Science fiction is sometimes referred to "speculative fiction," and while the name hasn't stuck as well, it's more accurate. I believe science fiction/sepculative fiction is supposed to be the narrative of ideas. It's a story with a conceit (or two) that leads us into a sort of intellectual exercise -- a dramatic game of "what if...?" Usually the conceit involves the future, or a technological or sociological change, but it could be anything really. (Arguably, you could broaden the idea of what the conceit is to cover narrative of any genre, and that'd probably be okay.) Science fiction likes to involve potential scientific advances or discoveries, but Twilight Zone-style stories of mystery or magical realism count, too. The idea is that by speculating, we learn more about ourselves.
When most people talk about science fiction these days, they really just mean action-heavy fantasy stories set in some future or with spaceships, robots, evil computers, mad scientists, and of course aliens. It's not about ideas, it's not about characters. It's about plot, what happens next. That's fine and good, but it's not really what I really think of as science fiction.
The point of the story is the "what if," not the "wouldn't it be neat if."
I am too unfocused to bring this to a bigger point, except insofar as to say I just rewatched Solaris, and it and Moon are the only two amazing space movies I can think of since 2001, though the 70s had some okay ones I'd like to revisit, like Silent Running. The list is so short that Danny Boyle's great-until-it's-a-monster-movie film Sunshine almost makes the list.
One day I will try to write my absurd, less-sciency and more mythological astronaut story. Probably. But right now I'm drowning in different mess, that being my getaway movie script, so this is really really off-topic and distracting from my goals. Still, I do love science fiction, especially when it gets it right. Science fiction without explosions is a rare fucking gem.
More "what if," less "wouldn't it be neat," please.
- this is just my definition, you understand, but
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
travisezell- July 12th, 17:24
- weird day. up, whatever, down, whatever.
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- travisezell
- July 8th, 2:11
Cassie is helping me rescore Every Room is Empty with more appropriate, less ridiculous music that we can actually get rights/permission to. It's actually pretty exciting. Cassie is awesome. I've been thinking submissions, festivals, because why not? Fuck it, man, I've gotta get out there.
I still owe you an I Love Moon post, and maybe an update about my writing. I know none of you care specifically, but it's my journal and I can write in it what I want. Well that's what I want. But first, Futurama, sleep, and back to my regular six-hour work day again. Finally.
- shave the birds
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- travisezell
- July 7th, 8:31
There was so much more -- there always is -- but now all I remember is I was playing in Nirvana. I wasn't an official member of the band but I was their second guitarist for a live show. There was no stage, we were all just standing on boxes at various points of the shoulder-to-shoulder auditorium and playing. The problem was, I suddenly realized, I only knew the songs from before Kurt Cobain died, and since it turned out he didn't (in the dream there was no mystery, it was simply as though I alone was mistaken about his suicide) they were playing all their new songs mostly. Also my guitar was turned up easily three times louder than Kurt's guitar or Kris's bass. Luckily they could play most their songs just the two of them, and even as I tried my hardest to watch them and figure out what chords to play or even what key we were in, I remember envying such a solid friendship, like the two spoke to each other without words. Nobody seemed to mind how off-key and overloud I was, but I felt like an idiot every time I strummed anything.
I remember that Nirvana was touring for its new album, Shave the Birds, which I thought was a lousy, terrible name for an album but my mom (of all people) thought hilarious. The cover depicted blueprints of something, something I remember being weirdly inappropriate for the title, like a submarine maybe?
There was a lot else going on in my dream, un-Nirvana-related, but it escapes me now.
I woke up humming along to the Arctic Monkeys' "I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor." Go figure.
I am overdue on some posts about things -- loving Moon, almost losing Mexico, holiday with the family -- but I need to leave for work in four minutes. So they'll have to continue to wait.
- guilty, not guilty, no contest
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- travisezell
- July 5th, 2:44
Officer L. Marshall, I can't even blame you. You're just doing your job. You're rewarded for punishing people, so it's hard to imagine it makes a difference to you if the people follow the spirit of the law or the letter of it. Don't get me wrong; I want to blame you. You said the word "awesome" five times, you misused the word the word "ixnay," and you assured me that it was fine that I didn't have current insurance, only to turn around and tell me I was lucky to have found it before you wrote me that extra $96 ticket. Either it's fine or it's not, but don't act buddy-buddy and then walk back to your cruiser and fine me for something. I might have stopped looking when you said it was "fine," which I kind of suspect was the point, and then you'd be rewarded further for your punitive measures. More tickets written means more state revenue, and yeah it's not much but it adds up. Do the math on how many traffic tickets Washington County writes a month. It's all numbers. All your department wants from you, Traffic Cop, is for you to write as many tickets as possible. Your weird, quasi-entrapment-sounding questions ("So you don't remember coming to a stop?" "Are you in a hurry to get somewhere?") felt like baiting, but maybe that's as much the tone you take as the words you choose. Maybe you can't help it.
