Great Live Paper

Is it wrong

2012-01-05T19:28:00.002-07:00

to want to see Mission Impossible 4?

RSS Subscription Filtering

2011-11-07T08:06:00.001-07:00

The problem? Between Blogger, Facebook, Vimeo, Youtube, Flickr, my thomasjcastillo.com portfolio site and Strong Mental Images, my new BGSU blog, it's a little difficult to keep everything aligned.

The solution? Designate Blogger as my content creation hub, Vimeo/Youtube/Flickr for hosting, and utilize RSS subscriptions on Facebook, the BGSU blog, and my portfolio site in order to showcase specific content.

The complication? Filtering the rss feed so that I can showcase that specific content I mentioned. I want to set up a structure that doesn't subscribe to every old thing I've ever posted, just some targeted posts that are fit for public consumption. And because my election blogs are not pretty.

The work? Well, luckily there are some tools available. But it's not as easy as one would think. In my case, a Yahoo service called Pipes seemed to be the best fit, but I do wonder why feed filtering is not more common. Anyhow, I fought with Pipes and won (with plenty of help from the examples provided by numerous other users).

So, how does it work, exactly? Well, Pipes allows one to subscribe to an rss feed and then filter the feed by a parameter like date or tag and then send out that filtered feed as its own rss feed, ready for subscription. So I'm filtering my raw GLP feed for the "Public" tag. Anything posted to GLP with that tag will go out to my other Online Presences. Here's my pipe. And it's workin, kinda.

The trouble comes in two forms: Facebook and the BGSU blog. Facebook is a simple case. Used to be you could subscribe to an rss feed via the Notes application, but at last look they just ain't accepting those feeds anymore. In September they were. Now they're not. The best way? Just an old-fashioned manual link in the post box.

The BGSU blog is a tough nut to crack. It's a Wordpress-powered system, but it appears that only a small sample of themes are available for use. And even those don't seem to respond well to my theme-editing attempts. I have tried the feed subscription on numerous themes, but it just doesn't seem to actually appear on the blog. So I'm still in the realm of Copy and Paste. We'll see if this one gets through.

Bowling Green Diaries

2011-09-11T13:40:00.001-07:00

It rains a lot in Bowling Green. At least, a lot compared to Tucson. We have a basement, and water will occasionally seep in after a heavy, or even just light but persistent, rain. But that's not much of a problem: a little mopping and we're good.

Alright, so here's the juicy stuff: We did all of our rental-hunting over the internet. We missed out on our first choice due to my lack of timeliness and ambition but April hit a homerun by venturing onto to the second page of Google search results and we found a super-duper place we got it!

So, the house has a lot of upside: it's in good shape, it's close to school and downtown and parks and shopping, it's got two stories and plenty of space. The downside: a small, unfenced yard (not unusual around here), a light-but-present cat pee odor on the stairs, and no washer and dryer. Or so we thought! To our surprise, a used but very much working washer and dryer greeted us upon venturing into the basement. And a basement! What?! It's all very "back East" and quaint! And I'm gonna put my tools down there and work on stuff and hell if I'm not looking through the Craig's List for a drill press...and a bench press. It's all tools and muscles here in B.G.

But there's a problem. It's the washing machine. Or more precisely, the relationship between the washing machine and the sump-pump. Ongoing, low-level hostilities that every once in a while erupt into open battle.

For those who don't know, because I sure didn't, the sump-pump is this little device that sits in a small, concrete-lined basin in the basement. It's job is to pump water out and to keep water from coming back in. Now, the pump works like a charm when it is on but nothing will drain out of the basin when the pump is off. There's no fallback, as far as I can tell, if the pump breaks, or the electricity goes out, or, as so often happens, the pump fails to activate. So, the pump has to activate when the washer drains and the means to do that is an inconspicuous little floatie attached to the pump switch, like so:

It's like a toilet but different. This thing is supposed to float when the water hits a certain level, thus flipping the pump switch and draining the little basin. But it don't always work out that way. One moment it's floating harmlessly around the basin, detached from the pump switch, like it has nothing better to do than take a swim. The next, it's caught oh-so-tenuously against the side of the basin and refuses to lift up enough to activate the switch. The next, it's bobbing up and down in a fit of performance anxiety, able to float but not enough to really do the job. And as this is all happening, water is pouring running out of the basin and onto our basement floor, like so:

It all happens in a matter of seconds. Hear the washer starting to drain and walk over to take a peek? It's too late. Get your galoshes. Bring a canoe. Grab your life raft, like so:

So that's been the big domestic challenge. That and the fleas. And that's my opener. When people ask how I'm doing, if they're really asking the question, I tell them about the sump-pump and the floatie. It occurs to me, now, that I could just remove the floatie entirely and flip the switch on by hand whenever we do a load of laundry. But then I wouldn't have an opener. And I wouldn't be the guy who has trouble with his sump-pump. And it would be no fun to talk to people, because other than that everything really is going well.

Next Post: A Delightful Game of Foot-Ball!

Ugghh. The Killing.

2011-06-23T13:03:00.004-07:00

The Killing was pretty disappointing. In retrospect, I'm glad Dead only had a six-episode season because it was headed toward the same territory. I think, conceptually, instead of expanding its world the The Killing pretty quickly and needlessly limited its world. I'm talking characters and incidents that are purely plot devices, with no real-world motivation: The fiancee OR the FBI OR the casino manager. I'm talking a severe and puzzling lack of basic realism: No actual investigating unless the plot calls for it, no substitute teacher when Ahmed walks into his classroom, no professional repercussions for leaking crime-scene photos. I'm talking time spent on completely un-compelling plot threads: The fiancee again, the nuts and bolts of the political campaign, the local billionaire. I think something like this would work if The Killing marketed itself as, say, Happy Town, but there's just a failure to meet very basic genre standards (Not a good thing, Veena Sud). Which is a shame because the show has a lot going for it. It looks great. Joel Kinnaman is fun to watch. Seattle serves as a unique backdrop. But as the season played out, the best thing on the show was the title sequence.

FCPXXX

2011-06-22T10:23:00.002-07:00

Am I supposed to have an opinion one way or another?

I'll probably go Apple with my next purchase...but if FCP has changed so drastically, that really undercuts my rationale for sticking with the Higher-Cost Machine. Perhaps it might save some dough to go Windows? Games! At the same time, I've been pretty solidly unimpressed with Premiere Pro, and the various Adobe suites still cost a bundle. Avid is...just tough to look at as an option at over $2k. I like the aggressive price point of FCPX, but (as I've seen pointed out elsewhere), the savings might get eaten up by having to buy new plug-ins/compression schemes/translation software. Plus I'm feeling that FCP7/Studio will go up in price, not down, in the immediate future.

My dream bundle would be something like FCP7, Photoshop, After Effects, and Pro Tools. But it's also possible to drop Photoshop and Pro Tools for some decent open-source alternatives. Thoughts?

The Social Network and The Oscar Problem

2011-06-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

The Social Network is an exceedingly well-made film about Facebook. For all of the skill that went into making the film, however, it is remarkably not very compelling.

Fincher is in full Oscar-chase mode here, and I think the restraint of his direction, while perfectly fine on its own terms, robs the film of basic humor, irony, and any potential Guignolesque fun. Everything is played really damn straight (The Winklevi being a genuinely entertaining exception), and, conceptually, I'm wondering if the project would have been better conceived as a farce than as an Oscar-season drama. Looking forward, the greatest contribution of this film may well be that it marks the decline of the courtroom drama and the rise of the out-of-court settlement drama.

Structurally, the film boils down to a bottle episode with flashbacks. This is good stuff, from a writing standpoint. After an extended opening, the dramatic equivalent to an action set-piece, the film finds its structural center in some very basic and effective depositionroom scenes that then allow for several long digressions: Harvard. Silicon Valley. Computers. It's all very well done, but the subject matter was only modestly interesting at best, and I never particularly got the sense the Zuckerburg and his Latin pal were friends apart from declaring themselves friends. While in theory I'm all for the unlikable protagonist, the failure here is that the audience is asked to feel strongly one way or another about Facebook. And it's frankly just not that interesting.

Anyhow, the film as a whole comes off, on the small screen, as a very self-serious collaboration of major talents (Sorkin, Fincher, Eisenberg) at the top of their respective games...and it's really hard to care. We're in Aviator territory, is what I'm saying. I do think the film will stand the test of time as a portrait of a specific moment in American history, just not a very fascinating one.

Blowing off some steam

2011-04-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Has there ever been a program more useless than Adobe Premiere? Crash city, I tell ya.

The Visual Structure Lesson

2011-03-25T00:11:00.002-07:00

North by Northwest Opening Credit Sequence (Link to Youtube)

Today we will discuss structure. And we start from an ominous blank page:

Structure is a big thing. Structure can happens whether you intend it to or not. As it relates to film and media, I suspect that many of us are already familiar in an informal way with structure because we’ve been trained by watching so many films and TV shows...and the local news, and commercials, and music videos and video games. In fact, you are probably inside a structure right now.

Films and other time-based mediums teach you how to watch. And obviously there are tons of different mediums and tons of different genres within those mediums. And my suspicion is that much of how “good” a given film or show is has to do with how well it teaches you how to watch it. So a lot of being a successful filmmaker has to do with successfully teaching your audience how to watch your movie.

Does structure mean anything to you, in terms of filmmaking or storytelling? Think about it. any metaphors come to mind? Any images? Are you familiar with three-act structure?

Okay. So today I’m going to give you an overview on visual structure. I didn’t invent this, this comes from a film producer and teacher named Bruce Block, who teaches some courses at USC who taught some people who I learned it from. So please address complaints to Bruce Block. I will accept compliments, however.

Here’s the very basic idea, with a few of my own thoughts thrown in:

Just as written media has structure, visual media has structure. Just as a script has it’s rising action and it’s climax, so do visuals. It’s about understanding and controlling patterns to create an effect upon your audience.

If you’ve taken an art class-If you have only drawn a picture-you are familiar with these basic design elements: Line/Point, Shape, Value (Tone), Color, Space/Form, Texture. Now, I've seen some different lists, but they generally just use different words for the same elements.

What Block does is apply these elements to movies. He calls them the Basic Visual Components: Space or Dimension, Line, Shape, Tone, Color, Movement and Rhythm.

So these are the building blocks. But there's another concept, and this relates entirely to how the building blocks fit together. Block calls it contrast and affinity.

Block breaks it down as such:

Contrast = Greater Visual Intensity.
Affinity = Less Visual Intensity.

An Introduction to Block's Visual Structure

View more presentations from thomasjcastillo.

The Lost Rhythm GIFs:

How does this all relate to movies? It has to do with visual progression, or how the components develop over time. So let's take a look at a couple of things. When you watch, look for the overall visual progression and then start to think specifically about what elements are changing over time.

Psycho opening title sequence

Titles designed by Saul Bass: The Breakdowns

~~Blue Velvet opening sequence~~ *I deleted this from the Youtube*

Some last thoughts:

Contrast and affinity works in a few ways. It can work within the frame. It can work frame to frame. Or it can work more broadly, from section to section of a given film.

Moreover, it's always a sliding scale. Contrast and affinity is always relative to what came before it.

Finally...you are probably already doing this, even without thinking about it. It's pretty intuitive. It can be pretty easy to get lost in the minute details of shape and line and movement, but all of this stuff is just here to support your filmmaking ideas.

