Learning about credit scores and movie making the hard way

This is not going to be a downer entry. That needs to be said at the outset. 

I am a substitute teacher. This means that from time to time, I sit down in classrooms full of students whom (<--- Bringing it back) I have never met. Today, I have the honor of sitting in on a class that is working on a design project and the teacher left me his computer that has internet access and I can get onto blogger. Gmail is not an option. 

I was simply sitting here when one of the young ladies shouted across the room and demanded that I give her a dollar. I would love to I said, but I'm broke. The class was mystified. I don't think that they had ever believed that someone could be out of college and not have some hard currency on their person. I'm sure most of their parents normally have cash for them. From the information they had about how money works, the only logical conclusion was that I was a big fat ungenerous liar. 

After a few minutes of harassment, I felt the need to defend my status as a man of my word, even if it meant showing everyone in the room that I was in truth a total bum. To my disappointment, they seemed to be more interest in my Burt's Bees and my lucky baseball card (Willie McGee) than the fact that I was a truth teller. You win some and you lose some. 

Anyhow, the job search continues. Get at me if you hear of some amazing opportunity, so that I can take advantage of it. It really doesn't need to be amazing. Homeboy just needs a paycheck.

In other news, my friend Daniel and I have been exploring the bottom rungs of the Detroit film industry together. We were unpaid PA's on a film project shooting down on McNichols earlier this week. We learned a lot and the guys making the movie were really friendly. Because there wasn't anyone else there to help, we got to try a lot of different 'jobs' while we were there. We supervised the script, noted sound and camera times, worked the boom and dressed the set. 

The following day we were extras on a major movie shooting in Dearborn. Big names, lots of people, lots of professionals. It is incredible to me how much footage gets shot every day on these sets when compared with how much actually makes the film. I will leave you with an equation:

An average film shoots for 9 weeks 6 days a week.

An average film in 1.75 hours = 105 minutes

How many minutes are accomplished on an average day?

Organic Cigarettes and Other Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

Hokay so,

I was just flipping through a magazine and saw an ad for American Spirit cigarettes boasting that they have ORGANIC cigarettes. Why why why why why?

Now we arrive at one of the most egregious suspensions of logic that I have seen in a long while. American Spirit advertises its Organic Cigarettes while simultaneously saying that they are not actually healthier in any way. This is actually mandated by a court ruling, which says that in their ads which boldly proclaim their Organic cigarettes they must also put these words:

No additives in our tobacco

does NOT mean a safer cigarette.

Here is an example of someone doing the exact same thing:

I really don't mind tobacco at all. I love me a nice cigar every now and then and when the weather is nice, nothing beats sitting on my porch with a nice pipe and a book. (I'm building up my old man street cred.) I guess what scares me is some magical power that advertisers seem to have over us. We are told over and over that we must purchase and consume organic goods so that we will in turn be healthier and we buy into it so much that someone can run a campaign selling us one of the most deadly products out there and because they slap a big certified organic sticker on it, someone is beating down the door to the nearest liquor store to pick it up. yikes.

Here's one kid who knows something about cig uh rets.

why is today creepier than every other day? Lincoln's fifth question.

for some reason, I am absolutely on edge today. Here are the contributing factors:

caffeine
three dimensional stop motion animation
the looming prospect of grad school
my first adventure in screenwriting.

So, I am sitting in the Caribou at five mile and sheldon right now. The hilarious part about this is that I do not drink coffee, but I applied for a job here a few weeks ago and I feel like if I keep coming in they will think that I am dedicated or something and just give me a job out of a sense of pity. Thus far, no luck. The truly unfortunate thing is that I feel compelled to drink a coffee beverage whenever I'm in here. I mean, could I really show up here and order a coke and sit by myself. That simply wouldn't make sense. My brother and I saw Coraline this afternoon. It was both the coolest 3-d movie I've seen as well as the coolest stop-motion flick. A lot of the time, I feel like when those mediums are used, it isn't a natural outgrowth of the story, but just becomes some kitschy little gimick that advertisers want to force onto a narrative because they believe that it will fill seats i.e. the Home Improvement 3D episode and the stop motion James and the Giant Peach. This however, was great. I was basically sold from the opening credits in which the screen was framed with a type of lace pattern that resembled old footlamps, but instead of just hanging out at the bottom of the screen, wrapped all the way around. It fascinated me. The movie though, IS REALLY CREEPY. If you didn't know that you shouldn't take young children to see Tim Burton flicks, take note. I may have a few nightmares tonight.
After the movie, I went to the library and started doing research for my grad school applications. The whole process just feels like a gigantic mountain to me. It takes up a lot of the space in my head after I think about it and makes it really difficult to focus elsewhere. So, there's a lot to get accomplished there.

And as some of you know, I am taking my first tenuous steps into screenwriting. It's a really fun project for me based on the life and struggles of Luke Haddad. At this point it is kind of following a Waiting for Guffman style arch. It is a lot of fun though because it is a medium that I have never worked in and at times I feel really not up to the challenge because there is so much that I need to start learning about how to make a screenplay that people would be interested in.

