I'm flying out to Perth this evening, tomorrow morning hopping on a boat that's going to take me halfway toward an island. I'm going to hop out, go for a scuba dive. Then get back on the boat and it'll carry me all the way to the island of Rottnest where I'll meet up with Nick and Mark. I'm bummed I'm leaving Melbourne, almost stayed an extra day. Even though I was only here a few days there are some people I met I wish I'd had more time with. And Mary I'll miss most of all.

(I think the saddest line I've ever read is from a Cormac McCarthy book, in fact I think he might've used it more than once. And it's also a line in this Hold Steady song I've been listening to over and over. And it's not exact but it's basically a paragraph to itself that goes something like:

He never saw him again.

or in the song it goes and I never saw that girl again...)

The odd aspect of traveling far away alone for me is that it helps me get over my shyness because always lingering in the back of my mind is a sense of limited time, so then I get a little braver; but then I end up missing the people I meet. I've always been haunted by this little memory of a film I saw as a kid in the Smithsonian or something - where an astronaut says goodbye to their family and friends and then travels at the speed of light, and then returns home, only to find that all the loved ones are elderly or dead and yet only a few days have passed by for them. It left me with a sensation about distance and time I've never shook. There are a lot of ways to get displaced. I think it's absolutely possible to miss someone you met for only a day. Then there's pondering those relative constructs - the Album Leaf video came out of an idea I'd had years before when Mary and I broke up. I'd often wonder what she'd be doing, so many time zones away from me. I'd be coming in from a night out just as she'd be getting up. Lives run in parallel then go out of sync. I'll miss her most of all, obviously, but am very happy and proud for her.

I share this story because this is how she impresses me and it inspires me: when we decided I'd move to the US and she'd go to Dublin, it came after a period of time where she was uncertain about what she wanted to do with her life and a run of soul sucking retail or office jobs. One day she told me she wanted to work on newspapers. Mary had a habit of keeping Sunday papers for weeks on end, reading every single part of them as I'd get peeved by clutter and want to throw them away. I'd find her reading the Book Review on Wednesday, alleging (wrongly) it was old news. Mary had never done any college journalism or high school journalism of any kind - I told her to go for it but honestly the jerk part of my brain was worried. A few months later she had a job at one of the major national papers in editorial. For those of you who know Mary, you know this is someone who isn't pushy or loud or brags or who charms their way socially into things. She just did it with her smarts and dedication. Mary makes me feel like anything's possible, in an honorable way.

Off Flinders Lane and somewhere near AC/DC Lane (no, really, there are plans to put a statue of Bon Scott in Perth in the city center) in Melbourne, street art dominates a block radius. One of the pieces was still wet.

Melbourne is beautiful. There are a handful of cities I could happily live in with my cursory experience of them - New York, Austin, Portland, London, Paris, and now Melbourne. I still can't quite put my finger on it. This city also is completely distinct - some remind you of others or there are places like them. I can't think of any place I've ever been to that has Melbourne's character.

I found a place to stay - the last place that wasn't a hostel in the city that had rooms available - but it was this awful hotel akin to the Australian version of the Shining hotel. It dates back to 1833 and hasn't been vacuumed since about then, I'd say.



I needed to write this damn treatment and the place was creeping me out and I was honestly out of ideas. Treatment writing is the bane of music videos - most of my director friends and myself averaged about 50 treatments last year of which a handful will get picked. Deadlines on them are very short, so you tend (as my buddy and very talented director Keith Schofield commented here) to let the ideas sit all day long and finally get something down very early in the am hoping that you finally got it.

Mary had job interviews, so I headed out for the day with headphones listening to the song on a loop. Just wandered the streets randomly. She got a job on her second one for a newspaper out here. Her boyfriend got his on the first interview. The luck of the Irish?


odd little signifier on the sidewalk

The city has a tram service that acts as its public transport that is convenient, simple, and hard to get lost on.


mary checks out the song


alan

Alan had to split so Mary and I ate Sukiyaki and caught up on five years apart. We realized that we had first met fourteen years ago. I'm very good at giving a first bad impression, and it was only two years after we first met for one night - teenagers on a suburban close my first Christmas I spent in Ireland, looking for something, anything to do - that we actually found each other. She thought I was a right awful nerd immediately. I thought she was cute. How it usually goes.

There was a lot of sadness in our breakup but we were both going in completely opposite directions with our lives at that point, just nearing our mid twenties. And now we have happiness and more than that have both fulfilled all the dreams we had way back when before we could even get close to them and chase them together, and an even better friendship free of being in a relationship. It's good to have someone who knows you ridiculously well who you aren't complicated with and I don't think I ever got the value of that. I just wish I could see her more often. And Alan I liked instantly - he's a graphic designer whose eyes light up when he talks kerning, and I dig that.

We hit this one street and kept getting all these cats following us. This one was my favorite - absolutely terrifying:


alan said it had fur like a sofa from the 30s




a through road is a dead end. so this is basically dead end street.



After dinner we wandered more. When it rains in Melbourne there's something about the way the city is lit that is just gorgeous, and it rains full but not hard, slightly tropical. Mary took me to Pellegrini's, which is one of those legendary city institutions complete with surly service but mindblowing coffee. If you ever hit Melbourne this is a place to drop by.



Even my decaf was some of the best coffee I've ever had.








i am spit out


i am born again newly from a city sculpture of... you figure it out


Asian bboys and girls in a closed up shopping center at 1am, using the shop window glass to practice moves.

After Mary split I finally came up with an idea for my treatment. Since I couldn't use my laptop, I had to write it on my blackberry, a very frustrating experience. And the room was still creeping me out. Walked outside and crossed the street and on the steps of the state parliament I wrote. While I was there I bumped into this gang of students who were protesting their university ripping them off. I'd seen them there way earlier that day. They were still there, said they were going to be there overnight. Advice to colleges: do not practice accounting irregularities on students of accounting. They were going to demand justice by being on the steps of Parliament as the MPs came to work in the morning.




at 2am i finally got it, and wrote it right there. one of the protestors took this picture of me. this one's for you, emily and ross.

I was even happy with the treatment. Sitting on the steps typing on tiny keys made me refine and make my ideas smaller. Not going to do it again, but another great, full day down here. I'm splitting tomorrow and will be sad to go. This is a great city and if you come to Australia make the time to come here.

Well I'm back in a hotel that isn't shady, haunted, or lacking in modern amenities like an ability to get air into the room, lock your door properly, etc. They did however offer me the ability to dial up the Internet. I don't even know how to any more. I'm flying back West tomorrow for a few days before going on to Japan.

Anyway here's some things to share that have been piling up, I'll write up everything else in a moment.

Arcade Fire playing an elevator in Paris on their way down to the crowd with the most creative use of a magazine I've ever seen. They're my favorite band in the world, obviously, and I'm one of those annoying Arcade Fire fans so I love everything they do - busking in Union Square unannounced, walking their show out onto the street to play. I have to admit it was pretty funny when someone said soon they're going to be playing their shows on their tour bus, or in the bathroom and everyone will have to crowd in there.

New track from half Korean goddess Amerie. I hear that NY is getting sunny and wonderful again. Here's a jam for it.
Listen to the mp3 of Gotta Work at Idolator right here.

