wednesday, january 29, 2003

guess what!? i was accepted into calarts animation program.

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee hoo.

it's been a personal goal of mine since about the second grade to go to the school, though now i'm not certain i will because i love my present school!

thoughts thoughts.

but on another note, my friend who goes there said she was mentioning my portfolio tape to her teacher who was trying to remember it, when the dean of the department stopped as he overheard them talking and said he knew my work and remembered viewing it! FOR NEAT!

anyhow. it's like 4 am and i should go to bed, i had 12 hours of class today. :p

suddenly i was @ 03:44 am

wednesday, january 22, 2003

sigh. i am back at school. how i wanted to write my token "i love home" message last night, but god- i was tired. i still think i have forgotten a million things at home because i was delirious when i finished packing, and i could care less about what i left behind. anyhow. i have so many things to tell you all about! i've been mad busy all this last week. i wanted to write each day but never got a chance for the internet, instead i compiled a huge single entry on my computer- and so i bring you:

THE LONGEST ENTRY EVER.
covering one full week of my life wherein i realize i have to socialize.

the madness began when i noticed the end of my holiday was rapidly approaching and i had yet to fulfill any social obligations or see any one i wanted to see during my break. always happens. the holidays are a blur, i take a week to re-coup, then i only have a week to socialize!
but socialize i did, with a vengeance. calling and making plans, stacking plans, organizing days. i had engagements coming out my ears!
it was also about this time i realized i still had many films to see before i returned to the big city (where i despise seeing pictures, because they are so expensive) and had to incorporate them into my plans as well.
things were smooth. i thought i was set. until last wednesday, we got a call from my cousin from spain (who is attending georgetown school) who said she was coming into town, with a friend no less! - to attend the sundance film festival- oh no! i had forgotten the festival entirely! my mom was working up there, and upon hearing of my cousin's visit she got a stack of tickets for my cousin and my family for a bunch of movies- suddenly my already jammed calendar became broken and jarred by independent films!
pant.
so. here comes the fun rollercoaster.

social events section number one: alice
my friend alice was going to come over and so we could watch "gosford park." then she calledto tell me her mother was going to come for a short visit as well to meet bruce and ignatius. all right says i. we plan to meet at12.30.
12.30 comes and there is a knock at the door, i run to answer it. it is my friend tawny and her boyfriend! not alice and her mother at all! tawny came by to tell me, she and her boyfriend were getting married in may, and that she wants me to be bridesmaid.
wets pants.
i was so startled at this news! not because i didn't expect it, but this was a new experience. she's the first friend i've ever had to get married! heck, she's the only friend i have to have a significant other!
to think, but 1.5 years ago were tawny and i were playing with action figures together, and now she's off buying engagement rings! very strange.
anyhow. we planned to have breakfast together later just as they left just as alice walked through the door with her mother.
entertain. entertain.
watch "gosford park."
i am SAD to say i figured the movie out far too quickly, and i usually never do, but the second the inspector lifts up the maid's photograph of her son and she says the boy was dead, i blurted out, "oh look! the other guy is her son, he's hers. he said his mother was dead, she said her son was dead, he said before his mother died, she worked in a factory and she said before becoming a maid she worked in a factory!"
squee.
oh yeah.
spoilers up there.

social events section number 2: breakfast with tawny, miriam, lots of films, amber
the next day or two is a blur of films and meeting people. i had breakfast with tawny at a little cafe where we think the staff was out to poison her boyfriend by giving him windex to drink which was disguised as orange juice.
my prisma colours finally came. should i give the girl a neutral rating? she took over a month to mail them.
my cousin flew in with her companion, alfonso. very fun. she's smart. she's a lawyer and is now getting a phd or something? i don't know.
my mom started working at sundance, a declared she detested her job because she was moved to the box office, instead of working with the theatre staff.
with no one home at night (sister perpetually out, mother at sundance) i went to "chicago" with my dad. i loved chicago it. the theatre at the end? oh yeah. i can see that from my bed at school. i had no idea catherine zeta-jones was in this! jeez. she has a good voice.
i also managed to fit in seeing a strange movie ("evelyn") which i had never heard of with my friend amber, since her little 6 year old sister wanted to see it.
dialouge highlights of outing:
little sister: and then when we were in dublin daddy went to the bathroom in an outhouse.
me: really?
amber: what? what outhouse? i don't remeber one, where was i?
little sister: in the back of van gobbling up all our food.

