My Happy New Year Utter

Sorry, no NY resolution for me since I'm still all about getting the same stuff done: being a better/more prolific/more read writer/blogger/person, etc. So, enjoy highlights from my quiet little New Year's Eve.
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Spent Some Christmas Cash YAY!

Just left Fry's and am waiting for the Metro 232 bus to LAX where I'll
grab the Culver 6 back to Westwood. Just picked up a VoIP headset
(wired but fold-upable), a 7 outlet surge protector, and a 3 pack of DL
DVD+Rs (just .99!). Fry's is always a great place for good deals and
their service has gotten a lot more friendly (as in: they're kinda
friendly now).
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At SFO, In Line at Peet's

This is before TheWife and I sat on our asses for 30 minutes waiting to
board our new flight (after the first was cancelled this morning) 30
minutes later than we should have boarded it. We'll also be leaving 30
minutes late. Then, once in LA we get to find a rental car for a
reasonable price then to home. Update soon!
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Middle of the Night at My Dad's

At my dad's doing a bit of paid blogging (via my Dad's ethernet--no wifi!) before heading back to LA tomorrow. This is what I get for working for a guy in Ireland--his vacation is already over, so I'm up at 2AM writing for him :\

I can't believe I forgot to Utter *completely* on Christmas day. I did take plenty of pictures (with my new camera!) and I'll post the best here and the rest on my Flickr in the coming days. I did Twitter...

OK, now I must seriously crash. All this family stuff wears ya down!

OH, we did see Sweeny Todd--I HIGHLY recommend it, though it's not perfect and very bloody. I'll do a quiview on Friday with any luck and a Pocket Review on my site, too. :)

Happy This Time of Year, everyone!!
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Requisite Anti-Christmas Post

OK, here is my requisite anti-Christmas post. I do one every year and being contrary is kind of my "thing". I even have a site called website666.com where I play devil's advocate to a lot of popular concepts floating around out there. So, since Christianity is the dominant culture here in the US I like to be a little insulting and offensive by posting the above picture.

If you feel threatened by it, maybe you should relax and know that it's not *really* Santa in the picture. ^_^

Though, I think those *are* his reindeer.

YOU SEE THAT, REAL SANTA? WE GOT YOUR REINDEER! THE NEXT IS YOU! YOU'RE GOIN' DOWN, FAT MAN! CHRISTMAS' DAYS ARE NUMBERED!! THERE'S ONLY ELEVEN NOW, MAN! ELEVEN! YOU HEAR ME, KRINGLE!?!?

OH yeah and if you celebrate Christ's birthday, I wish you a merry one and hope you'll appreciate that, originally, Christmas was a pagan holiday recognizing how the great and wondrous cycles of the universe keep life alive on our planet. In other words, happy Winter Solstice, everyone! ^_^
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No Country For Old Men (2007)

Here's a quick review (quiview?) of the Coen Brothers movie:

Intense, powerful, jarring, incredibly acted, amazingly made, this is one of the most intense movies I've seen in a long time. The Coen Brothers have one-upped Robert Altman and made a slice-of-life thriller.

Watch for my review later today at http://PocketReviews.net/.

One last thing:

EFFING JAVIER BARDEM!!!

MAN!!!!
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Al Mancini, My Wife's Acting Teacher, RIP

I should have posted on this earlier today, but I just didn't think about it. Al was my wife's acting teacher for something like 4 years and he really helped her grow and become a better actor. He passed away last night in his sleep, at home, with his family, which was the best place for him to go. I'd heard a lot about him over the years but only managed to meet him in person twice. I was slowly developing a script with a role specifically for him in mind. It wasn't science fiction so it never got a high priority. I'll get to it eventually and it'll still have a role specifically designed for him.

