Adam Humphreys' Blog

Lucky Dragon Ends

2012-01-23T06:05:00.000-08:00

This post was also posted at Thought Catalog.

Lucky Dragon Mobile Visa Consultant was a business operated out of a Van in front to the Chinese Consulate between Oct. 17th 2011 and Jan. 17th 2012. The business was set up to assist people who were having trouble with Chinese VISA forms.

In June 2011 Chinese authorities instituted a policy whereby they would only accept special New York 2011 version VISA forms. Due to unclear web design and a large variety of different VISA application forms floating around the internet, many people were coming down to the consulate with the wrong form. To make it even more difficult, the Chinese consulate required that the forms be typed ie. not filled out by hand. This would require a computer with adobe reader and a printer.

The consulate is located in a very remote location in Manhattan, far from public transportation lines. The nearest internet cafe, where people could remedy their problem, is a 15 minute walk from the consulate inside a Burger King restaurant near Times Square.

I came across the idea for the business because I too had the wrong form. I was turned around by the security guard and sent to the Burger King, where I found every computer was being used to fill out these forms.

I was assisted in filling out the form by a calm, friendly, but very shabby looking middle aged black man, and one really sketchy seeming woman (scraggly hair, short, heavy, a manic look about her). When I returned to the consulate I asked the security guard a series of questions to test his receptiveness to my idea. The security guard ("King", the other one was "Paco") said they were turning away nearly one hundred people per day. The next day I returned in a rented Penske Moving Van, running a printer off of an AC adaptor that was plugged into the Van's cigarette lighter.

The first day in full operation we were completely overwhelmed by demand.

At the end of the day, the black man from the Burger King came down and applauded us. He introduced himself as "Mike" (we later learned to call him "John"), a veteran of the first gulf war. He said we had taken away his entire income, as well as that of his staff (who he referred to as his "girls").

For the next seven weeks we established Lucky Dragon as a profitable enterprise, meanwhile battling a constant barrage of slander and harassment from Mike's main "girl", Jill, who was our full time antagonist. We created uniforms, improved the comfort of the experience, printed promotional materials, got credit card readers, hired employees who could speak Chinese, and generally worked to minimize costs and save money.

Video: Lucky Dragon in "full swing"
Without doing anything to promote ourselves to journalists we received mainstream press attention. Most notably we were featured on NPR's "Planet Money" on January 4th (link), which resulted in auxiliary coverage on several economically oriented blogs and one condescending think tank. I also appeared on live national television in Canada on a segment called "Connect with Mark Kelley" (which I feel went very poorly).

Recently we were in the Financial Times Deutschland (link), singtao (link), and a whole host of other global venues. At the time of our dissolution, we were talking with a journalist from CBS... and I'm disappointed we didn't get to do that.

What happened? Why is it over?

We became aware of changes internal in the consulate last tuesday. Changes that had come from higher up. The security guards told us that we would have to stay off of the sidewalk in front of the entrance, which they had never worried about before. They were now accepting out of state forms, also, they said. This development effectively killed 30% of our market.

I bought chocolates for the person in charge at the consulate and requested a meeting, which was not granted to me. Instead I met with a cute young VISA officer who smiled sheepishly at me when I told her who I was, and showed her my (by now iconic at the consulate) red hat.

She told me that she thought we were smart, and that she was glad we could help the people we did, and provide the service we did; that things were complicated, that they weren't trying to make it hard on people, that they were just bowing to orders from higher up in the government. I asked if they were planning to make any changes in the future and she said she could not tell me. We went home with a significantly reduced total income that day.

The next day we were informed they would accept all forms - as well as those that were handwritten. This killed another 50% of our market, leaving us without enough income on a day to day basis to continue showing up. We returned the van that night.

Miles Ross informed me of this tweet, later that day, which pointed to an executive order from the white house asking to speed tourist Visas to Brazil and China.

So was it pressure from the US Government? Did they learn about our story and decide that enough was enough? Or, perhaps, was our press attention in China and here reflecting poorly on the higher ups in the consulate? One must suspect it was a confluence of both of these factors, as well as other things we're probably not even aware of. Regardless, it is with great pride and affection that I say adieu to Lucky Dragon. It was an absolute pleasure to have stake in the running of the business - and to meet and get to know thousands of people in intimate sociological detail.

Lucky Dragon - A force for change in the world. LD4EAE

LUCKY DRAGON CREDITS
Adam Humphreys
Steve Nelson
Elys Muda
Janna Liang
Zachary German
Aung Aung
Mandy (last name idk)
Libbie Cohn
Monika Wyndham + Lauren Bucquet (design)

Lucky Dragon Van Press

2012-01-06T08:41:00.000-08:00

These are for displaying inside the van.

Lucky Dragon Con.t

2011-12-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Lucky Dragon is having a little moment here. I recently appeared via satellite on CBC's "Connect with Mark Kelley."

Lucky Dragon Mobile Visa Consultants

2011-11-11T22:31:00.000-08:00

Steve Nelson and I have started a small business helping people with Chinese Visa forms. We've been doing this for one month, and have grossed nearly 10k in cash. Here is the website.

Here is a picture of Steve with our first customer:

Here is a link to a help wanted ad I created.

Hakeem Olajuwon (The Dream)

2011-09-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

A film I am making called "Shitty Youth" is in progress and has been excerpted at htmlgiant.

And a brief interview with Carmello Anthony:

Brothers

2011-08-25T06:37:00.001-07:00

My brother, Tommy Humphreys, in Northern Ontario, Aug. 2011. Me in Northern Alberta, Jul. 2009.

T Magazine

2011-07-14T07:10:00.000-07:00

A video I made has been featured on T Magazine's blog. Watch Here.

2011-06-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

My account of Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals and the events after.

MOBY AWARDS

2011-05-31T16:34:00.000-07:00

"The Stinson Effect," a book trailer I made for Erik Stinson's self published poetry book, has been nominated for "Worst Performance by an Author" at the 2011 Moby Awards. (link)

Whose weird cat is this on my fire escape?

2011-05-27T16:35:00.000-07:00

We sleep with the window open, and our cat sometimes goes out on the fire escape. It is an inside cat, though, and has never interfaced with another cat IRL since we got it. This morning we woke up and our cat was outside with another cat. The other cat seemed to have come down from the direction of the fire escape above ours. The other cat was mewing towards our cat, and our cat was hissing at it. My wife was very alarmed. "Whose cat is that?" she was saying. After a while we decided I should rescue our cat. I grabbed our cat through the window and the other cat made an attempt to follow our cat into our apartment. My wife jumped off the bed and retreated into the adjacent room screaming "Oh My God". I shut the window half over the back of the weird cat, and it retreated outside but did not leave our fire escape. Thereafter a weird cat showdown occurred as documented in this video:

This kind of window attack recurred five or six times over the course of ~ 20 minutes. After this, the weird cat perched atop the outside of our air conditioner. Looking at the weird cat, which atop the air conditioner seemed to be floating in empty space, eerily satisfied with itself and the uproar it had created, we discussed some theories about the origin: 1) Had our upstairs neighbors taken in a cat without letting us know? This seemed unlikely, as they already have a dog. 2) Had the cat come from the long corridor of "courtyards" behind our apartment? It seemed it must have. But then how did it get up onto our fire escape? Could it have climbed a ladder? 3) Was the cat a stray? If so why was the cat’s long hair not knotty and dread-like? 4) Was it a woman cat in heat? These questions and more continue to intrigue me as I write this. I hope the weird cat comes again tomorrow. UPDATE: The cat returned and we let it inside. Then I removed it because we were unsure if it had fleas.

MEW LEUW

2011-05-12T10:08:00.000-07:00

new reel:

Song is "just be" from Dipset Trance Party, discovered via Heavy Cream (via YAYAYA).

$$$

2011-05-04T08:26:00.000-07:00

Here's my backstage video for Rag & Bone's SS10 Women collection. The visual overlays were created with this old television and this video of the Aurora Borealis. Here's another video I did for them with music by Cam Reed.

POOP

2011-04-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

Consider Sponsoring my film's Online release

2011-03-08T19:04:00.000-08:00

Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer, a 53 minute documentary film on a contemporary folk hero, has been featured on Viceland, Thought Catalog, and CBC. It has screened at independent venues across Canada, at PPOW Gallery and at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

In April of 2011 FOUH will be released on Vimeo. Please consider one of the following options:

1. Presentation Credit
Preceding the film, your company's logo will appear on a black background for up to 4 seconds accompanying a sound or music of your choice.

2. Movie Trailer Lead
Your movie's 15 second trailer will play before the feature as part of the video.

3. Producer's Credit
You will receive permanent credit in the film and a link underneath.

Adam Humphreys's Reel

2011-02-24T09:25:00.000-08:00

Hall of Fame Career #swag

2011-02-24T09:23:00.000-08:00

I've been nominated to the tree planter hall of fame. (link)

River of Dogs

2011-01-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

2010-12-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

Fuck Adam Humphreys at Viceland.

Pics from PPOW screening.

I feel like this thing is winding down now.

esquire video, hearty, vice, cineworks pic

2010-12-02T14:10:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed by Mish Way at Hearty Magazine.

A video I made is up at esquire's website. Contact adamhump@gmail.com to contract me for video work in the New York area; my reel can be viewed here.

My tree planting career is being talked about in the comments of this Vice article. Please nominate me to the tree planter hall of fame.

People about to watch Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer in Vancouver.