Summer movie I'm most looking forward to without a doubt is Spider-Man 3, out of sheer love for Sam Raimi, my time with the character back in the Secret Wars days, and how pitch perfect the other movies have been. I like how it's an epic trilogy really about Peter Parker, recounting the archetypal story of a earnestly kind nerd who finds out they have a talent and how to cope with it. Part 3 looks to be very interesting, cause this one looks like it's about self corruption and maintaining your sense of self along with success as you battle men made of sand and alien symbiotes who make your suit dark. Lots of jokes have been made about Spidey going emo in this one:

But at least he's got better taste in music now. The previous soundtracks had that fucking poodle man from Nickelback and a lot of those bands with like three or four words who have gelled up hair and moves borrowed from Power Rangers. Now Spidey's got bangs and new songs coming from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Flaming Lips and here's a Snow Patrol song for the movie. Fuck you for not letting me love Snow Patrol.

I don't know if you got a chance to see the I Heart Huckabee's videos before they were pulled off of youtube (in which director David O Russell goes apeshit batshit insane on his cast in a profoundly unsettling way), but it seems they went full blown viral. My friend Julie dug up this old NY Times article in which his methods are explained. Or at least, recounted. He was publicly furious at writer Sharon Waxman after the article hit.

Hilarious article in the Seattle Weekly that points out the dark secret of indie rock - a lot of those dudes are frustrated frat dudes. I have to take exception to John Roderick's hurt feelings as I was one of the ones who called him a frat guy on that night, but only after he called me a ninety pound weakling. It also reveals Zach Braff is a frat guy. I KNEW IT.

And you can Download a chunk of the Decemberists DVD here to watch what our live show footage is like and so on.

Getting kicked out my hotel in the middle of writing a treatment. It wasn't for trying to break into the roof last night with mary like I thought, just clerical error but every hotel in the city is completely full. Adventure time. I don't know why but I'm having a blast instead of being worried.

Here's a bunch of random musings from an intense day. I'm in Melbourne now, though I almost didn't make it. I've returned to urban civilization; hotel room. My first real shower in over a week.

I love this city instantly. I don't know particularly what it is; just a tone or atmosphere. It's beautiful and unique architecturally, if a little 80s or maybe too chromed out in places. But the feel on the street level is instantly likable; the way people carry themselves and walk and the varieties of life you see. Chinatown is thriving and I wish I had more time to eat here. Already feasted and had the most incredible yellow curry with Snapper for dinner.

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If you're scared of spiders don't look here. This is right outside the door of an Internet cafe in this little town we were in. I'm right at the door and I hear an American accent: "dude, do not move. Look at your foot." I don't see anything and am confused. His friends chime in and a few start panicking. Right by my foot is a spider the size of my outstretched hand. This picture really doesn't do the thing justice. Everything here is bigger. I like spiders but backed off cause the thing had fangs larger than a thumbtack. Me and the other Yankee picked up the mat it was on and put it in a tree. Poor thing was just trying to get out of the rain. Was told later it was a harmless huntsman, which is only dangerous to birds. This thing eats birds.



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So we were in Margaret River, holed up in a place called the band house. Which is a house that touring musicians stop overnight in as they cross the country. It looked like about half of all musicians who ever crossed the country had stayed here at one point or another. It was just a cheap convenient place in the middle of nowhere.

We were supposed to be met by a caretaker, who didn't show up. Instead we were looked after by her teenage daughter. I have to admit being taken aback by this; leaving your teenage daughter to look after musicians, especially of the rock variety, freaks out my middle class values. And this, then, was Daisy - half Croatian, half Spanish / Irish. And one time, sure enough, she had to look after the place on her own while a metal band decided to break every window in the house. I'm a sleepless insomniac and part of the agreement for me to take this trip is that I'd be in touch with my producers in New York, who I miss anyway so I've been making the effort, especially as I'm writing treatments while I'm on the road. Nick and Mark went to sleep and I stayed up waiting for notes to come in from NY, and while waiting Daisy proceeded to tell me her life story, the way only teenagers can, very unselfconsciously without stopping to pause for hours straight.

I don't know why but it was one of the most important parts of this trip so far. I really didn't say much at all, just listened very intently. Daisy is someone I wish there was a book about or a character I had dreamt up; but fiction wouldn't do justice to her. She grew up in the bush, which out here is the harsh countryside deep in the center of the country. By her own estimation she has lived in over 172 places in her few years. At one point in an abandoned train car. This is not necessarily of her own choosing; she has idealistic hippie parents who split up and a lot of what she what she said wasn't unfamiliar to me; it reminded me of most of my friends who had radical hippie parents.

But those friends didn't have this country and landscape as a backdrop; and it's hard to communicate in particular the hippie movement here if you haven't seen it, which has similar roots to the crusty movement in Europe, and even deeper to Romany gypsies. It's a very nomadic lifestyle and in some ways more hardcore than our own hippies given that the Green movement itself is more mainstream here. But hearing about what it was like to grow up in an unfathomable environment living completely off the land felt so very unreal; I couldn't imagine it. She knows aboriginal treatments for wounds and how to cook food with pieces of glass. At the age of five she carried a machete.

She's a really sharp kid with a good head on her shoulders, who has had to grow up faster than most and done it very admirably. To be honest I see the difficulty in her life ahead, because I am cynical of utopias and belief in them and what happens when you're raised in that, and she's so open and kind and there are people who will try to take advantage of that. But that very same upbringing has made her tough so I hope she'll be ok. I admire her a lot. I will never see her again but found her life thus far to be fascinating and remarkable and felt better for having heard some of it.

It made me realize all my problems lately have been insular and self obsessed. I don't have it that bad at all. I come from privilige and always will. I've settled into my life and know its direction. I think it's interesting for my generation with its prolonged adolescence: we ape youth but forget what it really feels like; the uncertainty combined with the excitement. And how entire lives can be tipped one way or the other by access and money and all the random elements along the way.

It reconnected with something that has been missing in my life since I have spent the past few years in the states without leaving much - I really, really like going to new places and hearing people's life stories. Part of it is selfishly wanting material for fiction, but part of it is wanting to understand. And understanding that letting people unburden themselves is a simple thing you can do that helps people. Through my life a lot of people have remarked that it seems people confide in me a lot, and I think all it takes is being a good listener. I'd be surprised if Daisy even knows my name, but like the heroine of a fiction I'd want to read, I'll be rooting for her.

-

I wrote this to myself a few days ago, having become lazy about writing in the past few years and trying to get in the discipline of expression by setting it down:

Sometimes you should read people like a book. I don't mean assess them; I mean listening by paying attention as if you were commiting a story to memory. Nothing opens people up like letting them you know that every detail is important not just to themselves. When you come across a beautiful sentence you linger over it, maybe underline it, or fold a corner of the page. Do that with other people's memories and you'll learn more than yourself.

-

I left Margaret River at 4pm on a bus, cheapest way to get out of town. Surfers bailing, too, because of the inclement weather. The five hour drive was remarkable, somehow. I always hate traveling by bus but something resolved and came into focus and as the ride progressed I was swept up by the sense of unadulterated freedom of impulsive travel. I'd no idea what I was really doing or getting myself into, and acceeding control into that felt wonderful. Everything I was going to come across would be completely new and unexpected. I think that's my definition of freedom - a sense of being able to commit to chaos and let it take you where it may with a destination in mind.

Bruce Lee remarked upon bamboo - strong but flexible, able to support buildings but bending in a strong wind. I often think of water and how it reflects energy and its hard not to given how much time in the ocean I've been spending - if you're panicky in water it becomes agitated the same way and cycles it right back to you. If you're patient and relaxed so is its surface. I'm giving myself up to water.

