Ohh, you crazy bible belters....

To me, there's nothing funnier or more scary than frightened ultrachristians. For example, are you a goth? Apparently I'm goth, and I didn't even know it. (my favorite is either the spending alone time to talk to evil spirits, my choice of breakfast cereal, or my pin that says, "I'm Goth.")

These people exist because they don't want to be like you.

I mean yeah, ha ha, it's funny to think of moms reading over this article some place in like Indiana or Alabama and getting all scared that their child is "goth." The scary thing is that I'm sure a lot of moms do. I think the worst thing is that they show the picture and then below it ask if one of the more nazi-like, evil, fearful, and amazingly stupid things we've done in our American history was actually the correct thing to do. Though it shouldn't be shocking. These people are the most nazi-like, evil, fearful, and amazingly stupid people in the country.

Sadly, there's a lot of them. Enough of them to be scared enough to re-elect Bush.

-j

Why the long face?

This is such a wonderful happy day! Gee whiz, am I happy. Why? Because Jackie, Rob, and Lola seem to be in crap moods today according to their blogs, so I'm trying to be happy enough for all four of us.

Oh WIMM, how I've neglected thee....

It's been eleven days since I've posted anything. And that was about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I cannot leave my loyal reader(s) with such a taste for eleven days. So here's a lot of more words.

We wrapped filming Nick's film "Infest" last Monday. Everything went really well. His set looked beautiful in it's absolute disgustingness. This woman is supposed to live in this gross apartment, and her murdered husband comes back to haunt her in the form of these Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.

Now about the actual roaches, they were really creepy at first, but after about a day, they were really cool. They were pretty strong, and they actually hissed really loudly, but they didn't bite or anything. They'd just crawl around on you, which wasn't that bad. I played around with them a lot by the end of it. But John Nodilo ran away like a little girl everytime they were within ten feet of him. The actress had to put her hands in a sink that was filled with them and they were all crawling on her arms and stuff. Nick has definitely got some great shots in this film, some really creepy visuals. He's got a murky bathtub, that the husband keeps popping out of and everything. Dave and Nick and I had to put everything in these pictures back to its normal color, so we had to repaint the walls, tear down the flats and put all the props back. It was kind of a pain.

Dave tried to eat a cockroach. It didn't work out. He looks so confident.

Then we started work on Marcus's film "National Heroes." This is probably the most bizarre film I've been a part of. It's a mixture of comedy, and pornography, so I'm sure we'll have to get the grandparents to leave the theater for this screening.

However it looks absolutely hilarious. The story is about this guy who is fed up with not being able to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so he decides to look for them in Los Angeles. He runs into all these weird characters along the way, that are spoofs of other characters. He finds a guy named Charley in the woods who is a direct take of Carl from Slingblade. He meets up with a guy named Buggy Hair who is a pimp that drives a Hummer, and has cockroaches in his hair (we brought them back out) and is a take off of Huggy Bear from the Starsky and Hutch show. We also had some very attractive ladies in bikinis as his "hoes." The characters in this film are hilarious. The "soldier" looking for weapons is completely insane. His sad pathetic roommate who has just lost his girlfriend (who turns out to be the porn star) is played really well. All his characters are great. I had to shave my goatee because I have a cameo in this film, as the notorious George W. Bush, creeping through the woods in a cloak, with a globe in my hand. I had a W. mask. It was either that, or I was supposed to be a sex slave in the desert, and I could keep the goatee. It'll grow back.

Apparently what they shot on Saturday (I wasn't on set) was a really hot girl in lingerie, that eventually partially came off. I'm actually glad I wasn't on set. I would've just gotten bummed out, like when you're starving and they bring you a bunch of food, but you're not attractive, so they never let you have any of it. Oh, I'm a lonely man.

My old roommate Curtis is down for the weekend, he actually goes back up to Vancouver tomorrow. It's been really fun hanging out with him again, for what little time I've been able to.

Also, I'm planning on flying out somewhere in the next week or two. The plan has been always to go to Michigan, but the problem is I can't rent a car because I'm too young, and the only place I can fly into is either Detroit or Chicago, meaning someone would have to pick me up. The other option was to fly to Denver to see Kristine and Éowyn, but Kristine's family will be out there, and Éowyn might be working. Then I could also go to Missouri and hang out with my parents for a few days, which would be the nice thing to do, because I believe Mothers Day is right in there, and I haven't been there to visit since I drove through on my way out here. Then of course I could just stay in Los Angeles, and do nothing but edit and maybe help out on Nodilo's film for a week, which would put me pretty far ahead, but knowing myself, I'd probably just sleep in a lot and stay in my pajamas all day. I'm leaning towards Missouri right now, unless someone can pick me up in Michigan. Even then it's kind of a toss up. I'd feel kind of guilty for not going to Missouri, because both my brothers have gone to visit. But I'm also the kind of overworked that hanging out with my friends in Kalamazoo can definitely remedy. I don't know. I called the reservation place, and they said that I can make the reservation the day of the flight if I want to. So I can think it all over. I got a week.