CBC's BC Almanac

2010-11-18T06:19:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed on CBC radio's BC Almanac. Also interviewed was a Simon Fraser University prof. (re Afghanistan) and a Prince George "Winter Driving Expert" (re first snows in PG area). Listen to the whole thing here. My interview:

Director Adam Humphreys on CBC's BC Almanac 11/17 by adamhump

After the interview I was contacted by a woman whose husband had a heart attack in a clear cut while working with Franz Otto. Franz Otto arranged for a helicopter to pick him up. Then Franz Otto drove the man's (her husband's) truck back into town.

I watched "Winnebago Man"...

Jenny Charlesworth wrote about Franz Otto on the Georgia Straight blog.

11/2010

2010-11-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

Interview with Vancouver is Awesome

Pics from recent screenings

Hated on spectacularly at 'Dressed for Dinner' (see comments)

Something I wrote about 'KAFF' for 'TC'

Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer Trailer

2010-10-30T11:39:00.001-07:00

If you are a tree planter and want to host a screening of this film contact adamhump@gmail.com

2010-10-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

a game of skate with miles ross

Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer at KAFF pics... Kacper's coverage

Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer at Dan Poulin's apartment pics... Dan, who I have never met before, brought a group of planters together on 10/28 and also made this great chalk drawing of the film's poster :)

Lauren and I attend an ECHL hockey game in Trenton, NJ

2010-10-18T07:12:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Slapshot, and had an idea to make a film about minor league hockey players.

FREE DAMIEN TEE

2010-09-08T09:37:00.001-07:00

front

back

Educate Yourself!

buy here

Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer Outtake #1

2010-08-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

new joke

2010-07-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

this one is about "lenny"

This young guy and his fiance are walking to their apartment in a sort of bad / sort of gentrified neighborhood.

They see a Rottweilier tied to a tree in the middle of a residential block. He's grey around the mouth, unhealthy looking, lying on some garbage. There is nobody around. The dog struggles to its feet and smiles at them as they pass. It seems odd and human like, the way the dog moves.

The young girls says, "there is something very mysterious about that dog. I think he just smiled at me. Do you think someone abandoned him?"

The thought makes them both feel sad. They look at him. He does seem to be smiling.

The young man says, "lets come back here in two hours and if he is still there we will take him home and name him Lenny."

The young girl says okay.

They come back in two hours, after he has cooked her a dinner. The dog is still there, lying on the dirty ground.

They debate it for a while, and then decide to take the dog home.

When they get him back they wash him in the tub using head and shoulders shampoo, and the young girl wonders aloud if Dogs can get get dandruff. The young man is sure of it. The dog meets their cat. They start referring to Lenny in baby talk voices. He sleeps at the foot of their bed that night.

In the middle of the night Lenny goes to an open window and produces a very strange sound; something between a meow and a fan. Like a high pitched hurrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

It is unlike any sound they have ever heard a dog make before. The couple is initially scared, but then they start to laugh.

Lenny makes the noise intermittently for most of the night, and eventually they become concerned for his health.

They decide to take him to an animal clinic the next day.

When they get to the animal clinic they tell the vet the story of how they found Lenny and about the weird noises he makes in the night.

"It's the weirdest thing," says the girl, "like a combination of a meow and a fan. like hurrrrrrrrrr or something."

The vet makes a grave face, as if she knows the sound and has dealt with it before.

"What is it?" says the girl.

"It could be a number of things," says the vet, "Let me take a look at him."

So the young couple waits in the waiting room, looking at pet magazines.

When the vet emerges she walks over to them and says "So Lenny.. it's Lenny, Right? Lenny's going to need a little operation."

"Oh no," says the girl, "will it be expensive?"

The vet tells them it will cost 800 dollars. "If you don't do it," she says, "he will just get worse."

"Let us go outside and think it over" says the young man.

Anyways, they ditched the dog.

dad at mono lake

2010-07-16T12:10:00.000-07:00

Nancy Holt & Robert Smithson - Mono Lake (1968 - 2004)

making gator-dew with dad in Genoa, Nevada

2010-07-01T12:05:00.001-07:00

The Ouvre of Joe Berlinger

2010-06-28T19:51:00.001-07:00

Joe Berlinger is a tier 2 American documentary filmmaker. Errol Morris and the Maysles brothers can be considered the only tier 1 American documentary filmmakers, though the Maysles brothers, who are nearing 90 years, have not produced a memorable work since 1976.

Joe Berlinger's work has straddled the line between television and theatrical documentaries. I was unaware there was a difference, or any need to differentiate, until I read interviews with Jason Cohn, director of "Manda Bala", who said something to the extent of "most theatrical documentaries recently have seemed like television documentaries with stretched runtimes" and something about him choosing to use a very wide aspect ratio in an effort to be prove he was making a theatrical documentary and not a television documentary.

Joe Berlinger's approach is more nuts and bolts, more essential.

Paradise Lost, and Paradise Lost 2: Revelations follow the same trial
My Brother's Keeper follows a trial
Crude follows a trial

The paradise lost films are the most memorable, to me; this is likely due to variables that could not have been controlled by Joe Berlinger or his crew: specifically the menace and vanity exuded by the father of one of the victims, Mark Byers.

One thing I like about this film, and this television style, is that it seems to take me back to this time in a way a theatrical style documentary could not - when people were considering and debating the corrupting influences of mass media and MTV.

I also like the milieu. These people are southern and poor, but they're not freaks, used to destabilize you, or scare you like in a Harmony Korinne movie. They're just real people.

I really like the music, the songs, but moreso maybe what the songs mean in the context of the film (something I can't quite pin down).

I like how Damien is sensitive and artistic and how people rally around him based on this "high school outsider status" thing they to relate to. Do people still do that? In the 1980's and 1990's were there real outsiders who didn't fit in and did they have champions, people who loved them just because they were outsiders.

Goths are sweet. In this film their whole dilemma is based on being misunderstood by society, and it is a life or death matter.

I like Mark Byers and feel like a character like that could not exist in 2010. His performance is so over the top but at the time he seems 100 percent convinced that he is fooling everyone. Some of the scenes, like where he enacts his grief over his son's tombstone in the first one, and then comes back to his wife's tombstone (who has mysteriously perished between PL1 and PL2)...

He reminds me of a pro wrestler.

Watching the whole film forces you to picture him, maybe 6 foot 7 and 300 pounds, with that face and with that bellowing voice and that crooked mouth, murdering children: cutting off one of their penises.

I also like how the film concluded. I won't spoil it.

If I were in a band, currently, I would want to appear on stage with this shirt.

Some Kind of Monster is that film about Metallica. That was pretty goood.

Paradise Lost 3, I have learned, is in post production. I will be looking forward to that.

new joke

2010-06-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

the one about the old lady who gets body checked at an intersection

There was an elderly woman with a walker waiting for a light across the street from where the Expedition was idling. Inside the Expedition were three young men.

Two of them were large and heavy; one sitting shotgun, drunk, and the other sitting in the backseat, drunk. The third was lean and sat in the driver's seat.

The one in the back said, "should I go over there and push that old lady over?"

The driver said, "where should we go now."

The guy sitting shotgun laughed at the first comment and ignored the driver.

It must have been around seven in the evening.

Before long the man in the backseat was opening the door, trotting across the street, and pushing the old woman onto the ground.

life's a shitty beach

2010-06-21T18:05:00.000-07:00

My Best Friend - Lou Reed
Patiently Waiting - 50 Cent feat. Eminem
To Hell with Good Intentions - Mclusky
My Name is Tommi - Mu
Chair Girl - Mu
All Consolation - White Denim
Use Me - Bill Withers
No Future Part 3 - Titus Andronicus
The Boy is Exhausted - the Wrens
The Freedom - Swan Lake
Like a Friend - Pulp

click here to download a new episode of adamhump radio

cat gets out

2010-06-14T14:43:00.000-07:00

our old apt.

Franz Otto Links

2010-05-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

-

1. Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer has a website where you can view a trailer.

2. A Franz Otto hamster has surfaced.

3. 185 people like Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer on facebook.

-

etapogsitap radio feat. me

2010-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

May 22nd 2010 recorded in Williamsburg

Daddy Long Legs

2010-05-18T06:37:00.000-07:00

something from Kobo Abe, "The Face of Another"

For me, identifying with the father character as something of a kindred spirit, the film illuminates and plays with a duality between responsibility and fun; suspending me between impulsiveness, chaos, creativity, narcissism, etc. and then this kind of sobre but boring adultiness which I come to recognize as essential and righteous.

It seemed like most people were not like me in that they did not sympathize much with the main character.

At the screening I attended on Saturday, the Safdie's introduced the film; they said what we were about to see had "come from a place of love", showing a kind of pre-emptive defensiveness which tainted the experience for me. The film opens with the announcement of a "special video presentation" - a home video of the brother's Safdie, ages 3 and 5 approximately, dancing with their father, who is shirtless and moustachioed.

Then company credits play.

Then the "film part" begins - a closely cropped, noisy, one hour and forty minute drama about a father's yearly two week custody period of his young sons (aged 3 and 5 approximately). The film is driven by conflict between the audience, the filmmakers, and the father's personality and parenting style.

One of my friends said the beginning is slow, and I guess this makes sense because at this point Lenny seems to be just doing his thing, and his thing seems fairly inconsequential. It is later in the film when the conflict of perspective, between how we feel the father should behave and how he is behaving, deepens - particularly when the father, called into work in the middle of the night, drugs his children to keep them asleep so that they will not wake up to an empty home, and the children end up sleeping for two days, during which time he is arrested, in the funniest scene in the movie, I believe, for spray painting "dad" on a shop gate (I laughed when he said "jesus christ" or something, as the graffiti artist "rambo" sprayed his name on the street).