The landscape is obviously remarkable down here - some notes I jotted to myself on the bus ride:



One signifier that you are in a world you don't know is the color of soil. The dirt that hasn't been paved or covered with drought ridden grass is blood red. All this was once empty. The difference here is you can sense it; something odd about suburban america is that those highly clean and flimsy looking targets and walmarts and costcos look as if they have been standing there forever and always will do. Here there is some constant reminder of something primeval and epically transcendent in the earth alone. No wonder Australians seem to have a general singular connection to the environment or obsess over it. Global warming is accepted by everyone here, from cab drivers to shop clerks. The sky here at night is milky, sappy. The stars drip rather than blink. The blue void is full of individual glows.

I saw all of those things out a rickety bus window. I thought at some point I'd be too old to travel like this. I'm so glad I was wrong.

I made friends with an elderly lady who told me a lot about the weather in the country; always a good constant thing to talk about. But going deeper; telling me about the drought that has affected everyone here, how the future forecasts a greener middle of the country but a drier coast where the cities are. Record aberrations in winter. It's surprising that this country, fairly politically conservative (though the joke I keep hearing is that you can't find anyone who will admit to having voted the Bush crony Howard into power), completely accepts on every level that global warming is a reality. Every single person I've talked to has something to say about this state of things and how it will affect them. Here it's not open for discussion; even the right leaning people admit something must be done. They disagree on how, surely, but it's refreshing to see that an entire nation can embrace the idea of tackling a crisis.

-

From there a long cab ride to the airport, and they always say, ask a cab driver...

Heard about camel farming. How Hollywood keeps turning to Australia to cast real men, but how the metrosexual thing is completely out of control here. It's a very macho culture, but man, blond highlights are in on guys. Most interesting thing the cab driver had to say was his compact history of why this country is anti-authoritarian to its core due to its relationship with England. I guess it's why I'm so reminded of Ireland here. But like that country, too, flooded with IT and EU monies, that's changing. The youth here respect more than anything the ability to make money and don't mind what establishment is required to get there. I see this all over the world. There were beautiful things to see on that bus ride... But I also wrote I'm watching the landscape give way to suburban developments and shopping centers with Targets and Blockbuster Videos and Starbucks; outside of which wild kangaroos graze. What must seem matter of fact to the natives strikes me as an image worthy of another planet.

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Here's how Australia is different than the US, at the airport.

Woman gets asked to take off her shoes at the security checkpoint. She takes offense to this. A horde of rugby playing looking guys whistle and say "take it all off baby". In line for the security checkpoint. Elderly couples laugh at the boys' catcalls. The security screeners laugh. In line for security checkpoint. Like I said, it's macho here. I'm used to damn near stripping every time I have to pass through JFK in NY. Here I go through with bottles of liquids in seconds. I forgot what that's like.

Once everyone boards the plane we end up sitting docked to the terminal for three hours while Qantas tries to find someone who can fix a plane in the middle of the night. My favorite thing we get explained over the PA after a fifteen minute long digression on the beauracratical process required to clear certain radio equipment maintained by people with differing certificate levels (I'm impressed by the transparency here): "We're just as surprised as you are we can't find someone to fix this. Sorta surprising and we'll keep you updated". We get told the flight might get cancelled. There's also that psychological factor you get when you're told the plane you're on needs to be fixed. My heart sinks. This is becoming awful. It's 3 am and no word. Some woman sitting behind is in hysterics at the same episode of Mr. Bean they play in a loop on our headsets to keep us occupied. The high that carries me through the day fades. I remember when flying as a kid it sure didn't feel like getting an overstuffed bus. Flying has become one of the modern circles of deepest hell.

We finally take off. I'm supposed to arrive in Melbourne at 5 am, 2 am to my body clock. At 8am this is what I see out the window.



Another bus to the city.



And another cab from the station to the hotel, which I get in after walking half the 3kms there. My luggage is just too heavy and I'm too damn tired. I don't try to get this driver to tell me everything I can. I sit in silence, take a photo of myself, and stare at all the pretty people in Melbourne, look up at the buildings. Mumble my way into my room key.



And then I got in the shower, saw enough beach sand come out of my scalp to build a castle... All forward momentum ceases and I feel blessed (another small practical thing to help the environment here - your hotel key slots in a port and switches power to the room, so without it no energy is wasted). Go to sleep happy and my head full of wonder. I miss my friends I've separated from but there is something that happens when utterly alone while traveling that lets you meet yourself. I feel I've done that now, and in a mere 24 hours I started to walk on and meet other people. At dinner I meet Mary, who I haven't seen in five years, and am reminded instantly of why I was so in love with her way back when. She doesn't look a day older but you can sense years have passed. Her boyfriend got his dream job here today and they moved into their house. She's going to start a life here. I remember how she used to always talk almost ten years ago about wanting to go see the world and live somewhere else, and here she is. I'm happy for her in a way I can't explain. She's the most quietly impressive person I've ever met.

My advice to all the Daisys and cab drivers and fellow passengers I've ever met and all my friends and all of you who spend time reading here: go see the world. No matter what. We'll be old later. Do it now while you still can.

A cyclone is headed to the West coast of Australia so our Outback bicycling trip yesterday and surfing lessons this morning got cancelled. There we were, three very inexperienced or complete novice surfer wannabes, standing in front of the wave that Patrick Swayze meets at the end of Point Break.

I've decided to do it like the old days and have impulsively decided to split off on my own... Bought a one way ticket to Melbourne this morning and I'm off. Just have to get 4 hours up the coast now somehow by myself... Wish me luck. I used to think I'd never get a chance to travel like this again; chaotically, meeting people along the way and just hearing their stories - my favorite part of travel. You meet people you couldn't have dreamed up in fictions, and if you listen well you hear about lives you cannot even imagine; and the fundamental experiences that bind all lives no matter how foreign to the same firmaments. Good to know that you can do that no matter how old you are.

I have to remember to write about the spider by my foot, the size of my foot. The kid who was the caretaker of the rock house for traveling musicians we stayed at. The tropical storm pounding down on the roof louder than I've ever heard rain. The most epic waves I've ever seen. The sky and stars here at night. The sign in a village pointing the way to the Internet. What kangaroo tastes like (it's actually quite good and no I didn't order it)...

I'm off...

Attention New Yorkers: one of the films I am most eager to see is screening in New York now for a limited engagement, and I forgot to write this up before I left (as you've already missed a chance yesterday to see it with the filmmakers with a Q&A - we're a day ahead here in Australia right now). Here's where you can get tickets and info and showtimes at the Cinema Village. I've been anxious to see it ever since this Vanity Fair article about the film and its history and how it came to be hit awhile back. If you don't find the five pages written there to be moving on some deep level, you're heartless.

Michael Tucker and Petra Ebberlin's The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair has been the recipient of rave reviews. But more than that the essential story sounds undeniably fascinating - a real life slice of Kafka or Camus. They previously made what I consider the most objective documentary about the Iraq - American war, Gunner Palace. Mostly because it just simply lets the soldiers speak for themselves without offering any opinionated voice of its own.

But something that's been amiss in this entire war is an entire subset of narrative that's been empty or missing: the story of the Iraqi people. These are the people who we are supposedly liberating but how many of you can name an Iraqi individual whose life has been changed by the conflict? I'm sure a few of you can, including some of the readers of this blog (my dear and wonderful friend Ruth and her husband Jason, who has served in Iraq, and she often sets me straight about my assumptions in either direction sitting on my ass with a laptop). But for the most part the general public doesn't seem to be embracing a flood of Iraqi immigrants to this country who we have saved from tyrrany, nor do we generally know their stories. If that's why we're there, then why not? Furthermore, it also sounds like the story of an exceptional US soldier, one who had to work in Abu Ghraib after the scandal broke, and approached it with dignity and selflessness and kindness.

