Try Avoidance

Bridge School Benefit 2010 Lineup

2010-09-14T20:14:00.007-07:00

The lineup of performers for this year's Bridge School Benefit Concert was announced Monday.

Saturday

Buffalo Springfield
Pearl Jam
Elvis Costello
Merle Haggard & Kris Kristofferson
Lucinda Williams
Billy Idol
Jackson Browne & David Lindley
Modest Mouse
Grizzly Bear

Sunday

Buffalo Springfield
Pearl Jam
T-Bone Burnett's Speaking Clock Review (T-Bone, Elton John, Leon Russell, Elvis Costello, Ralph Stanley, Neko Case, Jeff Bridges)
Merle Haggard & Kris Kristofferson
Modest Mouse
Grizzly Bear

On the one hand, I absolutely love this lineup.

Getting to see one of Neil's primitive bands, Buffalo Springfield, who haven't played a show since 1968, is a real treat. Granted, the original bass player and drummer have since passed away, but the band sets the mood for Neil, so this will a side I have not seen in the past.
Pearl Jam back at Bridge School after a too long hiatus and just days from their 20th anniversary.
This lineup proves my point about getting to see great musicians I would never under other circumstances see, like Elivs, Merle, Kris, Lucinda, Jackson Browne, and T-Bone's collective. The music is going to be fantastic, no doubt about it.
I was just wondering what ever happened to Modest Mouse. This'll be my first MM show, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Grizzly Bear are the token neo-hippie/folk band this year. Though not as transcendant as, for instance, Yeasayer, they show promise.

On the other hand, we're bringing out 16-year-old nephew Roman with us, and this perhaps the "oldest" lineup I've ever seen at Bridge School (and that somehow includes the year with Sir Paul and Tony Bennet), so I'm not sure if he'll dig it. Certainly, if there is some prejudice but he can slog through it, it'll be a rewarding experiencing, because this is undoubtedly a lineup packed with great musicians.

Tickets on sale Sunday morning.

Correction

2010-09-14T20:14:00.003-07:00

OK, I take it back. I am blogging here. I am blogging now. Let's see what happens.

New Decade, New Blog

2010-01-04T12:51:00.002-07:00

Try Avoidance. It was a fun five years. With the new decade comes a new blog:

I Tried to Erase - http://itriedtoerase.wordpress.com/

The Water Hazard Back In Business

2009-08-07T14:03:00.003-07:00

Holliston Mini Golf Course Finding New Life

I can't tell you how excited I am that The Water Hazard is back in business after three years of closure and slightly longer in poor repair. We were just there and didn't even think of checking it out. I need a trip back to Boston just to play a few rounds.

The Water Hazard is my favorite mini golf course ever. It's brilliant in it's simplicity. No windmills, no clown heads, just well-maintained undulating greens, with areas of rough (shaggy green carpet), and real sand, water, and rock traps. There are still some obstacles, but to me, it's a mini golf course for more mature people.

Matter of Chance Charts, Part I

2009-06-23T16:32:00.003-07:00

Here is a chart I threw together on Google Docs. Note that 2004 and 2009 film totals are extrapolated as though MOC operated the whole year.

DOBWF Color Correction

2009-04-11T19:16:00.002-07:00

After seeing DOBWF projected a couple times, I am wondering about my original color correction choice. I ended up doing a look with Cyan shadows and highlights. I decided to go back and look at the footage again. Here are three images: unmodified, cyan, and chocolate. Let me know what you think.

Low Budget

2009-04-07T15:15:00.001-07:00

Mocumentary web series just starting out...

http://www.lowbudgetcomedy.com/

The Sweet Science - Recap

2009-02-25T14:28:00.008-07:00

I almost didn't sign up for the Almost Famous Film Festival's 48-Hour Challenge this year. It seemed like the annual promise to "never ever do this again" might just hold true this year. Still, as the reminder emails started to trickle in from Jae, I got the bug. I signed up December 30 or 31, just sneaking in at the early-bird rate.

I didn't even bother letting Brock and Gabe know. I didn't think they were still into it after last year. It was a no pressure kind of thing. I figured I would just make something simple at home on Saturday and take it easy. Something simple, funny, and short along the lines of Johnny B. Naked.

Well, I got an email out of the blue from Angel Ruiz. He is generally a writer/director (though he has appearded in most of his films as well), but was interested in just acting this year and was looking for a team. So, all this ended up coming up in discussion and the guys were actually interested in doing a film, and having Angel available, who is always in real good shape, sort of opened up some possibilities.

I was skeptical about Angel at first. In almost every way you can compare films, Angel's films are on a different wavelength than ours. He always has very well put together films, and always very visually inetresting, but we lean more towards ironic comedies and arty dramas, while his sensibility has always been more bold action/horror and very flashy. It's two different worlds, really, but it turned out to be a fantastic collaboration.

We started tossing ideas around like we did last year. In fact, looking back at all the really good ideas we had going into last year's challenge, it had me scratching my head as to how we ended up making The Fuseman. I think it was just a process of elimination and late-night compromise. This film didn't fit the guidelines, this one didn't fit, this one no one understood... and we ended up making a weak film.

Well, we took a different approach this year. Brock had one flash of brilliance in the concept department, a twist on Everlast in which a boxer can see his opponents' lives as he fights them. We were pretty sold on the concept, and decided to just make a boxing film on Friday night, regardless of what the guidelines were. If it didn't fit well, we'd shoot something else on Saturday to submit to the A3F. We felt confident about it, no second guessing. This was going to be a great film, no matter what.

We got Angel on board, found Mario Guzman on the A3F Community page, and had Gabe ready to act as well. We started getting the crew together, and we had a Key Grip, Boom Operator, Makeup Artists, Still Photographer, and Craft Services, and nearly everyone showed up (we did have to call up an emergency Boom Op). No big surprised, for once!

Brock, Angie, and I went to the kick-off party at the Clarendon Hotel. Mario showed up as well. It was a fun atmosphere. It was a lot of suspense waiting for the guidelines to be announced. I think we were there around 5:30 and they weren't announced until 7pm on the dot. So, the video is playing, and the guidelines are starting to come up on the screen. They sort of got "typed" across the screen, one letter at a time. Big drama! The prop was a backpack... no problem (way better than a ladder!). The line of dialog was "this changes everything"... nice and short, not an awkward question like some years past. The theme was typing out before us... A Significant... and I'm thinking "significant other" maybe... that would have sucked... but it was A Significant Loss. Perfect for a boxing film. As far as I remember, we were the only ones jumping around and screaming.

There's two schools of thought when it comes to 48-hour challenges. 1) Have a strong idea and work in the guidelines or 2) start with the guidelines and let them drive you to an idea. We usually go with the latter, but this year we had a strong idea AND it fit well with the guideliens. That kind of synergy is, I think, what has made for some of the top-ranking films of recent years. There is a bit of good fortune involved.

So, we headed over to the Central Boxing Gym, for some fast food on the way and Brock wrote the script. We were a little slow to get off and running when we got there. We needed to start with the boxing action in the ring, but Matt wasn't there yet. We really wrestled with the lighting. The big questions was could we light the place so everything outside of the ring fell into darkness. There were some large mirrors on one side of the ring that kind of killed every attempt we made to light the ring, so we ended up covering them with Roy and Mike's help. We were also fortunate that Gabe and Roy brought some lights from the school, because the one's I had weren't strong enough, I think, and I had left behind the light boxes I had built to control the lights. We ended up tweaking the positioning of the lights and covering a lot of stuff with black cloth.

It was interesting to be in the ring. The place was totally dark, except for these two spot lights in the corners and Roy was handholding a smaller light to fill in the characters. It looked very dramatic just standing there.

Matt finally showed up, and him and Angel got into makeup and costume. They got in the ring, and it was actually tough to keep them separated. They really wanted to go at each other in the ring. We got some really good action shots, basically freestyle of them boxing each other around the ring. I shot with a 45 degree shutter, basically a 1/250th of a second. It gave a nice stroby look to the footage, very disconcerting. I shot mostly full wide on the lens and kept the camera close to the action. I was right in the middle of the blows and got hit a couple times as a result. They were all oiled up and getting watered down between each take. There was a lot of water, oil, and spit flying around, and the camera was quite slick afterwards.

Dan Berry was there as a Still Photographer. I was so distracted I hardly noticed him operating. I finished up in the ring, and was going to turn it over to him for a few minutes, but he had already taken a ton of pictures without me noticing. I haven't seen them yet, but they're on their way soon. He had to take off before we moved back to the training room, so we may not have good shots of Mario, which would be a shame.

We had shot about an hour in the ring and had two hours left in the facility. We moved to the back room, the locker room/training room. We set up a simple dolly shot to open the film and got that in a couple takes. We blocked the action and went into the performances. It's tough directing. I definitely enjoyed it for this film, bit was critical to have Brock nearby. I was trying to do my best Brock impression, trying to come up with ways of getting the actors to the performance I needed without explicitly saying how it should be done, and I hope I did a good job of not doing any line readings to the actors (when I needed to tell them where to start, I tried to state the lines word for word without any inflection or feeling, to keep it neutral and let them bring what they coudl to the characters). Still, there were a couple parts where we stalled a little and I wasn't quite getting what I intended, and Brock jumped in and saved the day, saying just the right things.

The lighting here was also pretty dramatic. I lit from the actor's side of the frame, so the foreground was in shadow. It was a good look. We ran right up to our deadline, and we got everything we needed except for one line of off-screen dialog we recorded the next day. Brock was pushing constantly, showing me a clock every fifteen minutes or so and pushing me along. It cannot be easy to be an AD, to be the bad guy constantly, but it's a necessity, and we never would have made it without Brock committing to do what had to be done.

We lost Rebekah, Zoe, and Alex and had a cast/crew dinner at 5 & Diner that went until 2am.

I have to mention Roy Shrum at this point. I had no idea he had filmmaking skills, but he was a real pro and has a lot of experience. Not sure why he hasn't been with us all along. He was a fantastic Grip, had good solutions to problems, and in the ring he really played a role, since he was hand-holding a pretty hot light and moving around with the camera and actors. It was really a creative role at that point, more than anything.

Also, there was Alex Zingaro, our Boom Operator. He was a very last minute fill-in, like the afternoon of the shoot last minute. He showed up and helped with general duties while in the ring, then operated the boom when we started shooting sound in the training room. I wasn't able to give him a lot of attention, but he's a real pro and must have been peaking at the monitor to find his frame lines. He made sure we recorded room tone, not once, but twice, after we had closed a door. Nice catch! The sound ended up very good.

Angel, Mario, and Gabe were all very solid. It was obvious through the performances and discussions beforehand that they gave a lot of thought to the parts. They didn't need the script much if at all, they had their lines down pat, which made it easier to get to the heart of the performances.

I got home, captured the footage, and then got about 8 hours of sleep. I started editing around noon on Saturday. I was in the seat until 8:30am on Sunday morning, with a brief break for pizza. Gabe, Rebekah, and Zoe came over with the pizza. It was good moral support and good feedback on the scene I had rough cut when they came.

Anyway, 20 hours later I had the picture edited, sound edited, added sound effects, added a music track. The final step was to convert to black and white and get it output to turn in to Jae. It was almost a shame to convert it to B&W. It's certainly a striking look and it will probably stand out from the crowd pretty well, but... the footage in color has a real nice look to it. I'll probably put both color and B&W versions on the DVD.

Overall, it's probably the best film we've made for a 48-hour challenge. We all feel really good about it. Could it use a little finesse? Sure, they all can, but I feel real good about this one out of the gate. Nothing to be ashamed of, for sure. Brock's talking about possibly writing a feature around this concept... cool!

Chair Burning

2008-12-07T00:11:00.002-07:00

It was a fun night all around. Brock, Parker, and Hudson, along with Gabe, Rebekah, and Zoe came out for some good eats at Cibo. Then we headed over to the IFP/PHX office for a mixer and spread the word about White Bread. Finally, over to Gary and Lori's, where the whole family (including JAG, Crystal, Adam, DRG) watched as we burned the Wildlifeless chair. It went off pretty much to plan. We had one shot, and I think we made the most of it.

Check out the image, this is about ten minutes of fiddling in Photoshop. It'll look way cooler in motion, you can be sure.

Days of Being Wrinkle Free, Part VI

2008-11-24T16:56:00.003-07:00

I took some still photos today that will be the basis for Days of Being Wrinkle Free posters and DVD menus in the coming months. Here is a quick preview. I can see titles/menus in the negative space in each of these shots.

Michael Crichton, An Alternate Obituary

2008-11-05T19:07:00.008-07:00

Michael Crichton, author, died from cancer yesterday, November 4, 2008. Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. He graduated from Harvard University, and later Harvard Medical School. He wrote his way through school as a peddler of trashy paperback adventures under various pseuodnyms. Eventually, he developed a unique style that played only-slightly-fictionalized cutting-edge technology (and consistently a decade ahead of the mainstream in that regard) against our deepest fears in the name of high-concept fiction, in books which often read like dialog-filled operations manuals.

Crichton was an instant Hollywood darling. For over three decades, everything he wrote was adapted for the big screen, often with tremendous success. He wrote, produced, and directed, movies and television, pioneered visual effects, developed video games, and more. Crichton was a unique voice. His style has never been imitated and his omnimedia success has never been matched.

The Personal Angle

After initially being shut out of Jurassic Park the film (thanks, Mom), I picked up the book at the library, then quickly devoured everything else Crichton had to offer. Jeremy picked up on this soon after, and took it to greater heights, reseaching (and later collecting) every edition of every book, article, and film, he had anything to do with. I do believe, and don't feel I am overstating this in the least, that Jeremy is (or was at one time) the world's greatest authority on all things Michael Crichton.

In December 2006, on a trip to Phoenix, Jeremy and I constructed the Michael Crichton Information Page, a single-page data dump on the author. This became the Michael Crichton Collector's Site and then crichton.org. Beyond the wealth of information the sites contained, they had a unique feature: Crichton would offer a clever quip when you mouse-overed his image on the front page. The following messages were manually changed from time time, but later, through the wonders of PHP, rotated on each page visit.

Jeremy was also active on the alt.books.crichton Usenet newsgroup for some time, and not just under his own identity. He created a character named SalaS to provide some anonimity. Eventually, in an homage to the "Moonkids" personality that trolled the Smashing Pumpkins newsgroup, he created an antagonistic character called Slotnick who never saw the light of day, fortunately.

Jeremy and I spent quite a lot of time cruising greater Phoenix area used bookstores in search of neglected special editions and paperbacks, that could be often had for pennies, but sold online for significantly more (this was in the days when Amazon.com had a text-based front page with a green logo). Exploring the old films, especially the made-for-TV films (all spectacular, for better or worse), introduced us to great actors like Donald Sutherland and Ben Gazarra. We noted Crichton's penchant for gratutitous nudity in all his visual works. The year 1998, in particular, was marked by the heated anticipation for the film adaption of Jeremy's favorite book, Sphere, which had taken eleven years to make it to the big screen. The way the book was adapted and visualized was debated long and hard.

Eventually, we both moved on to other pursuits. Nevertheless, Crichton carries fond memories of shared experiences and the shared language of his writings. He will be missed.

Mystery Wordle

2008-10-24T21:48:00.002-07:00

OK, it was too much fun. What could be the source of this Wordle, and why is it telling me to "eat donuts like Mason?"

Sans Hands Wordle

2008-10-24T21:38:00.003-07:00

Maybe this is old hat to you guys, but I just found Wordle today. Above is a Wordle of the full text of Sans Hands.

The Ayo Dance/Giraffe Walk

2008-10-21T11:11:00.002-07:00

Tent Set for Sale

2008-10-16T12:01:00.003-07:00

Matter of Chance Productions is selling the tent set we built for Wildlifeless. If you are working on a film that takes place in a jungle, a war film, or anything involving a big tent, this set could be just what you need.

The tent set is basically three sides of a 10' x 16' canvas wall tent. It is 8' high and designed for studio use. It is built of sturdy 2x4's with thick natual/yellowish fireproof canvas. It was design in four sections that fold up for easy transportation in the bed of a standard pick-up truck. There are a variety of ways to support it. We did so with a bunch of C-stands and lots of sandbags.

We are including lots of dark bamboo to look like supports, a bunch of extra canvas, and we even have two smaller A-frame tents as well. We may have some additional items left over from our film that you might be interested in for dressing up the tent.

The tent set cost around $400 to build from raw materials. We are asking $60 for everything. Buyer must come and pick it up in North Phoenix.

Wildlifeless (Trailer)

2008-10-09T23:37:00.002-07:00

Wildlifeless Doco, Part I

2008-10-04T01:19:00.002-07:00

We are working on a short documentary on the making of Wildlifeless. It will consist mostly of an interview with Brock, along with behind the scenes footage and stills from location scouting, casting, production, and so on. Above is a still from the interview that we shot tonight. Brock is looking fine and on his game. Look for the Collector's Edition of Wildlifeless coming soon.

Chungking Express Blu-Ray

2008-09-10T09:42:00.002-07:00

It was exciting to see the anouncement that The Criterion Collection will be releasing Blu-Ray discs for the first time, beginning in November. I've actually been holding back in buying DVD's lately, waiting in limbo to see how this developed.

Among the first discs available is Wong Kar Wai's iconic 1994 film "Chungking Express." I'm excited to see this in HD, considering I was never able to catch it on the big screen. There look to be some interesting special features as well, including an interview with Wong and Chris Doyle.

Yet, one line of the description disturbed me a little:

New and improved English subtitle translation

The English subtitle translation, of course, is our gateway into the language of this film. Will it still be a very emotional towel? Will Cop 223 still ask Woman in Blonde Wig "Would you fancy some pineapple?" We'll have to wait and see.

Days of Being Wrinkle Free, Part V

2008-09-05T12:29:00.003-07:00

There are three main challenges involved in completing Days of Being Wrinkle Free:

Voiceover - The voiceover is intended to be in Chinese. This is the shared vision of Jeremy and I (and Tim Nm). In the Tim Nm film, it was never clear how he would achieve this voiceover. He was always more focused on his yellow subtitles than the logistics of performing and recording a Chinese voiceover. Jeremy at some point, with reasons grounded in Tim's psyche known only to him, determined that Tim would haved toughed it out and recorded the voiceover himself, no matter how poorly it turned out. Well, that was all well and good when DoBWF was a real ramshackle affair, but it's actually turned out to be a polished effort in the end, and it deserves a better (and less potentially insulting) voiceover.

Sound - We shot the film with absolutely no regard for sound. In fact, Jeremy and I can be heard talking (sometimes debating) during the meat of many of the best shots. In a way, this is somewhat key to the film, because we were actively talking the character through many of the scenes. I guess we thought since the film would be told in voiceover, that we could just toss all of the audio. Even that isn't a great excuse, though, because there were three spoken lines in the film, and the audio on them is completely unacceptable.

