I must be wicked

I can't every feel rested. I'm barely able to hold my eyes open as I wait for this dvd of the Guy Maddin-esque video that Eric and I made over the past week to burn so I can spend my lunch hour tomorrow with Eric kinescoping, in between my classes with my two grad students. I felt pretty alert while driving home the other day from Prince Albert, I credit the three espressos I had that day, and almost no food. I'm noticing that food makes me very tired.
So last week we went to Prince Albert. Paul came with us, so the car was full. In Saskatoon we had a Fudruckers burger and I got the new Douglas Copeland book, the Gum Thief, from the McNally and Robinson book store on 8th. We visited with Judy McNaughton and Michel Boutan in PA, seeing their studios and so on. There was a parade that was rained on by the bucket but we were able to hide out in the art centre. Day two was really William's day. We spent some time in downtown PA, in a used book store I found "The President Vanishes" by Rex Stout, one of the few of his books we don't have yet. We got some Lego on sale at the Zellers, went to the water slide for a few hours, then A&W for supper and back on the road to Waskasiu. William and Margaret went into the rooftop hot tub while I tried to shoot some film. The sunset on the pier was incredible. The next morning we discovered that the bakery nearby was pretty good and quite cheap, so we survived on pastry half the time. William got to start his Lego and we started each morning with Adam West Batman episodes on the laptop. The battery belt stopped working and wouldn't charge, so I couldn't shoot time exposures. I shot a lot of other footage instead, mostly beach stuff, and I sat down in the lobby for two hours and wrote out the soundtrack to one of the four Grain films, I'm pretty happy about that. I dropped my still camera and now the lens doesn't retract and it doesn't take pictures. I replaced it yesterday. I just discovered that the videos the new one shoots are not recognized by After Effects, grrrr. The next day was our last. We went on a hike and I shot more film, 16mm, super-8, and video (with a video camera rather than my still camera). Unlike the way up, I did all the driving back. Felt very in the moment most of the way. Not bad trip, everyone had fun. Best of all, no one insisted that I should wear shorts the entire trip!

230

I worked on my website for another few hours today, finally getting all of the descriptions for my films written with a page and maybe photos or a clip for each. The pages are there, although over half the clips are still missing (there will be a total of 80 or so films listed). Next I'll have to design the page to tie the films together. I told Margaret's dad what I've been working on and he asked what order the articles (and thus also the films) will be listed? I now have a quandary, do I list the films chronologically? By genre (drama, animation, experimental)? Alphabetically? I suppose I could offer all options with links to each, how long could that take?
That was my main obsession, then I got thinking about the Walrus and the Carpenter film that I just made a dvd of, the one I shot 10 years ago and that Michele Sereda wants to perform in front of tomorrow night. Well the dvd looks like crap, I think the transfer to video that I did was a bit soft and I'm deeply unhappy with it. It may be passable as most people won't be looking at the projection that much or that closely, but I feel I'd be letting them down. So this evening after watching the new superfriends dvd with William (Galactic Guardian: The Super Powers Team, 2dvd set, Adam West as Batman), I took the only image I have handy of the Walrus and the Carpenter (if I still have the original artwork, it must be at my office) and brought it into photoshop, cut the pieces apart and painted the gaps where the cuts appeared, and reanimated the scene in after effects. It will now be bright and sharp and 6 minutes long, rather than the original one.
Speaking of Batman, I started rereading the Frank Miller Dark Night comics from the 80s. They hold up so well, I'm amazed all over again. I have the originals up in the attic somewhere, but only the first series. He did a second series in 2001. The whole set is published in whappingly thick hardcover book that I just borrowed from the almighty library.

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Happy New Year. Active day today, the car died last night so we had to get a new battery for it today. Margaret worked in the afternoon and William and I ate lunch at A&W, got some dipping fruit for tonight, and I paid all my bills. William put together a fairly complicated Batman Lego set by himself today, just following the instructions. He wanted to call Paul for help (as I needed a bit of time to catch up on other stuff) so I gave him the phone number. I heard him beginning to dial but then stop for a long pause before calling me and asking "How do you dial the hyphen?".
So I may have mentioned that the time registered on this blog is in west coast time, it is two hours later than that here. The new year came in relatively sober (not completely sober of course). I picked up the new Abbey & Mayor of Carcassonne expansion so William, Margaret, Paul and I played. Instead of two hours, it took about four. We concluded just a few minutes before midnight, then had some Henkell wine, some chocolate fondue, and we roasted some chestnuts in the oven. The nuts were mixed, some tasted nice but others were bland or bitter. The web site warned to be careful in picking them, but doesn't explain how to do that. William was up until at least 1am. I imagine he'll be a wreck tomorrow, but I've been wrong about this sort of thing before. Good night all. See in 08.

Hawaii

After building a 1000 piece Lego batcave, I really get wondering about how someone who is retrofitting a crime fighting lair into an existing subterranean area could get so obsessed with symmetry?