right here, right now

at church last week, a speaker mentioned how we spend so much time texting. we all know i'm a texter, being grateful for the "unlimited texts" option on my monthly plan. the speaker noted how often we are consumed in texting a friend in another place that we ignore those friends we're with at the moment.

i thought about that. i've made light efforts to curb my rabid texting around others, but something about that chimed with me, and i decided to be much more conscious about giving my time and attention to those i'm with. plus, it's just polite.

makbule the puma

some friends and i went to lagoon on saturday. it was a perfect day for it, and we had a blast (the same can also be said for the oquirrh mountain temple open house i went to early that morning). leaving our never-to-be-used water park clothing at the oversized locker, we walked into the park and i decided i was going to win myself a jumbo prize at one of the games. i saw a two and a half foot pikachu that looked like a good prize, but soon found a better one.

down by the new wicked rollercoaster was game offering either a tiger or a jet black puma, each about five feet in length. i vowed to the group and to myself that i would that puma. after mark and i met a very nice turkish girl named "makbule" working the old mill lunch counter, i decided that makbule would be an excellent name for a five-foot jet black stuffed puma living on my couch.

as i didn't want to have to carry makbule around the park all day, i waited until near the end to play the game. the premise was simple and possible: toss a quarter onto a 15" glass plate situated atop a glass jar. the glass on glass makes it extremely elastic, easily bouncing a quarter off it. but when each try cost only a quarter, it seemed wiser than throwing a softball into a giant milk jug at a $1 a toss. mark gave me some advice on how to aim and throw: go at a high angle, so that the coin essentially drops directly on to the plate.

i attacked it with all the focus and determination of, well, a puma stalking its prize. i wasn't mindlessly wasting money, but had set aside a certain amount with which i was going to win makbule. i became friends with the lady working the counter, who affirmed that my strategy was the right one, and was soon saying she wanted me to win it as much as i did (probably not quite, but i don't doubt her intentions).

my friends were around me, watching and cheering, groaning with me on the few tosses that were so close. eventually, most of them left to go ride wicked one last time, expecting, as i was, for all of us to meet up afterwards, with me stuffing a giant plush animal into my honda.

the money i had set aside was spent. the lady behind the counter charitably handed me a few of my tossed quarters that had fallen short and landed on the floor. rocio gave me a dollar.

i didn't win makbule.

i was really disappointed. i was so sure i was going to win the puma. i imagined how cool it would be, to drive home with him shoved in my back seat, of people being able to curl up with him at movie night.

this was not the blog post i envisioned writing.

so i don't have a big ol' puma named makbule on my couch. as reality was starting to creep in during my tosses, as i started to wonder if maybe i didn't get a quarter on the plate, if maybe the lady would just give me one anyway, for trying so hard. i really didn't want that. just as much as i wanted the stuffed animal, i wanted the story that came with it. i wanted the achievement that won the prize.

i set my goal, i was determined to win, i gave it my all, and it still didn't work out.

but i'll try again next time. it will be mine.

reasons why "up" is awesome

flabbergasted editor's note: this morning i checked the recent headlines on the blog-o-tubes and was shocked. a writer for sparkplug in the sea had posted an article that left me looking at the title like a winded rhinoceros: 11 lessons learned from "UP". what was so incredulous about the situation was that we had a very similar article slated for publication today on sheep go to heaven. the improbability of the situation was so perplexing that i immediately contacted the doppelganger blog's editor, if for no other reason than to share the uncanny moment.

i have decided to continue with today's publication schedule as planned, as our writer has not yet read the other post; maybe it's about the glories of the spacial direction.

last night i was speculating that my life and actions may be, in fact, governed by the phases of the new moon. this is adding evidence to the theory...

last week, mark and i went to see up again. you have do that with pixar films; they're too rich to appreciate fully the first time over. i didn't realize the profundity of nemo, ratatouille, or wall-e until the second, third, or seventh viewings. so, when i saw up on opening day and wasn't completely astounded, i was ok with that and knew i'd be back again.

pete docter and co. do not disappoint.

why:

it's awesome before it even begins. partly cloudy is, perhaps, the best pixar short to date, second only to the sublime geri's game. in five minutes, you're touched, laughing, heart-breaking, then holding back tears of happiness. already worth your ticket price.

the opening montage of carl and ellie's life is lyrical storytelling at its best. in preparation for the first act of wall-e, the team said they watched every buster keaton movie on dvd (another reason why i love the film?) to learn how to tell stories without words. that cinematic skill has carried over into up, helping us empathize with why carl is a grumpy old man and to love him just the same. their entire married life in five minutes, and you know the whole story. darn near perfect.

sub-reason: look at all the other trailers for animated movies: cool, funny-looking, exciting hero characters. who stars in up? a curmudgeonly old man with a cane (and not a "cool" cane, but one of those with four legs) and an overweight asian kid (yet neither adjective is ever discussed, noted, or alluded to). i love those pixar guys....

instead of being shipped off to a retirement community some time after the passing of his dear wife, carl decides to live out his dreams.

on my desk is a 4x6 note card with the sharpied words, "it's not too late". no matter how old you are, no matter what's happened, it's not too late to follow your dreams, wishes, and hopes. even if it takes a lot of helium balloons.

at the core, that's why this movie is great.

if you never try, you'll never know...

talking about his father, russell laments that his dad isn't around much, not making time for him. maybe his dad buys him a new four-wheeler for Christmas to make up for it, who knows? but walking through south america, talking to carl, russell remembers how he and his dad would go out for ice cream after scouts.