Regardless, you got me. I slowed down and I looked both directions thoroughly but failed to bring my vehicle to zero mph at the four-way stop sign in the middle of the deserted suburban-sprawl neighborhood at 1:45 in the morning. It doesn't matter if there was no danger of hurting myself or anyone else, as the only other vehicle within half a mile was yours -- parked a hundred yards away from the intersection. What difference does it make if my driving was controlled, safety-minded, and conscious of my surroundings? What matters is I didn't stop when the sign said stop. Thar means a ticket, and if you go back to base or HQ or whatever cops call it and you haven't written enough tickets, they will ask you what the hell you were doing all night. Especially when you pulled shit duty and you're in a deserted sprawl neighborhood miles from any activity, on Fourth of July night.
What was I going to do, reason with you? Make a case for the safety of everyone involved? Ask you if you felt that obeying the spirit of a law is more reasonable than obeying the letter of it? Your job is to enforce the law, nt to interpret it. We have lawyers and judges for that. Besides, let's not forget that during our brief transaction you actively discouraged my continued search for my non-expired proof of insurance, assuring me that the expired one I gave you was "just fine," when in fact you were planning on icing the cake of your citation for ORD 811.265 (failure to obey a stop sign) with whatever code means "failure to provide proof of insurance." It doesn't paint a picture of you as the kind of cop who's interested in discussing the difference between illegal and unlawful behavior.
Like I said, Officer Marshall, I can't blame you. You need a paycheck, and this is your job. Work is work. They give you a big list of rules and they encourage you to fine those who break them. Since you're a traffic cop you're already working the shit-ass bottom-rung job of policework (unless you count meter maids; I do not), and on top of that you're working a holiday -- probably hoping in your perverse way that there will be some drunk drivers out tonight -- and on top of all that, they send you to a dead corner in a shitty, bland, crimeless part of the shitty, bland crimeless sub-suburban town you work in. Just a job, and a hard one to find dignity in until you either transfer or move up the food chain. Why should you give any consideration to whether a thing should or shouldn't be a ticketable offense? What's in it for you? If it's ticketable, you ticket. That's the extent of your job and your authority. I can't fault you for not looking further, because I wouldn't either in your position.
All of this is to say, I slowed down and I looked and I considered myself 100% in control and safe as I rounded that corner, but you caught me in motion without that full and complete stop, and I cannot contest this. The law is the law, and you caught me in violation. So I'll go home and blog about it. If I get vitriolic, it's because I have to strain to respect you personally, or what you represent. I guess that's because I don't feel any safer on the road at night because you were there to pull me over. I don't feel like the service you provide, hall monitor with a gun, is the same thing as being a real police officer. If I sound nasty, well, maybe I'm frustrated and needed to blow off some steam. But what do you care? I'm still paying the ticket. You did your job admirably, and Washington County will be $242.00 richer for it. The very letter of the law was upheld, and all is right in your corner of the universe.
I do feel better having bitched and moaned about it, though. At this point, I guess I'll take what I can get.
- my heart is moving up the lawn
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- travisezell
- July 4th, 11:41
It's a jumble, but I was helping my brother and father with their business. In the dream the business wasn't computer and web networking, it was some kind of advanced gaming technique tutoring, and they handled one client at a time. We were teaching this young girl, maybe 20 or 21 years old. I remember she looked and acted a little bit like Sabra but it toitally wasn't her (even in the dream, I remember thinking, "she vaguely reminds me of Sabra..."). Anyway we got along great, like romantic-spark great, even though she was the hardcore videogame nerd and about a decade younger than me, and when it was all over on the last day, she said to me, "How do I find you if later I want to see what the son and/or brother of my tutors is up to, just to hang out or I don't know what else." (That's almost verbatim.) I was flattered and excited that the chemistry was mutual, and I spent forever trying to find something in Brendon's room to write on that was light enough to see my address, email and phone number, and to find a pen that worked. All the papers were dark-colored pages torn out of video game manuals and every pen I tried would bleed out, making a smeary mess either of the numbers of my address (and for some reason I was struggling to remember my parents' address on Shakespeare St., which ostensibly is where we were, rather than my address at 1844). I had all these plans to write a little message along the lines of "Please do call!" and she was making little comments like maybe we could go out "on a real date," but I couldn't for the life of me get it written. Either the house number or "userlogin" would come out a ridiculous smear. Finally, desperate, I flipped to one of several computers and tried to open Textedit or Wordpad, but the background was set to some videogame combat scene, busy and dark gray, and the thin black text was getting lost. Even though she'd been so young and into stuff I'm not really into, I remember thinking it was worth it, we had something deeper in common and it might be really great to try, if we could get past those silly things. But alas, I never actually did give that girl my contact info... the dream moved on before I could.
