boodatude

Where Were We?

2011-07-20T16:31:00.000-07:00

It looks exactly like I don't blog much anymore and technically, that's been true, but if my hand-written miniature essays and observations would magically transfer themselves to the computer, I'd be prolific.

This will not happen, the magical transfer part, so I'll have to invent a much better way all on my own. Trying harder. That's the first step. I SO appreciate other people's blogs; I'd really like to be contributing to the conversation.While Facebook has its place - a place I haven't quite pinned on any map - I'm fully convinced that it can not TOUCH the power and beauty and fun of blogs.

And speaking of that Facebook ... I posted this today. If I didn't have work, I'd be cranking these out. Work is funny that way, interfering with the fun stuff.

I've been sorting through old animations for a very cool new platform that's coming out (can not WAIT to turn you all on to it). The old animations are forcing me to confront WAY more often than I want that question. The not particularly happy question: is my work good enough?

This is the question that plagues many freelancers. No. It's not a happy question, but it's a good one and, like all good questions, doesn't really need an answer. It represents the best opportunity to review and measure all sorts of things.

I didn't ask it at all when I started animating. I just animated. It took forever for me to start asking but when I did, it propelled me. It didn't stop me. THAT's a good question.

Winter in June

2011-06-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

This is Episode One of Little Gems. This has nothing at all to do with the cold, spitting rain days we're enjoying (with occasional bursts of brilliant blue and pretty nice sun). It's just an episode.

* * * *

I wasn't trying to be all Sound of Musick-y. I was trying to sketch a respite from noise and a meadow seemed like a good place to find such a thing.

If, however, you know anything at all about meadows and country-side, you know the only way you get quiet is by waiting til night slams itself firmly into place.

Or putting a pillow over your head.

I could've sketched a pillow.

* * * *

All weekend long, it was gray and raining, so we curled up on the couch and watched many mediocre movies. We weren't aiming at mediocre; they just turned out that way. Normally, we'd turn them off, but we were too busy whimpering about the winter (and sort of cackling, too, because for some strange reason, it's big fun to suffer once in awhile. I do not want to know why this is true, but it is. )

Whimper, whimper, whimper. Eat, eat, eat. Load another movie. That was our recipe, in case you'd like to try it at home.

Convincing oneself that it was winter required forgetting that we'd gone to the farmers' market in the morning. I'd bundled up in a cashmere sweater and flip-flops. Even I know this is not a uniform that signals winter. The only way to shake the memory was to 1. completely ignore it and 2. whimper louder. Both of which I did.

It was very successful. I still think we're having winter while friends in the midwest are posting notes about sweltering.

* * * *

Yay. We get to have hot dogs and macaroni and cheese for dinner. A. rarely agrees to eat like that, but ... winter weather, you know. There are only so many days you can be bothered to grill artichokes and concoct another aioli variation.

Porch Talk

2011-05-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

It was always on the edge of evening when we were driving home down Garfield Boulevard. In the summer sun, the sidewalks glittered as if salted with quartz.

The boulevard was still a parade of handsome houses, but their elegant days were long behind them. They'd been turned into apartment buildings. Decay had set in, repairs never made, upkeep unkept.

Still, the buildings were - to a young girl - magnificent. Their steps - big, wide stairs up to regal stoops (is that possible? somehow 'stoop' and 'regal' sound oxymoronic, don't they?) and beveled glass doors set in oak frames were fascinating.

When I was little, old Chicago neighborhoods, with their brownstones and small mansions, were bookmarks in the long, romantic story of the city. I know that is not an easy sentence, I know it sounds all lyrical and nostalgic, but it's true. It's not true in hindsight, either. It was true then. I didn't want to live in any of those buildings or on any of those streets, but I couldn't helping imagining the history.

I believed the conversations people had on those sidewalks and stairs and stoops were delicious.

* * * *

We were talking about cats and pets, which reminded me of Chaucer, only I couldn't remember The Canterbury Tales and not just a little, either. Usually, there's a crumb - a first letter, a whispery idea - but not even the tiniest, ghostliest bit of the title would show itself.

I think I've been resorting to google too often and it's damaging my detective abilities. Or maybe I'm just forgetting shit.

* * * *
It was worse than last minute. I left Santa Barbara half an hour before the event was starting and arrived at my once much loved (and essentially still unchanged) Formosa Cafe in Hollywood long after all the people had met each other and snuggled in to their networking.

This apparent huge waste of time wasn't at all since I got to drink all by myself, hang out in the Formosa which had the BEST worst mu shu pork in the world, and have a very real chat with my head.

I asked me what I'd driven all this way for, answered and then agreed that if I want to be involved in an animated show, I'm going to have to do it myself. No. Not just by myself, but for myself. Exactly what I'd like to see.

* * * *

J. was up last weekend and agreed to miss his train and stay the night. This meant we had to find someone to take tickets to a show at the Lobero, our gem of a theater. The show featured musicians we really, really like - Eliza Gilkyson, for one - playing the songs of Woody Guthrie.

We asked all our neighbors in all directions but they were either not home or more interested in staying home. I took the tickets to the hotel down the street. I was just offering them to the concierge when an older couple turned the corner, pulling their luggage behind them.

They were delighted and excited. Of course I refused when they offered to pay for the tickets, but in that moment, I decided to NOT tell them they were a gift to us. I didn't want to diminish in any way the ... thrill, the bliss they were in the middle of. It was the perfect exchange.

* * * *

Someone in this house and it wasn't me started stocking super foods and eliminating the others. I didn't see the point in putting up a fight. If I'm getting fed, I'm generally happy.

I was sent to the farmers' market all on my own this weekend while A. went to a gig and I returned with pounds of raw almonds, pounds of strawberries, pounds of apricots and one pound of mussels.

I won't touch mussels, but I ate and ate and ate the rest of the stuff. Just when I was getting tired of strawberries, our friends who'd just been blueberry picking shared.

I am happy to report that, in spite of uninterrupted gorging, I seem to have slenderized. At the very least, I didn't fatten up. So, I don't know how super super foods really are, but they're certainly not bad.

I am lazy, but not too lazy to go back and add music to this little animation. I forgot it first time around. This is a character who'll soon be available for use in any old thing any one might want to use her for. She's going to be on a platform that lets people use any portion (and fade in and out. Whee.)

Holding Still

2011-05-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

One hour, I was fine. The next, something like a cold and a little like the flu, had crawled into me and I had no choice but to stay still. And watch sick movies.

I'd probably be all better if I'd applied stricter standards. Sick movies ought to let you drift into sleep without caring at all how anything's resolved or whether any one falls in love or anyone gets saved or anyone triumphs.

I did pretty well, watching Harry Met Sally and Working Girl, but three days gives you plenty of time to make plenty of mistakes. I also watched Secretariat, The Little Princess, Leaves of Grass, The Spy Next Door, Ken Burns' Civil War and loads of episodes of Numb3rs.

* * * *
At dinner last week, I met Z., who'd just learned that cashmere came from goats. He was honest to god surprised at this hole in his knowledge.

I figure it's a good thing I'm over being surprised by what I don't know or I wouldn't get a whole lot done. That said, it was a good moment, to spread our currency on the table. Every one knows something curious, something wonderful, something discovered or read that others don't.

We'll be doing good when we seek that stuff out, when we meet each other and start from the assumption that they're loaded with magical knowledge. Me. I'll be doing good. Everyone else can do whatever they want.

* * * *

Jack had his second birthday a few days ago and we had the tiniest party in the whole world. A. planted a few beans in a pot and made a sign that I painted with stripey, polka-dotted letters to read: Jack's beanstalk.

I found a little hurdy gurdy that plays Itsy Bitsy Spider in its entirety - Jack's latest song discovery.

Like any two year old, Jack rarely holds still, but because it was his birthday, he was allowed to dip his finger into the frosting of his cake. Over and over and over and over and a few more because, what the hell - once you've started and all that.

* * * *

It's a gift, the ability to hold still. Maybe that's because the moment you get to move again, you can unleash all the wonderful ideas and pictures and words and laughs you've been storing up.

Maybe.

This week, Linda unveiled a super duper fun poster with her collected graffiti.

And Ulrike sent me a copy of A Cat goes Kayaking - a collection of her 30 linoprints in 30 days project, each accompanied by a genuinely charming tale.

This is huge happiness for me, to have friends who are in motion, in creation, in play! Yay for everybody!!

Lunches

2011-04-28T18:36:00.001-07:00

She suggested lunch. Her new boyfriend was a very good friend of mine, so I went.

I remember listening to her stories about work, listening to her want to be wacky when she was, really, conservative. Tepid.

She married my friend, had children, and now, he and I have nothing to talk about.

* * * *

We went to lunch on Saturdays, to Daniel's little French place, to new Italian and Thai restaurants. We ate well, drank better, and played Spoof, a Rugby players' game. The loser has to perform an already decided penalty, typically a penalty worth doing your damnedest to not pay.

We were expats. T was killed in a car crash in South Africa, R & R had a bit of a business falling out, M was just a surly, unhappy, jealous man. But then, back then, it was great fun with so much laughter, you'd never believe it would end.

* * * *

We met just before a conference talk. She'd been a psychologist and had become a commercial pilot at 40 and now was volunteering as a companion through treatment to women with cancer. She was wise and funny and mouthy, which is a favorite combination of mine.

We skipped the talk and had lunch on the sunny Southern California patio. We knew the whole time we might never see each other again, but the ideas just flew. We made ourselves stop after three and a half hours.

* * * *

It was a late lunch and within minutes, we were the only ones in a favorite trattoria. He is crazy talented and smart and visionary. She is witty and genuinely fun and impatient with half assed work and strikingly beautiful. I have no idea what they think of me, but I feel I'm in an easy space.

We talk of everything and anything at all. Business, mostly, but not with corporate dryness. I feel like I'm dining with family. I am.

* * * *

I don't like going to lunch at lunch time, when a place is crowded with other conversations and other groups working out their dynamics. I like being the last ones, the only ones, there so if we share a dream dessert with genauche that pools on the plate, I can lick it off.

I mean, if I wanted to, I could.

Helllooo, World

2011-04-25T09:43:00.000-07:00

Easily, once a week, I think about what I'd do if I wasn't doing what I did. Not in theory, but in real life. Not in a 'well, if I had a chance to start over' way but in a 'from this point forward.'

There are so, so many things any of us could do.

I don't do this as a way of planning for any future, further economic meltdown, but as an ongoing measurement of ... well, all those things we may or may not care about. Happiness, actual income (oooh!), value and service to anyone else.

So far, I'm sure I'd do exactly what I'm doing now (only a little different, depending on whatever circumstances we all were living in). I'd do it not because it's oh so fun to play around. A lot of work is actually required to play the way I do all day and a lot of that work is not all that easy.

But I truly, truly believe in the huge value of stories told. I truly believe in the great value of films and theater and art.

I don't believe it in any academic or philosophical kind of way. I believe it because stories - even small glimpses of the possibilities that sparkle in someone else's life - change my day, my week and so, my life.

Little Episodes

2011-04-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

A's wearing loud shoes. I tell him: You're wearing loud shoes. He says: It's loud shoe weather.

Sigh. It is. I concede.

* * *

A.'s happy when he thinks I'm wearing a thong.

A thong? I can hardly believe it. Thongs are stupid and uncomfortable, but I check anyway. No, it's not a thong. It's the band that's come unstitched from the rest of the underwear. A. wants me to report this on twitter. I don't.

* * *

I can't remember whether I was ever persuaded by anyone's promise that a contribution was tax deductible, but, in my various roles at various registered non-profits, I've certainly encouraged others to consider the same. Still, I never made a large enough contribution that it seemed worth attempting to deduct it from my taxes. This year, however, I accumulated substantial amount of charitable donations.

I discover that I can't write them off anywhere since I submit a Schedule C - the independent contractor's favorite document. I can, of course, deduct it on Schedule A, but then I have to forfeit the standard deduction that everyone gets.

I shrug. It's okay. I think: can you show meager largesse or does largesse require largeness?

* * *

I mail off my tax return with the checks that allow me to have an opinion and go have a fancy schmancy margarita.

I do not like the fancy schmancy margarita. I like a margarita with good tequila, but in the future, I'll skip the color and the whacked additives. When did they start ruining perfectly good cocktails?

Saying Yes to All this Energy

2011-04-13T14:54:00.000-07:00

Many know that we took our kitty to the vet yesterday afternoon and let her body sleep. The rest of her rose gently, tentative, but not afraid.

You can argue it all you want, but energy survives death and lingers long enough to trace just the beginning of a trail away - and a trail back.

And so I did.

Anyone who's loved a pet knows what this feels like. Our grief's no greater than any one else's, our sadness no deeper.

It's the beautiful thing about animals, though, isn't it - their unique personalities mean that when their lives become entwined with ours, each is entwined in a different way. (Okay, you can't really count fish, can you?)

Because Luna was the single bossiest, demanding cat I've ever known, I was quickly assigned the role of hand maiden. No meant nothing to her and really, why would it have, since my no invariably turned to yes.

She loved having me take her for a let's-eat-some-grass walk. Frankly, this was annoying since the walks often were no longer than 20 feet but she still wanted a companion. She wanted one whenever I was on the back porch working. Up the stairs she came, down the stairs she went and when she saw I hadn't joined her, back up the stairs she came. She could do this ten times. Easily. And ten times, I'd say 'no, little one. I'm working.'

The eleventh time, though (just picking a number here), I'd give in, get up and go down. And we'd have just a few minutes of simple joy. Tell me what's sweeter than knowing your kitty's super happy she can have a little grass now (a little grass to be puked up a little later).

Often, I wondered what I said No for. Boundaries are important. But 'no, I can't' isn't always a boundary. It's a thing we say. A thing we make real by saying it.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd said yes, eagerly, to Luna every time. My dear friend C (who Luna owned before she came to stay with us) wrote this picture-perfect description of the little one on her very new blog 'What Luck':

She was a creature with an uncanny strength of will and determination. She was a delicate, porcelain beauty, so lightly tethered to the world that her feet hardly touched the ground, it seemed. She was shadow and smoke. She was perceptive and sly. She was shyly sweet.

So. We have grief. We have pain. Of course. We have it while all over the world - oh hell, all over the neighborhood - other people are living and being happy and talking about whatever interesting people talk about it. I am so grateful for this, not just now, but any time I'm in the middle of a painful episode.

It's all part of a big carnival of chances and possibilities, of comings and goings, of getting and losing. What could be less lonely than to be all this energy together? Hm.

Good bye, little one.

.

A Slice of Opera

2011-04-04T16:57:00.000-07:00

We went to half an opera last week.

The radio ad for the LA Opera's production of Turn of the Screw sounded deeeelicious. All the words were so ... enticing (which has since taught us to hesitate when listening to an ad written by the uber-literate. They just know better words.)

We didn't think of that, then. No. We got right on it. A. found an online coupon for tickets and within minutes, we were the proud renters of opera seats at super low prices.

It might have taken almost 3 hours to get to downtown LA from Santa Barbara (because, naturally, we couldn't bring oursleves to leave at a reasonable time) but I was as happy as could be. I was driving and although everyone else in the free world has nothing but complaints about LA traffic, I like diving off the freeway and zig zagging down side streets, through little neighborhoods.