"i know that sounds boring," he says, "but i guess it's the 'boring' stuff that i remember most."

best lesson in any movie this year.

another sub-reason: a standard movie would have resolved this sub-plot with russell's father appearing at the end, sealing the movie with sugar. bless pixar for being bold and wise.

squirrel!

finally, carl gets what he came for, to live in peace and quiet in his house next to the place he and ellie dreamed of. it's peaceful. it's quiet. it's boring. it's lonely.

he's sitting around doing nothing while the people whom he does care about are out doing (and chasing) things, and he decides to go after them. the balloons are losing buoyancy and his house is too heavy. so he starts throwing things out. everything. this was, perhaps, the most profound statement i noticed on the first time.

the story established how much these things mean to carl. they are his life, his remembrances of his time with his wife. but they're just things, and they're holding him back now. he is able to hold on to the memories without holding on to the actual things. he lets them go (without a second thought) and his life takes off again.

dang, i need to go see it again. anyone up for up?

(p.s. today is a tally hall day)

one small step for ghost armadillos...

...one giant leap for me!

this is the final shot of our movie, my first shot i've lit.

after this, the (forthcoming at some point) "teapot" post may seem rather underwhelming, but i'm pretty excited about this and wanted to show it off.

it was only thursday that i wandered into the weekly dailies meeting and said that i'd like to help with the lighting, and now i'm, well, i'm bonified.
and digging it.
seriously digging it.

if you believe....

it was only a few weeks ago that i realized i was born just ten years after the moon landing. i guess anything before your lifetime may as well have been forever ago.

today is the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing, and i'm happy to see that google had a commemoration graphic. i did my best to celebrate by wearing my r.e.m. shirt ("man on the moon": it was the closest thing i had), listening to the orb's adventures beyond the ultraworld (highly recommended), and watching the recently re-released for all mankind.

i've heard the movie frustrates some who are very familiar with the history of the space program because it combines all the apollo missions into one story (i'm curious what my dad will think). rather than being a historical look the progress of the program, it is lyrical look at the accomplishment and the wonder surrounding it all. it's marvelous.

a few days ago, i was skimming through mtv's schedule, looking to see if michael jackson's funeral would be rebroadcast. seeing the titles of the shows on mtv made me ashamed to be a human being. watching the poetry of the space program, of the work and dedication and devotion, the majesty of being on the moon, it made be proud of humanity.

like walt whitman's "the learn'd astronomer", looking up into the sky surpasses the mind and touches the heart.

when i heard the learn’d astronomer;
when the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
when i was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
when i, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
how soon, unaccountable, i became tired and sick;
till rising and gliding out, i wander’d off by myself,
in the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

i just realized, i should have worn my tmbg "apollo 18" shirt.

blast.

my dinner with dane

excluding my very first semester at byu, i was like a very high percentage of byu guys, rooming with a mission buddy. dane and i decorated our room with Christmas lights, went to a fireside where elder uchtdorf of the second quorum of the seventy told us that he was a harry potterfan, and we bore our testimonies to each other at a lamp post on 9th east coming home from school one night. dane was a computer science major who later switched to modern dance, attempted to live the life of a homeless person in salt lake during the olympics, and moved out of our apartment to hike across russia and asia, stopping in mongolia to spend some time with the nomadic yak herders.

since his eastern hemisphere trek, i haven't seen dane much. the last i saw him was in the ice cream aisle at macey's, where he and his new wife were soon moving to oregon, where he was going to open a dance studio. occasionally i've gotten e-mails from him, like the trivia contest asking which u.s. state has declared war on a foreign nation (it was maine).

last week he e-mailed me, saying he was in town to present a paper at a dance symposium at byu, in defense of how the dance department justifies the mission goals of the university, i believe.

we met up at the creamery on ninth. it was the most convenient place at the moment, but it was also where we would often go as exuberant freshmen. just walking back in there amidst long lines of parents and swarms of children in the ice cream line made it seem as if our past was only last year.

we laughed as we happily discovered were we still both dabbling with m:tg (if you don't know, i'm not telling), and briefly summed each other up on our hopes and dreams.

"do you still have anyone to have philosophical discussions with?" he asked.

i thought about it, and realized that i don't. from jon in high school, through dane, the chris, and even the dingus, i would have long discussions into the night, letting our minds sprawl as we talked. i remembered how, with dane and chris, my room-roommates, we would lie awake in our bunk beds, talking until one of us would fall asleep. i miss that dearly.

while i wasn't too concerned about it, i conscious of my car being in the creamery's "30 minute parking" and suggested we go to my place. he was very impressed, declaring it to have "good mojo", and we sat down with glasses of wheat tea (it's a japan-thing).

we talked of how we've changed since we knew each other, learning to apply gospel principles and understanding in a gray scale world. how we've tightened in some ways, relaxed in other matters of understanding. and he shared a thought-provoking story about learning what the prompting of the Spirit isn't.

the time came, and i dropped him off at campus. our visit was barely two hours, but as i drove home, i looked at the ever-changing byu campus (surrounded by cumbersome construction projects our freshman year, he noted that he was glad to be a school that could continually update itself). it was strange to remember so much that i had forgotten; some things were casual memories. others i wanted to hold onto, to see what i could do with them again.

wait for it...

in the ensign this month is an article titled, "a scripture that changed my life", a brief anthology that pretty much describes itself. reading through some of them, i wondered what i would have shared. and, until the editors solicit a sequel, i'd like to share my eponymous scripture.

habakkuk 2:3

habakkuk is one of those lovely little books in the rarely-visited back of the old testament. we don't know much about him: there are no stories of him calling fire down upon people, getting eaten by a leviathon, or talking with a donkey. he's only got three chapters; there's not much to draw from. his name never really caught on the way that daniel or jeremiah did. in short, it's pretty easy to overlook habakkuk.