Strawberry Progressions

2011-03-16T22:14:00.001-07:00

Shuggie Otis, 1971:

The Brothers Johnson, 1977:

AWOL, 1994:

DJ Quik, 1995:

Outkast, 2000:

I'm gonna name my kid Delroy.

2011-03-08T00:10:00.002-07:00

Posted here mostly so that I don't forget.

Still not feeling The Chicago Code, though. The show needs some snow plows, stat.

Late Night Sample Hunt

2011-03-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

MF Doom's One Beer

Cortex's Huit Octobre 1971

Still not sure how I feel about Marathon Man.

2011-03-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

Definite fan of No Escape, however.

Happy Birthday, Old Man

2011-03-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

Re-evaluating The Love Movement. Really didn't dig it when it came out, but I find myself randomly nodding head to its beats in the shower.

Important story on Ars

2011-02-11T00:30:00.001-07:00

about an attempt to crack Anonymous-and the severe repercussions of that attempt.

Some follow-up here...and some major political connections here.

I'm just not sure most mainstream media outlets have the expertise to write this kind of story, much less understand how it connects to the wider world.

My commentary? Barr stepped in his own dookie, and people around him will pay most heavily. Anonymous is not to be taken lightly, for good or for ill. I really have no side to take as far as the cat/mouse game. But this is the way of things. I don't think the FBI can break up Anonymous anymore than Anonymous can break up the FBI. I mean, websites will go down, data will be compromised, doors will be knocked down and US Attorneys will make careers. There will be pain. But these things are gonna happen whether this particular group goes down or not.

You know what it is? It's Stand Alone Complex. I hope those security clowns never get to sniff a government contract again, but not putting much faith in that hope. I feel a little sorry for the programmers, secretaries, and janitors that will lose their jobs. I hope everyone thinks a little bit harder about unintended consequences next time around. But my gut tells me better Bradley Manning than Kim Jong-il.

My WTF Addiction

2011-02-11T00:05:00.001-07:00

Marc Maron is an interesting dude. Not sure that I like him all the time, but it never fails as far as interesting and funny moments. It's the This American Life of comedy. Nerdist comes closest, in that Hardwick actually tries to ask somewhat serious, interesting questions about the business from time to time. But it's a distant second.

For straight up comedy, I'm doing Pod F. Thompkast. Comedy Death Ray and some others were funny, but the Bunch of Guys Talking Shit model just starts blending into one another pretty quickly.

Whither MyJazzWorld?

2011-02-10T23:52:00.000-07:00

To the Island of Lost Websites, friends. I'll show some love to the SwissGroove radio site in the Required Readin' section.

Top 10 Obscure But Superb Science Fiction Novels

2011-02-10T23:46:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Obscure But Superb Science Fiction Novels

Mostly linking here so that I don't forget.

Thoughts of the day...

2011-02-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

while fighting with the towel dispenser at the YMCA.

In retrospect, I was a little tough on the Chicago Code. Pilots are probably the worst thing to review if one is going to review a TV show. So I'll watch a few more before getting all mean again.

Hypothetical Facebook Status Updates

2011-02-08T02:28:00.002-07:00

2:21 AM: Looking at goofs for Like Father, Like Son on IMDB.

2:22 AM: Remarkably, there are only two listed.

2:23 AM: I can think of at least one other goof: The plot.

2:24 AM: And another goof: Making the movie in the first place.

2:26 AM: Directed by Rod Daniel, the man who brought you such cable TV classics as Teen Wolf, K-9, Beethoven's 2nd, and Home Alone 4, the one where Macaulay Culkin is 29, unemployed, and has to move back in with his parents.

The Chicago Code: Minor Notes

2011-02-08T01:48:00.003-07:00

Pilot-itis. Too much, too fast, to put it succinctly. Too much narration. Too much set-up. Network shows rush things too damn much. Let something sink in. I'm gonna watch the next few at least, but I got the feeling that it's going to be one of those things that I watch more out of loyalty to The Shield than because I actually like it. Anyhow, I hope they bring snow plows into this.

I found myself not caring about the back stories. The characters didn't earn them. Delroy Lindo had a nice moment with his, but the others were just wasting time. I think his little monologue should have started the show. He's already the most interesting character, so it will be interesting to see how his story turns out. I mean, he can't be all bad.

Main problem with the storyline? The whistle-blowing accountant was a wasted opportunity to really show the depth of Lindo's corruption and villainy. Maybe Lindo has her fired. Maybe he seduces her. Maybe he just makes her life miserable and her house is flooded. And he still manages to keep her vote, because he gets her some kind of tax break, or he gets her husband a cushy job. I don't see how a little whistle-blowing would result in death. It's cookie-cutter corruption. The problem with corruption is not that bad guys do it, but that they are able to twist good guys into taking part. I'm just not seeing that here. They are leaning action. Needs to get more cerebral.

Don't like Beals as Police Superintendent. Nothing wrong with her performance, but it just makes the world too small. Perhaps having her as lower on the ladder would allow for some bureaucratic obstacles to emerge later on in the show. Don't like the dead (or just ruined? I couldn't figure it out) father stuff. They could have held that longer, maybe kept it as something Beals discovers later on. And what the heck is she doing dealing with personnel matters?

As for the veteran Chicago dude (from Australia, I'm reading), he's alright. The car chase was a little too choreographed. I would not have made his dead father a good cop, either. Maybe he was a bad cop. Maybe Lindo helped his Dad out with something. Hopefully some kind of complications surface.

And the Kid. Maybe he can be Lindo's inside man. Get some Infernal Affairs/Departed action going on.

For me, the specter of The Shield hangs over this thing. And Terriers, though I can't say I loved it as much as the folks at AV Club. And The Wire. And even Daybreak, which I felt deftly melded the Groundhog Day thing with cop show and big city corruption elements. I guess I was looking too hard for that Terry Crowley moment. That moment wouldn't be no-name Mexican dude getting capped before we can care, but having Beals cap him, or something along those lines. The original sin.

Or here's a thought for the show: People who are trying to do good end up doing some bad. And I'm not necessarily talking about doing morally bad, just that things turn out more difficult or tangled or just plain worse because of the ostensibly good actions they take. And people who are ostensibly doing bad end up doing some good.

Do I like Wolfen?

2011-02-07T23:54:00.001-07:00

I like the atmosphere. I like cities. I like the images of old South Bronx. I like the way it's shot. I like the Wolfen-cam. I like the scene between Finney and Olmos on top of that bridge. I like Native American ironworkers in the city, which is actually historically-based. I like Tom Noonan. I like Gregory Hines. I really like wolves jumping through glass.

Do I like the movie as a movie? Not particularly. As a film entertainment product, it meanders from police procedural to political thriller to urban horror to supernatural thriller to eco-thriller, but never quite commits to doing one thing really well. It kinda has that Bad Michael Mann vibe going, where it looks really good seemingly at the price of being really boring. And, worst of all, it's not scary, at least as far as wolves are involved.

Outside of the story and its de rigeur action-gore scares, the movie has some genuinely haunting images. The aforementioned scene atop the bridge. Or the Wolfen-cam tracking through the devastated Bronx streets. Or just regular old shots of people wandering the barren cityscape. These short interludes have a quality that I can best describe as "Holy Moly". I understand the wolves as this device to symbolize the decay of the city and as an entrance-point for the character to, I guess, do some ghetto tourism, but these city shots simply overwhelm everything that the narrative has to offer.

And it's interesting to note the place the Twin Towers have in this film. Visually, they seem to signify...not sure exactly. The downtown money and politics that leeches the Bronx dry? It's a potent visual contrast, but the politics of the film are maddeningly nebulous, especially as the movie seems to end on some sort of pseudo-mystical message about the emptiness of modern society. Development is...bad? The environment is...good? The main problem I have with all this is that the Wolfen are only killing these developers to stop them from building on their sacred hunting grounds...which I guess are populated by the poor downtrodden souls who happen to be living in the South Bronx at the time, and who are remarkably absent from the film.

Anyhow, anyone who was involved with David Holzman's Diary gets a pass.

As you may have noticed

2011-02-07T22:56:00.000-07:00

this blog has expanded, from a 660 pixel width to a slightly more generous 750 pixel width.

Why haven't I heard of this?!

2011-02-07T15:37:00.000-07:00

Guest post by Tony Comstock on James Fallows' regarding actualities.

I've mostly seen this kind of thing in reference to early cinema, Muybridge and Lumiere and Edison ad such, though I can't recall if the terms actualities or actual films were used in my education. Reminds me of the little that I know of Scott Curtis' work in terms of the science film.

A related, perhaps inverse, idea is of fictionalized science in cinema: The impossible physics of everything from fake Youtube videos to wuxia films to Hollywood action film cliches (How do I do accents in Windows? Arrrghhh!). I'm thinking specifically of how movies capture motion in ways both possible and impossible. The famous Legolas shot from The Two Towers comes to mind.

And to take it further, here's the Mythbusters, busting one of these Youtube viral video thingies. Motion pictures used to debunk motion pictures:

I'm waiting for the next level, a parody video that confirms something that is actually impossible.

Not-so-Great Live Paper

2011-02-03T01:38:00.000-07:00

I've been humbled by a lot of things recently. The film is not ready, again. I need a win.

Thoughts on Storyboards and Shot Lists

2011-02-03T00:28:00.000-07:00

One of the beautiful aspects of filmmaking (and by beautiful I mean mysterious and maddening) is that there's no one particular way of doing things. What works well for one person may not work so well for another. What works well for one person may not work so well on that same person's next project.

Which brings me to the topic of the day.

What's the use of storyboards? Of shot lists? When are they necessary, if they are necessary? When are they useful, and when are they just taking up time?

These thoughts emerge from two experiences:

First, my time as a D.P. on a super secret web series. It was challenging due to the typical constraints of time, of budget, and of staffing that are common at this (lowest of the low!) level. But it's also been challenging on the level of artistic process. I've been struggling to understand and nail down my own approach, role, and responsibilities. All in all, things went pretty well but it was a process of evolution as much as one of execution.

Second, in my experience as a film teacher, specifically as a teacher of people in the midst of production. The storyboard/shot list assignment is an old standby, but in some ways I feel that it can be a time waster. Now, it's likely more an issue of when than whether the assignment is given out. Sometime during or immediately after the script takes shape is my sense of boards, and just before shooting for the shot list.

For me, storyboards work best as a pre-production creative tool for directors. A way of establishing a visual scheme. A way of looking not just at cool individual shots, but how shots as a whole work together. A way of solving visual problems that emerge from visual effects work. And, remember, all cinema is visual effects work.

Storyboards are cool because they give you a reason TO NOT think in terms of Master Scene or Shot/Revere Shot shooting. Why spend all that time drawing the same stuff over and over again?

On a set, however, I find that storyboards are generally pretty useless. At this level of filmmaking, the storyboard never looks much like the set. The sun is always in the wrong damn place. The physics of the space, of the lens, never quite work out. And it can be tough to figure out exactly what the heck the board means if you are not good at drawing.

Genre has a lot to do with it. Storyboard an animation, always. A short film, sure. A soap opera? What would be the point?

Most crucially to me, the storyboard is great at describing what is in front of the camera. Not so good at describing what's behind the camera.

