A Wannabe’s Week

February 9th, 2008 by Brian | Posted in Blog |

Don’t take the lack of blogging for want of happenings. The events have been more wanton than want, but mostly of the menial, the slow and relatively gradual process of settling into a new place and making it into home, which in a lazy sort of chronological order:

All domestic issues are roundly squared away; all Ikea crap bought and assembled (at least for now), clothes put away, knick knacks arranged and wall hangings hung, packing materials and other rarely used stored safely away in the garage or laundry room.

On Saturday, after a couple solid days of the aforementioned menial, Fig, Chloe, Bryan Harley (internet friend and fellow fan filmmaker of sorts), and I shoot a quick short-short of Fig’s penning, with Chloe and Bryan in the leads and myself in at the end, and all of us rotating around positions in true no-budget fashion. It was the first time my plucky GL-2 had seen some action in awhile, and was glad for the work, I’m sure, what with the strike on and all.

On Sunday we had Bryan over again as Fig and I restarted Geekza!, this time with Chloe on board. Later that evening, I went out with Tony to watch a friend of his play guitar at a bar on Vine Street. We’re so happening.

Somewhere in this general vicinity, I also got my phone plan straightened out, a long convoluted runaround that took a month, two coasts, hours of phone customer service, and three AT&T stores to straighten out, and a story which I’ll spare you the details of. Sufficed it to say, if you decide on getting an iPhone, avoid the prepaid plan at all costs if you’re able, and especially if you plan on switching to the regular plan later on.

On Tuesday I checked out the acting class Chad had scoped out on the Internet way back when. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, though was intrigued enough to try at least a month’s worth of classes.

On Wednesday, I had a slightly less involved run around with the California DMV, filling out title forms at one, before driving to another to have my car inspected and fill out driver’s license forms at another, before going to a gas station to get a smog check, before going back to the second DMV to finish the inspection forms, get the plates, take the picture, and take the driver’s test to finish out the whole process. A temporary ID and registration later and I’m on my way home, catching a glimpse of the Hollywood sign for the first time, unexpectedly seeing it dart between two buildings as I drive down the street.

On Thursday, I met up with a former Full Sail classmate, though she was unfortunately delayed, preventing me from going to my first acting class session that afternoon.

On Friday, I get impressively lost on my way to Tony’s for the first time, causing us to be solidly late to the Ted Kennedy rally for Obama that we were going to that morning. Nevertheless, we caught the tail end, and I had time to grab some pictures, the best of which can be seen at my Flickr. Afterwards, a good sushi lunch and some Guitar Hero later, another day is called.

Saturday, Eric, Fig’s friend who’s come into town for a few days, and I head down to an Obama precinct walk that I had grabbed a flyer for at the previous day’s rally. Having arrived too late to register to vote (by a day, even…) in the upcoming primary, I felt compelled to compensate in some way, thus canvassing some random neighborhood near Highland. By one o’clock, we were done and headed back to the apartment, where all vestiges of the “just having moved in” decor were swept away in preparation for Chad’s potluck party.

The party was good times, and such that I was able to put more faces to internet handles, including that of DorkmanScott, one half of the Ryan Vs. Dorkman fame and Hunter, who had said he might have a job for me when I got here and provided an update to the situation at the party. More to come.

Ultimately, however, Fig, Eric, Chloe, Tony, and I skipped out on the party early to see an improv troupe that a friend of Eric’s was in. The troupe was good and the show was decent, though I’ll be honest and say that Tony and I would have been fine up among them. After the show we returned home to find a partially burnt pizza box. I, for one, didn’t ask and went to bed.

Sunday was more Geekza! goodness, this time with Eric as contributing guest. Monday I hung around with Eric and the both of us had lunch with Fig, touring his work place, a Switzerland-ish pair of cottages in the middle of Los Angeles. Afterwards, Eric and I wandered around Los Angeles in various capacities, before I headed back to the neighborhood I canvassed to help the precinct captain make last minute Get Out the Vote calls.

