xtcian

12/7/02 Like I've oft moaned

12/7/02

Like I've oft moaned and opined in this space, it has been about 15 degrees below normal at best – since mid-October, culminating in a early-season snowstorm that was the worst since 1938 and gave us more snow in one day than we got all last winter.

me outside our stoop in Brooklyn, trying to hold traction in crappy boots

People were mildly freaked out about the situation, having been lulled into complacency by three extremely tame winters, but at least it wasn't like the ice storm that hit the South; folks in my hometown of Chapel Hill have been without power for three days, and Chip said he won't have power until next Wednesday. Despite its own generators, and a maniacally-stubborn administration ("we ain't closed our doors since Sherman marched through") even UNC shut down.

I was there during the last truly treacherous ice storm in March 1989, except that time we had a 74-degree day directly after; the ice melted and detached so quickly that students were being lacerated by falling icicles. I got brained by a jagged piece of ice while walking to class (and then I got dysentery the next week, but that's another whole funny ha-ha story).

Meanwhile, the snow is going nowhere up here and I admit, it's very nice in the early going. It acts as an incredible acoustic barrier, meaning that you go outside and you can't hear anything. Cars are silent as they pass, and even the muffled laughter of children (some of whom have never seen a real blizzard) seems to be emanating from a distant speaker.

Soon enough, the snow will turn to frozen brown diesel slush, and echoes of my crappy wintry times in Iowa will echo through my head: piles of black snow plowed into the corners of parking lots. Brown ice will coalesce at each doorstep and well-worn paths covered in kitty litter will be everywhere. For now, though, the white blanket is dead beautiful, and I feel blessed that our planet can look so different so often.

looking north from our corner on Berkeley Street (click for bigger)

12/6/02 We just got done

12/6/02

We just got done with an honest-to-God 16-hour day of editing the Pink House movie and boy are my arms tired. This was our last day with our editor before she goes off on another job for a month (and we go on our whirlwind tour of America), so this particular edit is going to be important to investors. Being one of its proud parents, it's still not "done" enough for me, but we can't go much further until we find the money to finish. We actually laughed a lot during this last edit, which, after all we've been through (having started this process on September 10, 2001), hints that we actually did make a comedy.

Comedies just aren't funny until the 7th major edit; I don't think people realize that. All of your favorite comedies were giant, unfunny hunks of shit for months before anybody could stomach them, and that includes "Animal House," "Annie Hall" or even "Some Like It Hot." Comedies are made in the editing room, and even the difference of three frames (approximately 1/8th of a second) can change the entire timbre of a joke.

So we're not done, but we're pretty damn funny. All we need is a finished score, some sound sweetening, and another go-over with a lice comb, and we can do some damage out there.

Matt Dawson and Omar Scroggins doused with pink flour during the car scene. Click on the picture to download a RealPlayer movie of the local North Carolina news doing a story on our shoot however, when you see me, please realize that my shirt was poofed out, and I do NOT have a distended belly and weigh 370 pounds, it was just an unfortunate choice of clothing and a TERRIBLE camera angle, fer chrissake

12/5/02 Hey, do they still

12/5/02

Hey, do they still do this at amusement parks?

me, my English mate Adam Regis, and Sean very unconvincing Civil War generals at Busch Gardens, summer 1981

12/4/02 One of the best

12/4/02

One of the best things about attending New York dinner parties especially ones where I am sick and can barely hold my head up during dinner – is that they begin with the opening salvo "What the hell does George Bush think he's..." and go on from there. No pussy-footing around here; sensitive, intelligent New Yorkers trust this administration about as much as mullahs in Yemen do. It's an instant starting point for most conversations, especially right now in history (when Bush is amping up the rhetoric on Iraq even as the U.N. inspectors aren't finding anything). We ended up talking to a cool couple named Andrew and Megan, all of us wondering why on Earth this government has such a hard-on for Hussein. I thought it was just a grasp for power, since a frightened American electorate is more than happy to hand the reins back to bellicose goons for as long as they appear to "get the job done." Tessa, however, thinks it's all about the money: pretty much every member of the Bush Cabinet has been cozy bedfellows with the major defense contractors.

I mean, it's got to be something, right? Short of showing a satellite photograph of a warehouse that says "ANTHRAX" in Arabic on top, the only motivation for this war - besides money and power - is sheer lunacy. That, or a true desire to see innocent Iraqi civilians shredded. Which, of course, would lead to more atrocious attacks on the United States... I mean, why am I even writing this? The whole thing is so mind-bendingly moronic that I have to believe that there is some other plan that we don't know.

It's pretty stunning to disagree with every fucking single goddamn decision this administration makes; in fact, it's making me physically ill. Moving to France can't come quickly enough, and when I get there, I'm going to pretend I'm Irish.

12/3/02 11 degrees Fahrenheit is

12/3/02

11 degrees Fahrenheit is a different beast than 35 degrees, or even 25. 11 is a serious outside condition. 11 is cold enough that when you pick up a basketball, you run the risk of shattering it.

