It won't always be like this

It's 5am, and I'm at work.

From the day before.

Now they pay me for it

No excuses -- my life has been pretty dull of late. So when the announcement went out that we were cranking up to 60+ hour weeks for these last weeks on the show, I generally saw it as getting a huge pay bonus for not having a life. Long days + full Saturdays have been the rule for me the last three weeks, with about three more before we finish.

Including this one. Besides the huge bummer of losing the R&R of a 3-day weekend (we'll be in Saturday AND Monday), there's the added element for me of the Bay Bridge closure this weekend. I'd BART over, but I really don't want to rely on Muni over a holiday weekend when I get into SF. It's bad enough during weekdays. So I'll be doing the Bay/Golden Gate/RSR circuit at least twice this weekend. At least I'll have the opportunity to swing by the old Brew Co. and pick up some of that Blueberry stuff.

I haven't done this kind of schedule since the DR/RT days, and even then I don't think I ever did 60+ for longer than a week or two. And I don't think the stress I dealt with then even begins to approach what I'm dealing with these days.

It's pretty taxing, but I gotta say there's this urgency to it all that gives you a real sense of purpose. Military metaphors have long gotten trite in the work place, but we're happy to excuse them in such situations. You really do feel like you're on this mission, in it together with the show's crew trying to get it all done. Together. When it's like this it's remarkable how easy it is to push any judgments and opinions you develop about somebody far, far into the background so long as they can get the work done. And when they actually do get the work done, which happens the majority of the time, it's equally remarkable how insignificant and petty those judgments and opinions suddenly become.

The work really is looking spectacular. There's a sense that we might have gone a bit too conservative on the stereoscopy on our last project, so we're pushing it much more this time. I think you'll really like what you see.

Be vewwy vewwy quiet...

... I'm huntin' houses.

What season is it anyway?

My recent emancipation from credit card debt has emboldened me to take some tentative steps into that lion's den of real estate, the Bay Area housing market. Without really meaning to, I'd find myself cruising around choice neighborhoods Sundays, 2-4pm looking for that cheery-yet-elegant 'Open House' sign and then making the (often abrupt) maneuvers to intercept.

It's house huntin' season!

By choice neighborhoods, I mean the edges of what I *think* I can afford. If trends hold up, that should be expanding in the next few months. Before my eyes, prices have dropped $10-20k on locations I've been looking at the last two weeks alone. I'm actually fighting a strong impulse I have right now to move on this condo by Berkeley's dog park. Besides the overall cool-down in the market, there's the seasonal winter cool-down a-comin' that I'm hoping will give me a fighting chance at something better when autumn rolls around.

Berkeley's at the top of the list. The town and I have history, and I'd like to build on that. I'd be perfectly snug as a bug in parts of Oak-town or E'ville, though, if circumstances dictate. The Watergate condos that so many of my cohorts have bought up, for example, are well within the price range. I find them a bit bleak (I like to call them 'people storage'), but I'd hardly be suffering there.

BART proximity's also a huge factor. Living in the East Bay means commuting, and so help me I will not be able to maintain sanity if I have to endure the Bay Bridge 5x a week.

Money-wise, all the on-line calculators and trackers have given me a pretty good idea of what I can afford. All these cheats like Interest-only and TIC just aren't options, as far as I'm concerned. I really wanna go for the real deal or bust. Some people swear by TIC, but even in the best case it sounds like a hell of a long-term gamble.

The big variable for me is the job. It's a volatile industry and I really need to factor that in somehow with my decision. What if I have to move in a few months? Who knows, I may find myself making lattes or something for a bit. Or I may find myself... living in a shotgun shack. Or I may find myself... in another part of the world. Or I may find myself... behind the wheel of a large automobile... Anyway, if any of this happens, I need to figure out stuff about moving and renting it out or potentially selling it before the 2-year minimum.

I suppose it's also possible that home ownership may simply not be in the cards for me right now. I haven't seriously talked to a professional just yet, and there's only so much all these web tools can consider.

Model citizen

I was pretty excited to learn that they were starting up sculpting lessons here at the new digs with Richard, the lead maquette builder for our (now former & lovin' it) model shop. Many others shared the excitement as well, apparently, and I couldn't get into a session until the start of June. Just finished up last Monday and I had a terrific time and got a lot out of the class. Rich is a terrific teacher too, not afraid to poke fun at your work if you're doing something really off, and had lots of great little tricks and little pearls of wisdom to offer on the subject. It's great how people here are down to earth about things that are easy to become such an insufferable snob about.