At the end of the two week period the father surrenders his children back to the mother. Then, motivated by loneliness and regret, he attempts to connect with them again. Eventually he sort of kidnaps the children from their nanny after school, and takes them back to his home and sending them to the store to get groceries (this is another funny scene, when the kids are shopping). When the kids return he is in a fully packed apartment and he is asking them to move.

Presumably his motivations are getting into a bigger apartment so as to spend more time with his children.

This move is poorly planned and comes off very badly, which seems, at this point in the film, "classic Lenny". The film ends with him carrying a fridge onto the Roosevelt island tram with his children, which is symbolic of (I don't really know, "being totally unsure of what will happen next and in constant frantic reaction-mode").

Among the three people I talked to after watching, I think I liked Lenny best and saw myself in him to the greatest degree - one of my friends said he hated Lenny for the whole film.

After the film, in the Q and A session, the brothers said, again, "when our father saw this film he understood that we were just trying to understand him, and that act of trying to understand someone is an act of love"...

also... "there is no narrative resolution because people like my father, 'narcissists' basically do not change"

Is Lenny a fair representation of their real life father? It would not matter if we weren't being encourage to make one substitute for the other, but...

Because of this encouragement, I can view the "film part" skeptically, whereas if it was just presented without all of the backstory I would not; instead of Lenny being put on trial I am now putting the filmmakers on trial for the ethics and motivations in trying their father through Lenny (or if I am to take the position of "it doesn't matter what is real or not real" I am like "then why tell me about your dad in the first place? why not just let the film speak for itself?"). This was distracting for me.

Most of the audience at this film seemed like they were older kinds of people - people from the Safdies' parents generation. I can see this film playing well to an older audience, reaffirming feelings of resignation to responsibility and aging.

I would have liked the film more if they did not include the video with their father at the beginning. But I will remember it, and Lenny, and remember mulling it over, for sure.

what did you guys think

adamhump radio show 2: Less Than Zero

2010-05-12T12:29:00.001-07:00

Vancouver Divorce - Gord Downie

Clangour and Flutes - Sin Fang Bous
I Phantom - Mr. Lif
I Don't Owe Nobody Shit - Das Racist
Foam Hands - Destroyer
The First Noel - Elvis Presley
Rainbow - Boris
Love Song to Little Trees - Bill Crosson
Clown Joke - adamhump
Traffic - Chad Vaangalen
Free Art Essay Introduction - Jogging
Freestlye - Giggs
Skip The Youth (with intro overdub) - Frightened Rabbit
Fistful of Love - Antony and the Johnsons

LESS THAN ZERO RADIO

radio show 1: from feb. 2010

47 Ronin

2010-04-28T13:58:00.000-07:00

A short documentary film in 2 parts.

Part 1: extended music video for "POS Crew - All in the Name" featuring unaffiliated muralist Travis Doubt aka. D7

POS Graffiti Crew, Vancouver BC

"POS Crew - All in the Name" original music video on youtube
(41,955 views)

Part 2: 47 Ronin*

*Single shot interview

Interviews with Travis shot in late October, 2009.

Edited yesterday.

skull drawing given to me by Travis in 2006

montauk

2010-04-25T12:25:00.001-07:00

we went to the beach and found a cool rock

for more videos of my cool rock go visit my youtube page

EVERY TIME A POLICE OFFICER GETS SHOT I THROW A PARTY / ADAM HUMP RADIO JOINT: THE ORIGIN OF RACE

2010-04-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

God

interlude
Hit Guided by Voices Alien Lanes
interlude
damian jr. gong marley - jam rock
interlude
08 Death Valley '69 (with Lydia Lunch) Sonic Youth Bad Moon Rising
interlude
usher - lil freak
interlude
roxy music - the strand (excerpt)
interlude
Kinky Boots Patrick Macnee & Honor Blackman
surfer blood - swim
caribou - odessa
sum 41 - fat lip - all killer no filler y'all
george harrison - set on you
metallica - battery - master of puppets
yes - i've seen all good people (just the first part) - the yes album

+

*HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WEIRD FAMILY ON THE F TRAIN?*

description by Lauren Bucquet:

"they all had the same short curly baby haircut, all one length- maybe about 2 inches long- around the whole head. black hair, pasty skin, very pointy noses, deep set eyes, really puffy cheeks that blended into a double chin. kind of like the penguin from batman. they pushed a double wide stroller into the subway car. immediately upon entering the 'mom' decided to awkwardly u-turn the stroller, getting it caught on the foot of a your woman sitting nearby on the way. laying in the stroller was the youngest daughter, maybe 5-6 years old. entertaining the girl was 'the older sister', maybe 16 years old. she sat down in the stroller next to her. the young girl proceeded to fidget around, and began turning herrself around onto all 4's and then back to lying down again and then back to all 4's and so on and so on. she started screaming out and laughing as she flipped herself. there was also you young brother, maybe around 8 years old. he sat across from his mother and the double wide stroller. he began furiously shaking his head back and forth while grunting and looking at the ground. he did this continuously for as long as we were on the train. their hair didn't move when their bodies moved. so strange."

cool story I heard recently

2010-03-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

The first thing you should know about this story is it is 100% true. It might seem "not true", but sometimes crazy shit really happens, guys... It concerns a girl whose friend was friends with this girl who Lauren met up with in London when she was there last month.

So this British girl, the friend of a of a... went to Amsterdam for a little vacation with some girlfriends. Out at a bar one night she met a local guy. She was pretty drunk, and by the end of the night she and he were walking in and out of alleyways kissing and groping. He asked her to go home with him but she didn't. She is a good girl. Her accent is lovely. She comes from a good family. They have been rich for thousands of years.

She goes back to the hotel where she is staying with her girlfriends and they give her a little bit of shit about it, and she blushes a little, but feels good, feels a little courageous, independent.

The next night they all go out again and, by chance, she sees the same guy. She is not that attracted to him, she admits to herself, but she gets pretty drunk and they end up talking again. Pretty soon they are fooling around a little bit in the alleyways again, kissing and holding hands in the narrow cobble-stone alleyways of Amsterdam. He asks her to go home with him again, and she refuses again.

So then she goes home to Britain and goes to her nice job, interning for a famous musician or working at a bank. Everything is normal.

...

Then this weird thing starts to develop on her face, around her mouth. A black rash growth thing. It hurts and is ugly. She goes to the doctor. The doctor immediately recognizes the thing, a fungus, and makes a very grave face. He tells the girl that he has to make a phone call to the police and he leaves her sitting there in his examination room.

The girl is freaking out, thinking what the hell is this fungus on my face and why do the police have to know about it. She maintains a very strong composure though, because she is that kind of British person who never freaks out, whose manners are impeccable. She probably has been to dinner parties with Jude Law or someone like him. That kind of person. Her brother dated Sienna Miller, maybe. She asks the doctor what is going on and he says that it is better if the police explained it. She probably cried a little from the stress, but the tears were beautiful and evoked sympathy.

The police come to question the girl about her fungus and ask her who she has been kissing, who she has been having sex with. She's really scared, but she tells them the story about the guy in the alleyway in Amsterdam. About how she met him at a bar and they had fooled around a little bit in he alleyway behind the bar but nothing too serious. She didn't have intercourse, she said. The police ask if she has his number, the guy, and she does.

...

She asks the police what is going on and they say that the fungus she has on her face can only be contracted from a "dead body"

...

The police in Amsterdam find this guy, the guy she had fooled around with, living in a dark basement suite. They had to break down the door. It smelled "terrible". They found four "dead women".

Evidence suggested he had been "fucking" "all of them", the "dead women" that were in his house.

The "dead women" had been tourists who went missing, who he had picked up at bars.

The polite British girl had given this guy a "blowjob", and that is why she had the fungus on her face. The fungus had come from a kind of "corpse mold / residue", which was "lingering" on the "guy's dick" when she gave him a "blowjob"

...

What do you guys think?

Have you heard this story?

Does it seem "not plausible"?

I guess I don't really believe it...

Pretty lucky that the girl didn't go home with the guy, though, eh?

Netflix Reviews

2010-03-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys,

2010-03-05T12:47:00.000-08:00

The big push for 2010 shirts on this blog is over now. Did anyone think my last post was funny?

I posted that before the hockey game on Sunday, which feels like years ago (in emotional years). I don't know if you guys watched, but Canada won. I nearly lost consciousness. I talked to every member of my family that day except for one, (mother) who was not in Canada, and probably would not have been interested anyways. My brother was in a large crowd on Granville street, which was probably a pretty central gathering point for yahoos, and he sounded very anxious and bitter; I imagined him half drunk, seeing the Crosby goal, walking quickly and excitedly from his apartment towards the center of the action, and then, getting closer to granville, getting jostled a little, and saying cutting things to strangers who only wanted a high-five. Then going back home. My sister said something like "all of the idiots are out", but she was at home, in her apartment. My dad was at his home. He told me he went onto the deck (my father lives on a steep hill, a quiet street) and screamed. Then there was silence again, I am assuming, and the sound of the creek that goes by his house, and the trees that never seem to stop dripping water. The clouds in that part of the world also make a noise. I laughed as he related it to me, walking in Bed Stuy, and thought about moving back to Canada.

You know what I ran into which is close to my place in Brooklyn? The place where David Lachapelle had his Bloc Party.

Whats been going on, guys, srsly...

8th Generation Joint

2010-02-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

A first generation joint is made when you roll 5 roaches together into a roach joint.

A second generation joint is made with 5 roaches of roach joints (first generation joints), so one must smoke 25 joints to make a second generation joint.

A third generation joint takes 5 roaches of second generation joints. One must smoke 125 joints to make a third generation joint.

One must smoke 625 joints to make a fourth generation joint.

and so on, fifth...

sixth....

seventh.....