Score - After getting an original score done for Wildlifeless, is there any turning back? No pre-canned music is going to capture the feeling of this film, and no music would fit it's 8.5 minute run time, anyway.

Well, I'm very excited that we have pulled in some very talented people to address these needs:

Voiceover - Wuzhi Lu will be doing our voiceover. He is a consumate professional with degrees in broadcasting and journalism, 16 years of experience, and completed work for Volvo, BMW, Intel, LG, Ford, GM, Heinken, Gucci, DuPont, the NBA, and Xbox. Wow! He is also a great fit to voice Captain.

Sound - Alden Fahl is a rising star in the world of sound in Arizona filmmaking community, having recently completed work on The Governor, and comes highly recommended. He will be doing the foley and sound design, bringing the real life sounds of the laundromat to life.

Score - Luca Antonini is back, having won Best Original Score at the Almost Famous Film Festival 2008 for his work on Wildlifeless. It's a joy to have him on board, and while we have worked with him before, his connection to this film was quite surprising. It turns out that he is a big fan of WKW's BMW Film The Follow. It goes without saying that this entire film is an homage to WKW, but beyond that "Unicornio," the song from The Follow, was top on my short list of musical inspirations for this film. When Luca and I realized this confluence of cirmcumstance, we knew it was meant to be.

There you go, three problems and three talented individuals to make it happen. This film is coming together fast. Film festivals, here we come! Now I have to figure out exactly what film festivals would be perfect for DoBWF.

Fourth day

2008-02-20T19:37:00.001-07:00

SmartBoxes arrived. Worst casualty was my desk. Three out of four legs
were busted right off. Hopefully we'll be able to find some
replacements. There were some other assorted dings and scrapes but all
and all we survived. Now we're in the midst of the unpacking nightmare.

Jeremy

Third day

2008-02-19T20:28:00.001-07:00

SmartBoxes are coming tomorrow. We went furniture shopping today.
Bought a bed frame at Pottery Barn. Looks like we'll be buying our
sofa from a place called Christian Street Sofa. They've got some
really cool stuff. We're looking at a mini-sectional.

Jeremy

Second day

2008-02-18T20:57:00.001-07:00

Still no SmartBox. Not good.

Jeremy

First day there

2008-02-18T07:44:00.001-07:00

We stayed at James and Chrissy's last night. I got a call from the
SmartBox people and they said that our stuff might not get here today
after all. That would not be good.

Tempature was 79 yesterday. Beautiful.

Jeremy

Third day

2008-02-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

We had wi-fi last night but I forgot to send anything in. We bought a
washer and dryer from Sears online. Right now we're in Pachuta, MS.
Almost there.

Jeremy

First night

2008-02-15T18:44:00.001-07:00

We're in a hotel in Fredricksburg, Virginia. The first day of driving
is done. Darrell is Googling local restaurants as I type this. We hit
tons of traffic but we managed to bang out almost a full third of the
drive. Hopefully I'll check in tomorrow as long as the next hotel has
wi-fi.

PS: I'm typing this on my brand new 16GB iPod Touch. I'm loving this
junk.

Jeremy

An Unauthorized Tour of Rebecca Kinkead's Studio

2008-01-31T13:29:00.001-07:00

An Unauthorized Tour of Rebecca Kinkead's Studio
Originally uploaded by jerpro

Check out the whole set over on Flickr. An interesting look behind the scenes of a fantastic artist, Rebecca Kinkead. This piece in particular hit me. I have no idea if this is close to the finished product or if there are more owls to come. Fantastic either way.

MacHeist Deal

2008-01-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to share this link for any who may own a Mac. This is a fantastic deal on a bundle of 12 Mac apps for only $49 (or less if you have friends).

I've been told that 1password alone is worth the price.

Enjoy!

MacHeist

Classic JoPro Art

2007-12-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

Art
Originally uploaded by jerpro

I just wanted to share this classic piece of artwork.

Enjoy!

Live Bazan

2007-11-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to some live David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion and The Headphones):

http://hardtofindafriend.blogspot.com/2007/11/david-bazan-live-at-grey-eagle-11407.html

There are some new songs mixed in there. Enjoy!

Buy a MacBook Pro

2007-11-27T07:05:00.000-07:00

To prepare myself for the next phase I needed to pick up a laptop for relief work and my own business. Decisions, decisions, decided: MacBook Pro 15.4". I can't truly recommend this yet because it hasn't arrived. I wanted to post this anyway, though, because Amazon.com has it for 5% off and a $150 rebate. Free shipping with Super Saver. All things considered it comes out to a 12.5% discount, the best price I've seen (and I've been watching these for quite some time).

Some highlights:

They've upgraded the processor to the Intel Santa Rosa platform (Intel Core Duo running at 2.2 GHz)
2GB RAM
LED backlit screen
Backlit keyboard
120GB hard drive. A little small in this day and age, but I'd rather spend cheap money on an external and use it with Time Machine then pay the exhorbitant price they want for a few measly GBs.
You know I'll be Boot Camping to XP. That's what you get when you're do .NET development. Developers, developers, developers.

What can I say? I long for my LCIII experiences of yesteryear.

Enjoy!

Buy Serendipity

2007-11-26T21:18:00.001-07:00

Here's a blast from the past: Serendipity! I've been loving it since 2001 so I might as well admit it. We were bored on Saturday night so we popped it in for another viewing (we absolutely own it; and this was a Jeremy purchase, not a Molly purchase). It's just as great as it ever was.

Kate Beckinsale is fantastic. You can't argue that fact. John Cusack is fantastic. He's been rolling in high comedy since the old days. He anchors this picture nicely. Jeremy Piven does his Jeremy Piven thing, but before he entered the "all I do is the Jeremy Piven thing" stage of his career, so it's OK. Eugene Levy is present and perfect in a small role (the search for the name by Cusack, Piven, and Levy is a great bit). Molly Shannon restrains her Molly Shannon self for about 75 minutes before cracking her single SNL line (who would have thought there'd be two Molly Shannon references on Try Avoidance in one week). Tom Brady's baby-momma even shows up. What more could you ask for?

Let's go down the list:

It's always nice when a romantic comedy is actually a comedy. Check.
The music actually adds value. I hadn't noticed this until this past viewing. Great tunes for the settings, I'd love to get the soundtrack. Check.
I cried when I first watched it and continue to get misty-eyed every viewing since. Watch the scene where Beckinsale goes to the Waldorf near the end and try not to cry. If you succeed your heart is made of stone surrounded by three inches of ice. Check.

This is what a romantic comedy should be.

Don't Rent Secrets of the Cave

2007-11-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

From the writer/director who aslo brought you ... Secrets of the Cave ... Enough said.

Buy Beirut

2007-11-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

I discovered the band Beirut recently while listening to WERS (88.9 here in Boston; also streaming online for those who'd like to check it out).

Listen to Postcards from Italy (this is a live version via Songza).

Of course the instant comparison is Neutral Milk Hotel. But this guy is doing something different. The rest of the his first album, Gulag Orkestar, isn't as close a match. And that's probably a good thing. Everyone needs to forge their own sound. Beirut has acheived that. The album is solid from front to back. I can't wait to check out their follow-up The Flying Club Cup.

It's been awhile since I've had an album sneak up on me like this. One of those albums that takes 6 listens before you really appreciate it. Like the way Good Morning Spider did so many years ago.

So, follow these instructions:

Buy Gulag Orkestar by Beirut
Listen 6 times
Enjoy!

Rent Music & Lyrics

2007-11-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend Music and Lyrics.

For some reason I find Hugh Grant funny. I'm not sure why. Even in movies that I didn't love, I respect the fact that he's always funny. Notting Hill, American Dreamz, and the very good About a Boy are some examples. This movie is genuinely funny.

What makes this movie work is the fact that the music is original and well done. The 80's tunes are deliciously 80's. The modern Brit-tina Spear-ulara tunes are actually clever ("Buddha's Delight" is unmatched; I can actually listen to this song for enjoyment purposes). The big thing about the music is that they don't dumb it down or say "look at me, look how clever and obvious I'm being." The music works because they sell it, unashamedly and without blinking.

Enjoy!

Rent Year of the Dog

2007-11-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

I highly recommend Year of the Dog.

This is not your "School of Rock" Mike White.

This is not your "Superstar" Molly Shannon.

This is just a good movie. At times it gave me a Napoleon Dynamite feel. At times it was very funny. At times it was almost scarily dark. It surprised me.

Enjoy!

Last Celtics Game?

2007-11-21T18:43:00.001-07:00

Closed

2007-11-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

What else can I say? The money's in the bank.

Last of the framed photos

2007-11-12T08:07:00.001-07:00

Backlit Trees
Originally uploaded by jerpro

2007-11-12T08:04:00.001-07:00

The abundance of peace until ...
Originally uploaded by jerpro

It's always nice to find yourself on IMDB

2007-11-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

http://posters.imdb.com/title/tt1003033/soundtrack

Michael Scott in Real Life

2007-11-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

We went and saw Dan in Real Life on Wednesday night. Fantastic time at the movies! This one is definitely worth checking out. Steve Carell plays a widower with three daughters caught up in a love triangle during a family weekend in Rhode Island.

The movie is filled with good-natured laughs and nice moments. It's by no means a "great" film but it's far superior to most stuff out there and I think you'll enjoy it. From time to time you'd swear that Carell is still playing Michael Scott from The Office. However, this is more due to the awkwardness of the situations than the heart of the character. It has awkwardness galore; and that's why I love it.

Have you seen it? What'd you think?

JJP Edited

2007-10-26T10:33:00.001-07:00

Kilauea Lighthouse
Originally uploaded by jerpro

Joshua helped put these photos together for my second anniversary gift to Molly.

No More Sunsets

2007-10-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

Sunset
Originally uploaded by jerpro

I wonder how 12 Brothers is coming along.

The Winner Is ...

2007-10-22T12:59:00.000-07:00

... SmartBox. They have the honor of moving our (hopefully) diminished junk to Louisiana.

Cementing

2007-10-17T15:53:00.001-07:00

Cementing
Originally uploaded by jerpro

One of the conditions of selling the house was fixing the front walkway. It was raised up about an inch and it was a tripping hazard. Ray came over and we banged this out in about 2 hours.

121 Sale Pending

2007-10-17T15:52:00.001-07:00

121 Sale Pending
Originally uploaded by jerpro

Yep. We signed the purchase and sale last Friday. Looks like everything is going forward. We close on the 16th of November.

Feist - 1234

2007-10-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

It's that song on the iPod Nano commercial. For about 3 seconds I thought it might be Cat Power. It wasn't, but that's OK. The song is still awesome.

I'm also using this post as a way to mention Amazon.com's MP3 download service. I've enjoyed it so far. All the songs are DRM-free MP3s, so they'll play anywhere. They also come in cheaper than iTunes. How can you beat that? Enjoy!

Disaster! Disaster!

2007-10-10T12:57:00.000-07:00

It's hard to know where to start in documenting last weekend's filmmaking activities. I guess I should go back to the A3F 48-hour challenge in February. We made a decent film that no one, not even on our own team, cared about, and with nary a humurous moment to redeem it. Then, late last month in Boston, we aborted another attempt to make a film had promise of being both very funy and very different.

So it was that we rode this raging tide of failure into last weekend's A3F All-Star 72-hour challene. Quite an honor to be hand-selected as a Top 10 team among the 120 or so teams that have participated in A3F events over the past three years. No entry fees, more time than previous challenges, big prizes at stake.

For me, anyway, the first 24 hours of the challenge were perhaps the least stressful of all challenges thusfar. Brock and Gabe took up the story/writing reigns this time, so as the challenge started I found myself at home, relaxing, and going to bed early for a nice night's sleep. The screenplay arrived the next morning. The story of an embittered married couple facing off in a bar over sports memorabilia didn't catch me at first, but all made good sense by the end of the first read. "This could be really funny," I thought. In fact, it's funniness, I reasoned, would be limited only by the actor's desire to take the material squarely into over-the-top absuridty. I was excited, and my focus would be purely to get some nice pictures to edit.

Sadly, when the high point of the weekend has come and gone before you arrive at the location, you know you're not in for anything good. When we did arrive, we discovered that there was a poker tournament schedule at the bar late in the afternoon, giving us scant hours to shoot the entire six-or-seven page screenplay. We dug in, and a few shortcuts and compromises later, we believed we had the film in the can, just in the nick of time.

It was only as we sat to feast on Fish 'n' Chips that our peril began to set in. As we mused about each of the hilarious moments that would make it into the final film, we came to a grim realization, moment by moment. The lines were indeed funny, and rather would have been, had we actually shot them. "Did we even shoot that scene?" No, no we had not. In our rush, pages of the script, perhaps as much as 50% of it, had been neglected. How could we have made such an oversight? What did we have in the can? What would we do?

The initial viewing at home confirmed it. There was only drama where our comedy was supposed to be. Well acted, well shot, well directed drama, yes. Even at that, it made no sense without the missing scenes.

Then came out-and-out creative block on everyone's part. We sat around Saturday night, then regrouped at sat around some more Sunday morning and early afternoon. We parted ways to get ready for the meeting without much ado and so much as a gameplan to take this film (or any film) forward. I finally broke through with some new ideas Sunday night, but, hey, it was Sunday night already.

What we did agree to do was tie the existing segments of film together with some quickly assembled shots of us sitting around the living room, watching this nonsensical film for the first time, with Brock conducting this fictional MOC pow-wow as resident neurotic director. We shot these scenes, then scenes of us each parting ways, dealing with the abject failure in our own melodramatic ways. Filming this type of conclusion to a failed film was in and of itself quite theraputic.

I would have felt much better, except I had to immediately hunker down and edit, not one, but essentially two interwoven films, to the level of precision and quality generally expected of our productions. Therefore, I didn't get to feel better until late the next evening, when once again, we pressed against the deadline to complete and deliver the film. Proving once again that it doesn't matter how much time you give us, we'll probably not finish until the last possible moment.

The finished film is something to behold. In form, it's quite accidentaly the most bizarre and challenging film we've made. It looks and sounds nice, and the acting is solid throughout, including the improved reactions. If any of this had been intentional, we could be lauded as mavericks, geniuses. They probably won't have a chance, however, since we can't seem to stop talking about screwed up we have been lately, and relating the depths of our great disasters, as I am now.

The whole affair was a lot more fun a couple years ago when we did not know so much or have as high expectations as we do today. Ignorance was bliss. There was no pressure. Back then, it seemed that we got all the breaks. Nowadays, everything seems broken. It'll be nice to leave calendar year 2007 behind us. 2008 may well bring with it a slew of Widlifeless film festival acceptance letters, prizes, and acclaim. 2007 brought only misery.

A year from now, we could well be watching this film nostalgically, a comical record of one of our grandest failures.

My final step in editing was to add a title. I didn't have the pride to put our name or logo up front, as has been the custom. Rather, it was the last thing I added. A simple ALL CAPS Arial Black string respresenting ourselves. It immediately follows another title: GOODBYE, CRUEL WORLD.

http://www.matterofchance.com/media/goodbyecruelworld.wmv

Remember the Blogs

2007-10-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

Wow! Can you believe it's been over three years since the first Try Avoidance post went online? There was some really interesting stuff being written back then. This was followed by a slew of other blogs coming on the scene. Let's give 'em the rundown.

The things the world is ill equipped to know...

JohnAnthony gives blogging a shot. He had some original stuff out there. He was known for his either excessively long or excessively short blog posts. It was a good run while it lasted (there were only five months that contained entries). The final stand was on Friday, July 22, 2005. Apparently, Johnny became too busy writing his short story to write any more blog posts. Shame.

For the Goodness of Sakes!

Auntie Lori's blog. This blog was a trip. Some of these posts were really out there (pay special attention to the comments this solicited). You can definitely say that it got you inside the mind of this interesting woman. Auntie Lori's tenure was even shorter than JohnnyA's. Her entire blogging life is contained on the home page. She never even made it to page 2. Sad.

The Doctor Is IN

A fascinating look inside the mind of a child who lists their interests as "Running Talking Crying Whining Opining Sleeping." Seeing things from his perspective was quite enlightening (or is it endarkening?). I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to hit this site this morning and see that there was a new post (if February, eight months ago, counts as new). Good effort. My only issue here was that I always assumed that Lori was perhaps a little too hands-on with The Doctor Is IN. That last post, in the third person, just confirmed it for me. Disappointing.

anything abstract

This is a blog that lived up to its name. The author, dubbed TK, took us on a wild ride of abstraction and poetry, with a short detour to try to convince us to buy tamales. I quickly made this blog my marketing showcase. I would litter the comments (really a must read) of each and every post with relevant lyrics from obscure The Moon Is No More songs. Evidently an acorns fall caused TK to fall off the map, never to be heard from again. So the question remains unanswered, "did the acorn fall before or after you got married?" Farewell.

THEREFORE HOWEVER...

Perhaps my favorite of them all. I would link to a specific post ... but there’s simply no destination ... but ... Dallas.

The Fat Lady Has Sung

2007-09-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned how much I love Opera? Hands down, Opera is the best Web browser out there. Here are the highlights for me:

The Speed Dial rocks.
I can't get enough of gestures. It doesn't seem like much until you end up in IE and can't use them.
Search in the address bar: just type "g" for Google, and then the term you want to search for
Rendering speed - this thing is just plain fast.

They also have the best mobile browser, if you're into that sort of thing. If you haven't checked out Opera yet, now's the time to do so. Give it a couple days and I don't think you'll go back.

PlotBot

2007-09-04T08:45:00.000-07:00

I have no experience in screenwriting software but I thought this looked cool so I'm passing it along.

PlotBot is a new, free online screenwriting site that allows you to collaborate with others on a screenplay. There's a great demo of how the software works right on the front page so it's at least worth a look. While writing you can quickly toggle between dialogue, sluglines, and action. Collaborate with others, track changes, comment on any piece of the script, star your favorite bits (or perhaps bits that need reworking). Enjoy!

Bocce Champion!

2007-09-04T07:47:00.000-07:00

What a tournament! There were thrilling finishes, crushing defeats, major upsets, a new finalist, and the same old champion in the 4th Annual Gastaldo Bocce Championship. Here's how it went down:

First Round

Game 1 - Big Momma insisted all weekend that she would not forfeit this year. Guess what? Two days later and we had a forfeit. Jeremy advances.
Game 2 - Caleb beat Matthew
Game 3 - John showed no mercy on his own daughter. He methodically took Sophia apart, 11-0.
Game 4 - I was really hoping Molly would break her losing streak against Mary Beth but it wasn't to be this year. 11-7, Mary Beth advances.
Game 5 - Again, no mercy. Carl takes out Gloria 11-0.
Game 6 - This was one of the better games. Newcomer Brooke taking on Gregg. It was a back and forth match and ultimately Ola's comeback fell short as he lost 11-10.
Game 7 - Here was one of the biggest turns of this tournament, and a game that had a huge impact. Dominic's friend Izak was visiting this weekend so we added him in to replace Cindy. Sure enough, Izak takes Dom out in the first round. Dominic's bocce rating suffered greatly because of this.
Game 8 - Vincenzo beat Olivia in the first round for the second straight year.

