When we shoot night exteriors in big cities, it's customary to have a cop dedicated to the set. The officer's role is to make sure nothing negative occurs between the film unit and the neigborhood. They also do some traffic control. When you shoot in dicey neigborhoods, it's reassuring to have those guys around, becasue a film shoot draws people like moths to a light, and I've seen it happen where street types begin harrassing crew members.

Last night we were shooting on Sutton St. in the greenpoint section of brooklyn. All day we'd heard forecasts of rain. sleet and hail. This made me very anxious, as I know night exteriors to be risky enough, without the water/electricity relationship, or the high winds/grip problematic (shit blows around). I'd just added a last light to a shot of an old car parked at the curb, when this cop with a thick rockaway accent says to me: "Get that light out of the street! You gotta keep a twelve foot fire lane open here."
I was rushing back to the monitor to see how our shot looked, and i stopped in my tracks, sighed, and winced.
"Sir," I said, looking at the cop finally. "You are quite seriously hampering my creative process."
I'd meant it as a joke. He didn't take it too well.
"Get your damn light outta the street." He said menacingly, "or I'll really give you something to worry about."

The funnist set-cop I've ever encountered was in L.A. We had this crusty old guy from the motorcycle division. The scene we were shooting was too sisters having the big hash out of their lives, the night before one was to get married. We were shooting on melbourne St. in Los Feliz, but it was supposed to play for Providence, Rhode Island.
As the camera rolled, these two lousy, primadonna actresses did their sisterly argument - screaming stuff like: "MOM AND DAD ALWAYS LOVED YOU MORE THAN ME! THAT'S WHY I STUDIED SO HARD AND BECAME A BIG CORPORATE LAWYER."

When the A.D. called cut, I could see other crew memebers laughing and holding their noses. The burly grey-hairedcop leaned to me and said: "Hmm. I think I'm smelling an academy on that one."

How funny. How weird.

I must have stepped into one of those emotional air pockets tonight. A really nice day off ended with a late dinner at the diner up the street, and I run into my cousin martha, and she's like a stranger. I noticed her inside talking to my friends while I was outside on the telephone. When I came in to say hello

"Hey, how's it going?" I said, leaning forward to kiss her.
She kissed me back, and then put her hand on my right shoulder and began to sort of push and pull me back and forth by my sweater.
"I know - you're here." She said. "I saw you outside."
I hesitated as she push/pulled me, trying to register what it meant. She stared at me without any trace of smile.
"Are you high?" I asked, finally.

Anyway, weirder things have been known to happen. I asked Terry about it as we walked back to the house. He just stared straight ahead.
"I ain't getting in the middle of any of your family's shit." He said, shaking his head with a cynical frown.

I must have seriously missed something while I was outside on the phone. This is probably not such a big deal but there are other weird thing afoot.

I don't really know where I belong. Usually I try HOPE that it's the same place as where I am. There's so much potential for things to go wrong, or people to radically turn against you (I mean "Me" - I just say: "You" - it's a weird usage thing in American English).

There's a weird wind blowing through new York tonight. Perhaps the rain brought something. Whether this whole story turns into a dream or a terrible nightmare will have nothing to do with me.

Last Spring in the city of Angels,
I was faced a terrible chore.
My great love had ended and best friends retreated.
T'was high time to open a new door.

Forced to leave a house of mirth,
I'd known none but the greatest of luck.
I packed up my stuff, and gave back the keys,
setting off in my black Nissan truck.

Laida, a girl I'd met in SF,
offered her Hollywood pad.
with time-a-wastin' and homelessness looming
Her pad wasn't soundin' too bad

The place was a godsend, very cosy and girly,
surrounded by gardens and trees.
I could pass the nights watching digital cable,
or picking through her DVDs.

The day I showed up with my boxes,
I'd packed that day while I cried,
there was the sound of another girl there,
kinda knocking about inside.

I made my arrival obious,
by coughing and shouting hello.
A gentleman's duty's to reaasure a lady,
not barge in "a la" creep or weird-O.

She opened the door but a sliver,
hers was the bloodiest of eyes:
Who are you and what is your business?
I'm not into rock and roll guys!

I explained how I'd been invited,
she was by no means satisfied.
She curled back her lip, bared her white teeth,
and just stepped right on back inside.

Desperate to prove my relation
to the "lady" of the house herself
I showed her the key that I'd managed to find,
on the fuse boxe's wee hidden shelf.

And despite my great sense of displeasure,
being treated like some common brute,
I couldn't help but think to myself,
God DAMN is this girl ever cute!