We did two subjects with a four 3-hour sessions each. That's plenty for an experienced sculptor with the basic poses like the ones we used, but it's still fairly challenging. Most other workshops I've been to do at least six sessions. Lacking formal instruction, these have always been a real battle for me, and I finally started getting it together with my co-worker's class last year, but it was his first time teaching and we ran out of time to cover everything.

So getting a real class with an experienced instructor for free was a real godsend. We'd have a catered dinner too on top of it all, which was awesome. I kept forgetting to bring tupperware -- the food was good and there was always tons of leftovers that'd just sit there overnight and get tossed in the AM.


I guess generally I've got a good grasp of proportion, facial expressions, and attitude. I notice I tend to stick to heroic or athletic body types, though, regardless of what's in front of me (though the models were both very athletic -- not always the case). This is fine, but can get a tad monotonous. I liked how some of the more experienced people layered on flesh to to give muscles and fat a sense of sag. The flesh on my models tends to look taut and a bit tensed up.


Faces were one area I really developed a lot this time around, even throwing in this pissed off expression on the guy with the staff. Because there was a very Wushu-like feel to the pose, I embellished a bit by taking the stance wider and lower and giving it a bit of a lean. I guess this sort of gives us something that looks kind of like southern staff.

Given the level I see my colleagues are at, I know I've got a long way to go, but at least I feel like I'm progressing. I'm in a maquette class due to start in two weeks, where we're supposed to make up something to build. What, o what to build...

Feature film numbed the radio star

What variety!

As much of a big NPR nerd that I am, it'll be a while before I understand what possessed them to make a movie of PHC. There are probably certain particular ways in which this film might have worked, but what we're given is this sort of bizarre melancholy mish-mash that would probably be a confusing downer to anybody that doesn't know the show, and kind of frustrating to folks like me who generally like the show.

I really like the voice actors on the radio show, but the movie pretty much sidelines them in bit roles and calls in mainstream talent to do their characters. Keillor, who literally makes the show what it is, is stuck playing himself in the film while Kline gets to have the fun as Guy Noir, and Dusty and Lefty are played by Harrelson and Reilly.

All the radio show's characters aren't real characters either, but performers or staff on the show. That is to say, Dusty and Lefty aren't out on the range, they're basically country music stars. Guy Noir isn't a detective, he's an ex-detective working as the show's manager. Gone are the creative little radio ads they do for the Ketchup Advisory Board, Rhubarb Pie, etc. No news from lake Wobegon.

The polished, name-brand cast also kind of muddles the radio show's folksy mid-western vibe as well. Instead of quirky stories about simple prairie folk getting themselves into unusual jams, we're watching divas and showbiz types hamming it up in a loose and meandering plot surrounding the last broadcast of a fictional version of the show. Tommy Lee Jones is some radio tycoon who's shutting the show down. Virginia Madsen shows up as some kind of angel. Lindsay Lohan is a gloomy teen whose mother and aunt are performing on the show. Some old performer guy passes away in his dressing room backstage.

How this is supposed to seem coherent to the uninitiated is beyond me. It isn't exactly a bad film, just sort of confused. If it's inaccessible for somebody who doesn't know the show, then who is it for? And if it is for the PHC-initiated, why play so fast an loose with canon?

I can't help but wonder now if NPR will be the next vein Hollywood will tap for movie ideas. Car Talk kind of got a cameo in Cars. What's next? Flora's indicated some interest in Wait! Wait!. This American Life, maybe? We can watch the mishaps that occur as Sarah Vowell visit historical sites while David Sedaris works through issues with his family. Ira Glass just sort of sits agape at the whole thing.

... and all that other stuff

When the traditional summer pastime fails to captivate and inspire, a viable alternative for me has become the summer box office race. Thanks to sites like BOM and RT, watching the millions pile up (or not) weekend after weekend for various feature films takes on the drama of any sporting contest. There are statistics galore, records to smash, and punditry at all levels. I can't for the life of me see the real significance of p2 breaking the 10th day BO record relative to a just plain overall week 2 record, but the numbers are there, and I can't help but find myself impressed nonetheless.

For the rooting interest, there's definitely a skew towards affiliated projects, but generally I just go for the movie I like. Luckily that typicaly jibes well with the affiliations, particularly this year with p2. Catching screenings becomes something like cacthing ballgames. Besides plain old personal enjoyment, there are conversations to be had about how well the thing will perform down the line. There's even smack talking, or at least awkward concessions when your film underperforms somewhat.