Conference Semi-Finals

Game 9 – Jeremy defeats Caleb. Later, Caleb reveals that his father promised to double his allowance if he beat me in the tournament. Terrible.
Game 10 – Huge, huge upset! I can’t say this enough. This was probably the tournament highlight. Mary Beth takes out John in the second round, usurping him as bocce champion of Oliver St. It was a good game, too. John controlled the game for the most part, but Mary Beth just kept sticking with him. John takes a 9-7 lead and he’s poised to advance. Mary Beth quickly rattles off 4 straight and takes the win in dramatic fashion.
Game 11 – Brooke gave Carl a run for his money but couldn’t complete the deal. To her credit, she’s never played bocce before and at least she made it to the second round and made a good push.
Game 12 – Izak’s cinderella story ends here. Vincenzo takes him out in an easy 11-7 game.

Conference Finals

Game 13 – Maybe Mary Beth was due for disappoint after the emotional high of defeating her husband. It just seemed like it was no contest against Jeremy. 15-5. Moving on.
Game 14 – Probably my second favorite game of the weekend. Carl seemed ready to take out both of his grandparents and advance to his third straight Finals appearance. Vincenzo had other ideas. Gus got off to a quick 4-0 lead and never really looked back, winning 15-8. It was no discredit to Carl because he didn’t play poorly. You had to see it to believe it, but Gramps was on fire throughout the whole tournament. He was like a man possessed. It was like he was making up for all that lost time, after disappointing the first three years of the tournament. It was a nice human interest story and it was good to have a new Finals participant.

Gastaldo Bocce Classic Championship Game

Game 15 – It started out back and forth. Vincenzo took a quick 3-0 lead. Jeremy got 9 straight to make it 9-3. Vincenzo started working his way back to 10-6. Jeremy took off again and pushed it to 17-11, but then seemed to stall out. He seemed to reach the classic JPP choke point. That’s when Gus really started breathing down his neck and brought it all the way back to within one point, 18-17. Jeremy counters with a score, 19-17. Jeremy tosses the pallino about medium distance close to the right side board and makes a decent first shot, but it goes around the pallino and ends up too far away to be a serious contender. Vincenzo counters with a decent shot but ends up too short, leaving an opening. Jeremy makes a great shot, fronting the pallino and protecting against fastballs. Vincenzo does his best to mix things up, but both of his next three shots end up just a bit short and without enough power to knock anything loose. So Jeremy is sitting on a win of one point, still one shy of taking the tournament. Does he go conservative or does he go big and take a risk? He goes big, with a wild spin shot that hits in the middle of the court and spins right, somehow filling in the tiny gap between Jeremy’s point ball and Vincenzo’s next closest ball. Jeremy tastes tournament victory yet again!

Thanks to everybody for playing. We’ll see you again next year.

Take a look at the updated Bocce Ratings. Take note of new ratings compared to last year and you’ll see the tournament’s biggest winners (Vincenzo, Marty Beth) and losers (Dominic).

Rarer Than I Thought

2007-08-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

Wow! I didn't realize how rare some of these 7" records were. It's very bittersweet to part with some of these rare Pedro the Lion/David Bazan singles. The one pictured above, and featured in this listing, is hand-numbered 207 out of a limited presssing of 500. How cool is that? But I've never even played the vast majority of these things.

On the Market

2007-08-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

Our condo is officially on the market. $215,000 if you're interested.

A Sad Day

2007-08-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

All of my rare Sparklehorse 7" records went on sale today on eBay. You can see the list here. And there are more bands to come soon. I knew this day had to come eventually. In reality, I have never even listened to most of these records I have. What's the point?

With the move coming up soon we can use all the money we can get to help ease the transition. We had a yard sale last weekend and I'll be having an eBay style yard sale over the next few weeks. Happy bidding!

A Challenge

2007-08-24T15:45:00.001-07:00

And here's a challenge with a few friends. I'm going to get my butt whooped at some point.

Two Running Goals

2007-08-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

I know these seem pretty weak, but I just thought I'd share. I blew out my knee about a month ago so I'm trying to work my way up slowly.

Red Sox win 5-4

2007-08-01T19:53:00.001-07:00

8.5 hours in - TN

2007-06-15T15:58:00.001-07:00

6.5 hours in

2007-06-15T13:08:00.001-07:00

New WKW

2007-05-17T08:16:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on My Blueberry Nights:

My Blueberry Nights: Nicely Told

The similarities to Chungking Express are amazing. Notice that he's using a pop star making her film debut (a la Faye Wong). A key left with a diner owner. Romance. A desire to travel. I'm sure there's more, that's just from reading the review.

MOC Doco, Part I

2007-05-12T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today we shot the first interview footage for the upcoming MOC documentary. The documentary will cover the fun and experiences of making our first seventeen films. It will be included on a DVD release featuring those films.

Today's subject was Gabe, who did great. Next weekend, Brock. Later, Angie and I, and as many of our friends and enemies as we can round up. We'll hit the streets at some point to revisit the locations of a number of our films, and dig up all of our raw footage to show some of the behinds-the-scenes antics and movie magic.

The Peoples' Champion, Part IV

2007-04-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Peoples' Champion has been officially selected by the TucsonFilm.com ShortFest for their 2007 festival. The film will screen Saturday, April 14, 7pm, at the University of Arizona's Gallagher Theater. Festival tickets are $10.

Update

2007-04-08T22:45:00.000-07:00

So, here's what I've been working on the last week:

John Philip Sousa Gets a Haircut - Got the project files from Bruce, did color correction, and output a nice digital master and MPEG's for DVD. It's looking very slick. Hopefully the new version will air this Wednesday on Screen Wars (if the film makes it through). If not, the final version will screen at the Phoenix Film Festival. Also got permission to include it on future MOC DVD's.
Flim Flam - The film has largely been done for many months, but had some audio problems and the audio never got a polished mixdown. I used some new techniques (from the DV Rebel's Guide) to reprocess the color correction for better quality, fixed the audio issues, and did the final mixdown. The finished product turned out really great. As with all of our films, you never know until everything is nice and polished if you have a good film or not. It's very good, some of Brock's classic cynical comedy moments.
The Peoples' Champion - After having a month to distance, did a few tweaks here and there and cut the digital master.
Wildilfeless - The score is a "lamb's hair" from completion, so I've brought up the footage again and am reprocessing the color correction for better quality (the Rebel's Guide again), awaiting the audio files. All we'll need when it comes back is to record and mix in a few grunts and groans, and this film is done. It was January 2005 when Brock originally posted the screenplay on Leonard Hughes. We'll all need to celebrate this one.
Days of Being Wrinkle Free - Reprocessing the footage, will have a final cut by the end of the week. I made the decision to find a native Chinese speaker to do the voiceover. Any suggestions on where I might find someone?
Tim Nm, CPA - I'll get the footage reprocessing once DoBWF finishes up. I'm going to take a whole new approach to this one. I'm going to get some outside opinions on what is and is not working with this film. It needs to be drastically cut down. Particularly, the opening scene is weak, and it gets better from there, but perhaps too late to keep peoples attention, so I have to keep it snappy. So, sadly not a feature after all, but it'll be much better off for it.
MOC DVD - We've got a nice featurette in the works for our first official DVD release. We'll go through the behinds-the-scenes action of our first seventeen films, bringing in all the outtakes, production stills, and artifacts we can dig up. Will feature new interviews with the whole crew, and we'll return to the scene of the crimes for some new on-location footage. Should be a lot of fun over the next couple months pulling it all together.

Oh, and did everyone catch these cool behinds-the-scenes pics from JPSGaH? Picture 1 - Picture 2

The 39 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Recap

2007-03-09T17:00:00.001-07:00

From August through February, Jeremy counted down his ranking and comments on the "The 53 Moon Is No More Songs." Here is a convenient set of links to those posts:

Now it's my turn, and I'm going to get it done in one shot. This is my Rope.

Let's start with some definition. What is a Moon Is No More song? Really, anything that involved Jeremy and I collaborating musically could be called a Moon Is No More song. Yet, bear in mind that TMINM has always been a literarily-leaning project. It's all based on narratives, and it is in the narratives that we can really start to classify the TMINM catalog. It breaks down this way:

This Is Normal - 39 songs based on Sans Hands that Jeremy wrote in mid-2001
Schoolyard - 9-song EP Jeremy wrote in 2002
Twelve Brothers - 5-song EP Jeremy wrote in 2003
Yanco, William, Officer - Unfinished concept from 2004
Bad Larry - 3 jams beyond the scope of This Is Normal

It has become obvious that the This Is Normal 39-song 3-album concept will never come to fruition, nor should it. Successful bands tend to write at least this many songs just to produce one album. You write many, play around with them, select the best, and move forward. In retrospect it was almost TMINM's fatal flaw to get stuck on forcing the original 39, regardless of quality.

However, after This Is Normal, the situation gets significantly better and more managable. Since the narratives got shorter (and the participants more experienced), the songs were more precisely crafterd. The Schoolyard songs are generally very solid lyrically and musically (so far). Twelve Brothers is all around rather good. All of the completed songs involved from those narratives ranked very high in Jeremy's ranking, proving that those deserve to stand on their own.

The Bad Larry jams ended up cross-polinating (Anti-Global Rotation became 12 Brothers' Sunsets and Half a Loaf of Baldwin became TMINM's Pitying Bowls of Saucy Lovelessness), and Y,W,O never really got off the ground. So, that leaves us with a very specific problem to solve: the original 39 represent probably one good album, but which songs will we include? Let's take a look at Jeremy and my rankings of the original 39 only, and a combined average ranking.

This Is Normal Ranking (Jeremy)

1. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II
2. 545.78
3. Come And Gone
4. Implode
5. Such Things to Such People
6. The Substance of Nothing
7. Last Resort, Part I
8. An Ambitious Attempt At Failure Before One's Birth
9. Pity Versus Sympathy
10. A Homo Sapien's Mass Of Flesh, Bone, & Muscle
11. An Automobile's Mass Of Steel, Plastic, & Rubber
12. Room 203, Part I
13. A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find
14. Pitying Bowls Of Saucy Lovelessness
15. Three Fingers
16. Standard Issue
17. Quality Over Quantity
18. La Fin, Part II
19. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part I
20. Allowing Oneself To Neglect Responsibility
21. G.O.D.
22. Last Resort, Part II
23. Ghetto Gap Gay Guy
24. On Account Of The Abuse
25. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part I
26. A Telephone Conversation On A Cold September Morning
27. A Common Path To A Common Problem
28. The Root Of All Sorts Of Injurious Things
29. Last Resort, Part IV
30. A Thick, Wet Snow On A Cold January Morning
31. A Study Of Human Possibilities Through Household Decoration
32. Allowing Oneself Time For Reversible Reflection
33. Driving Faster Than One Should On A Wet Road In A Thick Midnight Fog
34. Moment And Moment II
35. Morality
36. The End, Part I
37. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part II
38. Last Resort, Part III
39. Room 203, Part II

This Is Normal Ranking (Josh)

1. An Ambitious Attempt At Failure Before One's Birth
2. An Automobile's Mass Of Steel, Plastic, & Rubber
3. Pitying Bowls Of Saucy Lovelessness
4. Standard Issue
5. Implode
6. The Substance of Nothing
7. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II
8. Such Things to Such People
9. 545.78
10. A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find
11. Room 203, Part I
12. Quality Over Quantity
13. Pity Versus Sympathy
14. A Homo Sapien's Mass Of Flesh, Bone, & Muscle
15. A Common Path To A Common Problem
16. On Account Of The Abuse
17. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part I
18. Allowing Oneself To Neglect Responsibility
19. Ghetto Gap Gay Guy
20. Three Fingers
21. The Root Of All Sorts Of Injurious Things
22. Come And Gone
23. Last Resort, Part I
24. La Fin, Part II
25. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part I
26. Last Resort, Part II
27. A Telephone Conversation On A Cold September Morning
28. G.O.D.
29. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part II
30. Room 203, Part II
31. Moment And Moment II
32. Last Resort, Part IV
33. A Thick, Wet Snow On A Cold January Morning
34. A Study Of Human Possibilities Through Household Decoration
35. Allowing Oneself Time For Reversible Reflection
36. Driving Faster Than One Should On A Wet Road In A Thick Midnight Fog
37. Morality
38. The End, Part I
39. Last Resort, Part III

This Is Normal Ranking (Average)

1. - 4.0 - It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II
2. - 4.5 - An Ambitious Attempt At Failure Before One's Birth
3. - 4.5 - Implode
4. - 5.5 - 545.78
5. - 6.0 - The Substance of Nothing
6. - 6.5 - An Automobile's Mass Of Steel, Plastic, & Rubber
7. - 6.5 - Such Things to Such People
8. - 8.5 - Pitying Bowls Of Saucy Lovelessness
9. - 10.0 - Standard Issue
10. - 11.0 - Pity Versus Sympathy
11. - 11.5 - A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find
12. - 11.5 - Room 203, Part I
13. - 12.0 - A Homo Sapien's Mass Of Flesh, Bone, & Muscle
14. - 12.5 - Come And Gone
15. - 14.5 - Quality Over Quantity
16. - 15.0 - Last Resort, Part I
17. - 17.5 - Three Fingers
18. - 19.0 - Allowing Oneself To Neglect Responsibility
19. - 20.0 - On Account Of The Abuse
20. - 21.0 - A Common Path To A Common Problem
21. - 21.0 - The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part I
22. - 21.0 - Ghetto Gap Gay Guy
23. - 21.0 - La Fin, Part II
24. - 22.0 - It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part I
25. - 24.0 - Last Resort, Part II
26. - 24.5 - The Root Of All Sorts Of Injurious Things
27. - 24.5 - G.O.D.
28. - 26.5 - A Telephone Conversation On A Cold September Morning
29. - 30.5 - Last Resort, Part IV
30. A Thick, Wet Snow On A Cold January Morning
31. Moment And Moment II
32. A Study Of Human Possibilities Through Household Decoration
33. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part II
34. Allowing Oneself Time For Reversible Reflection
35. Room 203, Part II
36. Driving Faster Than One Should On A Wet Road In A Thick Midnight Fog
37. Morality
38. The End, Part I
39. Last Resort, Part III

A couple things jump out at me. There are six songs that are consensus Top 10's. Those songs are obviously in. Then, there are the songs that show our individual taste. Jeremy seems to like JLA songs much moreso than I do (Pity Versus Sympathy, Homo Sapien, Come and Gone, Last Resort 1), while I favor our odder, later work (Automobile's Mass, Saucy Lovelessness, Standard Issue). Based on the average ratings, some of each make the Top 10.

Where do we draw the line? 10 songs seems a little short. 15 seems a bit long. 12 songs is probably just right. Do we just take the Top 12 as listed? Or do we take the Top 10 and grant each person one exemption to include any song of their choice, perhaps a sentimental favorite?

Let's see what everyone thinks about the rankings and select our songs. I'll take care of putting together some monster posts on each song, with scans of the original lyric sheets, lyric changes oevr time, and full recording history. We can open it up to some constructive criticism from Brock and Gabe, tear the songs apart and put them back together again.

The 39 Best Moon Is No More Songs According to Josh

2007-03-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

39. Last Resort, Part III
38. The End, Part I
37. Morality
36. Driving Faster Than One Should On A Wet Road In A Thick Midnight Fog
35. Allowing Oneself Time For Reversible Reflection
34. A Study Of Human Possibilities Through Household Decoration
33. A Thick, Wet Snow On A Cold January Morning
32. Last Resort, Part IV

Music was never written for this group of songs. These were the last songs on Leonard Gardner, and the band was basically drifting at the point we got to these songs (I was unemployed, Jeremy was dating, Carl was kicked out, Vin was on the prowl, and eventually I moved back to Arizona). So, we never got a fair shot at completing these songs. Nevertheless, they would have been challenging songs because they were incredibly wordy and in a free verse style. I think we originaly envisioned that musically we would probably be in a different place by the time we got to these songs, and they would fit better with a more adventurous electronic and ambient style such as Radiohead's Kid A. We just never got that far.

31. Moment And Moment II

There is a single recording of an abstract guitar riff Jeremy played that supposedly goes with this song. It was a rare occurance for Jeremy to pick up the guitar. Usually, he'd come back to this same riff, which is actually tabbed out on the back of the lyric sheet, I believe. It's not great by any means. It's only advantage over the previous songs is the fact that it has any music associated with it.

30. Room 203, Part II

This is an LG song that we actually spent some time on. It had a sort of Pablo Honey-era Radiohead type of riff going on. Unfortuately, although we were at the computer desk as we always were, this one was not recorded, though the lyric changes were written down.

29. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part II

The lyrics to this song are identical to the lyrics to Part I. Only the music was intended to change. I wrote and personally recorded the alternate music performance for this song, but that was as far as it got. I'm not sure Jeremy ever heard me play this version in the flesh.

28. G.O.D.

This song is really at the genesis of TMINM, and actually ties together an even earlier era of recording history. This song was created based on samples recorded in the living room of my first Arizona house, in late 1999. Mike Palermo came over with a vision of a song in his head. He rotated between the drums and organ, and in a way directed my creation of a biting guitar. It was only after TMINM was founded that these recordings were dug up, assembled, and a small vocal sample from Jeremy was recorded. The resulting 45 seconds of noise certainly has sentimental value, but questionable musical value.

27. A Telephone Conversation On A Cold September Morning

This is the lowest ranked actual song from JLA. The song started out as somewhat of a picked/strummed folky song with alternating verses by Jeremy and me and ended up an annoying sequenced keyboard and drums affair that became an instant skip-ahead everytime I listened to our JLA demos. It simply illustrates that the song never really had any direction, and doesn't have a ton of potential. The lyrics don't very impactfully get across the failing relationship, but do capture the malaise involved. Malaise isn't a great thing.

26. Last Resort, Part II

This is a simple riff-based song that never had a very strong riff. The riff just sort of goes back and forth in a narrow range, and has grated on me over time. In terms of bombastic riff-based songs, this is the worst out of a numebr that we wrote. The final recorded version did have some interesting aspects to it, but in the end it leaves me cold.

25. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part I

This is one song where the first take may very well be the finest. Regardless of which version we're talking about, this songs weakness is the fact that the only riff in the song is basically four variations on E chord. Many of our songs lack for variety, but having one riff based on one chord really takes the cake. The final recorded version added some crazy drums, multi-tracked vocals, and even a solo, but it can't compensate for a weak structure and musical grounding, along with run-on lyrics without a real signature phrase. The original version shines above all for its spontenaity.

24. La Fin, Part II

This song has a simple but catchy three-chord acoustic guitar riff and is sung in French. In English, the lyrics just wouldnt' stand up, I think. Neither does our French.

23. Last Resort, Part I

Here is another song that has some interesting details, but has gotten very old with time. Jeremy told quite an interesting story about the progression and meaning of the choruses to this song. Great. We "sampled" our young cousins playing and incorporated that into the song. Cool. Beyond that, the song lacks for variety and has little in terms of melody. It rates this high due to the finer points, along with having a more adventurous baseline than some other, but all in all another very old, very annoying song.

22. Come And Gone

This is the song that started it all, and it hasn't changed much since the steamy day in July of 1999 when we wrote it. A nice start, but I've moved on long ago.

21. The Root Of All Sorts Of Injurious Things

Here is another riff-based rock song, this one more along the lines of The Rolling Stones. It rates higher than a Last Resort, Part II, for instance, because it has a more complicated riff, and when played had some interesting aspects to the interplay and coming and going on the bass and drums. The most transendant version of this song was one night with Graham joining in, and a five-man round-about of the "money money" bridge. So, while perhaps never captured in its glory, this song has potential.

20. Three Fingers

This song is most interesting for its Pedro The Lion-esque guitar line that cooncides with the vocal melody. Woah, did I say vocal melody?! Sweet. Beyond that it feels somewhat thrown together due to a poor structure where there are no clear verses and what sound like choruses are sometimes sung over the gutar chorus part, and sometimes during the guitar verse part. It feels askew.

19. Ghetto Gap Gay Guy

This is a fine, somewhat atmospheric guitar song with an interesting bit of guitar and vocal interplay towards the end. The problem is that it takes forever to get there. The verses leading up are long and entirely devoid of variety. It's just the same thing over and over again. It has potential for something interesting combining bass and drums, provided it can be tightened up.

18. Allowing Oneself To Neglect Responsibility

Also known as Heaven Express, this song is single plucked guitar sequence with a back and forth vocal between Jeremy and I. It's very interesting, but unfinished. It needs to go somewhere to close out the song, but we never figured out where. I envisioned a booming Hum-like space-rock explosion at the end, but never worked it out.

17. The Gradual Progression of Loss, Part I

Here's the original GPOL. It has a Cat Power-style guitar part, but suffers from line lengths that varies wildly. Somehow we pulled it together nicely when we played it as a band, and the song that started out with bongos and plucking transformed into a jazzy jam. Very nice.

16. On Account Of The Abuse

This song is also known the "I am ill" song. Here is a song that was really only played once, as a jam with Carl and Vin present. It has an interesting meandering guitar riff with a number of modifications throughout the song. Carl experiments on bass throughout, Vin gets random with the drums and other percussion. Jeremy does some stellar spoken word, and eventually everyone is cuing off Jeremy's words and jumping in with harmonies and chants. It was a lot of fun and provides a lot of options for what the song might become if given some time. This song is representative of the style of music that pleased me the most. There are others in this vein that are more polished and thus rank higher, but this is maximum potential to me.

15. A Common Path To A Common Problem

This is a later era song that nearly fell into the realm of our earlier songs in general style. Yet, there is something about the lyrics and melody that is so captivating to me. While I thought I had given up on this one long ago, I realized while assembling this ranking that it continued to creep up. It was stuck in my head and compared to the songs that have come thus far, I simply wanted to hear it more than any of the others.

14. A Homo Sapien's Mass Of Flesh, Bone, & Muscle

This is our original riff-rocking song. It actually has a number of parts, including the much-loved "ska" part. What it doesn't have is any verses, or a whole lot to say. It's just chorus after chorus, if you think about it.

13. Pity Versus Sympathy

This is one song that began and ended up very differently, yet both version are loved. The original had a lot of heart, the final version ended up pretty solid (and recently appeared as the cornerstone of The Peoples' Champion soundtrack). Yet, there is something mechanical and overly long about the final version. I'd like to find a middle ground where keep the heart and the listener's interest.

12. Quality Over Quantity

Come and Gone aside, this is the original TMINM song. It essentially forged our style of picked verses and strummed choruses. It lacks melody, and it ranks as high as it does because it has some very interesting and varied guitar parts, lots of potential to take the spoken word parts and melodicize them, and in a way is a song more akin to those later more adventurous songs. It's strange that in a way we ended up where we started.

11. Room 203, Part I

This is an interesting case of the variety in some of our early songs. It has sort of a jazzy feel to it. It has a simple but solid guitar part that varies at key points. It had a standout among Carl's early bass progressions as well, sort of a circular pattern that diverted from the guitar for a time only to return at a later point. Finally, when played live, it ended strong and built up in a little jazz jam. Lots of fun to play, and I haven't even mentioned all of the great lyrical points in this song.

10. A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find

It has been mentioned before that this is one of those songs that was sort of perfect from the moment we wrote it. It has a good intro and outro style, with a riff that includes some bends and a break that includes some slides. It has gourds, it has attitude, and what became a signature of our dual acoustic/electric attack. What's not to like?

9. 545.78

Musically, this is an incredibly simple song. It is just two chord in progression over and over again, with some accents during the choruses. In a comment on Jeremy's thoughts on this song, I called it the best acting that TMINM ever did. The emotion of this song was perfectly conveyed through the style, rythym, and intonation of guitar and the feeling that Jeremy put into the vocals. If there is one song that makes the TMINM album in its original incarnation, this is it.

8. Such Things to Such People

Here is another rather simple song that gets big points for emotion. It is two slightly augmented chords for the verses, and two other chords for the choruses. What makes it unique is that instead of being quiet/loud, it's subdued/intense, if that makes any sense. There is more of an urgency to the playing than a simple change in volume. It builds, and at the end of the chorus releases nicely.

7. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II

In an attempt to improve the Part I version of this song, I came up with the riff that we used in Part II. It's always been a favorite, and, being that it lays it all on the line with regard to divorce, is something torn from the heart. It has an urgency, intensity, and realism that lacks in some other songs.

6. The Substance of Nothing

This may well be our most popular and requested song. If a hypothetical TMINM fan were to be singing a line from one of our songs, it would mostly likely be "we could make/we could make ammends/we could be/the best of false friends/the best of false friends" or a creative variant thereof. This song has a lot of parts to it. After first rearranging the song into convenient verses and choruses, tossing out much of the lyrics, we added the other lyrics back in at the back half of the song. After coming up with an original version, than a new version, we added the original as a bridge of sorts to the final song. Basically, we took every idea and put it together. This is good in a way, but the song is overly long, and not even that much to play in parts. The main riff itself is a fairly conventional progression that has been used in tons of rock songs, such as All Along The Watchtower. My thought here is to keep that feel and sound together in the bassline, but vary the guitar part a great deal in this song. Particularly of need are some tearing guitar variations during the back half of the song, to underscore the intensity of all and maintain interest so deep into the song.

5. Implode

The word urgency comes up again here. This is a very explosive and urgent song. There is a certain throbbing and writhing quality to it. The bassline is intentionally a step down from the guitar riff, which creates an interesting sound that is just off-kilter enough to disarm the listener. This song is an absolute blast to play and perform. We never quite recorded in up to its full potential. Polished up, this could easily be our most memorable and popular song.

4. Standard Issue

This is the part of my ranking that will get extremely controversial where Jeremy is concerned. Where Jeremy favors many of the JLA songs we wrote in the first couple months of our collaboration, what really excites me are the song that developed as a full band after we had more experience. These songs have a strange night music quality to them. Them exude desparation and morbidity, and I love them for it.

Standard Issue specifically, has a snaky off-timed guitar progression, with a number of unique parts. Originally the highlight of this song was Jeremy's freestyle violin solo at the end of the song. Later, Micah added some random drum stylings throughout the song that really captured the essense of the song, and I added an more intense jam at the end of the song. As of yet, the two unique aspects of this song have not yet been combined. When they are, this song will become our dark indie world-beater.

3. Pitying Bowls Of Saucy Lovelessness

This music for this song came out of a Bad Larry jam entitled Half a Loaf of Baldwin (an homage to the jams of Half Visconte also called Baldwins). It is a haunting guitar motif with a loud and messy riff explosion and then back into quiet creepiness. Combine this with an absolutely nonsensical spoken word and screamed verse repeated a number of times at varied paces and you have one of the most unique and memorable of TMINM songs.

2. An Automobile's Mass Of Steel, Plastic, & Rubber

This is a song that ranks so high for me because the music and lyrics just really came together from the first playing. Despite the lyrics being quite a rambling narrative, it somehow meshed perfectly with the guitar progression. At times it has an uplifting quality that is odds with the dark subject matter in a beautiful way. Additionally, the song got better with age as Micah came into the fold and variations of the guitar parts were developed. "Headlights/feel the headlights" is a transcendent moment for me.

1. An Ambitious Attempt At Failure Before One's Birth

This song represents the pinnacle of what it is to be in a band. This was the last song the Josh/Jer/Carl/Vin combination wrote together. After nearly a six months of playing together at least once a week, we arrive at this song. I introduce he riff and structure of the song to the band, and from the first try, Carl and Vin intuitively nail this song in a way I couldn't have imagained. The bassline and drums were a 180 from what I might have come up with on my own, but the resulting song was the best we had ever done. For these reasons, the song best represents the band as a whole at a time when we were at our individual and collective best, equal partners in forging our sound. This song has all four members fairly represented, which can't be said of many our songs.

The lyrics to this song are about suicide. Like most of the This Is Normal songs, they are based on Sans Hands, yet this song can truly be said to be culled from events that were real, current, and personal, at the time they were written and sung. Of all of our ironic song where the music and delivery was happy or excited when talking about failure, dissapointment, and death, this is the one song that really delivers on that contrast in a meaningful, not simply mocking, way.

Despite Angie's moral objections, I have to believe this is the best TMINM song ever.

The Peoples' Champion, Part III

2007-03-06T14:20:00.000-07:00

The Peoples' Champion got some recognition at the A3F Top 20 Screening on March 1. The film placed 5th among dramas and 10th overall (among over 60 competing films). The big award was 2nd place for Acting. Good job by Gabe and Angie, the MOC newcomers Aaron, Jennifer, Matt, and Bob, and all those who composed the Champions Street Team!

The film is currently screening at undergoundfilm.org, and we'll have a neatly polished final version on DVD soon (any fine tuning suggestions, anyone?).

The Peoples' Champion, Part II

2007-02-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Peoples' Champion has been selected among the Top 20 in the Almost Famous Film Festival. It will screen with the other top films on Thursday, March 1 at the AMC Arizona Center 24 theater at 7pm. Tickets available here.

The Peoples' Champion, Part I

2007-02-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

It's about time we rundown our latest 48-hour film, The Peoples' Champion.

This was our third year in the Almost Famous Film Festival challenge. The first year we were surprised to place very high and win a number of awards. Last year, we made a much better film in all regards, but didn't place as well. It's been tough to figure out what the judges are looking for, and the competition has certainly improved as well.

I was really excited coming into the challenge, and I think everyone else was as well. We had more experience this time around, and I've upped the ante in camera and sound equipment. We have a full-time boom operator now. Gabe and Brock seemed to be doing some serious skill sharpening leading up as well. We even set up a bunch of guidelines for things we'd like to accomplish in terms of story structure, dialog, and look of the film.

We also had a couple great locations available, the Stop N' Look and Soul Invictus galleries, on Grand Ave downtown. We scouted these locations on this months' First Friday art walk, and got permission to use both free of charge.

The Stop N' Look is basically just a white art space with a super-long hallway, but it's got a lot more style than that. The art space has a big window facing the road with intricate ironwork covering it. The space is white, but it has some well-worn character to it. The hallways takes a bunch of twists and turns, with little seat groupings along the way. The first stage of the hallway is very colorful, with vertical stripes of alternating colors set off by wood stripping, and the color alternations switch up a couple times along the way. Further back and around a corner there is a long, straight stretch with gray block on one side and corrugated aluminim on the other. Earlier in the night Brock had pretty much described this hallway as his ideal vision of a location, and there it was! Highly unlikely. In the far back, a dark section of hallway with a large sliding steel door leading out to a back patio area. Basically this place was a lot of cool locations in one.

The challenge guidelines were a little late in being posted to the web site, so there was a bit of tension building up and it seemed like we were losing time. Around 7:15 I called up Jae Staats the festival founder and he gave us the rundown:

Theme

Heroism

Line of Dialog

I don't believe you.

Prop

Paper (a character must crumple it)

We really wanted to embrace the theme this time around (in past years it could be said we came up with an idea first and tried to wrap the theme into it later), so Brock began to dig into what it means to be a hero, looking up the definition. We tried to play around with what heroism could be about. It could certainly be about a super-hero, but the more interesting ideas were about people that didn't know they were heros, or people that were looked at as heros but were not. We thought about anti-heros, and people in situations where they could have been heroic, but failed to act, and how that would effect them.

The main two ideas that shook out were about a band about to call it quits that comes to realize that they are in fact heros to other people, and about an American Idol-style competition called American Hero which put hopeful, yet wofullly unprepared, normal people in harms way. The later one would have been a satire on how America sets people up as heros. In the end, the band idea "won out," but that itself is controversial.

I'm getting backlash about my undue influence on this decision. In my defense, this was the story that would fit the location we had, the location that had Brock's ideal hallway in it, and it was an idea that everyone could relate to in our collective interest in music and bands. Everything pointed to this being the film to make. (OK, in fairness everything pointed to us making a film about the game Guitar Hero, but that didn't get off the ground) On the other side, no one really made a case for the American Hero film that made it seem like anything more than an outrageous physical comedy film (Brock later revealed the satire aspect of it).

Truthfully, I would have much preferred to just have Brock and Gabe hole up in a room and emerge four hours later with a screenplay. At least then its in finished form, and there wouldn't have been anything to debate about it. Whatever came out, it would have been great, and we would have found a way to make it. If we do one of these challenges again, that's the way I would like to set it up. That way everyone else gets a few more hours of rest, and everyone just gets to do what they do well.

In any case, the main roles were Gabe as the lead singer/guitarist/songwriter Shane, Angie as bass player Haley, and Aaron Meyer as the drummer Marley. The other roles were Angie's cousing Jenifer as Laney the devoted fan, the very accomplished Bob Dolan as the club manager, and Matt Gieger as sound mixer DJ Don Dynamite. Aaron, Jenifer, Bob, and Matt were all first timers with MOC, and Aaron and Jenifer were true first timers to acting.

So, we got up in the morning and packed up both cars. The Camry got loaded with all the instruments: drums, guitars, amps, cables, mixers, etc. The Corrolla got loaded up with the filmmaking gear. Both cars were packed out. We got to the gallery and got access to the space, and were told to keep a really close eye on our cars and gear, as this wasnt' a good neighborhood. Now, I knew it wasn't a great area, but I didn't now the full extent of it. So, the rest of the day proceeded with a fair bit of paranoia about our stuff and our physical well-being.

Honestly, it didn't take all that long to get into the flow of shooting. We shot a scene with Angie and Matt, then the band and Bob, then Bob and Aaron. Eventually we worked out way to a key scene between Gabe and Jenifer, and this is where the first real tension cropped up. Jenifer had a pretty unweidly little monologue to get through, without a whole lot of preperation and experience. Even when she did get it out, it just didn't ring true, and everyone seemed to pick up on that. So, on the fly we all started pitching suggestions of different ways to convey her meaning, and it quickly devolved into confusion and frustration for everyone. It also seemed like time was slipping away, which it was, so we rushed through.

After that, we got some shots of the band members walking through these long hallways. Then, we setup the main room for the band performance. At this point it really hit us that it was still very bright out (the sun hadn't even begun to set at this point) and that it needed to be dark outside for the band performance. So, there we had rushed through some things, only to realize we had to sit around for a while. To top it off, we didn't have a lot of extras for the crowd at the club. So, we chilled at the Paisley Violin across the street sipping overpriced drinks and called around to get some people downtown. Eventually it got dark, people showed up, and we ran the camera for about five minutes and picked up everything we needed for that scene.

We packed up, cleaned up, and it felt like the night was done, it really needed to be done at that point, but we still had to shoot the opening scene of the film in a hotel room. Gabe went ahead and found the nearest Motel 6 (there were some grungier and perhaps more interesting hotels nearby, but too sketchy for Angie to deal with). We checked in and loaded up and it was like we starting all over again. At this point I know at least I was really just pushing myself physically to get through this. I could barely move, and barely had the will to do it. Really, I think everyone was very worn out at this point, and the scene we shot may play a little flat as a result.

We headed back home and edited until around 4am. We got started again around 9am and the rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We found ways to put it all together. We're pretty much solid these days in terms of production value, lighting, camerawork, sound, etc., so there were no major technical problems to overcome. We grabbed some handy TMINM music and laid that into the mix. We had to hustle on the net to find some musical instrument sound effects, since the instruments were locked up in a car we had no key to at the time, but that was the only real hiccup. We finished it, exported it, and had it on its way with lots of time to spare, which is somewhat of a contrast to previous years.

So, what do we think about the film? To me, it's one of the first films we've made that deals with real people. As I think about it, most everything else we have done has been out there in fantasy-land as far as characters go. A lot of genre expirimentation, but very little in terms of normal human characters. So, this is pretty cool to me. It's subtle. Everything else we set out to do in terms of foreshadowing, setting up and paying off, having a backstory for each character, staying tight and character focused, it's all there. It's pretty short, but effective. I think like most of our films, it's tough to watch for a while as the madness of the production recedes into memory, but it will grow with time. I'm just now really starting to enjoy some of the films we made two years ago, so it's a continuous process.

Will the judges get our style this time around? We'll have to wait and see. Results coming soom.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II - 1

2007-02-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

1. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part II

It's been a long journey to get to the top. I went back and looked: the first of these posts was on August 17th, 2006. Yep, almost 6 full months ago. Hard to believe, but true. You can get the whole list of songs at http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pk1PbUEtJKRDWSkygODiDPg.

There really isn't much more to say at this point. While it was tough to decide between the top two this one wins. The credit probably goes to the subject matter. While $545.78 has a nice emotional edge, it's false. This song rings true.

Ultimately, it is the core of the Jeffrey L. Allen CD, as we had envisioned it. It was to be the final song that wrapped everything up. Only there's no nice bow to be found. Just more anguish and therapy, on and on.

