Here I am now...to Entertain you... I am uhhh not doing anything now. I had nothing to do. All is well, all is done...for now. I finished dvds for doc final which I'm gonna have to do over again because of some titles that didn't transfer or get created or something yes. But it's done...now...sort of. It's done. It's done, I have done the stuff that needs to be done for my classes so now I'm going to make a xanga post. A xanga post that I can apparently now show on my facebook, in a global effort toward blog unity: a true "Blogosphere," because I officially don't have anything to do at this given moment. I haven't sat in a coffee shop for no reason in like months or month or monthish. I swam through a sea of late fees and worked up the courage to say "Yes, I want to rent the Battle of Algiers, and 'She's the Man' but I really don't want to pay the late fees on 'Down by Law' and 'Weird Science' at this given moment, becuase things cost me money, things nonmovie related and I'm pretty sure I'm leaving for a few weeks tomorrow." Jolly Hollywood video employee: "That's cool." I made movies over the summer kind of, it was fun. Got an offer from a buddy to goto Puerto Rico in the winter to work on his flick. I impressed him with my light setting, boom holding, slate clapping, nonsleep receiving, coffee getting, c-stand turning abilities, as well as my vague familiarity with Cuban history. I might not be shooting my film until the spring, so I said very firmly, "Yes." I hope I follow through with my "Yes." Than again I've said yes to a lot of things, some I don't really remember, and I don't have a calendar and then I have my own things to do this year so we'll see how much sleep I'll get in the next year, while maintaining all my promises. It's gonna be exciting. I'm a second A.D. on one guy's shoot, I'm something on another guy's shoot, and probably doing another thing on this girl's shoot, I'm not really sure, I'm in preproduction with another buddy for a Coca-Cola commerical contest thing where we might be given money if we go through these workshops to make a commercial for Coca-Cola. I hope it happens but I also hope it doesn't happen. I heard you can goto hell for those sort of coorporate teet sucking type ventures. All in the name of fun and art and friends.
I was trapped in an episode of Miami Vice last week (terrible movie btw.) I was sitting enjoying a newkie outside of a local pub with my buddy Marius and his wife Brooke, as I have done many times this summer. It was 1 a.m. abouts and these two fellas walk to the end of the curb, look down the alley, and turn around to reveal bandanas over their faces, sunglasses and camo hats. My initial reaction is "What kind of weird urban cowboy dude is this? Haha! When did Hardcore kids start carrying guns?...ohhhh..." We were told in a voice that was about as nervous as me to put everything that's in our pockets onto the table. I calmly and slowly put my wallet on the table, which the young criminal with a bright future snatched, when out of nowhere two plain clothes cops with the badges around the neck for cool authoritative establishemtn, guns raised, mustached, cargo shorts, let's beat some thugs down attitudes magnificently wiz around the corner (that the thugs looked down, mind you) and start chasing after the guys. It was so awesome! Dude dropped my wallet like fifteen feet away, before he had an asthma attack and was arrested by police. Beautiful. I love cops. I wonder if that guy has considered another route, besides crime, taking into consideration that crime requires a lot of running...Atleast carry your inhaler man, jeez. I was amazed at the amount of bereaucratic crap the officers had to go through. I gave like fifteen statements, I couldnt touch my wallet on the ground for like two hours, they were taking pictures of everything, and the cops caught the dudes redhanded! It sucks that that isn't enough anymore. I think it was gang activity too. I have a British professor who told me that there is a gang in London called the "Thirty Second Gang" that will bust into your house and steal your tv while you're sitting down, watching it with your family. Now that's a cool gang. It's clever and there's no guns involved. Gangs in America don't have awesome names, and instead of just taking your tv, they rob, humiliate, and kill you. I'm not down with that.
Uhhhh, here is something I've been upto, losing sleep over. I'm not exactly very happy with it, but my professor loved it. It's a motion graphics project (my new minor, possibly double major...I'm not going anywhere, why not?) Lemme know what you think. There's a description already on it.
Action figures used to define my childhood. I used to get so excited whenever I got a new action figure. It always had that nice plastic packaging outlaying every super cool badass device that particular G.I. Joe, Ghostbuster, Ninja Turtle, whatever had with him, glued to a thin piece of cardboard with graphics that would just oooooooze with boyhood explosiveness. I remember buying an action figure and hanging on to the cardboard, just so I could druel over the rest of the members of that series. I'd pin them to my wall and sometimes I would cross out the ones I got. Of course by the time I had enough money to buy another one, that series was already taken off the shelf, alas. It didn't matter, because eventually I'd get bored with that particular action figure of the moment, or atleast it's capabilities. They always seemed so much more action packed inside the plastic bubble. When I took them out though, they'd pathetically try to reenact whatever series of events I had lined up for them, but eventually I just became more enthused with my brother and I using them for pellet gun target practice.