I know not of you MAN she said,
even if you are Laida's mate,
I'M here at the moment and I'm doing my laundry,
so you'll just have to sit there and wait.

With that madamoiselle closed the door,
and she closed it quite hard at that,
I stood on the stoop, and thought to myself,
this girl is a real little brat.

Ten minutes or so passed while I waited,
and she finally made her way out.
I'd hoped that she'd smile or say some goodbye,
but to her I was no more than a lout.

Fast forward now eight or ten months,
To a New york loft - and a whole new kind of play.
This is the place, where I've got the juice,
and guess who'll be coming to stay.

My host, an old war pal of sorts
explains'me his altruistic flash
She's coming over here to work on the film,
and with us she is going to crash.

I hardened my face, and snarled these words,
"Big deal! - that chick's vibe is fleeting."
But I have to confess, with no small trace of shame,
that my heart it sure 'nough went-a-beating.

And so this song reveals to you reader
how man is so strong and so meek.
I don't know whether to slap that girl's face,
or gently carress her dear cheek.

Travel always leads to feelings of uncertainty in me. Knowing this is very valuable. I'm back in New York, and it's like a social experiment on myself. I say, if you ever want to know how you REALLY feel about something - I mean get into the unsocialized, inner-child- QUIT SMOKING. I was doing fine on the plane to New York, but when we landed I listened to my messages and both terry and David informed me that neither of them had received my flight itinerary, and they were both at different parties, in different boroughs, so i'd have to make my own way home. I'm in a cab, with 200 lbs. of lighting gak, with no keys to anywhere (and it's cold). Yeah, I was getting a little cranky.
Anyway. New York has changed, and it's exactly the same. I love it, and i rememebr why I left. I don't think it's healthy for the environment I live in, to be bigger, louder, more imposing or dominating than anything else in my life. New York drones everything else out. It's impossible to forget where you are, when you're in New York.

We played flag football in McCarren Park on Sunday. It was sunny, windy and brisk; just the weather I've missed from the east coast. When i met everyone else at the field I felt shy and didn't say much, even though they were all very nice. I never thought of myself as much of a football player, but I did alright. I actually made the game-winning touchdown. Oh baby.

Today at 3:20 in the afternoon I set back out for Williamsburgh from manhattan. It was really horrible traffic, everywhere, on every street, all day. Delancey street leading to the bridge was (as terry put it) "third world". I ain't driving into manhattan AGAIN during daylight hours. It's too claustrophobic. The island is busting open with big cars, and they're all fighting their way onto these old bridges that can't nearly accomodate them. I never noticed it before.

The best thing about this trip, and hgelping out with such a chronically disorganized film, is that i can really give a lot to people I love. Just being quite is the most valuable thing right now, as the yelling has begun in the production office. The more manic it gets, the greater my need to be calm and kind, and useful. That's the best thing about production: The better you get at it, the more you can give.

It's funny to me that Tony Soprano always watches the history channel and Biography. That's all I ever watch either. I never cared for episodic television. Presumably Tony Sporano is an extension of the show's creator, as are all the rest of the characters. In episode III of season IV, Tony goes off on a vent about "special interest" and asks what happened to the guys like Gary Cooper. Cooper he describes as "the strong silent type" who didn't complain about being "poor, Irish from Texas - whatever the fuck".

I watched the Biography edition of Jimmy Stewart, and he struck me as having lived his life the same way. He worked in the studios, he married one woman and stayed with her until she passed away. When WWII broke out he enlisted in the Air corps and flew B-17s over Europe. When the war ended and he was discharged , he returned to his "job" as an actor and never mentioned his service. When he was honored by the academy back in the late '70s, he appeared on stage looking great, silver-haired, with the same likable smile he always had. Unimpressed by his own life.

A week later Biography profiled Marlon Brando: "The rebel, misfit actor". It came across that he was always the center of attention, with his mysterious method and use of props to prepare himself. Then, as his career progressed, he got sidetracked by all these things that were removed from his own life: He became involved in the Tahitian independence movement , and American Indian struggles. He was frequently getting arrested, and God knows where his kids were or who was steering them into the adult world. He was taking all kinds of self-prescribed shit, and juicing and turning into a whale... Then, by the '80s his world was collapsing: his son killed somebody, and Brando himself was sitting in the docket, sobbing and pleading for the court to have mercy on him. I guess his half-Tahitian daughter killed herself, and there was some speculation about sexual abuse in the Brando house. The whole thing was a smoking, flaming wreck. Very tragic.

Obviously there's more separating Jimmy Stewart and Marlon Brando than a generation gap, but I couldn't help seeing the simlarity between Brando's life's arc, and A LOT of people I grew up around.

