At work uploaded by mike_1630.

I'm at work right now on break... this is the view from where I'm sitting.

Palm Trees at Justin's uploaded by mike_1630.

Finally! Amanda and I have had new camera-phones for the past two weeks, and the whole time they were, like everything else electric we own, on the fritz... the pics I was taking wouldn't send, my caller-id wouldn't work... and my voicemail never picked up.

But Amanda made a phone call today and got it all straightened out. And it's about time, so here it is, my first blogged pic from my camera phone.


I plan on setting up flickr to automatically bounce the pics I send to caliblog with a little "text message" attached. It's all so exciting and geeky at the same time.

I'm assuming the worst here - because I don't see how else I could have dropped both my netflix movies, 'Riding Giants' and 'I am Cuba', in the outgoing mailbox at the same time, and had "Cuba" arrive back at netflix by the next day... but "Giants" took six days. Something fishy is going on here.

I admit, I give the current administration a lot of 'beef'... beef about the war, about the economy, our deficit, about creating laws that allow corporate polluters to police themselves, rolling back veteran's health care by billions, diverting money from alternative energy and ignoring the kyoto protocol...

But - I like to think that I give them credit where credit is due. And today I read something that I've been trying to tell people for years now... Bush finally has taken the initiative to stand up firmly and say: our national parks just aren't working.



The administration has come forward with a "progressive" new game-plan for the policies policing our national parks... this is what the LA times had to comment:

"A series of proposed revisions of National Park policy has created a furor among present and former park officials who believe the changes would weaken protections of natural resources and wildlife while allowing an increase in commercial activity, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles.

The potential changes would allow cellphone towers and low-flying tour planes and would liberalize rules that prohibited mining"

I think few would argue that this much-needed move is a giant leap in the right direction.

One of those weeks. First off, this morning, in 100+ temperatures, I began riding my bike to work an hour earlier than I meant to. How did this happen?

Well, I think it can all be traced back to last night, Amanda wanted me to put a plant-hook in the ceiling above the television in our bedroom, she recently bought a low hanging plant from Target... or maybe it was the dollar store, now I'm not sure, but it's besides the point. So, I did this around midnight - and the cat must have been counting down the minutes... anxiously waiting for us to turn the lights off and climb into bed.

At some point in the middle of the night, the cat, who has been recently been renamed 'choco-love', began jumping off the tv, into the air, attempting to paw one of the plant-stems hanging down from the basket.

Now keep in mind there is only about a two and a half foot gap between the top of the tv and the lowest part of the plant... the cat must have been inches away from his target when fully upright. So, he made the attempt, leaping into the air at the unsuspecting plant - and then, most likely, completely missing the television on the way back down - because he surely would have knocked off either the potted plant, the candle, or the alarm clock - but he became trapped behind the tv and our entertainment stand, which is pushed at a forty-five degree angle into the corner of our bedroom.

He couldn't squeeze out the sides, so he tried to "climb-up" the only thing available... the cord of the alarm clock... pulling the clock off the tv and onto his head.

So - then he just sat there and meowed until Amanda got up and helped pull him out. But we can't usually get the clock out without extending the tripod legs and using it as a "hook" to fish out the cord. It's complicated. And something she didn't feel like doing at five in the morning.

So when we woke up at 11 o'clock, I thought it was closer to 12, don't ask why, I just did. So after Amanda took off to babysit, I jumped in the shower... managing somehow to only pay attention to the minute hand... I hurried out of the bathroom, got dressed, didn't look at the clock on the tv because it was buried due to the cat's miss-adventures, ran downstairs to unlock my bike and began pedaling to work, which generally takes about 25 minutes. It's dessert-like hot outside. I wasn't really suppose to work today. I'm not excited about going.

Half way there, stopped at a red-light on the corner of Hollywood Way and Clark, I pull out my cellphone to check if I'm making goodtime in the heat. That's when I do a double take... the clock reads 12:42... I only have ten minutes left until I'll coast into the parking lot, and I don't have to be there until two. So I decided to just get off my bike and walk it across the street to a shady spot under a large tree - and called Amanda to report how retarded I was. Damn you, choco-love, damn you.

