Due to a frank discussion of movie content, the following material has been rated 17 AND UP... this is not a joke, but a service to parents...

So, I just got back from my first program at the Film Fest, Shorts Program: Strange Bedfellows. It seems that the big winner this year at the festival is masturbation, which takes a starring role in three out of the seven films. American Beauty and Happiness, not to mention the American Pie series, must have opened the door wide for filmmakers everywhere. But can the m-word be used as a real, true part of an art piece or is it just a gimmick? I'm not going to even try to answer that question fully, but I think a little of the answer comes in the application, so I'll break down the films with little mini-reviews...I'm so gonna have to watch my wording throughout this entry... =)

1) Me and Daphne -- a film by Rebecca Gayheart. Yes, the actress Rebecca Gayheart. Yes, the actress that accidentally ran over a small child. How this film got made in the midst of everything, I have no idea. The general plot can be summerized best by the program's blurb: "Boy meets girl, boy masturbates incessantly, boy obsesses over small penis, boy stalks girl. An outrageous "he said, she said" sex farce." The movie was mildly funny and actually a little bit more modest than the program would have you believe. The acting saved the entire piece, especially the guy playing the nerdy lead (as well as his younger, flashback counterpart) and a surprise Jeremy Piven, whom you do not know you're watching until the end (since all you see before that is the side of his face). Overall, I gave it a 3 out of 5.

2) Related -- not a m-movie, but close. Did these people even know what a short movie was for? Even beyond the fact that it felt like an incoherent scene from a Lifetime movie, this "younger brother gets stoned, ruins older sister's party and then has a passionate make-out session with sister while parents cook eggs downstairs" movie just didn't cut it for me. Yeah, there's the incest, but it's the writing and the acting that made this one a stinker. I think they knew that, so they pulled an exploitive prank by having the young lead bare his backside by the pool in the beginning. I hope he got paid well as this isn't one for the audition clips. Totally horrible, but at least they can blame bad reviews on the incest. 1 out of 5

3) Lunch -- positively hilarious--this one earned it's "M" for the day. This was much closer to what a short movie should be like. Picture a corporate lunch cafeteria, lots of cookie-cutter workers eating cookie cutter lunches. There's a seat empty in between a repressed bitty and a huge nerdy guy. Enter well groomed actor man. He sets down his lunch from home--a rather large brown paper bag. He proceeds to pull out a plate, some silverware, a box of edible panties, some "Love Whipped Cream", and a bottle of "Sexy Body Butter". Wrong things ensue, all in the name of getting fired. The audience doesn't know whether to get nauseous over the consumption of these apparently edible products or cry from laughter. The director's name is Matthew Ehlers...he knows what the heck he's doing--a short film, not a compressed drama or comedy. 4 out of 5

4) Member -- I have no idea what I think about this one. Thankfully a respite from sex (mostly). Mainly, they're trying to do "Fight Club" in 13.5 minutes, but this time with Josh Hartnett as a taxi driver...so, maybe they're really trying to do "Taxi Driver" with...whatever. The movie was about 6 minutes too long, even with the billion or so cuts and really cool visual effects. Josh Hartnett was strangely compelling, despite the makeup artists attempt to show us the cleanest, most pretty hoodlum we've ever seen. The major problem of this work was that it couldn't make up its mind if it was anti-corporations, anti-patriotism or if it was anti-"people who are like this person on the screen who is anti-corporation, anti-patriotism". A big whatever. Style: 4 out of 5. Content: 1 out of 5.

5) Woman X -- very cool, could have been a much longer movie. Basically, an uptight London bank manager doesn't give any money to a homeless woman, so one night she beats the living daylights out of him for the 75 pounds in his pocket. Later, a mysterious, rich woman comes to his bank--with thousands to deposit, plus "75 pounds". He almost goes crazy...his life changes...the final line is a stinger. I liked this one, if only for its confidence. 4 out of 5

6) Bus 44 -- The best of the lot! Made in China, this 11 minute short tells the story of a young man who gets on a bus, not knowing that at the next stop robbers are waiting. The robbers get the upperhand and take off with the lady driver. The young man makes chase, but gets beaten up. I won't go much further, in case anyone gets to see it, but this film was done so simply and so straightforward that the ending doesn't feel cheap. In fact, this was the most powerful film of the program--it spoke more in its silence than any of the other films did in talk. Seek this short out, even if you have to watch a bunch of poop along with it. 5 out of 5