Hence the shot list. Where storyboards are expressive, shot lists are analytical. Storyboards are primitive. They are cave drawings. Shot lists are rulers and protractors. Still creative, just in a different way. Shot lists, like mathematics, are a way of conceptualizing abstract thoughts. Imagine the idea that you can shoot the last shot of the film first and the first shot of the film last! That is basically the foundation of what we know as "film school".

The shot list doesn't always have to be written down. If it is not written down, it emerges from nature. Or you just stay there all night.

In a wider sense, I'm interested in how others approach this board and list issue as directors and cinematographers. It's very nuts and bolts stuff, but it carries significant aesthetic implications.

So here's the plan...

2011-01-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

I settled on a name for my not-for-profit arts/education/media production company: The Institute for Moving Pictures, also known as "imp".

The Alliance of the Strange is now a family of web presences: the aforementioned imp (which will take the longest to get established), thomasjcastillo.com (a basic portfolio website authored in Wordpress and probably hosted by Bluehost that should be up within the month), and this present blog Great Live Paper, now formally rededicated to cinema theory and production, local news, basketball analysis, and miscellaneous politics, humor, pictures of old comic books, and television programs.

Future projects are to include be Shootin' Dirty, an ultra-low-budget media production blog and Funky Tucson, a pictures and words micro-local-poetic reportage blog. I'd like to establish these as consistent entries on the GLP blog, and then spin them off from there. All this because I'm not impressed by the layout of tucsoncitizen.com.

I'm dropping a few sites from my links. I don't read Dime Magazine much these days and I think Identity Theory is on permanent hiatus. I'm going to add NBA Playbook and maybe a couple other things.

And that's it. Here's to a more productive and focused new year.

Another potential name for my future company

2010-11-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

Working from the Genshiken example: Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture. I've been tossing this thing around for a while, but keep forgetting when push comes to shove. Seems to me like I have a few distinct things going, ranging from a one-man media and art collective to a production company to a straight up website.

Baby names

2010-08-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

for my new multi-million dollar holding company/oil drilling concern/production company.

Dreames Office. A play on Eames Office. Unfortunately, anything referencing "dreams" is bound to fall short of, you know, actual dreams. Some things are better left to the subconscious.

Random Corporation. What better way to attract research dollars than to confuse clients into thinking I am the reputable and right-leaning if somewhat Cold War-era think tank?

Arcades Project. The Walter Benjamin approach.

I blame Europe and Netflix.

2010-08-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

That's all.

Not for lack of ideas...

2010-06-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

But for lack of patience? Time? Note sure what, but this space has been severely under-utilized for months now.

So, some upcoming topics:

Production Theory: To shot list or not to shot list? And, more specifically, where does one start visualizing? From the blocking or from the camera?

Movie Reviews: The Road, Red Cliff, and more.

Education: As in, what are some good activities I can do in the classroom?

For potential employers...

2010-04-19T22:18:00.000-07:00

Take this site as half a lark.

Two Months Later...

2010-03-08T15:30:00.001-07:00

and 29 is working out okay.

Miracle Valley, there and then

2010-01-07T18:53:00.001-07:00

Lately I’ve been moving away from a strictly cinematic approach toward a reportorial approach. As in, TV news report. Maybe uncomfortably close. Because cinema is artistic and lasting and TV reporting is boring and damn fleeting. A lot of this move is practical, and reflects less a stylistic choice than it does my failure as a filmmaker to make something interesting and good. It reflects failures of vision, craft, of work ethic, of organization, of mental toughness. In short, it reflects my failures as an artist and also as a person.

With that out of the way, I can also say this: Some shift in my perspective of the documentary, of movies in general, and of my perspective on life called for a different approach. At this point in the project, and in my life, I don’t want to spin tales. I want to be here, in the present, talking, telling, and reflecting in as honest a way as I can.

At it’s most basic, I think this means that the film is both closer to writing and closer to radio. And blogging. It’s writing accompanied by pictures accompanied by sound. An audio-visual presentation. It’s basically a movie. Maybe this is just a convoluted way of getting back to where I always was. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just in a Ta-nehisi kind of mood. I do sense a difference, though. It’s more reflection than action. Maybe I’m making the film-essay that I never made in Eisenberg’s class.

Stylistically, I want to stay away from fancy graphics. From visualizing for the sake of visualizing. I wanted the presentation to be more immediate. Not “immediate” in terms of shaky camera, which is where I think I went wrong initially. Immediate in terms of being engaged with my audience as they watch the piece in the present. I’m not sure I am explaining myself clearly, but this is a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot deeper, than I ever got with my thesis committee.

What you will see here on out on this blog will pretty much be the script to the film. I’m going to try to organize the film along a series of blog posts, for lack of a better term. Short, concise statements and stories reflecting on the events in Miracle Valley and my experiences researching those events. I think I was long searching for a method of sharing all of that stuff that was outside of the story, on the edges, and the best way turned out to be just to say it.

On Professionalism...

2010-01-07T18:21:00.004-07:00

The thing that frustrates me about social media and/or Web 2.0 is the proliferation of my online identities. I have a Flickr account that I never use. And a Photoshop.com account that I never use. And a Youtube site that I never update. And a Google Video post that was flagged and pulled by software for copyright violations (It was a wedding video that utilized copyrighted music, but posting it on a free site was the most direct way to share it with the client's friends overseas). And a Facebook page to maintain. And an evidently useless Monster.com resumé to update. And a Myspace page or two that I never visit. And so on and so forth.

I view the web as a space where I can share many aspects of my life and pursue many interests. But I don't necessarily want to share those many aspects in a hundred different chunks. This is practical. It's also philosophical. On this blog, I've posted some political commentary, some light film criticism, some creative thoughts and basketball analysis. And I'd like to keep doing so.

Here's the gist: I'm aware that items that I post on this page may impact my (not yet existent) professional career. I specifically started giving this a thought or two after I was not hired at D'Mention Systems. It wasn't that I thought they did not hire me because of this space, but instead that it got me thinking about the possibilities and limitations of this space. Sure, I've done a very minor amount of profile-editing. But I'm not at this point interested in maintaining yet another rarely-updated space for yet another identity: "Professional Thomas".

If someone wants to not hire me because I did not vote for John McCain, then they are not hiring for the wrong reasons, and I don't want to be associated with them anyway. If someone wants to not hire me because Ben Nelson is not my favorite senator, then they have a real problem. If someone wants to hire me because I'm, you know, an unrepentant lefty, then they are also hiring me for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, if an employer is interested in knowing me and my interests in more than a cursory way, then this is the space to do so.

Social media is awwwright, I guess. The potentially limiting or self-censoring aspects bug me. My resumé directs potential employers to specific resources. If they go off that track, that's either their problem or their reward, and it's entirely their responsibility. I will say that if I don;t want anyone to know it, I don't post it. I'm feeling the post go off the rails a bit, but I'm just gonna say that until someone pays me, I'm keeping it all here: movies, sports, politics, whatever.

In Search Of...

2010-01-06T00:12:00.004-07:00

When will the Leonard Nimoy classic become available on DVD? Anyone know who owns the rights? I loved the music on that show...

In lieu of Free Darko-esque clip art

2010-01-02T12:54:00.002-07:00

Notes on the UA-UCLA basketball game, in preparation for Pascoe's blog comments:

With 3 1/2 Minutes to go, we lead by 11.

Nic Wise has had a horrible scoring game, but he has been good defensively. He disrupted a lot of UCLA possessions with his quick hands and largely contained the opposing guard, both of which helped us build the large margin.

B-Lav's issue, I think, is not one of ability but of decision-making. He chooses odd situations to pass and odd situations to shoot. Same with Parrom, but at least he has an excuse.

Awwright. Now it's done. Arizona wins, 77-63.

Our (lack of) rebounding issue was not as pronounced today, because the Bruins just ain't that good this year. I think part of the issue is just basic awareness of when the other team is shooting. The ball is hitting the rim, and our guys are still guarding their man. Ball-You-Man. Six-shooters. Peripheral vision. Try that sometime, guys.

Jamelle should be banned from double-pumping his layups and interior shots. He's shooting like 5% when he does that, and he has not attempted, you know, a regular shot where he might even draw contact. I like his three-ball, but he is quickly becoming a one-dimensional player.

Well, that's it for now. I should do some other things.

Independent Film Clichés, Volume 1

2009-12-31T23:59:00.003-07:00

I loved Sita Sings the Blues. Liked Humpday. Both movies, though very different in technique, are independents that broke out of the film festival ghetto to reach slightly wider acclaim and audiences. But I can't help but feel that there was a lot of filler on both of those films, probably to nudge them past that programming dead zone of more than an hour but less than 90 minutes of run time. Sita included a couple of unnecessary autobiographical sequences about the filmmaker and the cool but not crucial music video. Humpday probably could have been boiled down to the very last sequence when the guys discuss their impending feat on camera.

I still like and appreciate what the filmmakers accomplished on both of those films, but I also feel cheated by, you know, watching stuff that should probably be included in DVD special features, the next film altogether, or even on the cutting room floor. I think the next stage for independent cinema, especially now that streaming is such a key element in how films are seen, is for someone to make the 36-minute indie breakout hit. And don't get me started on Kelly Reichardt movies.

In the news this week...

2009-12-28T22:41:00.002-07:00

Been a long time gone. I really need to hone in on finishing my film, so I can move on to more important things like work and life. I've gained a lot of weight over the last two weeks or so. The Arizona basketball team is sooo not going to dance this year. The Last Winter was a pretty solid flick for, you know, being on Netflix streaming. I need to hit the theaters more often, and go for long runs in the park.

Call me crazy,

2009-12-04T13:40:00.002-07:00

But I'm just not getting how the social secretary is somehow to blame for the state dinner mess. So she wasn't at the checkpoint. Big deal. I'm really wondering how this specific thing is getting so much play in the media, and the Secret Service is pretty much let off the hook for, you know, not doing its job. It seems like a lot of people want to settle scores with this lady who I hadn't even heard of 'til thus thing went down.

Where have I been?

2009-11-22T21:37:00.004-07:00

Two weeks of health care, Afghanistan, and Arizona Wildcats football kind of shocked and awed me into submission. I guess the purpose of this post is to say that though I am not against all wars, I am against this war. In case I want to run for future office.

Something that I was thinking about: "Fighting a war". I've heard and used this inexact phrase, and it got me thinking. I think the basic problem with this war is that we are fighting the war, not the enemy. Think about it. Fight a war. It doesn't make sense, but that's exactly what we are doing.

Yglesias wrote that we have a moral obligation to help the people of Afghanistan. At least one comment pointed out the imperialist implications of this statement, but I broadly agree with the sentiment. But I think we need to clarify exactly what helping the people of Afghanistan means.

I don't think help is necessarily military in nature. I don't think help is necessarily elections and democracy. I don't think help is an interminable war. I don't think help is necessarily embassies or green zones or new prisons. And it's not necessarily the absence of those things, but there's some ingredient missing. Maybe it's the people of Afghanistan.

Prayers for Fort Hood

2009-11-08T20:42:00.005-07:00

The loss of life is the tragedy here. I could really care less why this man did what he did, and could care even less about designating it as Terrorism or Just Plain Crazy. I mean, it's all just talk at this point, and painfully late talk at that. To get to my point, it doesn't make it any worse if is was an Al-Qaeda plot or any better if it was a lone gunman. It all hurts, and measuring one kind of death to another doesn't strike me as honest.

