Blog of the Blogervilles

I was at the Public Library returning something and there on a cart were a handful of DVDs I either hadn't seen or hadn't seen in a long time so I snatched them up.
The rule of thumb here is that the movie I'm least enthused about will be the one that I get fined for because it will be returned late. It might seem like I really like the movie, refusing to let it go back to the indifferent hands of random strangers. But nope - it is probably boring and a chore to watch. If you ask me do I like Roman Polanski movies I'll say of course. That's the prescribed knee-jerk reaction of anyone who insists on calling himself a movie-director (which is what I do because, well, I do make films and at age 40 I'm not sure I can pull off "film student" anymore). Tess was the movie I grabbed. Very happy to see it for free. But I must be right under the wire if I hope to avoid a fine. Turns out it's about people who might buy or sell the name of their family for the sake of status - not subject matter that has me rivited. Then there is a rolling around scene which today we would call - or post-feminist and retro-feminist bloggers would call - a rape scene. Of course the blogs would then be referenced as a source of hard news by an actual paper columnist kind of the way Matt Drudge got the "scoop" and led the journalist profession down the tubes of Lewinskigate a million years ago. I must have watched at least half an hour of Tess by now. Nastasia Kinski is pretty enough and there's nothing wrong with the directing of course. But the movie has inspired me to fill out my tax forms.

P.s. Okay, almost made it throught the whole film. Played it on WinDVD at 1.5 X speed. Somehow it played like a more recent, less plodding, movie - despite still having characters that made me impatient. They all need a slap in the head. The last time I had to play a movie at high speed like this (where you can still hear the audio) was Gerry by Gus Van Sant - a movie about being lost in the desert, which feels about as much fun as being lost in a desert.

what's the big idea ?

So the good news is Rod Carley a guy from Canadore College in my home town of North Bay won TVO's Best Lecturer contest. The bad news is that right after the host introduced the footage of his lecture TVO cut to BLACK. And it's not like we lost the signal or the transmitter went caput coincidentally at that moment. There was still eventually a TVO water mark in the lower right frame. It was apparently on the topic of staging Shakespeare in a modern context, but I'll have to take their word for it that it was good. I'd like to lecture TVO about the blacked out picture and who might be operating the control room at head office. Hmmm.

radio

Gee, still waiting to hear back about a couple of radio scripts I sent in to this guy David Chapman. The last nudge was at the end of March. One was an adaptation of a story he provided and the other was my own original. I'd like to hear them both done. What happens if I don't hear back from someone is the paranoid wheels get spinning.

Then I start thinking something is up. Kind of turns me off of submitting scripts.

Mel Gibson's latest work

PTC Easter Greeting

Anyone can feel free to follow this link and
watch this video, except my mom.

She is not a big Porno the Clown fan,
and there might be one play-on-words too many
in this one:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f024f7f052/happy-easter-greeting-from-porno-the-clown

Happy Easter

Well, I made it. I was thinking I didn't give up much for Lent, didn't get ashes on my head on Ash Wednesday, didn't kiss the feet of the Cross with a hundred other people (wiped by an alter server with a nice clean cloth after each) on Good Friday. . . but at least I gave up my blogs during Lent. And I stuck with it. Sure I posted this or that on other sites and sent e-mails and ranted verbally into the wind. But I didn't log much. I sat myself down to actually watch The Passion of the Christ on DVD - definitive edition - for the first time without commentary since it was in theaters five years ago. I gave it my full attention. I only took one break, part way through the scourging. That at least offers plenty of opportunity to pick fights on the internet.

I made a few short films - four exactly - during Lent, and a few small things I won't count. There is even a Porno the Clown Easter greeting. I wouldn't want my mom to see that one. I went for a pretty bad play on words. The down side of shooting any form of HD is that I can't paste the code and see the frame properly on one of these blogs.

So even though I did give up this blog, some code was experimentally pasted into the Porno the Clown blog. Which is not the same as blogging about my own life and the issues of the day.

St. Patrick's Day came and went during Lent, a long 24 hours for people who gave up alcohol for Lent.

And on a day that my knee started acting up and I didn't want to go anywhere I saw that an event on Facebook I wanted to support would actually mean dragging my ass downtown into a neighborhood to cast a vote. Then I heard they were out of ballots and I had to hang around for most of the presentations even though it went against the grain to be there at all. Only after voting and supporting my friend's organization did I realize that technically I probably had no right to be there let alone vote in a community to which I didn't belong.

I'm leaving the details out of it for now. Because this is about Easter, not about my psychological piccadillos.

Right now I'm editing a live show that someone else - Jay (Porno the Clown) -videotaped with my camera on two separate performances that don't match in terms of who is on stage and how they are on stage. Very challenging. It's The Shameless Dames Versus the Volcano, their last show. I think Jay did a good job keeping track of what is on stage, even though there will be uncontrollable issues of lighting and sound between the two nights and the idea that dances set to songs are only very loosely in synch.

Hoping it all cuts together in a way that isn't too jarring. Meanwhile Happy Easter. . .

Vote Funny if you follow this link:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f024f7f052/happy-easter-greeting-from-porno-the-clown