All I remember of where it moved on to was that I was writing or programming some kind of a Postal Service-style pop song. In a voice very much like Ben Gibbard's and with a pleasantly fuzzy voicebox-filter, the line "My heart is moving up the lawn" was the song's catchy chorus. (Even now I can recall the melody, but it feels incomplete, like it needs to be immediately followed by a second line which I didn't know or at least now can't remember.) I remember waking to this line and to the idea that I'd had two girls practically ask me out and I'd been unable to connect with either. I don't know who the second one was... maybe there was a girl I'd otherwise forgotten from the songwriting dream. So naturally I woke up a little frustrated and mournful, as if I'd missed or fucked something up only moments ago but there was nothing to be done about it now.
- a runlist chosen for me, while i sleep
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- travisezell
- June 29th, 20:09
- (7/28) Viva Voce - Mixtape = Love
- (8/6) KMFDM - Today
- (8/7) Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch
- (8/13) Of Montreal - Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider
- (8/27) Spoon - Don't Make Me A Target
- (8/28) U2 - With Or Without You
- (8/30) David Bowie - Suffragette City
- (9/1) The Dodos - Jodi
- (9/9) Sister Machinegun - Hole in the Ground
- (9/12) Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit
- (9/13) David Bowie - Changes
- (9/16) The Flaming Lips - Bad Days
- (9/19) They Might Be Giants - Your Racist Friend
- (9/22) Kimya Dawson - Anthrax (Power-Ballad Version)
- (9/25) Death Cab for Cutie - Expo '86
- (9/26) Garbage - Girl Don't Come
- (9/27) Lou Barlow - Round-n-Round
- (9/29) Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks
- (10/17) Garbage - Shut Your Mouth
- (10/19) Scarlett Johansson - I Don't Wanna Grow Up
- (10/22) Lush - Ladykillers
- (10/24) Liz Phair - Supernova
- (10/27) Why? - Mutant John
- (11/13) Liz Phair - Uncle Alvarez
- (11/23) The Blow - The Long List of Girls
- (12/8) The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldier
- (12/14) Prince - When Doves Cry
- (12/16) They Might Be Giants - With The Dark
- (12/19) Fiona Apple - Please Please Please
- (12/29) Billy Joel - My Life
- (12/31) The Eels - Your Lucky Day In Hell
- (1/12) Lords of Acid - Voodoo U
- (1/24) Peter Gabriel - Sledgehammer
- (1/26) They Might Be Giants - Finished With Lies
- (2/1) MC Frontalot - Disease of Yore
- (2/3) Why? - The Hollows
- (2/11) The Twilight Singers - Teenage Wristband
- (3/8) Aesop Rock & John Darnielle - Dark Heart News/Coffee
- (3/11) Radiohead - Bishop's Robes
- (3/16) David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust
- (3/30) The Smiths - Ask
- (4/13) The Thermals - Now We Can See
- (4/19) The Eurythmics - Here Comes The Rain Again
- (4/21) LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
- (6/29) The Flaming Lips - Waitin' For Superman
- not a very interesting one, but i remembered it, so
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- travisezell
- June 29th, 10:57
Details are fuzzy now, but after hanging out with a group, having fun, I and someone else (Cassie?) were left alone with Briana and Jeff's 4-year-old son. I want to say the boy's name was Jersey. Anyway Cassie and I went back to their crazy home, an extra-narrow trailer home situated in the middle of a nonstop rainstorm and at the top of a rocky outcropping. A set of rickety stairs was the only way up to or down from the place, and the whole home was about as wide as a queen-sized bed. In fact the three of us, Cassie(? -- also partly Kelly, also partly Olivia, also someone else entirely) and Jersey and I, sat on Mom and Dad's bed and watched movies. And we drank. We drank till we passed out, and when we woke we realized we'd let Jersey drink too.
When Jeff and Briana showed up home (Briana was very much herself; Jeff was actually meaner and partly this guy), we knew we were in trouble. Their kid was still drunk, maybe hungover, and I knew he'd be all right (I liked the kid very much) but I also knew getting someone's kid wasted while babysitting him isn't exactly model behavior for a babysitter. So when we left and I squeezed past them in their tiny home I leaned in real close to Briana and said, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." Then Cassie(?) and I were going to go talk to Jeff/Jeffrey Donovan and confess the whole thing. Ironically, after such a build up I don't remember the reaction, other than being told we had to leave.