social events section number 3: depressing sundance films, ttt and casey, fate deciding pennies.
saturday was defined as a sundance day. i sat through, three films or something? all very good, but very depressing.
film a: a documentary about a family which is torn apart because of a mother's cocaine addiction
film b. a documentary about a man who as all 1. abducted and violently abused by a stranger, 2. abused by his psychotically depressed mother, 3. molested by his father's handy-man while still a minor.
film c. er- ok this one wasn't depressing. it was about girls kissing girls.
film d. a film which started out as a documentary on the nyc emergency task force- but took a new direction when after sept 11, because half its interviewees were killed trying to save people from the buildings.
saturday was also a showcase for this endure-o film from italy. one of those poetic, beautiful no dialouge, toturously boring poetic films.
sample scene: moth flies up against a window... for two minutes. cat stares up at moth... for three more minutes. back to moth... for one minute.
cat eats moth.
feel...
the magesty of it all.
as saturday, my friend casey came over for the night. i made the loverly discovery she is actually very much into lotr right now, which is well, very neat- as she is the only person who has ever equalled (if not bested) me in being obsessed with things.
anyhow, she wanted to see ttt again, and, well, i couldn't say no, but it was 9.30, and we had missed all late showings, or so we thought. there was an 11 one in a town about 45 minutes away. now we were crippled by indecision. the theatre was far away, it was a late show, we had both already seen the it. still, we wanted to see it again while we were together, before i left. then, we took initiative. we decided to flip a coin: heads, we went, tails, we stayed home. we flipped, and the penny vanished.
for the next 45 minutes we searched for the penny but to no avail. finally, we flipped another penny. it yielded a tails. upsetting, as this was not the answer we wanted at all. we felt only our original penny could forsee our true destiny. eventually we found it... though... heh, it was tails too. so we flipped both coins (another 30 minutes) until finally one came up heads.
then we drove out into the night, actually pressed for time because we had spent so much time battling with pennies.
we got to the theatre, which appeared deserted, dark and ... without an entrance. after another baffling 15 minutes of being scared of the tumbleweed-like-lonely lot, a security guard finally told us there was only a 10.30 showing of ttt, no 11 and that the theatre was closed.
imagine the feeling of betrayal, woe! we drove back home, alice stopped by to say good bye before she left for school, and then casey slept over.
we watched fotrex, and both passed out somewhere during bilbo's party.
the poodles, who were with us, however, did not.

social events section 4: sundance part two, ttt!
the next day was sundance day, part two. there was only one film though, instead of several. i invited casey to tag along. the film was called "bus 174." it was a brazilian documentary about a bus hijacking. very scary, as it was all real and during it a girl was killed.
about this time, cd burner came as well. casey and i took to trying to get it to work with software, when we had the thought to get to ttt again.
and again, our timing was off. we were late and had missed all evening shows. save, for one 10 o'clock showing, which was in yet another town, 30 minutes away. this time though we made it, the theatre was OPEN and we enjoyed the film thoroughly on a "deluxe superscreen."
oh yeah.

social events section 5: sundance full monty.
after ttt, i invited casey to yet another sundance party the next day, but this one was to go right up the canyon to the real deal, for the entire day- starting at seven am. she agreed.