To me, he was that ethnicky guy who shows up from time-to-time in movies and TV shows. Most notably, he was one of the golfers in one of my favorite films Falling Down. Al played the golfer who didn't have the heart attack when Michael Douglas fired a shot gun into their golf cart. He was also in two episodes of one of my favorite cheesy 1970s scifi shows UFO. He was in a lot more, too. You can check out Al's IMDB page to see all of his credits.

Since I didn't know him, I'm going to repost what TheWife said about him in her LJ:

A Master is gone - RIP Al Mancini
11/13/07 11:04 am

Got a call this morning from a former classmate that Al Mancini, the teacher who was instrumental in bringing me into the professional attitude and world of acting, passed away last night. No words can describe this man to the fullest - he was the epitome of the "Larger Than Life" man who went through life in an energetic and fantastically enthusiastic way. Short, Italian, loved women and cigars. Challenged us as actors to bring our own into our scenes, nay even rewrite the scenes. Oh and cook something with garlic in every scene as well. He loved food. Gave out his bruschetta recipe to us. Brought up the energy when it felt down. Pointed out to us that WE have the power to feel positive and energetic, no matter what happened to us during the day. Called my cleavage the "Valley of Indecision". Had the best voice over character demo I've ever heard.

Heard he passed away in his sleep with family in Ohio.

I wrote some quotes in my acting class notebook from Al:
"Who said that art had to be comfortable?"
"You look like I just shot your grandma."
"I want to say something about pants."
"Even when you're dead, we still gotta hear." (on being too quiet on stage)
"Primo...as they say in Nigerian...Primo."
"You didn't say 'I want my ass to shake here.'"
"It's a hot pissed!"
"Whatever you resist, you become."
"Is this the 'Yellow Brick Road' to the sack?"
"That's the worst excuse I've heard since 1812!"
"Sexual Fuckosity"

And here's Al's recipe for Bruschetta:

Get thick slices of Italian bread - toast 'em
Get a couple really great tomatoes - Smell & touch 'em. 3-4, chopped.
Basil & garlic - mix in
A little onion - not too much, otherwise it destroys it
Olive Oil
Vinegar - just a dash
Let this sit in refrigerator for 2 hours
Pile on toast.
Also can add green peppers, chopped finely.

RIP Al Mancini


Lance Percival, Millicent Martin and Al Mancini (far right) were part of the team that was responsible for the show "That Was the Week That Was," 1963

BONA SERA PROFESSORE!

That was the man that was and will still be in our memories. RIP, Al Mancini.

And it's pronounced "manCHIni." Like the Italians say it.

I Hit 600 Twitters Today! WOW!

Screencap from my Twitter page today:

Not sure why I'm psyched about this, but what the hell? It's Friday night and you're not reading this anyway. ^_^

disposableWebPage.com

disposableWebPage.com

INDEX RESEARCH

INDEX RESEARCH

Great site for all sorts of facts.  Stuff I think we really need to know about, too.

I Love How No One Wants to Pay You

So, I'm digging through job listings and I come across a blog job that's almost my ideal blog job only to find this:

3. Payment – we offer an innovative pageloads-based payment system which means that the earnings on your posts are not capped, and you continue to earn money from all your posts while you’re with XXXX.com. At the same time, we also offer a minimum guaranteed payment per post.

Yeeeah, I don't think I want to let my pay ride on a fickle public or a possibly un-marketed blogsite, thank you very much. When are employers going to get back to actually paying us for working for them?

I'M KIND OF DONE WITH LOS ANGELES

No, I'm not moving from the city today but I have made plans to leave. No, I haven't bought plane tickets or fueled up the scooter (hell, it needs to have it's muffler welded back on) but I have made the decision to leave. That's not to say I won't stay if I have a good reason to.

Here's the deal. I came to Hollywood to write good movies and/or good TV. I got here and discovered after years of working in the entertainment industry that people here pretty much only want to make broad, safe, risk-free programming for as many people as they can convince to watch. In other words, no one wants to be challenged or take any chances that an unproven product might bomb. Sadly, taking risks is how mankind moves forward. As a result, I've decided that this city is kind of a joke. The world of media is changing around them and they are not changing with it.