The cynical side of me says that all the reporting to be done in the coming days and years is just a way to sell ad space and books or flame one another in comments.

As far as the war is concerned (this originally being written as a response to an Yglesias post), it brings into focus just how diffuse the thing is: The Discursive War. The connections between the war and this act are broad, to be sure, but I do believe that we obsess too much over terrorism and training camps when all anyone ever needs is a handgun and a grudge. That goes for terrorists, crazies, or the assholes who shoot up bars or break up house parties every damn weekend. Take a look at your local newspaper on Monday. There's bound to be a few early deaths. Killings. Accidents. Not all stories are the same, but all end with loss, and that loss is painful every damn time.

Our F-35s, our enhanced interrogations, our poppy-eradication programs, our Predator drones and our thousands of troops about to be deployed are useless to stop this kind of act. I know that they are not supposed to do so, but too often we and especially our political and military leaders pretend that that is in fact what all that stuff is doing. It ain't.

Appropriate formats for email attachment

2009-11-06T12:23:00.002-07:00

Don't be sending me attachments in .docx format. Send a .doc, a .pdf, an .rtf, or even an image file like .jpg or .gif. I'm running Appleworks on a five-year-old machine, after all.

Wow.

2009-11-02T22:34:00.002-07:00

Spartacus, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and For a Few Dollars More just posted on Hulu. I think that pretty much fulfills my viewing needs for the week.

Quick thought on Kubrick: Obviously, a master director. But I've never been able to nail down what his films are actually about. The cynical part of me thinks that they are just really, really well made and...that's it. I do think Kubrick, as a filmmaker, is infatuated with men and cares very little for women. His films are very male, to varying degrees of masculinity. That's pretty much all I think about what his films are about. In thinking about Kubrick, my mind gets pretty clouded with film school mythology: He filmed Barry Lyndon purely with candlelight! He ruined Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage! Those kinda things really get on my nerves.

Open thread at 11:20.

2009-10-21T11:20:00.000-07:00

Don't hurt yourself.

Arrgh!

2009-10-13T19:53:00.001-07:00

Pretty much addicted to pirate-themed video games right now.

The truth is

2009-10-12T13:28:00.002-07:00

I have been so depressed (into classic Sega Genesis video games) that I cannot bear to write (make time to write nor come up with anything interesting to say).

The word "irony" comes to mind.

2009-09-20T09:59:00.001-07:00

Too funny, too sad: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html.

Very Interesting

2009-09-10T00:40:00.005-07:00

The politics of this whole thing are crazy complex, but this was just a really, really well-done report.

TMNT

2009-08-31T22:10:00.002-07:00

Just read the first 11 issues of the original Turtles. What a great, great story. The craftmanship is just outstanding. Highly entertaining but also very, very strange. A universe that can only exist in comic books. I need to get my hands on some more issues.

"Man, you come straight out of a comic book."

2009-08-28T14:17:00.008-07:00

Watchmen, the film, reawakened my interest in comic books. I retrieved a stash of comics from my parents' house dating to the early 90's: X-men (circa the Jim Lee relaunch), Punisher: War Zone (The John Romita, Jr./Chuck Dixon relaunch), and four collected volumes of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics that, if I recall correctly, my dad bought for me at Costco back when it was called Price Club.

I've been re-reading and researching (that is, Wikipedia-ing) a lot of information about comic books and the amount of stuff that I missed is pretty mind-numbing. But that leads to a couple of thoughts:

The stuff I was reading was just not that great, but it was good on its own terms. In the early 90's, I woulda been about 10-12, so I'm not sure I woulda quite got Alan Moore or any of the artistic types. But, looking back, the stories are entertaining, the craftsmanship is exceptional, the art is terrific. It's genre, and I wonder going forward if there will be more appreciation of dumb mainstream action/superhero comic books on their own terms. I mean, I'll take the Punisher over La Perdida any day of the week.

It's kind of depressing how many times title are repeatedly relaunched. I'm kinda discouraged as far as catching up is concerned due to the proliferation of titles and maybe even that there is little catching up to do: everything is just perpetually starting over. On the other hand, I'm probably never going to get through Usagi Yojimbo or Cerebus. Best to concentrate on specific story lines...

The medium is an interesting one, especially coming from so many years of film training. You know, beginning, middle, end? No? Comic books almost exist for reinvention, and probably are more like TV as a medium than film per se. I just went through a marathon session of the canceled TV show Day Break and found it to be terrific on its own terms: a 13-episode series. But imagine a show that goes on and on and on, and you end up with a Lost or a BSG...Great shows, but also tiresome, and I think that accounts for the relaunch bug that afflicts comic books.

It's also interesting how powerful the mythologies are for comic books. There are great story lines, but everything is anchored by the origin story. This is both good and bad. It's amazing how enduring the Spider-Man mythology is, for example, but, at the same time, that is basically the only Spider-Man story of any consequence. The characters change, but they never really change.

Post-Watchmen, I also caught another Alan Moore film adaptation, the Hughes Brothers' From Hell. On it's own terms, a decent flick, but I understand it's much, much different than the source material. I'm not sure it's a bad thing. The changes made to the story (Depp's character is an opium addict and psychic, he develops a personal relationship with a potential ripper victim) made complete sense to me. The fact is, ain't no one going to fund a 10-hour mini-series from Alan Moore's book, but they will fund a 2-hour gore fest starring Johnny Depp. It changes the work, but they are different mediums and different things work better in comic form rather than movie form, and vice-versa.

Kickbacks

2009-08-12T12:53:00.002-07:00

Thinking about that New York Times article I linked (lanked?) to yesterday, I gots to thinking about why that particular doctor was called in to put in the stitches.

Could it be a business relationship between the two doctors?

I have a wisdom teeth story. A few years back, I had a dentist that took a look at my teeth and said I needed to get my wisdoms pulled, immediately. He sent me to a surgeon who promptly gave me x-rays (unnecessary, as he could have just asked for them from the dentist) and then tried to schedule me for a surgery. The cost was $1,000. Per tooth. !.

I told my mom and she did some shopping around. We found another dentist who charged less. Not only did he charge less, he took a look at my chompers and said he could easily pull three of the teeth himself, and maybe the fourth. And we did the procedure and he pulled 'em all. Cost? About 300 bones total, as I recall.

Same outcome. Less costly procedure. Took about 30 minutes.

What incentive did my original dentist have for sending me to the surgeon? He certainly had no incentive to find me a bargain, or look up different options. He just sent me to a guy he knew. And I think he did that because the guy he knew would take care of 'im. And, unfortunately, that's how the business works. A lot of greased palms. Back-scratching. Double-dealin'. Kickbacks!

The Cost of Health Care

2009-08-12T01:56:00.004-07:00

People complain all the time about the cost of gas. Or the cost of the movies. Or the cost of eating out.

But at least you know before you get the product or service how much you're paying. You can make an informed decision and either decide to pay or not.

You can easily gauge competitor's prices and go somewhere else if you want to pay less.

But it doesn't seem to work like that when you go to the doctor's office. Or the dentist for that matter. Don't even talk about the emergency room.

It's a hard sell.

In fact, they often don't even sell the service. They just do it, then charge you later.

What does six grand buy? A lot of gasoline. Plenty of movie tickets. Hell, I may never buy six thousand dollars worth of movie tickets in my life. And I like movies. And six grand buys a lot of meals. Depending on where you eat. But where I eat, a lot of meals.

Not in the health care industry.

It buys three stitches, fool!

Another cheat, but I worked so hard on it I just want to keep it.

2009-08-11T20:32:00.001-07:00

"Why would a person endure 4 years of med school, one year as an intern, 3 years of residency and a year as first year doctor, to ceiling out at 250 grand a year?"

I have to fact-check you on that, bro.

First of all, nobody's talking about capping earnings. Reimbursements from Medicaid/Medicare (that's you and me, if you pay taxes), perhaps, but not earnings. A doctor can invest his/her money in whatever they want, run a side-business in vitamin pills (as does my PCP), or sell boutique services at free-market rates (i.e. a butt implant, if one so desires). So you can still get your hustle on and earn "baller money"-though you should probably go into Wall Street or the NBA, not a doctor's office, if 250k doesn't qualify as such.

Second of all, most doctors already make less than 250k, with specialists making much, much more than general practitioners. So any such pay cap would not affect the majority of doctors anyway, and would most likely not affect your PCP in any way, shape, or form. I mean, this is Tucson, not Beverly Hills.

Third of all, many of those super-high-earning specialists make a lot of their money on procedures that are at best only partially covered by insurance, in which case the patient already handles the cost at market rate. And in which case, that market is already rationing care to those who can't pay for those super-special procedures.

Fourth of all, think about how this is set up. The people who are fixing you up when you are already totally messed up make a heck of a lot more than the people who are trying to prevent you from getting messed up in the first place. There's a perverse incentive to let people get un-healthy and fix them rather than encourage people to be and stay healthy.

Fifth of all, think again how this is set up. A lot of doctors get reimbursed from government. Government sets a reimbursement rate. But government does not set the prices. We have no idea why the prices are initially set at the rate they are set. Some doctors charge X, others charge Y. There is no rhyme or reason for the discrepancy. And what we are finding is that some things that cost less actually work better. So reform would allow the government (again, you and me, if you pay taxes) to negotiate a better price, rather than just set a reimbursement rate for an inflated initial price.

Sonia!

2009-08-08T12:32:00.003-07:00

Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate the other day and was officially sworn in today. She is the 3rd female member of the Supreme Court and the first Latina. It ain't the Latina thing that's most notable to me, when I think about it. 3 females? In the whole history of the Supreme Court? That's lame. Three cheers for Sonia. Sorry, haters. You know who you are.

Reversal of Fortune

2009-08-08T12:30:00.001-07:00

Okay, instead of that text I blogged about yesterday, it's a quote:

"What seems remarkable now...is that everyone got along pretty well for a few months." -Calvin Trillin"Nothing But Holiness". The New Yorker. December 1981.

And then directly into civil case files and the "Commando Code".

The State of The Stuff

2009-08-07T22:26:00.002-07:00

Okay. Eight hours in front of a computer and all I gots to show for it is...3rd-person narrative text over Miracle Valley landscapes. Man. Such a fine line between light and the absence thereof. The text, in sections:

William Thomas, a son of Frances Thomas, led church members to Miracle Valley as early as 1978.

The church inquired about purchasing the old A.A. Allen Bible College, but were unable to do so.

Undeterred, church members purchased property and established a place of worship in the neighborhood just across the state highway.

In May 1980, the Arizona Republic profiled the steadily growing church community.

Local reactions to the newcomers were reported as generally positive.

But by December of that year, serious tensions had developed between the church and local authorities.

I'd still like to use some of that extra "intro" stuff, but it seems kinda redundant.

Okay, so after this I gots a few ideas: A quick media montage about the security patrol...then some heads spewing forth some quotes about the matter...then what? I'd like to include some information about run-ins and confrontations, likely from the civil case files. Maybe.

Problems plague thesis film

2009-08-07T03:38:00.002-07:00

How'd that be for an Onion headline?