The rhymes and structure are about as solid as it gets for me. Plus, I've always wanted to put "pre-nup" into a song.

Another thing that's great about this song is it's flexibility. It works great acoustic or electric; works great with quiet or screamed vocals (or both); it works great with minimal or maximum instrumentation. It has a variety of tempo changes to keep things interesting and ends on an emotional high.

Thanks for tuning in everybody. Hope you enjoyed the songs.

So, Joshua, what's next? Ready to hit the studio? How many tracks can fit on the super album? What's in and what's out?

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - $545.78 - 2

2007-02-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

2. $545.78

I'm temporarily back in Massachusetts to sell my car. It figures, as soon as I got to Louisiana I found a buyer. Oh, well. Uncie Gary hooked me up with a US Airways buddy pass and I was on my way.

On to the next song...

I really struggled trying to rank these last few songs. Nowhere was the struggle tougher than for the top spot. Ultimately, I decided to go with my first impression and put $545.78 at number 2. This song was written during the infamous creative burst at Cape Cod where half of the William Donovan Junior songs were written in one shot. This was the best of the bunch.

The song details a pivotal turning point in the life of William Donovan Junior. His wife is murdered by an intruder while he was away. The intruder gets away with $545.78 and Mrs. Donovan Junior's wedding ring.

I don't know that the lyrics are really the best. They could probably be better. But it doesn't matter. Joshua's guitar work is fantastic. It hits the perfect balance between rock-pop, sentimentality, anguish, and release. It's hard to explain. When I listen back to it I find that it's the guitar, not the words, especially in the climax of the song, that ends up making me emotional. Unparalleled.

This song has become somewhat of a legend in my own book. After we returned from Cape Cod we sat down to make our acoustic recordings of everything we had written. When we got to this song we nailed it on the first take. I don't believe the song has ever been recorded again. In fact, for the longest time, the song wasn't even played again. Though the recording is far from "perfect" in a technical sense, it was truly perfect in the scope of this song. The music and vocals were so emotional, so true, that I knew they would never be matched again and therefore the song shouldn't be tainted by further attempts at playing it. To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if Joshua didn't even know how to play it any more. I still stand by the original recording and believe that if this song is ever to be released, it should be this original version.

I will not record this song again. I love it too much.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Inheritance - 3

2007-01-25T13:11:00.000-07:00

3. Inheritance

Here is my favorite songs from 12 Brothers. Really, this song, Business, and Balance are all so close in my mind. This song gets the edge, though, for a few reasons:

1. It was the first song that I wrote for 12 Brothers. Let's face it, if this didn't go well then the rest of 12 Brothers doesn't even happen. Without this song there is no Business or Balance. That's critical. As it turns out, I was so tickled by this song that I felt the burst of inspiration and quickly was able to get the other songs written.

2. This is probably the only song where I feel I hold legitimate claim to the melody. Right from when I first started writing the lyrics I had a melody in mind. And it was a decent melody. It contained changes, it had a whole two-part chorus, fantastic! And you know what? The version that Joshua recorded is very true to my original melody.

3. The dual chorus ("AT LAST! at last... A SON! a son... that's unlike every other one") is spectacular. It jumps out at me as the type of effective technique we never would have come up with years before.

4. I love how quickly the song turns from a bright happy tale of birth to some strange twisted family drama. The music complements this change in direction perfectly.

5. The song quickly takes you through three points of view in a rather quick manner. Yet it never feels forced or awkward, and you never lose your place, so to speak. I tried the change of perspective in old the Moon Is No More songs without as much success.

6. I finally included an exitlude that worked and actually made the cut ("And all eleven walked away to bide their time for some later date").

Joshua's recording, which includes guitar, drums and vocals (and maybe some hot ash bass, I'm not sure) is great for a quick one man show. In fact, because he did such a thorough job on this demo it probably let me down a bit when the other songs he sent weren't as polished from an instrumentation perspective (guitar-only). Maybe that gives this song another artificial boost. In any case, one of the best!

We're getting so close to number #1. Can you feel the endorphins? I haven't felt this excited since I sunk a birdie at Fore Kicks. Which song do you think will be #1?

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Business - 4

2007-01-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

4. Business

OK, let's see if I can finally finish this list off.

No surprise to see a more recent song near the top. I think both Joshua and I showed a little bit of our experience when we finally got to the 12 Brothers EP. This song is an exceptional example of that.

Some lyrical highlights for me:

- "Our mothers used to say..." The reference to mothers in the plural indicates that various women were involved in the conception of this family. And that lines up with the original story.
- "The customer's right always so stay open late but make sure you get paid." I'll never forget my moment of enlightenment when I changed the word "and" to "but."
- "All's fair in love and war between brothers at the family store." I don't remember when this part was actually written. It almost got thrown away but Joshua showed his skill and worked in. Perfect! With time I like the line more and more and it provides a great ending to the song.

I never get sick of listening to this song.

Overwhelmed 2

2007-01-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

I was going to write this as a preface to a 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs post but it got too long so it has become it's own post.

I just want to convey that I have been extremely busy ever since the beginning of December. Molly and I are going to be leaving our cozy little home in Franklin for the next 5 months and heading down to Louisiana. We'll be assisting with the relief work that continues on down there. Once we had been there in October we knew we couldn't resist if an opportunity arose to visit for a longer period of time. The atmosphere is infectious. My final day at work is January 31st, and we'll leave on a three day drive that night.

In the meantime, we've been busy doing everything that could possibly be crammed into two months:

Thought about selling the house (even having a realtor out twice to evaluate and compare) but that just didn't make sense in the end
Tried renting the house to people we know, but honestly, who wants to rent for 5 months?
Had someone in to plaster two bedrooms/bathroom, and add tile above our shower
Painting two bedrooms/bathroom
New faucet on our sink because it was leaking (then this morning we found out the new faucet dumped tons of water into our downstairs neighbors' closet - just the thing I need right now)
Selling my car (which hasn't sold yet; click here to see the Cars.com listing)
Bought a truck (2001 Nissan Frontier)
Packing stuff
Selling stuff on eBay, which is fun but physically and emotionally draining ... kind of
Trying to have one last "hoo-ray" with people around here
Watching the Patriots in the playoffs, which is very nerve-wracking this time around
Found an apartment in Baton Rouge
Still trying to get the lease officially signed
Trying to plan finances for the next 5 months without any income
Canceled unnecessary home services for while we're gone (say goodbye to the excellent Franklin home phone number we've had for the past 4 years; we'll never find a number as good as that one, it was truly a sleeper, underappreciated at first, it took time for the beauty of that number to sink in)
Watching the Celtics stink it up on a nightly basis
Planning a route to Baton Rouge
Got people to help us drive to Baton Rouge
Getting plane tickets to get the helpers back to Massachusetts (thank you, Gary)
Putting in a change of address at the post office (but I'm still not sure what the address will be)
Worked out a leave of absence with my job
Trying to finish numerous projects before I leave my job
Three theocratic parts in three weeks leading up to our leave (demonstration, highlights, and book study conducting, the last one just two days before we leave)
First snow of the winter just hit

Whew! I can't wait, though!

If I can think of anything else (and I'm sure there's something else) I'll add it to the list.

Overwhelmed

2006-12-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

From the beginning, Try Avoidance posts have usually been about things going on. Film production notes, vacation logs, etc. Very rarely do they stray into Josh's current mental state territory. Somehow it seems there is a lot going on lately, but very little of it has been posted. Mostly because the big project Wildlifeless has had some air of secrecy around it from the very beginning. Like it's too big and important to talk about and needs to be under wraps until it's absolutely done and ready to premiere at some big film festival. Either way, this blog is crying out for a post (Jeremy has forgotten how to count backwards), so here goes.

Right now, I'm absolutely overwhelmed. I've been like this before. There is so much to do, that it paralyzes me, and I can do absolutely nothing. I've got a clear picture of what needs to be done: promote and release NMWG's sophomore album, finish the audio for Wildlifeless, start the audio for Days of Being Wrinkle Free, do another edit pass on Tim Nm, work on an MOC DVD release, etc., etc. TMINM/12 Bros. recordings. Ha! Yet, I sit down in front of the computer so intimidated by it all that I end up just playing Conquer Club (used to be TipTop, but now on to CC). It's a sad and depressing cycle. It's joyless.

Now it's getting to the end of the year, and I look back and it doesn't feel like I've accomplished much. I'm sure I could dig around and show how I've at least made progress on things, but it seems like a lost year to me. I still can't believe I sat on NMWG's album all year. That's not only sad, but a real let down to people that depend on me. Just when they really settled in to a local touring routine and are selling CD's like never before, I can't even get the new product out the door.

Add to this that I'm in a new job and don't have any vacation time around the holidays for the first time in a long time, and I basically feel trapped. I need to get away and clear my head for a while. If I could get over some of these hurdles, things would really turn around. Once the NMWG album hits the streets, I know it's going to take off, and that'll be a real boon for the label (though it's probably too late for it to make a big dent and take 2006 into the realms of profit, unfortunately, though 2007 should be good). Wildlifeless is going to make a big splash on the festivals and Matter of Chance will really be on the map in 2007. Wrinkle Free and Tim Nm, though I don't think they have a big market, would be sentimental and artistic achievements for me at least.

There's a lot of fun ahead. I have fun just thinking about making White Bread and Filmic. It makes me happy. Thinking about those films seems more like thinking back on a good experience than anything else. Sierra Maestra seems like the right film at the right time. If all goes to plan, we'll finally take Brock on the big cross-country road trip to Boston next Fall. That should be a trip to rival the Winter 04/05 trip where so many adventures in filmmaking and music were hatched. To get to all that, I have to get through my current drudgery.

Man, I feel like if I start one new paragraph I could start ten of them. It's all empty complaining, though. I actually updated the MOC and 727 web sites last night. More work tonight. I might be getting on a roll or sorts.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Popularity - 5

2006-11-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

5. Popularity

Two songs in two days. What a treat!

Popularity is the highest rated (and really the only) song from the Schoolyard EP.

This was a rare song where I played a part in the musical development of the song. My part? Basically, I told Joshua to create a Pedro the Lion riff. He nailed it while maintaining his originality. It's more of a long, lumbering riff than was typical of earlier Moon Is No More songs. The length of the riff allowed for the words to wander a bit more than normal, instead of having to be crammed in tight.

As with all of the post-trilogy songs, I spent a little more time thinking about lyrical structure. To me, the words flow better, the rhymes make more sense, and there's a nice sense of inventiveness. Of note is the tone of the song. There's something happy and dark going on at the same time. It creates a beautiful balance and makes this quite different from some of our other songs.

Popularity never gets old.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Come and Gone - 6

2006-11-17T11:33:00.000-07:00

6. Come and Gone

I know it's been a long time since I last checked in. Things have been pretty busy with travel and other things. I'm posting this from the Refresh 06 conference in Orlando, FL.

We finally come to the first song that Joshua and I wrote together, Come and Gone. I know this story has been told before (and probably better), but anyway... I believe it was the summer of 1999. Joshua was really starting to dabble with creating and recording songs. I was staying with him for the summer, spending most of my days alone as he went off to work. I must have been running my mouth about something, saying that I could write a song in short order. Joshua made the challenge and I took him up on it.

The next day he went off to work and I went off to write. By the time he got home I had Come and Gone. He whipped together some guitar chords for it in short order and wham! Instant song.

And somehow it has stood the test of time and remains one of my favorites. It is 90 seconds of bliss. The combo of our dueling (not dualing) vocals makes up for my lack of ability. The lyrics manage to be interesting as a love song by taking a fresh look at things and presenting some different angles.

As a matter of chance, it just happened to fit perfectly into the Jeffrey L. Allen concept. It conveys this sense of on-again/off-again struggling relationship perfectly. In fact, we didn't do a thing to it, lyrically or musically to get it to fit. The final recording that we had made of this remains one of my favorite polished recordings we've done.

Wildlifeless Final Shot

2006-11-04T00:59:00.000-07:00

At long last, we shot the final shot of Wildlifeless tonight. A simple object spinning in the air. It seems so simple, but it's held us up, if only mentally, for quite some time. By this time next week, we should have a locked picture.

Train Crash

2006-10-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

Check this out. This happened about 300 feet from my house, right on our street.

Article:
http://www.boston.com/.../commuter_train.html

Photo gallery:
http://www.boston.com/.../franklin_train_crash

Eyewitness accounts:
http://www.boston.com/.../commuters_recou.html

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Implode - 7

2006-10-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

7. Implode

I thought I'd get one in for Joshua before I hit the road to Louisiana.

Implode, in a word, rocks. JAG would say that it "kicks rocks." There is no doubt that this song rocks harder than any other in the Moon Is No More catalog. That alone has to qualify it for the top 10, right?

Joshua created an amazingly catchy bit o' guitar that travels up and down the neck. Meanwhile, you get to hear me sing, "Im-plode innnn-side / de-bris hiiiide." I think I sing the word "debris" kind of funny. Only Angie can explain it. The lyrics are not the finest, but they make do. There's something very earnest and urgent about them. Some combination of the words and the delivery just make me feel uncomfortable in a good way.

This is a pretty short song, but perfectly so. It doesn't overstay its welcome. It knocks on your door, blows you away, and then it's gone as quick as it came.

Brock on IFC

2006-10-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

Matter of Chance director-extraordinaire Brock H. Brown is the featured director for October on Independent Film Channel's Media Lab Uploaded program for the month of October. Starting this evening and running in repeats throughout the month, look for an interview with Brock, a Matter of Chance short film, and other material. Set your Tivo's!

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Balance - 8

2006-09-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

8. Balance

I'm mogging again today so excuse the initial formatting.

Originally when I made my list of 53 and ranked them this was much
lower, probably somewhere around 22. It made the leap over a lot of
good songs, and that's saying something. All it took was a couple of
listens to Joshua acoustic demo and I was hooked again.

This song is the conclusion of 12 Brothers. It provides the resolution
with great emotional impact. When Joshua sings "and now I know / now I
know / that we can be broth-er-er-ers," I don't know that there's a
more powerful single line. I get chills just thinking about it and
every time I hear it.

I love the acoustic sound that Joshua has going in the demo. My
preference would probably be to keep it like that. On the flip side
this is a song that just hasn't been played much so I'm not sure how
it would even sound with a full band. Certainly, though, if we go with
a few acoustic songs to provide variety and clarity of tone (and I
strongly suggest we do that) then this would be a prime candidate.

The only thing that bugs me still is the metaphors. "you want a ship /
to weather the storm" and "you want a ballot / to carry reform." I
think they're both good metaphors but the whole album has a metaphor
related to business so that feels more natural. In the past I had
worked up some alternatives but I'm not sure that we ever fully tested
them out.

And I have to say that Joshua deserves credit for this song even more
than usual since he wrote the music without any input from me, not
even a melody. He also tweaked the lyrics to his liking.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - Such Things To Such People - 9

2006-09-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

9. Such Things To Such People

I'm mobile blogging number 9. I'm not sure how Joshua feels about this song but it was always one of my favorites. I always felt it was under
utilized in our repitoire.

The music is simple in an easy-to-like kind of way. The chorus gets powerful. The vocals have a unique feel to them (maybe Mellencamp-esque? Not sure).

The lyrics have this certain duality to them. There probably isn't
another Moon Is No More song that accurately nails the "everyone is
good, everyone is bad" theme that's so prevalent in Sans Hands. It
sounds personal because the uses the first person, so you really start
to feel for this guy. Then you realize how self-righteous he is and
you feel like turning on him. Yet at the same time you can't shake the
sympathy.

I recall that the one time we allowed Skippy to be part of the band we
played this song a number of times. He added a very interesting second
guitar to the mix. I remember really liking it but also having a hard
time singing to it. It threw off my rhythm. But I guess that's normal
when you don't play guitar with any rhythm.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The Substance Of Nothing - 10

2006-09-18T19:51:00.000-07:00

10. The Substance Of Nothing

Here's another song that went through radical changes. From the start, though, this proved to be our most popular song.

I believe this was the fifth song that we wrote as The Moon Is No More. It was probably the first that we really struggled with. So much so, that I believe we moved on to the next song before we were truly satisfied with it. I can remember sitting in Joshua and Angie's bedroom/music room rewriting and rewriting, trying to come up with something that would work. Joshua deserves a lot of credit for polishing up some of the lyrics, more so on this song than probably any other. He always had a knack for a catchty chorus and that's what propels this song to its heights of popularity. Who can resist the brotherly dual-vocal of "we can make / we can make amends / we will be / the best of false friends / the best of false friends"?

In the end we took a variety of lyrics and fit them all in together. It has some of the original mid-tempo verses, the killer chorus, the stream of consciousness stuff, plus, my favorite, the old school part. It became a trademark that whenever we played this song we'd get to that part and I say, "Play the old school part; the way you used to do it." It's funny, because kept getting added, but never trimmed. Some of the later verses could probably be cleaned up a bit. The only thing I can remember cutting was the opening spoken word of "Oh, Billy!" Joshua felt that was a little over the top.

And who can forget Angie's classic interpretation of the chorus: "we can bake / we can bake some bread."

In a way, this song is more like the later songs in it's sheer length (sometimes clocking in at 7 minutes, usually 9, once it was 11) and jam-ness. There is a bit of variety in the music, with four or five distinct parts. That's one of the things that sets this song apart. That's why cleaning things up and trimming it down is kind of a toss up. Yeah, it can get tighter, but maybe it works purely because it's different.

One thing that I've noted from people's reactions to this song, beyond their love of the chorus, is their true connection to the lyrics and the message. Usually it's women that comment on how true the concept of "making amends" with "false friends" is. Every single one of them is like, "That's me. I've done that." I'm proud that it rings true. It is true.

Enjoy!

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The "Fuzzy Edge" Songs - 15-11

2006-09-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay in getting this post out there. I've been too busy with business propositions lately to finish this off. I'm sure my two readers were waiting with baited breath, Johnny Most style. Anyway, another short post before we get to the top 10. When we get there I'm thinking about doing those songs up proper, including full lyric posting and MP3 recordings.

These songs are on "The Fuzzy Edge." OK. I don't even know what that means. I knew I shouldn't have named the batches of songs. These songs aren't really "Dangling Off The Ledge," though, because starting with this batch of songs we have very strong contenders that have a good chance of making it all the way. I'm declaring now that when we get to the final 10 I'm going to stop naming the batches.