At some point earlier in the day, Hunter had called me to give me the in to get an interview at his work, which I quickly scheduled for the next morning. Flashing forward to that morning, I woke up (after having done an emergency-interim-holdover-stopgap laundry) and headed for Hollywood. I got there with plenty of time to spare, had a quick ten minute interview with the head of the company, and was out on my way again, back on the street by the time my interview had been scheduled to start. More has now come. By the luck of entrance ramps, I managed to just avoid but still witness the aftermath of a pretty bad accident on the 101. Another sign of the near-completeness of my adaptation; saying “the” and the freeway number is now second nature. Though still referring to them as “freeways” instead of “interstates” is odd. Crazy Californians.

Later that day, I made it to the first of the acting classes and watched students go through the same acting exercises I witnessed a week before for three hours, before getting up and doing a simple repetition game with another student. I think this class has something to offer, though I’m not sure it’ll be able to sustain my interest long enough for me to make it there. I paid for a month, and I’ll get it, but we’ll have to revisit my feelings on the matter after said month.

Later, I did decide to vote, having watched both Chad and Mark go out and come back (with coveted “I Voted” stickers) from it, and decided to go down and cast a provisional ballot, even knowing it would almost certainly be discarded. But I felt shitty for not doing it and wanted, if nothing else, to go through the motions to at least feel like I wasn’t abdicating my duty. And even if it did somehow slip through the cracks and get counted, it hardly violated the spirit of the law, seeing as I hadn’t voted anywhere else or in any other capacity in the primary. Should the FEC decide to come after me, they’re more than welcome, but given the cluster that Los Angeles County’s election day apparently was, I should hope they’d be busy with bigger fish.

Most of the rest of the day was occupied by watching “Veronica Mars” and obsessively hitting refresh on CNN.com. Even with the three hour difference in my favor, I still couldn’t stay up late enough to hear California called, but if a football game doesn’t matter until the game is over, I suppose an election doesn’t matter until it’s called.

I spent almost all of Wednesday watching “Veronica Mars.” Enrico Colantoni is the best.

The one thing I did do was take my desktop in to get serviced, which has inexplicably started to make an alarming noise after a cross country move and about a week’s worth of normal functioning.

Thursday I went to the second day of the acting class and again watched students go through the same couple of exercises for three hours, before playing a slightly more involved game of repetition. Hrm. Afterwards, Tony and I had planned on going to the Star Trek Tour thing, but quickly realized that by the time we got down there, there’d be less time than needed to enjoy the place to its full extent. So I ran some errands, mailing a disc to Travis, a sweatshirt to Chris, and a giftcard to my sister. It’ll be a few days late, having been mailed on her birthday and all (I’m a bad person), before heading down to Tony’s neck of the woods. We had dinner, hung out, and I headed back.

Today, I watched plenty more “Veronica Mars” (on Season Two now! Woo!) and…well, that’s about it, I think. In reviewing, it seems like my life is some sort of binge and purge between frenetic activity and watching surprisingly intelligent WB/CW teen noir. I can only assume this is good preparation for the movie business.

The problem with clearing a backlog of events is, as we’ve seen before, it leaves no room for the introspective. But I am slowly starting to get my head around this place. And while my procrastination for blogging remains frustratingly obstinate, I can feel a certain swell in creativity. It’s frustrating in its own way, as I actually feel an urge to dive back into editing on “The Martians” which is a feeling that is unique enough that I know not to take it for granted. But I’m stuck waiting for my desktop to be fixed, hopefully not for much longer.

In the meantime, “Indiana Jones and the Relic of Gotham” proceeds and pulls its old and patchworked body towards the finish line. The past few days have included a conversation with Charles (composer for “Injured Stormtrooper” and “Thanksgiving With the Kranzes”), with Fig, with a composer friend of Fig’s, Jon Vandergriff, and plenty of conversations with Ryan. But my role in this process is now, essentially, producer while Ryan works on sound, Jon works on music, and Fig and Markus work on effects. And while there are a great many things I love about making movies, the role of producer does not top the list. Rather, I need to be creating again; working to fashion something manually, creating something that never existed before, be it in words or shots.

I need the sculptor’s hands, not the manager’s mouth.

If you want to get downright pretentious about it.

Soon, perhaps. But for now, I need sleep.