The articles I've linked to above tell the story far better than I could, but to break it down it's the story of a secular, middle class Iraqi journalist who did camera work for Britain's Channel 4 news, until he was arrested in the middle of the night along with his brothers for an attempted plot to assasinate Tony Blair - the raid on his house turned up a case that was supposed to contain intel proof that only had shampoo bottles. While shooting Gunner Palace Tucker happened to capture this arrest on film which led to him digging further. And then he came across the story of Yunis, imprisoned for 8 months for no reason, detained at a part of Abu Ghraib for individuals with no intel value, and released with an "I'm sorry". Likewise it's the story of Benjamin Thompson, the soldier who became close friends with Yunis while serving as his jailor and spent two years trying to find him afterwards. Yunis lived in one oppressive reigme only to be liberated into a beauracratical nightmare of its own oppression, but it sounds like he still managed to retain his humanity, and just as importantly so did the U.S. soldier. If I was in New York right now this is the one thing I'd be rushing out to see. I think it may even be available from Netflix soon.



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As for me, I've still just been swimming in the ocean a lot. It's fixed my insomnia. Though I had an unreal nightmare last night that woke me up, gasping for breath. I'm headed out to the Outback tomorrow for a few days, so no blogging for awhile.

Groan inducing moment: while eating some steak with a table full of Aussies, I realize I'm trying to cut it with a butter knife. And there's a steak knife sitting in the middle of the table. Forgive me for saying "That's not a knife. This... Is a knife." But I had context.

What to write about... I'm just feeling guilty because all we've been doing is eating really good food and swimming in the ocean. And yet, my gadgets haunt me so I'm still reachable and have had to think about a treatment all day long. The real challenge in writing a treatment, I've decided, isn't the staying up til 5 am in your apartment pacing and thinking. It's when you have to do it when you're at the beach.

One thing I do want to say is that I've taken the time to observe the whole toilet swirl the other way down here in the southern hemisphere. But what's been puzzling me for days is how toilets here have two flush buttons. I found out why today: due to drought for the past few years everyone's helping conserve water by having toilets that have a half water flush for pee and a full for pooh. It's the kind of simple smart thing we ought to be doing.

Here's a pic Mark took of Nick and I going down to the water. This picture pretty much is how surreally beautiful it is down here.



Nick and I right after our morning swim in the ocean.



This morning Nick and I were riding a wave into shore. We were right at a steep dropoff on a beach known for surfing and the no surfing flags were up. I didn't see any of this happen but Nick caught it all - the waves were so strong that as we came up to the shore the water rushed out so fast out under us that we landed right on sand. We were both lying there laughing and groaning in pain. And now I have what looks like a hickey from a chupacabra on my side. The bruise has worsened over the day until it became a point of controversy at dinner whether or not I should go to a doctor as it's red with blood now. Maybe I'll have a tingling hip for the rest of my life. But it doesn't hurt.



After lunch we came back for more swimming and Nick and Mark made sand castles while I lay in the sun thinking about my treatment.



Mark went for abstract expressionism.



Nick went for Sand Castle Grayskull. I had no idea he was so good at carving skulls out of sand.



The fish Leena made us for dinner. Unreal.



And her Thai beef salad which everyone wanted to eat all of but we had to share. Food is incredible here. Produce is ridiculously fresh and full. We ate mussels last night the size of fists. Rosco and Leena ought to open a restaurant.



I've become really comfy on this porch. Everyone's in bed. I just finished revising my treatment. I wish I could get a camera that takes pictures of the moon the way your eye sees itso ma. Nick says that the sound from the trees at night here is like "monkeys having a knife fight". There's definitely something living in there.

Are you avin' a larf?

Even in the middle of all this, this bit of news is enough to make me excited enough to post about it. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's Extras came to a close on a high note that made you want more, just like their The Office. Sadly they said that would be it.

But they've decided to do one more final episode to close it all out.

Because I have the name Aaron with two a's I get all sorts of random phone calls from people. I just got a txt message from a friend in Paris that said "toilet paper plz". Such is life in the year 2007 with all our gadgets.



Here's Rosco.



Leena made us the perfect breakfast after eating airline food for a full day. There were some pears in there I'd never eaten before that were incredible - she said she wasn't sure what they were but mmmm tasty. Leena is a musician and last night I was drifting off to sleep hearing her play a new song she had just written in another room of the house and it helped me drift off. She's signed now to a major label so look out for her.





Last night's riff: we somehow were talking about how Wesley Snipes is such a method actor that even when he makes the Blade movies he is in character at all times and people must refer to him as Blade. That's right, Wesley Snipes method acts he is a half vampire ninja assassin. So we were coming up with his possible voicemails.

"Hello? Hello...? Speak up? Nah, just fucking with you. It's Blade. Leave a message."
"At the tone, please leave a message for... 'cough... Blade."
"You've reached Passenger 57. I'm out so you know what to do"
"Waaaaassssup! It's Blade man, hit me up"

We were also thinking that maybe Wesley is in trouble with the IRS because he's still in character as Blade, and obviously Blade doesn't pay taxes. So in reality, maybe he's convinced he's Blade and it's an IRS conspiracy to take him down by inventing this Wesley Snipes persona.

Anyone know any still photographers who do really good portraits of people at magic hour or thereabouts in urban environments? I need some visual reference for a video and am drawing a blank.

Happy birthday to my Dad. Three family birthdays days apart in the ides of March. We manage somehow, Or it's the luck of the Irish on my Dad's side and it just ran out.

Going to the beach...

By the time we landed in Perth we did the math and we'd been traveling 32 and a half hours. While we were on airplanes everyone we knew had gone through an entire day and more.

I spent most of the stopover in Singapore trying to understand how they crammed so much shopping into one airport and just trying to stay sharp. Some important work stuff came in and I couldn't for the life of me get email out and then the next thing I knew it was time to get back on a plane. After an 18 hour flight a 5 hour flight felt like a cakewalk, though we did sort of start to lose our minds.

(It's weird visiting a place only by its airport; the thing I remember most about Singapore were the signs in between the United Colors of Benneton and Burberry stores stating that "Drug use is punishable by death" in big bold letters).

I like to do this thing where I ask people to pose for photographs but they must show complete and utter terror in their eyes while smiling as large as possible. I don't think we had to stretch too much for these, though.





I spent the flight thinking of ways to rework a treatment I wrote before I left. And finally getting some sleep, a good deep twenty minutes against the window. I think all told I got in about 4 hours of sleep in those 32 hours. And then we landed.

As soon as we landed we turned on our phones and there's something to be said for txt messages people send to say "i hope you had a safe flight" as soon as you get off a plane. At the airport we were met by the amazing Ross Mcpherson. He books bands for Australia and has done so for Death Cab. He's put us up in house for the stay and I can't say enough how thankful we are for this; he's been the most gracious and generous host, doing everything he can to make us comfortable without seeming at all like it takes any effort on his part. Ross reminds me of most of the Australians I have ever met, sturdy, humble, hilarious and fllthy at the right times, and just overwhelmingly upfront and laidback about being kind. And then his lovely girlfriend Lena showed up with a Red Emporer fish to barbecue Thai style. She's half Thai, and oddest of all lived in Cork, Ireland the exact years I did. I had thought all those years I was the only hapa in the entire country.

Within an hour of getting in Ross had us at the beach. Mark, Nick and I were reeking of travel and man stench so we dove right into the ocean.



Ocean never felt better. Ragged with exhaustion, we were still over the top in our excitement, probably freaking out the locals at the beach a little. Still wet we went down the pub and of course this being Australia I was forced to drink a local beer which was incredibly golden. And here I am about to go to bed with only the ocean on me but I feel cleaner and calmer than I have for months.