one night i was flipping through scriptures, cross-referencing something (quite possibly by bruce r. mcconkie) and i ended up in habakkuk. glancing around to find my verse, i happened to read verse three in chapter two:

for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

i don't know the specific context of the chapter, but i know what it has meant to me over the years. we are on the Lord's time table. answers, ideas, pathways and people often don't come when we want them. there are moments and days when it feels like things may not work out. but the Lord is watching over us and sees what is ahead, what is waiting for us.

though it tarry, it will surely come.

lamers

a chevron "supreme" car wash does not get egg off of your car hood.

but some gas station paper towels, windshield cleaner, and some effort does a pretty good job.

lamers.

where's my two dollars?

i'm a fan of redbox, particularly for using the free rental codes they text me to try out movies on my clearplay.

the past two times that i've rented, though, i've mistakenly hit the wrong button and not realized that i skipped the part to enter the rental code and ended up paying for the movie i went to get for free.

it's only a dollar. well, it's been two dollars, now.

but it's the loss of the joy of getting a free rental.

at least the movies have been good. (well, i'm trying to get the filter for gran torino to load as i type this....)

kimmy and the goblet of fire

i always liked kimmy (her name has not been changed, because she's so darn cool about the following story). she was hip and cute, dressed cool and had a great sense of humor, liked good music and was fun to be with. we made a bet at the ward sledding activity and she ended up introducing me to wait until dark (i forget what the bet was or which of us won). she went with me to the radiohead concert. and i invited her to be my date to see harry potter and the goblet of fire.

as has become tradition, we had tickets to the midnight showing at the scera theater; the combination of big-a screen and overly enthusiastic fans makes it the best place to see the premieres. kimmy and i and our group all went out to eat at ihop that evening before the show started, which was the style at the time. i probably got the colorado omelet. i don't remember what kimmy got, but there's a good chance she does.

we were at the scera a few hours early, with enough time to get a decent spot in the fanatic line. kimmy noted that she wasn't feeling very good, so she and i took it easy seated by a wall. by the time we got into the theater, the best available seats were the rows near the back (we said hi to jaime and her boy, who were at the very back). being this close to the exit proved to be advantageous. during the previews, kimmy wasn't feeling any better, and as it got worse, we sent jack (or becky?) running to the concession stand for an empty popcorn bucket.

sadly, it came a little too late, as i looked over at my date and she was doubled over, holding her open purse to her mouth.

i walked with her to the ladies restroom and waited outside the door, unsure of what i could do in a situation like this. when she emerged, she seemed to be feeling better. i asked about her purse.

"jeff, i threw that purse away...." she said faintly.

we went back in and watched a bit of the movie, but she had already called her roommate to pick her up, as she was still weak. i felt bad about staying while her roommate came to get her, but she told me to stay, and i obliged, knowing she'd feel worse if i also missed the movie (even voluntarily) because of her.

the movie was good.

when i went to a party at her apartment a few months later, as soon as i walked in, she shouted across the room, "hey jeff- remember that time i got sick and threw up in my purse at harry potter??"

just one of the reasons why kimmy is awesome.

i bought my tickets for harry potter 6 this morning; the 12:01 a.m. showing at the scera. maybe we'll go to ihop.

dating

i rented 2001: a space odyssey shortly after i saw the "100 years, 100 movies" special in the summer of 1998, determined to educate myself in the field of film. 2001 was nothing like i expected, leaving with the same "okay.....?" that most people experience. it has since climbed to the top of my lists, one of the best movies ever. period.

i had heard so much about amelie that, by the time i saw it, it couldn't possibly live up to it's accolades. i remember watching it, thinking, "i should be loving this, but i can't force myself to." over time, it has become one of my favorites, continuing to reaffirm it's amazingness.

i rented the royal tenenbaums because i had heard it was off-beat humor that i might appreciate. our apartment sat watching it, confused at what was supposed to be funny about it (though i laughed hard at dudley's observation, "that car has a dent in it.") despite having only seen the movie once, the quotes were repeated again and again in our apartment, becoming funnier and funnier until i had to own the movie. it's now one of my most beloved.

i went into fanny and alexander curious to see what i had heard so much about, but thinking that it couldn't be better than the seventh seal. i walked out of the theater three hours later, so astounded that i was literally speechless, only able to say "i don't know what i just saw, but it was amazing!" i knew it was in my top 5. now it's my #1.

i wasn't sure what to expect with wall-e, a movie about a robot of some sorts. after the first time i saw it, i thought i was pretty neat. i liked the love story between two robots, but the "green" message was a little heavy, especially in the second half. yet i kept seeing it again and again, and, well, now i have the conceptual art book, desktop wallpaper, plush toy, and bed sheets.

"and if we don't try too hard...."

what i'm listening to these days

• yo la tengo- i can hear the hearts beating as one
• patti smith- horses
• u2- the joshua tree
• arcade fire- funeral
• kraftwerk- the man machine and computer world
• michael jackson- thriller
• tally hall- marvin's marvelous mechanical museum
• stacey kent- breakfast on the morning tram
• jane monheit- the very best of jane monheit
• vladimir horowitz- rachmaninov concerto #3
• johan sebastian bach- the best of bach
• wolfgang amadeus mozart- the best of mozart
• the shins- wincing the night away
• r.e.m.- accelerate and fables of the reconstruction

this is not a joke!

as i write this, my blog visitor counter is at 9,999. the first person to see this post will be the 10,000th visitor to sheep go to heaven (since i instituted the counter, which was a while after the blog's inception).

please leave a comment.

blog shots

a series of small to short posts from the past week, to be taken similar to the virgin jell-o shots at monday's f.h.e.

enjoy.

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the seventh seal indescribably gets better and better every time i see it. and, on blu-ray, rises to become one of the crown jewels of my collection.