Some of the best movie watching experiences I've had were those instances when I dozed off in the middle of the film for 10 or 15 minutes. I could count on feeling quite refreshed and interested - receptive - once I was back from my slumber. It feels good to give oneself permission to sleep.
Gartists must possess, among other things, a rigorous honesty about how they view and mythologize themselves. Where else would fictitious characters come from? The ability to understand the value in an experience, a landscape or a certain light; I imagine that's what enables one to draw from it again and again. If you know why sunsets are romantic (fleeting, rarified last breath of the day - before plunging into night, mystery, sex, lunacy, danger), then you can use those pieces like spare parts. I guess this would be most true of filmmakers. Musicians must experience such emotional stimulii in a completely different language or sensibility.

I watched Montenegro tonight, and I felt my dormant longing to be a fiery Slav reawakened. I imagine that's what one's supposed to feel. Perhaps not everyone responds the same way. There's like 10 other people I've ALSO always wanted to be: They take turns at the helm of my subconscious imagination.

I dreamed last night that i was in Montreal, and I finally had a new motorcycle. I was very self-consciously proud of it. But I also had my old bike, and I kept needing to leave one or the other at someone's house. I was supposed to go to janie's (which had relocated to park Ave. between Van Horne and Bernard) but I was stopped in a store by two of the Mexican guys who worked on painting my house. We got into a fight, and one of them tied a lit cigarette to my arm with a little black piece of silk. I got it off with a very deft calm move, and then began stabbing him in the bottom of his feet.
I really need a change. Maybe sleep in a bed that has access to better dreams.

On the morning of the day in which I am to die, I hope to...
Lovely a time I'm having with Vince and Judy &
Kid gloves fit snug but are not fashionable. How
expensive - I'd even say expansive, hemispherical... I lose
track Whack! lip smack-shellac bivouac nice rack
Kerouac was unrecognizable in his teddy bear
costume. Personally i believe we all love to wear someone else's
clothes the wind-o I wont too sea know moor. Fair wall and
Good-buy anything you want. But you'll have to carry it around all
day-o, day-ay-o, daylight come and me won' go
home cooking. that's what I miss the
most - Oh Daddy, you the MOST!! The most far-out cat daddy.
But I have a smashing woodsplitting motherfucker
headache medicine didn't work for the
skeleton - skinny. That's what we're all gonna be on the BIG
Halloween Nightmare on Elm St. Psycho Blood beach The Thing
Squirm in their chairs. But the king did not
expect the best. because this Halloween's gonna be on fire.

Mel's Halloween Opus

Long time no blog!
I took a couple hours off from my chores and tasks around the big blue house yesterday; so that I could visit a funky little motorcycle shop down by the ballpark. I chanced upon this [guy] and his start-up garage through craigslist.org. He advertised "a whole bunch of F-2 and F-3 parts" that he'd collected for years. My bike being without gauges, or matching colored wheels I figured I'd see what I could... See.
It's not often I find myself down on the Embarcadero, and I was struck by the utter newness of it. It's really a planned city, without any semblance of spontaneity or random expression. I realized, by my own equation, that it had none of what I consider Quality. But I should qualify that my reaction was influenced by the lack of numbered addresses visible on any of the new retail/office complexes. I was rolling along on the bike, my eyes dangerously off the traffic, scanning the sides of these buildings, and unable to situate which block of king street I was on. Suddenly I was forced onto the southbound 280, headed for Potrero Hill. The plight of the newby. I'm sure the workers just haven't gotten around to bolting the number plates onto the buildings.
But after all this driving, the motorcycle shop was closed. "Goddamn everything!" I thought to myself. I'd called the guy on the phone two hours before, and he didn't mention anything about closing early. Thinking to myself that the fellow may just be on a coffee run, I took out my book and decided to settle in and wait for awhile. I was rather grateful to be in a different setting, away from my house and my neigborhood. I leaned against the bike and began to read from CITY OF QUARTZ when a middle-age couple, climbed out of a white SUV, approached me and asked if I was: "...Looking for Casey?" They appeared to be his folks, and as they went on to explain how they were up from San Luis Obisbo, basically dropping in and checking up on their son, and his new (13 months young) enterprise. They expressed dissapointment that he'd split in the middle of the day, while clients (me) waited outside. I gathered he wasn't overburdened with customers - at least not in mom and dad's opinion.
Interesting thing. Usually I'm the one who does all the talking, but these guys - in what I'm seeing now was an atempt to hold me there until Casey returned and snared some sale - essentially bent my ear about their son. They told me of his lifelong misadventures (including federal prison), his dreams of redemption in a motorcycle shop... And I thought about ur friend N.A., and breathed a discreet sigh of relief on his behalf.
I was thinking to myself: Boy would Casey hate to know about this conversation. Mom and dad are sweet; I found myself touched by their openness about their son's (comment tu dis..?) issues. But the utter lack of respect for his privacy was at the same time quite awkward. I don't know what I'd do if my mom and dad were telling some stranger the kind of stuff I wouldn't even share in an AA meeting.
And I don't mean American Airlines.