And then we got Lena to try and do the terror smile thing but I don't think she's faking the terror, look at Mark's face for the love of god.


My picture of Ross nailing the look came out all blurry. He'll be here tomorrow. He has a lot lined up for us, fishing, the outback, relaxing, seeing some shows, before we go off to Brisbane for the Great Barrier Reef. Right now I'm on his porch, feet up, my silly foot still tingling, still some sand on my calves. I can hear wind blowing through trees I've never seen before.

Life is good. Time for sound sleep.

What I wrote on the plane to keep myself sane...

8 hours into the flight. Nick and Mark are asleep. We're above the arctic circle and according to the map fairly dead on to the North Pole. I walk to the back of the plane where there's a little standing room area and eager flight attendants who even here in coach offer fruit by the bushel. I have some strawberries; they're amazing. I stretch my left foot out... I hurt my leg a few weeks ago and bruised it so badly they almost thought I had a clot, but instead I apparently damaged a nerve and my foot has this odd pins and needles sensation sometimes and I guess I'm always going to have it. This from just a bruise. Its driving me crazy in my seat. Need to go walk on it.

Singapore airlines is pretty cushy. This has to be the most comfortable experience in coach I've ever had. We even have leg rests. Kinda. Like most things designed for passenger planes they do 10 percent of the job they're supposed to, as they only extend to your knees. So you end up with your legs bent at the knees hanging over which is silly. But it was really really nice to eat rice on an airplane. And goddamn there's a lot of space for coach. We keep seeing ads for their new first class experience, which is apparently a self contained 10 x 8 pod with a bed and a 42 inch plasma flatscreen with two people waiting hand and foot. We riff on it having its own starbucks franchise and paper shredder, fireplace, and heated towel racks. We have been cracking each other up so much someone finally complained.

But I am walking to the back of the plane to eat more strawberries and duck under a curtain and open a window and look down at the north pole, so I don't disturb all the sleepers in the cabin.

I've seen this before; I used to fly from London to Seattle, which takes you over the pole - the most direct route. Usually in summer.

The impossibly pretty stewardess asks me if I see any polar bears. That would be one ginormous polar bear. I wish I did. But instead I'm fixated on something I've never seen before.

The biggest cracks in ice I have ever laid eyes on. And as lo fi as my in seat map is, we are generally at the top of the arctic circle. The little I know about sea ice, it does start to break up at this time of year, and the North Pole is much more unstable than Antarctica, not resting on a continental shelf, but this year a massive Canadian ice shelf disintegrated. I thought it dissolves into pack ice at the edges. Here in the center of things are canyon sized cracks. You can see into the water and actually look at the enormous walls of ice going down into deep blue forever. I know my camera can't even catch this - I'm staring at it out a tiny porthole with my neck craned through layers of dirty plastic.

It's still epic and grandiose and humbling. The first time I ever saw ice from horizon to horizon I got that peculiar sensation where you're so moved by something you get the sort of tightness in your throat of crying but nothing else. That sense of being made to feel really small but comfortably.

I get a little of it again. I'm probably wrong but what I see is unsettling.

RIP, Santa.
And polar bears.

More pictures from the endurance flight marathon.



Mark Duston, Death Cab's tour manager and erstwhile buddy


Unfortunate copy writing


Making our mark in online trivia. Hump was winning round two but Sack quit in protest.


So Sack started playing in seat video poker, which we were hoping thanks to this image had a "press button a to rob everyone blind with a revolver" option.


Nick has this sleeping thing down. Seriously. He slept like thirteen hours of the flight. I slept three.


I'm old now. Nick stole my DS.

It's 7:05 pm in New York. We got on a plane at 10pm yesterday. We've lost a day. And that entire time we were on a plane.

We started the flight off by riffing. Someone starts a joke and you go on and on as far as you can take it.

So Nick told us about a list in harpers he saw of actual existing books that are bound in human skin, and that led us to making up our own list of really inappropriate books to be bound in human skin. Here's some of them.

Rachel Ray's Home Cooking
3rd level Actuarial Statistics
Dear God, are you there, It's Me, Margaret
Smile, Poncherello! The Erik Estrada Super Biography (Unauthorized)
Tuesdays with Morrie
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (Personal signed limited edition)
Chicken soup for the soul (College edition)
Bill O' Reilly's Tough Talk for Today's Teens
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Afghan Warlord Omega Nine
Dogeball the movie: A Novelization
How to Date Asian Women
Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe
Martha Stewart's Guide to making books bound in human skin
Linux for Dummies
The 1983 chiltons blue book guide to the 2 door honda civic hatchback (Printed on human skin due to publisher error)



Dianetics

So Nick has to bring up the possibility of us going down in the middle of the Pacific on our flight. His vision is wonderful and warm; we end up on an island with monkey butlers. I'm dreading ending up on the Lost island, because I would get so pissed off there and I can't handle all the flashbacks.

I'm waiting at the airport getting a few birthday calls. If I have to say anything before we lose our minds on this flight, I just want to say thanks to my friends and tell you to please not worry any more. I've already found myself again before I leave, thanks to all of you, and so many of you are so far away and all over the world. That sucks but it gives me a good excuse to come visit. But the best thing you've all given me is peace and a reminder of who I am and what you know of me.

Tragedy plus time equals comedy. I just needed a week. I even found out some things this week but they didn't even make me upset. I felt nothing. Just final. That chapter of my life is well and truly closed forever, and as you've all said, I am better off. I don't even think about all that sadness any more and it's probably better I just don't talk about it ever again. I am doing great.

Honestly I was dreading my birthday weeks ago but now I couldn't ask for a better one. I'm getting to do my favorite thing in the world: seeing more of it.

Time to board... Try to write from Singapore.

I miss you already, gnarly furball.






Caids is elusive. It's hard to get a picture of her. This is right outside the back door of my apartment by my desk where she sort of lives now. She's scruffy but pretty cute when she's asleep. I fed her one last time...



Not a bad birthday. Until I heard it's the world's longest commercial airline flight.


At Newark Airport, last snow we're going to see for awhile.

What the huckabee's is this... I'm ready to go, eating quickly before the car shows up. And I get sent this...

David O Russel is a great director. Flirting With Disaster, Three Kings, I Heart Huckabee's all movies I like a lot. A lot of stories came out of the cast and crew of Huckabee's though about how he's a little insane, and not in a good way. Filmmaking is a job that's really obsessive when you care, that raises passions and anger, but this is fucking crazy. It's really odd given him and Lily Tomlin have worked before.

(Note for Violaine and Stephanie. It's a little immodest of me to compare myself to David O Russel, but this is how I get the performances I do).

I am saying goodbye to New York today. This city has been a lousy lover for the past week, too cold, too loud, too all over me like a wet blanket, but I'll forgive it, I'll chalk it up to the changing climates, the half in winter/ half in spring temperment. I am looking for some sun and some warmth and some salt. I am looking to Perth. In about an hour a car is coming to pick Aaron, Mark and I up for the first leg of our journey down under. We are being picked up, driven to Newark. New Jersey and then sitting on the longest commercial airline flight available: Newark to Singapore non-stop. Eighteen and a half hours. I can sleep an entire night's sleep and wake up with ten hours left to kill. I hope that our tickets come with some kind of anti-psychotic medication or some serious sedatives as I really am not sure how I am going to cope with sitting in a small, uncomfortable seat for that length of time. I am sure it will all be fine in the end but until then it is fun to be overly dramatic about such a long flight.