Enough about the negative, lets look at the bright side. Yesterday I spent the afternoon hanging out with Justin, we decided to drive out to visit Jack Lemmon's gravestone. Jack Lemmon happens to be Justin's all-time favorite actor... and although he always wanted to, he never got an opportunity to see Lemmon in person before he passed away. So this was the next best thing. Aside from stop-and-go traffic on the 110 and getting turned around downtown 'Westwood', the road-trip went very well. We showed up just minutes after sunset... and found Lemmon's grave in the back... it's hands down the most beautiful cemetery I've ever seen. Not spooky at night on any level what-so-ever.



On the way out we noticed Walter Matthau, Marilyn Monroe, Rodney Dangerfield, the young-blond-girl from poltergeist...

I found this under the 'free stuff' category for Craig's List and thought it was funny enough to mention to Amanda... suddenly she couldn't stop laughing at the thought of an extremely gay cat hitting on all the other [presumably 'straight'] stray cats... so I thought I'd cut & paste it - hopefully it will make you laugh half as hard as it did to Amanda...

I started feeding a small hungry stray cat that was hanging around my building. I was sure it was a girl due to its feminine demeanor and the way it would coo and holler like she was in heat when other stray male cats where around. I grew more and more fearful that she would get pregnant untill one day she was licking herself and to my great surprise she revealed a penis. He is very sweet and has become very tame and likes to be held and petted. I would keep him myself except I am only allowed to have one cat in my apt; which I have. I would love to find him a good home before the weather turns. He is a white cat that I assume is an adolescent. Although he is small I think he is full grown. If you can find it in your heart to take in a poor gay street cat please call Jason at 310-749-4797

DSCF0127, originally uploaded by mike_1630.

As vibrant as this sky looks... the photo still falls very, very short of the real thing. Wish you could have been there.

For the last year & a half, I've never been able to fully cross off "restart video business" from my 'to-do' list. It's sat there, half on - half off, the back-burner for far too long.

To explain: When living in Michigan, several months before spontaneously deciding to move to North Hollywood, I ran a business out of the house that consisted of taping theatre performances or sporting events and editing them onto DVDs. It started off very small, but was beginning to branch out to "new" business, I even began taking away clients from longtime Ann Arbor video-services simply by word of mouth... it wasn't much, but it was starting to pay the bills. And then, I left it all behind to get away from the snow and move cross-country to sunny California.


It's not simply that I enjoyed [very, very much] editing day in day out from the comfort of my own "home office"... it's also that the cost of living in Hollywood can get a bit rough sometimes on a "minimal salary". Editing for myself again would, on-top of allowing us to not live paycheck to paycheck, benefit several things:

Most importantly, it would free up a lot of time for me, and time is something I'm always in need of - time to edit, time to write, time to train for our next big ride, time to focus 100% on 'pedal'.

It would give me the resources and the justification to buy all the "toys" I just can't seem to afford... dual G5... Sony HDV camcorder... high-end fully manual digital still camera... etc.

It would generally leave me in a better mood. Maybe that should be the "most importantly" reason.

Right now I'm in the middle of putting the finishing touches on the website, designing and purchasing 5,000 6x9 postcards to advertise everywhere I possibly can. Along with selling both my eMac & Canon GL2, only to turn around immediately and by a Mac mini & Panasonic's AG-DVC30. When all this is done, I'll be able to relax, cross one more thing off my 'to-do' list, work full time on this current "short-doc" and patiently wait for [at least] 1 out of the 5,000 postcards to land me some kind of editing job.

DSCF0048_1, originally uploaded by mike_1630.

I just signed up for flickr and I'm testing out some of the cool features... This post may or may not be here when you come back. Okay.

I probably shouldn't be posting this just yet, considering I've barely given myself much time to think about it.

But the other day I was feeling inspired, after reading several 'True Story!' zines, to draw my own zine. But about what? The idea of writing under two blogs... soon to be three... editing a documentary... working a full-time job... and drawing a zine seemed like too much for me to handle.

