with a Q

Lucidity at 10:06 AM on a Tuesday

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:07:11 -0500

The lack of posts I’ve made in the last three months is disturbing. The amount of writing...

VoiceZ is going into preproduction!

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:53:05 -0400

My script was one of the 12 picked to be filmed this year for Senior Film. I’m super fucking...

Senior Film Odds

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:06:28 -0400

I’m starting up draft four of VoiceZ, and I’m more nervous than ever that I may not get...

The University System

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:18:40 -0400

The University System: As I start my final year at Penn State, I’m starting to eye up the...

Inglourious Basterds Review

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:35:00 -0400

I really, really wanted to like this movie. I went in looking for a home run, and only got a base...

District 9's Effects On the Film Industry

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:46:54 -0400

District 9's Effects On the Film Industry: creeperstatus: atencio: What can be said about District...

District 9 Review

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:52:56 -0400

I wrote up a little article on Voyeuristic Cinema and made a mention of District 9. Well, after...

Further Down the Rabbit Hole (Even More Tales from Work)

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:53:17 -0400

I almost died five days ago. I had my usual ear protection on, when around the corner came the...

The Woes of Summer

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:22:00 -0400

At the end of every summer, financial stresses begin to pop up. This is even more true for this...

More Tales From Work

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:13:52 -0400

I’ve realized my role at the plant is the same as that of an anus. All the waste and garbage...

NaNoWriMo

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 23:57:42 -0400

Or National Novel Writing Month takes place throughout the month of November, and I plan on...

The above is an image from James Gunn’s PG Porn series. He...

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:30:14 -0400

The above is an image from James Gunn’s PG Porn series. He takes porn stars and inserts them into hilarious situations where sex is never involved. They show the shorts on Spike TV all the time.

In an English class, about three years ago, I made a short film with a couple of other students as part of a project. It was pretty awful, but there were some slick editing calls on my part, if I do say so myself. Another student in the class, twenty-six years old ex-army just back from a few years in Korea, approached me after class. He was African-American, tall, about 6’5”, in impeccable shape and was in an amateur kickboxing league outside of the state.

He asked me if I was interested in going to lunch after class, and I was, so we went for pizza in the Sbarro restaurant on the ground floor of the HUB. There, we chatted about class and other bullshit that comes up between two men while eating pizza, and then, he asked me the vaguest question I’ve ever been asked over such a meal.

“Are you interested in making some good money?” As any college student will tell you, making money is always a good thing, and “good money” is even better. My response was something along the lines of either “absolutely,” or “sure!” with the exclamation point included. He didn’t expound on it any further after that, and we concluded the meal with plans to meet at a Waffle Shop over the weekend. I speculated what he was going to request of me the few days before we met up again. Would he ask me to tape his kickboxing matches? That’d be cool. I was already planning on what music I’d set the fights to while editing.

When the day arrived, he picked me up and we drove to the West College Waffle Shop. Once inside, a gorgeous brunette approached smiling. She hugged him, and asked how he’d been. I thought this was a bit friendly for a greeting, but figured he might have worked there before and didn’t think much of it. She sat us and took our order before he leaned in really close.

“How would you feel about…” his voice trailed a bit, and he finished in a whisper, “porn.” My interest was piqued. It was the last thing I’d imagined him to ask of me. I sat back, wondering how to respond. If I said yes to soon, would it come off a bit weird? What if I looked creeped out, he might say nevermind or something and revoke the offer. I waited a second, half nodded and said that I was interested in so many words.

He went on to explain how he’d read that one of the routes to get into the porn industry was through making an amateur tape or two and sending them to porn star talent scouts. He’d been working up his stamina, he said, as well as working out to look his best. He even went so far as to find three women who all agreed to the idea as well.

At this point, the attractive waitress returned with our food. I had a stack of banana and pecan waffles if you were interested. I can’t remember his meal. Anyway, when she left, he nodded towards and said that he used to date her. Let me take a quick second to explain something about the waitress. She wasn’t just hot or pretty in a typical sense. She was pretty in a why-is-she-working-here kind of way, as if it was beneath her to sling waffles to people for a living. She should’ve been living a life of luxury on some millionaire’s yacht. After that bit of information, I was in. If he was getting these kind of women, and not some—to borrow a term—hood rats, how could I say no?

The porn industry is funny world. They deal and peddle our basic desires. It ranges from the smuttiest, dirtiest filth, to some of the more clever satires of our own culture. It’s a self-aware industry, never afraid to make fun of itself. It also embraces technology like no other entertainment industry, instantly adopting the internet as a tool instead of being afraid of its power. And for that, I appreciate it.