I have been feeling guilty about taking this trip as I do so much traveling with the band and I kind of feel like when we aren't on tour, I don't deserve to travel. But my mom pointed out that I have not been on a true vacation in a long while and that it will be nice to travel without having to work at the same time and you know what, she is totally right. Sometimes you have to force yourself to settle down and relax, force yourself to be carefree and not feel guilty about it. So that is what i am doing. Slowing down and forcing myself to put my feet up and find my center. Friends have been asking me, "What are you guys going to DO on your trip?" and I have honestly been answering, "Nothing." So i hope that is exactly what happens, a lot of nothing with Australia as a backdrop.

This is an odd thing, this blogging. I am not sure how to do it, how mych of myself I should put out there for consumption, I feel like there has to be a level of ego involved in this, some kind of belief that my life is somehow inherently interesting and that people need to read about what I have been doing and thinking and feeling. But i don't feel like my life is really that interesting at all and I am sitting here trying to imagine what someone would be thinking while reading these posts. I guess I just need to get comfortable with this medium, and learn HOW to do it and forget the WHY of it. So forgive me out there whoever you are, forgive me for the time being and allow me to figure this all out and learn to make it interesting. or funny. or sad. Give me some time to figure out how to make this real.

I will end this with a shared story... My friend Ben and I have a long running joke/list we call "Inappropriate places to remove your shirt." And the riff is quite simple really, we just imagine situations where it would be completely odd and inappropriate to simply, and without explantion or some kind of declaration, take off one's shirt. For instance: Standing in line at a fast food restaurant. The one that gets us all the time is: While sitting on an airplane. We laugh so hard at the idea of just taking off your shirt while on a flight. And what the folks around you would think and how they would react. So as I am about to emabrk on a long, maddening flight to the other side of the globe, I am sure at some point the very real and very palatable thought of taking off my shirt will set in. And maybe this time, I'll just go for it and see what happens.

In 24 hours I'll be on a plane headed to Singapore. 18 hour flight, a day in Singapore, and then at night another long ass flight to Australia. My last post for awhile. Everything's going great; excited for the trip, good response to my latest treatments. I may even get a chance to see Mary, the Irish girl I went out with for five years. She's relocated to Australia happily and man I hope to get to see her. The only thing I'm worried about is I wasn't able to find someone to feed the stray cat who lives in my backyard and has sort of become my cat. She's very self sufficient, but she's gone from being scared of me to such an extent I thought she was feral, to putting her paws on me whenever I go outside and begging for pets and cuddling next to me. I hope she's ok and remembers me when I get back. Be well, Caids. I give you permission to eat our squirrel friends if need be. Fucking circle of life, you know?

(I tried to change her unfortunate name given to her as a joke but it's all she responds to)
_

I amost forgot: this is for the Decemberists fans.

On March 20th, the day after my birthday, the Decemberists DVD, A Practical Handbook is finally released after working on it for two and a half years.



I think my favorite thing about the entire process is that I got to make something with Carson Ellis doing the artwork for it. That gives me a really pleasant feeling in my belly.

It all started unintentionally. I started as just a fan of the band, turned onto them by a girl when she came to visit me for a few days and she kept listening to 'Red Right Ankle'. I was working at the time at Dreamworks Animation of all places. It was post film school the first job that randomly came up after working in a video store for a year. I even worked in that video store for a little after I quit Dreamworks, such is the life of a film school graduate. That job was everything horrible they tell you about the corporate environment with the added pressure of self important people strangling each other to make family fun entertainment. It was a lot like The Office, even including ill informed office romance and bad pranks and the same existential dread and comedy. I spent, in fact, the first day after I quit watching the entire British series on DVD wincing.

During that time I'd caught the Decemberists on tour, at the Great American Music Hall and this is exactly what happened. I went alone, was sitting next to a redhead and during one of their songs I started singing along. She kinda giggled at me. I told her I'm sorry I love this band. She said so do I. And that's when I met Carson. Afterwards I met the rest of the band and they heard I'd done some live shooting and asked if I could come back for night two and film. I did. Unfortunately I can't ever show that amazing footage because in a guitar / accordion solo duel Jenny and Funk covered a lot of famous expensive songs.

A little while later I was doing nothing, going nowhere, figuring out what to do with my life and they asked me to come up and film them recording Picaresque. I dropped everything and drove from San Francisco to Portland. As seen in the documentary it was a good deal of insane fun. Friends and family dropped by continually, becoming part of the album. It was one of the best summers I'd ever had and suddenly I felt I had a new vocation. There are people who like shooting sports, nature, etc. I just really dig shooting bands. Here we are years later and they remain the one band who I love working for more than all others and people I'd truly call friends. The videos I've made for them are the least selfish things I've ever made. I want them to be for and of them. They're just great people I'd do anything for.

Things have changed for us now; I get a lot more chances to work but don't have that personal connection I do with these other bands that I did back in those days when we were working so small. It's neither better nor worse, just very different. Things have changed for them, too, for certain. But they remain the same great people. That's incredibly rare and is a testament to their character. We'll never probably have an atmosphere and time in our lives like that again, but we have the memory of it and I'm excited we get to share it, too.

So anyway I promised to share something to the Decemberists fans, the treatment for 16 military wives written in one hour five days before we shot while I was recuperating having just come out of hospital. You'll see some things that are different, but this is how naive I was back in the day: I even wrote it in script format. Due to my headache problems I had to direct the video on a cocktail of medications one of which was experimental. I'm sure people have been on drugs before while directing, but not these ones. I don't think I was ever proud enough of this video, because I see so many problems in it, but looking back this is where it all started and I was a right lucky bastard to be a part of it.

Here it is.

_

Hope to write you all from the road...

Just finished my Bright Eyes treatment. I really like this one. Fingers crossed. I was in such a fugue state writing that my friend Christina Strain called, and said she'd have to call me back, and we hung up. And I couldn't remember her ever saying that. I was like "why did she call me to talk for a minute? That's odd."

Congratulations to Christina - she's pretty much one of the coolest people I've ever met, the girl I wore the Bruce Lee suit for. I don't think I've embarrassed myself for anyone that much ever, and to this day I still have to explain it to people. She works in comic books and just landed a legendary job with Marvel. I don't know if I can say any more. I'll have a link to her prints later.

I'm writing though as this is a birthday note for my little sister, Heather Ann Stewart. Her birthday is indeed St. Patrick's Day, which is why she is the bearer of gold. Comedy gold usually, insightful gold a lot of the time. I named Heather. During the one year period when I was four and my parents actually went to church there was a girl in Sunday School named Heather who was deaf mute and I remember having this obsession with wanting to communicate with her cause no one tried. When my parents asked what we should name the new baby I leaped at Heather. You're welcome / I'm sorry.

She's one of my favorite people in the world. She's pretty much the most sensitive and toughest person I know, usually at the same time. She's had some hardship in her life and dealt with it really tremendously. Sometimes she's even a total butthead but I love her all the same and wish I could spend more time with her. Come to NY sis! This one's for her...

So from today onward my best friend since I was twelve years old, Nicholas Harmer, is going to post with me.

Nick and I have been having a rambling long dicussion on just about everything since we met nearly 20 years ago that has never stopped. It didn't stop when I lived in Europe for eight years, it didn't stop when we both faced crises that put us at our worst, it didn't stop when we ended up living on opposite coasts and our work often gives us barely enough time to look after ourselves. Whenever I'm shooting something I beg Nick to be a part of it, and he humbly drops everything and does as often as he can. Conversely he's let me go on tour with him and experience his world from my peripheral experience. Most of you might somewhat know Nick from playing in the band Death Cab for Cutie, and if you read the magazine you know that he frequently turns to its pages to find artists to work with.