Some working notes on my thesis film:

Problem: After the "arrival" section, I lose my way. I'm not really sure how to lay out the largely informational "tensions develop" section. It's a lot of exposition, with none of the drive of the interview segments. In fact, I really have no interviews at all for this section. It's a bunch of clips, but there's no narrative power driving the damn thing forward. I think I'm going to have to dig back into the newspaper text for this section to provide that narrative drive, because the clips I have are just not doing it. Looking back, I had the actors read the wrong material. Damn, Damn, Darn.

Well, I'm moving toward using less but longer clips. And a lot more narrative text. Ideally, I'd like a narrative text capper at the end of each section.

I mean, what does one really need to know? Over time, tensions developed between church members, their neighbors, and local authorities. (Can I include more of this extra "intro" stuff as some sort of transition between segments? Did I have it all along?)

Tensions Materials:
Marcus
Jimmy Judd
Children

1981 Materials:
Mediation
Black officers
Van Explosion

Running Tally:
Segments I Like: Intro, Arrival, October 22, October 23, Media Blitz
Segments I Don't Like: Tensions, 1981, Legal outcomes, End.

Open Thread

2009-08-06T23:30:00.001-07:00

Jut kidding.

New Video Site Up and Running

2009-07-31T22:57:00.005-07:00

I'm moving my video stuff over to Vimeo from youtube, myspace, and wherever else it's floating around. The community is geared toward more "creative artist" types such as myself and the tech requirements are not so darn stringent as the 'tube. Actually, Myspace isn't so bad on that count, but I just never go there anymore...Check it out here: vimeo.com/thomasjcastillo.

Toward Teaching as a Creative Act

2009-07-28T03:01:00.002-07:00

Just caught Lego Wu-tang, via Sasha Frere-Jones at the New Yorker. No Link. Y'all can find it. What have I been doing for the last five years? It's funny, but a lot of things that I should enjoy just make me jealous.

Anyhoo, I've been thinking about teaching as a creative act. I'm working hard this week, for maybe like the first time in a long time. I'm working on the dang movie. I'm making it happen, and watching Last of the Mohicans on Hulu at 3AM.

Bedtimes are for suckers. I'll treasure this week for a long time. I don't really want a job, but I do want to buy video games and computers and sound equipment galore.

Well, going forward. I gots to finish the movie, and maybe I should promote it a lil' bit. I'm starting to get the sense that I am more of an intellectual than a craftsman, and not really much of an artist. Whatever. I got projects to finish, and I don't even want to submit them to film festivals.

Maybe one day it will wall make sense, but I doubt it.

I know this is cheating. but who cares?

2009-07-16T10:19:00.001-07:00

I'm linking to both an article and the blog post where I first read about said article.
1. http://bostonreview.net/BR34.3/forman.php
2. http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/lost_in_the_city_or_dc_public_schools_and_absurdity.php

I'm not sure if this fits the criteria exactly, but I caught the blog post a few weeks back and it has stuck in my mind ever since...so here goes.

In the original article, the author discusses a philosophical debate in school reform: Can we narrow the achievement gap between low-income and high-income students by school-centered approaches (better pay, more flexibility in hiring and firing, high standards) or is that gap narrowed by improving communities around the schools (Health care, after-school programs, programs for parents)?
To answer that question, the author reports on a pair of efforts to close the achievement gap that both reflect and, possibly, bridge the philosophy gap: the Harlem Children's Zone in New York and the KIPP charter schools that originated in Houston and now has several schools throughout the country. The Harlem Children's Zone reflects more of the "improve the neighborhood" approach, starting out as a network of social programs that created its own charter school, whereas the KIPP programs reflect the "improve the schools" approach, choosing highly-qualified, dynamic teachers who work long hours and set high academic standards. Each have ultimately borrowed tactics from the other camp. And, they have both been successful. But therein lies the problem.

As the author writes, success stories in narrowing the achievement gap are not impossible to find. For my part, it's frankly not much of a surprise that, given resources and time and energy and incentive pay and radical approaches and dynamic leadership, low-income students can narrow the gap with high-income students. The problem is how to provide everyone, or at least most people, with that level of attention. As the author points out, the KIPP schools are expected to serve 24,000 low-income students by 2011, while there are currently an estimated 19 million low-income students across the nation: "The hard truth is that many mediocre teachers and administrators do not have the capacity to improve to anywhere near the standard required to achieve KIPP-like results. As much as it thrills us to read about extraordinary people succeeding with poor children, I want to see how ordinary people can do the same."

The author's statement leads me to some questions. In some ways, it goes back to the achievement gap, but in this case it's an achievement gap between teachers: If we do not have a solid methodology for narrowing the disparity between good and bad teachers, how can we begin to improve the disparity between students? In a given class, school, or district, how much power does a teacher really have to narrow the achievement gap? One of my fears in going into teaching is that I just perpetuate the differences that already exist, whether it be in academic achievement, economic class, or social groups. How can an individual teacher fight these battles? And how can we all be brilliant?

So here's what happened...

2009-07-16T10:07:00.003-07:00

I'm taking classes at Pima. Over the Fourth of July weekend, I had the bright idea that 1. The Pima program was actually entirely the same as the NAU program, they just didn't know it and 2. I didn't want to drive to Phoenix once a week for a year and 3. I can declare for the CTE certificate any time, once I have the work hours. Thanks for the advising, folks!

So I had to register from Seattle, where I was "Summering" with April. And they charged me 500 bones. But it was so worth it...oh so worth it.

The Labyrinth

2009-06-22T10:47:00.006-07:00

I'm currently trying to procure a teaching certificate in Arizona. Originally, I thought I'd go for the Secondary certificate, which is for teaching middle and high school. There's a program at Pima Community College that my girlfriend is enrolled in for her certificate, she already has the books, so I just figured I would put in my year or two and get that certificate.

One problem: I want to teach video production.

There's subject knowledge tests in Arizona, but not anything for video production. Now, I know they teach video. Because I took a video class at least once apiece in intermediate, middle, and high school.

I just needed a little guidance. I contacted the Pima program for advice on what subject knowledge exam to take, if any. For example, do I just take the English test for the heck of it, or do I test out somehow? Because I'm still holding onto this dream of teaching video production. They told me to contact the state. I called the state. The lady simply did not answer my question and referred me to another office. It went something like this:

Me: So, I'm supposed to take a test, but I'm not sure what test to take.
Lady: What subject?
Me: Video production.
Lady: We don't have a test for that.
Me: Yeah, I know. That's why I called. What test do I take? Do I take one at all?
Lady: Call the school.
Me: Thanks, lady.

But then I discovered this wacky thing called the Career and Technical Education certificate. I'm just reading off the website, but for a 3-year provisional certificate, it asks for a Bachelor's degree in the content area, 240 hours of work experience, and a couple of classes in English Immersion and the state constitution (which was so recently fiddled with vis a vis gay marriage). And both of those classes can be waived for up to a year. Great! I can probably qualify for one of those right now!

But, I'd like to go for the standard certificate. 18 more credit hours and you get a K-12 certificate for 6 years, plus possible state and federal grants.

So I go to this Pima teacher orientation. As soon as I say "CTE", I get a bunch of blank stares. I mean, those 18 credit hours, most if not all of those are the same courses that apply to a Secondary certification. And I have no expertise, I'm just reading off the website. But it just didn't compute with those people. I asked if I could take the English immersion and constitution courses. They said "No". I asked why not. I didn't actually get an answer. They just could not help me.

So now I'm off to NAU's website. I may have finally found an answer, but I'm still in need of guidance. Is a Secondary in English better or worse than a CTE? If I'm spending two years in school, why don't I get a Master's degree in Educational Technology and apply that toward the CTE course requirements?

The thing is, I want to learn more about teaching. I want to learn methodologies and psychology and cognition and all the buzzwords that teachers use. I want to take courses. Just tell me what courses to take.

the art teacher's guide to the internet

2009-06-10T18:38:00.002-07:00

A terrific blog.

the art teacher's guide to the internet

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The craft

2009-05-22T01:03:00.002-07:00

The more I watch older films, the more I appreciate the sheer skill at play. And I'm not talking about canon, either. I'm talkin' B pictures. I just saw Day of the Outlaw, a 1959 western starring Robert Ryan and directed by Andre de Toth. Another recent favorite was The Big Combo, directed by Joseph H. Lewis.

I guess both of these films could be considered canon in certain circles, but at the same time, they're not exactly required viewing in film school. Thank goodness for Netflix.

The limits of patriotism

2009-05-17T22:39:00.004-07:00

I looked up some jobs at the CIA website today. Unfortunately, they have no jobs listed for "independent contractors".

I'm still racking my head trying to figure this torture thing out. The most upsetting thing to me is not that we tortured in the first place, but that no one wants to accept responsibility.

I mean, and since The Absurd Hypothetical seems to be the preferred mode of debate in this case, is it completely out of the question that a person could decide to torture for a specific purpose, obtain useful information that saves lives, and then turn his or her self in and face the consequences? Call me bonkers, but that would be pretty darn patriotic.

Well, it is pretty darn not happening. In the debut episode of 24 this past season, Jack Bauer stood before a Senate committee investigating torture. Jack's argument was that he had broken the law to save lives, and therefore he should not be punished. But I really wanted him to accept punishment. He should have asked to be punished extra-harshly, with a cherry on top. That strikes me as the patriotic thing to do. But here's Jack Bauer, cultural icon, and he wants a walk. It's wacky, but it captures something within our national character that is troubling and disappointing. It's American exceptionalism taken to the extreme.

More thoughts on time and movies

2009-05-16T10:40:00.002-07:00

The beauty of the epic film is that it bleeds into normal life, if nothing else through sheer temporal force. What is a movie if you can't sleep to it?

Also, the epic film offers more bang for the buck.

As a filmmaker, I've come to the conclusion (with numerous exceptions) that a single feature-length film should last no more than 90 minutes.

So the next logical unit is 180 minutes.

This thing of ours

2009-05-16T10:15:00.002-07:00

I'm teaching a digital storytelling course this summer. The process of planning the course has got me to thinking about this filmmaking thing and its place in the world. Filmmaking as I learned it is basically taught as a vocation, but I can't escape the sense that it has wider applications and meaning than the product. Not filmmaking as a mystical craft or anything like that (spend any amount of time in film school and you start fetishizing frames per second, persistence of vision, or, more recently, resolution), but the process as being about more than just making films, in a practical sense. I'm trying to think about it in terms of communication and cognition and action. Does this digital literacy thing add another dimension to filmmaking and filmmaking education? Or is it just a way of selling more text books? It's a technical pursuit, but in looking at some teaching materials, it isn't just a technical pursuit. These computer things are just tools, right? So, I guesss my interest is in how filmmaking is taught, and what it means teach it, and what it means to do it.

Stimu-less

2009-02-08T23:17:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I can even begin to know of a better stimulus package, but I can say that the Nelson/Collins compromise kinda stinks. And the sad part is, I'm not sure that they even knew how to approach the stimulus other than as political actors. And there is something rotten about Nelson and the other centrists (not moderate, mind you, just too politically vulnerable to make up their minds either way) praising themselves for reaching a compromise on this bill. The message from Dems should be, "Look, this sucks, but we needed 60. The Republicans made some wacky cuts to states and education while adding some military stuff. I hate it and I hope Congress can get the good stuff back in. This is a shitty day and I don't feel good about it, but it was our best shot at getting this thing moving." That press release didn't happen. This one did:

I rise today to take action. For action is what is demanded by this American, and global, economic crisis. The economic recovery bill that came over from the House was a start. And the bill introduced in the Senate was better. But it wasn’t good enough and some elements didn’t seem to belong in a bill to create new jobs, save jobs people have now and return our economy to prosperity, soon. That’s why Senator Susan Collins of Maine and I worked with 12 Democrats and six Republicans to cut and tailor our bipartisan compromise, so it focuses like a laser-beam on tax cuts for the middle class and job creation for millions of Americans.

