Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Saturday, November 14th, 2009
travisezell	5:28a	you'll still fly me to the moon, although the moon to which you fly me could be phobos or demos And now Every Room is Empty has run its course, had both its showings at the NWFVF. The second went well, attended by myself, Kelly, Cassie, Jon and Jess, Duncan, Megan and Talina, and my mother and Brendon. Plus Enie was there independently. It was nice to have so many people there, I I have to admit. Andy is helping me devise a Festival Strategy for both Open and ERIE. Going to start submitting both simultaneous: this is going to get expensive fast. To that end, I've spent the last five hours or so trying to figure out Wordpress and re-do ice9films.com. Tomorrow, more of the same and digital press kits/withoutabox entries for both films. My cat is obnoxious and adorable in equal parts. I am tired and cold and coughy. Good night. Current Mood: even lesser futurama rules Current Music: awesome futurama into the wild green yonder crooner title track (Comment on this)
Friday, November 13th, 2009
laviecommeart	3:52p	The obsessions are getting louder -- all of them at once, like a chorus in my head. They're putting together a very, very, repetitive song. Maybe a jog will fix it. Yes, get out of the house. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 12th, 2009
laviecommeart	8:58p	The Script The goal, since I am trying to cultivate a friendly relationship based on shared wi-fi and boxes of organic produce (and the possibility of a "soup party" in the near future) is not to let the couple upstairs think I'm crazy. I'm sure I seemed presentable enough when we met. But do they know I live alone? Maybe they'll assume, when I'm having clearly audible conversations with myself, that I'm entertaining friends. In a way, I am. Ha. Let's hope they don't notice that the only voice vibrating up through the rafters is my own. And that it's full of run-on sentences and unfinished thoughts. Maybe it's just a bi-product of working from home and having way too much time to myself. Or maybe it's yet another sign (like the random bursts of laughter) of a creative mind. Yes, that must be it. When was that soup party going to be, again? (Comment on this)
favoriteplum	7:01a	I think i may have met a blind guy last night... or he certainly had a good stare. He played a good role in my life. That seems pretty perfect. The degree I wish to pursue is not an addendum to the job I have- I just happened to get that perfect job. I wouldn't say I'm particularly good at it, which is disturbing. There is always going to be someone better at what you are doing, unless you are successfully unique. Salesforce scares me. On the levels that I have been exposed to it. Last night was my idea of fun, except for the going to a bar and dinner part. Reality isn't that difficult to find, you don't have to chase it everywhere. I don't change course halfway unless I get lost. And I'm not a bull. There was no body behind that cape. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
favoriteplum	7:21a	I'm sure he's had many long conversations with impossible to talk to people. I dreamed this morning that I was walking down the street, so enormously and thoroughly stoned out of my mind that I was more dancing than walking. Yoga on the street in a slow progressive movement. Which isn't terribly unlikely but I was doing it in a white neighborhood and for some reason I wasn't immediately blown off for being an asshole. This shocked me. People along the block were dancing a little bit too, though far more productively, with little paintbrushes on the fences or what not, just tiding stuff up or talking to their neighbors. Then I walked into the house and my girl the sister was there. She was watching TV in her room, with a friend. It seemed so bizarre to me, stranger than the people dancing. Except her things were all tidy and in better condition and clear than mine. I couldn't help but notice that. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
meestagoat	5:51p	filed away When I'm having slow working days, the solution is not to guilt about it. The solution is to work slowly! This was a total revelation to me today. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
travisezell	11:26a	i refuse to be embarrassed by things i cannot explain This is the song I woke up to stuck in my head. Seriously. I don't know why. But it's a safe bet I sang it to Spacecat. Because what the fuck, why not? She's cute. Current Mood: -\- Current Music: see above (or below) (Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