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i've been a fan of frisbee golf for years. but kinetic speed frisbee golf is a whole new level. i like it.

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lighting an interview in austin, tx.:

i love lighting; it's my passion.

once we've started shooting, i begin to notice things i should have noticed before.

there are half a dozen things i would desperately love to change if we could start over and light for another 20 minutes.

does anyone notice these? are they blatantly obvious because i'm looking specifically for them, or are they legitimately blatantly obvious?

i feel like charlie kaufman, not janusz kaminski.

i remind myself that brian, who trained me (?) seems to feel the same way about most of the shots he does, too.

i let it go.

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as we were getting breakfast tacos, someone said it was supposed to be record highs that day.

the evening news confirmed it: austin set a new record with 105. as long as i'm in austin, i may as well get the best.

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my brother loaned me his macbook so i could watch movies on the plane. in my case:

the making of fanny and alexander

fellini's 8 1/2

le jour se leve

the spirit of the beehive

vampyr

buster keaton's three ages

kind hearts and coronets

sansho the bailiff

pepe le moko

shrek 2

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in keeping with the theme of amazing food on this trip, i had the best ribs i've ever had (sorry, mom) at stubb's bbq in austin. afterwards, my mouth tasted like bbq smoke; it was amazing.

they might be giants played a concert in their basement a year and a half ago.

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flying into salt lake, we went through possibly the worst turbulence of my life. when the plane blew sideways, and the ground below shifted in an uncommon way, i decided to close my window and let what happened happen. the crying babies seemed to vocalize how most of the people around me looked. when the plane safely landed, several people cheered.

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i went to the lehi rodeo on thursday night. they were doing a "tough enough to wear pink" theme for breast cancer awareness, with several horses, cowboys, and much of the crowd in pink. when i went again on saturday, i wore pink.

evidently, that was only for thursday night. excluding several little girls, i was about the only one in pink.

i'm tough enough.

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101.9 has reinstated their acoustic sunday morning playlists. as my i lay in bed, listening, "achy breaky heart" came on. that was perhaps the most surreal event of my whole weak.

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provo monogatari

the night before my parents got into town, i cleaned as much of the house as i could--pretty much everything except my bedroom and the backyard, which was untended since before the winter--then sat down and watched ozu's tokyo story.

my dad had some time off from work, and so he and my mom were driving out west, stopping along the way to visit my mom's family, then swinging around to see us kids. being that i'm the one with the largest residence and a recently empty room, i was also the headquarters for their visit. having them come out was not unusual; they seem to be out here once or twice a year. what was unusual was that they were out here together. in the past, my dad will be out on a ski trip (visiting his progeny is simply an afterthought), and my mom will be out visiting family. so having them here together was, more or less, a new one. as i was bedding down on the downstairs couch, i had a peaceful feeling that took me a moment to place: it was the same feeling i get when i'm back home in minnesota for the first night of Christmas vacation. it was good to have my parents here.

what i enjoyed most about their visit was taking the time to learn from my parents. while i'm starting to play tennis (jack? jaime?), my understanding of the rules is mostly the vestiges from the two-week unit in high school gym class, and my technique is stems from, if anything, wii tennis. but my dad used to play (i think he actually has a trophy or two somewhere), and i asked him to bring out his tennis racquet. on the courts by westridge elementary, he helped me polish up on the rules, pointed me in the right direction with my technique, and even gave me a few pointers on strategy, where to stand, how to anticipate, and the like.

and then, of course, we went to f.y.e., where dad happily found weird al's uhf on sale and promptly bought it.

like i mentioned, the backyard garden looked, well, unpleasant, excepting one pleasant surprise: the snapdragons, flowers that did only moderately well last year under my care and were supposedly one-shot annuals, had grown back in greater fortitude that before. one afternoon early in the visit, we were thinking of what to do with our time when i threw out the option of going back and weeding the garden. i planned for it to be little more than a way to occupy a few hours until becky and brady and the blessed grandchild arrived. yet plucking weeds gave way to thoughts of getting a few flowers and the need for a shovel. a trip to lowe's brought the idea of "why stop at little flowers" and "why not a climbing rose bush"? and "why not some asian poppies?" (my mom has them and they look awesome) a few days later, we were at a serious flower shop, loading our pallet with not only exotic poppies, but dahlias, tomato plants, jalepenos, and purple bell pepper plants (i didn't even know they existed). and then off to another expensive nursery, where hand trowels are sold for $25, to get the best darn rose bush we could find.

my dad got into it to, offering to go to the store to repair my recently broken garden hose and, after some collaboration with my mom, coming back with enough gadgets and gizmos to set up a watering system for my tiny backyard. i didn't need the stuff; in fact, part of the reason i planted flowers back there last year was that i wanted something to work on (although by september i was pretty tired of watering everything every night and decided that their season would end prematurely), but my parents were having more fun with this than i was that i decided to let them enjoy it all.

while it's always nice to have life return to its familiar order, i was sad to see them go, feeling a bit like my grandma waving goodbye as they left that morning.

update: gardening is not my natural forte; everything out back is looking sad. the snapdragons fared much better before i touched them, i see no signs of fruit or flowers on the vegetables, and my beloved rose bush bears a disturbing resemblance to the apostate olive tree of jacob 5. i am hoping that it's just the daily rain showers we've been having, flooding my plants and blocking out the sun, trusting that, when the desert's rainy season passes, my secret garden with one day flourish.

the new watch list: geriatrics

i'm trusting that the airport security teams know more than i do, and that perhaps al-quaeda is changing their recruiting tactics.

going through security at the small airport in portland, maine, elderly people were being pulled aside for security searches on either side of me. to my left a woman who had trouble bending down to take off her shoes, while the man on my left moved so slowly that it took him a while to gather all of his belongings. in wilmington, north carolina, a frail woman with swollen ankles in a wheelchair was being taken behind the glass partition and searched for guns, bombs, and any other signs of being a terrorist.

