Smoke em if you got em!

OK, the quality is swamp ass but you get the idea. Maybe not. This is the one I did last summer.

So You Want To Be A FilmMaker?

Start here. The rest will figure itself out.

Bruce Baillie - Valentin de las Sierras (1971)

Jewish Foot in Mouth Disease

Traditionally, on Christmas Eve, my parents invite the entire extended family down to their house to celebrate the near completion of yet another ravenously successful year of purchasing. And traditionally my culinary capabilities are called upon to prepare that timeless of all Christmas treats: 5 alarm texas Chili. This I love to do because it is the one time of year that I actually make a half assed effort in selecting the ingredient as opposed to opening up the refrigerator and blindly reaching for anything resembling meat. This year I returned from the butcher shop with no less that 5 species of meat; 2 from the flying kingdom and 3 from the petting zoo phylum. All of these, including various beans and spices were heaped into a ten gallon cauldron. It was a masterpiece. The house soon took on the aroma of a nasty Tijuana street fight and quickly my mother came drifting into the kitchen to check on my progress. "Ummm, that smells good," she said stirring the meaty mix. "What's in there?" "Well," I started, proudly and then went on to name every ingredient. When I was cruising through the "petting zoo department" she got this really concerned look on her face. "Did you say sausage?" "yep," I said "100% USDA approved pink squealer." "Ummm, you do realize that your cousins are Jewish don't you and they are not allowed to eat pork." It was at that point that every reservation I had ever had about being an atheist were washed away. I had just made a pot of chili that would have buckled Willie fucking Nelson's knees and now I was being told that the guests couldn't eat it. I was furious and with fury often comes "La Dance du Foot in Mouth." Oh, everyone knows this dance; you open your mouth to bolster your case but instead end up saying something so far beyond stupid that you are required to wear your penny loafers next to your tonsils while your bravely continue to rebuild your reputation. So, without thinking, I said "Sooooo, we don't have to tell them...do we?" An eerie silence filled the room...but only for a moment. Then, much like when southern white trash tries to describe the moments before their trailer parks "done flewed up into the sky" the scene got ugly....derned quick! In the next twenty minutes or so I was brought up to speed on compassion, respect, understanding and deception....with a little morality thrown in as a sweetener. By the time my mother was done raking me over the coals for my slip I was just a puddle of piss on the kitchen floor ready to be left on the steps of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for adoption. Well, to make a long story short I returned to the butcher shop and prepared the best "pork-free" chili I have ever made. As for my shoe, well, I still have one lace wrapped around my tongue according to my mother.

Oh Fuck Yeah!

I wish I still took Acid!!

Mekas Madman

The problem with being a genius is that you sometimes have to carry the baggage. With that said, I have been following Jonas Mekas' 365 Day Films where he shoots a different video for every day of the year and I have come to the conclusion that this man is out of his tits insane. But...in a way I could only hope to be some day.

Sweet Smell of Bullshit

A Reluctant Capitalist Haiku

Hefty Inbred gals
Godzilla charm in Spandex
Welcome to WalMart

When Worlds Collide

I was hanging out in a library today flipping through some old photography books. On the cover of one of the books was that iconic image of screaming Vietnamese children running away from their village that had just been Napalmed. The photographer who took that picture is named Nick Ut. He was the only one who got that shot simply because all the other photographers there had shot their entire roll on the attack itself. Nick was the only one with film in his camera and pretty much changed the face of war photography. A few years back I was asked to be part of the media circle-jerk that covered the Michael Jackson trial out in Santa Maria California. While there I was lucky enough to become friends with Nick. He was an AP photographer and I was working for the organization that ran the media pool circus so we happened to cross paths frequently. He explained how he got that shot and how it had made him a name in the industry. To me he was a god amongst weasels that scurried around the courthouse parking lot on a daily basis. One night we were out chowing down at an all you can eat pizza joint. The decor was based on the Klondike gold rush and had polar bears and moose heads hanging all over the walls. Nick came in with a new digital camera. This thing was sick; something like 22 mega-pixels and worth 20 grand. So he sat down and said to me, "Glen, stand on table next to moose." I thought the request kind of odd but I figured this was an idol of mine and probably would have downed some tainted Kool-Aid if he had asked. So I climbed up on the table and stood next to a moose head. Everyone in the place turned to watch. Nick then took his hands and made the international symbol for moose antlers by curling his upward palms on the top of his head. This I took to mean that he wanted me to do the same....and I did. He raised the camera and took the shot. later that night as I lay in bed I thought about what had taken place. Part of me was flattered that Nick would use me as a subject in one of his pictures. The other part of me wondered how the fuck this incredibly gifted Pulitzer Prize winning cat could find himself in a shit hole, greasy spoon taking pictures of an idiot standing on a table pretending he was a moose. Thus is the complexity of life.

Sound and the Fury

My aunt is one of the classiest women I know. She is an avid opera fan, attends all gallery functions and could whoop any one's ass in a game of classical Name That Tune. So it was a trifle disturbing that I should crack a joke the other day and she would rip the loudest fart I have ever heard come out of a human body. We were sitting at her kitchen table and I just happened to let fly with an off color joke. I have never told her an off color joke but I figured at least once in her 80 years of existence she was damned well going to hear one. As soon as I released the punch line she threw her head back to laugh but before anything could come out of her mouth a sound I can only describe as an uncooperative elephant seal being dragged across over-sized bubble wrap. She caught herself mid-laugh, jumped from the table and ran into the bathroom. I sat there stunned listening to what I thought was sobbing coming from beneath the bathroom door. I thought about making a hasty exit but before I could split she reappeared wiping tears from her eyes and laughing hysterically. "I almost pooped my pants!" she said. Well, it just goes to show you. You can take the girl out of the opera house but if you do she may just ask you to pull her finger.