Until I got the idea to go back through the caliblog archives - all the way, to the very beginning, and illustrate them. I want each "panel" to fill a whole page, so it won't have a "comic" styled lay-out to it. I'm thinking each zine will be 15-20 pages... I don't want to start it off too big and push it to the back-burner out of frustration. And that's it, that's the idea.

I scribbled a handful of little illustrations trying to decide on the style... I'm leaning towards this look:


I drew this one while talking to Amanda on the phone during my lunch break, I had just scarfed down an 'in-n-out burger' from across the street.



I'm curious if I, and I'm sure Amanda and Billy would get involved also, did something like this and we sold them off caliblog for like 3 bucks, how many of you would be interested?

Originally posted at Project Pedal

This is the parallel in the bike trip where I look behind me at far how I've traveled... and I turn to look at how far I've yet to go - and it draws self-doubt. Uncertainty. These moments of "should I go on? Can I go on?" are the ones that count the most when looking back.

I've got 10 hours of fairly repetitive footage from our month-long pacific ride... and zero useable audio. It's been weeks since returning and I'm still fighting back and forth the several possibilities of where to take this "short doc". Do I edit a direct cut of my intentions for "pedal"? Do I cut together a parallel story of our bike trip and it's similarities in filming an independent documentary? Do I convince friends to play the semi-fictional parts of other travelers we "hypothetically" crossed paths with?

A part of me says I shouldn’t show such an uncertain-side of myself… that I should instead, delete the above, and type a few paragraphs of “filler” for the night – maybe link to another slideshow. But I think these moments are important in filmmaking, in anything. They happen. They shouldn’t be ignored or suppressed, these moments are what the entire experience is about… it wouldn’t be an “experience” with out them.

I just needed to remind myself of this. I feel much better.

The internet here is dragging ass. I'll be surprised if this post goes through in under four minutes. I've actually been 'waiting' to post the last few days, which is different from the usual: "meaning" to post... I wanted to write about a strange dream I had the other night, but to do so I have to tell you about a new zine I'm reading... but Amanda wants to do this first. So I'm on hold.

This just in. Amanda is busy writing a post on the laptop in the other room... Which means, it's time for my strange and disturbing dream about our cat's butt blowing inside out. Actually because it's been so long, that's it. I can't really remember anything else except that I found the cat meowing in the bathroom with it's butt popped out like a second tail. It was gross.

But I had this dream because of a story I read from the second issue of 'True Story' about his ["his" being Barry Scanlan, the author & illustrator of the zine] pet Bob, an iguana, that got spooked during a show and tell with Barry's elementary class and blew it's own ass out. Hmm... I suppose this whole story is a bit anti-climatic.

Anyway, to liven up this post I thought I'd throw together some footage from Amanda and I's trip out to "the rocks" for our three year anniversary of our first kiss... awwww. I just cut a few clips back to back and threw some music behind - it's nothing fancy but I have a list of several things I still need to get done before I go to sleep tonight. Enjoy.


[update 08/07] To answer Cerceza's question; the writing on the fence that is too faded to now read used to look like this:


I wrote that the second morning of our bike trip... the video above was actually the first time Amanda and I had been back to the rocks since our bike trip.

My mom has this friend, Barry. He lives in Minnesota with his wife, Tammy, and their son, Zeb. He's a schoolteacher and an artist. They live on a huge farm and are total hippies. Tammy has super-cool, long dread locks and Barry, an ex-marine, is now a veteran for peace. Anyway, he's always done his own comic-style drawings on all types of greeting cards and correspondence to my mother and I have always been a big fan of them. A couple of years ago he started a zine comprised of those great drawings and some true stories from his own life. My mom just sent me all four issues and I read them all back-to-back a few days ago. They are hilarious! I laughed out loud several times (and cried a bit too). I loved them so much. They are fabulous. Please, please, please check them out. (The zine also received a great review in Utne magazine last spring!)

More than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees are in a Georgia health-care program, which costs the state's taxpayers nearly $10 million a year. A New York Times report found that 31 percent of the patients at a North Carolina hospital were Wal-Mart employees on Medicaid.

How much is walmart costing your state?