Life is not Film

I've had a lot going on this year. Changes in my work, my role on some side projects I'm involved with, relationships, friendships...the list goes on, populated with the usual life stuff most of you are familiar with from your own existence.

However, it wasn't until just now that I realized a key thing that I should have noticed long ago. Something that many of you know already, but that I only thought about and never really believed. I don't want to throw the big reveal in too early though, so I'll backtrack a little.

I set small time windows for most of my projects in life. If the desired goal - or at least an unexpected side goal - is not reached in that window, I move on to other things or shelf the project until later. Shelving it works much like when a TV series goes on hiatus...I may never return to it, or it may pick up in the middle of next season. In part this is because there are so many small things that I want to do, and if I don't make that deadline I have to budget time for the next thing. I sort of think of it as a desire to live my life and not get too bogged down in the details. If I am stuck on one project too long past the deadline, I feel I am fixated on it too much and missing out on the other projects.

This is really not the way I should be going about things. Small projects, be they a script, a personal relationship, or a job advancement, never satisfy for long. You get a brief feeling of accomplishment, but it is as short lived as the project was.

Anything of real value takes time. Lots of time in most cases. Sure, I can weld together something that looks vaguely like a robot in, say, a weekend, but it would be an inarguably awesome robot if I held out for the parts I really wanted and made sure they were placed perfectly. This all may seem like old news to many, maybe even most of you. But here's where I tie in film as mentioned in the title, and explain why it took me so long to get here.

My life does not have to fit into a roughly two hour long time slot.

I grew up watching movies. Ghostbusters, Young Guns, Clerks, Dark Crystal, etc. All of these films are around two hours or less. In that time, the guy gets the girl, the evil is vanquished, and the heroes ride off into the sunset. I guess somehow I started to think that things would happen that fast in life as well, but you don't have the option for everything to happen off screen between scenes in real life. It's deceiving in that way. Back off man, they're scientists...but we don't see them going to school for thier doctorates. He'll make you famous...but how much crap did Billy have to deal with before being picked up as a Regulator? Dante wasn't supposed to be there that day, but think of all the mindlessly boring days you don't see. Or for the more technical side, that two hour movie took 6 months to a year to make. Look at it either way you like, and it isn't as fast as it looks on the surface.

Don't get me wrong, I always knew the difference between movies and reality. I'm not a complete idiot. However, somewhere along the way the movies illusions of things happening fast made me impatient. The problem is, when you try to make things happen fast, it often actually sets you back and things take longer.

For example, you decide, pretty much on barely more than a whim, that you want to make a movie. You've got friends who can do everything you need...a sound guy, cameraman, effects, actors, you can write a pretty awesome short script pretty fast. But these people have lives too. They can't all get together at the same time during your time window. The window passes. Next thing you know, you've got it in your head that it isn't going to happen...so you stop even talking to your crew about the movie. Now it isn't getting made.

But if you plan it out for the long haul, maybe things get done slower, but they do get done. Tell the crew weeks ahead of time that on X day at X time we start rolling and you need them to be there, they are more likely to be there. You can't just call them up the day before and say 'Hey, this needs to get done right now.' That way lies madness and failure, because sooner or later so much simply does not happen that you abandon it.

What I'm trying to say here I guess is that your life is likely to be around 60 years. That's a long time. Not a two hour time slot, but sixty freakin years. Take some time, do it up right. If the alien invasion happens today, you can't stop it if you didn't prepare and train first. Your perfect girl is not going to fall in love with you and start a great relationship after one glance or even one date. You have to build up a company, you can't just rent an office and automatically have a steady stream of customers. Look at the long haul, build it slowly, and it will happen. If it doesn't, you haven't been paying attention...because sometimes the project - whatever it may be - can take a life of it's own and perhaps what you thought was the real goal was never where you were headed, but you learned something along the way that allows you to get to a place that is just as great. Maybe better.

In summary, forget about next week. Forget about next month. Look at reaching your goal next year. But work at it the whole time. Slowly, with precision.

Now that I finally realized this, well after most of you probably did, comes the tricky part...figuring out the pace. How to ignore that frantic voice saying 'We need that now!' in the back of my head. It's time for some serious change that's been a long time coming. Years. I've had conversations that touched on this with several close friends over the years, don't really know why it never fully stuck. And it clicked while I was watching Clerks II of all things.

I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about that quite yet...still trying to figure out that little trick myself. But I will figure it out, and so should you. Or if you've forgotten, count this as a reminder.

The Orange Soda Drive-By

Back when I was living in Louisiana I decided I wanted to get a bike and add some cycling to my workout routine. I never did...moving around every couple of years made me leery of buying large things, as it was just one more thing I had to move and it seemed prudent to live as light as possible.