The problem was, at the end of the narrow hall and down the stairs to the gate in the moonless rainy night there were like twenty rabid dogs, the neighbor's, who collected every night and roared and barked and smashed against the wire door, hoping to devour the humans inside, and we were being sent out into it. It's all a blur here, but someone (Jeff/Jeffrey?) fell, tumbled down the stairs and was eaten by those monster-dogs, and Cassie(?) and I managed to escape unharmed. We ran several blocks, got to my car.
Something about a drive-thru fast food place. The sun coming up. Then I don't remember.
Later on, probably in a second dream, I was working alone at my job, only my job wasn't a single computer in a room of machines; it was one computer in a long bank of computers, like a college computer lab. On some TV I couldn't see from where I sat in the corner a Chinese violin concerto was performing pop songs. I was printing alphabetical lists. The letter headings -- A, B, C, etc. -- were in 100-point super bold font, and the alphabetized items were in 9-point Times-esque. The list kept looking ridiculous, and I kept reprinting with the bold letters even larger until they bled out into the margins and were cropped into strange half-squared shapes. The song on the unseen violin concert was really catchy but I couldn't place it. When Shelley came to grab some stuff I asked her who it was, feeling like I'd be embarrassed by the answer. I felt like it was probably Coldplay or someone even lamer. She listened and said, you don't know this? I said I knew it, but I couldn't place it. "'Cause it's getting heavy, and I thought it was alreaaady as heavy as can be..." I sang along with the violin, to prove it. She left without telling me. I woke up shortly after.
In retrospect, the song was obviously one of my favorite Flaming Lips songs, but in the dream I couldn't for the life of me tell you who it was. And so of course upon waking the song is totally stuck in my head, like a morning song. Maybe that's all every morning song is. Maybe my dreams have an iTunes mode.
- how i blew my weekend
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- travisezell
- June 29th, 1:47
Keeping it short.
Today I was interviewed for The Adults in the Room, and I think it went pretty well. Andy might be using my interview as one of the closing moments of the entire thing -- I'm not sure how he plans to, but that's a pretty cool honor, even in the planning phase. Also, amusingly, I stepped in as gaffer today, so I was in fact lighting myself. I've worn a wild assortment of hats on various film sets, but that's a combination I'd never tried before. In short, it went well.
I'm so excited to see this film moving forward, to see Andy working on his feature, and to be a part in the small ways that I am, but almost equal to my excitement is my envy. Andy's going for it, he's breaking the barrier and producing a feature film, right now, and I'm not. He's in a much better place than I am to make it happen -- and it's not exactly proving easy for him -- but still. That is everything I want to be doing right now: directing a feature-length film.
Tonight I helped Cassie set up some stuff on her new laptop, and in payment she took me out to Casa del Matador, where we sampled some top-shelf tequilas to see what we liked better. El Toreso Anejo was the best of the ones we tried, though Gran Centenario was also good, in a scotchy/oaky kind of way.
Yesterday Ibuiltassembled a big-ass Ikea kitchen island/countertop guy. Tomorrow, with any luck, we're going to try to move the refrigerator (it's going to involve lifting the fucker, so we'll see if we're capable), but the kitchen is already a great deal less crummy to be in.
I also got visits from Duncan, Kelly, and Megan & Talina (who helped me with the Ikea thingy), so that was pretty awesome, too.
I didn't write a goddamn word, so I guess I got a goal for this week -- to write somewhere between 20 and 100 pages -- but in a lot of ways it was a good, productive weekend. In basically all the ways except the one I consider disproportionately most important.
And so it goes.
- russell calkins rules
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- travisezell
- June 24th, 1:01
Frank and Cora HD from Russell Calkins on Vimeo.
I hope Russ doesn't mind me linking to his new project. It may just be a directing exercise for his high-fallutin' Columbia film school but so what? This is awesome.
Go Russ! Also: recognize that lady? Hell yes you do. That's Russ's sweetie and my also-dear friend, the one and only Debi Moore.
I miss those guys.
- inside-out space dreams, stories in my head, self-directed pep-talk
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- travisezell
- June 22nd, 7:30
I woke up from two space/astronaut dreams. One I was alone in a rocket trying to reach Mars, struggling against time to plug in my laptop to stay in touch with my destination. The other I was alone on a space station and the Moon was calling me when nobody was supposed to be there. Both had more to do with a bank of machines in front of me, eerily like Laika's Tape Room rack of servers and decks, than they had to do with space, but in both I was alone and in need of contact. If only I could have plugged in fast enough, or found the right solution to my technical dilemma (which jack into which port, which screen with which keyboard) there was the possibility of reprieve from my solitude. In the former, I was about to lose contact with Mars (and a loved one?) unless I moved fast enough to switch over all my connections and maintain the link. In the latter, if I could figure out the message coming to me maybe I could find someone else. I don't know. Maybe it was the same dream. Each seems, upon waking, like the other dream inside-out.