meanwhile, i, a man in my late twenties with a scruffy beard and copy of the qur'an in my hand, moved through both security gates without a second look.

good eats

in 24 hours, i've become "a regular." josh the photographer and i have each been to the dock street oyster bar four times. the ad guys were there as were walking down the boardwalk at sunset, getting more "b-roll" shots, and after more oysters, mussels, and a cherry coke for me, we left to find some dinner. food--good food--has been in abundance on this trip. at a restaurant on the water i got the crab cakes and the flounder, two of the most-recommended items by the locals. the crab cake was full of flavor and spices, living up to all that had been said of it; the flounder was nothing to blog about. just the same, i was still full as we left the dock street oyster bar.
we walked past two sushi bars, numerous italian restaurants, a cafe, countless pubs, taverns, and bars, including a russian bar, a nice french restaurant that looked promising but was, for some reason, passed up (i think because it was empty inside, and therefore couldn't be that good), past another riverside cafe, debated over a classic ice cream and fudge parlor that piped out the smell of new waffle cones, stood in front of an oyster bar with live music on the outdoor patio, and finally conceded amongst the seven of us on the dock street oyster bar, walking in for the fourth time in 24 hours to the place we had just left.
when you've got the best, why do anything else?

two things i wish i'd brought: my still camera and my running shoes.

the interview went great, today. the guy we were interviewing works as a gaffer, and a self-lighting subject is as wonderful as a ron popeil invention: it slices, it dices, it lights itself, and my life is all the easier.
working in this (or any) sort of artistic position is a balancing act; could i have done better? if only i knew more, had more experience; what would the guys who trained me do? are the ad guys happy with it? well, it's kind of like jack johnson song: "everybody thinks that everybody knows about everyone else, but they're all worried about the themselves." so the trick is to keep your wits, think clearly and do your best, then let it be.

after a couple of final hours at the oyster bar and filling bucket of crustacean shells of every sort to overflowing, we were the very last people in our favorite hang out. we parted ways, and those of us walking home noticed some people with ice cream cones, and followed the scent to the ice cream parlor, just minutes from closing. there are few better ways to end a day than with a single scoop of chocolate brownie in a fresh waffle cone and a small box of fancy chocolates.

i hope i go running on saturday.

"great grits are perfection"

editor's note: due to our senior photo editor being on the road without a camera, some posts will be without the customary picture.  we apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that the evocative nature of the writing will make up the gap.  (why not having a camera prevents him from grabbing images off google--as he usually does--makes a difference, i don't understand.  but you know how these creative types are)

wilmington, nc.  8:43 p.m., eastern daylight time

north carolina has jumped to the lead for "best meal" at the moment, no small feat on this trip.  at the dock street oyster bar, a little caribbean-style restaurant shack just a few hundred feet from the river.  everyone i've talked to said to try to the crab cakes, but with no cakes on the menu, i went for the day's special, shrimp and grits.

best meal yet.

a flavorful cream sauce with red peppers and green onions with excellent shrimp over a plate of grits, i savored each bite.  afterward, we were brave and tried a plate of raw oysters on the half shell.  delicious.

yesterday was our first day of shooting.  i was generally happy with the lighting on the interview (and grateful for the good help around me), but it's still an odd feeling to not have anyone between me and the ad guys.  i like them, and they like me, but they're turning to me for answers and suggestions.  it's easy to offer the occasional suggestion or improvement, but now i'm the one giving the main ideas for lighting and shots; it requires a step up.  i think i can do better on tomorrow's.

we had lunch at a new england pub that looked like patrick henry could have given a rousing speech in, where i got the fried scallops but should have gotten the lobster roll.  from there me and the sound girl went out with an ad guy to get shots of the city.  again, not "jeff, put the camera here", but "shoot what you think is good, jeff."  i think standing up to shoot out the sunroof as we were driving across the bridge impressed them.

shooting during the afternoon is never really good; the overhead sunlight is just boring.  i told the ad guys i might go back out when the sun was setting, but after getting into my hotel room, lost the motivation for that until the photographer called me.

"hey, i heard you were going out to shoot around town; mind if i come along, just to get out?"

"um, yeah.  i'll be down in.... 10 minutes."

i'm glad he called; the footage we got was much better.  and we ended the day with swordfish at a very nice restaurant.

the night we flew in to maine, i told the shuttle driver that my connotations of maine were pretty much lighthouses on rocky shores and lobsters.  he said that was pretty much it, adding blueberries (and chickadees), saying we will have the best blueberry pancakes in the world here.  the hotel's breakfast cafe, decorating with not with wallpaper but genuine cloth wall coverings, confirmed it: the blueberry malt pancakes were the best i've ever had.

after all this, north carolina seemed like it could only go down.  and, yes, it has, but only slightly.  our hotel is equally nice but more modern, and overlooks the cape fear river (yeah, i always figured "cape fear" was a cape, or even just a movie), and has a nice boardwalk along the river.  

my connotations of north carolina don't seem as accurate as they were in maine: i think of tobacco plantations and toned-down versions versions col. sanders and scarlet o'hara.  instead, jimmy buffett and the island culture are much more predominant in the tourist (?) areas.

the one thorn in this whole trip is that i did not bring my camera.  it's hard to tell if a trip will be a whirlwind, where the camera is just one more bag to carry and keep track of, or it there will be countless moments to capture.  tragically, this trip has most definitely, been the latter.  *sigh*

mental pictures......  (and tim's point-n-shoot, which i appreciate).