To make an eighth generation joint one must smoke 390625 joints.

It is possible that there is a multiplier effect that I am not taking into account.

This would require over 1500 pounds of marijuana.

At an average price of $50 an ounce, it would cost over 1.2 million dollars for the amount of marijuana required to roll this many joints.

To do this in one year, you would have to average one joint rolled and smoked every 80 seconds, 24 hours a day.

The effect produced by an eighth generation joint is the highest state of spiritual awareness that can be achieved in a religion I forget the name of.

sources: Brent Jopson ~1998, this website

these two shirts are for sale

2010-01-27T08:47:00.000-08:00

Show your olympic spirit with this unique take on the rings.

All sizes are available, except for XX's (XXL or XXS, or SXSW)

This shirt was inspired by the feeling of being uncomfortably stoned and performing an extreme maneuver at night time.

The true spirit of Vancouver 2010.

To view more pictures click here

TESTIMONIAL

The Vancouver 2010 shirt is sublime. Whether its eating a huge pile of steaming flapjacks with tons of melted butter and maple syrup, or cutting up the slopes on my board, this T shirt, with its Gildan® fine mesh cotton provides comfort and style.
Nick S: Snowboarder, Treeplanter - Waterloo Ontario

Captures the true spirit of the Vancouver 'Games'... I will be wearing it much more often over the next several weeks.
Chad Buchholz, "Eighty Thousand Times The Word “Fuck”" - Vancouver, BC

rainy day at work

2010-01-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

the only people I see on the street are women walking their dogs, and they are struggling with the wind and their umbrellas; on my way to the train I wrapped one of those cheap umbrellas they sell on the street around a telephone pole after it fell apart on me. half of it went flying into a nearby minivan, which was parked, thankfully, and then I slam dunked the remaining part, the bottom half, into a garbage can; it was pretty stupid

John Steinbeck

2010-01-17T20:00:00.001-08:00

Lauren's dad gave me a box set of Steinbeck books for Christmas and I've read almost all of them now. Overall, Steinbeck seems very orthodox in a way that I find comforting. Here are my thoughts on the books in the order of when I read them.

Cannery Row (1945) - Reading this book first was key to my sustained interest in Steinbeck over the past two weeks or so. It is about Ed Ricketts, and Steinbeck's scene around Monterrey California. Ricketts was a marine biologist and seems like a very good person - I think Steinbeck really loved him. There were a bunch of fuck up types in the book; they lived in a flophouse and worked just enough to get by, seemingly doomed to always fuck everything up and be lazy and irresponsible, and Steinbeck and Ricketts viewed them as kind of holy. The Pearl (1947) - If I had read this first I probably would not have read the other books; the tone was always 'profound' or mythological. The dialogue was stylized in the manner of 'simple wise people'. A retelling of a Mexican folk tale, which seemed to have nothing at all to do with Steinbeck's life. Grapes of Wrath (1939) - But I guess I will allow myself to be interested in 'fictions' or 'contrivance', and will use my time to consume this kind of material so long as I agree with or empathize with the person responsible for them. I never read GoW in school on account of being Canadian, and was surprised when I started to really get into it. The chapters alternate between straightforward third person scenes of Tom and the Joad family, and then more of a collective / historical voice. I learned a lot about soil, farming, model t fords, and the great depression. I was especially surprised with the image that ends the novel and how fucked up it was. Travels with Charley In Search of America (1962) - Here Steinbeck is old and sad. There were some parts that were good or interesting, and other parts that were not. Steinbeck is not super funny, IMO, and this kind of structure, the journey structure, which lends itself to 'riffing', doesn't really work as well without a lot of laughs, I think. He really still seems like he wants to be 'a man' here. I feel like he is kind of delusional at this point in his life. Of Mice and Men (1937) - Probably my favorite prose style in the Steinbeck ouvre. I was reminded of reading this in grade eleven. I sat beside Karen Osberg in English class, and the teacher was like, "Mice and Men is playing at the Queen E (theatre downtown vancouver), if anybody wants to go you can get extra credit". Karen and I 'went together'. I think she wore makeup; still not sure if it was a date. Now I think it was probably 'my first date', though part of me still fears Karen would disagree. East of Eden (1952) - Currently about half way through this. "Sprawling". Lots of descriptions of landscape. Lots of 'wisdom': "a servant loses his initiative", "if (the story) troubles us it must be that we find the trouble in ourselves", "I enjoy being mediocre because I understand the loneliness inherent in greatness", etc. Really good.

2010-01-07T13:30:00.000-08:00

from Adam Humphreys
to "inn"
date Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 11:34 AM
subject (person's name) / Tree Planting / Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer / My Wedding

12/24/09 (15 days ago)

I am a New York based writer / filmmaker who earns a living by planting trees in the summer in British Columbia Canada.

In my life I have planted over 500,000 trees by hand.

I keep a blog that is a bit of a production diary and a bit of a personal thing. Recently someone from your area called me and read about my film "Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer". He became interested in the project, and was kind enough to give me some contact information for reforestation stuff around your area.

He told me that you, Richard Gere, had recently cut some three hundred trees in a nearby wetland and that you were under pressure to replant them, and that, in his opinion, the person who would be lined up to do that kind of job in your area was going to charge you too much, and was not going to do a good job.

I am writing you, Richard Gere, to offer you my services as a reforestation expert (some would say one of the fastest planters in Canada), to help you re-plant the areas you've logged.

I will do it for free, provided you pay the costs of materials. I can plant 300 trees in around 40 minutes depending on the land.

To me, the prospect of perhaps you helping me to find proffessional help in completing my film, my desire to personally meet you (you seem like a really good guy), the novelty of planting trees in New York, and other considerations would be compensation enough.

What's more, I think my film project has intangible merit, and think you would really like it, and could maybe get wrapped up a little bit in the excitement. It concerns a Paul Bunyan like figure in Canada, a reclusive legendary folk hero guy and my search for him. In a more broad sense it is about imagination and storytelling, trying to be a good person in the world, trying to make a difference, "counter-culture", being an artist, etc.

Also, I don't know if you do weddings at the [INN OWNED BY RICHARD GERE], but I am getting married next fall and am looking for a venue. If you felt bad accepting free labor and wanted to arrange a trade for some "space time" that would suit me very well.

Damn, this email is long.

I will attach a picture of me, a picture of my fiance, and the only pre-existing public image of Franz Otto.

1. POV video of me planting trees
2. Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer on facebook

Hope this finds you well.

Adam Humphreys

347-623-1258
414 Greene Ave,
Brooklyn NY
11216

Year in Review

2009-12-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

liked You The Living - Sometime in the first five minutes, in an otherwise miserable scene of a fat biker woman moaning and crying to her lover on a park bench, a tuba starts to play an upbeat march or something and the woman breaks into a song about wanting a motorcycle. Like a motorcycle will make all of the difference in the world. A man emerges unexpectedly from behind a tree with no dramatic purpose. "Nobody understands me," she wails, to the camera. Roy Anderson is like 70 years old, and his earlier films aren't that good. I saw some of them at the MOMA before I lost my student ID. I remember a scene where a guy does the table cloth trick drawing such sustained giddy laughter that I was embarrassed for my fiance. Also, this morning, reading the comments ("I cried") on this youtube video of the most exuberant scene in the film while listening to the music from it made me cry a little; Frownland - I think this film does a good job of being extremely negative and satirical about the experience of 'artistic' / 'bohemian' New York at the end of the Bush years. I am glad somebody did that. It's also very encouraging and humorous; 1980 - 1995 Lou Reed - I've especially enjoyed the Blue Mask for it's sentimentality. Songs for Drella is interesting, is about Andy Warhol. "Sword of Damocles" might be my favorite Lou Reed song; Chances with Wolves - I used to look forward to reading end of the year lists. Things have changed so much. When I lost my last ipod I didn't even care. Anyways, I found this radio show through my friend at work, and I love it. It makes me feel connected to the city, it's history and music. It reminds me that there are millions of songs in the world; Zachary German's music video for Feist - There is something uncanny and sinister going on between the swimming fish photobooth effect and this song, and Zachary's voice-over and blue-lit shirtless torso seems to flatten it. bpoty Do It With Joy - This is not a 'masterpeice' or something. When I found out about it and got a copy I was really worried it would be terrible, but it's not that either. It's people who were in a similar situation I am in thirty years before I got into it. Gave me the same kind of satisfaction that Chances With Wolves gave me - made me feel connected to humanity. Seems like a victory for me, and for the film. I wonder if the filmmaker is mad that I illegally uploaded it, even though I am its main (only?) champion.didnotlike Antichrist - there is a sweet slow-mo penetration shot at the beginning, then a lot of uncomfortable violence at the end; Ian Svenonius on documentaries at Vice Magazine - just seemed really bad, "painting with the big brush" type stuff; N + 1 "hipster lecture" thing - DJ rupture, looking bookish and nervous, talking about hipsters in Lima Peru, making a point about cultural transference, takes a moment to flatter the crowd, which looks like it is probably 95% people who are over 25 and live in dorm rooms, saying, of the Lima hipsters, "of course they're not as cool as you guys"

2009-12-17T08:54:00.000-08:00

Guy Lacelle, wise old man tree planter and tertiary subject of Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer, died in an ice climbing accident on the tenth. The news made me very sad. I put together a sort of Eulogy video for anyone interested.

Still looking for an editor...

Saw Antichrist...

2009-12-07T06:38:00.000-08:00

On Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer's facebook page you can view a short version of "Do It With Joy". Become a fan if you want to see it. There are 80 83 fans so far.

It's my birthday on the 15th. Gonna be 27. Here is a blog post about Chad's hair that I liked.

