POSTULATING THE PENULTIMATE AXIOM

I forgot to mention that at the Johnny Wu premiere part for THE RAPTURE, someone approached me and asked if it was true that I had been investigated by the FBI during Horrors of War for making death threats…. After a belly laugh, I had to dispel this myth. I have not been investigated by the FBI for making death threats or anything else. Aside from the lunacy of such rumors, all I can say is that I am really amused by how nutso some people can get.



Well, I predict the U.S. economy will bottom out this coming July-August. Based on what I have seen of the market and the real estate/mortgage world -> we can expect a fallow time, quite possibly as bad as the Great Depression. I’m saving up to stave off bad economic times. Also, I’m stocking up on movies to rent in my Netflix queue so that when my unplanned summer vacation begins, I’ll have plenty of visual stimuli.

I’m way behind on watching movies. I did work in a Blu-Ray viewing of Francis Ford Coppola’s YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH. It was not as arty as I thought it would be and much more comic book-y. It was shot HD and also film.

Now I’ve been working a lot. I serve basically three masters. I have my regular workload of editing, and then I have two freelance gigs that I dedicate a lot of time to as an editor. I generally work 75+ hours a week now. As mentioned, I’m saving up for the crashing economy. When it hits, I may be able to survive without working at McDonald’s. If it never hits, I’ll have a nest egg for when I start the next feature.

Having to work this much wreaks havoc with my little buddy, the cat named “V”. He acts out when I’m home because he wants my undivided attention, and a tired, worn out Boo apparently is unacceptable to him. So this past Friday, I decided I would take him to work with me. As anyone who has a cat must know, this is the start of a terrible story…

I put his body brace and leash on and took my boy out to the car. He was fine until we got in the door. He got very unhappy very fast. He climbed under the passenger seat and let it be known for the entire 10 minute drive that he hated travel. He cried and moaned a bit. I think it’s a combination of negative association – his only two previous car rides ended in visits to the vets, once for shots, and the 2nd to be snipped. Either that or cats just hate travel.

I have been a dog guy my entire life. These past few years I’m getting to know how felines are. Cats and dogs really are different. Dogs have the “pack” mentality, whereas if the people/family are there – everything is cool no matter where they are. Cats have terrible short term memory and they “rub” their oils all over the furniture and people to mark them as both theirs and also to be able to remember where they are going. Move a chair or wash things and the cats look at you like you are killing their friends.



Taking “V” out of his familiar territory and putting him in my edit suite at work was a mistake. My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ told me this was a bad idea and she was right. He not only hated the drive, he just sat beside the leather couch and would not move. He didn’t cry, but he was unhappy. My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ came up to pick him up within the hour. We took him for a walk outside in the grass and that seemed to calm him a lot. Then he had another car ride.

I’m told by My Sexy Fiancé Veronica ™ that it took over 45 minutes to get him out from under her passenger seat when she got home. She had to squirt him with a water bottle until he finally came out. He was a Velcro ™ kitty clawing into the floor of the car.

By the time I got in late on Friday night, “V” seemed fine. He doesn’t beg to go outside as much now, nor does he complain as much when I get in late since he experienced the alternative.

Since George is in town, we’re going to tape the BEHIND THE SCENES for the UNCLE PETE videos. It will be short, but I think something cool to go on the DVD’s. There are plenty of outtakes and the full length theme song might get me investigated by the FBI….

Sorry I have nothing more interesting to discuss. Not a lot going on whilst I work to the bone. Maybe next month…

Peace,
PJR, your faithful narrator

An Oligarchy in Place of Supercilious Skullduggery

No rest for the wicked. I am ensconced with post production work. I took on some extra projects this weekend because I now need to recoup a heavy loss this week. On Thursday morning, I awoke to the sensation of cold. First my hand froze, and then the rest of me started to go quite freezing. I awoke at 7:45AM and went downstairs to see what was happening. The thermostat read a warm 51 degrees. I felt the vents and cold air was blowing from them.

I attempted to see the pilot light, but to no avail. I called the service that read the most reputable and this guy came out within an hour and proceeded to spend the next several hours fixing our furnace. Two units had fried in it and I got stiffed with a $600 bill. It could have been worse in terms of cost – we might have had to replace the whole heating unit, but as is – a chunk of change I had not wanted to part with just blew away. It was 34 degrees in the house when the hot air started blowing again. I lost almost an entire day's worth of work helping this guy work on the furnace and of course the cats looked at me like I'm some kind of sadistic bastard for torturing them in the cold all day.



My cold has faded, at least the part that disorients you and makes you woozy. I can still produce record amounts of mucous, and that means spending more money on tissues. All this money keeps disappearing. I keep making it and it keeps going away. This is life. That is the grind, isn't it? Ce La Vie, as the French might say.

My HD-DVD's started arriving, as in the free ones as a rebate on the player. I now have 4 of the special edition High Definition Stanley Kubrick movies. 2001, CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING, and EYES WIDE SHUT are now in my collection. I started going through a lot of the extras and special features. There are documentaries galore. I had only recently seen the 2+ hour documentary "A LIFE IN PICTURES", and I subsequently bought it as a separate DVD from a used seller on AMAZON.COM. Some of the documentaries are even in HD.

One of the things that I have been contemplating as I watch a lot of these newly made MAKING OF's and BEHIND THE SCENES is that Stanley Kubrick would hate them. I think Stanley must be churning around in the ground. He detested any kind of commentary or theories or extras on the movies before. Kubrick was of the mindset that the movies were the movies – your own interpretation is what it means. Whatever the film meant to you is what it means. The End. To see film critics giving their opinion on an official DVD of Kubrick's movie somehow endorses these interpretations or validates them; Stanley would have hated that, at least that was his pattern for the past 45 years.

Now for those out there that know how much I love extras and even have made my own "peak behind the curtain" type videos – I am not Kubrick, nor do I aspire to be him. I appreciate all these insights into one of cinemas greatest minds, but I am not trying to imitate Kubrick, either in practice or theory. I can disagree with methods and technique with someone I truly respect and love. After seeing Vivian Kubrick's documentary last year on the making of THE SHINING, I decided I would never behave the way Kubrick did on that set. It was something that completely demystified Kubrick and made me completely believe you can find your own way to direct.

The only similarities I might have with Stanley Kubrick is in the form of a feline assistant editor.



There ends the similarities between me and Kubrick.




Peace to my homies in North Compton. Word.

- PJ