josh, our photographer, got in a few hours after we did, and although we'd already eaten, i went out with him to dinner.  and after meandering the streets, which seemed busier now than they did at 7, he chose the same place i went to earlier (largely because i wouldn't stop raving about it).  josh got the special.  i've been jonesing for a good slice of chocolate cake for days, and he noticed that, while it wasn't on the menu, it was on the "today's special", just like the shrimp and grits (and another plate of mississippi oysters).

through the mercy of the fates, we picked the best day of the year to come to this place.

as if that weren't enough, the clock/radio here, too, is ipod friendly.  and i've got jane monheit singing to me as i finish this.

wish you were here.

who needs the old england?

after 30 minutes, maine had already become my second favorite state in the nation.

and hour and a half later, i have to confess that maybe it was a little overzealous, but it's been a long day of travel (and this is a seriously dang place).  alarm went off at 4:44 a.m. after four hours of sleep.  my sleep cycles seem to be about fours in length, because i recover much better if i sleep for four hours instead of 5.  having the good fortune of a friend who works in salt lake early in the morning and who offered ride, mark drove me to the airport, eliminating the hassle of getting myself there (and avoiding a repeat of the vegas trip, where my sister kindly parked my car then forgot where in the long term parking lot she put it).  the plane to jfk in nyc was full but big (and we considered staying on with it to barcelona).

we landed 45 minutes early, only to have to wait 30 minutes and then disembark through the rear of the plane onto what looked like a monorail on wheels (instead of on one rail).  still, that's a net of 15 minutes early, and our plane was delayed for 90 minutes because the stewardess for our plane was on another plane that was delayed in portland, me, due to nasty weather (catch all that?)  i used the time to find out that another part of our team had their flight rerouted to boston and had to drive up, to straighten out some misunderstandings from last tuesday's commercial, and to make sure that the lights and gear was picked up in portland- called the electrician to let him know it was ready, and he'd already done it; that's a good feeling.

once on the plane, the pilot announced it would be a bit of a wait to take off, about 40 minutes.  30 minutes later, he came on to say that we were behind all the international flights and it would be another... oh, 45 minutes.  thankfully, the sole stewardess was very cool and the passengers were understanding.  and we each got our choice of cookies or peanuts while we were waiting.  i chose the cookies.

then dozed off to vivaldi.

ask my geographically astute sister informed me from the airport in new york city, maine in the pinetree state.  that it is.

it's beautiful here.  the air is moist and cool, the city's downtown is rich with new england heritage.  the kid who picked us up in the hotel's shuttle was amiable and helpful, and, in addition to affirming my connotation of maine being the land of lighthouses and lobster, added blueberries and chickadees, declaring the best blueberry pancakes i will ever have.  i tipped him well.

i was already in love with this place.

the rest of the hotel staff was equally friendly.  the hotel is in the heart of the cultured city center (with cobblestone streets), and, though smaller, my room is a exquisite as the venetian in las vegas (but without the vegas part).  whereas most hotels have a simple clock/radio from the earlier nineties (i don't thin the venetian was even that different), here i have a clock/radio with an ipod dock, playing new age spa sounds (or the main menu music on a wii) when i came to my room.   and the downstairs lounge served excellent fish and chips.

forget barcelona; i want to stay here for a week.

life is like a hurricane

last year was full of "bumper crops", to borrow from joseph musical interpretation of the pharaoh's dream. and, like an egyptian dream, this year has been dry. not just for me, but for everyone. i've turned down a couple of features, one for moral reasons, the other due to academic obligations. and that's actually become a blessing.

a commercial company in salt lake that has been giving me most of my work in the past few months (i'm one of the lucky ones who is working right now) asked me to come onto their feature, but i had to decline, as i was busy learning to make three-dimensional cubes at byu (more on that in the days to come). being that those guys are busy on making a movie, they've started passing some of their commercial work on to me. i've been to las vegas, shooting some friendly verizon execs and discovering a fantastic sushi place, and just a few days ago directed for the first time. granted, it was a continuing the previous day's work on a provo craft infomercial, but that was me in the chair calling "cut" and "action" (and i quite enjoyed it).

a few weeks ago i got a call to go to nauvoo for a weekend. three days with a good guy and good pay and i wouldn't miss any school- cool. then i got a call from fifty films, the guys in salt lake, asking if i was available to shoot and direct a seven-city, two-week commercial. i'd miss the last two weeks of school, i'd have to cancel on my friend for the nauvoo trip, but this was too good to pass up.

so i made it all work. then, a few days before we were supposed to leave, the ad agency pushed the trip back a week. i called to see if they had a replacement for nauvoo; they did.

then, two days before nauvoo, they called to see if i could still go. cool.

nauvoo was beautiful, especially driving through the midwest farm lands as the sun was setting, seeing streaks of light beside the road. ...fireflies. : )

and now i'm working on sorting everything out in scheduling this two-week verisign project. it's a shift i'm responsibilities, but it's a lot of fun, too. so i've got that going for me, which is good.

and my flair for writing has atrophied, too.... that's my own darn fault.

bohemian requiem

i've written before about my funeral, but today i heard queen's "bohemian rhapsody" on the radio and thought it would be a great song to request for my deathday party.

too late, my time has come,

sends shivers down my spine
body's aching all the time,
goodbye everybody, i've got to go
gotta leave you all behind and face the truth-
mama ooo- (any way the wind blows)
i don't want to die,
i sometimes wish i'd never been born at all-

no, i don't mean to be morose; as i was listening to the song, i realized how sad and tragic the lyrics were (i've never analyzed the song or pondered what it's about; maybe there's some other meaning), and it seemed such a poor choice for a funeral that i found it interesting, especially contrasting with the second half of the song.