laviecommeart	11:20p	the panic in the pause Grasping out again for something to dilute me. I forget how easy it is. And fall, again, into wanting to be like someone else because she's so much more potent. Fully herself. Must not lose sight of the path again. No tripping this time. No dragging our feet. No turning away from slippery cliffs. The goal is to be on. my. own. And collect precious moss and stones in the tread of my shoes. And absorb them up into the soles of my feet so that, one day, they'll shine out my eyes. Then I'll be ready to seek out other paths. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
tiny_monster	11:03a	ellewin and arldbard Hey everybody! A comic that I wrote and tedprior drew is up on Top Shelf 2.0! You can read it here. You can also read the first E&A story here! I have been neglecting this LJ since I finished the Month of Girls, but I have just finished Mungo Bean Book 2! It will be in our Etsy shop as of next week, and should be online fairly soon. It is a cracker! Also, if you are in Perth, come down to the Made on the Left Markets this Saturday and buy some things! You don't have to buy them from us but I strongly recommend it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
meestagoat	7:13p	because I can never have too many scarves Reclamation 2 Originally uploaded by meestagoat Megan sent me a wonderful package last month with vintage knitting booklets and a skein of beautiful multi-stranded yarn. I haven't yet done anything magnificent with the former, but the latter is now this scarf. Thank you, Megan! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
meestagoat	4:06p	I absolutely cannot concentrate today. I was doing all right earlier, when I was on campus for meetings and tracking down stuff at the library, but then I came home and started tackling Mt Laundry and now I can't do anything. My brain won't go and I feel guilty about it though I should really cut that out. I want coffee to sharpen up, but if I drink it I will be up all night and then I will be even more tired tomorrow. Silly brain! (Comment on this)
cherdt	12:41p	How I came to read The Stranger - or - Manuscript Day, 1992 Jim Colondo was an excellent fellow who seemed to genuinely like his creative writing students, in spite of the fact that I think he disliked his job. Photography was his passion, not bureaucracy, not discipline, not politicking--but at the time I don't think any of us really saw that because he was too busy doing a fine job. He was a thoughtful person. When I was hospitalized after my ski accident, I received Valentine's Day cards from the entire class, thanks to Mr. Colondo. That's right: I even have a Valentine's Day card from Jomo Grady. That speaks to the power of Mr. Colondo's good-nature. At the high school level, creative writing is not about details, it's just about getting people to write, to express themselves, to be inspired, to find a voice. Mr. Colondo introduced us to photographs, songs, sculptures, and poems, and asked us to be inspired. He introduced us to pantoums and villanelles and asked us to be inspired by the constraints. And, poor man! he had to read the results and dole out checks, check-plusses, and check-minuses. It must have been he that nominated at least two dozen students at East Lansing High School to participate in Manuscript Day 1992 at Western Michigan University. On the merits of a particularly ridiculous piece of prose, I got to head down to Kalamazoo one fine spring evening, and spend the next day workshopping our writings with some poor MFA student-instructors who were stuck with us. I imagine they must have thought, "I came to Western because of Stuart Dybek, and now I am babysitting angsty teens? I feel like a schmuck!" I can't remember if we drove, or were ferried there in a school bus. It hardly matters, but I recall that I was hanging out with my friend James Wilson, who in creative writing went by the more creative name, Jim "Driftwood" Wilson. We had a dormitory room on campus, so the college semester must have been over already, and according to the event schedule there was a dance/mixer for Manuscript Day attendees. It was probably stupid, but we thought we'd go check it out anyway. I don't recall how I met Melissa. I think she was outside the dance with her friends. Did she smoke? Maybe she was outside smoking. Smoking was a very adult thing to do, and a little rebellious. If you ever want to keep a teen from smoking, the best thing to do is to make the teen's 12-year-old sibling start smoking. That ought to kill the cool. But maybe I am giving her bad habits she didn't have. Melissa was wearing a long red velvet dress, appropriate for a more formal dance that this. She had long wavy dark brown hair, and she had an aquiline nose that I thought, for some reason, made her look a little witchy--in a good way. We all agreed that the dance was very stupid, but she asked me if I wanted to dance anyway. It would be ironic--we would be dancing and it would seem like we were enjoying ourselves, but of course we would be mocking it at the same time. It was a plan that couldn't