I used to caravan with Lloyd, the mannequin sculptor, back to Hollywood from South LA all the time. I forget why he wouldn't drive on the freeway, but he wouldn't and I liked following him in my '65 Mustang fastback - up through Little Tokyo, over to Vermont, tunes cranked the whole way. What's not to like?

Oh. Back to the opera. After parking and picking up our tickets, we still had time to wander down the street for a little food and a little riding on the restored Angel Flight - billed as the shortest railroad in the world. Yes, well. It's an oldey-worldey funicular that creaks its way up and down Bunker Hill (not precisely where it was originally, but close enough for me).

We felt pretty clever for making it back to the opera just in time. Not the nick of it, but just enough to get to our seats. The ones that the ticket taker told us were on the fourth floor. I thought I'd misunderstood, although there's not a lot of room for error. What else could the 4th floor sound like?

Our seats were on the 4th floor and getting there gave A. enough time to ask, 'What's our safe word?' and me to laugh. I thought 'Let's go.' would do fine. I've never thought of leaving an opera (except the 3D movie version of Carmen. Don't do it. Don't see an opera in 3D. Who's very stupid idea was THAT? )

At intermission, neither of us said 'let's go.' No, we tested out the waters. Gently. We don't often have exactly the same reaction or opinion, so there was a possibility that the other was in musical theater heaven. The set design was, after all, spectacular. It was minimalistic, but ... chic. Do you know the story 'Turn of the Screw'? Can you imagine a chic theater set? Yes? Well, that was it. Very very cool, with a lot hinging on a hinged, big ass window pane that cast shadows.

And everything else? Clearly, there's someone out there who loves Benjamin Britten. I have a classically trained flautist friend (wow. THAT was a phrase.) who likes him a lot. Fair enough. I bet he's trickety stuff for a musician. Maybe he's even wonderful for the singers.

For us? I have never heard the word 'caterwauling' used as many times in a row as A. used it. Once you've got a good word like caterwauling, it's like an invitation to haul out your (okay, my) best operatic voice and make your own second act. Because you can when it seems to require only atonal screeching and wrapping things up like Henry James would.

Oh, yay, oh yay! I've saved Miles. Oh boo hoo. I didn't keep them from knowing. He's dead.

There you have it. Screech along and you've got yourself an opera. Without hauling your ass to the 4th floor.

Hot

2011-03-31T18:21:00.001-07:00

We are sweltering today. Which accounts for the photo of me and the poor kitty, because sweltering or not, we're doing it in March. If you mix in the still blooming wisteria and the last traces of jasmine, it's just the sort of day that seems to make it very clear to us that labor is not what we were supposed to do.

It might be because I'm drunk on the heat. To the right is my sketch of the day - which is exactly how I felt whenever I ventured outside. I ventured out a lot.

Only after taking refuge in the cool shadows of this old house did anything start feeling romantic.

You KNOW there's a lesson in there, but it's too hot to poke around and find it.

Thinketing

2011-03-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

It's apparently how I'm wired. Or maybe, it's been educated into me. I'm perfectly happy to talk about stuff, complain about stuff, sort through recent history stuff but suddenly (every time, as if I didn't know it was going to happen) a line appears. And once I've crossed it, well ...

The talk has to stop. I have to move into solutions. Even if the talk refuses to come along, even if my mouth keeps yacking away, my head has to move.

This is, in my opinion, a very good thing when the topic has anything to do with personal matters. Run-on melodramas or even normal dramas just chew into your life. I've had some experience with this (haven't we all?) and I think my body starts poisoning itself in protest.

When the topic is big, any one of the world's issues, this can turn into silliness.

A Sketch Every Single Day

2011-03-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

There's not much I can imagine doing every single day as ritual, except making coffee but that really shouldn't count as ritual when it's obviously more like an absolute necessity. Anyway, it seemed like a good idea to try it out - not the ritual part, but the daily part.

I give myself an hour to sketch a character in some scene from my life.

This first one is called routers.We tend to think paralysis strikes once when you're trying to figure out how to make anything work. That's when you marshall whatever you have to give it one more try.

However.

We recently installed mac wireless routers. We bought them used - barely, but still used and this is all it takes to turn it into a series of frustrations. There's no point in getting excited with a little bit of progress when the next minute's going to return you directly to where you started.

I applied some filter I've since forgotten so I could check on my characters' positions, if they read right, if they delivered the message without using facial expressions. I rely a lot on facial expressions, maybe too much.

This one got the super duper clever name : One of those Tennis Days.

If that doesn't say it all to you, then you haven't played tennis for an hour and a half and spent most of it watching your ball land just a leeeeeetle bit deep or wide or straight into the net. I'm hardly particular about how I win points (we mostly volley, instead of playing games, so there aren't many points to score :)); I'll cheer myself for making a beauteous cross court shot - even if it's out by miles.

But EVERY shot? Maybe I should have titled this: Shit. Just shit.

When the Storm Passes

2011-03-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

We were promised day after day after day of rain this week and already the promise is broken (although it might recover its will to vent any second). Right now, the sky is piercing blue, the sun shiny, shiny bright.

There was no way of knowing the weather would grow tired so quickly of dumping stuff on us, not last week.

Then, we were stockpiling outdoor adventures. More than usual, we played tennis and walked and grilled and stepped out the door.

When the deluge hit yesterday, we had momentum behind us and, as if there was no way to stop, out we went, down to the water front, prowling the beaches for adventure and, failing that, at least a little excitement. Getting any kind of pictures without the wind-whipped rain getting in the camera was as exciting as it got.

Quite a few little boats were being tossed about out in Fools' Harbor, that unprotected stretch of beach front property below the pier. One had hit terra sand (I don't know Latin for sand. Okay. I looked it up. arenae. terra arenae. No wonder we never hear it. It doesn't trip easily off the mind's tongue, does it?)

Anyway. One boat. Lots of downed palm leaves. That was it. That was all.

Of course, I'm sure the owner of the beached boat feels differently about it. That's how it works, doesn't it? Someone, somewhere, is always suffering misfortune. Pain. Tragic events.

I'm not convinced that sympathy is of much use. Maybe the best thing we can do for each other is pay attention ahead of time, before misfortune strikes, practice resourcefulness and sharing.

That's all I have to say.

Figuring Out the New Stuff

2011-03-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Creating characters and artwork in Photoshop will one day, I hope, come much more easily to me. Right now, it's frustrating.

After a week of that frustration, I'm now guessing that other people scan in art and work of that, instead of using heavy/unwieldy paintbrushes.

My hand can't really sketch, the lines don't really flow, the paint doesn't really go where I want it to go and it doesn't work anything like actual painting, where you work it down to details from blocks of color.

The playfulness I can conjure elsewhere seems to disappear in Photoshop. I drew a fairy. I think that says it all.

So, frustration probably ought to be expected. Which is why next time, I'm doing what I think everyone else does and scanning it all in. What's the point of cheating if you're not going to cheat all the way?

That's what I say.

Stuff Can Go to Hell

2011-03-01T18:07:00.000-08:00

Stuff can go to hell and I'm staying put.

First thing this morning, my graphics card crashed in every which way it could. For a minute, I felt tears pressing on my eyes, a wail creeping up my throat.

I have several other laptops, but they're loaded with ancient programs (CS2) and hardware that just blinks when faced with my cameras. I'm typing now on my teensy weensy cute as a bug and about as useful macbook. I can hardly see the screen but we gave away the connector that would let me use an external monitor.

No matter how hard I tried to succumb to misery, though, it wouldn't stick.

I can paint. And write. And I can jump back into Flash and see what happens. I haven't used Flash for anything but fixing clients' work for awhile and my graphics tablet is too powerful for this computer, so the pen's a bit of a loose cannon. Still, it will be interesting. That's the only choice.

In the meantime, here's something I did. The charming and uber-talented Shana posted it on Facebook, so some of you have seen it and I'm sorry for making you dodge it again. It's only right that this blog gets a little action. :)

An Accidental Book Trailer

2011-02-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

I wanted to work on revealing brush strokes I'd drawn, so I had to draw an elephant to wear the decorations and the elephant needed to be on an antique book and the book needed pages and the pages needed a story so the book could open.

This is what I ended up with.

And you'd be surprised at how not so easy it was to get those graphics to work.

Blooming

2011-02-22T12:25:00.000-08:00

There's a limit. It's not a line you can see clearly; in fact, there's nothing precise about it at all, but that doesn't mean I don't know that I've reached it.

And I have. Finally, it's time to ease away from animating, from learning more about animating, from cooking up another idea that will let me test something else.

(It's February. Our wisteria's blooming.)

Actually, I reached 'finally' a few months ago and started doing a lot more writing. Fiction writing. It's a curious twist that's probably been mentioned before, but while fiction is not my favorite thing to read, it's my favorite thing to write. It seems impossible to write fiction, to create characters and give them voices that are true for them - not you, and not write your way to higher or deeper or greater - pick your superlative - perceptions.

Anyway.

Strangely, instead of not being able to find time or impulse to animate, the opposite happened. Suddenly, ideas they came a-crowding. They came at all times, during waking hours and sleeping hours, demanding I do something with them.

So I did. The results are nothing to ooh over. I've subjected you to quite a few here (or on Facebook) so you know exactly what I mean. There are bits and pieces that worked well enough that I'll be happy to use them in a real project, but just as many want to be put away.

And that's fine.

Of course, while I've been doing this, the world's gone ahead with the business of being the world - erupting. You can't be from the midwest and not have numerous friends in a big state of agitation. And I've said nothing. Not a word.

I wondered about my detachment. And then I decided to re-frame that. Because I'm not detached at all. I'm just not feeling the need to be talking about these things. What's the opposite of detachment? It can't possibly be 'tachment.' Whatever that is, I'm not persuaded that passing links around makes you tached. Oh. Attached!

Anyway, all my writing and animating anything my little brain's fingers light upon might very well appear to be unrelated to current events, but I know that everything - every thought, reflection, shifting point of view, discovery, transcript, fact check - goes in. It goes in, it marinades and when we get around to creating something, no matter how silly or frivolous, it's been informed.

* * * * * *

Shit. I typed away on the above, hoping my very VERY tiny video would have finished uploading on youtube by the time I finished. If it had, I could have and would have erased the above.

It's at a sloth-like 36% with 2 hours to go. It's 4mb. If there's a worse internet provider, I don't want to meet it.

Trailer After Books

2011-02-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

Here's my first book trailer.

Nine million things have conspired to make me cranky today. I don't mind my cranky in small, intense doses but prolong it and I am not fit to go out in public. I am, apparently, perfectly fit to go typing on a blog.

I'm also capable of signing off so I can go to Facebook and put up a video of manta rays.

Coloring All Over Egypt

2011-02-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

One way or another, it's because of Egypt that I haven't blogged for a bit.
It wasn't ALL consuming, but it did help itself to big handfuls of a brain that doesn't have a lot to spare.

At any rate, people like their own politics. No one wants to sit through mine, even if I couldn't fathom anyone NOT being excited by the going ons in the land o' the pyramids. Of course, I like a good protest that threatens to turn into a revolution. I like velvet revolutions best of all, but I don't think the method matters too much to the critics or the armchair quarterbacks.

A lot of people were and remain concerned about the aftermath. The vacuum always wants filling and until there's a clear successor to whoever filled it before, those folks are not resting. A cruel slapdown, the kind where people disappear is always a possibility. Big chaos, that disrupts business as usual, is also a possibility.

Some of the critics just didn't like what they perceived to be naive cheerleading from the social networks' sidelines. Actually, their perception was probably very close to reality. I'm sure there was breathtaking ignorance among the cheerleaders.

A lot of heroic efforts wouldn't have been even attempted if the heroes had gone and thought about it. Knowing stuff has a tendency to make us awfully cautious.

Anyway. I decided to NOT write anything about Egypt. Nothing at all. I started practicing drawing in a new way. Loosier and goosier. I'm not very good at it. Loosey and goosey and cartoony I can do with a pen, but a pencil makes me draw more realistically. Enough of that, say I. Off with realism's head, I say.

That was a little too violent. I take it back. Realism can keep its head. Just ... move over. Let the loosey goosey stuff in.

Please?

I'd make a good revolutionary, but I'd probably be a polite one.

Film Critics in bloggers' clothing

2011-02-08T09:00:00.001-08:00

It was a wonderful event in its awfulness: the bloggers' panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Although they made a point of saying 'it' was their passion, it was hard to tell whether the panel members actually loved film or whether they loved the access to the industry.

Although none of them traffic in gossip, a Oujia board wouldn't have been out of place as they tried their damnedest to call up the ghosts of old Hollywood gossip columnists, back when there was power in opinion.

It's a new world, though, and bloggers love to love each other, instead of admitting any rivalry. This is the first sign that something's wrong. Civility is a precious contract, but this was more of an inflated praise session.

One man who melodramatically loathes The King's Speech as an Oscar contender could not speak of it without using the word 'embarrassment.' Tom Hooper had just won the DGA award and the moderator noted the win had made him apocalyptic. 'Apoplectic,' he corrected. He thought the film was just fine, but not good enough to win an Oscar.

You may or may not agree, but the point is that the idea of a film being an embarrassment is not only a shot at the film, but the Academy voters. Anne Thompson attempted to praise the Academy members she's acquainted with, but the rest were having none of it.

When an audience member scolded them about the amount of time spent on Oscar talk, we moved on to foreign language films.

Once again, the panel thought the Academy did it all wrong. Although foreign language films are one of the few categories that require voters to actually show up to vote, our esteemed panel sneered. Apparently, the only voters who CAN show up are the ones not currently active in film making. They're old.

One of them, making a non-point, said 'it's like that Japanese film.' They figured it out. He meant 'Departures.'

I was handed the mic and asked for some elaboration. Was he trying to say that 'Departures' did NOT deserve the Oscar?

Oh, no! No. They all agreed it was a wonderful film.

Even though it was voted to its win by, as they said, the elderly?

Oh, yes.

Wow. Way to make someone apocalyptic. Or apoplectic.

I saw other panels - writers of virtually all the films in Oscar contention and directors and they were both illuminating events. The moderators had everything to do with the thoughts that were expressed. Peter Bart, editor at Variety and moderator at the Directors' Panel, was arguably better than some of the directors.

It was the bloggers' panel, though, that - to me - represented so much about film today.

Getting Over Rejection

2011-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

They sent a straight to the point email: You've been rejected. I didn't even get to be IN the contest. I guess they knew what they were doing. Still..

I went to the site to have a look at submissions that managed to meet their exacting criteria of expressing three essences: energy, forward momentum, and (the) positive. More than a few expressed them by putting the words on screen. Really.

I felt a little stupid for telling a story.

I wasn't alone, though. One story that made it past the praetorian guard was set in a slum/depressed neighborhood. A 20-something's drinking from a can of the beverage in question and generously shares with a po' little urchin, who shares with a second little urchin, who shares with yet another. Whoo and eee. Energy, forward momentum and positivity ensue.

I couldn't have cooked up a better satire if I'd tried.

And then I was over it.

Except that it made me think about rejection. I've known some who were crippled by it. Some are crippled by the thought of it and do as much as they know how to avoid it.

You can think what you want about rejection, but I just can't invest too much in the stuff. I can say this with confidence, having enjoyed loads of the things under different names. They're easy to experience when you put things out there.

Of course, losing something you've got years into - a job, a shared life - is certainly harder than, say, losing a role at an audition. But ...the actual rejection, that piercing moment when we're told no, when we're denied or eliminated for subjective reasons (those always seem so unfair), when someone else is chosen - that moment punctures the same size of hole.