The story ends more realistically than it began. It was toward the end of the year when he asked me to do this. I came back home for the summer, but made sure he had my number. He even called me once, telling me he had some of the equipment bought, and was just waiting on it to be delivered. That was the last time I heard from him though. It was pretty disappointing.

I’ve thought about how weird it might have been to actually shoot and edit a pornographic video for someone I had class with, but the money and my interest was there. Had it not been for his sudden disappearance, I could’ve been in California by now. Aw, the career that never was.

This movie is one of the primary inspirations for the musical,...

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:47:58 -0400

This movie is one of the primary inspirations for the musical, VoiceZ, I’m working on now. A Goofy Movie was the first movie I bought with my own money, and I did so on a whim while walking through a grocery store. From then on, Goofy would become my favorite Disney character. I began to collect old Goofy shorts recorded on stacks of VHS tapes. I still have a couple surviving to this day, though the quality of the video is hardly watchable. A Goofy Movie came out in 1995, in the middle of what I would call the Golden Age of Disney. But it was different than all those other movies, in that it had a contemporary setting and gave a home life to one of their most well known characters.

I have the words to the songs memorized, the lines of dialogue are carved inside the walls of my cranium and the characters are as normalized to me as my own family. I’ve grown up with this movie, and it’s grown up with me. It doesn’t hurt that it still has a very serious following from avid fans. I want to say that the following is different than those of other nostalgic cartoon memories. It’s morphed into something completely different for me. While I can watch Lion King and laugh along at like I did before, it doesn’t change as a film. I remember parts rather than absorb and dissect them.

One of my favorite new spins on the film is a video that transforms it into a David Lynch style mystery. This Lynchian spin on an old favorite is surreal and spectacular in its handling of David Lynch’s style and the utterly bizarre scenes from A Goofy Movie itself.

I’m tempted to do a full write-up analyzing the film and all the motifs it carries with it. It’s rife for picking, but I’ve never actually attempted it. I tend to spare the things I enjoy most from any form of critical analysis, but I think A Goofy Movie’s time has come.

Tales From Work

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:18:00 -0400

I currently work at a bucket, sorry, container plant in Pittston. Calling the product a bucket gets...

"Happy,” I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love, that I..."

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:47:00 -0400

““Happy,” I muttered, trying to pin the word down. But it is one of those words, like Love,...

VoiceZ is No More

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:19:56 -0400

The tumbelog, not the actual project. If you missed it, I’m working on a musical titled VoiceZ...

I’ve gone and done it. I grabbed a vanity url from...

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 00:52:58 -0400

I’ve gone and done it. I grabbed a vanity url from Facebook early today. It’s nothing too special, but makes linking to my Facebook profile a much easier task to do. No more copy + paste.

I tried capturing a shot of Wiley while he was in the air, but...

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:42:00 -0400

I tried capturing a shot of Wiley while he was in the air, but he was getting tired by the time I brought out the camera and would only get on his hind legs. This shot is probably my favorite of the pack, but I’m still looking through the 70+ I took.

The dog is insane. He can’t sit still for more than a few minutes. He was neutered and on puppy Prozac to curb his excitement, but both had little effect. And so we had to find some kind of outlet for him to get rid of his limitless energy. Normally, my mother takes him running with her on her daily jogs, but sometimes she just can’t handle him tugging her towards speeding cars. We needed something we could do at home in the backyard where Wiley wouldn’t have the option of running in the road. Enter the frisbee.

Frisbees float when thrown, so Wiley uses more energy leaping at them from all angles with a surprising accuracy. His focus becomes sharpened to a primitive point, ignoring everything but the neon goodness of the plastic disc inches from his nose. Not to mention, he does all this going uphill.

Wiley goes through frisbees like Jaws does swimmers. He also hasn’t quite figured out the release aspect of the whole catch and release. There are two in the image because we use the second one, to lure him into dropping the one currently clenched between his teeth. Otherwise, we’d spend an hour playing tug-o-war with a slippery frisbee.

You can see the other snapshots at my flickr photostream.

With A Q

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:54:04 -0400

Before my father came to America for schooling, his last name was Al-Barqawi. The Al denotes the in...

cdevroe: The camping setup Jealous. I’ve spent entirely...

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 18:04:00 -0400

cdevroe:

The camping setup

Jealous. I’ve spent entirely too much time inside of my house this summer. The rare afternoons I spend on the deck in my back yard are a treat that I’m not entirely aware of while there.