2009-11-23T07:58:00.000-08:00

I've started to review places on google reviews (what is foursquare? is it bad?). Tumblr has been activated. Ireadnytimes is being updated.

Been working some. I'm switching to 2 days per week to try to figure out what to do with "franz otto ultimate highballer"; considering releasing it as a vimeo account, editing to that kind of format or something.

I'm considering producing a copy of the MEC rad pant. MEC discontinued it. It is very popular with tree planters (esp. me). With good marketing this kind of pant could represent our changing values as people / a culture: it is lightweight, inexpensive, and quick drying (could play into ideas of an ecological collapse scenario). I believe people are looking for a way out of the current denim-centric pants paradigm. Lauren says she can make a pattern for me. Not really sure what that means. What do you guys think?

Lauren and I are going to make some olympics t-shirts soon. Going to Las Vegas for thanksgiving. Shoutout to Jody Rogac .

Freemans Restaurant

2009-11-17T19:10:00.000-08:00

Also available on google reviews.

I went here with my fiance; we were meeting my brother and his girl, who were visiting from out of town.
They were late, so we stood at the bar for a long time checking things out. I ordered the cheapest beer on the menu - a 'lowenbrau'. I said something to my fiance like 'do you think they make lowenbrau the cheapest to make you feel bad when you order it?' which seemed funnier then than it does now. It was $5.
There was a guy and a girl sitting at a table and looking at eachother, eating a desert with their heads very close together. The guy appeared to be in the band the virgins - or maybe just wearing the kind of outfit that would befit someone's idea of the virgins - and the girl was kinda hot with a grumpy / rich vibe.
The other people were expensively garmented and international. The decor was 'rustic' or something; like the kind of place people would picture bon iver chilling ~ 2008. Very 'of the moment' (or, perhaps, 'of the moment directly before 'the moment''?)
The food was okay, and we spent around $50 each. The total was $200. When I got home I got a double text message from my brother saying 'Thanks to Lauren for coming. Thanks for your couch last few days.Otherwise bro, that was my birthday dinner... I think you forgot. I know I'm sensitive but whatever. Later.'

this post is for people visiting via www.tree-planter.com

2009-11-04T13:42:00.001-08:00

Hey Guys. Here are some things I have written regarding planting or being a planter. I also strongly encourage you to follow me on twitter and on tumblr.

Also, you guys should become a fan of Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer on facebook.

1. Blog of Two Seasons Planting
"my favorite blog ever" - a planter
-there was a lot of drama the first year including a stasher witch hunt + me being fired (almost twice)
(best of: the yossef stashing saga 1, 2, 3, 4 ; love story ; my crew ; cam's greed crew ; someone else gets fired)

2. Do It With Joy Review
-budget-ass documentary film made in 1976 about Dirk Brinkman + his camp
-I think I am going to try to get the filmmaker to let me upload it
*Update: Do It With Joy has been uploaded, to view the film become a fan of Franz Otto Ultimate HIghballer on facebook...

3. Summarization of Article on Planters from "Forestalk" magazine, 1984
-what I learned re: the genesis of the labor force

4. Sarah Anne Johnson
-"the only incidence of representation of 'tree planting' in a high art, sophisticated, international context" (link)

2009-11-01T21:03:00.001-08:00

cried in time warner cheer zone
The cheers and the music are what got my attention and drew me to the time warner cheer zone. Then I saw the people lined up against a police barricade. The runners seemed happy, proud; like they could express their personalities and vanities in this particular public setting without fear or shame.

One guy was running with a 6 foot tall model of the Eiffel tower strapped over his shoulders. Beside me a woman was screaming wooooo and holding a sign that said "go runners".

Just "go runners". All runners.

Her enthusiasm was so broad.

My throat started to swell, just taking it all in there, pushing my bike through the crowd. I had to go down into the subway station to cross the street.

telecaster
I want a fender telecaster
a modest / neutral electric guitar
Cass McCombs and Jonny Greenwood both play a tele
Jonny's is probably tricked out
I might put some humbuckers on mine

silvicool

2009-10-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Can't wait for this to come out...

Shopgirl

2009-10-05T21:37:00.000-07:00

Shopgirl is a 130 page novel written by Steve Martin, the actor.

It follows a 28 year old 'girl' (Mirabelle) working retail (for Neiman Marcus: an LA luxury department store) as she navigates sexual and emotional relationships with one young man (Jeremy) and another older man (Ray); both (the relationships) complicated by a shallow, hot, 32 year old co-worker (Lisa), a complicated family situation (parental affair + Dad was in Nam), and clinical depression.

The other day I saw Mike Myers in the Dean and Deluca in Soho, near the store I have been working in, selling clothes. I think before I read Shopgirls I liked Mike Myers more than Steve Martin, but that is probably because he is Canadian. Also I read about him carrying a hockey stick around for no reason, in New York, and I liked that.

Shopgirls complicates and makes more sophisticated Steve Martin's persona, for me. Evidently, he sees himself as more than a 'silly comedy guy'.

A note on the style: Shopgirls is narrated from an omniscient perspective, with the narrator often having greater access to the characters' motives, beliefs and personalities than they (the characters) are aware of. This seems creepy - like if this story was at all autobiographical (which it probably is) then Steve Martin has a condescending attitude towards the people in his life.

Analysis: Shopgirls is okay. I thought about Steve Martin quite a bit. I was hoping there would be more stuff about working in a store.

Milestones

2009-09-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

Milestones is a 3hr 30 minute long docu-drama about a network of 60's radicals in 1975. The radicals are all friends of the filmmaker, I think. They are approaching middle age, and are still invested in "political struggle" and "alternative lifestyles" ("counterculture"), but seem increasingly aware of being marginal / inconsequential. I enjoyed the film, especially the more fucked-seeming characters.

I felt comparatively far less fucked.

The DVD was regionally encoded for France, so I had to watch it on my computer. The sound was so bad in parts that I could not determine what was being said. The picture likewise, was extremely shitty. I watched the whole thing in one evening, in two sittings, after dragging my couch over to my desk to make it more comfortable. During part of the film I was reading about Robert Kramer on his website. Robert Kramer died in 1999. I doubt he ever made much money from his work; I doubt he will ever reach a broad audience. His story seems as much a part of the viewing experience as anything happening onscreen. He is / was, as his characters are, totally committed to his lifestyle and cause, and totally fucked, career-wise.

I had heard about the birth scene from Milestones from my friend beforehand, so I was sort of expecting it to happen and vaguely dreading it. At around the three hour mark the pregnant character goes into the hospital and there is some dispute over which kind of room she is going to get, the expensive one or the cheap one. There is a very long build up to the actual birth, with shots of them soaping up the pregnant woman and her breathing. I was growing anxious and a little bit uncomfortable, and considered skipping ahead. I stuck through it though. After the baby came out everybody in the room kind of broke into celebration. My eyes were watering. It was an amazing feeling that I had never felt before while watching a movie; probably the same feeling people try to describe after they have seen their loved ones give birth - the 'miracle of life' feeling.

I would recommend Milestones to grad students, political activists, underground artists and writers, and anybody who has held an ideology that is irreconcilable with participation in economically generative activities.

If you are interested in Milestones, email me your address and I can mail you a French region burned DVD.

Sarah Anne Johnson

2009-09-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

Sarah Anne Johnson was a Yale photography grad student at around the time, I think, that Yale's photography school was 'incredibly well regarded.' Not that Yale is no longer strong, but I feel like there was a photography thing that was happening in the art world around that time that was very Yale-driven.

*I don't feel qualified to talk about photography*

Seems like there was a Jeff Wall type thing going on, a "constructed," "photographs are like paintings" thing, and then a Wolfgang Tillmans thing, which was something else, a messier thing, not as concerned with what is inside the frame and how to manipulate that.

I think Sarah bridged those two things, the Jeff Wall thing and the Wolfgang Tillmans thing, in a way, with her Yale thesis project. She built dioramas of situations she recalled from her experiences as a tree planter in Northern Manitoba and mixed them with actual documentary style photos from planting. The show was hung in a less traditional manner, with some photos bigger than others, and some on top of the others.

The show received a positive review from the New York Times. Later the photographs were purchased by the Guggenheim.

This success, to my mind, is the only occurrence of representation of 'tree planting' in a high art, sophisticated, international context.

NOW

Sarah's success and her story allow me to think about the interpretation of 'tree planting'; how the art world responded to 'tree planting'.

I feel like one of the primary concerns of my film will be "finding a marketable film," or "finding a marketable way of representing 'tree planting' to people who do not know anything about tree planting."

-----

I recently went to Sarah's new show with my camera. It had been listed on Jerry Saltz's "fall shows he is looking forward to" list, and I figured I would go there and try to talk to Sarah and her gallerist about tree planting.

I think things are really coming together for the film. I am continually pushing myself into situations that make me incredibly uncomfortable, and it feels really good.

I will be travelling to Vancouver, Prince George and Oregon in October.

Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics T-Shirt

2009-08-26T06:51:00.000-07:00

I am in New York, working part time at the Rag and Bone Store in Soho (119 Mercer).

I reviewed "Relapse" by Eminem at Kathy's blog.

I started a news-focused youtube channel.

Also, I designed a "post-ironic" shirt for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, BC. Seems like I could sell a lot of these, but I'm not sure about copyright, and not sure I want to do the work. Might be just fucking around. Please contact if you are in Vancouver and want to get involved: adamhump@gmail.com

This shirt was inspired by the feeling of getting uncomfortably stoned and doing an extreme maneuver at night time. - Adam Humphreys

Links:
Charlotte Gill, award winning writer, tree planter.

Sarah Anne Johnson, award winning artist, ex (?) tree planter.