Cut to the present day. Since I moved back to Seattle, I've toyed with getting a bike off and on. I put it off due to not wanting to lug it to my third floor apartment after a ride, not to mention finding somewhere to keep it. However, a friend and I were talking about cycling recently and I thought it would be cool to go riding with people, so I finally caved and gave it some more serious thought.

This morning, while out on a hunt for parts to build various crazy machines I came up with and finding absolutely none of the parts (although I did finally buy a soldering iron), I decided to just spend the money on a bike instead. Picked up a decent mountain bike, helmet, gloves, pump, and lock. Took it home, aired up the tires, made some adjustments here and there, and it was good to go for a test ride. I decided to ride over to my mom's place, just over 2 miles away. 4 miles round trip seemed like a good way to get a feel for it and see if there were any more adjustments I needed to make.

I get most of the way there, I'm 2 blocks from the destination, waiting at an intersection for the light to change. I'm feeling pretty good, only minor adjustments still need to be made and I was starting to remember how zen riding a bike was. Next thing I know, there's a cry of 'Woohoo!' and I'm hit in the face and chest by a 32oz Big Gulp from 7-11 and soaked in orange soda. The assholes then speed off before I can do anything more than give them the finger. Great way for the first bike ride in years to go down, eh?

I'm a pretty laid back guy...I've never started a fight, and I have very strict rules about never throwing the first punch. I can fight, but I will only do so to protect myself or someone else when they are being physically attacked. I do not consider these rules to be bendable...ever.

That said, reverse a few years. I have always had problems with bullies and assholes preying on others. As far back as first grade I can remember getting in trouble at school for taking down the class bully when he was messing with my friends. I will not let anyone mess with my friends, I just get really protective about anyone close to me. As with most folks, I don't like being messed with personally either, but I'll usually take more abuse myself than I'll let someone dish out to my friends. These guys in their truck today really pissed me off though...tends to be a knee jerk response to having a flying object hit you and burst open, you get a little pissed. They have no honor and apparently think their fellow humans only exist for their amusement, as opposed to treating them as people. They also, obviously, do not have the balls to stop and follow through. Probably for the best, actually, because it's been a long week and I could do without the hassle.

So I finally get home, and I'm still a bit irritated. No one around to talk to about all this and vent a bit that way, so I pop my ipod into the speaker system, que up the workout playlist, and drag out the punching bag. Might as well get more of a workout from all this, that's constructive...right?

25 minutes in, I feel something on my feet. Look down, and my feet are soaked, as well as the surrounding carpet. See, I have an Everlast inflatable punching bag, weighted down at the bottom by a few gallons of water. I have been hitting it so hard, I have burst the seams in several spots, and the water jets out all over my feet. So to add to this strange domino effect going on for me this week, I have just inadvertently destroyed my punching bag, which up to now has been the main upper body cardio part of my routine.

I think I am just going to stay in my apartment all day tomorrow and meditate on life or something. This is just not my week at all. Luckily, I really can't complain about most of the rest of my life, so I'm sure it is only temporary.

Live fast, die young, leave a good looking animated corpse.

My body is exhausted, yet my mind is a hyperactive juggernaut that refuses to slow down for even a second. This effect could likely be harnessed and put to much better use than many of my present endeavors. I do, however, need to attempt sleep at some point. Actual restful sleep. Temperature changes this time of year make this difficult.

As for my endeavors, lately I have been embarking on some tentative projects that, I believe, will focus my runaway brain. The movie I mentioned last blog around is one example. Some are much simpler, like planning my undead wounds for a costume party this Friday. Some will remain known only to me until the time is right...at which point my enemies will be crushed, driven before me, and the lamentations of their women will be heard for miles around. Actually, those will in all likelihood be rather anticlimactic, but that's no fun to describe. Only I know for sure.

All megalomaniacal ramblings aside however, things are going well other than my restlessness. Just need to convert a story to a script, as a crew is tentatively forming already. I have many stories I would love to convert to celluloid, and those that don't get written up as scripts will hopefully end up as short stories. I'm looking forward to doing some more writing, although I doubt I will write poetry again...I think my brain isn't wired for that anymore. Some musical projects (that do not involve me singing, for reasons you will read below) are advancing, which is also good.

However, there is a new rule. I am NOT allowed to touch the mic on Rock Band games. For any reason, no matter how much I beg or say 'just this one'. My singing voice is offensive and grating to the human ear. I may really want to sing Billy Idol, but I should not be allowed to. Someone tried to stop me after I gave them this rule (request?) last night, but I was too foolish to listen. Thank you for trying though...I do appreciate it. It seems I was deaf to the voice of reason, as others likely wish they had been to my voice.

I will leave you now, as I am sure you are reeling in shock at the fact that I blogged twice in one week. A sign of the end times, or just me providing you with junkfood for thought? You decide.

PAX '08, Forums, and Film

So, as you can see having been nearly 6 months since my last blog, I have been busy. Which is partially true, and partially an excuse. I actually have been busy as you'll see below. But to be honest, I have had time to blog...just didn't feel like it when I had time. So here it is, your moment of Blog.

