brrrrr

The snowline in Central Park, a few short blocks from my New York apartment, has hit 19 inches. I’ve been gradually turning up the AC here in LA, preparing for my return.

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the big finale

With just a few days left in LA, I plugged my television back in to catch the final episode of Joe Millionaire. And as jaded and cynical as I may be, I must admit I’m a sucker for happy endings.

So, congratulations Joe. Here’s hoping my last bit of time in Los Angeles is as fairy tale magical as yours was in France.

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blogger buyout

For those who missed it: in yet another brilliant move, Google has bought up Blogger, the web’s largest weblogging tool.

While some are questioning the wisdom of that move, I believe it makes perfect sense. Google is focused on, broadly, providing access to information. As the blogging trend grows, increasing percentages of the information on the web will appear in weblogs. Being tied more closely into blogs, then, means being tied more closely into information, exactly Google’s goal.

While I’m afraid I’m too entrepreneurial (which is to say, too bossy and too anti-authoritarian) to successfully work for anyone but myself, news like this just strengthens that small voice in the back of my head saying I should drop everything and apply for a Google job.

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we represent the lollipop kids

On the heels of my last Napoleon Complex post, it occurred to me that most of my readers have never met me in real life. So, a brief word of explanation: at 5’6″, I’m not terribly tall.

Which, frankly, puts me right at home here in the world of film. Earlier this week, for example, I inherited a stack of great shirts, pants and sweaters from the recently wrapped I Love Your Work’s costume wardrobe, as apparently Giovanni Ribisi and I are exactly the same size.

It took me back to a meeting Cyan had over the summer while casting Coming Down the Mountain. Caitlin Rinderer, our casting director, was singing the praises of a young actor she though would be perfect for the lead. He needed to look like a basketball player, we reminded her; was the guy tall? Well, actor tall, she replied. Actor tall? You know, she deadpanned, 5’9″, 5’10”.

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tag, you’re it

After spending some time this morning thinking about taglines for I Love Your Work, I realized that the tagline for this site (“now with 57% more unabashed egotism!”) has remained unchanged since its inception. Though I’m not entirely sure I’m ready to give up the old standard, I am awfully tempted by “the dangerous result of a serious Napoleon Complex run too long unchecked.”

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raindrops keep fallin’ on my head

It’s wet in LA. Which seems to have taken the city by surprise. Stores are closed, highways are flooded, old women cower in the corners of their earthquake-proofed homes. Yet I’m oddly happy. Too many sunny days uninterrupted have grated on me as much as too many days of dark drizzle would have, and today there’s something oddly pleasant about sitting inside, watching the clouds through the windows, and listening to the gentle ratt-a-tat-tat of raindrops on the roof.

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yeehaw

Los Angeles is a driving city. Here, everything, everything, is at least twenty minutes from anything else. Except during rush hour, when everything is, at very least, an hour’s drive.

Of course, as a subway-riding New Yorker, I’ve actually rather enjoyed the countless car hours. If nothing else, they’re prime listening time, and throughout LA’s highways, byways, surface streets and back alleyways, I’ve been burning the grooves off the trusty CDs I brought with me.

By now, however, after nearly two months of heavy listening, those CDs are beginning to bore me to tears. Which is why, earlier today, I swung by the exceedingly impressive Amoeba Music (on Sunset) and picked up a couple of new CDs.

Feeling the need to bolster my alt-country holdings, I bought:

All of which thoroughly impressed me on first listening and further bolstered my growing appreciation for the genre. A few weeks of this and I might could almost be a Southerner.

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finally done

After several very intensive months, Cyan’s first feature, I Love Your Work, is finally in the can. And though all of post-production (editing, sound, etc.) still lies ahead, the hardest work is done. My sleep schedule should once again be returning to some semblance of normal.

While I’m obviously thrilled, and more than somewhat relieved, I’m also a bit saddened. The crucible of a movie set is uniquely conducive to the alchemy of new friendships, and over the past month and a half of shooting, I’ve been lucky enough to work with a (by and large, at least) truly extraodinary group of people. [Point in case: Katya and Alexis, you rock the proverbial Casbah.]

I suspect over the next few months, I’ll be living a rather bicoastal lifestyle – juggling time between developing our next projects back in New York and overseeing post out West – which should give me the chance to stalk my new ILYW buddies. I just hope they’ll still talk to me when I’m no longer paying their salaries.

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alone again

I vividly remember, from when I was growing up, the feeling of returning home each summer at sleepaway camp to a bedroom all my own – the sense of vague uneasiness in a space so quiet, so unsharedly still. I felt a twinge of that again this morning, after dropping my colleague Yoav at the airport and returning to our LA corporate housing. For the first time in a month and a half, I had the place all to myself – with my colleagues off at various film festivals, I’m no longer sharing the apartment, the car, nor our workplace. And while the silence is a bit odd, it’s also deeply relaxing. I can lose myself in daydreaming. I can once again hear myself think.

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