I too often think i might be treating God like one of these toys. Some sort of personality that I've molded for him, and pathetically created with a mess of plastic, rubberbands, and model paint. When I was like five I met "Grandpa God." He was like this wooden piece of shit that had been handed down through generations and really wasn't that cool, like he didn't have weapons or swords, and there wasn't a button that caused any sort of karate chop action, but he was old and had been in our family for years so I sort of had to respect it. It looked like the sort of thing that would stand by some poor kid's game of bumble-ty peg or jacks or whatever the hell they used pre-sega genesis. I just couldn't touch it....if I touched it it might break. As long as I acknowledged in some distant form that this old thing was amazing, we were all cool. Soon afterwards I met an updated version of "Grandpa God" but this was like his bizarro twin, "Fierce, stern, pissed off Grandpa God." It's like the divine toy makers tried to update the old-school look of "Grandpa God" but something went horribly wrong. The quaint charm of a dry, wooden Grandpa God, was replaced by an irritating and yet haunting version. Some of my next door neighbors, when I lived in Tennessee gave this one to me, and he'd sit on my desk at night just staring at me and keeping me awake. "Fierce, stern, pissed off Grandpa God" had rich details though. His weapon of choice was a huge staff with a fiery cross at the end, and if you bought the complete set, his mansion and five saabs would part with the pull of a lever next to his staff that would send all his enemies falling into some deep dark fiery pit called hell. I never understood his weapon of choice, nor did I ever really understand anything about his arch nemesis, "sin," despite my neighbors attempts to explain. The "Pissed off Grandpa God" also came with a healing chamber that took the form of a giant heart, which I didn't really understand either. My neighbors told me that this is where he is supposed to live, and as silly as the idea was to me, I accepted it in a desperate attempt to make friends with my new neighbors. I sort of lived with "Pissed Off Grandpa God." He'd sit in my closet in a box with several other toys, and while I never got rid of him, I always knew he was there, and the very thought scared the crap out of me.
It wasn't until around the age of sixteen that I sort of adopted the postmodern fad of collecting "ironic" God action figures. These new updated versions of God took the place of the boring old "square" versions from the previous series. The first one I met was "Rock Star God." It was kind of like the Macfarlane line of toys in that they looked sooooo cool and so worth buying, because the detail was so rich, but they didn't really do anything. None of his limbs moved, but they were posed in this really powerful way, where God's hair and beard are seen blowing through the wind as he wails on an electric guitar. "Rock Star God" had a series of spin-offs and a very strange, cult-ish following. If you got into "Rock Star God" you had to buy all his albums, t-shirts, movies, thongs, books, etc. He had a bible but it was really just a stage prop in the immobile, plastic pose of God. The bible was still plastic, just like "Rock Star God" but it was opened to the book of Galatians in that immobile pose. It was still nonetheless a totally rockin' segement to his rebellious image. "Rock Star God" looked really cool, but I kind of got bored with him. He never DID anything. So than I met his counterpart "Super-chill Hippie God." He didn't have a bible, but if you pressed this button on his back he'd quote a verse for you in this weird lo-fi digital voice. "Hippie God" was very calming and peaceful and great to have around. His legs moved freely, but not his arms. They forever remained in his pockets. Still though you could have him be walking around in a very drab, but hip little get-up spouting out bible verses. The only problem was that as the batteries starting giving, so did the little chip inside his chest, so the bible verses starting giving way, utnil it was just this muddled little sound coming out of these holes in his chest.
After this I sort of shopped around for God Action figures, trying to find the perfect one to suit my personality. The Action Figure version of God that best spoke of me. I could never really buy into crazy buff gi-joe God complete with fully flexible appendages and bazooka. Nor was I a big fan of "President God" who was decked out in a suit, and came with an American flag. He also had a button on his back, but he only had one sound byte and just said the same shit over and over and over again until it didn't mean anything. It was a spectacular sounding soundbyte though. There was also one similar to "President God" called "Angry Political God" who came with a pipe bomb and sniper rifle, but I already knew that he would break as soon as I pulled him out of the package. I remember"Back to God" and eventually running out of ideas there was "God Classic" which I thought about buying, but I always wondered what people might think of me with one of those hanging around my room.
Once I was in college I settled for a long time on "Cynical Intellectual God." "Cynical intellectual God came with a bible, but also other books that the manufacturers continually updated him with. Oddly enough he also came with beer and a pack of cigarettes. He had a karate chop, that wasn't very exciting. If you pulled the lever on his back the spring would pull as if he was about to do something amazing but instead just lifted a cigarette to his lips. He had a very dull, angry expression on his face and his arms certainly moved, but the plastic on the joints of his shoulders rubbed together so closely that it was hard to move them. His legs were very agile but the knee joints provided for a very easy sitting position. You could prop him up on just about anything, from a record player, to a stack of Noam Chomsky books...whatever was your thing. "Cyincal intellectual God" was very similar to "God Classic" but the details on his face and body lacked any sort of motivation for him to do anything. The company that manufactured him, was actually a group of employees who were sick and tired of creating the same old trite God Action figures and started their own independent company. "Cynical Intellectual God" was created out of a sort of middle finger to the other Action Ficture Gods.
One time I saw in a coffee shop a stack of stickers that said "Jesus was a liberal." I laughed at the sticker and grabbed the whole stack, but the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. I saw where they were coming from certainly, in the face of so many people who use Christ to justify their shallow political motives, but the sticker was only doing the same thing. Jesus wasn't a liberal. Jesus wasn't a conservative. Jesus was never a slogan or a political party or a marketing scheme or a get out of jail free card for that matter. I've abused the "entity" of Christ if you will many times to justify my actions or rebuke somebody else's actions, when the only thing I had at heart was some sick need to prove that I was a person full of thought, deed, action, and depth, when in fact I share the same situation as every other person in the world. I'm desperate, confused, anxious, shallow, and selfish. I've embraced God and I've embraced Christianity, but I'll be honest when I say that I don't always know what that means and I don't like not always knowing what that means and knowing who God is; what part of him is real and what part of him is some dumb personality trait I've applied to him, to make me feel better about myself. Despite those ever consistent moments however, I still am able to bring myself to acknowledge that there's some undescribable force that takes ahold of me and won't let me turn away from it. I feel like I'm always chipping away at some big block of marble, and that inside that pure form exists, but I have to keep shaving layers of rock away to get a better glimpse. I don't know...maybe Jeff Mangum can say it best...maybe the Bible can say it best...but for now Jeff Mangum will do:
"And when we break we'll wait for our miracle God is a place where some holy spectacle lies And when we break we'll wait for our miracle God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life."