First off, been busy with the PAX '08 footage. I'm the producer this year, with Porkfry as Executive Producer. There was much planning beforehand, for several months in fact, and it paid off well. There were a few things we didn't get a chance to cover, and if you were involved with those pre-PAX events I apologize that we didn't get to you. There were a LOT of them, and we only had Pork, Myself, Hicks the amazing camera wiz, and his lovely assistant Opptimys Pryme. We were stretched a bit thin, so we managed the Pub Crawl, the Dinner, the arrival of the Supertrips, and setup footage. Some other events fell by the wayside due to rescheduling and such.

PAX was a BLAST. I'll leave you to search for tales about it yourself as they are all over the net, but I'll give you keywords for your YouTube searches: Fallout Puppets; Bad Horse Chorus; and Omegathon Recap Video. Those will bring up a ton of related videos as well to give you an idea of stuff that went on at PAX.

Since then we've been going through footage, most of it awesome. A LOT of footage. I can't say much more about it at this time, but trust me, it will be awesome. Trust me.

Forums: I am now a Forum Moderator as well as a game tester. I get paid for it. To play games and read forums. Ok, so I'm gloating, but only a little. That's a real forum, not my own (although they still exist).

As for Film, working on the PAX footage has re-awoken the primal urge I have let sleep for years...to make movies. I can pull a crew together pretty easily at this point, and they will rock. I just need to write the scripts. Script it, and they will come. Perhaps I can even get something awesome together for a future HP Lovecraft Film Festival...which, sadly, I missed this year as I forgot which weekend it was. (headsmack) So next year, first weekend of October, I will look into making my train trip to Portland a reality.

Many other strange and wonderful (as well as strange and horrible) things have been going on, but now you have the highlights. I won't promise to blog more often this time, as I seem to be unable to keep that one. But I will say I will try.

The game is afoot...

My year at Microsoft Game Studios is at an end (as a contractor, you have to - by law - take 100 days off from Microsoft after working there a year) and I now work at Big Fish Games, which is pretty awesome.

I love working downtown...today I was wearing my hat with the Cobra logo on it and when I went to lunch I had two people address me as Cobra Commander while giving me free samples of stuff, then another guy saluted me, said 'Hail Cobra!', and offered me free passes to a strip club.

Ah, the antics of random strangers can really improve your day sometimes.

And, despite my lack of posts for the better part of a year, you can see that any reports of my death you may have heard were greatly exagerated. Not that you likely heard any. I've just been busy with PAX, work, school, and other diversions. As I have said many times before, I will try to post more often, as I seem to have many random adventures of late that are at least somewhat worthy of posting.

Booze, Atomic Style

So last weekend I went and brewed beer with Porkfry and a bunch of other people. A friend and I paired off to split a batch of russian stout, which will be named Liquid Tyranny. Bottling is next weekend and thusly will the brewing company most likely to be known as London Dungeon Brewing Co. will be born. Mind you it isn't an Official we-sell-beer type thing, just what we are calling ourselves when we brew. I'm pretty excited to see how it turns out. First batch of beer made by me, aw yeah.

Then today Pork and I went to the Washington Brewers Festival and sampled many fine beers made in Washington. It was loads of fun, and may become an annual tradition. It was that cool.

Other than that, not much going on. Some future plans have taken root, namely hitting PAX and then the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival a few months later. And hopefully I will have the New Webcomic I have in the works up and running by then, so stay tuned for that.

Several other things are going on actually, but they are either A: mundane enough for me to not feel like writing about or B:, quite frankly, none of the internet at large's damn business. Not to be mean or anything, but geez, just because the interweb is here and plays host to many very public tear soaked emo journals and other public blogs that seem to be much too personal for the World doesn't mean the inner workings of my private life will be on Da Net. I mean I like you folks, but you can't peek in my windows all the time. Preferably not at all, actually. That would just be creepy.

Badass, or somesuch

I was having a beer on this little patio in front of the New Orleans, a little bar/restauraunt in Seattle's Pioneer Square, the other night, and some guy randomly walks up to me from the sidewalk side of the railing. He was obviously drunk, and dressed sort of like what you might expect a modern pirate to look like...big hoops in his ears, red bandanna tied around his head, short beard, etc. Not even remotely in a hip-hop way either.

He says to me "I wish I could be a badass!" with no detectable sarcasm or irony but almost a hint of admiration, which is what made this odd. I was just kind of hanging out, and I don't think of myself as nessecarily looking 'badass'.

He puts his hand out to shake mine, and I shake it.

Then he says "How long have you been a bouncer?"

I reply that I am not, I'm just having a beer.

The modern urban pirate turns and walks away without another word.

Ah, I love the odd things that happen to me sometimes.