And upon waking, since it was only 7am and I went to bed after 2, I rolled back into bed. 7am is my first of three alarms, the last of which is 8am and usually it still takes a combination of all three and a dozen of their respective snoozes to drag me out of bed, generally around 8:30am. Not this morning. For some reason this morning all I could do was think about the pieces of Uncanny Valley and how I didn't know how I'd bring that into a story, but that such a good story is there.
In my mind, Uncanny Valley is an ensemble story, a kind of near-future Magnolia where all the storylines dovetail into the culmination of the first artificial life. Each thread of the story would involve an advancement in a kind of technology or idea and in the end most threads would be manipulated by a single source with a single goal. I fantasize that the story will be William Gibson meets Stanley Kubrick's 2001 meets, like I said, Magnolia. But I've never known how to get so much into one narrative without bloating it, and I've never sat down and got my hands dirty enough to find the shift in focus from emergent technologies to the people involved. So the story simmers internally and every once in a while, for no apparent reason, it comes to a boil and draws my attention (there is a back-burner parallel to be made in here, but this is already one thinly-stretched metaphor), keeping me awake at 7 in the morning when I could easily snooze for another 80-90 minutes.
Anyway I can't be too upset by this occurrence. It's been weeks since I've even opened my documents to write anything seriously, and I need a goddamn kick in the pants. I'm biding my time for two more days (today's my last day as Melissa/Editorial Coordinator, and tomorrow's my last 9am shift as I pass the baton back), but I know me. I'm always waiting for the next deadline or impending change in routine to start something. There's always something on the horizon to hang my procrastination on. And I really need to stop doing that.
More than anything I want to just finish Mexico, kick out a full draft and be in a position to revise and/or shelve (and I only say shelve because there is the outside chance that I'll be pulling out The World of Missing Persons in a hurry and scrambling through a draft of that, repeating last year's Ellipsis writing jag, and I don't want to do that. The reason, or a reason, I didn't get into the Sundance Institute is that my story didn't have the cohesion it should have had. I suspect it's okay if it's not polished (that's what they're looking for, scripts to polish) but it had to cohere and work, and I didn't have a chance to balance the parts out and make that happen. If TWOMP goes the same way, I will be -- at best, assuming I even get this far -- a perpetual finalist. Not good enough, dammit. Not good enough at all.
Right so. In my return to livejournal, I've flooded my blog with: long stories from work, a couple of memes about music I love, a repost of webcomics, random lists of things I like, a dream post, and a blathery thing about how I need to write more and why I'm not doing it. I'm one sloppy, half-assed movie review from full-speed on all pistons. And if I can blog, I can write. After work tonight, I know what I have to do.
- music 2 of 2: life story
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- travisezell
- June 22nd, 1:00
if your life were a soundtrack, what would the music be?
here’s how it works:
1. open your library (iTunes, winamp, media player, iPod)
2. put it on shuffle
3. press play
4. for every question, type the song that’s playing
5. new question – press the next button
Well, okay.opening credits
Thom Yorke, "Anaylse"
"There's no time to analyse, to think things through, to make sense..." (That sort of makes me feel like my life story picks up exactly where the beautiful disturbing end of The Prestige leaves off, since this song was the closing credits song of that film.)
waking up
Danny Schmidt, "This Too Shall Pass"
"Well, things change fast. This too shall pass, better carve it on your forehead or tattoo it on your ass..." (Okay. Bitter blues. Hell of a way to start.)
first day at school
The Walkmen, "I Lost You"
"The highway’s bright and long, the river’s overflowing, the houses burning down..." (This is proving to be one bittersweet story from the start. Longing and loss on my first day at school?)
falling in love
Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton, "Crowd Surf Off a Cliff"
"Cursed with a love that you can't express. It's not for a fuck or a kiss..." (Emily Haines does have that kind of sad, first-time-in-love croon to her voice. The right kind of vulnerability. This is a good choice.)
breaking up
Sting, "Island of Souls"
"They launched the great ship out to sea, he felt he'd been left on a desolate shore..." (Hard sell... unless I broke up because my father the shipbuilder was killed?)
prom
Crystal Method, "She's My Pusher"
(Wow, that's a rather slow, pulsy techno song with a beat for prom. Sexy in a 90s-spy kind of way. That's some prom!)
life’s okay
Adorable, "Man in a Suitcase"
"Telling half-truths and lies, cigarettes, bourbon, and betrayal..." (I guess my "life's okay" mode has something to do with being a traveling salesman from a Raymond Carver story? I bet it's less glamorous than it sounds.)
mental breakdown
Boards of Canada, "Telephasic Workshop"
(I can see it. Kind of soothing in an off-kilter way. Futuristic in an all-plastic kind of way.)