It's not that Hollywood ate me up--it's that it's kind of toothless. Imagine trying to convince the smart kids to let you into chess club only, when you watch them play through the keyhole in the chess clubhouse door you see that they aren't very good at the game of chess and aren't really even sure how it's played. This is my impression of Hollywood. Sure, there are some exceptions, but generally this place is just not the industry I want to struggle for years to break into.

Sure, if all of the sudden I meet George Lucas' agent at the Ralph's on the corner of La Brea and Fountain and he offers to buy my script, then, yeah, I'll stick around.

If one of my friends still in the industry manage to hook me up with a publisher for one of my novels, sure--I'll definitely hang around to collect a check.

However, there's a big, big world out there and I'd like to see it. LA is a fun city to live in, but I've been here long enough and the world is waiting. TheWife feels similarly. If any of you have seen her perform live, you know she doesn't belong on the LA stage, but on the Broadway stage. So, here's the plan, starting, well, a couple months ago, we start saving to move from LA. I'll save up enough to get us both to NYC and then I'll go on to Japan for a couple years. Yes, she'll stay in NYC and we're staying together--we'll just be apart chasing our dreams.

What am I going to do in Japan? Well, for starters learn the damn language the right way. Next, I plan on continuing to write and self-publish my own stuff. Since I'm in Japan I'll try to hack my way into the animation industry over there which produces some of the most amazing stuff I've ever seen.

So, that's the plan.

Now, if I can just get some sort of income in the meantime, we hope to be out of LA by January or February of 2008. Want to help? Click the red support links you see at the bottom of each post or just click on any Google ad you see floating around (every bit helps!).

And, of course, I'll keep ThePete.Com going through all of this.

Ever Feel Like Just Not Having a Day At All?

Man, things have been supremely stupid lately. My FIGHT CLUB derived mantra ("Let that which truly does not matter slide.") Has been out the window this weekend. Between arguing with TheWife about how we argue (!!) and trying to explain to TheDad how he should treat me now that I'm in my mid-30s, I feel like I'm in high school all over again.

Last night, I thought of a thousand annoying things I wouldn't have to deal with were I dead. It's sad when there are so many annoying things going on that you think that "If I were dead, at least I wouldn't be dealing with all of this stupid shit."

God, I sound like I'm writing a LiveJournal.

I'm far from suicidal or anything, it's just that life is so retarded sometimes. Intelligent design my ass.

If I believed in God, I'd stop on a day like today. It's like: you want to praise Someone for this world?

The day I say grace for a meal chocked full of borderline-poisonous chemicals is the day I give up caring about myself and others.

I just wish more of us would do more of that--concetrating on the latter part of that statement. I couldn't care less if you believe in a god, just so long as you don't use said god as an excuse to exploit/victimize/hurt other people.

How did this post turn into a rant about religion?

Sheesh.

I need a vacation.

A big, long shiny vacation...

/end of rant. .

REAL LIFE GOT YOU DOWN? ME TOO!

Man, there are times when I want to just turn off the world for a while. As I think I've blogged before, there's a certain amount of sameness to each day. Not just the obvious stuff like, you know, existence. Stuff like Bush being an ass, the middle east being fucked up and the mainstream news covering pretty much depressing, pointless things, like the latest massacre or Paris Hilton. What's sad is that too many of us Amerimorons eat that shit up.

In response to this sameness (or more boredom of it), I'll probably be blogging a bit less than usual. At the very least I'll be blogging less about current events. I'm supposed to be working on a screenplay, but I just didn't feel like working on it last night due to a bit of depression about the world. I'm trying to think a bit less about all that stuff and have signed up for Second Life. I don't expect to be a convert. In fact, I honestly don't get what the point is to that beyond the "everyone can fly" factor. I think people who turn to Second Life to do things they can't do in real life give up too easily. Then again, if I can find a better job, or maybe get paid as a writer inside SL, then why not?