fail. We danced, or rather swayed or whatever passed for dancing, with my arms around her waist and hers around my neck and she was warm and her dress was soft and she was very close and everything was very confusing. We went back outside and talked under the moonlight, near the parking lot and the bike racks and the tall brick institutional buildings. She met up with her friends again and we said goodnight, and everything was very chaste but flirtatious: not a kiss was exchanged, but the thought was clearly in the air. Later I ran into James and we went up to the dorm room and hung out with some other people for a while until we all got tired and went to sleep. The next day we received purple t-shirts with a drawing of a cat and an excerpt of William Blake printed on them in pale green: "What immortal hand or eye dare frame thy fearful symmetry?" We went to our workshops and read the pieces for which we'd been deemed worthy of attending the event. We talked about them and tried to give each other suggestions and ideas without really being very negative, mostly out of respect for our own delicate egos and what would come to us in our turns in the hot seat. Around lunch I ran into Melissa and her friends again, and she said they were going to look at some student artwork, did I want to join them? Of course I did. While we walked along, studiously considering each charcoal sketch and conté crayon drawing, someone mentioned The Cure's song, "Killing an Arab." Did you know, she said, that it is based on a novel? 1992 was a very politically correct time, particularly if you were a high school student, and particularly if you were hoping to come across as cool. It was an important question: how could one of the coolest bands--the other being The Smiths--possibly sing "standing on the beach/with a gun in my hand/staring at the sea/staring at the sand/I'm a stranger/killing an Arab"? How could they create such a violent, callous, senseless, and racist song? We looked for explanations. In some ways, perhaps those were better days than these. Somehow, I knew that it was based on a book. I must have picked up this knowledge from someone far, far cooler than myself. Had Scott Flaster or Matt Collar mentioned it? Could I have overheard Jen Burigana talking about it at school? Or was it something that Stacy Walker or Melanie Furchner had mentioned in a letter? I even knew which book it was. "Yes," I said, "it is based on Albert Camus' The Stranger." A letter seems likely--I had read about it somewhere. Like so many other things I had read about but had never heard spoken. It probably didn't help that I was studying not French, but Spanish, where no letters are ignored. Spanish is a more transparent language, and I appreciate that now. I didn't really say, "Yes, it is based on Albert Camus' The Stranger." Instead, I said, "Yes, it is based on AL-bert KAY-mussus The Stranger." Melissa laughed. "You mean al-BEHR ca-MOO?" The witchiness that I found charming the night before seemed much less pleasant now. Any coolness I may have established the evening before vanished. "So that's how you say it," I fumbled. I explained that I needed to meet my friend James before the keynote speech that afternoon, and I excused myself. I did not see Melissa again. A few weeks after school was out, I bought a copy of The Stranger. That was my revenge: maybe Melissa and her friends knew how to pronounce Camus, but damn it--I was going to read the book! I read it, but I still didn't feel cool. [Edit: James Wilson tells me that I have it all wrong! Manuscript Day was a separate event, and that the young lady with her fancy French pronunciation was at a different event, a weekend arts conference, where they gave us different purple t-shirts. This makes more sense, now that I think of it, as the charcoal sketches would be out-of-place at Manuscript Day.] (1 Comment |Comment on this)
favoriteplum	10:01a	you have a pointless knife, and a broken 50's radio the size of a small table. you are on an island surrounded by natives and Russian Novels personified riding on monstrous machines. Do you stab someone for their skin, seal up the table as a raft, and absurdly attempt to set sail? Or do you sit under the table for hours, peaking at the Russian Novel, trying to fix the radio which doesn't have an outgoing signal nor ... good luck. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