Ahh... Gusty, warm nights in October. I'm set to walk over to the cafe on 22nd street and make a plan (pitch a plan - is more like it) to the very sweet German girl who works there. I saw her on the street today, and she told me to come by her work at eight - when she finishes - and it seemed to be hummin'.
But now... Ah, confidence, bluster, swagger, bullshit... Where do they go?

I've noticed no one writes LOVE STUFF on Blogger; at least in our little camp. It's not the greatest, this "boy meets girl" thing. Not the most interesting story out there. My back is sore for some reason. It's that tired-sore that always seems to suggest psychosomaticality. I'm trying to figure out if my loss of mojo to go hang with this girl stems from my own depleted energies from working, or some "worm hole" of the moods I unwittingly crawled into.
Or, if it's something coming from her; a shift in her consciousness. Life is not in a vacuum. I wish I could just lie down on a hardwood floor.

I walked the dog around the neigborhood and up to Dolores park tonight. There were several parties going on in different corners of the park - some final hoorah for Critical Mass. I steered pretty well clear of them; somehow the energy didn't seem that positive. It was more like people looking for a struggle in which to pour their energies. All over the mission district I saw groups of six or seven cyclists, heading home after the big rallye, and filling the lanes with their bikes two and three abreast. A small taste of power tends to have an ugly effect on weak-minded people. The whole thing seemed defiant and confrontational, for the sake of defiance and confrontation. HEY MAN, DON'T FUCK WITH US. WE'LL HIT YOU WITH OUR KRYPTONITE LOCKS.
Everybody's got a plan to make the world better. Invariably calls on other people to change what they are doing.

I keep having these weird encounters with groups of lesbians around here. This area has become the stomping ground for young, angry, punk-rock dykes. They go to the Lexington Club on 19th street, and when there's enough of them together, they start fronting tough. How dumb can you get? I've heard other people recount the same experience. Gay, straight... It's all the same. If you act like a shithead, you will be treated like a shit head. Sometimes you'll be treated like a shithead even if you're an angel. That's just the nature of life.

Shit. It's Sunday, and I have to go work on the house. Everyday I work on the house. It has gotten so hard to keep at it. I think I am in the sixth or seventh week of painting, and though it's near done - everyone says so - I can't seem to see the end. The most interesting thing about this process, is seeing myself brought to the end of my will; my strength; my resolve. i consider myself the strongest man alive, but I'm watching the steeply banking downward curve of my focus.
The hardest thing is knowing how much personal business needs seeing to, and not having the nergy at the end of the day to deal with it. yesterday our front door lock went on the fritz, and I just left it. For all I know the house is wide open. My room upstairs is just a sty, mattress bare, clothes on the floor, alongside garbage, crumpled up receipts, pieces of sandpaper. If only I coyuld finish today, in one twelve hour rush of work. I would totally do it. Instead I'm only able to fill holes and gaps in the wood with caulking and bondo. I want to take this day off, but I'll regret it tomorrow.
It's scary to push myself so hard and so far.

I'm experiencing a goddamn amazing piece of time travel today. I's like a science fiction movie, in which a character keeps walking through those viscouous liquid time portals, unwillingly walking back and forth from one dimension to another. Today it was 1994 for me; halfway through my undergrad and trying to extract some information or service from concordia University.

It all started when i decided i would apply to UCLA's MFA program, with the notion of fast-tracking myself to YET another dimension, where everyone's above the line, the grass is green and the girls are pretty: With a masters degree i could say goodbye forever to grip trucks, sandbags, cable runs, shitty six day weeks... But the deadline is upon me, and suddenly i have to rememeber my student ID # and password for the on-line admisiions and transcript services (and the former wasn't VALI - when did I change that?)

When I left concordia, and Montreal, i never thought I'd look back, but now six years later THINGS HAVE CHANGED. dealing with institutions takes a lot of experience. I feel like I'm out of shape. I have two weeks to hustle my application together for the Fall 2003 semester. That one won't be in my hands.