I talked about p2 at length, but I've been watching other stuff that I've been meaning to write about.

Box scores from the summer BO Race...

Superman Returns: Classic beats New

"I'm back."

It seems that the popular consensus on the return of the Superman has settled down firmly somewhere around 'disappointment'. My expectations weren't very high for it anyway, but I was hoping that the six years of development hell the project wallowed in would've resulted in a minimally compelling re-imagining of the man o' steel to make him relevant today. It's quite a challenge, but I didn't see much point otherwise.

Their approach? Make some truly radical changes... to Lois Lane! Everything else in the movie, from the titles to the soundtrack to Lex and Super himself, stayed pretty much the same as the original movies. But Lois is now a jilted single career mom, which might have worked if she wasn't cast as somebody who looked like a fifteen-year-old. All this, and she still goes into rooms and locales alone (or with offspring in tow!) that b-grade horror movie bimbos from our parents' generation would've known to avoid. It's a competently-made film otherwise, but stuff just seemed to become less and less important and coherent as the movie went on.

Also have to remark on the 3D -- It's pretty crummy. It seems that they skimped on some features of stereoscopy and tried to compensate by overdoing it in other areas. The result was that everybody looked like they were on flat cards moving in and out of the screen at ludicrous speeds while lacking the motion blur to make that motion seem organic. There are lots of different ways to tackle stereoscopic 3D, so don't let this film chase you off from other 3D films.

The Devil Wears Prada: Style ties Substance

Miranda Priestly and the Fashion Factory

I'm still not entirely sure what a sleeper hit is, but I think this is it. While all eyes were on the MoS over the July 4 weekend, this became kind of a curiosity as it held its own amazingly well and has kept apace with Superman in the weeks since then. I wouldn't be surprised to see Super drop below it in the daily BO (obviously never the overall BO) in coming weeks. (looks like it did over this weekend)

I caught one of our screenings for this and did indeed find myself enjoying it way more than I'd care to admit and actually saw it a second time with the Moms because I knew she'd like it. It's your basic Cinderella story with Streep as some twisted merge of the fairy godmother and the wicked stepmother. Hathaway's cute enough as the protagonist. It isn't any more redeeming than, say, Johny Depp cavorting about on a sailboat, but in some ways it's as if the fashion industry was making some attempt to explain itself in this movie in a way that non-fashion types like myself can appreciate.

Okay, this entry's already pretty long. I'll hit some of the other stuff later this week.

The devil wears seafood

Many a lobster dinner was expensed as 'reference' for this film.

So did you see it? Given the BO(1), chances are good you did. And given the exit polling, (92% of a very diverse audience rating it as very good or better) you pretty much liked it.

Besides haughty self-righteous indignation, one of the things I felt staring at that 52% on RT last week was a warm fuzzy recollection of days of yore, when I could rely on critics to slam summer movies I had terrific fun at. They're hard to find now, but I do remember reading some pretty nasty reviews for 'junk' movies turned classics like Ghostbusters and Back to the Future back in the day.

For a while there it seemed like the critics kind of got it and were right there with us in seeing silly summer fun for what it was, such as when they loved the original back in '03. So this time they saw that it was silly, saw that it was fun, and yet they slammed it seemingly with relish. Go figure.

Anyway, if you had talked to me after the preview we got about two weeks ago, I would have dropped some good money on an RT rating somewhere in the high 70s/low 80s. I guess it's good I didn't, but I really would've out of some passive-aggressive spite even if I knew then what I know now. In fact, dare I say it, I actually liked this one much more than the original, and many folks at the screening were equally surprised to find that they agreed.

I was actually pretty luke-warm about the original, kind of for many of the reasons the critics are slamming it now. It kind of moved slow for me. The plot seemed a bit obfuscated and somewhat inconsistent. I didn't quite connect with the characters.

So lynch me, I think Keira looks kinda hot like this.

This time I did. The sequel built nicely off a familiarity with the old characters and put them in interesting new situations with what I found to be campy-but-fun banter in the finest tradition of certain space epics from our collective youth. I really enjoyed the new characters, from Harris's crazy witch doctor to the evil trading company guy to Nighy's Davy Jones(2). Especially Davy Jones, actually.