I saw Sin City last night. I think the absolute best comic book to movie adaptation I've ever seen. Ultra violent, ultra stylistic, and voice overs you can almost read in the panels while you hear them. Very very well done. Elijah Wood: very very creepy. Nick Stahl, the Yellow Bastard: not as creepy as someone led me to believe.

That's about it from Hollywood. Tomorrow we check in/out, then go build a television set (a set for a TV show, not an actual TV.) Two more 5pm-5am shoots, one full day possibly Saturday, definitely Sunday, one more check in, a week off, three weeks of classes/editing, then I graduate. Hooray.

Later

-j

Not to get on Jonny's nerves, but....

I keep seeing the previews for the new Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy movie, and I have to say that it looks like a "renter." Or a "wait until it's on HBOer." Which sucks, because I read the books. Four of them. They were good...ish. Everything in the previews looks kind of lame.

Nerd Alert.

Ok, so the other day I finished the novel of Revenge of the Sith. So now I know what happens. If the movie matches the book, it starts out pretty cool, then lulls, then ends pretty cool.

However, what I was weary of the entire time is true. If the movie matches the book, episode 3 doesn't match into episode 4, or for that matter, episode 5. There are a few minor points that don't really fit. Small things. But just enough to know that George Lucas was kind of full of crap when he said he had this stuff thought out from the beginning.

That is, if the book matches the movie. Which, I'm sure it does at least 95%. So take this as a warning. After the new movie comes out in May, nerds everywhere will be upset about every small detail that doesn't match, the same way they were when Wolverine was taller than 5'2" in the X-Men movie. Be cautious, and ready to be annoyed by every mom's basement dwelling self proclaimed Jedi around the world.

-j

Apathy.

It's not that I have nothing to do. It's that I want to do nothing. I should do laundry. I should clean this room. I just ate too much I think, and I'm tired. So right now I'm content sitting alone in the dark amongst all the trash and loads of dirty clothes, and playing Freecell until I decide to get up and do something that needs desperately to be done.

-j

Happy Birthday Kristine.

Yes, it's for real your birthday today, not like my fake birthday a couple days ago. I hope you like your present. Have a good day, and don't get all weepy and stuff because you're really really freakin old.

later
-j

Gluttony, Pride, Sloth, Envy, Wrath, Lust, Greed.

What would give anyone the idea to do this?

R.I.P. Mitch.

Someone just left a comment on my site within the last few minutes pointing out that one of my favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg, has passed away. This is very bad news. It must be great though for his family to know that in his short life, he made so many people happy. Although there isn't anything I can find that states the cause of death, he was only 37. I'm sure that even though his life was cut short, his comedy will be making people laugh for years and years to come.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite Mitch quotes before i go to bed for all of an hour and a half: "I f*#kin hate arrows man, they try to tell me which direction to go. It's like F*#k you, I ain't going that way... line with two thirds of a triangle on the end! Imagine being killed by a bow and arrow, that would suck. An arrow killed you? They'd never solve the crime. 'Look at that dead guy... let's go that way.'"

-j

Oh, it gets better...

Hi folks, it's 2:30am out on the west coast. Let's recap the last day.

Dave called at about 3pm to tell me not to show up to set today until they called me, because they're changing the call time, but they weren't sure to what. So I sat by the phone, and waited. And waited. Call time was originally 4:30pm. At 8pm I called Dave to ask "WTF?" He tells me, oh yeah, the shoot for tonight is cancelled. Instead we'll be shooting at 6am the tomorrow. Expect a "long day."

First of all, rude, for not calling me.

Second of all, lame, for blowing everyone's day. I'm done with my shoot, but no one else is, so everyone could've used today instead of sleeping in preparing for a 5pm-5am shoot.

Third of all, crap, for throwing off our schedules, because it's 2:30am, and I can't sleep, and I need to be ON SET in three and a half hours.

Fourth of all, you suck, for forcing Cesar to push back his shoot so that you can make up for the slowness of the day before.

Fifth of all, what the hell, because if you could only get 12 shots in 12 hours, two 16 hour days aren't going to help you at all if you have 85 freaking shots to get in one room.