So I am doing all of that and right now I'm listening to the first time to U2's new album. they have it streaming on their myspace. How great would it be if this could be another Joshua Tree? Here's hoping. I'm also going down to the D tonight to see Medicine for Melancholy tonight. Given the frenetic, caffeine adjusted state of mind that I am in right now, I think this movie is going to be just what I need.

Peter and I

So, this is a story that works as a journal entry as well. It really discusses how I am seeing/feeling right now. I wrote it a few days ago and have basically just stared at it before I finally decided to put it out there for viewing. I hope that you enjoy reading it, I hope that it means something to you. Tell me about it. I want to know what is good/atrocious. Let's discuss.

-Linc

I think it was the rain that woke me and I found myself in the keel of a sinking boat. The oars were gone. The water splashed on my forehead and chose either the left or right side of my face to trail down. I lay still for a few moments before I knew the danger that I was in and began throwing handfuls of water overboard, while searching for land. The rain was heavy and the wind drove. As my boat was thrown to the crests and troughs, I searched for safety and found only a low haze that blocked everything more than what would be a block away.

I decided the only thing to do was keep the boat from filling with rain until the weather broke. I reached a crest and began to descend. Just as a new wave blocked the horizon, I thought I saw someone step out from the cloud bank, which I now saw was thick and definite like the curtains of a stage. This desert is much too wet for mirages, I thought, as I kept my focus on the water inside the boat for fear of that which walked upon it outside. A haunting vision can be written off after it has passed but trying to discount the fear invoked when the vision is present is like ignoring the dog with its teeth in your arm.

“Lincoln,” He called to me, and I was compelled to look up and when I did, I knew that He was no haunting vision, but was like something I had always known, something I knew before I knew knowing. Primordial and Right and Abundant.

“O, Jesus, I thought you were a ghost.” Then and there I knew that I was living out the story of Peter. I was going to walk on the water. “Call unto me, Lord, and I then shall walk upon the water.” I was putting on my best Peter, trying to be that disciple full of zeal on whom Jesus built the foundations of his church. I loaded my voice with archaic language as if my words could make this Man or this Moment more solemn.

Jesus seemed to sigh as he said, “Lincoln, that boat will no longer hold you. Come to me on the water and we will walk together.”

My heart leapt. I had read this story and I knew precisely what to do. Peter was able to walk on the water only when he was full of faith and kept his eyes on Jesus. He fell because he was worried about the storm around him and looked away. Be like Peter, be like Peter, Full of Faith, Never doubting, I thought as I slammed my eyes into Jesus’. I blindly put my hands on the side of the boat and swung my legs over the side. What I did not see was that the boat grew taller in the aft than it was in the bow and my feet slammed into the edge. I began to tumble toward the water. At all times I kept my eyes on His and watched them turn slightly sad, the way a parents would when their unflappable child loses a spelling bee. The parent knows how the odds are stacked against winning, but the child in invincibly unaware.

Be like Peter, be like Peter. At this point in the fall, I had spun and contorted in order to maintain eye contact and found my self with my back to the water looking at Jesus upside down. I felt victorious, convinced that I had conquered my environment as well as a treacherous boat design and would shortly find myself resting on a bed of water. This is why I didn’t inhale before I sank beneath the waves.

I think that I was angry first. How could I fail when I knew exactly what to do to walk on water? I had read that story so many times. My empty lungs opened and I gasped the water. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I nearly raged or nearly wept. It was torture to see the shadow of Jesus’ feet on the other side, where the air was, where life was. I thrashed and pulled but never drew any closer. With water in my chest, I reasoned that this was where I would die and so unsanctimonious a death with physical salvation
visible and unattainable, must mean that my spiritual salvation was just as far from reach.

Lightning flashed and an eternally pierced hand shot through the water. It latched onto my shoulder and ripped me to safety. It hurt. I spat that gasp of water and it disappeared into the sea like a useless fish thrown back. The rain had stopped. The moon was out. I was enjoying oxygen, as I never had. I was on the water. I wasn’t looking into Jesus’ eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think, Lincoln.” It hurt, but in the same way that the pain in my shoulder was a hurt that saved.

“But I did right what Peter did wrong. I believed that I would float and I kept my eyes on you. I wasn’t worried about the storm. I did this better than Peter did.”

“Walk with me.” It wasn’t slippery. I had always thought that it would be, but I found my footing to be more sure here that it ever was on land. I spread my toes and saw the water fill in between them. Walking on water is filled with expectation. A lake never passing the soles of your feet is like a three beat pause in your favorite song. “Of course you did those things, you had the story. But you must understand that whenever I bring someone out here, their challenge is going to be their own. Peter loved me, but he had fear and wasn’t sure if I was sufficient for him. That was his challenge. It clearly wasn’t yours, I wish you could have seen what you looked like when you fell out of that boat. Lincoln, you fail to be present. You concerned yourself with living Peter’s story and passing a test when you should have known that I simply wanted you to join me. With all that worry of being full of faith and being more impressive that Peter,” (Which is exactly what I had been worried about) “you missed the fact that I should have been both your means and your end. You should never be too busy with someone else’s story, so that you miss what is happening in your own.”