This whole compromise stuff is just a dance, compromise for the sake of compromise. For all the opposition to the bill, it had less to do with real-world economic issues, or even with ideology and beliefs, or with genuine opposition to the bill, than with power games and press releases. So, in this case, the Dems needed 60 and didn't have it. Senate egos are a bitch. So we had to play the compromise game to get 60. Great job, hurray, let's pat ourselves on the back. But we shouldnt forget that this is a weaker bill because of that dance. The goal, after all, isn't 60 in the Senate. The goal is good legislation. Nelson and the centrists on both sides forgot that part.

Thinking about time

2009-02-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

In my post about watching movies, I'm not exactly sure that my thinking was consistent. I didn't explain myself fully. I really didn't write about how exactly watching movies was harder. I think I was really concerned, in writing that piece, with time and how time is treated by me, the viewer, and the differences in my attitudes toward time while watching TV and while watching movies.

So...how is it harder to watch movies themselves? Well, movies require more concentration. As I wrote before, I can feel free to walk away from a TV show, get a drink of water, maybe make a sandwich, feed the cat, sweep the kitchen floor, and puzzle over the gas bill, and feel pretty comfortable when I come back that I can catch up with the show without being totally lost. There just isn't so much cognitive information per second as there is with movies. TV requires less attention than do movies. Movies require more attention than do television. This is a generalization, but it pretty much gets to the core of the issue. It's harder to watch movies because I'm out of practice.

I also wrote in the last post about movies as art-objects. I'm not sure how to explain that further...but I did write something about enjoyment versus appreciation. I think it has to do with a visceral reaction versus and intellectual reaction. And my attitudes toward watching movies, that they require more attention and so forth, becomes an intellectual reaction rather than a visceral reaction. So, there's not necessarily something within the film itself that dictates this, although there can be. Or there might not be. Because it's also my attitude toward the film. So it's both cues from the film and my attitudes toward it.

So, time. In that last post, I alluded to, but didn't elaborate on, my problems with TV. I stated that I didn't want to sit through another Gaius Baltar hallucination. Make no mistake about it, there is a pleasure in time. And this goes for both TV and movies. Nothing feels better than finishing popping out disc two and popping in disc three, knowing there are still hours upon hours of intrigue and excitement ahead (Yeah, I'm talkin' 'bout The Shield). But I think that pleasure in time has a lot to do with freedom. And freedom is the freedom to go to sleep or to walk away and do other things and not feel held back from doing so. I guess the key is to fit the damn TV show or movie into a real-life rubric(?). A sandwich rubric (?). A visceral rubric (?).

Open Thread

2009-02-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Please be gentle.

What I mean when I say I'm "editing"

2009-02-01T15:28:00.001-07:00

The by-product of watching a lot of TV is not only that I watch less movies, but that it's also harder to watch movies themselves (And, for all those budding network executives out there, I only watch broadcast for sports, everything else is all Netflix or Hulu).

Sure, I'm not completely lost when Coates or Yglesias post a Battlestar thread, but I'm wasting a hell of a lot of time viewing entire seasons of TV series, while simultaneously avoiding movies and DVDs because they take up too much time to watch in one sitting. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've decided to shift back to movies for a time. Don't get me wrong, TV viewing has its pleasures. But if I have to sit through another Gaius Baltar hallucination I might rip my eyes out. And don't get me started on 24. It should be 12 or even 8.

I'm slogging my way through Underground, the Palm D'Or-winning post-Yugoslavian film from the 90's. It's taken about a week. And I'm just over halfway through. I have some regrets. I coulda been through like 2 more seasons of Battlestar by now.

Part of my recent troubles with watching films is the way I watch things now. I watch a lot of TV, but not on a TV set. It's all computerized. The result? One minute I'm watching the movie, the next I'm hijacking some poor schmoe's thread on Daily Kos.

The running time of Underground is pretty intimidating, but since cinema is so visual, and the movie is in a language that I don't understand, I have a sense that I need to watch every single moment, like I can't take a bathroom break and come back without rewinding the movie. And that's a bummer. It ultimately shifts the pleasure in watching the movie a bit, the difference between watching the damn thing and enjoying it (or not) and watching it as an art-object and appreciating it (or not). I'm kinda straddling that line on this one, but overall it's pretty enjoyable. It certainly is manic.

I guess the point is, I'd like to tend toward a more casual movie-watching and not feel guilty about it. I've been in film school too long. There's been a lot of self-indoctrination about needing to watch every minute of every thing. It's very demanding where it doesn't really need to be. I feel imprisoned by films. I'd like to be free. On a purely cognitive level, one really doesn't have to watch every single second of a film to get it. I mean, you could even cut every other second out of practically any film and you'd still figure out 99% of the plot and all of the major themes and statements. As a filmmaker, I guess I should be saying that people need to sit and watch like good children or sumthin. I really hope that people watch, but maybe it's better that people watch my movies and talk all the way through, maybe learn an instrument, or kiss their lover.

Pop go the Huskies and the Huskies go pop...

2009-01-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

The Cats pulled out a big win tonight against a ranked and Pac-10 leading Washington team, 106-97. From the tip, or at least the 15:20 mark in the first half when I started watching, Arizona exhibited a confidence on offense that I have not seen so far this year, and that attitude carried them throughout even as Jordan Hill battled foul trouble.

Game Notes:
The last two games were really tough emotionally, but it now appears that the miracle comeback against Houston has given this team all the confidence that it needs to make a run. With the win tonight, the Cats need a 7-3 record through the remainder of the regular season to reach the 20-win mark. And a 7-3 record would give them a winning conference record. And a winning conference record and 20 wins are absolutely crucial to reaching the NCAA tournament this year. And 7-3? That sounds like it's possible. Not necessarily probable. But, possible.

Jordan Hill had a very nice first half, but struggled in the second and eventually fouled out. Tonight, he was outplayed by John Brockman, probably the only time he has been markedly outplayed by an opposing big all year. But the Cats still won, and won pretty comfortably for a tight game. If you get what I mean. In the last few minutes of the game, Hill was at his worst, missing several free throws and giving up two turnovers. And with four fouls, he was unable to aggressively challenge shots or chase boards. Fendi Onobun, of all people, came in a provided a big boost off the bench against Brockman, sacrificing life and limb (but really just limb)to chase after rebounds and loose balls and contest shots. He even hit some free throws, and hit a travellicious shot at the end of the first half to bring the Cats within one going into the break. Nice job, Fendi.

So that goes into my next thought...Do the Cats play better without Jordan Hill? I don't have any plus-minus stats, but it seems to me the Cats established their lead less than midway into the second with Jordan on the bench. As soon as Jordan picked up his fourth, I said something like "This sucks. The Cats are just passing the ball around the perimeter and Washington doesn't even need to guard Fendi in the paint." Kyle Fogg promptly drove and pulled up for a mid-range jumper. And the run was on. Tonight at least, Jordan's absence seemed to open up the game for the Cats. And not worrying about his foul trouble on the defensive end allowed them to contest shots and dive after loose balls, and overall just make a more hectic game in which the Cats thrived.

Pennell is aggressively systematic with his late-game substitutions. It worked to perfection in the Houston game and it worked tonight to maintain the lead. Judkins and Johnson in on O, Fendi and Horne in on D. I don't remember Lute ever being so tactical. And the rotation in mad deep. I think he's regularly playing like 9 people. That's cool. Haven't seen that in a while. And I think it help come the last few weeks of the season.

And...my apologies to Zane Johnson. My attitude is...if he's slow and a defensive liability, at least he can hit threes. And then he misses a bunch of threes and I'm like, he has no use, drop his scholarship. And then he hits a clutch three for the second game in a row. So...there it is. The man is clutch. He can stay as long as he wants.

Ballots n' Bullets

2009-01-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

This past Monday was Martin Luther King Day. That we have a federal holiday honoring an activist is remarkable. Thing is, I'm not sure that, as a nation, we know how to handle King. He never held public office. Wasn't a war hero. He wasn't part of any political machine. Wasn't descended from a famous family. Was a leftist but not a Leftist. Instead, he was a regular citizen. He was crazy radical without being a crazy radical. He was investigated by the government that now honors him.

There' something theoretical going on here. The state appropriates the image of the radical and neutralizes his meaning. MLK Day has somehow become a day of service, nothing wrong with that, but it should probably be a day of protest and civil disobedience. Year after year, history is scrubbed of his message, of his tactics, of his intellectual arguments. School teachers are happy to mention bus boycotts but don't say anything about opposition to war, the fight against poverty, serious critiques of both capitalism and Communism, Resurrection City, the Chicago Freedom Movement, non-violent civil disobedience as a means to an end, not just as being nice. From my point of view, he was far more left than we, as a nation, care to admit, but just not left enough the caricature as some kind of terrorist. So we instead make him into a teddy bear.

Toward the end of his life, King was far more unsuccessful than successful. He was more unpopular than popular. But he fought the battles that needed to be fought. Truth to power, in deeds and not just in words. But he was not simply an idealist. He had specific goals and was willing to take action to reach those goals. If he was alive today, he'd probably get on our nerves, and we shouldn't forget that.

Arizona State Tonight

2009-01-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

The hated Scum Devils play at McKale tonight. I'm going to call it here: Arizona loses by 20. I'm just getting myself prepared for disappointment. In the unlikely event that the Wildcats pull a win out of their hat(s), I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Notes on the killing of Oscar Grant

2009-01-15T14:44:00.000-07:00

For those not in the know, Oscar Grant was a twenty-two year-old African-American man who was shot and killed early on New Year's Day by a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer. The shooting ignited a number of street protests and fierce criticism of local authorities. A wrongful death suit was filed by Grant's family against BART. As for the officer who shot Grant, he resigned from the force rather than face an internal investigation, and then fled the state after reportedly receiving death threats. This week, he was found in Nevada, arrested, and charged with murder.

Beyond the facts of the case, contested as they will be, the crux of this story is in the cell-phone video captured by at least three different bystanders, all showing in some way the officer shooting Grant while Grant lay face down on the subway platform. The immediate precedent of the Rodney King tapes jumped to mind when I became aware of these videos, but that comparison illuminates some major differences in the two cases. Here, the views are multiple and somewhat more casual. Here, the officers are operating in full public view, and the crowd isn't exactly polite, with some offering verbal protest and others (reportedly, the officers had broken up a fight between two young, male parties) threatening physical violence. And well before they are available in the major news outlets, the videos (and copies of the videos) are viewed thousands of times on Youtube.

The democratization of technology, the police killing of young black man (and why that is more or less meaningful than when black men kill black men), the weakness of our law enforcement institutions and training, the talking-head politics of it all, the appropriateness of casually and repeatedly watching the shooting of a man on my computer screen. These are all aspects of the story that I've thought about. But as a filmmaker, the killing, and the video of the killing, disturbs me most because it happened.