In the meantime, if you find yourself missing my wacky opinion on life, the universe and crap, check out my opinion on life, the universe and crap from the late 20th Century. I've been reposting old content from old versions of my site (previously called SpinningHead, The Bitch Page and GodDamnFriggin). You can check these old posts out by clicking on [http://thepete.com/index.php#thearchives|TheArchives]. I'm posting stuff from 1999 currently, though I have "new" old stuff to post straight up to 2001, I believe. What's amazing is how much I have changed. I've been reading a LOT since back then. Plus I'm a Mac guy now. 1999 ThePete would never have thunk it!

SWAMPED AS USUAL

Ok, sorry for the lack of posts since last week but things have been busy and hectic. Friday night was my bday dinner with my best friends here in LA. We went to Skooby's and then Beard Papa--the evening was awesome! The only thing that would have made the night better is if we has seen a movie, but alas, it took so long for us all to get into Hollywood that before we knew it midnight was rolling around and believe it or not LA gets pretty damn chilly that time of night.

Then on Saturday I woke up thinking I had to meet my writer-friend Chris in H'wood only to remember he was out of town. So, I spent the day cleaning up the homecube (still not done) and transferring more MST3K episodes to DVD--I used to think this was a never ending project, but I'm almost out of Joel episodes! MST fans will know what that means. For those that don't, it means that I'm more than half-way through the series.

The other thing I did with my Saturday was FINALLY start my screenplay for ScriptFrenzy.org. I'm over a week late, but when it comes to scripts, I'm pretty cocky comfy with the plan to finish by June 3. I wrote 18 pages on Saturday with a personal goal of 120 pages total. But I'm really excited about this script since it's a redo of an unfinished script I started years ago. Starting over from scratch was a great idea because this time 'round things are pushed much further. This, in turn, helps me stay excited to keep writing, as opposed to what happened with the first attempt at this story.

Then on Sunday I slept WAY in, waking up at 11:30am, of course I was up until 4am writing, so don't think that I'm some lazy bum. :) After that - did some more homecube cleaning, some more VHS-to-DVD dubbing and then hit Trader Joe's for some groceries. Once that was done it was a quick dinner and off to see the new Satoshi Kon anime movie at the new Landmark theater at the Westside Pavillion mall just minutes from my home.

Sadly, the movie kind of sucked, which is a shame since Kon's last two movies, Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers were really wonderful, well-made films. Paprika, his latest just didn't do it for me. Watch for a Pocket Review in the next day or so.

I think that's enough for one weekend! Now back to that screenplay! (And maybe some blogging after that!)

Niceness is Cool

So, I tend to often bitch and moan about how sucky we humans are to one another but I never really talk about the nice things I see people do from time-to-time. So, here's a post about nice things.

Yesterday evening, I'm walking from my dayjob to the bus stop and this Latino dude walking in the opposite direction smiles at me and holds out a day pass for the bus. "Hey, do you need this?"

He wasn't some freaky idiot or anything. He was a dude who recognized me from the bus--I didn't recognize him at all (even now, sadly), but I'm one of the only bleach-blond white guys that takes a bus in LA, so I can understand why he remembered me. Regardless of any of that, I was really struck by how this dude's natural instinct when he realized he no longer needed a day pass was to find someone else who might need one. I had to turn him down because I already have a monthly pass. However, it was still pretty cool of him to offer.

OK, now I'd like to do some armchair cultural analyzation. This analyzation will be based solely on stereotypes since any Latinos I know are much more assimilated into "white" culture and this guy looked and sounded like he was just smuggled in. Though to be honest I have no idea if he was an illegal. All I know for sure is that he was real nice.