Do It With Joy

2009-08-19T10:28:00.001-07:00

Do it With Joy, made in 1976, is a film about tree planting.

The subjects / planters are 'colorful' and 'interesting'- people pursuing an alternative lifestyle and who have, in the narrator's words, "found a new solution to work."

I have watched the film enough times to be familiar with all of the people in the camp. They seem pretty cool. I would like to hang-out with any of these people, even today. I think we have shared a meaningful formative experience that we could talk about.

In the documentary, they talk, sit around, eat, cook, joke, flirt, play the guitar, plant trees, 'screw around,' push trucks out of mud, and complain a little bit.

There is a scene where they organize a soccer game against a nearby Nisga'a tribe and are beaten 15-0.

My favorite scene is when they build a sweat lodge out of a plastic tarp and everybody climbs in there all naked. Then they run out of the sweat lodge and jump off of a dock into the water. I feel like that scene captures something of the beauty, and freedom of 'the experience,' in a way that makes me think of Ryan McGinley photographs.

The cook is a mime, and walks tightrope.

A musician talks about living a schizophrenic life, being an artist in the city and leaving the city for the bush for three months at a time.

The assistant cook, and cutest girl in camp, talks about planting dreams and then says flattering things to the camera about Dirk Brinkman. In the special features menu of the DVD we learn that she marries Dirk, and becomes a politician. I thought this was interesting because it seems like in most camps I have been in the cutest girl 'gets with' the highest available authority figure. It's darwinistic like that.

The "crew" was two people (shown in picture, smoking, on the inside of the DVD case). They shoot on 16mm, and sometimes it looks shitty because of solar flares, water on the lens, or them using the end of the reel as it spools out, but these 'touches' I feel, do nothing to detract from the overall portrait.

The 30 up section on the special features is 'of particular interest' to me. Somebody finds all of the characters 30 years later and sees how they are doing. Most of them seem okay, or still struggling with whatever they've been struggling with all along. One woman kind of loses it. Another guy gets a little weird. The musician ends up in a successful band making some money. A bunch of planting couples are still together, including Dirk and Joyce Murrray (MLA).

It made me feel good about being a planter. I think it enabled me to see myself from further outside of myself, in a way, and helped me to understand my current career anxiety within a larger context - an entire history of people who did this job. I felt better, in a way, more resigned.

I am surprised it is not more widely known in the planting world. Seems like it should be more of a classic.

*I have uploaded "Do It With Joy" (shorter version) to Franz Otto Ultimate Highballer's facebook page, please become a fan to view

Dirk Brinkman

2009-08-12T10:46:00.001-07:00

1. Dirk Brinkman owns the biggest planting company in Canada. Brinkman and Associates Reforestation.

2. Dirk Brinkman was one of the original private contractors to 'let' work from the ministry of forests.

3. Dirk Brinkman started planting in 1970, and was probably one of the first vagabond / hippie planters, but also a great leader / managerial type.

4. Dirk Brinkman is partly responsible for the design of the modern tree planting bag.

5. Dirk Brinkman experimented with labor organization, and is part-author of the way tree planting is currently practiced. The contemporary system of peice work, remote worksites, and people getting their own peices of land (as opposed to planting in lines) is based upon his experiences.

6. Dirk Brinkman could be considered "The Architect" of the "Highballer Era."

I met him for lunch on Burrard street Cactus club to talk about my Franz Otto Film. He ordered a salad and there was prosciutto in the bottom, so he sent it back, saying he did not eat meat. He told me he was on break from meeting lawyers, discussing a settlement for a native tribe. His current work is global and political - he is negotiating or inventing standards for a carbon offset market in reforestation across the world. This means making sure that the carbon offsets that are sold are 'actually' helping the environment.

I was very impressed with Dirk Brinkman.

He sold me this film (clip shown in video above at, a doc about a planting crew produced in 1976 by Orca Productions. Do it With Joy.

It was made by this guy, Nicholas Kendall. I will blog about Do it With Joy more later.

History of Tree Planting Labor Force

2009-07-12T17:45:00.001-07:00

I found this when I was doing some research today.

Lots of them were still using Polaski like things. This was just when the D-Handle revolution was beginning.

I am a planter and have planted 4 years - through college, through an MA, and through moving to New York. I am making a film about Franz Otto, the legendary tree planter.

They Interview a guy named Pete Robson who had worked in reforestation since 1964. Are these Fitness babes?

haha above "flatulence reforestation."

"On the first planting projects I was involved in we used inmate labor, After that we hired whomever we could. we hired locals, hired off the reserves, got men off of Main and Hastings in Vancouver. We paid by the hour and few had much interest or much skill in it. Needless to say our production was low."

"By 1967 we decided to try letting a contract. We were not impressed with the results of the first one, but the next year we let a contract to two hippies - complete with beflowered volkswagen van. They camped under plastic and planted faster than we had ever seen."

'These two hippies were to revolutionize tree planting in the province.'

'They let the way for a new breed of planters, people pursuing what was once called "alternative lifestyles."'

'One big time contractor has a degree in religion. Another is a dropout nuclear energy engineer from the atomic energy commission of Canada. There are homesteaders. teachers, artists, craftspeople, lots of carpenters, and at least one potato farmer. '

'Tony Berniaz, mountaineer, world traveller and now gentleman farmer, has probably planted a million trees; he used to be a PhD chemist.'

'Holly Arntzen, a Vancouver musician, liked to wake up camp every morning with the golden sounds of Handel and Vivaldi played on her French Horn.'

'Clay Perry, legislative director of the IWA in Vancouver explains, "Because of the strategic importance of silviculture to the future of the industry, it has to [should] be organized in a rational way and give people a rational lifestyle. It is just not rational for BC to rely on 'counterculture' people for such important strategic work."'

'Dirk Brinkman, founder Brinkman reforestation, responds: "not only is it a logistical necessity to use tent camps and to move all over BC and Alberta doing short term contracts in remote places, it's also a part of our lifestyle."'

Article ends with planters finishing up a contract and drinking beer.

Niagara

2009-07-01T15:23:00.000-07:00

just found out about Alec Soth's photo series Niagra

Shots of architecture and people in Niagara Falls. Lots of couples, whose honeymoon budgets probably do not allow them to get very far from home (bummer) but who are trying anyways (sweet).

Interspersed are images of handwritten letters: most of the grammar is bad. Some of the letters are romantic, love letters, and some are angry.

2009-06-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

'I am going to rent a truck today and go way out into the bush to find another older planter named Guy who sleeps on the block and climb's ice in competition.

First day with Franz

2009-06-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

I have met Franz Otto and crew.

Shot some footage of him planting. He is a great planter.

A lot of things happened.

Tomorrow I am going to try to meet Guy LaSalle on the cut block where he is sleeping.

2009-06-20T16:29:00.000-07:00

Virtual Clearcut is interesting.
The tone, I would say, is aggressive.

Here is a picture (I love) from the Bowron clearcut (1990). Biggest clear cut ever - visible from space. Jumping off point (kind of) for the book.

Uwe

2009-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

I shot some stuff of a guy names Uwe who worked at the nursery. He was like 50 and had a dog named lady. He toured me around the places where they grew the trees. I kept aking him questions and he would answer them and start walking away as I finished. I could tell he was uncomfortable to be on the camera. Not sure if it is usable.

Bought this book at the PG bookstore.

Meeting Franz tonight.

Driving to Quesnel to meet Franz

2009-06-19T09:26:00.000-07:00

Matt Bock, my foreman who lives in Prince George, has agreed to lend me his 92 Toyoto Previa to drive up to Quesnel today, where I plan to Meet Franz for the first time, provided I will have the van in Prince George by Monday.

This saves me around 150$ in rental fees (I had a a truck booked with enterprise).

I am a little bit nervous to meet Franz - mostly nervous that he will not be likeable or will wear awful t-shirts or something like that. Worried that he will not be interesting at all.

I don't know where I am going with any of this, and I plan on telling him as much. I am drawn to his legend. That he has done pretty much all there is to do in this little world we have, and has achieved the highest stature of any tree planter.

Still, he is effected by decisions made by morons in cities who have never even stepped on cut blocks, thus 'in the bigger context,' he is a small fish. I am interested in his motivations, his will, his work ethic, his story; but I don't know if there will be a good film.

This is kind of a journey form, a quest thing, but I don't want the film to be "here I am Mr. Filmmaker on his quest to meet the legend."

I like POV films when they are not about the filmmaker him/herself.

I shot some stuff of Fred and Cass (who are on my crew) on the last shift there. Fred hurt his neck trying to jerk his head away from some mosquitoes and Cass was throwing up in her land. I found them at the cache. Fred was holding his head all weird and walking in circles and Cass was laying down under the tarp. It was pretty funny / usable.

I want to come back for burn season and shoot Cam Stewart burning slash piles. Those images would have an epic, gulf war kind of vibe.

Update

2009-06-09T12:30:00.000-07:00

1. I have been filming very little. I find it difficult to 'plant lots of trees to earn money for the film' and 'film other people planting trees' simultaneously.

2. I have 8 more days of planting.

3. My wide angle lens adapter arrived and looks good.

4. On the 19th I will travel to Quesnel to meet Franz Otto, legendary tree planter. I will shoot him for three days, probably just planting trees.

5. I have planned out shots.

6. Should I buy wireless lavalier mics?

7. If this doesn't 'work out' or 'amount to anything' how depressing will the gear look on my floor in a corner of our little apartment in New York when I walk out the door to my retail job?

I spoke to Franz Otto on the telephone

2009-05-17T15:41:00.000-07:00

learned some things about him, like he has four children, still plants and supervises, sometimes takes his daughters out to plant with him (they are in elementary school), loves tree planting, etc.