oh, p.s. the narrative is coming to close soon, i swear to god. ^^

so at the crack doom- er, dawn, we were up driving through the mountains heading to the king of all indie film fests. i was dog tired because i had been up until 5.30 the night before. poor casey had to endure my inane babblings for the entire trip.
the first film of the day (and the only one we had hard tickets for) was playing in a hotel. after getting to park city, we dashed there- just barely sliding in before the flick started (as usual). in our haste though, we parked in a ... suspect space, we we wondered about it as off to the side of it space there was a barricade reading "store parking only." it wasn't right in front of our space, kind of behind it. we were only one car-row from hotel, we figured we were safe, or at the very worst, we'd be ticketed. at this, we ran inside.
the films were good. the first was a short about imploding old missle silohs in north dakota and the second was about butte montana, the most polluted place in all of the usa, which by 2018 can be declared the first biohazard disaster area.
butte sotry #1
butte was a mining town, a very prosperous mining town. but in the 80's it's productivity fell, and now it is virtually nonexistant. what remains is a great mining pit, which is slowly filling with water. not just any water, a water so high in magnesium, arsenic, copper, zinc etc, it has ph levels consistent with battery acid. once, a flock of canadian geese, were forced by a storm to land in the water. the next morning nearly 400 geese were found dead in the lake, blistered and burned.
butte story#2
the town's mascot in old days had been the black cat, ironic though, as now cats cannot live in butte, because when they lick dust from their fur while cleaning themselves, the dust is so concentrated with arsenic, they are poisoned, and die.
after the films, 45 minutes later. we left and walked out to the lot, only to be met by a tow truck, towing a car from our parking space area. it wasn't our car, but then, we couldn't see our car either.
surely not.
it had to be there.
we thought.
it had to be.
but where was it?
as we got closer, it was obvious.
casey's car was gone.
towed.
we went into the hotel front to ask who towed the car (also noticed the first "tow" sign at the front desk, thanks.) the clerk gave us their phone number all the while telling us the tow charges were something close to 175 dollars.
after getting 411 from the tower (toe-er, not tower) we went back to the parking lot and waited for the tow truck guy to make his next round, because he told us he would give us a ride to the lot. he came, and wee! we got to ride in a tow truck and the tow guy asked if we were from california. also witnessed the man tow a lexus. we drove for a bit out to this out-of-the-way mudpit, and found the car.
there among the lexuses and audis and tons of nice rental cars which had been apprehended during the fest, was our sad old car. we went into the office to talk about our plight. the room was tiny and filled with photographs which were in the manner of "the greatest tows ever" featuring crumpled crashed vehicles in deep snow ridden ravines.
the man at the desk felt sorry for us, especially casey i think because she looked as if she was going to cry, because he knocked off the storage charages from our penalty fee.
so yeah, the ordeal only came to... ouch. 110 dollars.
as we drove off, we decided the car impound was equivalent to osgiliath in film version ttt. strange, not nessecary, annoying, but character bulding. also, lot man was very much like faramir- seemingly cold at first, but nice in the end.

once we had regained ourselves and were once again on our quest to mordo- i mean, the eccles center we met up with my mom, who worked her box office magic and managed to get us into the main theatre to see a premeire, which by the way, even when we were 138 in the wait list line.
the first premeire... was strange.
yep.
tatum o'neale was in it, and we saw her after the film.
also saw tilda swinton!
the next film though... SQUEE! the coup de gras! oh my god! the whole event was so much fun. we thought we would never get in. the wait line was out the window <-- i mean door :P i'm getting tired. we were number 200 or something. it was salma hayek's directorial debut. it actually sound sounded good. and while we were standing in line we noticed the short before it... was ... by sean astin! weee! it was his premeire as well.
we decided we had to get into the showing. but how? it was jam packed and sold out!
why, mummy of course.
i called her up on the phone and she said "i'll be right there" five minutes later, she came to us and said, "girls, could you come with me please?" and took us inside... where she gave us tickets!
we felt so special!
the short was great. i was sad because sean astin didn't come. i was secretly hopin'! really, had he been there i would have fainted.
the film was so funny, it's online now. i'll get the link if any one is interested. the film had such big names as elijah wood- first assistant director, billy boyd- musical inspiration, peter jackson- the bus driver. hee! it was all lotr people, tall paul was in it, pippin's small double was a co-star and the best part was the fotr poster ad on the bus.
a little tongue and cheek goes a long way.
the last film, hayek's, was great. so good. i've never thought any one way about her, but now i am a fan. she came and sat in our row with ed norton and peter fonda and was so gracious to the fans. her director q and a was fantastic! she had a utahn staff, it was filmed in utah, so neat. the little boy star of the film, sang and nearly brought tears to the eyes of the audience!
casey on norton and hayek: oh my god. they were just on the golden globes and now they're sitting down the row from me!
after the shows and the q/a's we met up with my mom again, who led us to the employee secret bathroom (so we could avoid the monstrous line in the main one) but while we were down there
oh my god! <-- random. my city is on television!!
sorry.
while we were down there, jane fonda went into the food room and ed norton was in the green room.
casey: oh my god, there's ed norton making veggi burgers.
then we left. so much fun though! i had to tell you! seeing astin's film was great, salma's was amazing! actors and directors, just exciting and fun to be with casey too.
even if our car was towed at the beginning. ^^"