Nick and I often disagree, but for some reason even when we vehemently disagree we respect each other's opinions, and always hear each other out. I hope that translates here. I hope we can continue the discussion, which has become a little more difficult due to the amount of time we both spend on the road, here always. He's also, like me, found himself at a place in life where he needs an outlet occasionally and a way for all our friends all over the world to know what we're up to.

His first post is below... Say hello.

Oh yeah and to start with, he's wrong. Guitar Hero is perfect for people who are excellent air guitarists. Real musicians... Pshaw.

So today, March 17th, 2007, St. Patricks Day, I played Guitar Hero for my first time. And I totally hated it. I think my best Guitar Hero performance will be my last Guitar Hero performance because after I tried to play "Mother" (As made famous by Danzig) on easy setting all I really wanted to do was smash the damn plastic guitar and set it on fire. There is something wrong about a guitar game that in order for me to succeed at it, I need to UN-learn how to play a real guitar. Now that I think about it, has anyone ever tried to smash the plastic guitar controller and set it on fire?



Maybe that move actually unlocks a treasure trove of extras. I am going to start spreading a lie to all the Guitar Hero addicted folks out there, that if you smash your controller and set it on fire during Psychobilly Freakout you unlock the secret "backstage party" mode wherein an orgy mini game begins with real hardcore nudity. So anyways. I think I best stay to the games with guns, because it occurs to me that I am only good at those games because I don't really know how to shoot a real one.

ode to the brooklyn bridge and snow. and david fincher's zodiac.

It's snowing here in New York, but not really snow. It's more like falling shards of ice, with dire winds to match. I'm writing a treatment for a Bright Eyes video tonight.

I often begin the whole writing process with a single image. Sometimes when it occurs, while listening to the song, I cannot fathom why or connect what it means to the song. It's an alchemical apparition that starts me off, literally tumbling out of my unconscious. This time I immediately thought of trains and bridges.

I was listening to the song on repeat on a long subway ride home and halfway through it the N train crosses the bridge and for a moment you come out of the tunnels and see the entire city below and away from you. When it's snowing I can't think of anything more beautiful, the city quietly hiding underneath a bed of white, the gusts running down the river filling the sky with flurries. Every time I see this I have to get out of my seat and go to the window and just watch.

_

I'm surprised by how many people I know who live in New York or come to visit never check out the Brooklyn Bridge, or walk its span. It's one of the simplest things you can do here but on a good day I can't think of a more perfect way to experience New York, suspended above it between the two boroughs, Manhattan spreading out and beyond you, every landmark building recognizable, the Statue of Liberty visible on the horizon. All the waterways reveal themselves. There's something quaintly sublime about how the bridge was constructed to let people walk on it. It's merely wood, and it rattles with the passing traffic and the wind.

I spent a lot of time out there Sunday. Given it's snowing here, oddly enough a few days ago it was nearly eighty degrees. It was one of the first bright, clear skied days we've had in a long time and the bridge was full just as the sun was going down. I hadn't worn a coat and the wind off the river was brutal but I didn't feel cold.





I was really down and heavy with thought but something about the firmament of the bridge and its beauty and a feeling of hovering between two realms lifted me up enough to start getting my head clear about things. When I came off the other side of the bridge I realized I'd said goodbye to something forever halfway across it, and at the moment I stepped down into Manhattan everything changed. The bridge had taken my weight.

Ok, I still have no ideas for this video...
_

I was going to stay in, what with the weather and given I was out for dinner and drinks last night but got convinced to go out and check out Zodiac. The roll of good movies continues. I loved it, but don't expect it to be to everyone's taste. It's ultimately not even about a murderer so much as an examination of commitment leading to self ruin, even when the best of intentions are behind it.

I think it's a huge leap forward for Fincher, the first movie he's made where his style becomes a presence rather than the modus operandi. It's exhausting and exhaustive - I've never seen a movie that seems to adhere to every odd nuance life presents, which is an odd feat, as sometimes the details of life can be dramatically inert. Every single detail of the real case is packed into this movie. It's also revelatory as a time travel machine to a time before cell phones and email. The structure of life seems entirely ancient only 30 years ago.

But really the movie is dependent upon whether or not you're one of those people who gets into the existential hole that crime presents; the movie is about singular obsession, which directors like Fincher obviously know about, and what it ends up doing to individuals. I'm sure a lot of people will find the movie frustrating, or boring, but if you've ever found yourself reading about a real murder and getting engrossed in all the symbological detail, it was fetishistically, perfectly made for you.

Harris Savides' cinematography is a wonder - the first film shot on digital that pretty much lays it down that digital is here to stay and can stand on par with film - still different but not lacking. And the other wonder has to Robert Downey, Jr. who has somehow leaped into my field of favorite actors. During the worst part of his personal life and career he always seemed to be trying a little too hard. He seems wise now, in the way only someone who has gone through some really fucked up stuff can be, and combined with his natural gifts it's made him so completely watchable. I think he even looks more interesting with age on him. There's a single moment where all he says is the word "no" that is the emotional centerpiece of the entire movie and shows why Jake Gyllenhall has a lot to learn.

I'm out with friends last night and hear this story: a buddy who happens to be in Scotland goes to see U2 play a show there. He's pretty close to the stage. A song finishes. Bono shushes the audience, raises his arms and slowly and powerfully claps his hands in a slow beat. The entire stadium goes quiet.

CLAP.

CLAP.

He steps forward to the mike. Says with all of his Bono-conviction... "Every time I clap my hands a child dies in Africa".

Without skipping a beat, a Scottish guy yells out "WELL THEN STOP CLAPPING!"

The Host with the most. Last night I saw one of my favorite films of the year, Bong Joon-Ho's The Host. You cannot take away from me the sheer love and devotion I have for this film. I'm sure a lot of you have seen it already, but if you haven't you're missing something expectional that I promise you haven't seen before; even though you have.



I haven't seen his other films but Memories of Murder is the next thing I have to hunt down, especially given this is only his third feature as a director. This movie is the perfect rejoinder for why I'd take a movie like 300 so seriously, because it proves that a genre film with a humanist, realist approach can reach the exhilarating highs you know from really great movies that hardly seem possible today. If you ask me it's a perfect antidote for and example of everything that's wrong with Hollywood today, and why directors from South America and Asia are running circles around them.

Let's get this out of the way, because there are people who are going to think it's no big deal and I know I'm going to lose you here. First of all it's a monster movie. It's pure genre. Environmental neglect and the hubris of man (here not very subtly in the form of a US military base pathologist) leads to the creation of a mutant monster who wreaks havoc by emerging from the Han River, hungry and surly. That's the setup. But about ten minutes into the movie everything takes a left turn and every cliche and convention you know of the genre is completely subverted but made lovingly all the better for it. It takes the premise seriously but knows how to have fun with it.

Take the initial monster introduction (which is a scene that even the people who hate this movie - and there are very few of you apparently - have to admit is damn good). It takes place in broad daylight. They don't hide the creature for a money shot later. It's in the water, and tourists and citizens alike come up to it and pelt it with snacks, which is pretty much how i expect people to react should Nessie ever poke her head out of uppermost Scotland. Then the rampage begins. The creature itself is one of the best designs we've seen in years. It's perfectly emblematic of the id and predators and yet has no air of stylization about it. It looks like a cryptozoological aberration, something that could possibly exist. Sometimes it's graceful. Sometimes it's clumsy. And mostly it just wants to eat and be left in peace. Every rule of the genre is broken right here, and it's revelatory. It feels like trading in a dirty straitjacket for a cashmere sweater. Not even Spielberg reached these heights with his Jurassic Parks, ransacking the primordial for thrills but forgetting to give us people and situations we can care about.