The plot, frankly, made a lot more sense to me than the original, where I never quite could resolve everything about the cursed gold, who was cursed, and who needed to do what to fix it. It actually cleared up some of the questions and inconsistencies raised by the original in a very satisfying way.

Pace-wise, I really didn't feel the 150 minutes. Seriously. I had a smile on my face the whole time and always found something on screen to keep me interested. It ends on a terrific note and I am primed for part trois, particularly what creative things they find to do with one Mr. Chow Yun-Fat.

Those hills look familliar...

FULL DISCLOSURE: Yes, it could be said I have connections to this film. Apparently several scenic photos from my Brasil visit last winter came in handy for a few BGs we slapped together. So take this all with that grain of salt, but most of you who know me will know that I'm brutally honest about our projects.

FULL DISCLOSURE 2/CONFESSION: Yes, I did see the movie which the title of this entry spoofs, and will probably lose hetero points for saying I really liked that one as well. To be fair, I was taking my Mom for her birthday... After seeing a company screening for it at which I figured it'd be something she'd like, which she did. So yes, I've seen that film twice and pirates deux once.

(1) Box Office. What do you think it stands for?

(2) I have to stress that his face is NOT prosthetic, but totally CG, right down to the eyes. We (in the collective sense) did the mix of mo-cap and animation that you might recall for certain characters from certain other epics involving bad jewelry.

Lost me there

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

This guy was about the only reason I was rooting for France. After that I just sort of didn't care who won, and just wanted the damned thing over with.

That said, I sort of feel for the guy right now. Surely we've all screwed up before, and the consequences of just how stupid this move was is going to be drilled into him for the next few days (months/years/life), if it isn't already. The man's got a lot of talking to do.

Think of the children!

Looks like there's a good chance the final could turn out to be that vision of soccer hell I was talking about earlier. A primer:


Euro 2004 Ad for the Guardian UK

The SF Chron had a nice piece lamenting the problems some teams have had staying erect, and how it may be influencing our next generation of players:

A thrilling World Cup is still one big flop -- CW Nevius, SF Chronicle

The 'I' is silent

Ai meu deus!

After an 11 game run from the law of averages, the Brazilian National Soccer Team turned themselves in peacefully Saturday to French authorities in Germany. A few of many stories:

Brazilians come to terms with 'national shame' -- Calgary Sun

Brazil fans destroy Ronaldinho statue -- Radio New Zealand

Three Men Protest Brazil's Game Against Ghana In The Nude -- All Headline News

A rough google search

Yes, soccer is a team sport, but individuals can have a defining influence. On Saturday, France had Zidane. After watching this man and Henry work for about the first 20 minutes there wasn't much doubt in my mind who deserved the win.

Brasil naturally has a whole bunch of I's on their team, but in a more formal sense Parreira seemed to pin the team's fortunes on Ronaldo. Apparently a lot of the folks still really love the guy, and to a degree I do too, but I was perpetually aggravated by the missed passes and stumbling throughout the tournament. It's like the whole team kept trying to feed him the ball, but he was too often a step too far behind it or sluggish and lumbering on the movement afterwards. Can't take anything away from the goals he did score, but it felt like too much of the offensive focus was on him when it really didn't need to be.

One thing I began to notice was the sort of denial the ESPN sportscasters had about the whole thing. Going by their commentary, you would've seriously thought Brasil was dangerous throughout the match. But even with their frantic efforts in the last minutes, Brasil never seemed like it had much control of the game, and never looked like a real threat. (ONE -- count 'em -- ONE official shot on goal through the whole game.)

Anyway, Brasil's out, their national morale and stock exchanges will be in the toilet for a few days, but on the bright side I can let the World Cup fall slightly lower on my list of concerns. Apparently Ronaldinho can prioritize other interests as well.

In terms of rooting interest, I really did like what I saw from the French Saturday. This isn't some issue of pride -- I just really want to see Zidane and Henry play some more. You always hear about the legendary players like Beckam, Ronaldo, and Ronaldinho, but the one guy that really brought it this time appears to be Zidane.

This is also by the process of elimination. I positively hate the Italian team's flop-focused style of play. Portugal falls into kind of the same style, but actually nastier. Germany's style I can respect a little more, but they do seem a little thuggish as well. I'd prefer a Germany-France final for the game, and I'd watch the Italy-Portugal 3rd place match as a kind of window onto football hell, where two whiny, floppy, bullying teams make life miserable for each other, fans, and refs.