We, in our endless quest to find the most pain there is in life, can poke our mental fingers in and root around til we've got ourselves something gaping.

I can imagine people insisting that the amount of pain we suffer is equal to our investment in whatever we just got rejected from. In my experience, this is less than true. What is more true is that the pain is equal to our investment in the story.

And for me, that's the BEST way to get over rejection: it's a fact. Don't make up a story about it.

Cartoon Women are as Complex as the Real Things

2011-01-20T08:50:00.001-08:00

Designing any old character is easy enough, isn't it? Designing a character that's kind of good and will animate like a dream - without the might of Pixar behind it, that's a wee bit harder. Designing a woman character , that's a wee, wee bit harder still.

(I'm giving you that one, in case you're having a slow day. I do it for A. all the time: Here. Have at it.)

I take the above back. Designing a woman isn't any harder than any other character, but the visual vocabulary for them seems so ... small. That's what's hard. If you only have ten words to work with, try stirring up any excitement.

I can, and will, make women any way I feel like it and that's fine for my personal purposes. Until I'm working exclusively on my entry to film festivals, though (the one that'll be way under 5 minutes, the one that will be very funny and have eternal charm - that one), it's sort of important to develop characters that work in the marketplace.

I think, sort of/suspect a little/am slightly aware that it's the marketplace that's got a pretty small vocabulary for characters that are women.

I've got no complaints about it. I'm definitely not yelling 'Oppression!' That's just how it is and will be until women like cartoons.

Anyway, all of this inspired my little test here. I used virtually the same head, with the same dimensions, same features. You know. The same. :) I changed the bodies. I am not sure what it means, but it means something. That's what they give grants for, for the figuring it all out.

How cool is this, that I get to play cartoon scientist?

Fantastically Tiny

2011-01-17T17:27:00.000-08:00

Forever and ever, or as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated with small scenes in tiny containers, enchanted by jewel box theaters.

(I posted something like the above and the picture on Facebook, but the 'why' of it all was what was fun for me.)

It's not the miniatures that interest me; the spell is cast only when there's a scene at some mysterious stage in a story - waiting for one to start, holding its breath after one's just ended.

I've mentioned this all before, but a little while ago, I decided to start preparing artwork that, one day, I can assemble in my own tin nichos. I'll cut out all my little artwork pieces and position them however I want them and then I'll do what you do with things like this. (I'm hoping that between now and then, I'll know what you do with things like this.) Until I start making them in the real world, I am happy to pop them into a digital box with digital doors that swing open on tiny digital pins. Doesn't that sound fun to me? Yes it does!

Plenty of people have made it a point of scholarship (or maybe just pick-it-all apartness) to examine what Joseph Cornell was doing with his boxes. He barely left home - literally, but concocted some fascinating adventures inside four little walls (and a bottom. A box needs a bottom, doesn't it?)

I'm willing to consider the possibility that they represent an attempt to take over control of a confined life. I'm willing to consider they represent safety. I'm willing to consider a lot of things, but I think, in the end, it's likely I'll just say I love the ... the illusion of having a little world, whether its pretty or magical like a snow globe or strange or fierce, to stare in to and just imagine.

That's what I like about them.

Just a little bit ...

2011-01-13T17:45:00.001-08:00

Some days, all it takes is a picture of a Christmas tree glowing to remind me that it's just as easy to see beauty as anything else. There's a possibility that this tree might stay up a long time. It's short. It doesn't get in anyone's way. It's quiet.

It'd be nice if it was a little funnier, but A. has that pretty much covered.

A Holiday Greeting. Late, but still ...

2011-01-07T17:25:00.000-08:00

I'm probably a little late with the holiday greetings, but we're hanging on as long as possible. The little artificial tree's still up (it's too sweet to call a fake) and all our fantastical, magical Christmas cards are still sitting on the mantel (thank you, thank you! I love real cards and think that next year, I'm resurrecting the tradition of sending them. I think that. Thinking and doing = two different things.).

Oh. And there are still loads of treats that survived our little trip back to the wintry midwest.

So tonight can be it. The end of the holidays. But not before I say ... well, happy holidays. A little anticlimactic, isn't it? But not anticlimatic (I think it's fair to assume that's a word, don't you?) because while we were very unimpressed with Santa Barbara weather when we returned from tropical Hawaii, we are thrilled with it now that we book-ended the month with arctic cold.

I am glad there are robust people who like them shiny red noses and frozen little digits. They don't have to brave the cold at all, but sort of leap into it.

My feet, they get cold and stay cold and misery teases relentlessly. I was warm most of the time this time with a long cashmere coat and about three scarves and Ugg boots and mittens galore and other stuff I forget. I was warm because most of the time, the temperature was nearly balmy, wandering in the 20 and 30 degree range. Which made everything icy.

But on our last night, the wind start blowing and the temperature plummeted.

We left. Yay.

I've posted pictures of cold, Hawaii style (and it was, if all you have is gorgeous, sleepy heat to measure by).

And I've posted pictures of cold, Iowa style. It's lovely when there's snowfall. It's treacherous when there's ice. It's hell when the numbers drop to single digits.

So. Better get cooking with the new year.

Techniques FOR Keeping Warm

2010-12-16T18:32:00.000-08:00

I look, accidentally, like an elf tonight. I have a fun scarf wrapped around my neck and a fun, long sweater wrapped around the rest of me and a fun belt wrapped around the sweater and Britishy fatigues. And then I added Uggs. Things were just fine until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. If I moved more slowly, arthritically even, I could be an extra in that ancient Rudolph television special.

It's cold here. It was beautiful and warm-ish today, but now it's just cold. I am combatting this cold onset by enjoying my very first day actually doing something on Facebook.

I will try to not compare it to blogging. Even if I haven't actually taken advantage of the advantages of blogging, I know they're there, waiting very patiently for when I come to my senses.

In the meantime, it's still cold. I'd like to at least remember warmth. This is not easily accomplished when all you have is days of Santa Barbara weather to choose from. It might be a beautiful little city, but heat's not one of our selling points. Which is a selling point when you're thinking of Santa Barbara from a sweltering LA.

I've added pictures tonight of my recent memories of warmth. This last one has nothing to do with warmth at all. Neither, I guess, does the Buddha, but you can't go wrong with a Buddha picture, can you? (Although my Buddhas pictures from Thailand, taken in suffocating heat, shimmer with the stuff.)

This picture is a picture of A. taking a picture from the championship tee on Hole Three of the Robert Trent Jones Sr. course at the Mauna Kea. (That's a whole lot of title for something that's just scary. Yes, we talked about playing a little golf, but I think you can see how THAT would've gone. Not well. That's how.)

Treasures, a Christmas animation

2010-12-12T06:47:00.000-08:00

I'm practicing 'get to the point, say what you mean' titles. I do not like those kind too much.

Still. They come in handy when what you have on offer is an animation for the holidays (or any time at all) called 'Treasures.'

Here it is:

Trubble

2010-12-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

I just finished an animation for Christmas. Right now, before anyone has seen it, I think it's beautiful. After people see it and tell me all that's wrong with it, that opinion might change, but for now, the satisfaction is pleasant.

Maybe it's not satisfaction. Maybe I'm just tired. At any rate, my blog has not been as neglected as you might think. There was some internet trubble. It gets its own spelling, which is as close as I can get to giving it its own word.

That's me. And some flower. I desaturated it so you wouldn't have to see my super excellent tan. :)

I wonder what Nabokov would have done with the solipsism that rears its ugly head when the internet has trubble. I'm very sure every one else has problems, too. A system this complex, with secret, electronic chambers watching every itsy bitsy quiver of data packaging and wires and connectors and modems and routers - well, that system will have problems.

I don't care!!! What about me?!?!?!?!? What about my VOIP? What about all those emails that stack up?

Apparently, we're not so advanced that my service provider can hear me through the computer screen, wailing in fake despair. That's a good thing. I'll live.

This is a gecko. He runs my insurance company.

And I posted this on twitter, but I might as well put it here, too. Because. (I can't think of a very good reason why I should, so 'because' is going to have to do. I put a perfectly okay sunset into Photoshop and blended this. Keep that in mind next time I offer to make you a cocktail.)

Aloha

2010-12-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

When you travel on impulse, having a plan is oxymoronic, isn't it? Still, I imagined that since the big island is only, after all, an island, I'd be able to see a volcano, wander through a coffee plantation, do what you do in big tropical gardens. I didn't imagine how I'd get it done, just that it would be done.

I imagined this before we arrived. Lots of things are easy to imagine when it's still 'before.' This shot to the right is a view of our beach at Mauna Kea, first thing in the morning.

We've left the place at night - up to a friend's house, over to a hole in the wall town, down to a restaurant for walu (aye! better than monkfish) but otherwise, we've hardly left the beach or tennis courts and there's been nothing disappointing about it.

Today, we bucked up and headed out. I'm swiping an excerpt of A's email to various moms and sisters because I've either gone native (not likely. They drive too slow.) or (more likely) there's a little more stuff to do today.

... Today we hiked a mile down a steep muddy trail to a black sand beach, drove a 3500 ft mountain road, drank Kona coffee in a Hawaiian cowboy town, watched egrets graze with Angus bulls, saw the most beautiful mounted butterfly display, snorkeled with a sea turtle, and took in a little sun on the beach. And today has been slow :-)

Now we're off to the third hole. We played with the idea of playing a round, but like imagination, it was easier to play with that idea before we did the math and saw any of the course and factored in what seriously goddawful golfers we are. So, now we're off to marvel at it, perched waaaay over the ocean.

Happy December, isn't it?

Cleaning

2010-11-28T18:31:00.000-08:00

You can ignore it, neglect it, let yourself be distracted by just about anything else, but people who use their computers to work eventually have to clean them up.

I don't think I want to know the one who thinks it's fun. It's not. Every photo, every movie, every half-started project called 'test' gets glanced at.

I'm not sure if it's the cleaning I mind so much or the discovery of how much shit I've done - not the amount, but the quality. Every photo that is stupendously useless stops me. There are a lot of stupendously useless photos.

There are also a lot of photos that send me drifting into the memories of the occasion.

By way of example, this photo. This is a picture of Jack. He made an very good Winnie the Pooh. We all sang the Winnie the Pooh song and the ABC song. None of us knew the lyrics to the first; all of us disagreed on the lyrics to the second.

In a rush, we found Winnie the Pooh lyrics with a ball bouncing on top of every word, but couldn't find chord progression, so A. had to figure it out. A., being a guy, didn't know the tune and I, being a girl, did, so while he practised, I complained and corrected. He insisted he had it. I insisted he did not, because he didn't.

And then we sang it.

And that's the story. From one photo. Jeeesh.

All that stopping and drifting's exhausting. It would be so nice if someone had a better method. And told it to me.

Dreamy

2010-11-27T18:40:00.000-08:00

It's a wintry night, tri-tip and squash are in the oven, candles slightly scented with pine (so slightly scented, I struggle to understand the exorbitant price tag) are flickering and the place is toasty warm. I feel liquid, and dreamy.

At first, I was just pleased to have slid into this place, but then I started the wondering. If I could recall the recipe, I'd write it down and make it all over again tomorrow.

So, let's see. A few rooms have been thoroughly and vigorously cleaned. I finished two backgrounds and the first scene of a little fellow's been animated. Two short videos were edited. A bath was soaked in, in an unsuccessful effort to make a back ache from changing tennis racquets go away.

A car was rented. Parking was reserved. And something else. Oh. First thing this morning, my laptop wouldn't start up. So, I had to search for troubleshooting procedures and then had to actually follow the procedures and sign up for a Genius session at the Apple Store and then cancel it when, mysteriously, the computer starting breathing and whirring again.

And that, apparently, is how I achieved this suppleness of mind and spirit. No wine was involved. Only a hell of a lot of work.

I think this is a recipe I'll use very sparingly.

If You Only Knew ...

2010-11-23T18:04:00.001-08:00

Editorial Note: I wrote the following after a long long day. When I read it this morning, I considered a quick deletion, but then THAT wouldn't get me credit for at least posting SOMETHING. So I'm leaving enough to qualify.

When whoever makes dvds started putting all the movie-making-magic secrets on them, I was a little - what's the word? Some word. I didn't object to secrets being divulged (as if I was entitled to object to anything).

It was the movie magic, the mystique ruined by revealing too much that had me worried.
There were many delicious surprises for me at the animation expo, but one of my favorites was the panels of animators (if that needs a plural 'were', please change it yourself) who delivered to us all our recent flickety-flicks.

The major studios fund a WHOLE lot of playing around, testing it out, making it work time - no one's being lazy; it's just that these characters and scenes are being interpreted as they go. They show dailies and some studios bring in alllll the animators to participate in critiques which are aptly called 'hotboxing' - but now that I write that, I'm not sure. I filmed it, so if I'm wrong, I'll correct it. Later. Whenever I get around to it.

The surprise was just how much of EVERYthing goes into every scene and how little individual animators pout about their anonymity.

2010-11-22T10:11:00.000-08:00

I finished this way last week and with ten test videos now done, thought I'd start reviewing. Then the excellent animation conference and all sorts of other things got in the way.

I wanted desperately to tweet - and 'desperately' is not being melodramatic - from the animation conference. There were so many great moments to share, things that were really valuable. The rooms weren't wired, though, and there were too many conversations to have in between sessions. Somehow, even 140 characters seemed to need too much time.

I'd like more of it. More time. More time, fewer car issues and rain spread out over 12 months, instead of dumping itself in torrents on one day. I'd like a lot of things.

Galoreness

2010-11-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

Apparently, this is just how me and conferences are going to do it. I'm going to decide to go at the last minute and they're going to to what they do.

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to the animation expo in Burbank to play a real animator. If I'd gone tonight, I could have caught the screening of 'The Illusionist' - the oh-so-cool looking film from the man who gave us The Triplets of Belleville. I didn't go tonight. We have someone over for dinner (I can only write now because everyone else is on their iPhone; things have changed, haven't they?)

Anyway, every night, I'll leave the conference and head over to my friend's place in West Hollywood. He's away, working, so it'll be JUST like living there. Except that I'd never live there. It's paparazzi land. I guess all of LA qualifies as paparazzi grounds, but there's just a higher concentration here. A valuable aside for anyone who ever expects to visit Los Angeles: parking's gone awful. Goddawful. It's not like a city crammed into four square blocks awful. There's plenty of space to park, but you can't park in any of those spaces, or anywhere else, unless you live there.

It's always good to end with a public service announcement.

Those Castles

2010-11-17T17:46:00.000-08:00

Old schools made of stone and brick cast a spell, don't they? They're too handsome, too beautiful for children, really. What child appreciates all those architectural flourishes? (Although, now that I think about it, it's unlikely that anyone who designed a school was doing anything more than satisfying taxpayers' tastes for the classical. 'Just give us something impressive. Proof of educational life, but the fancy schmancy kind.' Kids have better things to do than be awed by appearances, I hope.)

Anyway, I'm lucky to be old enough to have been a student at a few of these palatial joints. If forced, I still have memories redolent of rich wood, chalky chalkboards, polished floors and the mysteries of knowledge. Oooooh. I don't think there's much correlation between the beauty of the school and my love of learning - not unless I lie about it. If I was a good student, it was of judicious skipping (to borrow a phrase from someone I can't remember.)