7) Gas up and Save -- My second favorite. A dark one about a mom and son who travel across America's deserts in a U-Haul. The young man is the twin of his dead brother and carries the guilt of having "sucked all the life out of him at birth". Or at least that's what his mom told him. We come to find that his Bible-toting mom (actually, she only reads the Gideon Bibles at every hotel they stop at each night) believes he is the Christ. The young man does fine for awhile (if fine means sitting in corners and not talking to anyone), even stoically watching old Liberace reruns with his mother every night, but on one fateful night of his sheltered life, he get's, well, a little "excited" and "fulfills a need". Let's just say that Mother doesn't handle this very well. The director, Anne Paas, doesn't pull any cheap shots and presents the story in a pseudo-documentary form. But it's not mockumentary, really...there isn't any irony and that's the most powerful part of this story--these people ("Middle America" if you wish, but I think that might be a little broad) don't communicate in coy banter or hidden meaning. This isn't "Friends". And that's where the film succeeds--amidst all the absurdity on screen, you realize that this is very symbolic (and, even more scary, representational) of what could very well be happening "somewhere out there" every single day. Chilling. 4 out of 5.

Today starts a week of movies at the Florida Film Festival. Don't worry, there's lots of breathing room in there for me as I'm only really seeing about 6 of the hundred shows they're playing. The two that I think I'll like the most are "Gigantic: A take of two Johns" on Friday night, which is a documentary about They Might Be Gaints (sorry, not a lot of linking today...I have to be out the door in a few minutes), and "The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys" on Wednesday night, which is totally not about what you might be thinking and has a rather good cast (plus the drawing skills of Todd McFarlane). Also on the list is "The Business of Fancydancing", a film by Sherman Alexie, "Cherish", which I'm going to "just because", the Student Works showcase (featuring "Slumberland", directed by one of my good friends' wife and starring, well, that good friend), and a Shorts program, which I feel is good for me, like vitamins.

In between, I'll be writing and working on a semi-secret assignment. And massaging above my eyes since my optical prescription is going stale and I'll be squinting at so many movies.

In memory of Martin Burnham, a missionary who was killed yesterday in the Philippines, I'm not going to write anything today about myself or my thoughts for the dual reason that most of my thoughts will probably be with him and his family and the fact that I and my thoughts seem very small and disctracting in light of things.

In an effort to keep myself humble, I'm going to give out the URL for a photo page I made today:

http://keith.cakepolice.org/photos.html

Laugh and poke fun all you want. Dance little joyful dances if you must. Because of this possibility, I'm making everyone cut-and-paste. =)

It became apparent in high school that photos were the currency of the internet (I tried the whole AOL chat room thing back then...it got both annoying and disturbing simultaneously)...I've almost never sent people a picture of me until I really knew who they were...well, no more...consider this the shoebox of cash I've been hiding for years--blown all at one time on (must finish metaphor! I feel my strength...fading...), like, a neon kit for the bottom of my Volvo. By that, I don't mean the photos are cool but useless. I'm saying that the photos have been piling up forever and now they're online...and...and...since I've used them all up on something expensive like a neon kit--wait, I just mixed my metaphors--either way, I don't have any more to post anytime soon.

I think the cool but useless thing was a little more interesting. And succinct.

***

In other news: watched "Bridget Jones's Dairy" with mom and dad. I cringed at every bad word hitting my parents ears while they laughed their backsides off. A fun bonding time all around, but far more stressful than I'd like--shouldn't watching contemporary movies with parents be a banned activity?

There comes a point when you can totally ignore the constant waterfal of sweat caused by being outside in Orlando anywhere between 9am and 9pm. Today I reached that point.

You see, my car has no air conditioning--I haven't had a car with air conditioning since 1993. You'd think after 9 years of burning summers, I'd get used to it, especially when I always eschew any suggestion to actually fix the air conditioning in my car by saying, "Come on! I've gone this long without it...it can't be that bad." And after you get past that point I spoke of above, it's not bad at all.

I started my day with a trip to the Huges Co. Plumbing Supply Warehouse to pick up a flushing mechanism for my dad who's fixing the toilets at church. Glamorous, I know, but sometimes I like to live the high life. After showing my entire lack of knowledge about plumbing by assuming that the two things on the piece of paper my mother gave me were actually two different products instead of the kind of product followed by its actual name, I then tried to pay for everything with my parents credit card. The Huges Co. cashier would have none of that, even though my parents knew I was going to pay with their card, so now I am down 50 dollars and I don't even have a toilet flushing mechanism in my hands to enjoy (I think I would enjoy hooking it to trees or playground equipment and really mess with people's minds...or my own...but dad needed it right away).

