xtcian

9/21/02 You know that day

9/21/02

You know that day when the wind changes, and there's that unmistakable little chill in the air you look off into the horizon and you swear you can smell fall, and then the winter coming? Well, today wasn't that day. At all. Here we are in late September, up in the Berkshires, and it's still so hot and humid that we have to crank the air conditioners all damned day.

It is sad, however, to come to the end of the growing season. The local uber-nursery Wards - a store that seems to attract every white old-school preppie dad and mom from Massachusetts and Connecticut - shut down most of their incredible greenhouse of exotic plants, leaving naught but a bunch of pumpkins and a selection of bulbs for next year. It's a little unsettling. Up here, you can catch the faint whiff of desperation that might have kicked in for the ancient farmers, looking to the sky, then to their fields, and wondering if they had enough to get through the lean season not too far off.

All I know is this: if you could live on tomatoes, I've got the garden for you. And I know it's the crustiest clich on earth, how homegrown vegetables taste better, but good lord above, I wish all of you could taste these:

this week's haul Lindsay, Tessa and Dana in the background wondering why I'm taking pictures of vegetables

I like the girls with the boom

9/20/02

I've always agreed with David Byrne's quote about lyrics: they're a trick to get you to listen to a song longer than you normally would. Most song lyrics are reprehensible to me, some are vaguely unnoticeable, and only a tiny fraction of them are brilliant. I realize I'm in the minority on this one, as most people find a great deal of meaning in their favorite songs, but to me, lyrics fall under the following categories:
- badly-forced rhyme (most boy bands, No Doubt, Britney, Pink, etc.)
- incomprehensible and pretentious (Alanis Morrissette, some Fiona Apple, etc.)
- nihilistic bullshit (Bush, Creed, Matchbox 20, and all college moaning rock)
- lame aphorisms ending up as high school yearbook quotes (Dave Matthews, Jimmy Buffett, the Dead, Phish, Widespread, etc.)

I mean, give me the indiscernible vocals of the Cocteau Twins, the Sea & Cake, Stereolab and early R.E.M. any day of the week - at least those guys understood that vocals were meant to be another instrument, not a bullhorn for whatever dime-store epiphany the lead singer happened to have during fellatio the night before. I loathe country music, but at least they understand the ludicrousness of their lyrics; someone in Murfreesboro, Tennessee thinks "Drop-Kick Me Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life" and then writes a song around it. There's only three or four rap bands I can stand (Outkast, Wu-Tang, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul – you know, the ones for white dudes), but I appreciate the genre because the lyrics aren't a trick, they're the thing. When that Matchbox 20 poster boy gets a song from his guitarist, he begins the process with nothing to say and it goes from there.

Of course, I'm a total hypocrite. My favorite lyricists in the world are probably Morrissey and John Lennon, both famous for nihilism and pretention. When I told our music supervisor that I didn't like lyrics, she basically thought I was a moron who didn't try hard enough - so I tried to think about the lyrics that have always affected me, and listed them in my head. And now that I have, they're all so strange, and probably meaningless to anyone else. You can't help what you like, you know.

My Fave Lyrics

We got through the 30s though our belts were tight
Conceived of a future with no hope in sight
We've got decades ahead of us to get it right, I swear
Fifty years after the fair.
- Aimee Mann, "Fifty Years After the Fair"

Boy afraid
Prudence never pays
And everything she wants costs money
"But she doesn't even LIKE me!
And I know because she said so.
In the room downstairs
She sat and stared.
I'll never make that mistake again!"
- the Smiths, "Girl Afraid"

The third time I saw lightning strike
It struck me in bed
It threw me around
And left me for dead.
- The Cure, "Hot Hot Hot!"

Everybody says join our religion, and get to Heaven
I say no thanks why bless my soul
I'm already there!
- XTC, "Season Cycle"

Any major dude with half a heart surely would tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart falls together again
If the demon is at your door,
In the morning it won't be there no more.
- Steely Dan, "Any Major Dude"

It's a sad but natural fact
That something deep inside stays lonely forever.
- General Public, "Cry on Your Own Shoulder"

She's not a girl who misses much.
She's well acquainted with the touch of a velvet hand
Like a lizard on a windowpane
The man in the crowd with the multicolored mirrors
On his hobnail boots.
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime
A soap impression of his wife which he ate
And donated to the National Trust.
- The Beatles, "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

Everybody knows you only live a day
But it's brilliant anyway.
- Elliot Smith, "Independence Day"

I know I'm unlovable
You don't have to tell me.
Message received, loud and clear.
- The Smiths, "Unlovable"

Hey fat girl, c'mere - are you ticklish?
Yeah, I called ya fat.
Look at me, I'm skinny.
- Digital Underground, "The Humpty Dance"

9/19/02 Today's blog is cancelled

9/19/02

Today's blog is cancelled due to a blinding migraine.