I gave Mike Manzone notice of my intention to take over his apartment on march 1st, 2001. He seemed agreeable to it. I have a stable life in my future. Just the thought of it seems to energize me.

My blogs are not smelling too fresh right now. What, it's been three weeks since I touched this. Goddamn, what happens? It's like a blackout drunk - waking up in jail, or a wrecked car. I don't even drink. I'm addicted to painting.

Everything i want to write is too personal for blogger-forum. I don't know if that's good or bad. I should probably branch off to another venue of personal expression. Ambitions thwarted by procrastination; I'm not going to lay that one out. Letting fall every plan or design... Smoking has really cost me a lot in the last 18 months. I only have one week left of that.

I was excited about going to new york a few weeks ago, but now i'm shuddering at the thought of living out of bags for another month - two - three months. Who knows? I know i can buck up, but it's not too inviting.

Zack asked me tonight what i planned to do on Sept 11th, and I hadn't thought about it. Inwardly, I figured I'd wait and see what happened... you know - out in the world. Maybe I'd arm myself in the house, and listen to patriotic radio broadcasts. I'm not going out and around the Mission district. I know there will be marches, and demonstrrations calling for peace and rethinking of American policy. I think that's so childish and simplistic and goddamn holy. I'd rather go out to Alameda and attend services on the U.S.S. Hornet. I find that much more comforting than the alternative-world of this neighborhood. I don't know what I'll do on Sept 11. If I work on painting the house, i'll probably hang an American flag on the scaffold. Everyone else on the block can find their own interpretation of events.

The week seemed to run by in hyper-time, and i didn't get to exert any creative energy on blogger or anywhere else, unless you count LA PEINTURE.

The stress level of the week was moderate most of the time, with a couple moments of code red when we rigged the scaffold to do the 35' high sunburst of bartlett St. My dad seems to think I'm going over budget, and I need to start thinking about cutting corners. I'm of the mind that there couldn't be a less perfunctory prep, unless we painted right over the cracked, peeling paint. Sigh.

Last night Terry and I went to see an old French film at the castro, and I found myself uplifted by the experience. When we entered the theater, the old Wurlitzer organ was playing LA VIE EN ROSE in baseball-time and we giggled at the wonderful otherness of it. I found myself thinking about value and romance, and the book of short stories i want to write which would explore those themes.
Sitting in the theater, as the lights dimmed down, I was struck like lightning with the conclusion that exposure to life, and people and ideas and culture saves us from our own nihilistic thoughts. In that moment, I realized that the Herculean task of painting our old house has a certain, preciousness to it - if i can find it. I can be Chaplin - or harold Lloyd - riding on the hands of the big clock tower, or scrambling up and down the scaffold, with gallons of beautifully colored liquids -clanging against each other, gently seeing to every inch of the old, wooden facade. A nail or a screw here, and some sanding there, and as we move the scaffold another 10' feet, the poor, broken old house emerges with a sparkle; and every passer-by smiles, and thanks us for taking care of the old place.

This week I will begin the first installment of the "Painting the Gingerbread palace" feature on filbert.net. There will be pictures and stories. I hope everyone stops in to take a look.

I only had a couple of minutes to read the other bogs on filbert this morning, but it was like a book I couldn't put down. Only later when I was at work in San Rafael did it occur to me that the growing collection of people submitting words (on filbert.net) has begun to emit an energy greater than itself. Or I should say, for me, its meaning has deepened. I began to wonder if I couldn't detect a pattern or rythmn of life - faintly - the ripple across our many private consciences. Huh.

Everything seems kind of crazy and upside down, but no one is getting hurt, so I'm not worried. I'm trying hard to get Terry and David Hale to conribute blogs to the page, so hopefully we'll see some new blood.

Why does that seem suddenly morbid? Seeing new blood?

Today I was working for Brad, trying to figure out why a 220V dryer plug was smoking at a house up in Marin. The power was supposed to be off, and I was a bit absent minded as I rapped with Tim, and Don the customer. I was squatting down, prying the the plug out from the steel box with a screwdriver when it suddenly blew up: There was still current in the circuit from some hinky, old school wiring job done in the early seventies, and I'd inadvertently shorted it. The arc was shooting out blue/orange flames about a foot, and sparks of burning metal poured onto the floor like as they would from a mini-crucible. I pulled my hand back as fast as I could, but not before it was burned and blackened. Tim said later it was smoking as I tucked it into my armpit and said; "I'm burned"

But it seems okay, so I'm not overly upset. Like the car crash Matt and I had on Fountain St. in Hollywood; no one was hurt, so I thought it was pretty cool. I'm beginning to realize that I'll take anything over normal, day to day life. The only things that make me feel alive are emotions, and I only respond to the powerful ones anymore. Addiction.