15. An Automobile's Mass Of Steel, Plastic, & Rubber

Unfortunately for Joshua's sensibilities, this is the highest that a Leonard Gardner song is going to make it on my list. At least he cracked the top 15. I really do enjoy this song. It's a slow little ditty. Unlike most of our slow ditties, however, the lyrics seemed to flow off the tongue. And that despite the fact that the lyrics are not written in traditional form. I've been trying to think of a band or song with which to compare the lyrical style. I'm struggling. It's a bit of a disassociated stream of consciousness about equality through the story of cars crashing. Another one based on a true story. One night I had witnessed the aftermath of a car crash. This one involved only a car and a deer. The deer was killed on impact. But the deer didn't have opposable thumbs so no one cared much. This is normal. Driving by we noticed in the middle of the intersection a large object with a car hovering nearby. People were standing over the object and here's what it was: a dead deer illuminated by the headlights of the care that had recently taken its life. Good for the headlights. We went inside the nearby movie theater and told someone to call whomever is supposed to be called in the event of a dead deer in the middle of an intersection with people standing over it and a car hovering nearby. When we finally went back out to the intersection we found the animal had been pulled over to the curb. A trail of thick red blood followed it and it seemed as though the car had been pulled right along with the deer: it was in the same hovering position, spotlight on death. I took a picture for fun. I said this to a friend as my eye peeped through the viewer and my small mass of flesh, bone, and muscle compressed the button: "We're an unusually rare breed."

Some of what I just wrote is true. Some of it may not be.

Memory can be like that. This is normal.

Actually, this song is too good to not give you a link. So download it now. And read the lyrics.

14. An Homo Sapien's Mass Of Flesh, Bone, & Muscle

This could be the song that has evolved the most over time. It started out as a funky acoustic punk song; turned into a raucous punk rock song; turned into a peppy and fuzzy Neutral Milk-ish song; turned into a dark, dank wasteland of post-modern, post-grunge, pure Pig, rock. And you know what? It stinks. But inside there somewhere it's still a great song. It appeals to the masses. Sure, the references to homo sapien make it ripe for being made fun of, but it's tough, it can handle it. Sure, it's short, and the lyrics don't vary much, but the message is good and in the right form it's undeniably entertaining. There's no doubt this song needs to go back to it's "fun" roots. There was a time when we were trying to make the albums be something that perhaps they were not. Jeffrey L. Allen had to be dark. How it could be any other way? But you know what, there is another way. The songs need to be the songs; they need to be who they are. No more and no less. To try to alter them to fit some grand vision just doesn't fly.

On that note you have to skip the download you can get from http://www.727records.com/ and go straight for this version. Lyrics.

13. Pity Versus Sympathy

This is like the anti-Homo Sapien. It evolved, but for the better. When Joshua came out to Massachusetts to put the "finishing" touches on recording the lyrics for Jeffrey L. Allen I spent a lot of time preparing my vocals. This basically meant that to and from work each day I would sing along with the sing along CD that Joshua had made for me. One thing that struck me about this song is that it was lacking punch emotionally. What should be a desperate man just sounded blah. Just like that, while driving South on 495, it struck me. "I lost." That was the whole theme of this song, loss. We needed to accentuate that and drive it home, much as I was at the time driving to my home. The punchy part was going to get a makeover to add these chanted "I lost" statements. There were also some new lyrics: "i think i / can accept this / can accept this / except i cannot." I give Joshua credit for hearing me out and allowing the changes. I thought for sure he would fight them. We ended up recording the vocals the way I wanted, though I think it took about 4 hours to record vocals for this one song. Joshua was big on getting the entire performance in one take instead of having to piece together the best bits from various takes. You can only imagine. Again to Joshua's credit, this song probably suffers the least from the electronic drums that became the norm on Jeffrey L. Allen. Joshua spent a lot of time getting the drums just right. The variations in the hard part are beautiful and interesting and allowed for another of my suggestions, which was to leave the first chorus devoid of lyrics. In a way this ends up making the song because it allows the emotion to build, rather than confronting you with it right near the start of the song. Then when it hits you in the second chorus, and you're not expecting it, you feel it deeper.

Song. Lyrics.

12. An Ambitious Attempt At Failure Before One's Birth

This is a tough song to talk about. I can say that it started as a poem called Walking Backwards. It features some beautiful lyrics such as "angie / is the most / beautiful girl / in the world." Seriously, I dare you to click on the Lyrics link. Also, there's nothing like unknowingly singing a song about suicide to someone to just lost a friend to suicide. Shoot me now.

Song. Lyrics.

11. Last Resort, Part I

Beautiful song about divorce. A great message nicely represented by the lyrics. One of the few songs where we lived up to our ambient noise pact. This features our young cousins in the background playing and fighting. A neat note on the lyrical development of this song: every chorus originally was "when all else fails / try avoidance / when all else fails / try avoidance." (Yes, you now know the origin of the blog name.) Of course, we were also using this chorus in Part II of this song and over time I grew tired of it. It was boring and quickly became my least favorite part of the song. Then I thought of a great alternate line to mix in there so we turned the first chorus into: "we've tried tried and tried again / but all this failure leaves us spent / when all else fails / try avoidance." The remaining two choruses were unchanged and still repetitive. But in time, after having played the song with the new alternate chorus many times I liked it so much that I knew I needed another. So chorus two became: "but time time and time again / we fought our best without a win / when all else fails / try avoidance." Great! But this posed a problem. Now the absolute climax of the song, the final chorus, was the least interesting of the lot. I knew we needed something but it took a long time to finally pin it down. When I did, it was perfect: "but once twice and three times now / we tried our best to keep our vow / when all else fails / try avoidance." That line sums up the whole song better than anything and hits the absolute height of emotion for me. It still gets to me when I listen back. Perhaps for that line alone this song reaches number 11. So that's the story of how the chorus went from being the worst part of the song to the best.

Song. Lyrics.

Up next is the top 10. One ... by ... one.

Wildlifeless Decompression Update

2006-09-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

The true history of the making of Wildlifeless is Brock's alone to tell. However, I'll offer some brief comments as an observer.

Saturday was the big studio shoot for Wildlifeless. At the end of June we survived an arduous trip to San Diego to shoot the exteriors. Saturday was the interiors that begin the story.

The Set - The interiors called for a very large canvas wall tent. These tents are pretty expensive, and a real tent would not have allowed us the manueverability we needed considering cranes and other filmmaking aparatus. So, the decision was made long ago to build our own tent set. It would be basicaly a 10' x 15' tent with three sides. When we built the smaller tents and tent facade for the exteriors, I used lightweight 2 x 2's. For the big tent, stability was key to support such large sections, so 2 x 4's were used. Heavy, wet, raw 2 x 4's. I precut the materials on Friday morning. Friday night we were supposed to have access to the studio to construct the set for a number of hours, enough time to get the job done. Well, when we arrived we found out that we had about a third the time we thought we would have. Beyond that, our drilling technique wasn't working so good. It was a fight to drive each screw. A half day prior to the shoot and we were already massively behind the eight ball. I was beside myself about the whole ordeal. I'm pretty sure it was tough to be around me at the time. I was fuming over the lack of cooperation from the school personnel, and the general lack of professionalism on their part. As it turned out, a lot depends on who you talk to. Saturday morning we arrived early and not much later, a much more helpful faculty member was there to assist us. It was a completely different experience from the night before. With better tools and techniques at hand, we got the whole set built (assembly and attaching canvas) in around an hour. Getting the thing in upright and supported was another matter. We used most of the C-stands and all of the sandbags in the studio to get it mostly stable. Beyond that there was the dressing: arranging of props, attaching of bamboo, faking a projection surface, etc. Tons of work, but well worth it. It looked great, and like a million bucks on tape. However, it was complex enough that we didn't get our first shot until around 2pm. Four hours behind schedule. Yikes!

The Shots - Before Brock conceived the storyboards for this film, I pumped him up with the following admonition: "Forget about limitations. We'll get a dolly. We'll get a crane. We'll figure it out. We'll make it happen. The sky is the limit." And eschew limitations he did. This film has more crazy camerawork than you can shake a stick at. Light years more than anything we have done prior, or anything I have seen in the local scene. Better still, every shot is in the interests of the story. That didn't make them any easier to pull off. We had crane shots coming up from toe to head, sweeping through the entire set, swooping around the characters, along with the simpler push-ins. Brock conceived of them, and we did our best to execute. They are some of the most beautiful shots we've ever done. If we have any issue, it will be that they are just too pretty compared to the exterior shots, which suffered somewhat from being my first time out with the new camera.

I really could go on and on about the how the day went, but I'll leave the rest to Brock. Just ten or so more pick up shots and we'll have our images.

Back To The Grind

2006-09-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

I start my new job in the morning. It's with a company I've been around and people I have worked with, so it won't be an entirely new experience. It'll be smooth sailing as far as first day's go, as far as I can tell. The tough part will be getting back in the routine after eight weeks of goofing off.

I'm not entirely satisfied with what I did with those eight weeks. As it goes with time's of unemployment (voluntary or otherwise), there is some level of stress and unceratinty. Without knowing when or where your going to be working next, you never end up taking full advantage of the time you have. There is also the factor of dwindling funds in the bank account that makes unemployment very different than other periods of "vacation."

The first week or two I was going like gangbusters on Tim Nm, CPA. After a year and half, I actually pulled out the stack of tapes, captured, screened, and rough edited nearly the entire film. Darn, I'm just now realizing that I never got the audition scene shot, which goes to prove my point. Getting everything set for the Wildlifeless studio shoot would have been nearly impossible were I employed, as well. Other than that, I am aware I worked on a lot of things, but finished very little.

Well, time to get to bed, get to work, and get on with things. Let's hope this is the last job I have in Phoenix.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The "Dangling Off The Ledge" Songs - 20-16

2006-08-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do a short post tonight for the sake of time and dramatic effect.

These songs are "Dangling Off The Ledge." Why? Because they're so close to inclusion but ultimately they probably won't make the jump.

20. Three Fingers

This song is based on a true story that I heard at work. The events described in the song actually occurred at the Big E in West Springfield, Massachusetts. No lie. In short the story is that this no-legged, one-armed cripple with three fingers was sitting on the ground, probably watching the parade go by, when someone stepped on his fingers. I mean, what are the odds, given how few he had? Fortunately this moment of irony has now been forever preserved in Three Fingers. Musically I'd say it's quite a departure from most Moon Is No More Songs. Originally recorded on accoustic and this seems like the type of song that should stay that way, what with it's gentle plucking and all. Lyrically, I always felt the rhymes and flow of the words, though simplistic, worked well. A sampling from the chorus-y part of the song: "he didn't look appealing / looked like he was kneeling / seemed like he was feeling / sad for what he's missing." The nice thing about this song is that it doesn't take itself too seriously, yet it stops short of being goofy. Originally we had an incorrect line: "he didn't have arms / didn't do much harm / missing a finger and a thumb / just a cripple though not dumb." I believe it was Bam! Bam! Emily Brown that pointed out the fact that he would obviously be missing a finger and thumb if he had no arms. The line was easily changed to "he had just one arm."

19. Pitying Bowls Of Saucy Lovelessness

Wow! I never thought I would live to see the day that this song would rank so high on a Moon Is No More list. Unfortunately, there was no denying the energy that this song brought to the table when we played it live at the final Moon Is No More show at the Zeitgeist Gallery. The guitar hook and driving drums were unstoppable. Because of the style of the song my lack of vocal talents are minimized. I'm basically talking really fast with a slight funny accent. The lyrics come from a short story I had written and I'll reprint them in their entirety here since they're so short. The song consists of me speaking these lyrics at varying speeds three times. "you've reached equality and that can't be good for your head to be giant apples of wisdom does harm like rational mosquitoes that comment on your sweet refined blood your pitying bowls of saucy lovelessness." Yo! Yao! Far out!

18. A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find

A happy little song about compulsive dishonesty. The bottom line is we play this song very well. We always have. It's a short, easy to like grungey pop song that features gourds. How can you not like that? And I even get to play the gourds, marking one of my very few moments on an instrument (if you can call it that). I sing it decent, in a raging, rasping kind of way. We developed a great way to record it: the song starts with acoustic guitars and no bass and then all of a sudden jumps into electric and bass and drums and then finishes back where it started. It's just solid, not much more to say. Plus, how many songs do you know have the phrase "ad naseum?" I almost titled this A Good Conscience Is One You've Yet To Find and then realized that I hate to have contractions in my song titles so I went with A Good Conscience Is One You Have Yet To Find. And that little story is a explanation enough why song titles should be short. And that's the ideal segue to talk about...

17. Investment

I could easily be convinved to move this song higher, if only because I think the 12 Brothers EP is solid every which way around. This is one of the weaker ones of the bunch, though so here we have it at 17. As Joshua tended to do with 12 Brothers, he nailed the music. The anti-chorus slowdown is a perfect fit for Investment. A lot of research went into the lyrics for this song to ensure that the investment terminology was just right. When we talk about cattle options and whether we're selling or buying it has to be accurate. I mean, I work at an investment company. If I can't get that right I'd be in big trouble. Fortunately, Consultant Maikowski provided some insights into the world of option trading. It's actually a very interesting methodology but you have to really get it down before jumping in and I'd say it requires a bit more time than normal stock trading, though you can hedge your bets and decrease your risk quite a bit. But I'm getting off topic. Of course, this song is about brother number 12 getting back into the business world in the Southwest, after sneaking back over the border from Mexico. He gets an entry level position at an investment bank. "here's your cube and welcome to our firm / you can make it here if you can just grin and bear it / though the ladder climbing's slow here / so your shoes had better wear." That's a great verse in my opinion, not for emotional impact, but for pure flow and word usage. It's actually one of my all-time favorites. Of course, #12 has some bright ideas and he's willing to share. "senor this offer's window's getting narrow / so you need to sign up quick / if you dream of spending millions / then i suggest you listen to my picks / and i'll be right here to help you understand the risks" Another great verse. Joshua may have tampered with the ending to this one for the better so he deserves some credit. Then we get to the chorus. "cattle options / expire in seven years / you can sell them / in two thousand eleven." What can I say? It was 2004 when I wrote it so the numbers worked. Seven was the key figure we had to go with (for obviously reasons if you know the story) so our timeline got set in stone. Then we break into a little more Spanish just to prove we're in the Southwest (but I think it works). "mijo you've made some wise decisions / and now we'll be sure to make it through this famine / you've earned your new promotion / more money and more power in the balance / more money and more power in the balance." First, this verse is easily the weakest in this song but it's not terrible. It just needs a little polishing. Mainly this is what drags the song down to this spot on the list, it's incompleteness. I do like how we use the word "balance," which is the title of a later track. It adds to the symmetry. Then we go two more rounds with the chorus and altered chorus. "cattle options /expire in seven years / you can sell them / in two thousand eleven / cattle options / expired this year / if you ignored the warning / you'll go hungry i fear." Again, the altered chorus needs more polishing. OK, I've offically written far too much about this song.

16. Room 203, Part I

A simple easy-listening song. This was the fourth Moon Is No More song written and it holds up well. The last recording we ever did of this song came out very well with a full band. The story is about William Donovan Junior being taken to the hospital after the incident at Leonard Gardner's house. He sits in his hospital bed and pesters and nags Jeffrey L. Allen for sympathy by recounting various stories. This song has it all. Hospital references written before Pedro The Lion's Priests and Paramedics. References to suicide. The use of Biblical "times." A great "saved a boy from the wash" line. Probably best of all: Angie "plays" the pillow while I sing "you're so shallow / filled with sorrow / i'm a pillow / i'm a pillow." Any song featuring a pillow as an instrument gets an automatic bye into my top 20.

Next up we'll be discussing "The Fuzzy Edge" songs, 15-11.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The "Sitting On The Fence" Songs - 30-21

2006-08-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

As we get higher on this list we get into some very murky territory. It becomes even harder to differentiate rank at this level. That's why I'm calling this batch "Sitting On The Fence." In all reality, it is quite possible that half of these songs could jump much higher and end up in the final cut. For now, they're probably out.

Between posts I found my Moon Is No More MP3 CD and have had a chance to give a lot of more obscure songs a listen. This has definitely helped revise the list, though there weren't many changes to the songs from the previous posts. Last Resort, Part IV was not what we thought and it moved down to 39.

Let's get to it.

30. The Gradual Progression Of Loss, Part I

As was mentioned, I found the Moon Is No More MP3 CD. As I mentioned in my original post regarding this song, if my memory was jogged this had the potential to move. With the additional information provided therein I did feel the need to bump this song up a few spots. Somehow we made the song with no melody work. That alone has to be worth at least two places on this list. The full band rendition featured a great mid-song change from brushed bongos to full drums that works really well. The lyrics make for an interesting bit of poetry (their original intention) but a less-interesting song. On the other hand, the lyric file for this song contains one of my favorite notations under MUSIC: "Chan style: C". Hopefully you know what that means.

29. On Account Of The Abuse

This is a slow jam that Joshua really seems to love. For me, it's OK. There's definitely something trippy about it and we've only played once to my knowledge. That makes it kind of hard to judge. It has some good potential, though. The lyrics are off the wall and feel somewhat disconnected throughout. "I am ill."

28. Ghetto Gap Gay Guy

4G's. In our original recording this song was far too repetitive. However, it had a nice alternate part near the end. If this were mixed together a little more effectively we might have something.

27. Last Resort, Part II

When I originally wrote the lyrics for Last Resort, Part I and Part II I always thought I would like Part II better. It seemed to snap better. Alas, it was not to be. Part II eventually turned into a nondescript punk-pop song that lacks pop. It still has a nice flow but it's lost some of it's effect over time. It isn't as re-listenable as most of the other songs. In this song we see the reuse of the "when all else fails / try avoidance" line which kept popping up in my lyrics. I thought the harder rock song would deliver a better delivery on that chorus punch, however it turns out that Part I's slow, but more heartfelt, delivery tops it.

26. G.O.D.

Stands for Guaranteed Overnight Delivery, which is a delivery company. I really have no right to say I have anything to do with this song. It was recorded long before The Moon Is No More was a twinkle in anyone's eyes by Joshua and J. Michael Palermo, Part IV. It did not get mixed, however, until The Moon Is No More was in full force. I threw in some "perhaps / perhaps / perhaps" vocals that you can barely hear. This song has staying power, but it's frailty lies in the fact that it's a throw away song at 40 some odd seconds. On the flip side, everyone seems to love it. It's an easy song to grasp. That means that it could go as far North as 1 or as far South as 53. Instead, I've placed it firmly in the middle of this list.

25. Allowing Oneself To Neglect Responsibility

Another song that was originally just a poem. This song features cool callback vocals between myself and Joshua, followed by a cool little jam. I always liked this one.