I know this because I spent part of the late night outside, or basically outside, up in the second floor of the barn, winging the basketball as hard as I could against the ancient wooden backboard. I can take a loss as good as anybody, but a 27-point shellacking at the hands of Illinois (who kept shooting 3-pointers even while their team was up 20 with two minutes to play) reminds me too much of last year to keep my psyche from bubbling over into a fine froth.

2001-2002 really sucked apart from my personal life with Tessa; a moronic monkey stole the White House, a terrorist attack claimed 3,000 of my fellow New Yorkers, the stock market took a historic dive, Dook won another national championship, my own team went 8-20 (the worst record since 1911), I got fired, I went broke, I went crazy, I went on Celexa.

I've done a lot of work to get myself back to emotional fighting weight again and I forgot to mention that we made a movie in there somewhere – but sometimes a 27-point loss, even in something as irrational as a college basketball game, can bring up strong feelings that aren't quite ironed out.

So at midnight, I lit the court with halogen lamps, took a ball, and lunged it at the backboard enough times to feel better. Then I calmly sunk 7 out of 10 foul shots, which wasn't bad, since I couldn't feel my hands.

in warmer times: Jon Gray prepares to sink a 25-footer over Easter holiday in the barn (click pic for bigger image, or here for Steve's pics from last Xmas)

12/2/02 Hi, I'm Ian Williams

12/2/02

Hi, I'm Ian Williams and at Columbia County Farm, we're not content with being just shiftless: we take laziness to another level. Don't wanna sit upright for an entire movie? How about putting it on your laptop, then putting the laptop on your belly - so you and yours can remain prostrate for the entire thing!

We watched Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones tonight in that very fashion, although the new iBook's speakers are so weak that I had to rig up a boom box at the foot of the bed and pipe it from the headphone jack. Not bad, I tellsya.

It did leave me with a few thoughts:

1. I never saw this in a theater. There was a time when I joined the rest of my generation in a two-day campout to see the new Star Wars movie, and this time I remember forgoing the film in favor of hoops. I think The Phantom Menace had something to so with my interest falling off a cliff: so wooden and dreary, it reminded me that it is definitely not 1977 and I do not own my orange Huffy anymore.

2. Although digital filmmaking is a pretty exciting venture, there was definitely something... I dunno, sherbet about this whole movie. It was pretty enough, but sometimes it reminded me of that Dire Straits video Money for Nothing in its two-dimensional hazes, all the color of Italian gelato. Some of the digital scenes in the Pink House movie come off more honestly, and we spent $119.75 million less.

3. My grandmother used to cry every time we mentioned Matthew, the cousin 9 days older than me, who died in a car accident on his 2nd birthday (1969). I never understood why it seemed so recent to her until I did the math: for her, 1969 was only about 17% of her life ago, whereas for me, it was almost 95% of my life ago (actually, I don't remember it at all).

Not to trivialize Matthew's death (I will no doubt soon dedicate a blog to him and the affect he had on our family), but the same function applies to the Star Wars movies. When I was 12, and "The Empire Strikes Back" ended, three years to wait for "Return of the Jedi" was a goddamn lifetime. Now, at the age of 35, it seems like last month that I was helping salvage the DVD campaign for "Phantom Menace." Perspective allows you the ability to wait for things, it allows patience, it allows for delayed gratification, and it is the one thing kids never have. God knows I didn't.

12/1/02 These stretches of time

12/1/02

These stretches of time we spend here at the farm will soon be considered "restful" one day, but not for a while. Besides, I'm not sure if I'll ever truly desire restfulness, at least not before I'm 60. In the meantime, this blasted place is way too cold, so I set about to insulate the basement ceiling some weeks ago to keep us from seeing our breath on nights like this (18F).

Insulation is almost always the worst stuff on earth, combining fiberglass and god-knows-what space-age polymers that are best kept behind a drywall for fifty years without being disturbed. However, there's this new stuff from Owens-Corning (who, by the way, hosted the recent North Carolina victories at MSG) that feels more like a rolled-up sleeping bag, and is meant for tyros like me who don't own an oxygen mask. The problem is, nothing on Earth, due to gravity, is fond of being stuck to the ceiling. Hoisting these large rolls aloft, and then trying to staple-gun them into place, has taken WEEKS of backbreaking labor and a Buddha-like patience.

Today, we tried tackling the most forbidden place on the whole farm: the basement underneath the library room. Unfinished and left as dirt in 1860, it feels as though a human skull may become unearthed at any time. A small crawl space lurks in the nether regions, making it truly the duodenum of this house's digestive system.

Tessa helped me put some pipe insulation deep in there, then asked if I wanted her to staple the blanket insulation as well. And with the dog barking, the temperature plummeting, and the rolls of Owens-Corning spilled out to her side like a giant tongue, she actually lay in that pile of ancient dirt and did it:

Of course, the dog wasn't too thrilled about the staple gun, leading him to thrash around in the basement mud and the pools of leaking groundwater. By the time we were done with the job, Tessa and I were covered in guck, coughing up brown fluids and unable to think straight. Short of re-roofing with tar on an August day, I think we just completed The Worst Job Possible at the Farm.

So we spent the night on the couch with mouths open, feet up, watching Legally Blonde.