It was right after this trip that I started to notice how hot, how humid, how terribly Florida the weather was being; the start of torrential sweating began. No matter how far I rolled down my windows, I couldn't get comfortable. So, since I was uncomfortable already, I decided to drive to UCF in order to tie up loose ends. Since only one teacher who I needed to speak with was in her office, I only tied up one loose end by getting back my portfolio for last semester's Grad Writer's Workshop. No comments whatsoever on my work...I don't know whether that is good, bad, or indifferent.

After speaking with that professor, I decided to try other professors who I needed to speak with. On the way to each of these offices, I saw an aquaintance who I didn't think I'd see again. How cool! I went to go see three professors and I ended up running into three friends. Much more fun, if you ask me.

After standing outside and talking to my friend Conrad for quite awhile, I forgot entirely that I was hot and sweaty. Snap! Just like that, the summer became bearable. It's a wonderful moment. A moment that means I won't have to fix my air conditioning for at least one more year.

My CD accumulation of late has now reached it's end (and I don't mean the CDs that actually make me money at the bank)--I have been waiting to go out with my friend Paul to Park Ave CDs for quite awhile...I decided that our trip would be the last of CD buying for the summer, so I'm glad we went today, before more stuff came out that I wanted (hello! Belle and Sebastian CD! Oh well...I'll get it later). It's been forever since we did anything and each of us have been stockpiling each other's things for quite some time (okay, okay, so we only each had two items..."stockpiling" is such a good word), so it was nice to come clean by giving stuff back as well.

I capped off my new music infusion with the newest by The Breeders, who are on 4AD records. It's a gal rock band and you might know one of the gals from a band called The Pixies (also on 4AD), Kim Deal. Well, it seems that Kim has a twin sister and together, the Deals rock. From what I've heard so far, it's a great album...and I mean the music, not the press (which I would assume is also good).

The best thing, though, was that I got to see an old friend and that's always cool. He's going to give up his summer to work with challenged kids in New York. A brave, brave soul.

I also got to hang with Meg before her family heads up to Atlanta for a few days. They're going to check out a car for sale up there. I also think they're going to get a little World of Coca Cola action while they're there. I already advised them to be cautious when entering the "International Soda Showcase" room...the Japanese Apricot soda is fine, but the Italian carbonated bitters, "Beverly", is like bubbly floor polish in a cup.

During our hanging, we caught the end of "The Mole 2" and watched Baz L's "Romeo+Juliet", a movie experience that I missed out on by being in Russia. I finally have a little respect for Leo D., but I'm very depressed that the last movie that I saw Clare Danes in was "The Rainmaker"...where is she? She's such a good actress. Oh, as for the movie--really good. It's fun to watch it after I've seen "Moulin Rouge"...it seems that Luhrman was trying out various things in R+J that reached fruition in MR.

Gotta go to bed. Must wake up at decent hour--I want a normal daytime schedule again...this nocturnal stuff is wearing me down. =)

Okay, so Anne was right--setting a time to start may be good, but setting a finishing time to write up until is potentially demoralizing. A very perceptive judgement from a fellow writer. =)

But it worked! I sat down and told myself "At the stroke of 12:30pm, you are not going to proctrastinate, you are going to write. And it can all be bad, really bad. Let it be really bad, okay? If you try to edit while you write, you will not have Thai food for a month, understand? Keep writing until it becomes counterproductive."

So I did. And I got a good 2,000 words out of it. Better than that, I've almost nailed down an elusive character portrait of this old woman in my story that's supposed to be sweet and accidentally evil at the same time. Trickier than I thought.

I have my one little victory. Now I need to shoot for regularity, especially when my two hours consists of staring at my computer screen and wanting to die.

Thank you to everyone for all the encouragement and living good example-filled lives. I know that you don't do it for me, but I get lots out of it nonetheless.

I'm going to try to start doing something that Juan has been doing for quite some time--writing on a regular basis and at almost the same time each day without a worry except for continuously producing first draft prose. You would think that I'm starting this because of Juan's example or from the example of every other writer who's said that doing such a thing is the secret of their success. No, I seem to be doing this because I bought a book called "The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle" by Steven Pressfield (writer of The Legend of Bagger Vance) and I want to justify its hardback retail list price by doing something that it suggests.

That's actually not true either--this book was the final kick in the butt for me, kind of like a good devotional book. There are those devotional books that offer some pithy statement coupled with a barely relevant Bible verse; they're okay for light reading or those who can stir themselves into a religious fervor over anything. But the truely good devotional books realize that what someone needs is a good butt kicking, some phrase or paragraph mixed with an uncompromising Bible verse, not taken out of context, that leads the person to realize that they're not going in the right direction. At all. As in, going to fall off a cliff.

