This evening's blog is brought to you by the letter Y. As in,
Y CAN'T I FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE A GODDAMN BUS.
I was going over to my friend's place and took a bus that said it was going to downtown. Oh, downtown! Cool, great, that's exactly where I'm headed! Except the mobile box of torture and questionable odors made a sharp right the second it hit downtown and then next thing I knew I was trying to catch the last bus out of some part of town that was near a King Taco. And you know what kinda shit goes down near King Taco.
In spite of my continued failure with public transportation, life has been pretty good. My primary task at my internship for the past couple of days has been to watch submissions for a film festival being put on by the arts center I'm interning with. So yes, I spend seven hours a day watching countless films, ranging anywhere from 1-minute avante garde animation shorts to 90-minute features from Korea. I feel like there were no guidelines for this festival other than to submit to it. I guess I'm on board with that idea, but it makes my job very difficult since I'm trying to rate all these films. Should a very good 4-minute stop-motion comedy get the same rating as a very good 60-minute documentary about Norwegian anarchists? (the documentary was actually terrible, I just needed an example.) I'm baffled as to how to properly do this. Now, I do have something of a system, and it kind of works, but it's not infallible. If I watch a feature-length film, I ask myself, "On a scale of 0-10, how okay would I be with spending $7 to watch this?" If I watch something like a 30-60 minute film, I ask, "On a scale of 0-10, how okay would I be with spending $7 to watch this and another film of equal entertainment value?" And with shorts I'll ask the same but with anywhere from 3-5 movies of equal entertainment value. This sort of works, obviously with other variables factoring in. But on the whole, money makes me a harsh critic. With over 50 submissions and a total run time of about 27 hours thus far, lawd knows I need to be-- the festival director wants to screen ALL of them! Hold on to your popcorn, folks, it's gonna be a looooong festival.
In other news, it's 11:52pm right now and I just got a call from my landlady. I have no idea how to express the confusion and concern that went through my mind as I saw her incoming call, but she only called because she saw the cabin light on in someone's car on the street and thought it was mine. Guess what? It was. Conclusion: I'm a cotton-headed ninny muggins, and my landlady rocks.
Anyway, I wanted to share a story that might give you (yet another) small glimpse into the rambling joke that is my life. I was crashing at my friend's place in DTLA a couple nights ago and I was sleeping in a room that's up on the roof. The roof breeze was nice so the door to the outside was left open over night. Well, I awoke the next morning [to find I had transformed into a giant beetle] to discover that I had been bitten by mosquitoes not once, but TWICE in two very inconveniently close locations on my upper lip. My lip swelled to at least three times its normal size-- needless to say, I was not pulling off the Angelina Jolie look in any capacity. I looked like that lamp from the Brave Little Toaster. No, not Lampy; I'm talking about the hanging lamp in that creepy scene at the parts shop.
On a side note, the song in that scene, "It's a B-Movie," is probably one of the most bad ass songs to ever be featured in an animated children's movie. It's on my iPod along with several other Brave Little tracks.
I put some ice on the monstrosity protruding out of my face, but it took about a full day before fully going down. Good thing my second interview with the bakery was today and not yesterday. Having to explain my lip would have been an unprecedented combination of awkward and exhausting.
Okay, since I let it slip, yes-- I've been interviewing with this bakery. Both interviews went well so far. I haven't wanted to say anything because it's been my experience that whenever I talk up a big game about a job or an interview it always falls through, and then I have to return to the internet with my tail between my legs and say, "Nope! False alarm, folks. I still suck. You may resume your daily business." But then people are already resuming their daily business, because I suck.
Know what DOESN'T suck? My new flatmate. He's been here for like a week and I keep forgetting to talk about him to the millions of internet people who he's never met. Tonight's actually the first time I've had a meaningful/noteworthy conversation with him, and my suspicions that he's a cool dude turned out to be accurate. He's this kid from Singapore who's going to some architecture school around here. He's not the guy I had brought up a while back who was a writer-- but that's okay because this guy is a photographer, which is even better! He showed me his portfolio and he's taken really cool photographs from different parts of the world. Best of all, he really likes film and cinematography and wants to do more film projects. This is freaking AWESOME. I like making movies but I am a horrible cinematographer, and he has a great photographic eye but claims to be a horrible writer. TALENTFUSION-GASM, or, as I believe shallow-and-pedantic academics refer to it, "collaboration." Possibly in the future? Granted, he's in school full-time while I'm over here putting 45 minutes into sauteeing my breakfast each morning, but this could lead to some majorly good things down the road. Summer film project 2014, perhaps. We can enter it in the film festival I'm involved with and I'll TOTALLY pay $7 to watch it!
Also-- and I'm going to break the name-secrecy code just this once because my ignorance is worth mentioning-- when he first told me his name I heard,
"Hi, I'm Hugh."
But what he said was
"Hi, I'm Hyu."
Oh, Dgessikuh, you still have so much to learn about the world.