I had to stop by the breathtaking Santa Barbara High School the other day. If I'd been in a more sentimental mood, it could have brought tears to my eyes. Besides its beauty and luster, the staff and students I spoke with were warm and friendly and happy.

I was still marveling at it an hour later. A. didn't skip a beat. The staff at HIS were not kind and happy.

I don't often think about my high school, not the details. I had a great time. I was an athlete and a pretty damned independent child who sort of came and went as she pleased. You'd think I'd think that all the staff and teachers were wonderful.

The longer I thought about it, though, the fewer happy people I could recall. What I could recall was being yelled at, ejected from classrooms, sent to counselors and principals.

I guess I was a little mouthy.

Apparently, in spite of all the classes cut and the classes kicked out of, I still learned some basic math. I could see that one and one added up to whatever.

Maybe I was so bad in high school because it was a modern building. Where do you think that story would fly?

The Damn Breaks

2010-11-16T17:43:00.000-08:00

I'd be suspicious, too. Suddenly, after nothing at all, I've got two whole posts in two whole days. Prodigious output.

The big surge is partly because I've just finished stuff and partly because not posting anything at all is a habit.

It's a habit I don't want. So, I'm changing it.

A little sigh, a little Pinot

2010-11-15T18:46:00.000-08:00

Someone left a bottle of Anderson Valley Pinot here the other night and, after rendering 2180 frames, I thought I'd nestle close to the bottle, just to feel what it felt like. Well, one thing led to another and now the damned bottle's open and I'm a quarter - on the way to half - way through it. That probably makes it sound like I regret opening it but any sound of regret is absolutely a lie. I'm pretty pleased with myself.

Kitty's been a little sick with kitty sneezes and although she's not the first kitty to get them, she's our kitty and everyone in this big old house loves our kitty and she's an old kitty, so of course we're concerned. We've been heating pots of water for some humidifying action and putting itsy bitsy bits of eucalyptus stuff at her nose.

Otherwise, it's been all animating. Oh, and tennis - lots of tennis. And a few dinner parties. Okay. LOTs of dinner parties. And friends who really needed strategizing sessions. Hey! What happened to all the animating I was going to a little bit complain about?

Complain HAS to be the wrong word, mostly because I have no complaint (which necessarily makes it wrong.) It's just that I often launch into another project, take on another gig, and forget how long it really takes to really do a little something.

I entered another contest, although in terms of my career, I'm sure I'm supposed to be past contest-entering. I don't care at all what I'm supposed to be past. As I told Anonymonopod the other night, though, I don't enter contests with some crazy ass focus on winning - although I'd never decline the win. I LOVE that a contest - generally - makes me create characters and stories and then animate in ways that are so, SO different than what I typically do. Contests draw viewers (unfriendly critics among them) that I'd never see. I'm lucky enough to not have had too many unfriendly critics, but even if I had loads more, I wouldn't care.

In this contest, I had to draw and animate ... ready? William Shatner. It was sooooooo much fun. I love my character. I kind of like my story. I definitely liked animating a sci-fi thingie - totally new for me. Not true. I made that very strange creature.

uh-oh. I went to find it and got lost in an old Flash forum. That was many many minutes ago. Time for more pinot and pizza.

From Morning til Night, it's Day of the Dead

2010-11-02T06:39:00.000-07:00

Today's Dia de los Muertos - a pretty good distraction from mid-term elections. I love to vote, but this particular voting opportunity has the potential to be a festival of teeth and foam.

Or maybe it will be a day of graceful civility and I'm just on alert because of my tiny experience. Maybe I just know people eager to share their spikey political opinions, people who must know I firmly disagree with them but will still have those talks.

Either way, it's Day of the Dead. For someone, somewhere.

Spider Web Music

2010-10-31T15:13:00.000-07:00

So imagine you had a few pictures of spider webs, taken during a drizzle. Nothing literary or poetical about it: you'd have sworn they were made of strands of pearls. Pretty, pretty and all that.

The question anyone would ask was: um. Now what to do?

This is my YouTube description of this video: Made a quick little fairy & tossed her onto spider webs to see if she'd play music. Ah. After Effects practice: you have to have something to work with before you find out whether or not it will work. Spider webs were something to work with.

Whatever. Episode 8.

2010-10-21T18:17:00.000-07:00

Seriously, whoever invented low grade fevers that don't do shit but sit there and make you get all wobbly when you try and walk - that inventor needs to be slapped upside the head. It's a stupid ailment and a big waste of time.

Here's my newest episode. I can't bring myself to remember what's in it long enough to write an introduction. (Of course, by the time I finished that sentence, I DID, in fact, remember what's in it. Still, when your video is less than two minutes, it seems ridiculous to explain anything, doesn't it?)

Combination Platter

2010-10-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

If I got to choose all over again, these are things I might not mix: tennis elbow. animation shoulder, a wee bit of flu, extreme packing of social calendar and recurring recovery from a leeetle too much wine, sake and scotch.

Without the benefit of hindsight, though, I mixed all of the above and am just riding out the penalty. Consider that a warning. Or a recommendation. Either one will do.

I DID, after all, in spite of persistent, stabbing pain, manage to do all sorts of animating and had fun doing it. I've just now finished a mermaid. I like doing things like a mermaid because I get to invent exactly how my mermaid operates. It's a good guess that my operation is wrong - all wrong - but since I can NOT be bothered to check on the physics of locomotion (is there such a thing? maybe it's mechanics of locomotion.), my mermaid stays as is.

I also finished another video in my series. I'll eventually get around to posting it.

hop, damn you

2010-10-03T17:55:00.000-07:00

I'm sure bunnies are perfectly fine, but I can't make myself get excited over them - unless it's the one distributing easter eggs (and even I know that's not a real bunny what does that).

So. Because of my confessed bunny ambivalence, I was on the verge of dumping the footage used in this episode and using clips of our New Orleans partee (much absinthe included).

And THEN, some strange stubbornness kicked in (not meant to imply that I'm a stranger to stubbornness, but that THIS one was strange.)

I decided that this was ... life and you work with what you've got, even if it's bunnies. I wouldn't want to dump any of the other apparently insignificant episodes of life.

Where I Face My Age

2010-09-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

Sure. It looks like a short little video and that's it, that's all. There are a gazillion production details, though - kind of a surprise. Who knew it would take so much getting, learning, adjusting? Camera, lighting, mics. Sound, synching, editing so the synching might actually work.

Jeesh. And restraining from using my every day profanity. Oh, THAT's been a tiny little hell (which I intend to give up. It's so not worth it, just to avoid anyone's objections.)

That's been a part of the hardest part: making myself comfortable with making myself public.

Originally, I meant to keep myself out of these videos. I don't care that this young internet generation is so loose with their privacy. That's their problem. Or good luck. Whatever.

But I realize that, as a for instance, you can't visit a place without taking a personality along and using it as a lens. I know this too well about traveling. Send two people to the same city or neighborhood or joint and they'll experience completely different things. Oh hell. Have them read the same book and they'll read it differently.

So. I'm still figuring it all out, but the lessons are coming fast and furious and I'm currently almost sure I'm actually learning something.

Imagine THAT!

Episode 5

2010-09-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

Allow me to direct you directly to the video posted below. It's obvious I'm going to have to supplement these episodes (well, obvious to me, the one with a growing library of photos and footage and not much to do with it all unless I start working on a full length feature.)

Here. Episode Five. I hope you enjoy it. This was really fun to make.

Episode 4 of This

2010-09-13T07:55:00.000-07:00

It was kind of exciting. Ish. I could have - and wanted to - use my shiny new web series to say a little something about the Floridian nitwit's threat to burn the Quran.

The exciting part was realizing that I can assemble stuff quickly enough to be topical. Whoo and whee. The ish part was realizing I'm just not that interested in giving up my time to stupid stuff that inflames. It's easy, what with stupid stuff being allllll over the place, but ... slippery slope and all that.

I didn't realize the 'ish' part until the end. I just decided not to say anything and I'm glad I decided not to but it seems to me that, because I was torn, my thingamajig suffered for it.

I'm calling it a lesson.

Oo and ee. Episode 3!

2010-09-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

This episode, for better or worse, was ready to go on Thursday, but try telling that to YouTube. It took about a billion hours to upload. I think it takes an hour for how many OTHER people are uploading videos. Fair enough. Still, it does make other video sharing sites a little more attractive. I'm thinking of putting these up on blip tv.

(None of that is even a little interesting, but I thought I'd share in case YOU're considering posting videos.)

Olive's busy practicing blinking, so I thought I'd let a new character make her appearance. I just forgot to name her. She's my first try at an anime character. Some day, maybe, I'll understand the appeal of anime.

Striking Balances

2010-08-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

A film maker, trying to coax me into producing, gave me what he thought was very good news: We have 900 hours of footage.

900 hours. It was fingers on chalkboard. The uncoaxing was immediate. I don't even want to imagine wading through that much material.

On the OTHER hand, if you DON'T have much footage from your shiny new camera, what do you do? You use stuff from your Flip and still camera and go ahead and make Episode No. 2, anyway. And you think: okay, well THERE'S a lesson learned. Again. Damn.

In the meantime...

2010-08-25T07:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a little animation I did that had nothing to do with what I'm doing.

I think I'm allowed to leave that piece of crap sentence up there because this story's about mysteries. Good to consider the construction of the above an appetizer. A warm up.

The plan! The plan!

2010-08-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

I had a plan, a good one.

Maybe it was less a plan and more a serious intention.

I don't need to tell you how those go. Good thing, because I can't remember. Obviously I can start it (or start a portion of it): best laid plans of mice (isn't it?) and men - but then what?

They go bad? They get mold? They get messed up? Get wrinkled?

I'm forced to wander to the bar and leave the rest to people playing trivia.

ANYWAY. I'd like to do my nifty new show at LEAST once a week. That's the plan mentioned above. (And I'd like to make it just a little longer than 3 seconds. In case anyone has a little longer than 3 seconds to spare.)

I was almost going to make it. Except for this:

my nifty new - and very first - camcorder got electronically stubborn. I bought it refurbished. I think they missed a few spots.

I marched it down to the store and traded in and up. My NEW new camera is a wonderful thing.

It just uses different media than the old one. The old one used tapes. The store is kindly turning my tape into something I can use.

AND, more importantly, it works in a totally different way. It took some time to figure out Camera #1 and cameras in general.

Camera #2 is like starting school after summer vacation.

And for SURE you know how that goes.

Let. Go. Do. It.

2010-08-15T11:43:00.001-07:00

Probably, it would be good enough to explain my blog's evolution thisaway: I'm doing a web series now.

I've threatened to do it before and went on to dabble with various versions - mostly driven by animation which was very fun but too hard to sustain. This version fixes that, oh yes it does. Now I intend to just smush stuff - writing, animating, thinking, watching, doing - into a video and call it a day.

Well, actually, I'm going to call it 'This. By Cris.' We like a name that covers everything. Ish.

Here's the first episode. Episode might be too grandiloquent. I'm going to go with 'a start.' Here's a start. As per usual, any good criticism that I can do anything about? That's very very welcome. (Helpful hint: don't even think about criticizing my personality, because THAT's just a done deal. Sigh.)

Nem! Nem! Soha!

2010-06-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

Nem as in ...'nem' and soha as in 'sho-hah' equals: no, no, never. It's the Hungarian cry/complaint after the Treaty of Trianon jiggled borders around like puzzle pieces. Only, I guess you can't really change puzzle pieces without calling it cheating. It's like finishing a crossword puzzle by completely ignoring the number of boxes some obviously wrong editor provided.

ANYWAY, this is not the first time I've mentioned 'nem, nem, soha' but it IS the first time I've mentioned it with the accompanying video, kindly sent by my husband formerly.

Not for one second would I ever expect ANY one to know about the nem, nem soha business. Why would you? In fact, I wouldn't expect any one to know much at all about Hungarian history. To me, it's truly fascinating, fabulous and acts as a little flashlight on so much of the rest of history in the European-ish theater.

When we went to Istanbul a couple years ago (two years ago?! Time and flies and all that.) I bought a little Turkish dictionary. I had the accent all wrong for the first day - and no one wasn't willing to help correct that - but suddenly, it seemed like I could talk Turkish like ... like someone who could sort of talk Turkish. People were openly very surprised and even more surprised when I said: No. I don't speak Turkish. I speak tourist Turkish.

What surprised them was my strange ability to pronounce it. It was nearly, almost a mystery. Except for that Ottoman Empire occupying Hungary for so long. Clearly, they'd traded bits and pieces of language and pronunciation. So much for linguistic miracles, hm?

I just finished reading a novel that was beautifully researched, with scenes set in Istanbul and Budapest and I was as happy as could be to revisit places. But even she got Hungarian history/geography wrong. I don't care. It only bothered me a leeetle bit.

So. I don't expect anyone to know anything, the same way I don't know anything about other places. That's why you travel, I guess.

But there's a difference between not knowing anything and not KNOWING ANYTHING like our Missy Contestant. Ignorance is blissful only if I never have to meet you on the street or depend on you in any way.

Doing Stuff Without Apology

2010-06-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

I like ideas. I like them more than news or facts or secrets or gossip. I like the ones you have to tug at a little, pick and stretch to connect to another one or lay over a story so that it looks just different enough to let you - for only a second, sometimes - see things in a whole different way.

It's a particular, peculiar thrill to be in mid-conversation with someone that's been turning over the same idea.

Still, there's a limit, when I get really tired of ideas and everything in me goes a little military. I'm almost sure my insides are all armed with itsy bitsy miniature bayonets and things to use in bombardments because I definitely feel them bossing me around: Shut up with the ideas. DO something, for chrissake. (Although, since they're in miniature, it all sounds kind of sweet and squeeky.)

This probably accounts for how little patience I have for those who boast that they're 'idea people.' Until you put three or four into action, until you at least make the attempt to implement, what's there to be impressed with? Ideas are easy. Magazines, the internet, lifestyle television shows are FULL of them.

I know - or, rather, I understand: putting an idea into action can end up so quickly feeling like defeat.

Or it can feel like exactly how it's supposed to work with ideas.

I'm glad to not really understand what prevents someone from taking action. I know some start out wanting to stay far away from failure and whatever embarrassment or ridicule they think accompanies it. I have an old friend who's said this in a variety of ways for many years and finally, recently, I heard it one too many times.

There is no embarrassment or ridicule that doesn't start from how we'd prefer to be perceived. I can not think of a better way to ruin the play in it all. The fun.

I thought of all this when I finished the above. I created it backwards, which is a fantastic way to make mistakes that can not be fixed. I wish I learned something - I did, on paper, but that's hardly the same thing as putting it into practice.

I'll try. Next time, I'll really try: Script first, character design second, et cetera, et cetera. (Those et ceteras are there to hide the fact that it appears I've already forgotten. Good news: I wrote it down. Bad news: I forget where I wrote it down.)

Legacy

2010-06-15T16:33:00.001-07:00

A long time ago, a Czech writer was lamenting to me the damage done to language by the Soviets during their ... let's call it occupation. He talked with poetic melancholy, but was also resigned to it: the big words, the words that could have glowed with virtue and possibility, had been trivialized.

It was just true. It almost seems true again, in a different place, in a different time.

It'd be nice to wrong.

Life. Parade. Parade. Life.