24. It's The Children That Are Hurt The Most, Part I

I can just see Joshua getting scared as he reads that title. Don't worry, we're talking Part I here, not Part II. I wish I could remember the original title of this song, back when it was written 2 years pre-The Moon Is No More. This was my follow-up to Come & Gone. The original intention when writing the lyrics was for this to be a slow little ditty, probably conjuring up images of Sparklehorse. It even features a Sparklehorse line, "the flowers of evil," from Gasoline Horseys. When it came time to put this to music we just ripped on through it like a cowboy rock song. Joshua did a lot of good work on the music and official recording intended for Jeffrey L. Allen. He made it very palatable and interesting. It features a bass, guitar, and drum mini-solos. And that's saying something because solos were not something we did very often. The final version always had a little hard hitting country feel to me, in a good way. Maybe this should be higher.

23. La Fin, Part II

When I first made my list this one was quite a few spots lower, bordering on the 30s. After listening back to it I had to make a move on it. In fact, given time, this could move even higher. All I really need to say about this is that Joshua sings it in French. Maybe The Arcade Fire are having too heavy an influence on me, but that sounds like a darn good idea to me. In a later version he sang French while I spoke English all at the same time. That does not sound like as good an idea. But with Joshua in French it had a great melody and simple acoustic guitars. That's the way this song should forever stay. "c'est normal / c'est normal." When we were slated for three-discs this was going to be the final song. On a side note, was this some sort of weird precursor to Tim Nm, CPA and Days Of Being Wrinkle Free? I'll let the reader be the judge.

22. Quality Over Quantity

Here we go. The first song written specifically for The Moon Is No More. To call it a song might be an overstatement, given that it's mostly spoken word. It's possible I'm ranking this too high on a purely nostalgia basis. In a way, though, this is a historically important song because it set the tone for what The Moon Is No More was going to be about. We were not simply going to deliver "normal" music. We were going to do what felt right for us and make music along the lines of what we would like to listen to, even if no one else would want to listen to it. With time this song matured and Joshua did a lot of fine work revising the music. My favorite versions featured dueling vocals and a Karate style guitar/bass.

21. Standard Issue

Lyrically, this was written during a boring Arizona summer-time (again, pre-The Moon Is No More) with references to various objects around Joshua's house. Musically, this was part of the William Donovan Junior creative burst that took place on the Cape. Later it came to include either bongos or brushed drums with a creepy violin layered on top, courtesy of yours truly, with the help of the Hooper borrowed violin which we kept for like 3 years. One concern I would have for this song would be if I could recreate the violin solo. It was probably about 6 strokes long but, not being classically trained in violin, I'm not sure exactly what string or where my finger placement was. I wonder if we ever wrote that one down. I could easily see this slipping into the "Dangling Off The Ledge" songs.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The "Living On A Prayer" Songs - 40-31

2006-08-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

*** UPDATED ***
One song has appeared and one has disappeared. I'll let you figure out which.

Time for the second edition of the 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs, in honor of Joshua's planned TMINM super-album. This batch of songs, from 40-31, have almost no shot at making this super-album. We still have a few that don't have music as well as some pretty poor work, but also a surprising song or two that Joshua may disagree with. We'll see how it all shakes out.

One thing to note is that this batch contains at least one representation from each of the "releases" that we had crafted. Even Jeffrey L. Allen gets into the mix in here towards the end.

40. A Thick, Wet Snow On A Cold January Morning - This was to be the second to last song of the three original albums. I like snow and this is the only song that includes snow in it, so maybe it gets an artificial boost. In my mind the lyrics were never really finished; they had never been refined. Maybe it gets another boost because I feel the refinements would have made this a really solid song. It's more coherent then most of the songs that I was writing at this point. It's also to be noted for being the second "cold morning" song (more on the first later). I must have had a thing for cold mornings.

39. Last Resort, Part IV - I think Joshua had told me that this song was really good and that I just needed to give it another listen to. Well, I found my CD of Moon Is No More MP3s and I could not for the life of me find a recording of this song. That just confirms my suspicions that it was bogus all along. Therefore this makes a move right down the list.

38. Monday, Part I - Here is the introductory song to the Schoolyard. It really has nothing to do with the characters of the story, but it sets our schoolyard theme of literally being in a schoolyard. It tells the tale of heading back to school on a Monday. In fact, that's the best part and the only reason it ranks this high. The chorus had such a good ring: "summer ends on / a sunday / and school begins on / a monday." Angie later informed me that real school children start school on Tuesdays. That really ruined things for me. Tuesday just doesn't work.

37. Accident - Still no music, though the melody is still floating around in my head, a slow dirge. The lyrics are actually pretty good, but they get extremely clumsy in the final verse. This is a setup song, in a way, to give reason for the protagonists' initial anti-gun stance. Sad, sad stuff.

36. Memorial - This song, intended to be the final song on the Schoolyard, provides a nice wrap-up to the EP. It recounts a memorial service held for the victims of the Schoolyard incident narrated by the deceased protagonist. Walking through some of the lyrics here are some highlights: 1) A Cleary lyric sighting within the first verse. This was more like a tribute than a rip-off (but that's what I always tell myself). "as i watch the sun rise / through another person's eyes." 2) Maybe it gets a little too cutesy with the listing of student names: "billy, kim, and timothy," then later "dawn marie and little joe / jane and jim and chris." 3) A nice comment on infamy: "through all of this despite my fame / there was no mention of my name / apparently there was no bearing." 4) And just to remind us that he's actually dead, and perhaps to confuse us as to his level of remorsefulness, we sum it up with this comment: "it was the most beautiful service / but i am not conscious / of any of this." Still never put music to this.

35. Transfer - Another song with that never received music, though I have memories of trying to craft a Pedro the Lion-esque guitar riff for this with Joshua. In my mind this is a really great lyrical compliment to Popularity. It follows a similar pattern: it starts happy-go-lucky but then quickly turns more sinister. This case is marked by slightly darker shades towards the end as the transfer student gains more and more power amongst the school's elite until a friend informs our protagonist (if you can call him that) regarding his girlfriend: "i heard he drove her home / he's taking over her." All in all in does a decent job of avoiding the typical Schoolyard goofiness, it sets a clear tone and feeling, and it has a nice story arc unto itself. I always enjoyed the chorus, too: "fooling around with us / will make you better off / you'll be productive in / the non-school product."

34. A Root Of All Sorts Of Injurious Things - This song always grated my bleeding ears. The music was only ever so-so and phrase "money money money money money money money money" gets repeated far too often. It's only saving grace is "sister had her needs / so overdosed on speed / failed first with codeine / but the doctors were so mean."

33. A Common Path To A Common Problem - It was tough for me to rank this so low. It had such promise but even at its best it would never be more than a decent, faceless and emotionless pop rock song. There is nothing about it that ever stood out. Joshua came up with great guitar bit for this but it was never a perfect fit. This song has always stood flawed. Too many times we would find a really good guitar part for the first verse of a song, then just reuse it for all subsequent verses, regardless of whether the lyrics worked or not. Too often we were reluctant to change the lyrics of a song, though I'm not sure why. Maybe Joshua can shed some light on that. In any case, it's opening verse, "through the jetway / and onto the plane / daddy can't save / from beyond the grave," was a great setup for An Ambitious Attempt At Failure which was originally slated to come too songs later. It's downhill from there. This song also features a repeated "fail miserably / be happy" section towards the end, a phrase we reused far too much. Believe me, there are no two phrases that work poorer when put to music than those twins.

32. Sunsets - This was originally a Bad Larry song called Anti-Global Rotation (I think). The Moon Is No More stole it to serve as the atmospheric centerpiece for 12 Brothers. It's a jam song, which would have been a tough thing to record in real life. The original recording features some great guitar work by Joshua, some decent bass work by Carl, considering he had never played bass before, some strange ambient sounds by Angie, some truly horrid yet moving drums by myself. On top of all that was layered some half spoken word / half sung lyrics that were actually part of a short story I wrote during a convention break entitled "A Quite Inconsequential War-Time Tale." This just would have never worked on tape.

31. A Telephone Conversation On A Cold September Morning - Here is the first song from the 10 track Jeffrey L. Allen concept, the concept that Joshua and I have been kicking around what seems like half a decade now. Oh, wait, it has been half a decade! In any case, you can imagine how hard it is for me to put this song on here. It started as an undoubtedly acoustic affair and then somehow morphed into an electronic track a la The Postal Service or The Headphones. In actuality by doing so Joshua made this song into so much more than the sum of its parts. I was never built to sing this song, we could never find the necessary female vocalist to complete it, and it just gets too boring towards the end. However, it still remains interesting to this day and may just be a few tweaks away from being resurrected. That's why they say it's "living on a prayer." You just never know.

Join us next time for the middle batch of songs, the ones I've termed the "Sitting On The Fence" songs, 30-21.

The 53 Best Moon Is No More Songs - The "No Chance" Songs - 53-41

2006-08-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

I had asked Joshua to put together the previous post to allow him to fully express his vision for what might transpire next for the Moon Is No More. I didn't expect he would put it together so quickly. Good job! In any case, he did not fulfill his entire assignment. I asked him to rank every Moon Is No More song from number 53 down to number 1, as far as likelihood of being included on the super-album. He was also supposed to provide a brief commentary on each song. Since he failed to complete this task I decided to take it upon myself.

How do you rank songs? It's virtually an unexplainable process, at least for me. It's extremely arbitrary. I could break things down and rank each song in a number of categories such as Music, Lyrics, Melody, Popularity, etc. However, each category would in itself be arbitrary so I'm going to save myself and the reader the time involved in such a pursuit. Instead, I'm going to go with my gut. In fact, I haven't even listened to most of these songs in a long time. In some cases it's probably been years since I've heard the song. That's OK. This is all about feeling the flow. I reserve the right to change my mind at a later time. When I'm done I'll post a Google Spreadsheet that will serve as the living, breathing list if we decide to pursue this project.

So, with all that having been said, let's get to the songs.

The "No Chance" Songs - 53-41

These songs have a less than .01% chance, in my opinion, of being included on the super-album. There is not one song on this list for which proper music has been written. That's a good indicator that it's going to rank low on my list. Perhaps there are some good lyrics in this bunch, but more than likely not. For the most part these songs didn't have music written for them because the lyrics were so bad to begin with.

You might notice that there are exactly zero Jeffrey L. Allen/12 Brothers songs on this list. It's worth mentioning. Jeffrey L. Allen was the first album we wrote and while it was immature at times it was also the most straightforward as far as likeability and it probably exhausted most of my creative juices, where towards the end of the writing process of the original 39 I was spent mentally. 12 Brothers is just solid all around. Enough said.

In future posts I will rank songs on a one by one basis, as opposed to merely as a group. However, in this case, because these songs stand no chance it just didn't make sense to spend the time on that. So here they are in order of when they were written:

Room 203, Part II - I always enjoyed in the book how Jeffrey L. Allen ends up in the same hospital room that William Donovan Junior is in towards the beginning. This song is probably more about my enjoyment of that thought than about anything having to do with good music. The chorus, while it has a decent ring to it, is way too preachy: "make your life mean something / make a difference / accomplish something / of some importance."

Last Resort, Part III - This is tough, because technically without Part III how can you have a Part IV? The lyrics are poor at best, though it does have a standout line involving "retnal repitition." Thinking back, I feel a lot of the later songs that I wrote for This Is Normal hinged on a single phrase or line that I enjoyed. The rest of the burden of the song was simply hung up by that tiny nail. Most of these songs collapse from the weight.

Morality - The lyrics have no real structure. They are simply intended to comment on the moral of the whole story. The music was intended to be Radioheadesque, Kid A variety. The lyrics feature the classic "Who's to say?" line which was a real hit that summer and eventually morphed into "Who-Ta-Swane" and "Who-Ta-Sweeny." I think Skippy may have had something to do with the line "the imperfections of humanity are beautiful."

The Gradual Progression Of Loss, Part II - Actually, we may have come up with music for this, or maybe what I'm thinking of was just a variation for Part I. In any case, Part I doesn't rank to high on my list so a song with the exact same lyrics and no music can't rank higher. What arrogance to think that I could have two songs with the exact same lyrics and somehow make that fly.

The End, Part I - Worst. Song. Ever. This song feels more like a baseball game recap of the whole story than like a song in its own right. Terrible. Let's move on before I get depressed.

A Study Of Human Possibilities Through Household Decoration - Many a time we tried to start writing the music for this song and dumped out after the decent opening line: "oh angel eyes / make sense through signs." All discernable melody vanishes after that.

Moment And Moment II - Terrible lyrics. I remember one time I started feeling cocky and decided that I was going to write the guitar part for this song all by myself. There's probably even a recording of this, considering that we recorded everything. I was left greatly humbled and have scarcely touched a guitar since.

Driving Faster Than One Should On A Wet Road In A Thick Midnight Fog - What can I say? It has the longest song title of any song I've ever written. Really, that's all I can say.

Allowing Oneself Time For Reversible Reflection - At one time I thought this song had promise. It didn't and doesn't. I believe this may have started as a poem. I don't believe the poem was any better than the song.

Girlfriend - Now we get to the Schoolyard material. Looking back I realize that I overvalued most of the lyrics from this 9 song EP (is a 9 song EP even possible?). There were a few standouts, but more like this song. I was going for a Neutral Milk Hotel style fast, crunchy, pop song on this. I failed miserably. What exactly does it mean to "lick my lids?" I have no idea, but it sounded like a Neutrally bodily reference. And that's probably the high point of the song.

Protest - A nice anti-violence protest song. Too bad it's so goofy (which seemed to be a Schoolyard trait) and lacks any thing that could be called a melody.

Betrayal - I'm running out of self-depricating things to say at this point. This is a throw-in song to move the story along.

Monday, Part II - Starts goofy, then gets far too gruesome for my tastes. Much like all of these songs, this stands no chance of inclusion.

There you have it. Songs 53-41 that have no chance of appearing on the Moon Is No More super-album. Thank you for wasting 15 minutes with me. In our next article we'll discuss the "Living On a Prayer" songs, numbers 40-31.

Keeping Up with The Moon Is No More

2006-08-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

The Moon Is No More began over five years ago. Around about the time of my wedding (June 2, 2001), Jeremy took Sans Hands (and assorted other short stories and poems) and converted them into lyrics for 39 songs. He did this by hand, one sheet of white copy paper per song. Quite a stack of paper. It became even more unwieldy after being exposed to moisture, after which the pages became wrinkled and full of body.

It was a chronological retelling of the intertwining stories of Jeffrey L. Allen, William Donovan Junior, and Leonard Gardner. It was much like the script for a stageplay, with character names next to the lyrics. There was even a narrator. There was a title page, too. A guide to the whole lot. It specified three albums, an album for each of the characters. The project as a whole was entitled "This Is Normal."

jeffrey l. allen
1.01 quality over quantity
1.02 a homo sapien's mass of flesh, bone and muscle
1.03 pity versus sympathy
1.04 room 203, part i
1.05 the substance of nothing
1.06 a good conscience is one you have yet to find
1.07 a telephone conversation on a cold september morning
1.08 such things to such people
1.09 implode
1.10 the gradual progression of loss, part i
1.11 g.o.d
1.12 it's the children that are hurt the most, part i
1.13 last resort, part i

william donovan junior
2.01 last resort, part ii
2.02 the root of all sorts of injurious things
2.03 standard issue
2.04 $545.78
2.05 three fingers
2.06 ghetto gap gay guy
2.07 come and gone
2.08 pitying bowls of saucy lovelessness
2.09 a common path to a common problem
2.10 room 203, part ii
2.11 an ambitious attempt at failure before one's birth
2.12 it's the children that are hurt the most, part ii
2.13 last resort, part iii

leonard gardner
3.01 morality
3.02 heaven express
3.03 the gradual progression of loss, part ii
3.04 the end, part i
3.05 a study of human possibilities through household decoration
3.06 moment and moment ii
3.07 driving faster than one should on a wet road in a thick midnight
fog
3.08 allowing oneself time for reversible reflection
3.09 an automobile's mass of steel, plastic and rubber
3.10 last resort, part iv
3.11 on account of the abuse
3.12 a thick, wet snow on a cold january morning
3.13 la fin, part ii

I have no idea how long this process took. I have imagined that it went quite quickly, like a week or two at the most. Jeremy can educate me there. Nevertheless, it couldn't have taken all that long, since the "lyrics" were not really written with song structure in mind, just sort of spilled worth from the pages of Sans Hands.

Before we ever sat down to write music, we did some planning. One Sunday at Olive Garden, we sketched out some logos on a napkin and wrote a big list of everything we would need to make this project a reality. That included instruments, software, equipment, and people. There was a timeline for releasing the triple album. Just over a year to get the whole thing done.

Instrumentation
Piano (J&MB)
Electric Guitar & Amp (Eric/Mustang)
Acoustic Guitar
Violin (Katie/supervised)
Live Drums
Drum Loops (Beazy)
Chello (???)
Xylophone/Fisher Price Piano
Keyboard (Beaz/Josh)

Software
Acid 2.0
Sound Forge 4.5
Logic Audio Platinum 9
Rebirth

Equipment
4-Track
Room Mic
Vocal Mics

Performers
Jeremy (Vox, Violin, Live Drums, Ambient Noise)
Josh (Vox, Guitar, Live Drums)
Graham (Vox, Bass)
Bryan (The Beaz) (Drum Loops, Noise)

This was followed by a trip to Toys 'R' Us to procure assorted toy instruments. Overall, it seems the original vision was more of a ambient/loop oriented music. This would change, along with many other things on the list, especially people.

Each Wednesday and many Mondays and Fridays, Jeremy would come over. He'd take a page off the stack, tell me what the emotional context of the song was, how he envisioned it stylistically. Sometimes this was straight-up punk music, sometimes weird pop, or funeral dirges. I'd play around on the guitar until I hit on something that felt right. He'd try to sing along. I'd suggest alterations to the lyrics to fit more of a verse/chorus structure. When we had something, we'd turn on the mic and record it. It was just Jeremy and I in front of the desk, recording into the computer mic. The date on our first recording is July 8, 2001. From the start, we recorded nearly everything we did.

On the original papers, we'd jot down lyric and structure changes. I'd write down some guitar notes, either quick tablature or just chords and capo position. When we brought in Carl as a bass player, he'd jot down his version of bass tabs on the back of the sheets of paper.

Sometimes it wouldn't work quite that way. I might have hit on something on the guitar that was good, but not right for the current sheet of paper. In that case, Jeremy might fumble through the stack until he found lyrics that did fit. So, although we tried to wade through it all chronologically, we jumped around from time to time, and those were often our finer moments.

The first few recordings have both me and Jeremy on vocals. It didn't take long before Jeremy was the sole vocalist.

On July 9, 2001, we were back at it, recording 1.03. It's a slow, mournful song about death and war veterans. It features Angie's music boxes in the background, a staple of that song to this day. 1.04 is a slow, more jazz-influenced song about a stay in the hospital. It started with Jeremy drumming on the desk, and towards the end Angie can be heard drumming on a pillow, to complement the lyric "I am a pillow/you're so shallow."