But the assumption that jumped into my head was that he was pretty seriously Christian (as the Mexican stereotype suggests). It was Christianity that taught him that being nice to total strangers is good. Funny how white folks who are Christian aren't always that nice. It makes you wonder how different the two "colors" of Christianity are. Or perhaps the Mexican takes his religion more seriously than us white folks do.

Just some random musings, I guess.

Then, last night, I dashed out of my favorite Internet cafe to see (by total coincidence) TheWife's car passing directly in front of me and stopping at a light. She saw me, and after the light change, pulled over and picked me up. At the next light she handed one of those small, plastic shopping bags.

"An early birthday present," she said.

I looked inside the bag--there were two cans of [wiki: Haggis]!! I love Haggis and I had been talking about going to this British shoppe (their spelling, not mine!) in Santa Monica to pick some up. Turns out she was in SM yesterday so she decided to pick up a couple cans for us to have a special Scottish dinner tonight.

Now, it wasn't just that people were nice to me, but I was nice to TheWife, too. I picked up a little anime-themed trading figure for her.

So, three nice things in just one day, in just one person's life. If we could all just only do nice things for people (and ourselves) the world would be a much happier place.

Sad, really...

Faint Cold, Real Tired, Thanks Las Vegas!

Well, as you may have read in the caption of day 91 of Project 365, I managed to wear myself down enough on crap food and possibly too much fatigue that I feel lousy right now. Damn--and I had so much hope for today. I ended up splitting the day between sleeping on the couch and (before I started feeling really lousy) uploading the pics from our whirlwind 41-hour trip from LA to Las Vegas and back to LA by car. A trip I hope NEVER to take again. We definitely had a good time (hey, our old pal Alejandro was getting married!) but I really feel like I'm paying for it now.

The sad thing is that I don't drink, smoke, do drugs, hire hookers, party, gamble, etc. All I did was consume junk food (this disgusting strawberry slushy, pancakes, a bottle of Coke and Jack in the Box) and get a lousy night's sleep Friday night (due to our hotel room being feet from strip clubs with LOUD music playing 24 hours a day). We also went to Paris, New York-New York, MGM Grand, the Star Trek Experience and had a great time just wandering around people-watching (it's a writer/actor thing). If you'd like, you can check out the pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepete/sets/72157600041365572/

Here's a taste to get you started:

In the above picture you can see the strawberry slush that was no doubt jammed with refined sugar--a substance I very rarely consume and therefore have hardly any tolerance for. I think I'll have to start eating a bit more of it just to inoculate myself.

I also shot a huge stack of vids, but they'll have to wait until next weekend. I don't feel very good sitting upright at present. :(

LA Fog--That's Right FFFog

LA Fog--That's Right FFFog

Originally uploaded by thepetecom.

Not SMog.

I could tell the bus was coming only by sound. Gotta love that
LA weather!

TheLatest from ThePete for Feb 20, 2007

Man, is it already late Feb???

Well, I hope everyone had a good three-day weekend or at least a day of easy traffic getting into your job. Presidents' Day is one of those silly holidays where we're not entirely sure how to celebrate it. Are we supposed to give Presidents Day cards? Have Presidents Day parties? Play a rousing game of "Name that President"?

The only PD tradition I was able to observe was shopping for good deals. Seems there's a glut of PD sales all over the place on PD. A quick trip to my local anime shop (poweranime.com) and my favorite supermarket (Trader Joe's) took twice as long because of the PD sales. Parking lots and register queues were clogged to hell and back.

Still, I had a pretty productive weekend. I took some much needed personal time and did a whole stack of chores that I had been meaning to get to for weeks and even months. I spent 7 hours ion Sunday burning off videos from the DVR and didn't even finish clearing everything off.

Friday night TheWife and I had a blast seeing my friend Zo's band, called [myspace.com/byallmeansnecessary|B.A.M.N.], play at the Key Club in Hollywood. I'll try to post some pics later in the week. They rocked.