driving
Foo Fighters, "I'll Stick Around"
(Sure this isn't the flashback? Ugh.) "I thought I knew what it took to bother you..."
flashback
Shutter to Think with Angela McClusky, "Day Ditty"
"I wanna walk to the garden with you and spin dizzy circles..." (Oh I like this for a flashback. That's a nice flashback. And it's dreamier than if Craig Wedren was singing.)
getting back together
Beck, "Inside Out"
"For all we know, this is all we need..." (Groovin' but not very emotional sounding. Probably for the best. The problem is the steady shakers and unshifting rhythm makes me picture a kind of 80s montage scene, and that's not how I want to have my "getting back together" scene go.)
wedding
Plaid, "Tak 2"
(Leave it to me to have slightly foreboding Scottish IDM play at my wedding. Obviously we got married in space. So that's cool.)
birth of child
Nirvana, "About A Girl (Unplugged)"
"I need an easy friend, I do, with an ear to lend..." (I guess we know the sex of the baby.)
final battle
The Thermals, "Brace and Break"
"Stuff your sentences into your boring diary, stuff your senses into the back of your jeans..." (This is a good, gritty, uptempo song. This is a bareknuckles song. I don't know why the story of my romance with some girl and having of a baby involves a final battle, but it's obviously a good, mean one.)
death scene
Brian Wilson, "Heroes and Villains"
"Unafraid of what a dude'll do in a town full of heroes and villains. Just look what you've done..." (Interesting. Kind of a weird, operatic track for my death. Clearly I die surreally, even a little comically, but with a tinge of melancholy? Everybody knows how much I love ambiguous endings, so this is amazingly appropriate.)
funeral song
Styrofoam and Ben Gibbard, "Couches in Alleys"
"At the end of this road that climbs the horizon will be reached in a matter of miles, and when the wheels cease to spin the walls and the fences will grow higher than redwood trees, and I know your demise..." (I can see this. It's sad, it's Ben Gibbard autotuned, and it's clear now that I died in a tragicomic/beautiful accident in some kind of robot factory on the moon. Seriously? My life ruled.)
end credits
The Smashing Pumpkins, "The End Is The Beginning Is The End (Stuck In The Middle With Fluke Alternative Mix)"
"Is it bright where you are, and have the people changed? Does it make you happy you're so strange?" (Oh yeah. Check that shit out. Even the title is saying, "It's not over yet."The only part of death I fear-- The part of death I fear the most is being forgotten forever, so that's promising. Plus, Fluke does up the big beat techno mix, which is yet more proof that looking back on my life, it's an exciting futuristic adventure that can't be contained without synthesizers and drumloops.)
So there you have it.
- music 1 of 2: alphabetics
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- travisezell
- June 22nd, 0:34
List your favorite bands from A to Z. Similar to Martha, I'll add not a single song but an album -- but this is nothing conclusive. It's just impulse, top-of-the-head kind of thing. I don't believe in favorites.
A. The Afghan Whigs, Black Love
B. Blonde Redhead, Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons
C. Camera Obscura, Underachievers Please Try Harder
D. Dave Brubeck, Jazz Impressions of Japan
E. Elliott Smith, Figure 8
F. Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
G. Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest
H. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
I. Imperial Teen, What Is Not To Love?
J. Jared Louche & the Aliens, Covergirl
K. Kevin Drew, Spirit If
L. Leonard Cohen, The Future
M. The Mountain Goats, Heretic Pride
N. Neutral Milk Hotel, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
O. Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
P. The Pixies, Bossanova
Q. Quasi, When The Going Gets Dark
R. R.E.M., Monster
S. Squarepusher, Ultravisitor
T. They Might Be Giants, John Henry
U. Underworld, Beaucoup Fish
V. Veruca Salt, American Thighs
W. Why?, Alopecia
X. Xiu Xiu, A Promise
Y. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Z. Zs, Arms
Some letters naturally had stiffer competition (M, R, T) than others (X, Z, Q).
- both book and web
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- travisezell
- June 21st, 22:57
I don't know why I like this one so much, but I do.benrosen does good daily grind comics. Check him out.
And I'm always ready for a new laserpony comic bybinsybaby and nedroidcomics.
Possibly not unrelated: I went in search of Powers: Vol. 5 for Jeff because I am missing my copy somehow, and although I came up emptyhanded in three stores, I did spend $110 in comics and graphic novels. Ackbar was right! I should have listened. It was a trap.