On July 10, 2001, we recorded our first multi-track song. It's was 1.01, the beginning of it all. I recorded three acoustic guitar loops, Jeremy hit the snare drum and hi-hat. We both recorded some vocals. The drum loop and guitar loops didn't really match. Not at all. We did it anyway. To us, it's a classic.

On July 13, 2001, we wrote and record 1.05, The Substance of Nothing. In a later form, this would become the most requested, quoted, and sung TMINM song. This was a poppy modern rock song in its original variation.

We got together four more times that July, and finally on August 1st. By that time, we had worked our way through the whole first album and onto a couple tracks from album two. All by ourselves, all acoustic. We had something to work with, and it was time to bring in the rest of the band.

August 2, 2001 marked the first full band practice/recording session for the band. Angie played drums, Graham played bass, I played guitar, and Jeremy sang. We made out way through four of the aforementioned songs during this session. Angie is no drummer, and Graham had only recently picked up the bass, so it's rough, yet has a charming garage-band quality to it. Jeremy took up plugging mic in through a distorted guitar amp for a unique effect we would use extensively later on.

That weekend, we went to our grandparents house on Cape Cod, and brought along the acoustic guitar and the stack of papers. That's how it was that in one creative burst on a lazy afternoon on Cape Cod that we wrote the music for 2.02 through 2.06. Not only was this five whole songs, but an amazing variety of styles. 2.02 was a Rolling Stones-esque riff rocker about money, 2.03 was a creepy night music meditation on common objects, 2.04 is chilling and frantic account of murder in a style somewhat reminiscent of REM, 2.05 was more playful, like Pedro the Lion at the carnival, 2.06 was an chimey, ethereal meditation on family with a Fisher Price Littlye Tykes intro. When we got back home on Monday, the 6th, we recorded these up acoustic, along with cleaned-up versions of some early songs.

The next major recording session happened over a month later. What happened in the intervening time was most interesting. We had a number of sessions to try out other performers. We found Graham to be not as committed to practicing as we would have liked. We tried out our friend T.J. on bass, but weren't feeling that. We brought in Eric Liversage (AKA Skippy from Cleary) as a second guitar, but were dissatisfied with his lack of timing and penchant for punk rock. The upside was the inclusion of our brother Carl to play bass. Carl had never played bass before. He may, in fact, have purchased his instrument and amp specifically to join the band. The other big find was one Vinnie "The Fish" Brovaco. He came over one night to play second guitar, which he did magnificently. However, the night ended with a conversation that went something like:

Josh: Wow, you're really good on the guitar.
Vinnie: Thanks, you guys are really good, too.
Josh: What we really need is a drummer.
Vinnie: You need a drummer. I can drum. I'm your drummer.
I'm drumming, look.

Vinnie sat down and started to drum along to our songs. He caught all the changes, and really brought something new to our music. To us, he was the best drummer we had ever heard. It was only much later that we found out that Vin had never drummed before.

Now, we must talk about Vin (also know at times as Rocko Brovaco) for a minute. We were all in our late teens or early twenties. Vin, on the other hand, was probably already over 40, and a devotee to prog rock bands of the 1970's. He was going through a divorce at the time. Maybe that in some way motivated him to come play us, as an escape. For whatever reason, he did, and he stuck with it. He was a faithful practice partner. It was a quite a juxtaposition to have him there with all of us young guys playing this weird music, that we didn't fully appreciate at the time.

By the time we next turned on the mic on September 5, 2001, it was to record a full band multi-track demo of 1.01. We weren't really set up to record multi-track properly at the time, and certainly not configured to record drums, but we managed somehow.

For the next six months, we were there, at least once a week, and often twice, playing as a band, recording often. We got really good at the core early songs, and eventually worked our way through the rest of the second album as a band and occassionally jammed on songs from the third album. Along the way, Vin got better at the drums, Carl got a lot better at the bass. By the end, we could pretty quickly tear through a new song, with Carl inventing original basslines that weren't mere copies of the guitar line, and Vin always coming up with accurate emotional interpretations on the drums. The last recording of this band configuration was January 18, 2002. It was 2.11, a song about suicide and happiness, with a poppy guitar picked part, a loopy bassline, and stomped out drum beat. It is wonderfully reminiscent of The Velvet Underground, and perhaps our shining moment as a band.

May 2002 brought tradegy. I was laid off from my job, and slipped into a funk for the rest of the year. Depression, illness, my life was a mess. The job market was as tough as it had ever been. Most days I'd sleep until 4 or 5 pm, get up and toss a couple resumes out through Monster and get no response. Then we'd go out to eat, watch some television, and I'd play some online game until 1 or 2 am. Rinse and repeat.

In late Novemeber, I got a call from an old co-worker in Phoenix with a job offer. It was an offer I couldn't refuse, not after six months of unemployment. Somehow through it all I had managed to get Cleary's album done and ready to release. That was how Cleary's CD release show became the first and perhaps the last TMINM show.

It was November 29, 2002. TMINM opened the show, with Carl on bongos and Micah on second guitar. Even in the local art gallery, we went for it in dramatic fashion. We started the show with the lights down and with 1.11, G.O.D., paying. This track is a 45 second industrial style track crafted out of very old guitar and organ samples that pre-dated TMINM. Just as that track ended, the lights came on, and we kicked into 1.09, Implode, a grinding metal-riff-rocker and kick in the face. Jeremy was the consumate front-man, putting on a show that involved a lot of attitude, a little dancing, and smashing of bell-sticks. Random Kate was next. Cleary headlined, but since Skippy bailed out, I was forced to play his songs solo. Sad.

That might have been it for the band. I think most people would have called it quits, having been split up by a couple thousand of miles. Yet, for some reason, we continued to collaborate. I started from scratch, and began recording all of the instruments for our first album. In September or October of 2003 I brought the laptop and some gear out to Mass. and Jeremy recorded all of his remaining vocal parts. Now I had all the tracks necessary and went to work, mixing and re-mixing, but never finalizing and releasing anything.

For my mega-vacation of two weeks spannign December 2004 through January 2005, I got crazy and booked two shows for TMINM. The idea was to get out to Mass. and assemble a band, targeting Carl and Micah, practice up and play the shows. It was a crazy idea. To top it off, we went with two completely different setlists for the two shows, so we had somewhere over twenty songs to learn in a couple days. Meanwhile, we shot a music video for Random Kate, shot a feature film starring Jeremy, and attempted to document our crazy band project. We even had an EPK to promote the shows to the press that I forgot about.

The end result was one poor show and one very memorable show. I've only watched back the first show at AS220 once. At the time I was surprised that we weren't as bad as I remembered. I thought we were really bad. We weren't. We were just really boring, which is just as bad, if not worse. It was a low point for the band, I think.

Two nights later, we played in Cambridge at the Zeitgeist Gallery. The place was packed, the crowd was friendly, we were engaging, and the songs were our newer songs, that were written mostly after the band had gotten together, and they were just plain better songs. It was a memorable show. I collapsed at one point from shear rock power.

Now that show may indeed be the end of the band. Since then I haven't so much as touched the tracks for the first album. I handed them over to Brock at one point, and he gave a positive review, but maybe he was overly optimistic? He gave good points to the thematic and storytelling aspect of the album, but as much as admitted that there was something unique and different about the music, and not necessarily in a good way. More in the way of 'this doesn't sound like normal music.'

OK, so having laid out the history of the band, I want to talk about the future. To me, the band is not dead. In a way it continues since Jeremy and I continue to collaborate on musical projects, including Schoolyard and Twelve Brothers. Jeremy has no problem churning out albums or mini-albums worth of narrative lyrics. It's me that has the problem getting the music to a state that is fit for public consumption. So, let me put it out there and get some feedback.

What we have recorded, the first album, has never sounded quite right. This is owing in part, to the low-budget, lo-fi manner of recording. Everything involved was crappy, from the guitars and amps, the mics and preamps, and even the software used to sequence it, and the lame effects used to punch it up. If it were up to me, I'd re-record the whole album.

But that's just the start of it. I think we have a more fundamental roadblock. Most bands write a vast quantity of songs to create a single album. They may write thirty or forty songs, work through them, and pick the ten or twelve best for their album. This is the way Micah got to his excellent album that should be out early next year (maybe just in time for his return next year). TMINM, on the other hand, started with 39 songs, and pretty much is ending up with 39 songs. It's as though it doesn't matter to use that some of the songs are subpar (and a number are), because we need them for the narrative construct of the album to work. It would be like a film with a missing reel. I think this may be a fatal flaw. We might be better off to reset ourselves and look at ourselves as a band, not a band based on a book. If we had the freedom to toss out tracks (like 1.07, which became 1.04, which has never been solid, and is downright annoying at this point), we surely do have a goodly album's quantity of good or great songs.

The other flaw is that once I got in to actually record songs, I took them in directions that may not be true to the music or best serve the songs. I tried to retain those unique qualities of the original recordings of Jeremy and me at a desk. Yet, Homo Sapien went from a garage/surf punk song to a dark-pseudo metal piece of trash. The aforementioned Telephone Conversation went from a folky song to a loop-based, keyboard song. Pity Versus Sympathy got too dramatic. Come and Gone got too poppy. And again none of them sound like real music, because I just don't know what I'm doing on the recording and mixing end.

But consider the songs we're getting hung up on. They are the first songs we ever wrote together. There are so many better songs we wrote later on in the process, and with more people involved. This original batch of songs are very generic. Often the bassline just follows the guitar part, there isn't a lot of variety within songs with the guitar parts, and simple things like congruence of bass and drum parts isn't even there at times. The songs we wrote later on were more interesting in every way imaginable, yet we may never get to them.

So, I have a couple of proposals for discussion.

1. We have to throw out the idea of three albums. While we do have three albums worth of songs, we do not have three albums worth of good songs. We need to pick and choose from the completed songs only the songs worth releasing, and go from there. Also, there's no way I can afford to release three albums that won't sell. One album is bad enough.
2. We need to get back to the essence of the songs. Every song does not need the full double-guitar, bass, and drums treatment. Some will be much better with simpler instrumentation, such as our original desk demos. In fact, we have to ready to release an original demo or two if they stand up.
3. We need to ensure some basic quality of instrumentation in all the songs. If the bassline and guitar match each other, we need to throw some diversity in there. Keep one or the other, and write a new part to fill in.
4. Real drums. The album suffers so much from the drum machine drums. We need Micah on this. His drumming at our live shows was amazing, and not to be matched by any drum machine in the world.
5. Seek professional help. I need to take a course, get some help, or something, to get the mix and effects on the tracks to resemble other commercially-released music. Normal music.
6. Re-record. Many of the tracks simply could stand to be re-recorded. If we are going to record new drums, and new bass and/or guitar parts, then we might as well re-record everything, you know.

Listen, we worked too hard and did so much, we can't just let this die. We need to release one album before we die. One big TMINM album that will be a testament to everything this band meant and did. I may need some help with this. I may need some independent evaluations of our songs (Brock and Gabe) to see what really is worth releasing and what is not.

Does that give us something to think about? More to come...

Rebecca Kinkead 2006

2006-08-11T11:53:00.000-07:00

Hey, it's that time of year again. I get a CD in the mail with all of Rebecca Kinkead's latest works of art, and update her web site. This time around she's working in a style unlike anything she has done before. Her solo exhibition at the Clark Gallery runs through September.

Tim Nm, CPA, Part VI

2006-08-09T19:39:00.000-07:00

The big news today is that Subterranean Jazz has offered to allow use of their music in the Tim Nm soundtrack. As you may or may not know, I have felt that a sort of free-form jazz would be a good complement to the freewheeling and jump-cut heavy feel of this film. I have been editing to SubJazz tracks as inspiration, since they impressed me at the A3F 2005 screening. I've got their whole catalog on order. They've got such a wide variety of styles, it won't be hard to find tracks to match the feel of various sequences.

SubJazz are my new local heroes. Matter of Chance will owe them in a big way. We should check them out Saturday, September 2nd.

Tim Nm, CPA, Part V

2006-07-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Here are some frame grabs from scenes five through seven, crew, cast, and shoot.

Today, I decided to rearrange the sequences. I'm not sure how they came to be the way they were in the first place, but the new sequence will be: Vision, Research, Casting, Crew, Location, Theater, and Shoot.

Nike + iPod

2006-07-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a long while since I've posted. I figured I'd check in and throw some peeps at my new addiction: Nike + iPod.

Basically, you've got an accelerometer in your shoe and it's wirelessly transmitting data to your iPod for viewing on the screen, voice feedback through the ears, and later syncing with the the Nike+ website.

I know that doesn't sound like much, but trust me, it's worth it. I just recently completed the Utica 15K Boilermaker in record time. Record time for me, not for the Boilermaker. 1:23:46 was the time (5:57 better than last year). In any case, I need to do a lot more training next time and get that number way down. Nike + iPod will help.

Of course this meant that I had to run out and buy an iPod Nano (1 GB) because that's the only iPod that the Sport Kit will work with. I passed it off as buying it for Molly. Now hopefully she won't fight me over it when I want to go for a run. The other purchase they try to get you to make is that of the too expensive Nike + shoes that have a compartment under the left insole specifically designed to hold the sensor. Don't be fooled! You don't need the shoes for this to work. I'm using a key pocket attached to the bottom of my laces (which looks like this only less dorky). Nice and secure and by all accounts just as accurate as having it under your fat foot.

I finally received the Sport Kit via FedEx today. It was amazingly easy to set up. Plug in the wireless receiver to the bottom of the iPod and instantly you have a Nike + iPod menu to choose your workout, adjust your settings, or view your workout history right on your iPod. I took it out to the track and calibrated it at 400 meters. It was extremely accurate on my subsequent 3 mile run. It was a great run for me. The female voice feedback was actually very encouraging and peppy. It was almost like she really wanted me to reach my goal. At any time you can get the voice feedback to tell you your total time, total distance, and current pace by clicking the center button. That was all great, but that's only half the fun.

Next you take your iPod home and sync it up. iTunes prompts you to upload your running data automatically to the Nike + website. This site is a thing of beauty. Check it out if you don't believe me. You can view the site without having to sign up for an account. It's all Flash, if you're into that sort of thing. All your data is there, presented to you in gorgeous charts and graphs. You can set goals, challenge virtual runners, check out your records, and view your full running history. Nice!

Here's where I'm at:

1 run for a total of 3.03 miles with an average pace of 7'41" per mile. My fastest 1 mile is 7'35".

Hopefully I can bump those numbers up (or down as the case may be) shortly.

When all else fails try ... running.

Tim Nm, CPA, Part IV

2006-07-25T00:59:00.000-07:00

OK, stills above from scenes 2 through 4. In these scenes, Tim does some research on Chinese language and culture, scouts locations, and looks for a theater to screen his film. Another batch of scenes will be processed tomorrow. I'll need to go through another pass or two of color correction before I get everything right.

The next big thing is taping the auditions. Are you guys ready for this?

Tim Nm, CPA, Part III

2006-07-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

With the footage trimmed down to a manageable size, I'm proceeding to the deartifacting, deinterlacing, and color correction phase of my workflow. I just finished these tasks for Scene 1, The Vision. There was roughly 10 minutes of footage, and it took almost 20 hours to process. There will be another four blocks of footage that will take just as long. Most of it is a waiting game (sleeping game, actually) as the footage deartifacts overnight.

Above are two stills from Scene 1, one each from the narrative and interview sections of the scene. I'll try to post two stills from each scene as I get them processed.

In this scene, Tim watches his favorite film, taking notes, and playing along to various scenes. It was a fun scene to shoot. We basically turned off all the lights, then brought up a few lamps and as many candles as we could find around the room. The television provided the rest of the light. Fortunately, Jeremy is as obsessed with the film in question as Tim is, so he was able to work the remote, blasting back and forth to various scenes in the film as we shot. Then, Tim discusses what inspires him about film, and his ideas for a new kind of film.

Lady In The Water

2006-07-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Lady in the Water is the latest film from M. Night Shayamalan, the auteur who exploded onto the scene so brilliantly he's become doomed to a level of scrutiny beyond anyone I can think of in film history. Worse yet, since he works by choice exclusively in the Suspense/Thriller genre, he is to a degree flexing the same filmmaking muscle's each time out, lending to a tendancy of not only comparing the merit of each film, but an internal comparison against his other works. That, Manoj, is the critical baggage you must drag through the airport of cinema.

Lady in the Water presents, from its opening credits on, a modern day fairly tale. One that takes ordinary people (a stuttering apartment building superintendant played by Paul Giamatti, for one) in an ordinary location (the aforementioned apartment building, with a cast of iconic characters) and traces their reaction to the extraordinary around and within. Even though the this is an ancient Eastern tale, the characters in it have names like narfs and scrunts (really) and so on. It's a tall tale, but is it a good one? When your stretching this far, you have to be very careful.

The film succeeds where Night is most comfortable, peering around corners but not quite, talking about things without mentioning them directly. This is the classic tension that he employs so well, and it's present in this film, though with fewer moments overall where you're likely to jump out of your seat. Where the film fails is the extent to which Night allows us to peak around the corners, what is allowed to walk around the corners, and the detail to which the mythology is laid out. If the Village prematurely revealed and then allowed too extended a view of its monsters, then Lady in the Water invites them over for tea and scones and proceeds to talk them to death, every last secret.

Night wants to make believers out of all of us. Yet, I'm not sure if he wants us to actually buy into this tale, or if he wants to prove to himself that he can make us buy in. There is so much self-referentialism at work here, I'm left feeling that perhaps this was more of an exercise than anything else. He even gives himself a major role in the film. He's not bad, but the whole thing is... yicky. In the end, he did make me believe one thing: Somewhere in Lady in the Water is a very good suspense film, once you strip off the goofy creature names, keep them further out of view, take out the clever self-referencing, and the bloated cameo. Keep these elements in and you are left with Night's most unrealized film to date, and left scratching your head.

Yet, it's not nearly as bad as the critics make it out to be. When they decry the film as final proof of Night's fraud, it strikes of bitterness, and perhaps rightfully so. The only non-beastly bad guy in the film is a film critic, soulless and petty. Sadly, while the critics' scenes provide an inside joke or two to filmmakers, they also provide the most direct break from the suspension of disbelief this film so hopelessly clings to. Well, Night certainly got his, but the critics may have the last laugh when it comes to this film and potentially all of his future efforts.

Tim Nm, CPA, Part II

2006-07-19T00:36:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year since the last Tim Nm, CPA post. The screen capture above should tell the whole story. All footage has been captured. Now it's a series of little puzzles putting the sequences together. I captured and watched all of the footage today. I relived a lot of good times shooting this film. That was quite an eventful trip. There's a lot more good stuff than I remember.