Why do we wield cameras? Do we want to capture the bad? Or to prevent it? Too get psychological, can we ask what the videographers intended when they pressed the "rec" button? Did they get more than they bargained for? As things worked out, it's probably better that they did. Everything is on the table. The protesters will protest, the police will deny blame. And who knows if the justice system will be fair. Of all people, the officer should be glad it was recorded. As far as I can tell, none of his fellow officers witnessed the shooting while several bystanders did. I could imagine a situation where, without the video, those bystanders claim that the officer shot Grant in an even more gratuitous, aggressive manner than is seen in the video(s). To a jury, he will likely end up looking more incompetent than malicious. But the whole thing speaks to the core inadequacies of technology. A camera, whether wielded by the state highway police or by a college student, only captures what's happening. It doesn't stop it. Now, this isn't an anti-Youtube screed. What I'm getting at is that it's completely unacceptable to be content to catch the killing on tape. We need to take action as citizens and as institutions to prevent these things from happening, at all.

In any case, this is a tragedy, and our responses to tragedy, just like our technologies, are inadequate. We meet generalization with generalization. Stanley Crouch blames "marxist university professors" without bothering to name a single example. Protesters reportedly lit trash cans on fire and damaged bus stops. That's right, trash cans and bus stops for a murder. Well, we have our "video gold" and Oscar Grant doesn't have his life. And that's horrible.

Return to Burn: Arizona 67, Oregon 52

2008-12-29T16:17:00.000-07:00

After the breath of fresh dookie that was the bay area road trip, the Arizona Wildcats basketball team returned to McKale Center and defeated Oregon by 15 points.

It was a fairly low-scoring game, and one that was both more and less competitive than the final score indicated. Why more competitive? The Wildcats led throughout by double digits, but never reached the 20-point lead plateau. They experienced a emotional dead zone after the first TV timeout in the second half, allowing Oregon to whittle down the lead from blowout territory to manageable deficit. Maybe the crowd was sparse and quiet due to the BCS Championship game, maybe the students haven't returned from break, maybe there weren't many highlight dunks to get the crowd energized. Whatever the reason, Oregon hovered about 10-11 points back for much of the second half, really only a three or two away from changing the game. But why was it less competitive? Oregon couldn't buy a basket from beyond the arc. I haven't checked the box score and don't have a degree in advanced basketball stats (see here and here), but they were 2 of 19 on threes the last time I noticed, and Ernie Kent's teams typically live and die by the three. Tonight, they died.

Oregon had several good looks, but the ball just did not go down. Tajuan Porter in particular was a complete non-factor. It wasn't as though he was jacking shots, either, he just didn't take a lot of shots from behind the arc or otherwise. For their part, the Cats were not exactly on fire from behind the arc either, finishing something like 5 for 17, but they did just enough in the first half to establish a lead and just enough in the second to quash Oregon's micro-rallies. Nic Wise thoroughly outplayed Porter on offense, and Fogg was solid, as is becoming usual, defensively. Horne was terrific offensively, hitting a couple mid-range jumpers and a pair of threes, but he is beat frequently off the dribble in man-to-man situations. He still hasn't learned to move his feet on D, he doesn't do much boxing out, he makes lazy passes on the perimeter, and he always gets one or two bonehead fouls per game. The kid is a UA-era Iguodala clone. He's extremely athletic, has a ton of potential, but is just not very consistent in all facets of the game at this point. Chase had his best game in a long time. He established himself early, coming of low screens and running backdoor cuts to get some good shots close to the basket and getting to the line. He was active defensively, getting at least one steal in transition and getting his hands on some passes. My only peeve with Chase tonight? His transition defense off the ball is atrocious. He frequently hustles back on D only to turn his head away from the ball and drift to the nearest zone assignment. Meanwhile, someone is either driving to the hoop or cutting to the hoop right behind him, getting an uncontested basket. Jordan Hill was solid but not great, and his scoring output was down. Oregon has a few big guys, and they hacked and pushed Hill all night. His leg injury is a factor, and it manifests itself as fatigue. He didn't go as hard to the hoop as he can at full strength, and he noticeably slowed down running the court as the night wore on. Offensively, the ball rotation comes to a halt when Jordan gets the ball, and I'd like to see him make some faster decisions with the ball, either immediately go around the defender to beat the double team, or maybe re-post lower after catching the ball higher. What I'd really really like to see is for the Cats to clear out his side and run a two-man game with Jordan and either Chase or Nic.

What to make of this game? Oregon isn't good now, but in a year or two they should have a pretty good team. Their big, #33, has the physical tools but lacks polish on O while their other big is in the Marty Luunen mold, but with a little wider frame. As for the Cats? Hopefully, they learned their hard lesson about the Pac-10 after starting 0-2 and bring it every night. They started and ended the first half well, and they opened the second with a small run rather than the two-minute lull followed by a run.

Cross Posted from Yglesias Comments. Because I can.

2008-11-06T02:46:00.000-07:00

More Nader:

Does anyone see a problem here? Not with the video. The comments. There's like four or five people duking it out over who's the A-1 top progressive. Ridiculous.

So, of course, I have to leave my two cents. Or three. If you still allow pennies around here.

Ralph Nader is an activist. He comes from an era of activism. He's like the white Jesse Jackson. Umm, I mean, the light-skinned assimilated Lebanese-American Jesse Jackson. This is what he does. He makes bold proclamations, issues challenges, gets his name in the limelight, gets his cause some attention. This is what he does. This is who he is. He's done it for the last fifty years. He'll do it until he dies.

The statement was dumb. Silly. Unnecessary. Nader has a knack for saying dumb things. He's an activist. He's not a politician. He's not a coalition-builder. He has a strategy but no tactics. He does not play well with others. He's not a wordsmith. He's not even sensitive. He's not even nice. He's downright cranky. I don't recommend him as a Cabinet choice.

Nader's core message does have some meaning. His catchphrase needs some work. I tend to think Obama is more progressive than he puts on. But how will he govern? Valid question. Was he was a better choice than McCain for progressives? No question. Is he a Progressive, proper? No. Is he a secret Marxist? No, and I know how that breaks your heart. Is he the most progressive major-party presidential candidate of the last twenty years? Oh yeah. Of the last fifty years? Probably. Of the last century? He's no Eugene Debs, but he's in the conversation. Is he Progressive Super Guy? No. But you already know that. The voters know that. And he knows that. And Rachel Maddow knows that. So there's no disagreement.

What is a Progressive, anyway? Why am I capitalizing? Is there a secret handshake? Strategy and tactics. Activism plays a part. Elections play a part. Governance plays a part. Do we really expect all of those elements and more in one man or woman? I mean, Martin Luther King was not exactly a Congressman.

I hold these truths to be self-evident:
-Nader would not make a good President.
-Nader would make a downright bad President.
-Nader is a patriot and a hero.
-Nader is not responsible for Bush's war or Gore's campaign.
-Nader is an increasingly ineffective activist whose best days are behind him.
-Comments such as "Uncle Tom", valid in content though they may be, are immediately rendered invalid when phrased in such a poor, divisive, and ill-timed manner. I mean, was he even watching the election? "Bitter", anyone?
-Just because Progressives sometimes use those phrases on their enemies doesn't make them okay. No double standards.
-America is not, itself, Progressive.
-Don't kid yourself.
-America is way MORE Progressive than the mainstream media allows.
-But don't kid yourself.
-If we wuz really progressive, we wouldn't be in this mess (I slap my forehead in realization).
-Obama understands this situation. Obama does not kid himself.
-America is MORE progressive than widely held, but America is not as currently configured, Progressive proper.
-Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book.
-Written by a white lady.
-Who had good intentions.
-and got a lot of attention.
-but she fundamentally misunderstood the black experience.
-And Nader is a Lebanese dude.
-And he has good intentions.
-And he gets some attention. In blogs. After the election.
-but he fundamentally misunderstands the black experience.

And just on cue...

2008-11-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Nader busts out with an "Uncle Tom" reference. Does this guy have a tin ear or what? I mean, here's a guy of Lebanese descent who is basically identified as a white guy. It's like a kid who can't get good attention, so he goes for bad attention.

The curious case of Mr. Nader

2008-10-29T23:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not gonna sit here and hate on Nader or people who voted for Nader in 2000. They voted, they had their say, and nobody is gonna convince me that at their core they are worse than Republicans. No way.

Ralph Nader is, ultimately, a very influential guy, so I can't say anything that would diminish his accomplishments. Consumer safety, workplace regulation, environmental regulation all owe some debt to Nader. To name a few. And it's funny how a lot of these things have become incorporated into the mainstream Democratic platform. Basically, he's done more for America than you or I or the rest of the people on your street. Love him, hate him, it's a fact.

I remember a more vibrant Green movement around that time, and where I live there was a lot of love shared in local races between the Greens and progressive Democrats, including some cross-party endorsements. Anyhow, Nader helped that movement and that movement helped Nader. He lost the election in 2000 and has run in both 2004 and 2008, with diminishing returns. And I've noticed less and less local enthusiasm for Greens. Feels like a major blown opportunity for the party. And the opportunity was that, for a brief moment in time, the Greens were not just a party of disgruntled Democrats who would never vote Republican anyway. They were drawing Republicans. Libertarians. That mythical Independent vote. Not in huge numbers, not even in winning numbers, but in good numbers. Solid numbers. Built-to-last numbers. And then they lost that vote.

The Dean Dems have since been smart to shore up some of the progressive Nader vote, but as far as Nader himself goes, it's really odd that he hasn't built any sort of institutional legacy with the Greens or with his own political party when it was all there for the building. Instead, it's all him, all the time. And that's kind of the frustrating thing about Nader. He ignores the banal realities of party politics. He can't stay in one place, with one organization. He can't build lasting coalitions. He has no allies. Man, alone.

I can't figure why he doesn't run for Congress. State Senate. State Attorney General. Something where he could have an influential, positive effect in government. But he's not built for politics. He is built for activism. Politics? Coalitions. Compromises. Corruption. Organization. Power. Money. It's a pretty sick game. But don't enter the game and then complain about the rules. He is a better advocate for progressive ideas than an implementer of progressive ideas. And that's a valuable role. But politics is not a one-man show. It's parties. Organizations. Institutions. Here's hoping Matt Gonzales can build more lasting progressive institutions.

As a side note, I saw the Socialist party candidate do a cameo on Colbert last night. Seemed like a nice enough guy, though way out of his league in terms of the ole media-savvy. And then my girlfriend leans over to me and says "That's the other Socialist candidate that my mom was telling me she's not voting for." SeewhatImean? I'm thinking, if the fifty socialists in one camp can't even get together with the fifty socialists in the other camp, what are they running a Presidential candidate for? Are they maybe doing something wrong? Elect some freakin' school board members first, then we'll talk President.

Term Limits

2008-10-23T15:40:00.000-07:00

Looks like Bloomberg will have his shot at a third term as mayor of N.Y.C.

I vaguely remember a lot of talk about term limits when I was a kid in the 1990's, but didn't fully realize how severe they are. Here in Arizona, state reps and senators are each limited to four two-year terms, for a total of eight consecutive years. Of course, they also have to run for re-election every two, so that takes a good chunk out of each of those terms. Looks like there's a similar system on the N.Y.C. city council.