BarkArt

I cut down this hollow tree I found last year while running from the law.I then sanded it up, polished it and then polyurethane-d the shit out of it. I put some lights inside of it and then took some pictures of living trees to place inside of it. Here's the funny part: I printed the pictures on transparent plastic and decided to mount them on PlexiGlass to get that "ghostly" feel. So, just a few minutes ago I was trying to cut the plexiglass with a razor-knife and it wasn't working. So I took a BBQ lighter and heated up a butter knife until it glowed and then used that to melt my way through the plastic. Now the house is full of toxic smoke and I have a headache. Wonder how many brain cells just bought the farm?

Buggly

Last week some sort of flying insect crawled into one of the plastic, see-through legs of my computer monitor. It struggled for about a day and then expired...there in the see-through plastic leg of my computer monitor. So now, as I sit and type away I have a set (possible more) of eyes staring forlornly out from behind the plastic. I'd like to get rid of it but apparently I would have to perform some serious computer surgery and I am not up to the task at all. So I have solved the problem by resting a piece of stale toast against the leg and thus blocking its frozen gaze. Tomorrow I'll have to find something a little more environmentally stable than crispy dough. Just an observation.

Nature's Little Schizophrenic

I lived in Southern California for almost a decade and when people ask me what the worst part of living out there was they almost always assume that I'll snap back with the obligatory response of earthquakes, fires, mudslides and traffic. It almost always comes as a shock when I look them straight in the eyes and tell them it was the mockingbirds; those little under achieving language learners of the sky whose retarded stream of consciousness drive men to eat the business end of shotguns.
I lived in Del Mar. It is one of the most affluent and stunningly beautiful communities on the face of the planet. Snuggled tight against the ocean to its tits and dry ritzy hills to its ass, it is a place where the surf bum and the filthy rich rub sunscreen and Armani-covered shoulders. I happened to luck out by finding a dirt-cheap house to rent amidst the million dollar shacks. The reason it was so cheap was because the landlady, a demented little woman, chose to leave the 50’s era, military style apartment house “as is”. She considered it charming. Well, “charming” was one way to put it. However, I found that fighting mice for a place on the couch and dancing around frogs that would pop out of the detached bathtub drain fell a little bit outside the realm of charm. But considering I lived to surf and its location directly across the street from the beach I bought into the whole “charm” thing and bit my tongue.
The little fucker came in the spring. At first I thought it novel to be awakened every morning at sunrise by the sounds of various birds chirping right outside my window. It gave a sense of closeness to nature that would otherwise have been vacant being so close to the seagull infested shore. Within a few days, however, I began to wonder why these birds seemed to wait until the other had finished its calls before the next one began. Never were they in harmony. It was like an open-mic night with a constant turnstile of variety. One morning I hastily opened the window because it sounded like someone was sodomizing the neighbor’s cat only to find a single shitty, gray brown bird sitting on the arm of a low-slung juniper tree creating the god-awful racket. Being only five feet away I scared it off with the wave of a hand. But it returned…every day…at sunrise. At first I began by tossing a handful of pennies from a jar a kept near the window but eventually resorted to throwing object with more substance; a water glass, books and even a stale burrito. Nothing worked. No hint was taken. It simply returned the next morning. The little bastard was driving me insane and my neighbor was getting rich off discarded projectiles tossed into his yard from my window.
One morning, after a month of this I decided to cut down the tree and you know what? It worked. I lived happily in that house for the next year. When I finally moved a mile up the coast (the frogs finally won out) I ended up in a posh house surrounded by dozens of huge junipers and the very first morning I was there I was awakened by dozens of mockingbirds chattering outside my window. To this day I still hate Gregory Peck.

Oh The Thing You Learn

Today I learned from a fellow co-worker that the "Guacamolans" down in Brazil were stealing our jobs faster than these jobs could be created and were pretty much the sole cause of the construction industry woes. First of all you have to take into consideration this co-workers perpetual state of pre-menstruation and his blindingly...blind faith in the Red White and Blue. I granted him some geographic leniency but prodded him to further expound upon his thesis. And what he told me. MY GOD! I never realized in how much shit we, as a country, were in! Apparently this act of job stealing is more wide spread than I had ever imagined. I was utterly astounded to learn that the Portuguese (also from Brazil) were flying across the border faster than pregnant teens in Pre Roe V. Wade days and that these Portuguese were taking ALL of their money and sending it back home! What they really wanted was to start farms back in the old country and they were just "using" us as a way to make that happen. No wonder it was so hard for nice Caucasian boys to find work. I was always under the assumption that white kids were too busy jacking off on the internet and day dreaming about seven figure salaries like all the shiny-faced tools on MTV to be bothered to take a job that paid slightly higher than minimum wage. And you know what? I am led to believe that A LOT of people know this fact! Where the hell have I been? I guess they really don't want better lives than the countries that they emigrated from could ever offer. What they were doing was just padding their pockets at our expense. I guess I am going to have to radically change my way of thinking. The first thing I am thinking of is purchasing farmland down their in Guacamola.