I am going to visit him and shoot footage of him planting trees.

I thought I would be able to whip out my camera and shoot at odd moments

2009-05-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

And the film would reflect a lack of planning, a spontaneity.

But if I carry my camera all of the time I run a high risk of fucking it up. So I am afraid to have it all the time.

Moreover, if I schedule things, and shoot them, I am shirking my responsibilities as a planter. My boss will not be happy.

Is this doomed?

I don't know. I think it will have to change. I am now thinking a lot about Franz Otto.

I thought it could be like participatory observation documentary, but that would require an even smaller camera - a coolpix or something.

Hoping to interview Patrick (aka. "Cheese") the other crew boss at some point today to ask him about Franz, etc. Hoping to explore wow planters give meaning to their work and lives. Planters being people who don't quite cut it in "society," maybe. Think that is interesting.

Cheese is funny, besides.

Franz Otto: "Yes, the legend is true"

2009-05-04T12:50:00.000-07:00

I want to find Franz Otto so i can make a short about him in the spirit of Werner Herzog's films. Here is the only photo I can find of Franz.

He seems like "the guy" as far as tree planting goes. There are german people beside me. I am at a small cafe in 100 Mile House called the Chartreuse Moose.

Read about Franz

Posted on this message board looking for Franz.

Things I've Shot So far

2009-05-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

1:30 interiors of a small plane
2:00 interiors and exteriors of a run down motel room (where I am staying)
35:00 a safety meeting where my boss talked about bears, injuries, other stuff
15:00 the owner of the motel talking about his life, how he hates tree planters, how he is moving to asia, while standing in front of and stoking a small fire behind the motel

I guess I am shooting "24P" because it just kinda happened

I saw Hunger and thought it was __________

2009-05-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

Originally I thought it would be enough to shoot a bunch of scenes of planting out of order, snippets, like Paul Chan's videos "Baghdad in No Particular Order," and "Now Promise Now Threat." These scenes would look a lot like the stuff on my viddyou page. The idea was that it would accomplish the following within the narrative:

1. Expose the process whereby the money for the film was earned by showing the filmmaker embedded in a work environment.

2. Provide new images to people who have no idea what tree planting is and who might be interested

3. Lull people a little bit into the rhythyms of work, underscoring themes of work, how watching a film can be thought of as work

I particularly like work that addresses the conditions of its own existence, or the process of it's own creation - I like BARR or Andrew Kuo.

I couldn't buy a camera without going planting, and that seemed a good starting point for a film in my head.

Now I am thinking that there should be a loose momentum to the planting parts. Instead of trying to capture a "reality" I would stage a "realistic" narrative.

I have ideas for scenes that would not require too much from the actors - but I am not sure of the willingness of my collaborators. I suppose time will tell. The finished film still seems out of focus to me.

This is both good and bad.

Bought a Camera

2009-04-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

Went and saw the Z7U and thought it was huge. Way too big.

I bought a new HVR V1U with a wide angle lens and a rain poncho thing. Cost me 4200.

Feel kinda good about it. It is smaller, which i think is good, but will still produce nice videos, I think.

$4200

2009-04-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am going to try to make a film.
Here is the blog.
Here is the idea

In Vancouver Now

2009-04-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

Flew back to Vancouver last night.

Going to look at this Camera tomorrow. Via Craigslist ad. Asking 4500 for it new. I am going to offer 4K.

People are talking about swine flu. If some really bad shit ever actually comes I probably won't even believe in it until "it's too late."

Going to See a Camera Tonight

2009-04-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Looking for something used on craigslist that takes DV tapes. Needs to be small and portable.

I have thoughts about people who try to make HDV look like 35mm film...

UPDATE: Did not go see camera. Went for a beer in the daytime at Sweet and Vicious. Talked to one of the guys in Ryan McGinley photos. Went to New Museum to see Younger Than Jesus show. Had sushi and beers. Kind of "blew off" the camera thing.

Wrote Jill Godmilow

2009-04-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Sent her some ideas / a manifesto type thing.

I am hoping she will write back to me and tell me if I am misguided or if I am being stupid.

"Cat Gets Out"

2009-04-20T07:56:00.000-07:00

Long Anticipated New Short Film Project
Starring Lauren Bucquet as "The Black Haired Kitty Wrangler"
and
"My Cat"

Directed By
Adam Humphreys
Runtime :45
Format: Mpeg4

Press inquiries: adamhump@gmail.com

summonsed

2009-04-18T17:44:00.001-07:00

Andrew Kuo Interview

2009-04-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

Andrew Kuo is an artist with a show up, 'I'm Dying over Here,' at Taxter & Spengemann
123 East 12th Street
New York, NY, 10003
www.taxterandspengemann.com
Tues - Sat 11-6

picture via image search

FMS: Your blog is called Emo + Beer = Busted Career. Do you still consider your ‘career’ ‘busted’ and if so, do you think it is reparable?

AK: I feel like there is no such thing as a "career". You are only as good or identifiable as what you're doing at the moment. So that title has more than a few problems with it. Sometimes I feel busted and sometimes I don't.

FMS: I went to your show and it took me about a half hour to get through everything, all of the graphs, which was longer than I’ve ever spent in a gallery by myself.
Do you read a lot, or watch TV mostly?

AK: I don't read that much outside of restaurant reviews or fantasy sports columns these days. My TV is always on. I would take a bullet for that thing.

FMS: Do you want to explore depression and negativity, or is it just ‘what comes out?’

AK: It just comes out, man. I must have the best friends in the world cause they put up with all of this all the time. When you make things you always manipulate them. I did it all on purpose. I hesitate at the word "negative." I tried to make a show that had a strong sense of hope in it. Maybe I blew it?

FMS: I don’t know. I wasn’t bummed at the show at all. I was mostly concentrating, decoding. Rodney Dangerfield’s quote as the title for the show suggests you are like, 'performing' and having a hard time keeping a good face on. Is that how you feel?

AK: Both? Who doesn't have a hard time keeping a good face on? Have you seen the papers?

---

FMS: Are you writing/have you written a book?

AK: I would really love to. My parents always wished I went that way. In college I would write short stories and send them of to literary journals and such (to no response). That was before the interweb, which is either the best thing to have happened in my life or worst (literarily). I write lengthy e-mails to my friends every Monday as reminders for a weekly party I throw. They get really personal and weird. That's the "writing" I do now.

FMS: At what point did you start turning graphs into a tool for music criticism?

AK: Maybe 3 years ago. 4?

FMS: Writers complain about reviewing books. Say that reviewing a book is somehow ‘beneath’ the writer, maybe, is seen as more ‘commercial’ than artistic – sometimes even seen as the antithesis of creativity.
Do you take your role as a critic seriously and do you think it conflicts with being an artist?

AK: I think I take criticism seriously, but if someone tells you a slice of pizza isn't good, do you believe him/her? "I'll be the judge of that!"

FMS: I might not buy the pizza.

AK: I think everyone should have opinions about things. My biggest complaint about humans is when they feel nothing. If you like art, you think about it and skip nude self-portraits. If you're a chef, macaroni and cheese should move you. They don't say "Everyone's a critic" because it's not true, right?

FMS: I have noticed you are posting less graphs on your blog. Are you bored of your NYTimes music graphs? Do you consider the NYTimes music stuff, like, a meal ticket? Do you ever feel like you’re ‘half-assing’ them?

AK: Dude I am/was swamped! I literally got cold sweats thinking about all the things I had to finish. But I gotta step my game up for sure. Thanks for reminding me! I try not to half-ass anything though. I try hard. (Can you tell?)

FMS: (Mostly yes)

------

FMS: You seem to like order. Like you are right brain dominant. Have you ever thought about it that way?

AK: Except you should see my apartment. What a mess! I like controlling things that I can control these days. Usually on flat surfaces no bigger than something i can carry with my two hands. I don't see splatter paintings in my future. Or maybe I do! These things look clean and orderly and maybe they are, but I can't wear a clean shirt to save my life.

FMS: I think you posted a picture of Dash Snow under the heading ‘Geico Man,’ a little while ago. Are you guys bros? I think of him as having a mystique. And you seem to want to demystify yourself, lay yourself bare...

AK: That's not Dash, that's my friend Jason Nocito. He takes photos and sometimes will take a polaroid of Shaq or the Lohan and have them sign it to "Earl." He was at a "club" once and he was making it "rain" and the MC screamed "GEICO MAN'S GOT MONEY!" It stuck. But the real Dash Snow is a sweetheart. He is not mysterious. He just is hard to get in touch with.

FMS: I haven't asked you about what you are into wrt art or emerging artists or what you look at when you need to be inspired. Do you have any comments on that kind of thing? Have you seen/did you like the OMG obelisk at New Museum?

AK: the OMG thing is pretty funny. A "text" piece I got it! I consider myself a fully emerging artist so yeah, I look at "emerging" artists' work. (Who isn't "emerging"?) I try to look at everything but it can be a lot so I shut it off from time to time. When I'm making a show I try my hardest not to look at things. I just work better that way.

FMS: What are your cats' names?

AK: No name for my cats. I tried but nothing stuck. Some of my friends say that's mean but I don't know how having cats who eat whenever they want, sleep wherever they want, and purr five hours a day is "mean".

2009-04-07T11:12:00.000-07:00

Celebrity Sighting

2009-04-02T18:36:00.001-07:00

At around 4:56pm Blake Lively came into the store with her boyfriend, Penn Badgley.

She left a green drink with ice on the counter and went to try on some clothes.

Later, she exited, having forgotten her drink on the counter.