i imagine a slideshow of dramatic pictures with cross-dissolves.  then, when the much more fun and popular part of the songs starts, the show lets loose with all the pictures of me being the jeff i'd like everyone to remember.  headbanging is optional.

so, if anyone's taking notes...  : )

landmark moments

lds missionaries serve for two years (the guys do; the girls are out for 18 months).  at first, it can seem like a daunting time, then it's soon been a whole year.  about three months from the end, you get your "trunky papers", the plans on getting home.  it can be a sobering time, realizing that this singular and defining era is fast drawing to a definite close.

i was homesick for the first part of my time in japan, and so allowed myself little time to seriously consider returning home (i took the requisite "surprised" photo with said papers when they came).  i'd heard the idea of reading all 138 sections of the doctrine and covenants in reverse order when you had 138 days remaining, and so counted out the days so that i could read the whole book in the remaining time, but, apart from that, i did not look to the finish line but continued to keep the pace.

soon i could no longer count months, but weeks.  and, soon, it was only days.  on the very last night before my time was over and i would return to the mission home in kobe, my companion and i biked down to the shotengai, a sort of covered outdoor mall, going out to do the most basic and iconic missionary work, out talking with people on the streets; one last time.

i would have loved to find that one "golden" person that night.  to give away a book of mormon to someone who, i would found out in a letter a few months later, read it and joined the church.  but the truth is, no one would talk to us.  we were out there for a few hours, talking with whomever would stop, asking them what they knew about the meaning of Christmas (it was just a week before the holiday)' telling them we had a message that would change their life if they would give us only five minutes; working just as we had worked every other day.

and nothing.

no books.  no numbers.  nothing.

sure, it would have been cool find someone on the very last night of my two years (and another missionary from my group did have such an experience), but it didn't bother me.  i realized that my mission was not based upon the success of my last night.  that the meaning of all the work that i did was not contingent upon that one day, but, rather, every day that i had worked.  the sweetest and best and most memorable did not necessarily come on notable days; i don't think my 6-month, one-year, or 18-month days were inherently better than other days.  instead of forcing the fun and favorite memories to come at pre-arranged times, i had a library of experiences that had happened when they happened.

and so it is with posts, too.  i'll look back over the year and see which ones rose to be the best, likely growing from the occasion, rather than being forced into greatness.

like the young boy, russell, comments in up when speaking of the few times he has had with his father, "i guess it's the regular stuff i remember best."

thanks for reading my first 400 postings.

profundity

i haven't taken much time to write lately.  i've wanted to share my joy of my computer graphics class (which is where i've been spending as much of my free time as possible) and to launch a secondary blog (inspired by my boredom during monsters vs. aliens), but i haven't had that fire inside that compels one to write (that compels me, anyway).

i was about out the door (to the beloved byu labs) when i took a moment to read em's latest post, a moment of insight from her busy life.

i loved it.

if you have a moment, i'd like to recommend it.

blogger tells me this is my 399th published post; what do i do for number 400?

the biggest ball of twine in minnesota

we took a fair amount of family car trips when i was younger.  at least, it seems like we did.  apart from the annual trek down to grandma's for either thanksgiving or Christmas, the only other notable car trip i can remember at the moment is the drive out to washington state for a family reunion.  but, heck, i have trouble remembering my college years sometimes.   wait, that makes it sound like i was a drunken frat boy; let me rephrase that: i have a hard time separating college memories.  which may be due to all the apple beer we drank....

wherever those car trip memories come from, attached to them are a pile of cassette tapes.  because i was a bit older, i sat up front with my dad, while mom usually stayed in the back with becky and tim (they got very good at playing travel guess who?, and would do two or three people at once; that always impressed me).  i also seem to remember me usually choosing the music.  whether this is due to: a. me being the oldest, b. me being up front, or c. me having a poor memory of this whole era in general, i know not.  all the same, when i wasn't consumed with final fantasy legend 2 on my gameboy, we cycled through a trusty collection of tapes.  the three that come to mind at the moment are the ghostbusters 2 soundtrack, an oldies rock 'n' roll compilation with a neon jukebox on the cover, and my dubbed copy of the uhf soundtrack.  as i type that, i already want to call my mother and commend her for her job-like patience in hearing the same inane-songs again and again across much of the western united states (a similar scenario occurred when they drove me out to the mtc years later, only this time it was the CATS soundtrack with which my father and i were obsessed).

while the uhf soundtrack was, as the title suggests, the accompanying music to "weird" al's under-appreciated  masterwork, it also contained a handful of songs not in the movie.  these songs, like all of his oeuvre, are novelties, genius to anyone under fourteen, mildly amusing the first time to everyone else.  this includes parodies like "spam" (before i had ever heard "stand" or even heard of r.e.m.) and original gems like "attack of the radioactive hamsters from a planet near mars."  the last song on side two was "the biggest ball of twine in minnesota", a ballad wherein al and his family use their annual family trip to visit the eponymous string ball.

today i was playing mah-jong when my phone rang.

"jeffrey, guess where i am!"

now, my sister and i call each other when we're on top of mountains; it's just what you do.

dad wasn't as easy to guess, although my first two guesses were logical, considering the circumstances.  i'm sure there are so some father-son teams out there who would call when one of them is being welcomed at buckingham palace, waiting to be seated at a fine restaurant in paris, or just leaving a meeting with the board of trustees at harvard.  and i'm sure that's wonderful.

i first suspected texas, in reference to pee-wee herman proving he's on the phone in texas in pee-wee's big adventure (yes, nearly all of the in-jokes with my illustrious father are rooted in campy 80's movies).  in fact, it was my plan to call him and then actually holler, "the stars at night are big and bright!" when i was in texas for allison's wedding last summer, but completely forgot.

my second guess was that he was at the alamo (again, pee-wee).

