Equals bad. Well, I'm burnt to a crisp, my face hurts no matter how relaxed I keep my expression. To explain; Amanda and I got out of work around noon, now after the confrontation with Ted last night, we weren't going to take any chances; I spotted our resident manager talking to a plumber only feet from the stairway leading to our apartment, so - Amanda bolted back for the car, I walked past the two smiling and casually came inside - I changed - packed a change of cloths for Amanda - grabbed a camera - and we headed for Santa Monica to kill some time.

Thats when Amanda thought it would be a good idea to lay down in the sun for awhile - so we strolled down the ocean and laid in the sand. Next thing I know - it's an hour later - there isn't a cloud in the sky; and of course - I am red as a lobster now. Which sucks. So the moral of this story is don't fall asleep on the beach.


Above: I was surfing the internet, looking at other random blogs, when I stumbled across this photo - you can only see four of the rock stacks in this photo, but in reality there are about thirty of them [most as tall as myself]. This was taken at a beach in Venice, I only know this because Amanda and I went for a walk there two weeks ago. I highly recommend walking the Venice strip and checking these out... they seem to defy the laws of gravity. There are no rods, or cemented joints used to support the rocks. Actually; while Amanda and I were there, a small group of people walked up and barely (very barely) touched one, and it toppled over, and of course - they couldn't put it back.


Above: Another random picture from the same site I found the rock picture on. I don't know why, but I think this picture is awesome. I think I am just a sucker for flying above clouds; feels like your in an entirely different world when all you can see is rolling 'hills' of white. Yup. Ok, thats all the random pictures for today.

Anyways; to calm some of your nerves - I talked to our landlord on the phone for fifteen minutes and it went well. I won't go into details, but I will just say; I think we lay low for a while, things will be fine. So thats a relief. I know I will definitely sleep better tonight than I did last night. Anyways;

I wasn't sure I was going to bring this up [it still being in the very early stages of planning] but; "what the hell", I am going to start a film production/ community/ democracy/ network... ("see, I don't even know what to call it yet"), but here is the idea behind it:

When I was young, and first learning to draw, I copied from comics I read, and pictures I liked, and of course; after many years of practicing from good examples, I didn't need to copy anymore. I moved past the imitation process and started to create drawings from scratch. So - I think it would be a very useful learning process to take that idea and apply it to film; to take scenes and moments from our favorite films/ shorts and recreate them.

Well, back in Michigan this idea was difficult to push considering Chuck and I knew about two, maybe three other people interested in film... not exactly a crew. But here; "...thats a different story all together".

Of course, we wouldn't just do scenes or shorts from existing films, but it would help to keep busy - and to familiarize ourselves with each-other as well as with the [preferred] creation process. The group would consist of volunteers (who go through a simple interview process... "don't want to get any crazies in the group"), these volunteers would make-up a board/ democracy (so to speak) that would vote on projects and help share the responsibility of production, from 'pre' to 'post'. Groups would be formed - and for each individual project people would be rotated in their area(s) of interest. And thats it; hopefully the group would slowly grow and grow and take on new levels and help people like us network and accomplish films we can be proud of, and more importantly; learn things that better us as filmmakers.

So, thats it in a nut-shell. Now, if you'll excuse me; I have to go apply more aloe to my face.