2010-06-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, it's hard to tell the difference.

Today, I feel like I found my way to a parade where all the candy ran out and now I'm sitting here for the entire-School-Board-in-Cadillac-convertibles part. I KNOW there's something good coming up, I can feel the drums through my shoes, but whoever put this thing together had no interest at all in keeping me entertained.

If I Know it, Anyone Can

2010-06-09T17:27:00.000-07:00

Stuff came up, like it's been doing a lot lately which isn't bad at all; it's entertaining. But it does tend to make me forget lunch, which also isn't bad at all. Except it's 5.30 now and I'm having wine and chocolate gelato. That, I'm pretty sure, IS bad.

Wait a second, will you? One more spoonful and I'll be good.

Fine. I had two.

Despite appearances, I haven't taken a break from blogging at all. I just haven't hit 'publish post.' This, too, is good.

Today will be different. I will show a cartoon I did ... a year ago. Maybe longer. I finally published it in its proper place and got only the most tepid response. I understand tepid responses to my animation skills - they come and they go and if I thought more than one person had any idea who J. Alfred Prufrock was, I'd finish slaughtering that line.

I understand tepid responses to a lot of things I do and am really happy if I get more.

This tepidity was a bit of a surprise. I actually really like this one. It makes me snicker. You know, less than giggle. More than grin.

I'm figuring there are a lot of people who just know nothing at all about mythology. Which puts us right back to Bad, because I - me - I know very very little mythology, so if I know it?

That's my story. I'm et cetera et cetera.*

*sticking to it

If You Were Waiting for a Sign ...

2010-05-27T18:31:00.000-07:00

No, I did not abandon the blogging boat for the shiny cruise ship that's Facebook. I've been doing stuff. This is one of the stuffs.

The Weekend Advantage

2010-05-10T14:32:00.001-07:00

One of the advantages of what I do and how I live is that I often don't have to have a weekend. I don't have to squeeze all the fun into two little days and a couple of nights. It's true that, sometimes, I miss the idea of a weekend but what I miss is the anticipation, not the execution.

Here's a video of one of A's gigs this last weekend. He's a guitarist, the one on the right. No, the faaaarrrr right.

And that's all I have to say today.

Gingerly

2010-05-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

A friend put together a little meet & greet for a candidate for the state assembly last night and I went, more to be there for my friend than to meet anyone. I could not have been more pleased with the candidate, though - Susan - wait a second. I forget. Susan Jordan.

Good god, you want to meet a lovely, smart, dedicated women of palpable grace, you want to meet Susan Jordan. And balls, but lovely ones. She's right there and quite forthright. I am a huge fan of forthrightness, even while I might slither around in the oil of diplomacy.

She stood her ground in opposing offshore drilling, even though the local and powerful Environmental Defense Center (which has done outstanding work but cut a dubious deal on this one) was pissed at her.

(Just yesterday afternoon, Governor Schwarzenegger withdrew his support for the deal, so she had her glow on.)

Anyway. She had to leave, which left just a few of us, draining wine glasses. A woman I don't know said to me, apropos of I forget what, "Well, you're an environmentalist," and I burst out laughing.

I am not. I care as much about the environment as I care about education as I care about jobs for peoples as I care about other stuff. I can't imagine myself being a single issue voter. I think I'd feel like i was doing a half assed job of being an American. I think that's what I'd think.

Here's a little clip. It's Ginger, tinkering.

mobility

2010-04-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

Finally. Yesterday, I got a car. Yesterday, I got a voice-over as right as I'm going to get it. Yesterday, I got food poisoning.

I think I could've squeezed more in, but it was some work surviving the food episode. It was entirely my fault. I made a big bowl of gaucamole. My particular recipe allows me to cheat and add salsa for seasoning.

Oh I can't even talk about it; it's still nauseous making.

I can, however, talk about the car. It's been - wait, let me count on my little fingers and toes - eeek! Almost six months. It's been almost six months without a car. Being without a car is dreamy when you live in a big wonderful city or Europe, but Santa Barbara counts as remote.

No one cares about how remote it is until the fires start raging or someone scares the bejeezus out of us and threatens a tsunami. Oh. THEN everyone cares. Because we're not only remote, we only have one real access road: the 101 Freeway, otherwise known as the Ventura Freeway. Yah, yah, there's the beautiful 154, that goes up the pass and through cowboy country, but IF there was a mass exodus, you'd probably be able to walk that route faster.

A few years ago, the rains were torrential and a big mud slide slid over La Conchita, a leeetle bitty town right next to the ocean. It was awful. And muddy. People died.

And other people were trapped. You couldn't get anywhere from here.

This is a ridiculous blog post. I'm still queezy or queazy - pick your spelling.

But what about the car?!?! Isn't it cool? It's super duper old. It's a BMW and has nine trillion miles on it, but drives and rides like a ... well, a BMW. And it wrings out a whole lot of miles from every gallon of gas. And it has a sunroof.

This is still a ridiculous blog post. I'm sorry.

Unwrapping the Decorations for Earth Day

2010-04-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

I took this old animation carefully out of the box and posted it ever so gently on youtube which makes it way easier to show than the ornaments on my Christmas tree. Maybe by next year, I'll have done a different cartoon with better animation, but I can't believe I'll like it any more. (Wait! Is that sentence less than 140 characters?!? For once, I might have a blog AND a twitter, all in one! Whee. I'm going to try it.

Sometimes I Forget & Then I Remember

2010-04-20T17:58:00.000-07:00

It poured. Then it shined. Or shone. Whatever. And then it got big and blustery. And the whole time, it was a disastery day with the internet. Blustery and disastery. But it's all over now and any mess is all cleaned up. You'd almost think it was trying to compete with last week.

Last week was full of taxes and limoncello from and homemade by Linda (and pistachios, too!) Taxes make me think in a whole new way about my life and limoncello makes me think et cetera. If you do it a different way, I recommend mine - it's very entertaining.

(PS. If you can get a friend to make YOU limoncello, do. Do it any way you can. A long time grappa, palinka and brandy drinker, limoncello went down easy and all delicious to me. A. liked it very much too, but also liked to say: Whoa. This is stout. Yes, that's what he said as he drained his glass.)

Anyway, a long time ago, I lived in the beautiful sorority house among beautiful young women, more poised and sophisticated than I ever aspired to being. My boyfriend was smart, hilarious (I had to learn the word 'iconoclast' to describe him) and was one of those lucky, gifted athletes. He had an arm like a rocket with badass accuracy. Unfortunately, he was too short. You have to be tall to be a quarterback.

He'd drop by the beautiful sorority house with other football players and always leave with a brain ache. He liked the girls - sorry, the women - but complained,'They talk in superlatives.' Drove him crazy.

I don't think I'd have noticed. I didn't understand girls en masse in the first place and sorority stuff in the second. They were very nice to me, but I had to invent theories about why I was ever invited to join, none of which matter at all.

I thought of him the other day when I was thinking of writing fiction, of how much I once needed to do it. My favorite part of fiction was exploring and playing with what we say and what we mean. A story's a story, but you throw dialogue into the mix and you start cooking entirely different dishes, sometimes depending on a single word.

Words conceal and words reveal and it's quite a job, being the architect of a story and deciding which to employ.

That's all I had to say.

Here's an animation I did:

The Written Word Strikes Again

2010-04-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling pretty biblical tonight. I made sun-dried tomato hummus from scratch, using one of those blenders you'd find in a flea market in Old Jerusalem. And later, I'll dunk my footsies into warm bath water, wash them with fragrant soapy suds and anoint them with lotion that can do dual duty of lulling me to sleep.

I have to. This is no ritual. My feet are dirty, the consequence of testing whether I could walking around in bare feet. We can do that in Southern California. I did. I walked all the way over to the IRS office to retrieve my many forms that I probably should have retrieved a month or two ago. Oh well. When we're being biblical, we refuse to rush things. We give to Caesar what he insists on wanting even if he squanders it, but we don't race to give it. Please.

This barefoot test is because I finally read 'Born to Run' by Christopher McDougall.

Our very fun and uber-healthy neighbors recommended it, but I was unenthusiastic. I felt like I'd run enough, performed enough, paid penalties enough and all that. Of course, I'm grateful running got me through college, yes, yes, yes, but I'd have rather skied or played tennis. So - yes, I still have got me some issues with running.

And then I broke down and read it because A. got it from the library and didn't shut up about it. For good reason.

It is an oh-so-cool account of the author's adventure hunting for the world's running elite, the gentle and loving and happy and strong and BIG partying Tamahumara who quite literally hide out in the deadly jaws of Mexico - the Copper Canyon.

Did I tell you it's oh-so-cool? He's a rock and roll writer.

It's highly educational, too.

In separate places - at university sports facilities, in training camps, in biology labs - there was a small but dedicated group of people who saw the increasing incidence of injury to runners and just knew - KNEW - something was going wrong at exactly the time running shoes were becoming more high performance and cushier. And expensive.

Our feet, it seems, need to have as little cushion as possible. We've been advertised into foot stupidity and terrible injuries and even the smartest among us fell for it.

(I don't want to do the chronological math and I won't, but it's hard to miss that MY career ruining injuries were a wee bit close to these big improvements.)

At the heart of the book is the sweet proposition that we homo sapiens beat out the smarter and stronger Neanderthals for the right to survive into the 21st century and get ourselves some cell phones precisely because we were punier. We could keep ourselves ventilated - GO sweat! - and we could run. We could not run as fast as our prey, but we could run longer. When our prey had run as fast and far as they could, they keeled over and - ta da! - we et them.

That's my book report. I can't wait to tell you about my summer vacation to bible land.

Magic Bloggers

2010-04-01T12:39:00.001-07:00

This is my new favorite animation, glitches and 'Really? You had to zoom in again?'s included. It was fun to tell you by way of cartoon how much I like your blogs and comments - and not just on my blog but everywhere.

I don't know how anyone could stand not to have genuinely interesting and witty people in their world.

Thanks!

Crappety Crap

2010-03-29T11:18:00.000-07:00

I was on the porch this morning, sketching characters when I got distracted by shirt, the one I put on an hour earlier, when it was clean. Somehow, inside those sixty minutes, I'd managed to get kitty cat paw prints and butter (or maybe that was honey) on it. I recklessly examined myself further. Yes, there, on my nifty swifty nice pants, the Italian kind that look good no matter how much effort you put in to making them NOT look good, was a spot of makeup.

I wrote this:

I'm going to try and experiment and just so I can kill a couple of birds at the same time, call it meditation. For one whole day, I will NOT get stuff on my clothes.

I shifted the sketchbook and those pants mentioned above suddenly sported a long line of blue ink.

The experiment's off. I don't see the point in battling nature.

Here's the last one of my first batch of cartoonies:

w

The Proper Thing to Do

2010-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

It only seems right to interrupt my marathon of animations-in-training with something a little more entertaining, like life.

It might be the right and proper thing to do, but in the end, the really more entertaining thing to ply you with is another animation.

This really and truly makes me laugh, even if I did it. A. is very fond of the elevator BING and, at strange times, will say: 'Do dat ting.' Imagine my pleasure, knowing I coined such a silver-smooth turn of phrase. (Some of you might remember me popping up a scene from it) - wow. THAT was a long time ago ...

Seeing Beauty

2010-03-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here's the second 'Tell Me How the Story Ends' thingie - it was already posted before I thought to ask your sterling opinions so the intro is still long and laborious, but I'd already started to tighten things up.

I liked this one a lot better, partly because I got all carried away with special effects and made them sort of work. Any time you can get me away from making Disney-fairy sparkles has GOT to be a good time.

In my defense, it's not an aesthetic thing. Although I like sparkles ON things, I like them in serious moderation. Serious. If it's possible to be subtle with sparkles, that's what I'm a fan of.

It's the sparkles that indicate magic's afoot that I can't resist. I spent a huge portion of childhood absolutely SURE of magic - not wishing for it or pretending or getting all precious, but kind of making it a second home in my head.

That is my sparkle excuse. Is it possible to have an excuse without apology? Well, then that's this.

Oh, but here's another little video.

Starting Somewhere for the 28th Time

2010-03-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

I was excited to start these little animations about story ideas with no endings.

I didn't want to use any of my favorite ones first - not while I was figuring out the format and timing and whether or not there'd be a consistent look (pft. as if THAT was even an option). This might have been a strategic error.

I picked what I picked and had a great time doing them - it's not rocket science - and happy happy, that was me.

Now, not so much. As usual, I know I'll get better. I work work work and am not afraid to throw stuff away (as we've discussed on other occasions, if you call me telling you 'discussing') and try again, but right now, today, I'm just thinking that maybe these are not so much fun as annoying.

What do you think? Truthfully would be good. This is the first of three.

Recovery

2010-03-17T15:39:00.000-07:00

Last night, at 5 pm, we were happy elves, peeling the freshest limes swiped off the tree next door and loads of oranges from the farmers market.

I was making a nice big bowl of gaucamole from the avocados off our old worldey tree in back and A's bread was finishing becoming bread in the bread machine.

At 5 pm, we were so healthy, with rosy cheeks and stuff like that.

At 5 pm, the huge tequila bottle was full. Huge bottle. Full.

At 8 pm, the huge bottle of tequila was less full. 1.75 liters was down to what the metric system calls 'not much'.

This is a picture I thought to take early early this morning. It's not good, getting a shock like that first thing.

We were only four little people, having a few margaritas while we watched a live Allman Bros. show streaming from NYC. It's turning into J's annual thing. He's a crazy good bass player who loves his Beatles and Allman Brothers. I guess if the Beatles put a little something on, he'd probably sign up for their streaming show, too.

Anyway, you don't need any more details, do you? One of us, at ten to four in the St. Patrick's Day afternoon, is still in bed. He's not feeling too good.

I don't know how long it takes to recover from drinking that much tequila, but we're sort of counting on it being possible.

eeek. :)

Larchmont Village

2010-03-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

Santa Barbara's okay. It was summer warm today, the jasmine's making everyone drunk and it's beautiful. Still. It just doesn't do for me what a big city does.

Last week, we dashed down to Hollywood, zigging around the zaggy Oscar traffic, so I could go to a meeting that turned out to be a sales session. A. dropped me off, delivered speakers to Ozzie's guitarist and came back just in time so my head didn't explode. We needed a treat.

We could have gone in any direction, but I picked the way that would end us up in Larchmont Village.

There are other nifty oas - wait a second. What's the plural of oasis? Oases? Ick. Oasises? Treasures. We'll go with treasures. Around Hollywood. Franklin at Gower, even with the Celebrity Center there. The little glen of street at the Beachwood Canyon market. Parts of Vermont Street. The compound at the end of Sunset and the little nook at the end of Melrose. (Although, it's a big sadness that the Bodhi Tree's aiming to close shop. On the other hand, Book Soup's new owner promises to take care of the little gem.)

Where was I? Oh. Larchmont Village. Larchmont Village is just that - an unexpected village where there oughtn't be one, kind of tucked in between decaying neighborhoods, old school Paramount Studios and oh-my-favorite-beautiful Hancock Park. And if you're inclined to try and figure out where it sits, you can see the Hollywood sign right up the street (well, you kind of have to go over the tops of a lot of buildings, but it's there.)