And to end this post with a bang: I went to my first LA-based dentist appointment yesterday. My dad recommended the guy after they met on a Porsche forum, which is kind of weird; almost as weird as your dad showing up to your college graduation in a Porsche and you trying to figure out whether he stole it or murdered somebody to get it. It was all right. The dentist appointment I mean. I don't have any cavities but I need to floss more.
J-MIL OUT
Y CAN'T I FIGURE OUT HOW TO USE A GODDAMN BUS.
 |
| Also, who Y'd in the pool? |
In spite of my continued failure with public transportation, life has been pretty good. My primary task at my internship for the past couple of days has been to watch submissions for a film festival being put on by the arts center I'm interning with. So yes, I spend seven hours a day watching countless films, ranging anywhere from 1-minute avante garde animation shorts to 90-minute features from Korea. I feel like there were no guidelines for this festival other than to submit to it. I guess I'm on board with that idea, but it makes my job very difficult since I'm trying to rate all these films. Should a very good 4-minute stop-motion comedy get the same rating as a very good 60-minute documentary about Norwegian anarchists? (the documentary was actually terrible, I just needed an example.) I'm baffled as to how to properly do this. Now, I do have something of a system, and it kind of works, but it's not infallible. If I watch a feature-length film, I ask myself, "On a scale of 0-10, how okay would I be with spending $7 to watch this?" If I watch something like a 30-60 minute film, I ask, "On a scale of 0-10, how okay would I be with spending $7 to watch this and another film of equal entertainment value?" And with shorts I'll ask the same but with anywhere from 3-5 movies of equal entertainment value. This sort of works, obviously with other variables factoring in. But on the whole, money makes me a harsh critic. With over 50 submissions and a total run time of about 27 hours thus far, lawd knows I need to be-- the festival director wants to screen ALL of them! Hold on to your popcorn, folks, it's gonna be a looooong festival.
 |
| ^was eligible for the Young Director's Award when he first entered |
Anyway, I wanted to share a story that might give you (yet another) small glimpse into the rambling joke that is my life. I was crashing at my friend's place in DTLA a couple nights ago and I was sleeping in a room that's up on the roof. The roof breeze was nice so the door to the outside was left open over night. Well, I awoke the next morning [to find I had transformed into a giant beetle] to discover that I had been bitten by mosquitoes not once, but TWICE in two very inconveniently close locations on my upper lip. My lip swelled to at least three times its normal size-- needless to say, I was not pulling off the Angelina Jolie look in any capacity. I looked like that lamp from the Brave Little Toaster. No, not Lampy; I'm talking about the hanging lamp in that creepy scene at the parts shop.
 |
| The one that vaguely looks like Steve Buschemi. |
I put some ice on the monstrosity protruding out of my face, but it took about a full day before fully going down. Good thing my second interview with the bakery was today and not yesterday. Having to explain my lip would have been an unprecedented combination of awkward and exhausting.
Okay, since I let it slip, yes-- I've been interviewing with this bakery. Both interviews went well so far. I haven't wanted to say anything because it's been my experience that whenever I talk up a big game about a job or an interview it always falls through, and then I have to return to the internet with my tail between my legs and say, "Nope! False alarm, folks. I still suck. You may resume your daily business." But then people are already resuming their daily business, because I suck.
Know what DOESN'T suck? My new flatmate. He's been here for like a week and I keep forgetting to talk about him to the millions of internet people who he's never met. Tonight's actually the first time I've had a meaningful/noteworthy conversation with him, and my suspicions that he's a cool dude turned out to be accurate. He's this kid from Singapore who's going to some architecture school around here. He's not the guy I had brought up a while back who was a writer-- but that's okay because this guy is a photographer, which is even better! He showed me his portfolio and he's taken really cool photographs from different parts of the world. Best of all, he really likes film and cinematography and wants to do more film projects. This is freaking AWESOME. I like making movies but I am a horrible cinematographer, and he has a great photographic eye but claims to be a horrible writer. TALENTFUSION-GASM, or, as I believe shallow-and-pedantic academics refer to it, "collaboration." Possibly in the future? Granted, he's in school full-time while I'm over here putting 45 minutes into sauteeing my breakfast each morning, but this could lead to some majorly good things down the road. Summer film project 2014, perhaps. We can enter it in the film festival I'm involved with and I'll TOTALLY pay $7 to watch it!
Also-- and I'm going to break the name-secrecy code just this once because my ignorance is worth mentioning-- when he first told me his name I heard,
"Hi, I'm Hugh."
But what he said was
"Hi, I'm Hyu."
Oh, Dgessikuh, you still have so much to learn about the world.
And to end this post with a bang: I went to my first LA-based dentist appointment yesterday. My dad recommended the guy after they met on a Porsche forum, which is kind of weird; almost as weird as your dad showing up to your college graduation in a Porsche and you trying to figure out whether he stole it or murdered somebody to get it. It was all right. The dentist appointment I mean. I don't have any cavities but I need to floss more.
J-MIL OUT
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