Sex seems to be the furthest thing from my mind. How odd. It's as if my body spares me the distraction, becasue it lend snothing to the process in which I'm living. There is nothing cosy, or sweet or sensual - sleep-in-on-saturday-morning about my existence. It's all mental fucking discipline. They say (in martial arts) if you control the head, you control the body. I'm astonished to see, at 33 years old, that I've finally wrested control from my pay-per-view imagination.

Terry and I dropped into the mst fascinating place tonight. He had noticed an arresting, old-timey diner on Bayshore blvd. called SILVERCREST (WE NEVER CLOSE) and insisted that we go. I've driven by the place many times on my way to Visitacion valley, but it had never occurred to me to drop in. Well tonight was the night.

The SILVERCREST diner is all crimson red-painted stucco on the outside, with red neon lights from the sevnties announcing its pleasures to the passing vehicles. We pushed open the back door to go in, and it was 1970 inside. A group of cool, streetsmart, older black guys were playing pool in the darkened backroom bar, A scratchy jukebox had a James Brown track going - something i'd never heard before. And all night there were old soul and R & B songsplaying - that I'd never heard before.
A man walked past us and suddenly asked: "How y'all doing?" He wore an oldtimey brown, pinstripe suit and sandals with socks. One of his eyes was obscured by a milky cataract: The other was framed by a scar that could have been made with a chainsaw. He walked up to a row of five identical vintage pinball machines, pumped a quarter in one, and proceeded to play at it for no less than an hour and a half. He left without ordering so much as a coffee.

We sat the bar, a little bit unsettled by the perfect otherness of our surroundings, when the owner himself walked up and gruffly asked us what we would have. The old guy had his gray hair combed into a hustler's pompadour, and he wore his shirt open to show what once must have been a very alluring chest. I was scanning the breakfast menu when Terry suddenly started yammering at the guy in Greek, without so much as asking where he comes from. Of course terry had found the one Greek in san Francisco.

We're like family down there now.

This better not crash.

Something great might come out,and I wouldn't want to lose it.

I went out with Suzette for a few hours tonight. Sweet girl, if not a little distant from life. She has her feet pretty well planted on earth, with only a few exceptions.

Shit, i'm bored. I may as well just go to bed. I have all these house-demands that must be seen to tomorrow, and I promised Nick I'd help him organize his garage.

It seems when i think about blogs during my day, I rememeber interesting (at least to me) tid-bits that I can put in my blog later on. It's clear to me that I'm much too far in the zone with this painting thing. I'm doing my typical all or nothing charge, and evrything is falling apart. Yet i can't take my eyes off the goal. I fantasize about freedom from this place, and this project, and yet I don't exactly know what i'll do or where I'll go after.

But i feel deep down that I'll come flying out of here like a catapault. Energy. I pray something nice comes of it.

Vinnie's back.

And I've been gone too long. This is not going to be long because I'm on an early-rise program (that way the bad juju can't get me). Finally everybody left, and I'm able to return to my monotonous, predictable life of coffee, cigarettes, house-painting and baby.

I've decided to work on training baby to be a watchdog, instead of a guard dog (cause there's a difference). A watch dog barks at the sound of an intruder to the house. A guard dog puts him in the ground. Once i'm awake I can do that myself (lol).

I powerwashed the houser this weekend. What a goddamn stressful experience that was. I had meant to be low-key about the whole thing, but when I pull-started the machine (it's GAS) it was so loud, I may as well have been in a bi-plane. I started the wash down in the breezeway on 21st st., and the water jet was taking off dirt, grime, airborne pollution, paint chips, pieces of house... Everything was blowing 30 feet away onto the neigbours place, and the parked cars on the street. I was stripped down to shorts and sandals, soaking wet, swearing - going up and down the ladder (which was too short). So much fucking crap came off the house i had to wash most of Alan's place after - and then there was 500 gallons of black water pooled down in his shed entrance, swirling with branches, paint chips and pigeon skeletons. And that was only one small part of the whole three day job. This thing is so massive.

But I got the star quaterback flying in from Montreal. We're gonna be PENDEJOS EN CONTROL, gussying up the old whore of a house , just like we did back in our reefer-smoking, plalteau-painters co-op days of youthful; misadventure. Wiyth terry on the crew i feel we shall be invincible.

"Give me ten divisions of men like that, and our problems here will soon be over."

"Ahhhhhhh! The puppies...!!!"

"Are you leaving? Cause I'm COMING."