So, combined with all the good examples in my life and the good examples I've heard about before, "The War of Art" has produced the desire in me to start working at a set time and to write until a set time (I might tweak this to writing until I can't write anymore, but I seem to be quick to decide I can't write anymore).

So, I have 8 more minutes of listening to Wilco and reading blogs before I start writing. I'll report back soon.

Straight from the Rat's Mouth

I'm physically exhausted, but my mind hasn't shut off for the night--what a perfect time to blog, no?

My trip to Boca Raton was wonderful. The trip there wasn't as bad as I thought; spinning Volvos aside, three and a half hours on I-95 is not my idea of fun. My CD of MP3s helped a little seeing as I was able to fit about 130 songs on one CD-ROM. That one CD held an eclectic blend of Radiohead, Sam Phillips, Weezer, Garbage, the theme song for Sealab, TMBG, Gorillaz, and Sarah Masen...now that would be a tour to catch!

Things started to get interesting as I hit West Palm Beach. Apparently, they're building a new highway in this area, but they're not anywhere near finished and it also seems that they don't have a real plan--I passed about 10 freestanding overpasses connected only to dirt mounds which I assume will be streets someday. The combination of huge metal rods sticking out of the sides of the basically freestanding overpasses and huge red beams jutting out of the ground gave West Palm a rather post-apocalyptic feel. I also felt as if I were off-roading as the asphalt changed color and consistency about 20 times.

People do not enjoy storefronts in Boca Raton. I enjoy them very much in Orlando (where we believe in having the storefront so close to the road so that there is little room to park in front of buildings)--I can see where I'm going and make a decision to pull into a parking lot quite a ways ahead of my destination. In Boca, they seem to believe in tall bushes filled with beautiful flowers, all flanking small signs that let you know you just passed a drugstore, grocery store, or Blockbuster. Finding somewhere to stop was rather difficult as the flow of traffic was 45 mph and my optimum speed to be able to read the decorative, but tiny signs is about 4 mph. Oh well, I saw a clearing in the bushes and hoped for the best, slowing down just long enough to verify that I was still on concrete as I turned right into a patch of hibiscus. After driving about a half-mile into the flora protected area, I found that I had stumbled on an Eckard drugstore...no Starbucks, but it would do, at least to get a Coke and smile.

After this little detour, I realized that I was still an hour early to the wedding. Back out onto the road I went. One of the intersections was SR 441. I thought, we have one of those in Orlando...let's see what this one has. Thank God that this one had better stuff than the one back home which is mainly populated by hookers (hearts of gold, one and all, of course). I saw a Borders bookstore looming over a well landscaped parking lot. Perfect.

One nasty, slushy coffee drink later and I was back on the road to find the wedding. The bride's parents decided to hold it in their backyard. The word "backyard", however, might undersell the experience. They had a beautiful home, officially called a McMansion in Political Science--huge, but cookie-cutter looking. The backyard was set up with various tents and drapy white silk. The guests were mainly family and just a few friends, so we all fit well in the breezy backyard.

The wedding was short and sweet. After the bride walked down the aisle/20-yards-of-silk-on-grass to what sounded like a song in the industrial genre, the preacher said a few bible verses, led them in a simple exchange of vows, and gave a prayer. Then everyone ate Greek food and chatted until late. Aaron and Ann Marie were so cute to watch. Aaron's usually rather serious or reserved, cracking only wry smiles for comic effect. Last night there was nothing wry about his smiles--he looked insanely giddy.

Before I leave this scene, members of the fashionistas would probably like to know that Ann Marie wore a vintage, cream colored, embroidered dress with a trim sillouette (I'm thinking 1940s style). Aaron outfit ran the gamut between Banana Republic and Skip's Western Wear--brown cowboy boots, flat-front woolish brown pants, khaki military shirt, and a western-style blazer.

I left the sweet couple at about 9pm and drove back to Orlando. It took much longer coming back--I just couldn't keep my speed up. I basically used all of my physical energy to get back home.

So now here I am with lots of mental energy and absolutely no physical energy. Mom and I watched "Harry Potter" tonight on DVD, but it must be a bad disc...the picture started hanging and pixellating at the end, just in time for the big scenes. Either way, it was 2 hours and 40 minutes well spent seeing as my mom loved every minute of it.

Time for bed. My brain is quickly catching up with my body.