It's not for tourists. It's for people who love a city. People who love a city love the changing landscape, the shifting set designs, the whole range of music. Up in Hollywood proper, you couldn't do anything without running into celebrities. In Larchmont Village, you got a different kind, the kind trained in theater, the kind you could believe read real books. They were more like ... movie stars. Well, even Larchmont Village is changing. We ran into Jack Johnson, which was really odd since the last time we saw him was at the marina in Santa Barbara.

We were in Larchmont Village for exactly one hour and five minutes. You know these things when you feed a parking meter that tells you the precise amount of time you're allowed to mingle.

We had the most excellent dinner at La Bottega Marino. Can you please add all your sound effects, but pick the ones that have some gusto? Jeeeeeeeze. Deeeelicious. I had pumpkin raviolini in butter sage olive-oily sauce. Yum times thirty. Wait a second. Here.

That makes me a little sad, to think they have multiple locations. I guess two doesn't really count as multiple. So, I'm back to being happy.

Well, one raviolini led to another and then we wandered (Nope. We went really fast. The parking meter was ticking.) down the street to the Larchmont Bungalow. Oh, it's cozy, without being twee and that's a big deal. When you've never eaten in a place, what do you know? You have to trust yourself to not get sucked in by ambience, but still trust your senses. The senses knew we scored.

I was entrusted with ordering two pieces of cake.

Me. Yes, me. I got to pick. Sometimes, I come mighty close to baby paralysis. A. says my head's like a mower that gets stuck in tall grass. Whatever. So, pick I did and it was all very fun and I was quite excited because it went well and - AND - because it was birthday cake.

'Your birthday?' asked the - well, I don't know. Maybe he was the manager. Maybe the owner. He was nice (so was the guy who took the order and answered my stupid cookery questions). Of COURSE I told the truth. My birthday was the week before. But I had friends with birthdays. Never too late or too early for birthday cake. That ought to be a law or something.

He understood. He said he'd treat me to the cake. We came home with a piece of chocolate - but not that 'yah, yah, lots of chocolate cake.' This had a perfect layer of, well, chocolate cake and some kind of fricking MIRACLE marscapone middle (I lie not when I tell you my eyes are tearing up at the memory) and, oh, mousse on top. I let A. eat that part.

Piece number two was banana cream cake with coconut in the frosting. If you can imagine the best, not too gooey sweet but ... oh, just the best, then you know what it was.

I'm going to end right here because I know a WHOLE lot of adjectives and nice things to say that end up having the ring of platitudinosity to them. It was a genuine, generous and happy gesture and that is absolutely that magic you can almost count on in Larchmont Village. In Hollywood. In Los Angeles.

Madrid. The End.

2010-03-12T12:11:00.000-08:00

Madrid is a fine place for Madridians and other people who like it, but I'm glad to be through with it.

In popular parlance, travel is a passion of mine (one I don't get to exercise so much since it started competing with animation. Back in the day, writing was like air to me and those two were perfect partners. Oh well. Things change and all that.)

Anyway, out of the nine millions reasons for travel, the biggest for me has never been the stamp in the passport, the tick in the box. It's a perfectly good reason, just not mine.

Still, Madrid gave me a chance to practice and learn a little. And to reflect on why the hell I couldn't just be grateful for being there. I didn't actually care about it, but I realized that you can't turn around today without hitting someone yelling at you about gratitude. I've got a LOT of gratitude about a LOT of stuff; sometimes, I think I'm grateful for everything. Other times, I'm MOST grateful that I know when to stop. So. Madrid's nice. It was the first European city I was ever in. It stamped visions in my memory.

I think I've given it enough space.

When the cat drops the ball

2010-03-04T18:53:00.000-08:00

The cat was howling that I am a conquering hero howl cats do when they slip up and think they're lions or tigers or pandas or whatever they mistake themselves for. It's piercing, you know.

And it was early, before coffee or anything useful, so I forgive myself for not thinking she was howling with her mouth full.

It was full of mouse. She pranced on in and dropped it on the kitchen floor and pranced off and I meant to appreciate the gift as soon as I finished saying: Hey, you. Get back here.

Which is all the time it took to process the picture of an adorable little rodent with eyes full of terror. He was so alive.

If you wanted to locate the center of total paralysis, you could have triangulated the cat, the mouse, the me. The cat was done for the day. The me was stupid. The mouse was pretty fast.

Well what would YOU have done? I asked A. who could not believe I let a mouse make it to the refrigerator.

I don't know if I convey how quickly he said: Step on it. (How'd I do? He didn't even take a breath.)

I was thinking more along the lines of keeping him alive. I don't know why except that I saw Ratatouille and that other piece of excrement with Matthew Broderick's voice. 'Maybe I can put some peanut butter on the floor and lure him out.'

'Yah, make a little path to the door and show him the way.'

Ooh. Good idea. I thought.

A. laughed at what a sucker I was. 'You'll get all the mice coming IN. And once they've eaten it, they won't remember how to get back out'

I saw he had no intention at all of helping out. He's never been the same since he found the two big ol' milk snakes hiding above the cupboards in the farmhouse and put five and five together. What piece of shit farmhouse in Iowa doesn't have mice? The one, I assure you, with two snakes on patrol.

So. I'm going to think of it as a new pet, as you would, wouldn't you? A shy new pet with a long tail. I will think of him like that until he dies from whatever wounds were accidentally inflicted. Or from the mousetrap I set.

And THEN A. will have to help out. It won't be a Disney movie any more when the little dead mouse starts stinking.

Art in Any Language

2010-03-01T17:17:00.000-08:00

It'd be pretty cool if art was art in any language, but Hungarian, for one, had to go and get all contrary with muveszeti. (Cafe Muvesz is one of the better coffee houses in the whole world so maybe they knew what they were doing.)

Anyway. Good thing I have two hands because on the one of them was nothing but piles of complaints while I compiled this little beauty. If it wasn't Why do you bother? it was What is the point?

I can't say the other hand had any more confidence, but at least it was sympathetic. In a pitying kind of way.

Jeeeezus. They were such troublemakers. All I wanted to do was see it through, if only to get this oh-so-obvious version out of my system.

I do that with writing all the time, as if I can cleanse my brain's palate. I have no intention of keeping anything that lands on the page, but I want to give it its chance. It's hardly efficient, but words is words and they want their way so what the hell, I say. Give it to them.

I wouldn't want to guess how many times I'll have to try making a video about art before I just give up. It's not the art I want to show. That can barely be done in the best books. It's something else. Blah blah blah.

A Brief Romance with Tapas

2010-02-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

I'm going to think you'd have done the same - dedicated yourself to testing every tapas that crossed your path, even if you had to make a little detour to ensure that the paths did, indeed, cross.

Okay, maybe you wouldn't have done that at all. Maybe you're thinking: Why not just come clean and call yourself gluttonous? If you're thinking that, then I'm thinking in return: Why? What did they invent tapas for if not to seduce people like us? Hm? Hm?

I think it's enough that a serious lesson was learned. Tapas are best in the strictest moderation.

No, really. That's a real lesson. Do you feel like you learned anything? No, I didn't think so. See? That's just how tapas are. Cunning little things.

Finally, some bits of Madrid

2010-02-24T17:42:00.001-08:00

You have to start somewhere if you're making itsy bitsy videos about Madrid on your way to making videos about Barcelona, and this it it. Somewhere.

Gosh, it was two months ago we were in Spain and you probably lost interest a month and three weeks ago, but ... that's how it goes when you're me.

Yes, it's a very short video and yes, it would probably benefit from some ... um ... elaboration. I meant to. I wrote and wrote and wrote some more and then I thought - what are you writing NOW for? Isn't that what you made videos for? (But I am VERY clever. I copied and pasted all those paragraphs in a secret file so I can call on them when they're needed.) So. To the short video:

Lines

2010-02-21T17:41:00.000-08:00

In the event any one thinks I'm being unusually - as in 'more than usual' - negligent in attending to this blog, I thought I'd give you my day in reverse, just so you, too, can own a glimpse of what is not blog fodder:

I broke a wine glass.
I wrote.
I sent A. off to his gig with my traditional: Drive carefully. Have fun. and he answered his usual: I always do and I'll try.
I added titles and figured out how to make a displacement map.
I whined about all the big shrimp that are all over our kitchen smelling like shrimp.
I wrote.
I worked on an animation.
I ate a breakfast burrito from Super Cucas.
I went to three garage sales with A because A likes garage sales.
I looked at another three million cars on craigslist, checked them out on edmunds and then kelly blue book and realized I was just repeating my research because all the cars show up in my search history.
I made coffee.

The last time I wasn't just working was way last week, when we hit the last day and the last line of the film festival. I lived long enough in England to know that it's lines that separate me from the British empire.

In theory, queues are one of the better social conventions (inventions?), exquisitely democratic and plain old civilized. In practice, the good queuer waits patiently and without complaint, regardless obvious paralysis and the absence of any information about it. In practice, I'm about the worst queuer possible. I seem to have an American alarm system that knows a time limit when it feels it and just will not tolerate standing in Kafka-esque obedience. I'm sure the British Empire's line judges were glad to see me go; no one likes someone to stir up trouble.

I haven't stood in a line since. Until this film festival. Queues were a bigger feature than the films. They were fun and full of companionable silences and enthusiastic film reviews (it's one of the better sources of news on which films are sleepy gems and which are stinking stinkers). They provided, over and over (and I mean over and another over, since I stood in so many with no reward at the end) -wait. What are those things called that you look in - ah! Never mind. Microscopes. Damn. Wrong word. Hmm. If not microscope, than what ...? Glimpses. Just plain old glimpses.

Those lines provided glimpses of our various psychologies in motion. Imagine it. You've waited almost an hour to see a film. People who were clever enough to snatch a queue card ahead of you are ahead of you. People in possession of very expensive passes which entitle them to entry before everyone else have drifted in and avoided your trembling lower lip and street urchin stare. In short, you have no idea how much room is left in the theater. Until the Man In Charge of the Line hoists his bullhorn and tells you: The only seats left are in the front row.

Did you imagine that? (Or are you long gone? I'll pretend you're still here, playing this very exciting game.) What do you do?

First two, three times, I was gone almost before the bullhorn was hoisted, spitting my standard but as we've all agreed, totally inoffensive profanities.

The next time, I was with A. and ready to turn on heel when the gentleman in front of us said: I'm going to wait. The people behind us nodded - not firmly, but still. They, too, were going to wait. The woman beside us sighed. We were having much fun with her, we seemed to just surrender our ability to move. One woman marched away from us with the same gusto I'd once shown. She went to the front to check on the uncheckable and moments later, passed us. 'What are you still doing here?' She wanted to know.

Me, too. I wanted to know.

Cautionary Tale Part 52

2010-02-11T12:37:00.001-08:00

I don't know why I bother to be cautious. It never works for me.

I'm now the owner of 9 (nine!!) tickets for the remaining films in the Santa Barbara Film Festival, collected through verrrrry careful husbandry of my original stock. Oh, that and a few gifted tickets. Oh. That and A's kindess. (And now it's ten, because that's what happens when you knows people and those people knows you love films.)

Thing is, while I was biding my time, waiting to pounce, I missed some good ones. The missing is not entirely my fault. When the theater's full with people who paid loads for the shiny platinum pass, well ... that's the deal. Oh, I wanted so much to see Vincere, the story of Mussolini's shhhh-secret lover and their son. And 'How to Live Forever'. And the documentary 'A Murder of Crows' (at least that place again. I thought I should do something about my deep loathing of those yacky smart asses.)

Most of the missing was my fault. Caution in action. Which is at the heart of my cautionary tale. Is that too obvious to be irony? Yes, I thought so.

Here's what I've seen and even if you're bored stupid right now, I urge you to at least glance at the names so you can track them down and then hurry down to the cartoon. (This is what happened with all that work on a horse. I dumped a very realistic, even handsome horse and went with this goofy gaited thing.)

I saw 'Ballad' - the family flick from Japan. And 'Castaway on the Moon' - a South Korean movie so wonderful, I have no business trying to give a synopsis - a lesson learned from reading the film festival synopsis. After trying to jump to his death, a young man drifts onto a river island where he is completely ignored when he needs most to not be. The only one who notices his presence is a young woman terrified of leaving her room. Luckily she owns loads of technology and a big ass camera that can zoom in on his every move.

See? See? Does that in ANY way communicate the ... aye! wit and enchantment It does not. And that's a great great thing, when nothing but the movie itself can deliver its magic.

A., on the other hand, saw both of the above and a long list of other great films. Every night, off he went and every morning, he enthused enthusiastically. He saw 180 South about the man who started Patagonia (& it might have included the guy who started NorthFace) and naturally, it was breathtakingly cool and all the people were there for Q&A's.

He saw the world premier of The Sun Came Out about Neil Finn of Crowded House inviting Wilco, a couple of guys from Radiohead, Johnny Marr from the Smiths, the bass player from Soul Coughing (I never heard of it and it made me laugh) and a few other musicians to record an album in 20 days - all original songs. The proceeds of the sale of the 20 songs go to Oxfam.

You don't have to be a musician to know it was a kick ass project. The film only debuted here because Hale Milgram, from Capital Records, is a local. It was breathtakingly cool and a few of the musicians were at the film for Q& A's.

He saw the film about the jazz stand up bass player, Charlie Haden (he's most famous for his work with Ornette Coleman, but people like me don't know that. I saw him playing protest jazz at the Lobero.) He saw the film about Stuart Mossman, and the film about the Doors. (No one needs that in bold, do they?)

I guess the truth is that while I'd have gone to any of the above films, I wouldn't have appreciated them like A. did.

I have three days left to watch so many excellent films I'll swear I won't go near Netflix for ... for a month.

And that's all I have to say about it.

glue'll do it

2010-02-09T20:02:00.000-08:00

Last night, I was almost sure I'd get a blog written because I managed, well, this:

Perfect blogging conditions - I'm drinking and eating and pretending to get ready to go to a film from Japan that starts in ... oh ... minutes. Side note on the side dish: Snow peas from our garden, onions and garlic oil. Try this at home. Well, without the snow peas from OUR garden.

Now, see, I thought that the time limits and the pressure would make my fingers fly, but I've stopped to hear about the TED conference and to talk about ingredients and you just can't have distractions like that when you're trying to make paragraphs appear.

I know a thing or two about deadlines and distractions - more about the second than the first, but ...

And then it was time to go and see 'Ballad' - a sweet, fantasy family-film. If you count the cat, we're a family, so naturally we thought it was pretty damned delightful.

I like this film festival, but really, the dearth of distributors can't be good. The focus on attracting film festival goers has worked like a dream. People pour out, even when it's pouring, to see Oscar nominees and Big Names in Show Business, but if I were a film maker, I'd really have to think twice and probably more about submitting my film and paying the substantial entry fees when there was so little chance of getting picked up.

Oh well. There are other things to think about. Not jury duty, though. After a week of checking in every night, they told me I was off the hook. Whoever's running that jury selection program needs to cook up a system that works way better for me.

Any week now, I won't have to think about a replacement car, either. That seems to be far in the future, though. We'd probably be more successful at finding a car if we didn't have polar opposite visions. A's driven a VW van for just long enough that he wants something with serious zoom. I'm a little bike pedaler and walker, so any car at all that looks vaguely adultish is fine by me. So far, we've agreed on nothing except a BMW wagon.

That's it. That's all. The rest of life is taken up with animating.

Here's one I did as a Valentine.