"i'll give you a guess," said my dad.  "'weird' al."

and then i knew it: 

my dad was at the biggest ball of twine in minnesota.  

it was probably the coolest thing of the whole week, and today was only sunday.  i told him to take a picture, even if he only had his cell phone camera.  i don't think he'd ever used it before (his finger's in part of the shot) but it would be a tragedy not to have a memory of the occasion.  

according to wikipedia, it is 13 feet in diameter, weighs 17,400 lbs., and is the largest ball built by one person (a man who wrapped for four hours a day for 23 weeks).

seriously cool.

and that's when i knew...

i think it was when natalie wished jack a "happy restoration of the aaronic priesthood" that i knew she was the right girl for him.  

i'm pretty sure he already knew it.

for the love of the game

jack and i are getting better, i'm loving it more, and real tennis is a heck of a lot more fun than wii tennis.

it's also awesome to hear "what's the frequency, kenneth?" on the radio.

we close our eyes

at heart, i'm a hopeless romantic. i've never had that professionally diagnosed, but i'm pretty sure i know myself. but, lately, i've wondered if that romantic really is starting to lose hope: i skip past "the luckiest" when it comes on my playlist; i no longer look wistfully at my sleepless in seattle dvd in hopes of having someone to watch it with.
what happened to me?

tonight i was asked why i loved wall-e so much and i had to think about that for a moment. anyone who's been around me in the past nine months has heard my rantings of it being the greatest thing since blah blah blah, but i had to really think for a moment why, at the heart of it all, did i love it.

artistry, beauty, and humor aside, at the core of it is a love story that i love.  a tractor and an ipod fall in love, and that's told in a way that makes it universal. when wall-e first sees eve power on, when she flies around with such grace and beauty, when his eyes focus on the most sublime thing he has ever seen, that is when i fall in love with the movie, and that is why i love the movie.

coming home from dropping off my date this evening, i was thinking about that scene, and thought of my other similarly potent scene, the "ruby tuesday" scene in the royal tenenbaums. i just melt.
i'm still a sentimental guy, and that's a comfort.

i turned up the volume to the point of the speakers starting to fuzz and sang ben folds' "landed" with all my heart as i drove past years of memories on ninth east.

the greater good

i've really enjoyed my "intro to animation" class.  i feel a bit out of my league, as some of these kids can name off animators like i can list cinematographers, and i'm not really in love with all animation.  granted, i got a looney toons dvd set for Christmas and love them as much as i loved watching them on saturday mornings, but they never really inspired me to make a career choice.  but it's been fun, even with just two days of class, to learn different rules of animation.  i love sitting at the light table, with my stacks of paper all lined up, drawing a bouncing ball.  we also have to keep a weekly sketchbook, a responsibility i like largely because i'm so fascinated with others' sketchings and want to make mine look like theirs.  two hours at the bean museum after the first day of class left me with little more than determination to stick with it in the hopes of getting better.

i hung out at the mall one night, trying to draw people without freaking them out, hoping to master the art of staying out of "stalker distance" without being so far away that it was impractical to draw people.  kristin gave me some good tips on how to get away with everything (i'm openly envious of her sketchbook), but plans to spend saturday the mall were altered and i went to the byu library, instead.

three of our week's sketchbook pages had to come from some figure drawing handouts.  as i began reading about the different muscles of the chest, i soon felt inadequate to even pick up my pencils.  i knew enough of how complex the human body was to know i didn't know much, and, the more i learned, the more i felt like i shouldn't be drawing yet.  if i had the time, i would definitely take an anatomy class; i like to know every muscle, instead of just drawing what i think should there.

that's not really an option on a saturday night, although i did learn some about the muscles of the chest and back, and worked very hard to make my drawings as accurate as i could.  and, after six hours, i had three pages i was proud of.

now, six hours for three pages is more than usual.  most of the work is just sketching, which can go much quicker.  and i had fun animating my bouncing ball the night before.  but next i had to animate a flour sack as well as keep up with the drawings.  and i could probably balance this with my computer graphics class.

but i'm only here for seven weeks, and we're already into the second week.  time feels so very short, and the computer class is the number one reason why i'm here, and i committed to invest as much into it as i could.

i thought about it on saturday, thought about it on sunday, and, after my computer class today, knew it was the right choice.  i dropped "intro to animation."  it was for the greater good.

sadly, my animation and sketches won't get graded, which is sad, because i would have liked my teacher's feedback.

instead, i'll show them to you.

interestingly, that blue pencil is, technically, "no-photo blue"....  yeah.

the ball is only 3 seconds long.


i made the right choice: my computer class is pretty much the coolest thing ever. i spent some time in the lab tonight and it already pains me that i'll be out of there in only six weeks. so i'm going to get every bit out of it while i can.

back 2 school

yes, after four years and a bit, i'm back with a byu student id.  it's pretty awesome, really.  when i learned that the 3-D animation world really likes (and needs) nice guys with a real-world understanding of cameras and lenses, i looked around and found that i could come back to byu for the spring.  i signed up for a 3-D computer graphics class, then, deciding that, as long as i'm here i may as well learn as much as i can, signed up for "intro to animation" as well.

i was excited for my first day of school and wore my best clothes: my new vest, nicest jeans, and favorite shoes.

it's a bit of a shift, getting back into the mindset of going to class and doing homework, as well as being a little detached from the student world, as i'll only be here for seven weeks. but i do love the academic environment. i love the light tables we draw on in my animation class, the fact that my teacher worked on "the little mermaid", "beauty and the beast" and "aladdin", and that the computer graphics classroom/theater is decorated with all sorts of amazing designs, storyboards, and concept drawings.

special thanks to kristin for being the right person at the right place at the right time to take my "first day of school pictures."