Then, Saturday night I decide to change plans from a Jon Favreaux (sp?) double feature (Made and Swingers) hosted by Favreaux himself to support fellow artistes and friends Pamdrew ([uptobat.blogspot.com|Andrew] and [pamdrew.blogspot.com|Pamela] Moore). For anyone paying attention, they were both in my play back in 2005. Anyway, so they were performing in a spoken word poetry show at WriteActRep.org. Now this was not your typical spoken word poetry show--the actors performed famous love songs through a bitter filter--it was a riot! Check out the site for more info on the troop (troupe?) and if you're in LA check them out. They seem like a pretty talented bunch, especially Pam and Andrew. After the performance we went to this place called Fred 62, had some good food and a great time.

Over all, it was a great weekend, though, as usual I didn't get as much done as I had hoped to.

This week's goals are simple. I need to finish up the site layouts on TheFunniesPage.Com, Website666.com and PocketReviews.net. Once that is done more regular posting will commence. I also want to simplify the sidebar on ThePete.Com a bit more.

Coming up on ThePete.Com are more Project365 updates, more news commentary (duh), comics, and more about what's going on in my life. (I'm sure you're real psyched about that last part!)

Family, Career, Sacrifices and The Normal Life

It sems like every day it's a battle of scheduling. Between this website(including creating posts, comics and media), my 8-hour-a-dayjob, my various fiction projects, my wife and just relaxing, I try to get a bit done from every category and usually fail. On the other hand, I do manage to get some things done, which is nice.

Notice how in the above list of things I didn't mention family. I'm of the mind that life is very short and that if I want to die happy I need to get everything I KNOW I want to do, preferably, as soon as possible. This isn't to say I constantly am working toward one goal or another--well, actually, it does.

As a result my family is often finding themselves annoyed with me. I put plenty of other things in front of seeing family almost every time someone wanted to see me. My niece was born last spring on the east coast and I haven't seen her in the flesh yet. I didn't make my grandmother's funeral because I was shooting a short film that day. I was the director and it had taken a bit of doing to get a day when all the actors could be there together with the crew (always a challenge when you have no budget).

In short, I make a lot of sacrifices for what I want to do with my life. My family, as families are known to do, tend to inadvertantly use guilt to try to manipulating me into sacrificing the most important stuff in my life just so I can have a meal or spend some quality time with them.

During said quality time I find myself lukcy to be asked about my passions. This past weekend my father and step-mother were in town to see TheWife and I (though they flew into also see my step-sister an hour east of us and my ex-step-brother, his wife and their daughter)--so it's not about just seeing me). They planned to spend all day Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night with us. Of course, they didn't bother to ask us if we had that much time to spare. So, we told them"sorry" and only spent last evening with them.

They still tried to get us to change our plans and while it didn't descend into a shouting match, I wonder how long it will be before they start treating me like the adult I've been treating them like for my entire life.

How many childhood birthdays did my various parents (I have 4) miss because of business trips, late office meetings and bad traffic?

It's no wonder I really hate celebrating my birthday. Growing up I always felt like I came in a close second to my parents career choices. Now it's my turn to make the career choices over family and they don't get it despite the fact that I've learned these values from them.

Kind of amusing when you think about it.

I suppose the good news is that they are catching on. There's still the familial guilt and overt disappointment, but they seem togive up on swaying me much sooner than they used to. I don't know if it's conscious on their part or not, but I appreciate it nonetheless.

I know my mom is the only of the 4 parents I have who actually bothers to read my blog, so let's hope I didn't just give her a reason to never read it again. :)

Sorry, just need to muse/vent a bit this morning.

Stay tuned for the Project365 picture for today and more of my quips to the State of the Empire speech as well. I'l have part 7 up by 2pm PT.

So much more to blog on, too...

Crap, I wanted to mention about how Saturday night was the first time in a month that we've actually hung out with friends. I hardly see any of my friends. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. The only time I usually see friends is if we're working on some project.

I wonder if my family understands that it's not just them I can't make time for. Ah well...