But before I go, I just need to ask this: why do companies treat their workers so fucking badly? I know it's a big clich to whine about the plight of the American employee (not that I am one anymore), but in what part of business school do they teach that being an asshole makes you more money? Is there some graph with a parabolic curve that shows how mean-spirited you can be per dollar?

I ask this because one of my friends (who shall remain Google search-less, but I'll call him Jeremy) recently survived a merger, wherein his company was bought by a larger company, and he was one of the few that kept his job. Now, anyone who has been through mergers like this can tell you that being the "bought company" almost always spells doom, even if not right away. Jeremy clung on and accepted a new position at the newly-minted supercompany, but only if he agreed to lose all his seniority and thus his vacation days.

Now, I have to ask how big a fucking deal is it for him to have a few days off? In what sense is the company financially impacted when Jeremy takes a couple of god damn days to drive to Palm Springs and get a mud massage? I'd say it was beyond negligible, perhaps even an infinitesimal, cosmologically small fraction of money lost to the company – perhaps something around 45 cents when all is said and done.

Yet because of their broke-dick attitude on this issue, Jeremy is miserable and will no doubt quit 6 months earlier than he would have. The company will be robbed of at least a half year of his brilliance, his professionalism and his ability to bring in clients. And that, my friends, is not negligible.

I'll write more about the crazy dot-com world of 1995-2000 someday (you know, as soon as everyone else stops), but the changeover from "young, fresh-faced entrepreneurs" to "paranoid, fuck-face pricks" was really something to behold in dot-com management. I've always said that the volume of unbridled exuberance was directly inversely correlated to the chasm of mean-spirited evil as soon as the money began to run out. I should have known the day they stopped supplying half-and-half in the fridge; let that be fair warning to all of you.

9/18/02 I don't know how

9/18/02

I don't know how many of you out there have tried to add music to a movie, but it ain't as simple as throwing in a couple of rock tunes and seeing what happens. In essence, it's turning out to be one of the most challenging things we've done, and that includes almost getting struck by lightning in the real Pink House yard (as well as putting my fist through a Mexican restaurant soap dispenser and lacerating my wrist I forgot about that one).

Anyway, a fine line separates a great scene with a great score from a great scene made utterly unwatchable by a cheesy music cue. You can see bad music cues all the time just by turning on Cinemax after 1am or so all those straight-to-video erotic thrillers starring Shannon Tweed have god-awful synth moments covering up lame expository shots.

You need to keep the cues short and snappy, but do too much of this, and you get the bass-zapping goofiness of "Seinfeld." Or even worse, those stupid clarinet riffs from "Cheers." And by all means, avoid songs with words unless you plan to make some larger point, something I've never seen a movie do successfully save for the In Your Eyes scene from Say Anything. Frustratingly, it's easy to grow weary of a song or orchestral riff that goes on too long in the background, but if you change it up too often, your movie feels emotionally messy. You could try to do without music entirely, but then your 85-minute comedy will seem like a 4-hour documentary on Bulgarian shepherds.

I was told many years ago that audiences will forgive almost anything visual, but the true mark of a student film disaster is bad sound. We were very careful with sound during the Pink House shoot, but now that clean livin' has caught up with us: the party sequences seem to happen inside a vacuum. It's fascinating how even the slightest tweaks of ambient noise can supercharge a scene it definitely makes one more aware of noise in real life. Every time you rustle your shirt as you turn in your seat, every time you lay your hand to rest on the table: these things make noise, and they're generally not caught by the microphone during a movie. You have to add all that shit in later, and believe me, it's tedious.

Thankfully, today was about actual songs. I decided long ago to be pretty good at a shitload of musical instruments rather than be great at any one, and it's a decision that has paid off in the studio and at parties (my piano version of "Someone to Watch Over Me" is definitely B-minus, but then again, you get it for free). Today I laid down guitar, drum, piano, bass and violin tracks that can act as scene segues, or even as a character's identity (for instance, we're thinking an evil solo violin will accompany Heather Matarazzo whenever her antagonist Charlotte is onscreen). It can be a stop-gap measure before my mom writes a real score, something that can't happen before our Sundance submission deadline on Oct. 2. This 11th-hour push also forced me to get an optical cable that runs from the digital 8-track recorder through the Edirol UA-30 and straight into the iMac through USB, which is pretty sexy for closet dorked-out music spastics like me. I know I'm late to the optical cable party, but how cool is that thing? There's actual red light coming out the end of it!

my cramped studio

9/17/02 When my brother Sean

9/17/02

When my brother Sean called me today, I was at the Whole Foods market on the corner of 24th and 7th Ave, juggling two giant cartons of organic lactose-free milk and a good-for-you coffee muffin. I had to sit down in the frozen foods section because he had an anxiety attack at the airport, and I realized that my myriad freak-outs regarding flying have rendered me useless to help in such situations. Sean's experience today is similar to my airplane troubles; both of us just started getting zorked out after a bunch of really bad flights. He had a cross-country jaunt two weeks ago that was apparently 2 1/2 hours of being put in a paint shaker even the flight attendants strapped themselves down for the better part of a thousand miles.