What I Do when I Can't Do Creative

2010-01-27T08:03:00.000-08:00

When last we met, I was trying to animate a slightly more horse-looking horse than what I could manage when scribbling. Well, you can try as much as you want sometimes and all you get is something ... more purple.

It wasn't just the horse that refused to work. For three days, virtually everything I touched frustrated. By the third day, impatience had grown into crankiness - a really good sign that I had to do something about it. I'd have worked on it even sooner if I'd realized where I was heading.

Anyway and luckily, I've done this for a long time and have learned to check in on a few possible culprits. (They were downgraded to 'possible' from 'probable' years ago, but those little bastards know how to dig themselves in.) Because I invented them, invited them in, it's easiest to ask myself the following questions straight out:

1. Is there any - and I mean ANY - part of me focusing on applause or admiration or flickering daydreams of them gasping and grasping, finally, my genius?

This is a very private thing and no amount of talking about it in a pub will clear it up. I obviously really like sharing my work and want to do stuff that's good for my career and I even have visions of doing projects that speak to a big old audience, but I have to do that from the business part of mind mind, not the creator part.

2. Am I holding on to stuff just because I did it?

Oh, THIS was a problem when I first started animating. I told myself - PROMISED myself - that I'd just 'try it out' but after hours and hours of work, my brain's hands would wave all over the place while it shrieked: I can't! I can't do any more! Oh, those were some ugly moments. When I started teaching Flash to kids, it's one of the first things I tried to impress on them: let it go.

If the computer blows up, you haven't lost anything at all. You've been teaching yourself SOMETHING, guaranteed, and often, if what you had was great and wonderful and wanted desperately to be in the world, you'll be able to recreate it - only better.

The thing is, some things need marinading, need revisions, need re-doing. It's a good thing, to throw stuff away. To stop and start all over. Clinging to what doesn't work is making a contract with a poverty consciousness. When I hear any echo of 'I can't,' I know it's true.

I'm pretty committed to 'I can.'

3. Am I paying attention? Am I receptive? Am I loose?

Or am I letting some irritation nag at me, some tiny resentment I thought was hidden away scratch its way to the surface? Sometimes, it'll just distract. Sometimes, I'll find myself overcompensating.

I take the time to set it straight with some spiritual exercising. This is probably why I'm addicted to forgiveness and being really big grateful for all the creative juice I can squeeze out. THIS is where I want to be, buoyed by bliss-y stuff.

4. Am I doing the work? Am I pushing my boundaries and edges and DOING the work?

This last one was the gangster that came to stay for three days. Jeeeeeze.

Although I'm a self confessed not-looker-up of reference material, I'm otherwise typically all about the work. I like it. Everything I do, even the tedious stuff, informs the final outcome. To know more is to have a richer vocabulary I can access (and I don't mean a vocabulary of words, but of ideas and techniques). I'm not anal or fastidious - I just enjoy the sensation of discipline and the results (even if the process can be difficult - see this new program I'm learning. It was hell, it was hell, it was he- Oooh! Suddenly, all the pennies dropped and stuff started working!).

BUT. Sometimes, I'll decide to try something new. And I'll forget that I only got where I am after work. Some how, I allow myself to be deluded into thinking that by sheer force of wanting it, it'll work out.

It's bad enough when it happens on one project. I was doing it in three - a script, a horse animation and a painting.

So. I let the script go and started new. Yesterday I painted alllll over the increasingly terrible painting and got at least a sketch up of my happy woman. And the horse? Well ...

of course it's a horse

2010-01-22T06:54:00.000-08:00

You might remember I can't draw a horse.

At least, I can't draw one from memory. It's as if I've only seen them in a block, a block painted in primary colors with a big H for horsie.

Here's a horse I scribbled last night just to get it out of my system:

In spite of knowing this about myself, I still will not consult a reference - not for a horse or money or plane or fish or bird or most other things with mechanical details that contribute to their locomotion.

Not entirely true. I WILL eventually look them up, just to take a peek, but not before I've wasted a whole lot of time doing it my way.

I'm not the only one who forges ahead without facts or a solid foundation. (I'm undecided whether or not that's a comfort. For now, it's just an observation.)

I wonder - don't you? - if Haiti will be a case in point. There's going to come a time when relief has to turn into recovery, restoration, re-building. It's easy breezy to find people who know stuff about Haiti expertly sighing that Haiti's half of the island didn't get into sad ass conditions without a whole lot of trying by a whole lot of people to get there.

Maybe this time around, someone will at least google it.

A Snack until Dinner

2010-01-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

She dabbles, she fiddles, she edits, she revises and still - STILL - she doesn't have anything finished enough to pop it on a blog. What the hell is UP with her?

I don't know. It's a good thing it's not a dinner party or there'd be some mighty testy people milling about.

In the meantime, a little something because it's the middle of January and doesn't that really say it all? Yes, I thought so.

In Haiti news, my friend, Innkeeper to Go, posted an elegantly simple way to help. Give up the shoes; buy new ones. Either way, there are people who need them. These are the things that are tucked right in there, on Maslow's hierarchy of needs (well, unless you come from that tribe that goes barefoot but there are loads of romantic myths surrounding them. Can we just agree that a shoe is not a bad thing? Okay, then.)

Here's the page to kind drop off locations in your zip code area: http://www.soles4souls.org/about/locations.cgi

Sliding Out of The Year with Cartoons

2009-12-30T12:54:00.000-08:00

Until my brain recovers from the traveling and security measures so extreme they were surreal, I thought I'd pop up a few animations I did for the holiday crowd. They were meant to be digital version of stocking stuffers, but my colleagues were so busy filling orders and getting them in the mail, they didn't have time to hang the stockings. You know what happens when the little treats get thrown in with the big, beautifully wrapped presents. They get piled up on a table, forgotten.

Well, I kept them and thought I'd give them to you, here. A little late, but I think you'll see these aren't all just for Christmas ..

That's probably enough YouTubing for one day, isn't it? I also did two other versions of 'Side by Side' for same sex couples.

I'll post those tomorrow unless you want to see them right here. Here's the version for men. and here's the version for women.

It's such a simple story, but that's all it takes for a love poem, isn't it? It's hard to believe it didn't occur to me to do a gay and a lesbian version and I'm really sorry about that. I'll do better in the future.

Back to being sloth-like. It's a good day for it - raining outside and toasty warm inside.

Trying to Talk about Tapas

2009-12-22T13:01:00.000-08:00

I meant to talk about tapas, but A. made me some hot chocolate. Spanish hot chocolate is, in a word, famous, and with two more words, good reason. I thought the only way to get it, with all the romance of aroma and consistency, was in an old chocolateria where all traditions could be observed. I couldn't have been more wrong. We got this in a market, in a nice little box.

The only traditional ingredient missing were the churros. No matter where you hear about the hot chocolate, you hear that churros are nearly obligatory - donut thingies used for dipping - a Spanish biscotti.

They're nothing like biscotti and only ' like' donuts and if you take into account how little I like to employ "quote marks" . They're like donuts if the donuts aren't sweet and if the not sweet donuts were in oil a little too long. Look, I love and know my donuts, so you might as well believe me.

But back to the hot chocolate. It's not hot chocolate like Americans know and love hot chocolate.

It's hot chocolate thick and creamy pudding but just a weeeee bit less pudding-y. It is HEAVENly. If you're going to say that aloud, I recommend all three syllables.

And speaking of heaven. George Clooney and John Malkovitch, paragons of celebrity dignity in the US of A, are whoring themselves like nobody's bidness in a Nespresso commercial. Why yes, it IS "set" in heaven. Quotation marks and all.

A Kiss from Madrid

2009-12-19T14:26:00.001-08:00

Before the internet and when postcards still mattered, one of the first things I learned in any language was how to ask for 'beautiful stamps.'

And I learned to ask for them at the Post - almost always, an interesting if exquisitely frustrating place.

I've neither seen nor looked for a Posta here. We'd probably only find one of them if they were tucked between tapas bars. :)

I miss asking about stamps and getting to pick from the impressive variety. Now, the first thing to learn is the type of coffee I'd like to order.

My order is easy - coffee with milk. A. prefers the Cortado - espresso with a kiss of milk.

I have so many things to share, but tonight, the blog version of cortado - a kiss of Madrid cream.

* * * * * * * * *
Madrid is a lovely city at Christmas time.

All the grand boulevards are strung with lights - the city turns them on at exactly 6 pm and off at exactly 10 pm, but even without the holiday twinkling bits, the city's like other European capitals.

It's aglow.

Here are a few scenes from the neighborhood we're in - the theater across the street, the casino next store, a business, the stock exchange, a plaza ... .

Until next time. Love from us.

Hit Play

2009-12-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

It's 10 am and our visiting friend is sleeping away in the next room, all dark and toasty, and that is good. However, my computer with all my animation projects is in that room, waiting for me to fire it up and finish 3 cartoons. And that, I've decided, is also good.

It's always a kick to watch your schedule jam up before you eyes and just ride it and the unexpected thrills out.

We're leaving for Spain on Monday so we had to crowd work into a short space, but life - blissfully oblivious to what we thought had to get done - introduced its own twists and characters into the plot. We can go a whole month without a visitor, but this week? Three. And appointments that honestly could not be missed and friends who needed some love and parties that, technically, we could have declined but that would have been wrong and not friendly or fun at all.

I'm thinking it's what they invented breathing for. And the pause button. Eventually, I'll hit play and it'll all race to some kind of conclusion. Wheeee!

And JUST as I reached that last paragraph, our friend emerged from his sleepy cocoon. We're good to go.

What We Value

2009-12-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

It was a lot like The Night before Christmas. Ish. We were asleep in our bed and nothing was stirring, not even that cat that has now started complaining with some vigor when the toilet seat isn't open for her drinking pleasure. This turn of events, the toilet as water dish, disgusts A.

Anyway,I guess the rest of it's nothing like The Night Before etc. The car was hit.

It was a little smash, but a smash nonetheless. Nevertheless. Whatevertheless. Less than a crash.

Short version of the whole story: they totaled the car and were very clear that they only HAD to give us $1000 dollars, although all estimates for repairs totaled (a different total) $2,000 plus. And we've invested quite a bit in car maintenance in the last three months alone.

Longer version: Oh hell and no. Yes, it's an old car, the kind you'd be embarrassed to drive if you subscribed to the 'you are what you drive' school of thought. I've had a 65 Mustang and a pretty red Jag and, end of the day, a car is a car so I was fine with this one. And it was a little soldier.

The insurance company - in this case, Unitrin Specialty Insurance, only has to pay out the value of the car if it were for sale. Got it. Got it right away, almost before it came out of their mouth. It's not such a hard concept, after all.

But I wanted someone to explain the policy, the reasoning, the how of and why they would leave the burden of restoring a car to operating condition to the car owner.

I'm pretty sure I heard every condescending, impatient remark you could hear. I heard eye rolling through the phone. I heard someone say to me: "We're paying you the value of the car. What's the problem?" I quote. Exactly.

I had to go allllll the way up the chain of command, though, before I found someone who was capable - for whatever reason- of abandoning the party line and speaking to me from a position of personal honesty. Finally, when I asked what he suggested I do to replace a car with the paltry sum they were sending, he was actually willing to say what he'd do.

And I was pleased. Because in the big scheme of things, what I value most is that we're all in this together and for that to work, we have to step up and speak to each other as if we're not covering our own asses or trying to side step responsibility. We have to talk to each as if we actually care about the other person.

Wow, that sounds a lot like the end of that ancient holiday special we watched last night.

The Way We Remember Things

2009-12-07T09:24:00.000-08:00

Searching through old notebooks and sketchbooks is always entertaining. With enough time and distance, things we recorded years ago look like the notes of some other, often more interesting person - well, unless you've found the stuff from youth in which case 'more interesting' just doesn't apply.

The other night I was looking for a little book that once existed and was probably thrown out and I found a whole other sketchbook instead. Inside were dozens of stories and illustrations I was keeping for that little 'memory' series. Remember that? Oh, here. Remember this?

I was genuinely delighted. And surprised. On page after page were episodes remembered in the best possible way.

With all its freedoms, adulthood also represents a daily temptation to be cynical or alert to all the injustices and insults thrown at us. Nothing we could do about them when we were young, but in adulthood we finally have the power to be bitter and unhappy. Isn't that the weirdest ass thing to do with the little bit of adult life we have?

I'm happy that for whatever time I waste in the bad stuff, I can still turn it into something good in the memories. I consider it a gift.

Because I feel Like It

2009-12-03T18:43:00.000-08:00

I know what I'm supposed to do and there's a chance - the kind that show up in hell - that I'll actually get it done without headache and that always popular jet propelled swearing, but even knowing that, today was spent on other stuff like making a video.

Here's a draft of my intro to it. I thought I had the final version, but some of my layers were nudged out of position. Oh well.

So, it probably looks to you like all I'm doing is playing around. Fair enough. I am but I'm doing it with my current and future clients' very best interests in mind because no one should pay me to learn. Still, play is play and this? This is play.

I'm good with it. I have a plan, a plan that makes me very happy.

I hope you like it, too, considering you are not only the people I play with, but the ones who remind me of all the enchanted stuff out there. It's one of the most sweet deals ever invented - the way friends cover so much more territory.
It's amazing how much goes on in the world that ought to get, at the very least, a little cloud of sparkly fairy dust around it (yah, well, I can not help how much I love those twinkly things. I do like them exercised with restraint, but ... how much can you restrain twinkles? Something oxymoronic about that.)

Yack yack yack. Point is - I'm doing this because I feel like it. Really. I feeeeel it.

Don't Know Where, but there's a limit ...

2009-11-29T15:10:00.000-08:00

I'm not qualified to have a philosophy about animating, well other than 'make it realistic? Are you kidding? It's a fricking cartoooon!' - but I have developed an idea or two based on my skills.

I'm as good as I am. I'm willing to improve and I work at improving, and I even have visions of being pretty good one day, but in the meantime, I just want to be creating stuff. Sometimes I get a character right and sometimes I don't. Sometimes the script is tight and sometimes ... well, you can make your own list about all the ingredients.

For me, there's a time limit. Even when there's no deadline, there's still a moment when it's just smart to say: this is it. And this? Is it. Here's my first cartoon about the little adventurer. I wince at all the wrong bits and know I could repair them, but, really.

Just for the record, this new program has great advantages and features - most of which I've barely used. That's because its drawing tools make me unhappy. I draw directly to the wacom tablet. Lots of people import drawings and 'animate' those or trace - essentially reconstructing. Not me.

Never mind. I don't know why I'd go on and on about that. Anyway. Here's this animation, before I post it. Please don't tell me about the music glitch. If I do a second one, A. will compose something for me.

Go ahead and tell me if there's something that absolutely strikes you as: fix it. Fix it fast, please.

Sigh. Thank you.

Sharing and Probably Too Much of It

2009-11-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm working on an animation for kidlets with my shiny new animation program. Here's a clip. It was a lot more fun with my first musical composition (Garage Band - yet another thing I need to stay away from) - but A. insisted I remove the track that sounded like a 70's cop show. Jeezus. Some musicians. So particular.

Hey, while I'm at it, sharing and all that, I'm going to add to this blog. I wrote a bit the other day because one of Brian Andreas' pieces is up for auction. Both he and Kenny Loggins signed it - and because the proceeds benefit the Unity Shoppe, Brian's going to do an original drawing to make this auction particuarly special. He doing this because I wrote the piece and THEN found out that there's more than one print up for auction. Eeek a mouse. I'm a dope.