- two things
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- travisezell
- June 21st, 21:14
Looks like I am going to be one of three judges at a short film thing run by Clint Ganczak (owner of the camera used for Every Room is Empty and some early parts of Andy's The Adults in the Room) along with filmmakers Karl Lind and Kelley Baker. It's a month away, July 22nd at Kelly's Olympian at 8pm. People submit short films, we pick a winner, the winner gets a gift certificate to Gearhead Grip. Should be interesting. I think the experience of watching people's locally made, unfestivaled short films will be more interesting if I am judging them (that is, judging them in an official capacity). It's good company to be in, as well, even though it's not a huge-deal kind of affair. (Still, if you know anyone with a recent film you should tell them to submit to it. Dude, a lighting/grip gift certificate!) So that's sort of neat. You should come.
Unrelated, here are some musical acts I've been quite taken with lately:- Electric President
- The Bird and the Bee
- Calexico
- Blind Pilot
- Underworld Beaucoup Fish
- Camera Obscura
- Jarvis Cocker
- Grizzly Bear
- Department of Eagles
- The Field
- The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
- Brian Wilson Smile
- Julia Nunes
- Yo La Tengo
- The Eels Hombre Lobo
- Wilco
- the lingering smell of poop, or: a work story
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- travisezell
- June 21st, 14:56
Over six months ago, Melissa used to sit at Yolanda (the terminal nearest the hallway) and complain that everyone would come to the nice "client bathrooms," directly across said hallway, to do their business. Which meant the Tape Room always smelled it. Also, with the upstairs (HR, corporate) kitchen directly above us, all their microwaved-popcorn and burnt-coffee smells trickled down our way, too. Basically with our hefty A/C keeping a room full of machines a steady 69 degrees all the time, we were sucking in everybody's odors, and the worst of it was their poop smells.
About three months ago, give or take, we started to notice in earnest that a Poop Smell was around that wasn't from the bathrooms -- it's easy to test that, you walk into the bathroom and see if it smells worse than the Tape Room. We began to call Facilities and they would come in. Sometimes it wouldn't smell anymore, but sometimes it would. Either way, all they could do was begin the arduous task of seeing where the ventilation was coming from and where it wasn't. The upstairs bathrooms, the client bathrooms, a small half-height storage space midway up the stairs known as the Hobbit Hole... each one was ruled out, reconsidered, ruled out again. The Smell lingered, and in fact undeniably grew steadily worse.
Three weeks ago Melissa left for a three-week stint as assistant editor at the Sundance Institute, leaving me as ad hoc Editorial Coordinator and in charge of the Tape Room. Dave Drusky, former video engineer and friend who'd been laid off in the big Requiem-For-J&B Layoff of '09, came in to be Travis while I was Melissa.
Early last week the smell was so bad we could barely stand it. By Tuesday afternoon we were actually gagging, and when a director came in to request a Digibeta dub of his short film, the levels had spiked. The three of us were driven to the hallway, where the smell was merely foul, and the director complained immediately of a sore throat. (Not like we were getting sick from it, but honestly, it was bad.)
Yeah, right, so the above picture is a bit of a spoiler to the story I admit, but on Tuesday we shut down several hours early. Dave was sent home and I wandered the halls trying to do my job from outside my room (limited or no access to the files, the compressing machines, or the scheduling computer). Eventually I too went home early. Plumbers and air experts ("industrial hygienists") were called, appointments were made. Promises of action. No more runaround, no more passive suggestions that it's not as bad as all that.
I spent three days working from a cubicle in the Production Prairie, amongst the coordinators and PR guys (very cool people, actually). I only went in the room when I had to, and I had the above respirator fitted with organics-filters to protect me when I did. I literally sat at my desk, plugging away at DVD or Quicktime compression, with a gas mask on. That's right.
The Smell at that point seemed to have exhausted all its potential poopiness (which, man, was a lot) and evolved into what I called a propane, gas-leaky smell. Sour, with a bit of a poop aftertaste. (Try working in an environment where that phrase gets used seriously, and you'll understand why I had a gas mask on.)
So anyway. The plumber came, something like three or four hours late (during my lunch break, so I didn't get to talk to him), and when he showed the smell was so mild (admittedly, it comes and goes) that he couldn't do anything for us but come back the next day, I was told. The industrial hygienist showed up, took readings, that same day after I'd gone home. The next day when the plumber came back they discovered a cracked pipe above the scheduling office (basically one corner of the Tape Room) that ran to the client bathrooms. I'm assured that sewage did not run in this pipe, only "a trickle of greywater," which Wikipedia says is "distinct from blackwater in the amount and composition of its chemical and biological contaminants (from feces or toxic chemicals)." But you know what? Either greywater smells like blackwater, or fumes backed up along with that trickle and came out the pipe, or that water wasn't as grey as everyone thinks. One way or another, now that the pipe's been sealed, it's significantly easier to be at work, and I've given the art department back their respirator.