Sean asked me a question I've been asking myself all year: why are we capable of developing such chronic anxieties at a time in our lives when we should be mellowing out? You'd think that a lifetime of three decades, stretched thin by the friction of experience, would give us the ammunition to care less about the things we can't control. God knows or should I say the Buddha knows – I've been trying to be good at relinquishing control, having read all the books by the Dalai Lama, along with Pema Chodron's extraordinary When Things Fall Apart, among others. And still I'm finding myself inheriting more childlike fears as I get older.

Suffice to say I told Sean to have a tequila shot and a very large bourbon & ginger - I mean, that's what I would do. I have a stash of Xanax and Ambien for flying, but I really think heavy drinking is the ticket. Hell, if there's turbulence, you'll think it's funny and if there isn't, you'll sleep the stale, dehydrated slumber of the hungover traveler.

One last word about this. I'm not scared of the plane crashing, I'm not frightened of on-board terrorism or a bomb in the cargo. I know the plane is utterly solid and no commercial jet has ever crashed due to wind disturbance while cruising. I even like the act of flying. I just fucking hate turbulence. Seriously, I'd rather walk to California than sit through fifteen minutes of turbulence. And like Sean and I have found out, some things in life just build up in your body like mercury, things that we're unable to expunge in a normal fashion. I was never afraid to fly as a child, and somewhere in the late 80s, I had one too many shitty flights, and now I have to drug myself up. Tessa says that one of the keys to sobriety is to "accept life on life's terms," but sometimes that's a tall fucking order.

9/16/02 Finally back in my

9/16/02

Finally back in my own digs here in beautiful Brooklyn, with my own computer and all the amenities of my cave. It's just me and the Chopes tonight, as Tessa is up in rural Massachusetts filming a documentary on Erin McKeown, leaving me to procure every last bit of music for the temporary Pink House soundtrack, order sushi and walk around without a shirt. I wish I found wife-beater shirts comfortable, but there's just something about them that's totally stinky to me. I'm not a big fan of men's underarm hair (or their toes either, but that's another story) - or it might be the Mormon "garment" thing as well. If you don't know what that means, have a Mormon tell you (except it'll mean being on their mailing list until the year 3057).

This trip to Chapel Hill was a good one, the sort of perfect distillation of the NC experience that happens every third trip or so. Several images come to mind, but I'll just post a smattering so you get the idea.

click on the images below for a bigger version

left: Natane Boudreau practices lines while we frame her in the monitor she nailed the hardest joke in the movie a few seconds later
right: a shadowy Tessa waits for the horse and buggy to arrive for our 1920s shot, while the sun (and our hopes) plunge into the horizon

left: the beautiful Liz Mann done up in 1929 best
right: Scotty and me post-football game, wandering past UNC's Bell Tower shrouded in a midnight mist

9/15/02 Ever fascinated with this

9/15/02

Ever fascinated with this country's malls, I decided to drag Scotty along to the Triangle area's most recent monstrosity, the Southpoint Mall. Or it might be "Southpointe" - it's impossible to tell with the New South's penchance for ludicrous anglophile apartment names. One more shithole called "Thrushcross Grange" or "King Henry's Creek" and I'd just about blow a gasket. The New South is sterile and ugly, what with its boxy, glassy downtowns and its mind-numbing urban sprawl, all coaxed together with cubic tons of red cedar mulch and sad, symmetric saplings held down with guy wire. North Raleigh is the most soulless place you could ever go; it takes about three gallons of fossil fuel to wander anywhere interesting (public transportation is non-existent, and they clear-cut the old forests for car dealerships and "Chi-Chi's").

Thankfully, Southpoint(e) Mall was a bit of a surprise. It's still the same mall ingredients found all over this great country of ours (Spencer Gifts, Bath and Body Works, Foot Locker, and a bad Food Court) but they actually did their homework architecturally. Not only is the structure largely brick, but also reminiscent of old downtown Durham with the tapered smokestacks of the ancient tobacco warehouses. And they really got me with once nice touch: all over the building are pref-fab "ghost ads" touting products and businesses that no longer exist. I'm a huge fan of the genre even though these are fake. I'd post pictures, but of course, I'm stuck on another computer with nary a bit of access to my stuff!

After watching the compelling indie The Good Girl, we met Ann Humphreys at the Wine Bar to exchange tales of the last year or so. We reckoned that our lives would have been much better if only she and I had decided to live in the same town circa 1997-2000, instead of her being miserable in San Fran, and me being suicidal in LA. But here we are anyway, both in pretty good places. I'd love to have her up in New York, but she has carved out a nice life for herself here in North Carolina, with a support group of friends, great yoga and a cool job. I had her on one issue, however: the only people smart enough to deserve her live in the city that never sleeps.