Anyway, a few days ago, I posted at The Coughing Dog, that there would be a surprise on the site yesterday. I just got it done by the skin of my teeth and uploaded at 11:57pm. Check it out.

-j

Ugh, folks. Ugh.

Okay so the shooting for the Looker went fantastically super splendid. Everything went really really well. No problems, a few minor hiccups at best. Plus, I had help from the finest PA and best giant lobster ever, Éowyn Mishawn. A big round of applause for her please. Let her hear it.

There will be some stills from the film up at the Coughing Dog site soon.

Now we're on Dave's set. Not seeming to run as smooth. Our shoots all week are from 5pm to 5am, so I'm on the graveyard shift. Apart from that, he's got 104 shots. We were supposed to get 37 of them done today. We got 12. That's right 12.

We had a meeting afterwards, and he's considering cancelling his whole shoot. See, I like the guy well enough, but maybe he's really not cut out for this business. First of all, he is the guy in charge. If he only gets 12 shots in 12 hours, he's got no one to blame but himself. He's put $4500 into the design of his set, which, while it looks pretty nice, I'm sure it was unnecessary. He basically built a hospital room, instead of finding a room that could be turned into a hospital room. That's where his moolah went, and he's still not happy with it. To me, it looks fine. He's not happy with the performances of his actors, but to be honest, he had one guy who has a broken leg (in real life) come out from about an hour away, arrive on set at 7pm, and not get his first shot until 2am. He has another actress, who was on set until 5am, and was never in a shot that a stand in couldn't have done. He's walking around like a giant ball of stress, the tension is palpable, and he's claiming that he's not sure what to do. Apart from that it's like 3am. Of course your actors will be "flat." After we wrapped today he had a meeting with us and said that today was terrible, and it made him feel like he should give up being a filmmaker and go back to working in the bank in Indiana. He's seriously considering canning the whole film. That alone to me signifies he isn't cut out for it. One bad day and that thought crosses his mind. In this business you need to handle pressure. Lots and lots of pressure. This shoot, this is nothing at all. This is a breezy walk in the park compared to a budgeted film, where you're spending other peoples money, and as the seconds roll by, the dollar signs are ticking away. A major motion picture costs on average $20 million. Figure in that budget 40 days of shooting, that's $500,000 a day, at 12 hours of shooting a day, that's $41,666 an hour or about $700 a minute. If you only get one shot an hour like he did today, not only are you instantly fired, you'll never work again.

Anyway, on to lighter things. As I mentioned, Éowyn helped out on my shoot. She spent the week here, and it was totally flippin' sweet. We had a great time. She worked on my set, she got a few roles in the film, we went to Universal and went on the rides, we took the tram tour, she ordered about fifty grande non fat one pump vanilla sugar free latte's from Starbucks, we went to Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash, we toured NYFA, we walked through the Universal Prop building and the Universal Wardrobe building and came up with the idea a little too late to pretend we were really important set designers for Spielberg to show off to a passing tour group, we dressed as warriors and played with swords, we drove up Mullholland Drive and almost made Éowyn carsick, we got lost a few times, we ate breakfast in bed, consisting of cold pizza and pudding pops, I gave her a foot massage that was so awesome she tried to knock herself out by hitting her head on the porch railing because there was just too much joy for her body and mind to handle, we went to Hollywood and eventually saw the walk of fame and the handprints and we spent easter sunday having dinner at the Hooters across the street from Graumann's Chinese Theater, we went to the Hard Rock Cafe, we hung out with Tom and learned about "protrusion," we watched the last half of the season finale of Carnivale, then we watched the first half, we screwed up parking a few times, once at City Walk, and once at Starbucks, we watched nearly all the dailies from The Looker and took still frames, we cleaned a lot of freshly spit strawberry and creme frappacino from my computer monitor, we helped move equipment into and out of NYFA, we hit our heads on shit, we went to Sebastians, she cramped my style in a bar in Burbank, she almost blacked out in a warehouse parking lot after miraculously receiveing a concussion through her elbow, we drank a lot of wine, and we finally watched Napoleon Dynamite together. It was eventful, quite eventful, considering it was the first time we'd ever met. It was an absolute freakin blast. I was sad when she left. Both because she was gone, and because I had to be in Santa Clarita by 6:30am, and we stayed up really late the night before. We had a really really good time. Thanks for coming, Éowyn.

Anyway, it's 7:30am. I have to be back to that hospital set at 4pm, so I need to get some sleep.

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. As you can read, I've been pretty busy.

Later.
-j