THE END!

the longest entry EVER.
my fun is over now though. i'm back at school now, but not without a story or two!

p.s. wonder if mom got to see joaquin pheonix today? she called today "project: stalking joaquin"
ok.
whatever.
^^

suddenly i was @ 12:43 am

monday, january 13, 2003

ok! well it's been a thooousand years since anything has happened here, but can i really be blamed? i have lead the most boring existence ever and really didn't feel i needed to record such in my blog. i've been assigned the job of "puppysitter" which means - me, ignatius and bruce, together, oh yeah, all the time.
they scream and cry in the morning until i come downstairs, then i have to play with them until they fall asleep. the worst day so far has been the 8 am to 2.30 am day. no one came home to tag team me and i was upset. i mean- GAH! trapped in two rooms all day! always in the kitchen or the living room, as they are the only rooms the puppies are allowed.
it's just, sigh. my last vacation days spent in an intense maternal relationship with my dogs.
me: ignatius, don't do that! don't make me come and get up, come here. bruce, you're going to fall off settle down. boys! nap time! pee pees on the papers! where's the big dog?
it's sad and pathetic.
though it can be said, i finally have the random chance to watch all those fotr extras. one little special feature section per 7am puppy-awake period.
ho ho, and tp add to the charm of my puppy life- i have given up ever looking decent. never brush my hair (oh-na-tur-al curly, whatever) never leave my sweats...
so in less you are incredibly ethralled in the ups and downs of who is paper trained or who pooped when or which sweatshirt i have chosen to wear on what day, i assure you, this blog has not missed anything in the past week.
oh! though, i did, like an idiot, fall down the stairs a few days ago, and nearly crippled myself because i was trotting wearing only slippy socks and looking at my cat pearl.
me walking downstairs: HIIIIIIIIIIIIII pear-
thumpathumpathumpathumpa crash into box, thumbaCRASHCRASH, cat hiss, thump.
i hit my head, and my back. oi! my back! it was the worst. i tweaked my lower back and couldn't bend over anymore. the next day it was better, but then i thought i was well enough to stretch for excercise and ended up hurting it worse. then, ha. i had shin splints, for god knows what reason. so there i was in sweats, with tiny dogs, moving like a 92 year old. it was bad when i had a friend come over and we made bread- i didn't even change for her! the thought of anything with an non-elastic waist band on my back, pained me.
p.s. bread was good.
i also went and saw "about schimdt" which was really, really good. i loved it. i hope master jack gets best actor, i really do. his performance was spectacular. i felt as though i was going to cry every other moment. <-- i was emotional mid you, this film being my venture out of the kitchen/living room areas and away from the puppies. but really! everyone should see it. i love films which are more about people, minus big fx. sometimes it's overwhelming, all the cgi and tricks and styles, in films today. sometimes you just want to get to know a character.
speaking of getting to know characters. i picked up "trainspotting" a week ago and have been reading it. i like it, but jesus! it's brutal. like i want to know all the details of where rent-boy shoots up.
i like sick boy.
i also am walking around practicing my scottish accent, because i have no life.
me getting ready for shower: are ya ootay yer heid?
i figure i have a mean half-arse cockney accent, i might as well bone up to a half-arse scottish one.
and, boyo, we're half way there man.
workwise this past week, i was a good person and actually (drum roll) FINISHED the sound for my animation. hooray! it's only been a year- but, hooray! i am so pleased with myself. now if i could only finish my animatic of storyboards. :p
anyhow. i must clean out my email inbox. it's over flowing, i've been meaning to do it for months.
p.s. have a very cool gollum desktop right now.
p.p.s. found the original amadeus on dvd! wee!