travisezell	9:01a	oh good, i'm murdering rapists in my dreams now I'm trying really hard to piece together the couple of sparse scenes I remember from my dream. Readers who actually read posts about my dreams should be warned, this one is all dark ewwy stuff. I don't know why. I saw the opening to the terrible serial killer movie Suspect Zero yesterday, and most of The Hudsucker Proxy, and then went to bed thinking about how to logline-ize Mexico, but honestly I've been in a pretty decent mood, not a very dark place. Dreams are just dreams, you know? I don't pick them. Anyway this one featured character actor Roy Brocksmith as a bad man, a creepy businessman who raped strippers in their club. Somehow he had the money or the connections that this was overlooked, that he was never punished. Then my friend (loosely Brie in the dream, though also others) was going to have some interactions, no wait I think did, and she wasn't assaulted but she was creeped out, and (god I wish I could remember details) she was dreading future encounters with this man. So I went to this club and I went into the back room and I went up to Roy Brocksmith (or maybe it was the actor from Suspect Zero, Kevin Chamberlin; probably it was a conflation of both), and I took a sharpened chrome chopstick which I cannot tell you why I had, this thick skewer, and I delicately and calmly shoved it through his throat and out the back side, then watched him drop and wheeze blood and grow still. And then I calmly walked out. I got sort-of-Brie and put her in a car and we drove casually away from the club down what I think was Hawthorne, as cops and civilians all started racing toward the club to see the carnage. She had no idea what had happened in there and we didn't speak of it, but when I told her she wouldn't have to go back and deal with him she was too smart to not know what had happened. I remember knowing that we had a good chance of getting away without even an investigation because so many people hated this guy and wanted him dead, had motive and opportunity, that they had no reason to come all the way down the food chain to me. Still, I didn't want her to know anything so she wouldn't have to deny anything if we ever did get caught. We were on the run now. And then we went to a buffet! I mean, naturally. Why wouldn't we? She really wanted cake, and I really wanted cake, and we went to this Country Home Buffet style restaurant with ten different kinds of cake and we cut ourselves slices, but the idea of the buffet was, you had to cut the most paper-thin slice you could manage, and I remember how difficult slicing the pieces thin enough was, and how long I spent trying to decide between boysenberry ice cream cake and some kind of raspberry cream thing. I think I went for both, but when I dropped my knife in the super-disgusting dumpster-smelling garbage slot beneath the cakes (!!!), so I didn't get the second slice. I think the police showed up, or someone showed up, and they wanted to take me in and I knew it was over, but it was all very vague and all I felt was relief that this girl who wasn't quite Brie had gotten away. I don't even know my relationship to her in the dream. Lover? Friend? Hell, sibling maybe? It's hard not to look at this dream and wonder if it could translate over to the inciting incident/opening of Mexico. I laid in bed repopulating the dream slightly, adding Carter to the strip club or even making Carter someone Martin ("I") would hire to dispose of this Brocksmithy guy. I didn't know why running to Mexico made sense. Maybe Carter was going into hiding? Maybe Carter was hired to get them across the border, a sort of ferrier? And I don't know how the characters would develop the central-to-the-story pipedream of living rich south of the border, either. But all in good time. It's morning. Despite my disturbing dream, I'm hungry. Current Mood: surprisingly hungry Current Music: the coral - waiting for the heartaches (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 8th, 2009
travisezell	10:51p	the first time's always a little awkward When I got the RACC grant to post-produce Open, they told me I couldn't do any work on it at all, not even editing, before January 1st, if I wanted any compensation from them for that work. So I shelved the entire project (a move that cost me well more than the three months I'd anticipated; I didn't get rolling again for almost a full year). To take my mind off the multi-thousand dollar production I'd just paused, I started talking to Jeff about doing another "sketchpad film," a one-day shoot based on a rushed script, using unrehearsed actors and a single controlled location. I'd done several of these before -- my Godard knock-off Love is Suicide ("#1"), my Theatre-of-the-Absurd knock-off Short Film ("#2"), my film built out of improv 1000 Pieces ("#4," since my attempt at #3 fell through), and my split-screen kinky silent film Bathwater ("#5"). I had months to kill, no steady job and no production in the works. It was time for #6. It actually took over a month for things to fall into place, which is unusual for the sketchpad films, and the script was somewhat more complex than its predecessors -- so much so that the one-day shoot bloated to three before it was complete -- but the end result was Every Room is Empty, whose title I