And we have the pictures to prove it.
When my old roommate Matt told me that no giant squid had ever been photographed alive, I took to telling people that nobody had ever seen a live fish. Shockingly I was able to convince some people that this was true.
WARNING: The following post contains some technical language. I will attempt to clarify the terms you don't understand in that down-to-earth folksy manner for which I became famous on The Andy Griffith Show. Please try to make sense of this. I believe in you.
SECOND WARNING: The following post is long. Clear your afternoon.
Here's the movie I made this summer. It's around 7 minutes and 17.5 MB -- thanks to RM for compressing and hosting it.
My thoughts: I needed more time to edit (especially where sound was concerned). I got some complaints that the score wasn't whimsical enough. My most consistent praise concerned casting, which, yes, I did, but I can't help but feel like that's just complimenting the actors. Ah well.
COMPUTO UPDATE: Some of you are aware that my computer, COMPUTO, recently suffered a cataclysmic crash and refused to start up (the words "Unexpected Kernel Mode Trap" are forever burned into my brain). After several days worth of failed attempts, I came to the conclusion that my problem was not hardware related, but could not be fixed via safe mode -- and so the hard drive had to be formatted, and the cycle started anew. My computer is now called "ASTATRON."
Interestingly, all kinds of stuff is working now that didn't before. My DVD-ROM drive works. It can actually read discs now, instead of just sitting there like before. And, the "New Hardware Found" wizard doesn't pop up every time I start up my machine. So it all worked out for the best.
Unfortunately, due to cutbacks in FAA funding, I'm about to become unemployed once again.
No worries, we'll be OK. In the meantime, I've got Arrested Development to cheer me up, which, in one of the greatest miracles known to mankind, was renewed for a third season despite awful ratings.
Whether people will watch it on Mondays, now, I don't know. All I know is it's definitely a huge pick-me-up every time it comes on.
Lucille: Well, apparently, mood-altering medication leads to street drugs. That?s what this very handsome, young doctor said on The Today Show.
Michael: That was Tom Cruise, the actor.
Lucille: They said he was some kind of scientist.
Lindsay: Don?t buy! We did it, Mikey! We?re super rich again! And, I?m going to buy a car. The Volvo.
Michael: Lindsay, you?re not going to start spending money. And this is not a Volv.. oh!
Lindsay: Oh, that?s from sitting on the copier.
Michael: Hey, why don?t you pop a tent in front with your cousin Maeby?
George Michael: What?! No!
Maeby: I?m not really the outdoorsy type.
Michael: Well, then this is a good chance for you to rub off on her.
I never thought I would ever, ever say this, but... THANK YOU FOX. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Julia and I are catching up on Lost since everyone likes it so damned much.
We're almost at the end, but I thought it important to point out that, in early episodes, the little kid is reading a Spanish language copy of Green Lantern/Flash: Faster Friends, which I really wanted to like since it has a Mark Waid credit, but which I found mostly incomprehensible. Ah well.
I also think it's important to point out that, while searching for the cover to that comic book, I found about a billion other sites that were able to identify the obscure late-90s comic book in the show. So, you heard it here last.
(Did everyone else catch the reference to The Office, when Merry's girlfriend says her father just bought a paper company in Slough? Oh, only about 165,000 people noticed that. Great.)
Well, in more current news, I'm watching this Prison Break show. I'm pretty sure it's terrible...but I love it! They're trying to break out of prison!!! Have you ever seen a bad television show or movie, besides Life, where people construct elaborate schemes to escape from prison? I haven't! Besides Life.
Apparently, Michael Brown wasn't assistant city manager, but was in fact assistant to the city manager.
What officiating high school football has taught me so far this season:
The strategic powers behind the Confederacy, Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart, are no match for the brilliant inventions of Thomas Edison and the wily intellect of George Mason, respectively.
Tune in next week to find out if Cardinal Gibbons is any match for the combined powers of martyred tag-team St. Stephen & St. Agnes.