The problem is, voters can always vote out bums, but they can't keep good public officials in office (Of course, they usually keep their bums, but that's a slightly different issue). I see the use for term limits, and would love them on the federal level (Ted Stevens, that means you!) but I still feel like eight years is waaay too short. 10-12 years seems like a good compromise to my ears.

Is Mitt Romney donating?

2008-10-23T11:19:00.000-07:00

Sullivan post is here.

It's actually even bigger than previously understood. Yesterday, I linked to stories alleging up to 40 percent of the financing for the California proposition to strip gay couples of their right to marry was coming from LDS Church members. Now, the numbers claimed by the opponents of Proposition 8 are even higher - more like a staggering 77 percent:

Ayers

2008-10-09T15:38:00.001-07:00

I'm not bothered by Bill Ayers. Apparently, Yglesias and Sullivan can't help but condemn Ayers. Just in case they run for office, I guess. I don't particularly care about Ayers. I don't know the guy, can't vouch for him. But at the same time, I'm not going to reject and denounce him. I simply don't see how it was a some sort of mistake for Obama to meet Ayers. Obama did not hire Ayers to his position the University of Illinois. Obama was not responsible for Ayers rise in the education reform scene. Obama did not go into any business ventures with Ayers. I don't know, but I doubt they went to Bulls games together and shared nachos. Obama is not responsible for any of Ayers' statements about past violent acts. Or school reform, for that matter. And Obama had nothing to do with those violent acts. And, if I'm not mistaken, Ayers wasn't convicted of anything. So there's nothing to apologize for. And wouldn't we be better off if all ex-radicals worked on school reform?

A better debate fomat

2008-10-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

1. More questions from live audience, less questions from internet.
2. Questions are pre-screened to make sense and touch on relevant topics, but order of questions/audience questioners are randomly selected, not grouped by topic.
3. Order of answer rotates for each question.
4. One-minute response time/discussion with questioner TO QUESTION from each candidate. Followed closely by:
5. Thirty-second attack time from each candidate, with
6. One follow-up question/clarification allowed from moderator per audience question, at which point answer cycle repeats. (Moderator does not have to offer a follow-up, but can offer one up at his/her discretion.)

I think one of the problems with the debate is that the candidates spent more time attacking one another than answering the questions. This format builds in the attack/response time, so that candidates already know they can get their licks in and therefore feel more comfortable sticking to the question initially before veering into attack mode.

The Cure For Insomnia

2008-10-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

Last night's "town hall" debate.

"He knows what evil is..."

2008-10-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Again, I just can't help myself. From the Youtube:

"The Castro Brothers"

2008-10-02T19:04:00.000-07:00

I just can't help myself. Via the Youtube:

Risk

2008-09-26T00:25:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on that aforementioned Freakonomics blog post early in the AM:

I think one of the major problems, and this has been touched on in several of the comments, is that there is no risk involved in these transactions. The seller will always have a buyer. Because the buyer, now the seller, will in turn always have another buyer. It doesn’t seem like much of a free market. It seems like a shell game, and one that only ends in crisis.

There’s simply no incentive for buying and selling quality and a lot of incentive for buying and selling garbage. Is there some way of introducing more risk into this game aside from out and out government penalties or years of FBI investigations?

And then it hit me. There is only government regulation, or self-regulation under the threat of government regulation. There's no market-induced regulation. And there's no market-induced risk, specifically in selling. Why would they want risk, when there's so much money to be made? There is only incentive to artificially eliminate risk. Thus the bubble.

A problem here is that there is no risk for selling. There is risk for not selling. So everyone is selling, selling, selling. But no one's buying, not in real money. Only in credit.

There has to be risk in both buying and selling. It seems to me like a severe imbalance. Obviously, there's risk in buying. You might get a lemon. In fact, it looks like the Treasury is simply declaring itself to be in the market for lemons. So the risk is accepted and apparently even desired. But there's no risk in selling a lemon. Is this the same in any other industry? Perhaps TV and movies, but certainly much less so for cars and dog food. At least I hope so.

Krugman's column

2008-09-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

linked here. Important point:

The fundamental problem with our financial system is that the fallout from the housing bust has left financial institutions with too little capital. When he finally deigned to offer an explanation of his plan, Mr. Paulson argued that he could solve this problem through “price discovery” — that once taxpayer funds had created a market for mortgage-related toxic waste, everyone would realize that the toxic waste is actually worth much more than it currently sells for, solving the capital problem. Never say never, I guess — but you don’t want to bet $700 billion on wishful thinking.

The problem here is that the toxic waste is just that: toxic waste. That's the problem. There is no worth there. And our solution is to artificially drive up the value of this toxic waste, so as to continue the cycle. Either that or a straight write-off. I prefer the write-off. Well, they gots us by the balls. They know we want to buy it and they also know it's toxic. So they'll inflate the price to...$700 billion. Doesn't Paulson know anything about negotiating? You don't start with the high bid first. Unless...maybe...could it be...this is the lowball bid. Yikes.

Can you spend $700 billion in a day?

2008-09-25T23:56:00.000-07:00

In a week? In a month? Do you know what you want to buy, and how much you want to pay for it?

The whole thing sounds like a poorly-conceived college-level grant proposal. And I've written my fair share of those.

Now the "market" expects $700 f-ing billion and will whine if they don't get it.

These are the best and brightest and they are apparently flying blind. No wonder these banks are failing. It's not even about rationality or irrationality. It's that no one is even sure of the distinction between the two. There is no gauge whatsoever.

To reiterate, from a previous post: Of course it will f-ing work. But who does it work for?

Regarding the previous post

2008-09-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

The key point:

And here is where we come to today’s problem. I think *everybody* who issued this paper knows *exactly* what it is worth. And that’s why no one is trading. They need someone – someone who doesn’t have access to uber-CarFax – to come along and buy up some of the used cars. They need “uninformed traders” to pay irrational prices to get a “market” going again. Guess who the sucker is? None other than the United States Department of the Treasury.

Will the bailout work? Of course it will f-ing work. The question is, who will it work for? I don't see the bailout doing any good, though it will likely prevent further immediate harm. And there's a distinction there. Are people on the verge of losing their homes going to suddenly be able to pay that mortgage? No, but they may be able to refinance. They will be able to tread water.

Sounds about reasonable

2008-09-25T22:43:00.000-07:00

From a Freakonomics post comment section:

#
26.
September 25th,
2008
5:17 pm

#11 - Kevin H

For a full and complete explanation of what is going on from a theoretical point of view, I recommend reading Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons” and Grossman & Stiglitz’s “On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets” (I think I’ve remembered the titles correctly). Careful, there’s some math.

In a nutshell, Akerlof looked at the used-car market. The seller knows whether or not the car is a “lemon” or not. The buyer has no clue one way or the other. He really can’t know without buying it and driving it. If there is a certain level of trust between the buyer and seller (via a trip to the mechanic, a test drive, a prior knowledge of the seller or car, a warranty, etc), this “information asymmetry” is not enough to prevent a transaction. Take away the trust, or (as Akerlof puts it) create “perfect information asymmetry,” and sellers can’t find willing buyers.

Then, Stiglitz looked at what happens when everyone knows exactly what everything is worth. If you pay a certain fee, you get to be “informed” about the true value of a certain good. He didn’t use this comparison (the paper was published pre-internet), but imagine being able to join an “uber-CarFax.com” website with not only complete title history, but also maintenance records, gas mileage, fender benders, traffic tickets, car washes, average trip length, idle time – everything about every car on the market. Then you could easily identify the cars where your valuation of the car (based on the uber-Carfax data) plus your information costs (the access fee) would be less than the asking price of the sellers. You would be assured of a profit. Theoretically, you could also “flip” a car to another “informed trader” on the uber-CarFax site for a price somewhere between what you bought it for and what it’s actually worth. Obviously, the other “informed trader” would immediately agree to your valuation (because he has access to the same data) and likely the price (because he could theoretically “flip” it again).

The only way this works is if *not* all buyers and sellers are “informed traders.” Otherwise, for example, a seller would offer the car up for sale for exactly what it is worth – or not sell it at all. Any informed buyer who agrees to a price higher than the value is either irrational (in which case all bets are off) or has access to other information which increases the value unbeknownst to the seller (in which case there is no longer equal information for all). Barring those two situations, if the seller offers his car up for exactly the right price, then the only people interested in buying are those who need *that particular* used car – there is no opportunity to flip it to other informed traders. *Plus,* the buyer can’t possibly recover his uber-CarFax access fee – by becoming an “informed trader,” the only way he can profit from the transaction is by somehow turning the car itself into a money-making venture. Perhaps he could, like me, drive it to work until it falls apart or, as I like to call it, “hold it to maturity.”

Thus, when every buyer is as well informed as every seller, there is only one transaction left – from the person who has it, to the person who needs it. There is no “market” for used cars anymore. There are sporadic individual transactions which are based solely on the immediate and idiosyncratic needs of the two parties at that particular point in time. The end result of “perfect information symmetry” is the same as “perfect information asymmetry” – market failure.

And here is where we come to today’s problem. I think *everybody* who issued this paper knows *exactly* what it is worth. And that’s why no one is trading. They need someone – someone who doesn’t have access to uber-CarFax – to come along and buy up some of the used cars. They need “uninformed traders” to pay irrational prices to get a “market” going again. Guess who the sucker is? None other than the United States Department of the Treasury.

On another thread regarding Fannie burden of guilt for this mess, I offered up a test/term paper I wrote in 2005 (and got a half-dozen takers, thanks!). I’ve got another one from 2004 on this topic (30 pages, with footnotes!) if anyone is interested. Another warning: my professor dropped me a letter grade because he said my solution to the problem was inconsistent with free market capitalism. In my opinion, it pales in comparison to what we’re about to do. hunterath [at] hotmail [dot] com.

— Posted by Hunter

Bail Out!

2008-09-25T21:10:00.001-07:00

If the whole crisis is simply one of confidence, as proffered by that eloquent genius of finance Ben Bernanke, couldn't the Congress just solve the crisis for free by consistently "making progress" over the next two or three weeks, thus reassuring the market? Yeah? Huh? Wha?

Assuming the bailout is passed, and Obama wins

2008-09-25T12:10:00.000-07:00

...Couldn't his hand-picked treasury secretary just give the money back or directly invest it in health care reform, education, et al? I don't really know the mechanisms by which this would work, but my sense is that a President Obama could simply chart a different bailout strategy and free up the money if it is not already committed to specific purposes come January.

Chicano!

2008-09-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

Tommy Chong uses the apparently antiquated term here. Nice to hear the real deal as opposed to all this "Latino" stuff that's tossed around so much these days. Plus, a Cheech and Chong reunion tour is announced. Ah, yeah!

Enron John McCain

2008-09-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Read the story here. In my view, this post isn't clearly and concisely framed. We need to make it clear: McCain is an oil company man.

I guess this is where all the Homeland Security money is going...

2008-09-08T14:59:00.001-07:00

Police arresting journalists at the Republican convention.

Barack O and Joltin' Joe

2008-09-05T18:51:00.001-07:00

No post, just liked the sound of that.

"The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations"

2008-09-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

Trapper John calls it like it is.

A Global Candidate

2008-08-30T09:09:00.000-07:00

versus a provincial candidate.