believe was a phrase from a dream, though I'm not sure anymore. Maybe I just made it up. Many of my films have played to crowds larger in theaters grander, but none of my films have played in a legitimate festival before tonight's screening of the Northwest Film & Video Festival. Every Room is Empty, something I threw together to keep myself (and my comrades) busy while I waited for the year to roll by so I could return to a larger project, was the one to finally break my festival cherry. The screening went well. I think it was one of the better films in tonight's shorts showcase, but I'm hardly objective. I'm pretty sure it was the strongest straight narrative work. In fact, I think I can safely say it was one of the two best films in that program (by far its strongest competition, a film called Passenger about a coyote riding the MAX, suffered only from its length). No offense meant to the other filmmakers, obviously. I did have to go up front with many other filmmakers and talk about the film, and I cannot say I excelled at that portion of the night's proceedings. I was more prepared for Q&A than I was to just tell people what it was I'd made. I felt the story of making it on a whim and with poor preparation would sound self-inflating and falsely modest; I felt the story of losing nearly a third of my footage and having to improvise a third act in the editing would sound like apologetic backpedaling. So I mumbled something about writer's block and writing a story out of the inner monologues and inner dialogues that fill my head when I face the blank screen/page, and I handed the mic away as fast as I could. Like I said, I think I could have done a good Q&A session but nobody had questions; Thomas just asked us to tell the audience "something about our work," and I had nothing prepared to say. Plus, public speaking, yikes. But otherwise the event went well, the film seemed well-received, and I saw some faces I don't see as often as I'd like. It's funny, I'm working on completing my eighth or ninth short film (depending on how you count Avalanche) and this will be my first "official selection" credit. And "official selection" isn't even that big a deal! Not like I won an award here. Anyway, all that happened. ERIE is out there, did something, and has a second screening. That means if anybody reads this you have one more chance to go see my film, and please do. Friday night at 8:45pm at the Whitsell. Maybe I'll be better prepared to speak to the group after. But I'll be honest: probably not. I'm a lousy self-promoter. Ask anyone. It's probably at least 50% of why I've been single for so long. But boy, that's a conversation for another night, eh? Current Mood: tired at midnight Current Music: pixies - vamos (1 Comment |Comment on this)
pdxpix [ drjeff ]	7:51p	Ah, the good old days when the sun was shining... I still have some leaf pictures that I took a couple weeks ago and have been lazy about editing. I'll hopefully trickle them all out before winter hits for real. :) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
meestagoat	8:30a	what i just wrote Find out how your congressperson voted here, and find their contact info here. Dear Congresswoman Schakowsky, Thank you for voting for health reform and AGAINST the Stupak Amendment. I am horrified that in this historic moment, the House chose to curtail women's reproductive rights. Thank you for standing for all women to ensure that abortion remains not just legal, but affordable. I am so disheartened today. I am a young woman who is relatively healthy and currently able-bodied, but who has many friends and family members with serious medical needs. Health care reform is the most important political issue to me right now, bar none. I know people who have gone bankrupt after becoming ill or disabled. I want to celebrate the House's passing of the health care reform bill as a victory, a way of finally righting the injustice that is our current health care system -- but I cannot celebrate, knowing that women's rights have been, once again, thrown under the bus by centrist Democrats. Thank you for standing for what's right and for not betraying women. I don't know if this amendment can be stripped from the bill or weakened in some way, but if it can, I encourage you to do everything you can to make that happen. Congresswoman, thank you for fighting the good fight. I am proud to say I voted for you. Sincerely, me (5 Comments |Comment on this)
