuit, which was pretty cool. You don’t seem to require a deep or encyclopedic knowledge of the Simpsons to play, but sometimes it helps.
Wednesday saw a lease signed, and I took an interview for an editing position where apparently they were after editors who have never edited before, because they want to spend time training employees instead of having ‘em just sit down and work. I guess they want to be the next youtube, but you have to be at one of the universities where they’ve sent a cameraman, instead of using your own camera. Or something.
Much time since has been spent on ye olde craigslist looking for more jobs and some furniture to fill out the apartment. I’ve been moving some of my belongings over from Russellville. In the apartment itself, we encounter slight problems that show me how inattentive to detail we were while just glancing around at apartments to see if we could fit inside. So we’ll keep phoning up ‘Bill’ the manager until they go away. His command of English doesn’t seem to be quite up to par, which can make the prospect of phone conversation more daunting.
One such point of order involved each bathroom of the californian apartment, which is equipped with a ceiling mounted coil that can glow with the heat of less than a thousand suns. It seems like an odd choice to provide that instead of a fan. Even more odd is the fact that my bathroom obviously has a fan, with no clear system for energizing it. Also, we preferred keys that could actually open our mailbox, instead of the shiny keyring weights that were originally provided.
And last night – St. Nick’s. The old standby of ‘people who recognize you from something prior (school, let’s say) magically recall what great friends you were, regardless of truth’ holds true. There was an awful lot of Quinnipiac in one place last night. And it was very Quinnipiac indeed.
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02.03.07
Posted in Work at 8:42 pm by Rob Schultz
Today I met some of the Cougars. Specifically Casey McAdams and Troy Hauschild. Tobin and I helped them to shoot as much of a sketch for the pilot they’re assembling as possible before it was time to go watch basketball.
I found myself operating camera a lot more than I have in a while, especially for someone else’s thing. I guess that’ll happen when your sketch team and production team sums up to two (2) people.
I guess I won’t blow the sketch by describing it, but it does include Randy the dummy getting splattered across a windshield, because he was able to do more takes than Casey would have. Apparently (I missed it, operating camera and all) some women driving by saw one of the hits and freaked out.The cougars’ delight that we were so new to the city gave way to lots of helpful tidbits of advice. I hope they’ll come straight to us instead of craigslist the next time they’re ready to shoot. Sorry to the 75 other applicants who wanted the job – we were there first.
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02.02.07
Posted in Movies at 2:01 am by Rob Schultz
So I’ve been up and down hollywood and sunset blvds, and followed mullholland dr around for a while. Yesterday I met someone I’ve known for years for the first time, which is usually an odd experience. We went checking around some apartments-for-rent that we called earlier in the week. Two were average, one was pretty neat. Everything recently replaced, and featuring a totally useless fireplace like everywhere else around here.
But the real value of a place like that is having a landlord who knows what time it is, which way the wind is blowing, and where his towel is. In just the two hours we spent together so far, he revealed any number of truths about the New World Order at work, how Hitler was a British Agent financed by the Bush family which shares blood with the modern Queen of England. All that stuff the Vatican doesn’t want you to know. I hope that he’ll really appreciate and prefer tenants who can talk with him about that sort of thing.
And of course, as we were meeting and viewing the apartment, our esteemed potential third roommate was booking flights across the continent for him and his automobile. So I found my way to LAX today to collect him.
So now we either get a phone call and a new apartment, or we start searching all over again.
Also, I borrowed one of Russ’ netflix discs while he was out working, and saw a French film that starts out at something near the sensibility of a State sketch and gradually works its way in the direction of Michael Haneke territory. Overall pretty good, but I would have rather had an answer than a message. 3/5.
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