It's rantin' time.
SECAUCUS ? Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."Well there's your problem right there.
If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.
The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might?ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could?ve brought last Monday and Tuesday ? like the President, whose statements have looked like they?re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.
But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called ?The Department of Homeland Security?: ?Louisiana is a city??
Politician after politician ? Republican and Democrat alike ? has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were ? congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded ? even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.
But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans ? even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection ? or at least amelioration ? against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.
Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?
I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.
For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been ? as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be ? whether or not I voted for this President ? he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government ? our government ? "New Orleans."
For him, it is a shame ? in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself ? it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.
Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.
Conditions in New Orleans are more post-apocalyptic than I had realized.
The Superdome, where upward of 25,000 people had sweltered in conditions described as unfit for animals, was mostly emptied, though 1,500 were still there late Friday. They had renamed the place, rife with overflowing toilets and reports of murder and rape, the Sewerdome....
An estimated 20,000 were said to be at the four-story convention center, which at some points apparently attracted as many refugees as the Superdome but was ignored much longer by rescue operations. Conditions there were even worse than at the Superdome, with armed thugs seizing control and, the authorities said, repulsing squads of police officers sent to retake it.
On Friday morning, people huddled in small groups inside the center or sat on orange folding chairs outside, a gruesome mockery of an actual convention. Amid overflowing toilets, an elderly women and a teenage boy were having seizures in the arms of relatives.
Evacuees said that seven dead bodies littered the third floor. They said a 14-year-old girl had been raped.
Yeesh. I guess this isn't one of those crises where people come together and get patriotic.
So what I want to know is...will there still be a New Orleans? Or is it just gone now? Hey, about 2/3s of our readers have PhDs in history, so tell me: when was the last time a city was destroyed and didn't come back?
Julia points out that Tulane's new temporary website, which includes an interesting blog-like list of messages from the school's president, indicates that there will be no Fall semester. We have at least one friend at Tulane, who of course can't be reached by Tulane's email system -- all of their on-campus servers must have been destroyed, hence the temporary website and their need to "obtain new contact information for each and every employee." It looks like Tulane's students will be transferred to other schools.
So, if you didn't already know, I'm living in Eugene, Oregon, with my girlfriend and cat. Julia (the girlfriend) will be attending the University of Oregon's arts administration graduate program; Asta (the cat) will be posing cutely on various surfaces; and I (me) will be moping around until I become employed again.
(As I type, Asta, posing cutely on Julia's new desk, knocks over a wireless internet card with his paw. That would be his "April" pose.)
Yes, I had a super-sweet job in Atlanta and saved up all kinds of money, but then I spent it all on a class in 16mm filmmaking at USC. It would be nice to not worry about being unemployed for the next six months or so, but on the other hand that class was very rewarding. Matt B. often reminds me of a day when he called me -- I had been up for something like forty hours, and was just frantically putting together my things so I could go out and help a classmate on a shoot -- and I told him I'd love to talk, but I was too busy, an unprecendented statement from me. What amazed me was how rewarding the extra work was, and how instantly gratifying. Even doing menial tasks on a film shoot was energetic and fun and creative. I loved it.
That being said, I'm applying for two different kinds of job in Eugene: the same-as-before type, like graphic design or database administration, which would keep me in large televisions; and the film/video production type, which would keep me super poor but probably a lot happier.
Speaking of large televisions, yes, the one I had for the last several years is now in the hands of some young rich Emory undergrad co-ed. ("Co-ed," as porn has taught me, means "girl.") We've gone from four televisions in a variety of sizes back down to the normal-size one I've had since 1998. (And, pending a birthday gift accruing about a month of interest now, I still don't have a computer monitor. I'm using Julia's. Oh sure, she'll buy one for herself...)
So that's where I am: comparatively teensy little Eugene, Oregon, jobless and now with two pieces of furniture. If you live in Eugene and wish to hire a Furdell, now's your big chance.