Well, there's sure been a lot of laughs the last few days. Every guy I know is taking some shade of ass-kicking this Summer - so I don't feel too bad anymore. And it turns out the dead whale was just another 1/4 mile to the north. We'd have smelled it if we were downwind. Too bad. It's probably just a skeleton by now. I make light of all that because I can't really deal with a blue whale getting run over by a tanker and washing up in Marin County. I can only deal with the animal apocalypse through cruel humor, set off like a hand grenade in a crowd of people.

Vinnie's baclk alright, and he's half out of his head from the paint fumes - or the stench of some personalities around these parts.

At the Ingleside police station, on Ocean ave., there's an old slab of bullet-proof glass hanging on display next to the desk where they write down reports and deal with the public. The lexan (i think that's what they call it - now) has five highly visible impacts from what I guessed was a 12ga. shotgun firing 00 buckshot. It looks quite striking, hanging there on the wall. It's the first thing you see when you walk into the station. The second thing you see is a plaque commemorating an officer who was killed in the line of duty, back in 1971.
Now I don't know why, but 1971 just seems like the year that kind of thing would happen. The early seventies has this tough, psycho, bluntness to it; or so it seems to me now. Maybe it's just the way cars were designed... Those Detroit irons, with their V-8 hemmies and glass-pack mufflers were the chariots of that decade's villains. There were certainly a lot of tough-guy movies (DOG DAY AFTERNOON, DIRTY HARRY, TAXI DRIVER).
I found it easy to imagine the night it happened. The parking lot full of cruisers, and fog rolling in from Daly City... Some Hellborn villain with a trenchcoat and three-days growth of a beard, skulks up to the old wooden door of the precinct house and slips in under the greenish glow of the bare flouro tubes... Pulling that sawed-off duck gun from under the coat and...
"Can I help you sir?"

In any case the night that the cop got killed was the same night the lexan got that nice, decorative etching. I asked: That's how I know. I happened to be there at the precinct because some fool kid with a shaved head in a souped-up Honda Civic hit me in my truck and then drove off. It was more dramatic than that in the moment, but I'm just tired of recounting the story. I changed lanes, pulling in front of him: He didn't like it, so he pulled into the emergency lane and passed the two cars on my right, cut hard across two lanes of traffic so that he was 4' in front of my bumper, and then he locked his brakes. I didn't have a chance of stopping, so I skidded right into the back of his car. He booked out of there, but another car stopped and the driver said he saw the whole thing and would testify the guy had made a reckless, deliberate move causing an accident - and then fled the scene. So I'm probably not going to get shagged for any money (thank God).
But it's looking like there's nothing I can do to that punk kid. The cops won't touch a traffic violation, unless an officer witnesses it. No one really cares. What the kid did is basically legal, because it's not covered by any part of the vehicle code. I doubt that kid even has a licence, let alone insurance. Driving like he was I would guess he is a convicted felon. No one just pulls a move like that suddenly - out of the blue.

When i finished the paperwork at the police station, I asked one of the cops what happened to the guy who shot up their station house.
"Did he get the San Quentin gas chamber?" I asked the desk sergeant.
He barely looked up from his paperwork.
"He was never caught." He grumbled.

So why in Christ's name do they have that 30 year old nightmare hanging on the wall like a trophy? Is that to show what a tough job it is? Or to remind people to be patient when they wait in line for an hour to report their injury or wrongdoing? I was really puzzled about that as I drove home. These guys adorn their station with a souvenir of the night some psycho came in and shot the place up like a Terminator - and then got away - through a parking lot full of cop cars. Whatever.

I was just grateful to get my car home and into the garage without any altercations, road rage or freeway shootings. There was a humorously ironic moment as I drove home, and looking back in the rearview mirror, I noticed my new punched-steel cab screen that protects the rear window (since it got smashed in three weeks ago). I cover my back, and I get hit in the front! What do i need now? Roo-Bars? A roll-cage? Self-inflating tires? I'll just have to go back to the truck accesory center and spend some more money. Just make the check payable to Mad Max.

I'm struck by the high political content of my fellow bloggers at filbert.net. Perhaps I should jump in too.

Then some might say: Perhaps not, Vinnie.

Ever since I was in film school, I kept hearing about the "old-boy networks" that kept women out of the movie business. It was assured to me that I would one day become one of the gatekeepers, as that was a position a white guy was guaranteed, but it didn't really work out that way. Perhaps it was the year that I spent in Latin America: People said I possessed a "Corazon latino". I wonder if I could use that to get into UCLA grad school.