suddenly i was @ 11:13 am

saturday, january 4, 2003

hey ho, guess where i am? not my chair at home, not my beloved dorm desk, not animation class- i am at my dad's work! yee hoo.
today i went downtown in search of something to buy with my bookstore giftcertificate. i ended up with "trainspotting" the book and "40 licks: greatest hits of the rollingstones." i wanted the amadeus soundtrack, but they just didn't have the version i was after, so i figured, another time bucko.
this morning was happy-vet day. pearl, ignatius and bruce all had to go get shots. you should have heard the sad noises in the car:
puppies: whimper, squeak, whimper, cry
pearl: bo-eow, bo-eow
especially pearl, i have never heard such sad noises from a cat in all my days.
at the vet everyone was very very well behaved. again, especially pearl. it was funny, we (i was with my dad, thus, my being at his work now) lifted pearl's box to the table and warned the vet this was our wild cat with a nasty disposition at times.
the vet lifts her out. not a peep. not a hiss. he pokes her, turns her over, opens her mouth and gives he shot- and nothing! she's perfect cat all of a sudden. my father and i stare on in shock. this IS the cat who hisses when i walk up and say, "pearl, do you want to go outside?"
i love pearl so much. she's such a weirdo.
puppies were good too, everyone liked ignatius' name and dad confessed he didn't like bruce.
blast, we could have named him dashiel, oh well, too late now.

i think today we're off to see "about schmit" <-- or however it is spelled. so many films, so little time. saw "my big fat greek wedding" yesterday. i love that movie.

p.s. GAH! family threw out my bathrobe! my lovely warm purple too big compleatly worn and wonderful terry cloth robe! i got out of the shower, and my towel was gone. my sister, after i yelled, presented me with MY towel which she had used and was currently wet and covered with her mascara.
so, i went for my robe.
discovered its fate.
mother's alternative suggestion: use the red one.
the red one i took my dying cat to the vet last summer? i think not. i won't even touch it.
wrap myself in a death schroud or a masacara rag- what's one to do to keep clean around here?

suddenly i was @ 03:30 pm

friday, january 3, 2003

why do you build me up buttercup!?
hello all. hpe we all survived the new year and were as gold and better while ringing it in. i myself REALLY lived it up and had dinner with my parents and their friends and then watched "the iron giant."
weeee-hoo. don't hold me back! if this is getting overwhelming please avert thine eyes.
it was scary however, because one friend at dinner told a story about how when she was 13 her best friend was murdered! very scary.
so, yes. my new years. big whoop. though, sadly enough it was one of my better ones because a. i stayed awake till midnight, b. was not watching the worst crap b sci-fi movies when it became midnight c. was not alone. so i guess progress was made in 2002 (could have fooled me).
yesterday i went to see "catch me if you can" with my parents (ALL RIGHT i'm a social loser, i admit his to you all now) which was very very good. i love tom hanks, i think he is just the best thing out there sometimes, is there nothing he can't do? and, yes. i also like steven spielberg, i know he's not as cool as some other directors, because he is the ultimate of all hollywood warm and fuzzies, but i still like him. but the film, yes. very good. i liked it muchly.
then afterward i did a little thievery myself, and noted ttt was just starting as catch me was ending. my mom and went it.
ah, nothing like a free film.
especially when it's ttt.
SO after 6 hours of movie-going... heh heh heh.
oh! i have so many films to see! i'd really like to see chicago as well, and about schmit and real women have curves and- oh! so many!
but at least i got another ttt viewing.

speaking of tolkien, which we almost were, today is his birthday! his age? 111.

^_^

suddenly i was @ 02:45 pm

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