Every once in a while we have to pause and smell, convinced we got a phantom whiff of something amiss in the air, but for the most part we are okay again. A little leaked ("grey," ugh) water damage to the walls and some of Melissa's paperwork in the Scheduling Office, hence cleaned up (and leaving the paperwork unpleasantly gray and crusty) and some memories and jokes about The Poop Smell are -- we fucking hope -- all that remains of the entire ordeal.
And that is the story of the lingering smell of poop, and what I've been suffering through for months.
- i've become a lurker on my own blog
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- travisezell
- June 21st, 3:19
There's no one thing I can blame, but all the little things have added up to wear me down lately. I don't have the energy or the mood for writing, script or blog. I pulled two 50+ hour weeks at Laika followed by a 42 hour week, being Melissa, and somehow sunk a little deeper into the lonely/tired/reclusive Ikea cave I call a bedroom. I haven't been sleeping much, or eating well, exercising at all, writing or seeing people. I've been lonely, but not going out. I've been bored, but not really doing anything. I've been sleepy, but not sleeping. I haven't seen many movies, or even bothered to pack my laptop with the hopes of writing. I come home and watch Deadwood (television at its most excellent) and play Sims 3 (videogaming at its best). But productivity? Not even. Proactive behavior? Get real.
Dutch came down (!!) and we played a bunch of board games, including teaching my roommates how to play Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game, which is exhausting and complicated and infinitely better than a scifi-franchise-tie-in game has any right being. It's also in every way true to both the spirit and the visceral experience of the show, and that's no small feat. I definitely haven't mastered it. Tonight, we played two games and in both, I lost. But it's fun.
Subsequently, not a lot to report. Any passing moments or thoughts have been frivolous enough to be summed up in under 140 characters, as depressing as that sounds.
I ought to come back and mention the famous Poop Smell at work, but maybe later. I'm tired. Tomorrow is Father's Day. Dinner in King City. Tonight is sleep.
Good night.
- i can't say if i liked it, but i know i wanted it
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- travisezell
- June 12th, 22:33
So I saw Away We Go tonight.
I cannot tell you what I think about this movie. At least, not for sure. I think I like it and I think it works. I think it's an interesting road movie in which little happens, and each episodic encounter is commentary on a bigger, not-so-subtle theme, and I think the commentary is good even though the players in each tableau are broad to the point of being (as Ebert eloquently puts it) grotesque. I think this is Sam Mendes's first mostly-success since The Road to Perdition, which I regard as maybe the best film of that year.
I think the movie might be really good.
But I can't be sure. Because it's broad at parts, preachy at others, meandering and worst of all, it's sentimental. I can't tell you what I think about Away We Go because all I can really do is feel about this movie. Because the whole time, I'm not going to lie to you, all I could do was sit there watching everything happen, watching this intelligent, immature, oddball, comfortable-with-each-other's-quirks couple experience everything together and say, "I want that." (Not the having-a-baby, so much, although the film made that seem surprisingly attractive as well, but mostly the rest of it.)
The problem is the brilliant writers (and Sam "Second-Only-To-Ron-Howard-In-Unsubtle-Filmmaking" Mendes) make their co-protagonists, Burt and Verona, and their "we're in this together even though we're (maybe) fuckups" attitude so attractive -- and they make each scene's various (ideological) antagonists so cartoonish and unattractive -- that of course I side with the good guys. That's melodrama! But it gets something right, and it might be great despite the obviousness, or maybe even this special brand of obviousness is a crucial piece of the whole thing, and that is that the attractive world of Burt and Verona is half-assed, desperate, poorly thought out and flawed. In short, it's attractive, it's good, but it's thoroughly imperfect -- and everybody's sort of okay with it. They still care about what's important, but their lives are on the precipice of falling apart, even though both seem moderately successful. It's the couples they meet, with their kooky worldviews and unrealistic, exaggerated belief systems, that come off as "having their shit together," as successful members of society. So within the harsh blacks and whites of melodrama there are shades of gray after all, even if there's still that hard line between the two.
Okay, there. That's semi-objective. I had to blog it to get past feelings.
But seriously, this is a movie where feelings outweigh thought, and those movies I don't always trust. Later on, with distance and time, I will look back and either feel exulted or embarrassed over my initial reaction, so I will lay it out here for the record. I did like this movie, quite a bit, but only because I wanted what they had so badly.
I walked back to my car deeply struck by lost love (yet again) and burning with imagined visions of a future I could have had if I hadn't fucked things up. No doubt it was that rose-colored future that never would have been regardless, not the way I saw it anyway, but I still walked through downtown and drove home feeling sadness, and longing, and regret, and above all loneliness. Thanks a lot, movie.
And by the way... that's twice now, Mr. Krasinski. What is it with you? You're on my list, pal.