travisezell	12:15a	being whatever it is i do Friday I worked. This is only novel because half the week was spent in a headcold daze, either not at work or half out of it while at work. Friday felt like a normal day again. Then, dinner with Brie. Then, movie marathon with Brie, Martha and Spacecat. The theme: buddy movies! We watched Midnight Cowboy (to be fair, Brie and I only caught the second half), then See No Evil, Hear No Evil (the mostly forgotten hilarious/awful comedy starring Gene Wilder as a deaf man and Richard Pryor as a blind man who are wrongly accused of a murder), then Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Decent day, good fun, all around. Got my ass out of bed, trekked through zero-visibility motherfucker rain to Petco, got Spacecat some actually-good-for-her dry food (I'd been out, poor girl was living off delicious canned food) and clippers for her claws. Martha and I (and a towel burrito) worked together and we clipped my girl's claws for the first time. She didn't love it but she didn't freak out either and was a very good kitty. (We rewarded her with some of my canned chicken. She's gonna get fat!) Woke up too late and a little sick and didn't go to the NW Film/Video Fest's "BarCamp," which I'd wanted to, but made it with Martha and her beau to "What Is Wrong With This Picture?", in which a critic hilariously and unapologetically goes through some volunteer rejects from the festival and explains why their films sucked. The tone of the thing was somewhere between MST3K/RiffTrax and Writing Group. It was worth attending. Went over to Laika and Leif laid Open rushes out to HD tapestock for me. The Downstream color timing session went really well and I'm happy with the final footage quality (though it was somewhat more expensive than I'd hoped. So it goes!), but we found out today there was some sort of timecode fuck up on Downstream's part when laying my clips out to my hard drive. So unfortunately tomorrow I'm going to try to spend a couple of hours minimum at Laika conforming my edit by hand. I have approximately 48 cuts that will have to be synced by hand, visually, to my rough edit. So it goes! Tomorrow evening will be my first (real) festival screening, Every Room is Empty plays first in the Short III program at 7pm at the Whitsell Auditorium. Hope to see you all there? Aw come on. I've been so busy between Open and Every Room is Empty I haven't had any time to write in the last couple of days. (Admittedly, that and recovering from a shitty shitty cold. Still have a phlegmy throat.) Oh, and the medicine Mr. Doctor gave me? He told me I'd take a pill a day for 20 days and in 2-3 months there's a 50% chance the splotches would clear up, so I wasn't even looking to see if there was a change in my condition. Well if you look real close you can still kind of tell it's there, but my skin is entirely skin-colored again and I look like a regular naked dude (who could stand to lose 15, 20 pounds) when I take my shirt off. So, holy shit, how about that? Travis Ezell: movie watcher, kitty-daddy, busy filmmaker who wishes he wrote more, and regular naked dude. That's me in a nutshell. Current Mood: normalizing? Current Music: wax tailor - hypnosis theme / the baseballs - umbrella (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 7th, 2009
pdxpix [ drjeff ]	10:25p	It's trippy out there! The skies were pretty interesting tonight... And here's one from a week or so ago, somewhere along Cornelius-Shefflin Road. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
pdxpix [ inkytwist ]	10:01p	colours! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
favoriteplum	1:21p	Zoe Keating Nov 10 Fillmore, SF Opening for & accompanying Imogen Heap (call venue for times, and get there early!) Nov 17 CAS Planetarium in Golden Gate Park, SF TEDx SF 4pm to 8pm (a few tickets left at http://www.tedxsf.org) (Comment on this)
favoriteplum	1:05p	'I'm going to get you a car. Just stick with me a little longer and I'll get you a car. Maybe a Prius'. Repeat. You live your life a certain way. Then, after 8 years, he didn't come home for 3 weeks. When he does, he says 'Never mind. Go sell it'. Very shortly, he's gone, leaving me with a 2 bedroom apt full of accumulated stuff. He helped with the rent for 2 months, was it? It took me 6 to be able to open his room's door, figuratively speaking. He went and bought a house, by himself. Why am I a jerk? (Comment on this)
Friday, November 6th, 2009
remy	10:52p	the nursery is all ready, just waiting for caden (he was due yesterday) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
favoriteplum	4:52p	Don't believe what you read on the internet. What next? (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
pdxpix [ windfaerie ]	3:51p	A question for fellow photographers: I'm planning an interesting concept photo for this year's holiday card. Key to the photo is violent/beautiful rocky Oregon coastline w/ waves crashing in the background. I'm aiming for something a bit like Yachats when the tide comes in and explodes along the shore but closer than the 4-hour drive needed to get there. Any suggestions for such a stormy/tumultuous location as a backdrop? x-posted to damnportlanders (1 Comment |Comment on this)

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