Anyway, I am a huge HUGE fan of the Unity Shoppe - so here you go. If you think it's maudlin, you're entitled, but you're wrong. Ha.

** ** **

In just one day, the auction will end on a 'Connection' print signed by both Kenny Loggins and Brian Andreas. The auction proceeds will benefit the Unity Shoppe of Santa Barbara. You can find it right here and bid with gusto. Or cheer on the other bidders. :)

There couldn't be a better story for this organization, a local pearl - you know, one of those gems that isn't shiny and show-offy, but the reward of a lot of grit - and luminous for it.

Allow me to remind you how that story goes:

there came a moment in the middle of the song
when he suddenly felt every heartbeat in the room
& after that he never forgot he was
part of something much bigger -

- Connection by Brian Andreas

When it comes to helping each other, people do what they can do. And there are countless reasons why they do it, why anyone steps up at any time to give support or lend a hand.

Nothing is better, though, than the hand reaching out because it knows the hand it's reaching for wants the same warm feeling of safety, the same strong grip of hope.

Or the voice that advocates or negotiates for the one who is just trying to findthe the right way to talk of a future to its children.

Or mind that opens wide and creates solutions and imagines EVERYone flourishing.

This is exactly how the Unity Shoppe operates. There are no halos on parade. There's just a promise that's made and met every day: dignity for the clients. Real dignity.

I don't know if it's in their mission statement or a formal matter of policy, but I'm going to trust my experience and guess it's borne out of a vision of our connection.

It seems as if all involved know this to be true and so, whatever they say, however they assist, whenever they're organizing or distributing - there is nothing but an unfailing attitude of unity.

It's wild and it's wonderful and fills all of us in this community with big gratitude. What other way could you feel when you're invited to be part of something much bigger?

** I've included a few pictures of the grocery store and children's clothing boutique for anyone who wants to be stubborn and refuse to believe it. Ha. Each of them gets a little bigger when clicked.

http://www.unityshoppe.org/
http://www.logginsfans4unity.com/

Rearrangements

2009-11-16T14:22:00.000-08:00

Strange - I started this blog a couple of hours ago and got interrupted by phone calls, a cigarette, a post office run, beer retrieval and recording a voice over. I only got as far as the title and by the time I returned to it (which is right now) I'd totally forgotten what 'rearrangements' referred to.

No. I can't remember at all.

I should probably change the title, cut my losses, move on to something slightly more engaging but that's the thing with me. The second I start having to negotiate that territory of 'what's interesting to someone else' versus 'what's interesting to me' - I'm screwed.

I'm screwed reminds me how my credit card company flagged my card this weekend for suspected fraudulent activity - despite the transaction being well within the boundaries of normal. I think they expected me to be grateful for their surveillance, but I thought it was a little over-enthusiastic, principally because I was the one who had to resolve the whole thing. By the time I was on my third phone call with them, I was pissed off.

Here's a curious fact. I swear like a professional swearer. Except when I'm really angry or when I'm in a clearly defined business situation. Mystery, but one not worth solving.

I wasn't furious with the credit card company - just really annoyed. Which, to my little lobe that handles profanity, was good reason to employ standard really annoyed language. This includes 'hell' and 'shit.'

Mister Man at the Credit Card Company warned me that two more infractions would entitle him to hang up on me. Hell, I nearly said, I didn't even know I was swearing. I had to ask him what prompted his warning.

You know, that's the story of the whole world. It's a thin line between not wanting to offend deliberately - emphasis on deliberately - and not wanting to offend at all. There's no end to the shit that some people will take offense to. At. One of those.

Are there criteria - objective criteria - for measuring what's really offensive? Probably not. I wouldn't trust a whole lot of other people to decide for me.

I'd like to know when the offended will step up and take some of the responsibility for being such big pains in the ass.

Do you think, like I suddenly think, that maybe I've had to be too nice lately? Ha.

Recovery

2009-11-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

Oh. Here's a cartoon I just finished. Do you think the timing's okay?

Like everyone else, I got a share of the flu - not a big share, but still - enough to count. It didn't drop me, didn't force me into bed and tears, but it made sure I knew it had installed itself and that I should pay attention. It was a lot like the cat. Persistent. Insistent. Demanding. Waking me up at ungodly hours. Curling itself around me while I sat and worked, but howling if I was audacious enough to want to get up and do something.

So, two weeks after it hit, I'm finally nearly recovered. My friend who knows all sorts of stuff about ... healthy stuff was a huge help. You should get one of those, a friend who knows that stuff. Jeeezus. A few good doses of supplements and life got a whole lot better. Wheee.

Yes, recovery is good. But I've got a little more to recover from. Since I was perfectly capable of sitting at the computer, I spent plenty of time learning this new animation program. I also managed to spend way more time than usual doing internet prowling. Probing. Poking. Reading.

Oh, hell no! It was awful. No, no, no. There's just a flood of information out there and, as you'd expect in a flood, a LOT of flotsam and jetsam. (See what reading a little Faulkner will teach you?) In an earlier, less electronic age, I might have been thrilled to read an article - ONE article, one LONG article - about any of this stuff. I'd have been happy to discover a curiosity. I'd have loved to seek out more information.

But I got too much. I really need to recover, but so far, B12's doing nothing.

Take Two

2009-10-31T17:25:00.001-07:00

There are some things, some creative gigs, that might be great to do all alone, but they benefit in big ways from having a fresh eye.

It's easy enough to do animation all by yourself, too (as long as you keep them very short :)) - but it's way more fun when other people dropping ideas into the mix. Artwork's even better. JP dropped an idea by just yesterday, so back I went to make revisions. I'm confident I'll get better but right now ... this is it.

a Halloween cartoon

2009-10-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

I'm a little disappointed with the placement of Halloween this year. Not much of a Halloween fan, I nevertheless overly appreciate others' costumes. I bet if I went into therapy, someone would tell me why I don't get any thrill at all dressing up, but that'd sure be a waste of a therapy session, wouldn't it? I guess it's easy to waste therapy sessions.

Last year, the architect who sits in the window directly across from came in as a spectacularly scary witch, big pointy hat and all. I didn't even try stopping myself from exclaiming/oohing and ahhing really loud/whatever else I probably said. She looked so real and so cool and so much like the Wicked Witch of the West who is, after all, the standard for what any real witch ought to look like. Sorry, I didn't make the rules.

She didn't have to dress up today. In fact, she looked like any old architect.

Sigh.

Next year's probably a lost cause, too, isn't it? These damned calendars.

Oh. Here's a Halloween cartoon. Sort of a Halloween cartoon. I made it with my fancy new program which explains why it looks like I'm a beginner.

I don't care. I really love cemeteries. All over the world, cemeteries are some of the best places. If I was an architect, I'd sign up to make cemeteries. If I was an architect who made cemeteries, maybe I'd like dressing up for Halloween. In which case, I'd go for the authentic witch costume.

I think.

Painting Holes

2009-10-21T16:45:00.000-07:00

Not long after we last met and I told you about the curious way paint can - what's the opposite of improve? Unimprove? That'll do. - the way paint can unimprove a perfectly okay painting, I dug through canvases not yet discarded.

You may/may not remember this fledgling effort? There she was sitting on the end of a porch bench using up only one third of the space.

Yes, yes, TODAY, I get it. I could've have and probably should've left her there and let the other two thirds fend for themselves. It's not like they were naked canvas.

They had grass. They had sky. They had bench.

Nope. Couldn't do it. Didn't even occur to me.

That's what I'm going to try to learn next. Stopping. I've never been very good at that.

Oh well. Painting's fun. So is cutting holes in a canvas.

Happy Underneath

2009-10-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

Maybe this is how it's done and maybe not, but it's how I'm doing it, ever since I found myself throwing out canvases. I didn't mind throwing them away, but they're not so easy to fit in a garbage can.

I needed to test my disasters on less conspicuous surfaces. So, the thumbnail painting began.

If the thumbnail (I think it's about 5 inches by 5 inches, but I oughtn't be quoted) - if it doesn't look too bad, I think: well, go ahead, you big baby. Try that on a bigger one.

But I'm not so stupid, so on that bigger canvas, I first paint lights and darks and shadows. Often - I mean REALLY often - I like what happens at that stage. A lot. But you can't just ... stop.

I don't know why, but you can't. Otherwise, all the paintings would be shades of white and shades of gray with some strokes of black. Too bad. Anyway, that's when the colors start.

I've followed the above process with a few of my Happy pictures. When I'm at the shadow stage, I get wonderful faces, with smiles that capture the degree of happiness JUST RIGHT, very 3 Little Pigs-ish-y.

The more I paint, the thicker the mask, though, the smile starts looking like other smiles. The unique curl and curve and stretch gets covered up.

I know there's a genuine smile under it all, though, so at least I'm happy.

PS. I got a quick call from Ronnie this afternoon. It might be the meds, but she's doing beautifully!! Thank you, one and allllll!

You're Invited!

2009-10-14T17:23:00.000-07:00

We're having a party tomorrow and you're invited. It's BYOP - or, for those, like me, who can't be bothered to learn any more acronyms than I already know - like MVP. And PBS. And ... um ... I probably know a lot more than that, don't I? Oh ... but BYOP's Bring Your Own Prayer, whatever that looks like.

Probably should've been BYOPWTLL, but I like subtitles. I bet you're not supposed to mix them with acronyms, though.

ANYWAY. We're getting together to focus our best, glowing healing and love and it will all be good and let's rock this one life thoughts as my dearie dear friend Ronnie gets some surgery.

Yep. Once more, cancer's been sneaking around and sticking its ugly little fingers into the bodies of people I love.

Ronnie swings by here when she's out swinging through the ether. You might have seen a comment or two from her. This is her and Christo. She's the one with the blue scarf. I decided it doesn't matter one way or the other whether you know her and love her and have happy energy to spare.

You see, I found out last week when I was on my way to the hospital to visit the nephew getting his second round of that acidy-ass chemo. Also visiting him was his tutor who was scheduled the very next day for a scan. They were looking for cancer.

I thought: this is crazy ass shit and a little ridiculous, besides.

Of course, I have limited time and attention and loyalties. Of course, people I love are more important to me than those I don't even know. But they're only more important to me. Not more important.

And yes, there are loads of rotten, greedy, jealous, bullying, abusive, vindictive, petty people and frankly, if I had my choice, I'd never have to deal with them at all. But maybe those need some full on love thoughts more than anyone.

So, from now on, every time I send out my prayers and best thoughts, I'm going to make a point of including everyone who needs them. You're invited to do it, too.

And if you want, you can start with Ronnie. Tomorrow. She's in surgery for four hours. I don't know WHICH four hours she's in surgery, so I'll start early and maybe take a break for elevensies. It'll be fun.

Monday Night

2009-10-12T18:44:00.000-07:00

Andy's cooking dinner. Monday night football's on. We're drinking a beautiful bottle of Nicolas Fueillatte rose champagne after afternoon massages. Last night, we spent hours watching the Food network.

And this is Monday night at my mom's house in the California desert. She does what moms do - she spoils us outrageously. And we are so grateful. I don't blame you if you think I'm just saying that because it's what you should say. But we are grateful in a big, big way. When we've been struggling the most, she's gracefully and graciously helped. When we haven't struggled, she's still paid attention to those special things.

Last week was all catch up, after so many days spent hanging with women and getting all empowered. :) There's no point wishing that animation didn't take time. It's what it needs and if you waltz off for four days, well, that's four days - you get the point. And then I went and got lost in painting and if you want to find a good way to lose even MORE hours, it's painting.

Point is, we'd already planned a quick visit to my mom, but weren't as enthusiastic as we could have been or should have been. Something about navigating LA traffic and the 101-405 interchange will make people stay home.

I'm sorry we felt like it was an obligation. This has been nothing but fun and relaxing and champagne filled.

Happy Monday night. Happy ... what's this holiday? Happy Columbus Day.

What I Should Be Doing

2009-10-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for a women's conference in LA. Lots of cheerful, highly enthusiastic women from all over the world are attending. It's a good thing I know where the bars are.

I also just got the current gold standard of animation programs.

Am I getting ready for the conference? Am I learning the program?

Nope.

I'm sitting here with one eye swollen shut and the other full of feathery things swimming around. I've spent hours and hours painting today. I think it's probably not just some romantic idea - the painting studio with bucket loads of natural light flooding in. I paint in a dark kitchen in an old Victorian house. I don't know. Acrylic fumes, dark, eye with stuff in it. Maybe there's a correlation. That's another thing I should be doing. Googling this mysterious condition.

My eye better clear up pretty quickly. How else will I make the tour of all the art galleries with all the excellent snacks? Maybe if I put a patch on, people will move over and let ME get to the hors d'oeurves first.

tick, tick - DING!

2009-09-28T11:22:00.001-07:00

I'm waiting for the timer to go off on a cartoon competition I entered. In two little days, the public viewing will be over and the judges from FOX cartoons will start doing what judges from FOX cartoons do.

Of course, I'd like to win. I'd like a flat in Rome, too. But I entered this for other reasons just as important as winning.

The most important was this: if I want my work out in the world, then I have to put it there.

That's probably painfully obvious to you, but I had to remind myself of it often - certainly every time I saw the young, well connected animators getting nine billion hits (one has 31,000 views. 31,000!! I'm really happy I have friends! Eeek. :) Sageweb wonderfully watched and twittered - yay!)

Putting my work out there teaches me - every time - to make things that I enjoy. To do what I want to be doing. I appreciate your time, your watching my cartoons and your GREAT encouragement, but I make sure I know that you don't have to like anything. I will not love you any less for not liking what I've made.

No matter what you say on a blog, you might very well wonder what the hell I'm doing trying to animate.

That's something worth knowing and accepting and then getting on and doing it any way.

If you want to see the cartoon (and you can stand the worst compression on the whole planet, maybe of all time), here you go. It's 3 minutes long. (It was one of the rules, that we had to animate a holiday theme. I'd have loved to do a Boop cartoon, but time ran out ...)

Color Adjustments

2009-09-25T07:51:00.001-07:00

Dabble, dabble, throw away. That's how I painted for the last three months. I was writing and animating and by the time I got around to painting, I couldn't make the shift. I think that's what happened. I don't know enough to say this is true, but I'm willing to float it.

These things we do, these ways we create - they need different ways of seeing and if you're really focused on one thing, then the other medium will suffer.

Hmm. That's either true or a big fat excuse.

At any rate, a few days ago I started playing with one of my 'She's Happy' sketches. And although she looks suspiciously like a cartoon character as opposed to, say, a real painting - I FINALLY got the colors I wanted!! (Those would be browns and maroons and reds and creams).

I have now wasted a whole half an hour, though, trying to get the computer monitor to capture them.

I posted them from my mac, where the one on the left was too bright., the colors inaccurate.

The one on the right looked delicious like pudding.

When I moved over to the PC, it looked delicious like mud.

I don't carry at all about the painting. It's not finished and when it IS finished, it might get tossed. BUT trying to get it to show up on a computer provoked some thing.

It's almost irresistible, isn't it? If I could miniaturize it and carry it with me, I might do just that because it's probably good to be reminded of how differently we see things.

Even though we ALL know that and comfort ourselves with it, I forget it just about every day. I really need to remember it. I'll start with TRYING to remember it, because I'm not feeling so ambitious.