Chad was visiting, and he said "do you know who that is?" I said no. Then he explained it to me. He picked up the drink and took a little sip. "It's pretty good," he said.

trying to decide

2009-03-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

If I should leave New York for a little while

and work in the woods in BC again this summer

earn between 8 and 20 thousand dollars

live in a tent

call my girlfriend once every 5 days

come back in July and maybe go somewhere else for a while

OR

keep working three days a week, selling clothes

"He's The Master"

2009-03-24T15:53:00.001-07:00

2009-03-21T07:06:00.001-07:00

To transfer between the 7 and the L train you have to walk an entire block underground.

Usually there are two buskers in the middle. The first guy is always sleeping next to a sign that says ‘nytimes published poet.’ He looks homeless. I have never seen anybody pay him to write a poem.

The sign connects his body to a story of ‘downfall,’ or ‘struggling artist.’

Then there is a guy who plays drums on turned over buckets. The big kind you get when you buy huge quantities of pool chemicals. It echoes across the whole underground chamber. Gets louder then louder then really really loud, then quiter then quieter and finally goes away as you duck into the next station.

putting fish into a can and sealing the can

2009-03-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

I swear my brother is writing some of the spam that I get

2009-03-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

Plow through your girl like a bulldozer lol

My brother is an entrepreneur. Link To Brother's Ventures: Pacific Website Company

going to las vegas

2009-03-13T09:13:00.001-07:00

Lauren's sister lives in Las Vegas, and I am flying there this evening.

What have I done?

Matt and Kyle's art thing was cool.

I went bowling in Williamsburg for Lauren's birthday; it was cool.

The Russian Concussion is sleeping on my couch. He will be here while I am away, feeding my cat and designing a video game on his massive fluorescent laptop computer. His computer looks like Skate shoes in the late nineties - or basketball shoes that sell for hundreds of dollars. Shoes again. A ridiculous and loud computer.

Aran Darling has been sending me funny videos and pictures. Here is my favorite.

The New Deal

2009-03-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

My friends Matt Moravec ('tall Matt') and Kyle Thurman are curating a show.

Haven't seen the artworks yet, but I've seen the space. There are two large glass doors in the entrance, and it is shaped like a half hexagon. The walls are white, obviously; on the right side the ceiling opens up into concrete and exposed ventilation pipes. In the back there is a door to an office that is full or t-shirts designed by famous artists for the gap/whitney biennial.

It is also organized/blogged by A-ron (downtown cred) and has something to do with Art Production Fund (institutional support). All of the artists, I have been told, are younger than I am.

New Phone

2009-03-01T07:37:00.000-08:00

My phone broke so I got a new phone yesterday.

There are two Indian guys who work in the Verizon place on fourteenth street; I remembered them becuase that is who I got the last phone from.

They told me I qualified for a new phone, which is good. I didn't want to buy a new one. There was something langorous and bored about the way they showed me the upmarket phones. I told them I want one that is simple, and looks nice.

While they were doing the paperwork I watched the Seinfeld that was playing on a screen. 'Do you guys get sick of this playing all day?' I said. 'We don't pay attention.'

Then a guy with a beard and skate shoes stormed in and sat down beside me, visibly shaky. 'Can I help you?' said the be-turbanned Indian guy whose beard was combed upwards into his hair.

The guy pulls out his phone, one of these typing flip phones, and says, 'I need you to show me how to put a key lock on this so that my FUCKING GIRLFRIEND can't look through it!'

I just kept quiet and watched the Seinfeld. It was the one about the vasectomy - Elaine cuts her hair.

Later, I would lie in bed and listen to an argument between two sisters, their loud voices echoing around in the courtyard and through my window as if they were in the next room.

The Levee

2009-02-26T07:58:00.000-08:00

Two days ago I went to Chad’s apartment on S 2nd for the first time and I don’t know if I felt deja vu. I don't know what deja-vu is supposed to feel like.

There were pizza crusts in the stairwell. It felt mad hood: the kind of stairwell that people do business in. Dust everywhere; cigarette buts.

I know that Chad got the room on craigslist and moved in with strangers, so when I thought ‘I’ve been here before,’ I also thought, ‘maybe not.’

I sat in his apartment with his roommates and the layout was also familiar. ‘I’ve been here before,’ I thought, again. ‘Or a building like this, an apartment like this, some two years ago: visiting a bro who was new to the city, who I’ve since fallen out with.’ I asked them how long they had lived in the apartment and they said five years.

So it couldn’t have been the same apartment.

Then they said, ‘do you know (name of bro)?’ I did. ‘He stayed here for a while.’

‘Ahhhhhhhh. So I have been in this apartment,’ I said. ‘That’s neat.’

Chad and I went to a bar called the Levee, which used to be Kokies. They have a special with a shot and a beer for four dollars. Cheap beer and cheap bourbon.

It’s kind of grimy. You get the feeling that they are going for a 'pre-gentrification' vibe.

We drank bourbons and played Jenga. One of the bartender bros was playing The National. It felt like the end of something, or maybe the part after the end.

So we played pool. I have been on a good run against Chad lately. Then these girls came and put their name on the chalkboard.

We had seen the girls before. They had insisted on playing me in Jenga the last time we were at the Levee: a couple of months ago. ‘They must be the regulars,’ said Chad.

I will describe them. The leader is dark-haired and Italian looking, with tattoos on her forearms and big, pouty lips. She carries a small Paris Hilton like dog. She wears low cut V-neck T-shirts which reveal the sides and bottoms of both of her breasts. Her breasts are medium sized and hangy. She is loud. Her hair appears artificially straightened, and she carries maybe ten extra pounds. She is very good at Big Game Hunter.

The one I Jenga-ed is moon faced and slightly shorter than the leader. She also has dark hair and wears baby-doll dresses.

Then there is one that is very short and shaped like a barrel. The short one is the most employable looking.

Live Blogging the Oscars

2009-02-22T06:53:00.000-08:00

My sister was in town. She is a law student, and has not yet purchased a blackberry. I found this kind of surprising, though I did not mention it to her.

I have thought of having a blackberry, so that I could 'live-blog' important things that happen to me.

1. Getting a new cat and neutering of new cat (story of loss and building of trust between friends)

2. Having a benign cyst removed from my head (part one the anxiety, part two the opiates)

3. Going to court for public urination (examination of NY judicial system, social class)

4. Becoming intoxicated at a bar ("1 beer down, feeling okay")

5. Working on a movie set ("sitting in a truck with a diet coke")

I'm on Twitter

2009-02-20T15:40:00.000-08:00

I'm on twitter.

World War Z

2009-02-19T05:39:00.000-08:00

How does an actor become a character actor?

Some are 'stars' in real life. They probably smile a lot and do adorable things without even thinking about it, making other people smile a lot.

Is a character actor someone who thought they could be a 'star,' or a 'lead,' and went through all of the acting training with that dream, and then was gradually pushed towards more 'character' parts?

How does a character actor become a lead? Does that happen only when the 'character' is something intensely relatable for a big audience? Like Bob De Niro's tough?

THREE Z'S

Zoe Kazan (Sept. 83, Yale, 5 ft. 4 1/2")
Paul Dano (Jun. 84, Eugene Lang)

Franny and Zooey
Franny = an actress going to Yale
"There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that?"

Zooey Deschanel (1980, Northwestern {did not complete}

*Bonus* JD Salinger's Uncollected Writing Online *Bonus*

I've wanted to use this pic for something for a long time but I don't think I will find a relative context so here goes

2009-02-16T17:42:00.000-08:00

Picture Removed. It was not funny.

Now: Sometimes I cruise theories on wikipedia.

The World Values Survey.

I read about that guy who wrote that.

Postmaterialism and the Postmaterialist.

I just read Revolutionary Road after seeing the movie, and I think it was a good way to read the book - even though I was picturing Leo and Kate vibrating with anger pretty much the whole way through - because I was very aware of it's structure without having to read it 2x.

It reminded me of Erving Goffman, and Dramaturgy.

Dramaturgy = good way to think about jobs you're not into.

Heavy Vietnam Vibes

2009-02-15T19:26:00.000-08:00

I watched The Deer Hunter last night, and started Apocalypse Now this evening. Maybe it is because I read Tree of Smoke earlier, but I feel like I am just coming to a place where I can understand/process those heavy Vietnam vibes.
The opening of Apocalypse Now gave me tingles. I couldn't find it on youtube, so here goes:
1) Slow mo jungle trees swaying with the beginning of the Doors' 'The End;' yellow smoke inexplicably rising from below like mustard gas, and helicopters flying through the front of the frame in slow mo, but still so quickly that you barely see them; and the helicopter noises are all stretched out and bass heavy - 'whuk whuk whuk whuk'
2) Trees burst into flames as Jim Morrison begins his singing 'this is the end,' the camera panning to the right, until Martin Sheen's face is super-imposed onto the left side of the frame, upside down, smoking a cigarette, sweaty, 'beautiful friend.'

buying a toothbrush

2009-02-14T17:34:00.000-08:00

Today I bought a toothbrush. I had to choose between like 10,000 toothbrushes at the Duane Reade. All of the toothbrushes were colorful, and bright. They ranged in price from roughly 3 dollars to about 10. There were four or five brands, and one no-name Duane Read brand.

I didn't want to get the no name brand toothbrush because it didn't have those little plastic feeler-things on the side. The no-name's bristles were lighter colored, too, and set perpendicularly to the handle; whereas the other brushes had angled bristles that looked, I don't know, more agile and effective.

I settled on the Oral B Advantage Glide with a lime green handle and a tourqoise head and feelers. It was around five dollars. I think it is a middle of the road toothbrush, which is what I wanted.