Anyway, women do really well at the crew level of film production. I suspect this "fast-track" is a result of guys (best boys and keys) who like having chicks around, which is a form of objectification, but if that gets you a union card and some benefits - what the hell.

But I wonder why there aren't more women struggling to break into the male-dominated world of construction. No one is swinging at the glass ceiling of drywall carpentry, or plumbing. I've worked on hundreds of construction crews, and it's a cock-fest through and through. I think iIt would be great to have some gals around. It would be almost tolerable.

I read somewhere that women and minorities are under-represented in the world of architecture. Now obviously you don't need to know conduit bending and rebar framing to design a building, but it would make sense to me that someone in the field would have to possess at least SOME background in the trades, as opposed to a mere certificate from an art school. We build on the experience of others. Every stud you nail up in a house is a microcosm of the Brooklyn Bridge, because the principles are identical. Layout, cutting, joining...

When John Roebling died, something like four years into the ten year construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, it was his wife who picked up the project and carried it to completion. She didn't write columns about women's under-representation in bridge-building, from the student's lounge of the gender studies department. She just jumped in and did it, and I would imagine she thoroughly understood the project because she was a partner in the family business of cable-making. I don't imagine she did this in order to attain rockstar status in 19th century New York society circles.

I've heard that James Cameron can perform any technical fuction on a film set. From mixing sound, to loading magazines to setting C-stands; he has a firm grasp of all the mechanics of production. That's a total grasp of the medium. I think that's a worthwhile goal for anyone who aspires to lead. But now most directors and D.P.s go to film school, and graduate right into their postions at the top of the industry. It's a shame because those sexy jobs are like a fancy uniform worn by an army officer who's bought a regiment for it's social status, but shuns other officers who've actually had experience in a bush war.

Like in THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

I think I'm most annoyed at my new environmentalist roomate, who can't seem to even get a handle on recycling. The guy never seems to turn the taps all the way off, and if the toilet's running, he'll let it go for hours. In his room he has five 100W bulbs burning in the overhead chandelier, instead of just getting a 60W desk-lamp for his computer table. But to hear him go on about proposed oil drilling in Alaska! I think that stuff is just social grist for San Francisco kids. You have to say what everyone else is saying. I guess if you went to Los Angeles with a mouthful of Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky, you'd last as long as water lily in the Mojave Desert (and I'm talking L.A. - not Santa Monica)

All the roomates I've had here, upon moving out, throw all their unwanted crap into the breezway between our place and Alan's. When people are under the gun, it's TO HELL with principles.

Nothing will turn you into a redneck quicker than the rental business. As long as home-ownership increases in America, folks will vote conservative. It's not the media herding everyone around with frightening headlines about crime and terrorism.

Brad was telling someone a story about a carpenter who had sawed off the end of a piece of plywood that he was actually standing on. I guess the point of the story was that people actually do such things.

Today I got to thinking that I did something similar, when i rented this apartment to a couple of guys, on the promise that I would "almost never" be around. Well, I'm around. I live there. I sleep there, and wake up there. I have my morning coffee and shower there... I'm there. How fucking dumb. I wasn't supposed to be there. I hang out in the garage a lot.

The camping trip turned out to be kind of nice. Roadtripping with one's old man can be challenging, but we did alright. The lowest moment had to be when we drove 26 miles up a valley, and then plunged down another 16 miles of dirt roads, to get to a hot spring (which i insisted that we go to) only to find forty cars there. The place was a friggin' built-up ashram/meditation center. And this is in the hinterland. What was I thinking? That there would be a wild, untouched "stash" of a hot spring - in fucking California?

Ass-rams and zen yoga centers have this really positive, benign image (becaiuse they're soooo spiritual), but as far as I'm concerned it's just one more way to get you to pay $200/day to go into a hot spring - THAT'S IN A NATIONAL FOREST! How is that any different than a resort in palm Springs, or a golf course in Florida? I'll tell you what's different: Semantics. Which (ety-MO-logically means "some antics". Like - those are SOME antics you're up to, but I'm smelling through it!

So we dusted that place, and set up camp in a very buggy site about five miles back up the hot, dusty road. Whatever.

Walking up 21st street tonight, I turned back towards my house, and caught sight of the moon - the big, bright full moon, with fast moving white fog drifting by -- it made me gasp. I really did a double-take. I thought to myself - "the moon is full. So that's what's going on." The house looked like something from a horror film, with the tall chimney pots and plastic owls silhouetted against the gunmetal-blue night sky. And then i thought to myself: I can't believe I have to paint that motherfucker.

Summer 2002. You son of a bitch- are you still here?