The film is manic in its tonal shifts - going from darkly funny, affecting, thrilling, comedic, overwrought, subtle, overtly political, realist, ludicrous... Sometimes in the same scene. It's the epitome of smart entertainment, entertainment that has something to say and really truly cares about its characters. After all, its characters are losers. But it makes you care about them all the more. And when they go down, you feel it. You actually feel in your gut for the characters in what is ostensibly a horror film. It renders our heroes with enormous flaws and they often do things to themselves and one another that get in their way. They seem in fact like real people. And that helps you as an audience member to take seriously what's going on, empathize with them, root for them, and more than that, relate to them.

That same respect for the actors and their characters is applied to everything else here, which merely makes the radical move of scaling everything back and treats the silliness as if it were reality. When people run in this movie they don't run very fast or far. That's a subtelty amongst many other details, as people are often seen to be falliable while panicking, but it's sort of how everything else works. Like a real tragedy, our family gets caught up in just as much surreally lunatic bureaucracy that in some way is more horrifying than the monster coming into their life. All authority is suspect. Not a single soldier, policeman, or doctor provides any safety or comfort in the movie. There are angry grieving people who want answers, and get none. As much as the movie is critical of the US it may have accidentally captured one of the most frustrating things we know of here, in the wake of Katrina and the Walter Reed scandals.

I need more time to think about my love for the movie, especially how it wears its political heart on its sleeve. But for now it's something I have to urge you all to see. And please let me know what you thought of it or if I've got it all wrong.

Sleep driving. Heard a lot of friends talking about this in the past few days because of this news article, and oddly enough it lines right up with a personal experience I had.

Earlier in the year I heard from a director who was incredibly stressed out, and we were talking about the amount of sleep deprivation directing causes. He told me he was sleeping four hours a night on a double dose of Ambien. Sounded pretty bad. And then he told me he was waking up and finding the remains of meals he'd eaten in his sleep and piecing together what he'd had, like a forensic archaeologist of midnight snacks. He had no conscious recollection whatsoever of having eaten in his sleep. I thought it was him just pulling my leg until his assistant swore to me that he had to go to his apartment and put locks on his fridge and cabinets.

So now they're going to have to put a warning label on sleep aids such as Ambien that among other things it can cause you to unconsciously DRIVE IN YOUR SLEEP, as the link shows.

Funnily enough this last weekend I took Ambien for the first time because I've had enormous trouble sleeping and I slept for only three insanely lucid dreaming hours after hallucinating for two and upon waking up discovered that I had apparently sent a bunch of txt messages I shouldn't have and I really have no memory of doing this or even thinking through doing it. Needless to say I'm never taking that stuff again. I have never even taken any psychedlic drugs and thanks to Ambien I feel like I've had my first acid trip.

I think now that spring is here in New York I'm just going to start bicycling again and hope for the best. Modern pharmacology is crazy. I'm pretty sure that fifty years from now we'll look back on modern advertisements for drugs as something akin to leeches, phrenology, and trepanning. Except for the ED stuff. Any ad that says with a straight voice "if you have an erection that lasts longer than four hours..."

Just heartbreak. No hobos. No shotguns. Some crust. And going to the southern hemisphere. Two posts today. This one is the maudlin philosophizing emo one, so skip it if you want to see a hobo with a shotgun and read why I think 300 is racist garbage.

So I can still get passionate about stuff like silly movies about naked dudes with spears and my professional life which I take as a good sign as my personal life has been an absolute disaster. It's been hard to get worked up about anything. I've never been so heartbroken before. It's amazing how it's a physical pain. You can't sleep or eat or think about much else. The thing that sucks is it's so clear right now but at the time you apparently have to hit rock fucking bottom to see you need to get out of something. It's odd how potent a mixture you can have of love and damage. I've definitely witnessed it before, but never been through it myself. Admittedly with me it got so bad friends were worried about me. I'm glad to say to all of them reading that I am probably hiding because I feel like a jerk to you all, and I can honestly say I'm ok now. I even have my fucked up sense of humor back.


this should be in one of those time life mysteries books as it was taken pre-breakup

I think the sad thing is that most people go through an experience like this and become bitter and jaded and decide never to open up to anyone again. Most of the people I know seem to be able to trace their sense of guardedness to experiences like this. I don't think that's right. You should give completely to the people you care about it and if they take and use it, it may hurt, but it cannnot be wrong on your part. I don't understand why people are scared of that. I think letting damage become permanent is how people get to the point where they assume kindness is always insincere. That's really sad. Then everyone is just mean to each other and not themselves.



The strangest thing I'm finding is how a breakup redefines your sense of time. A past has become absolute, inaccessible. The future has doors that are closed forever, possibilites that have ended. And the present becomes something you have to kill time over to get by. That's the worst part. I think they should really crack this hibernation thing. Fucking bears do it, come on. And when you have a particular bad breakup, they inject you with bear hormones and you knock out in a cave for six months and when you come back, sorted.

Why have I been trying to find someone to blame, or how come so many relationships devolve into that? No one is perfect in a relationship. After all this I only believe more strongly that the most important thing there is in relationships is an ability for two people to forgive one another and be ok with each other's faults because everyone has shitloads of them. As Chris Rock puts it:

"'Cause if you can't share what you're like, you'll have problems.
When you love somebody, you got to love everything about them.
You got to love the crust of a motherfucker.

You can't just love the white part of the bread.

You gotta love the crust, the crumbs,
the tiny crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.

That's what the real motherfucker is."

If you don't have that you don't have love. You have a form of madness that's based upon need. People in the throes of what they call intense love when their brains are mapped have cortical activity most closely resembling cocaine addicts I read once. Maybe that's it.


actual image of brain activity of someone in love, or high on cocaine

But I think as unromantic as it sounds, if you can find someone who is okay with your farts, the fact you get boogers hanging, the weird things you say in your sleep, what you look like at 3am eating garbage from the fridge with fucked up hair - and then not just the trivial stuff - whatever weird ass health problem you have, your mood swings, your bad habits, the things about you that aren't kind or good (because we all have that shadow self), overlooking stupid and completely idiotic political beliefs you have, tolerance for the odd passions you have... If you can find someone who can deal with all that you have found ideal love. With the wisdom of Chris Rock, bear juice and time I can now move on from what was close to it.
_

For lots of reasons then, I'm leaving the US in a few days here. I am going to Singapore, then Perth, before going to Brisbane to go scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. On the way back I'm going to spend some time in Tokyo and Kyoto though. I'm lost right now, which I think you can fix some times by getting even more lost. And broke, too. And I'm glad that I won't have a phone that works. I'm going to want to blog this trip though, so I'll try and get my act together. Please share experiences of these places if you have them.

Heartbreak and hobos with shotguns. Lots to say here, to catch up, and I swear at the end there's a great video of a hobo with a shotgun as a reward for my self indulgence.

So I've been a mess lately. Heartbroken. My health has been a little touch and go, borderline dangerous but I'm on the mend finally.

Professionally things have been good. I work with two wonderfully supportive people who I couldn't ask for more from. We have lots of big plans. Last week they brought me to a screening of 300 with the director present as he works with our parent company. I didn't care for 300 much though, even though I got a huge kick out of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. As brilliantly as I thought it was visually realized, 300 is big time trouble. You can't have parables in this day and age about the battle of freedom vs tyrr