2006 in review

What a year it has been!

For me it started with an intense four months of work at Mobile Infirmary as the company prepared to annex another hospital. Up until 2006 the job had been a breeze, with overtime a rare thing indeed, but during every week of the big conversion we were on mandatory overtime. The intensity built until the weekend of my birthday, which ended up feeling like one long episode of ER. Whoever said the IT field is boring has not run at full speed through a hospital to a mainframe terminal in post-op to frantically unlock a pharmacy cabinet so that a life could be saved with the proper meds. Okay, that's probably dramatized a little, but it was enough to make me glad to leave the health care industry behind when R was reassigned for her job in mid April.

Yes, that's right--it was time to move. We said good-bye to southern cooking, the friends we Mardi Gras'd with, the church in which we were married, and warm winters to settle in an unexplored land known as Delaware. We bought a townhouse in Wilmington and have been enjoying a more urban lifestyle since.

R began her second assignment with DuPont as the mechanical engineer supporting the ethylene co-polymers High Pressure Unit (HPU) semi-works as part of the packaging and industrial polymers business. It sounds pretty technical, and it is. In fact, I had to ask R to write this paragraph for me. Her assignment is located only a few miles from our house at DuPont’s central research and development center, the Experimental Station. Most new polymer products developed by DuPont get their start in the HPU. R does great work and has been recognized by her manager as raising the expectations for her role in the unit.

I was unemployed for a few months after the move, which was like a dream come true for me. Disappointingly, however, a good chunk of the extra time I gained was spent developing my job seeking skills and seeking that next job. Still, it was a good break. Not having to go to work every day makes settling into a new house in a new city quite a bit easier to manage.

There was one particularly exciting thing that came out of my temporary hiatus: the opportunity to work on an independent film. I joined a crew and helped with the lighting for a family film called Jack of Clubs, which will be premiering in Wilmington in April of 2007. The shoot lasted 6 weeks and required many long days of satisfying work for no pay. What I got out of the deal was a lot of contacts in the business and some friends too. It was an experience I won't forget.

A series of events (well-documented in the archives of this blog) led to me find a Business Analyst job with a small, but quickly growing software company in Pennsylvania. I'm constantly surprised by the fast pace of the company culture and the amazing work ethic of my coworkers. It's been challenging and demanding, but the valuable skills I am learning and some perks from the company make it worth the stress.

R and I like to explore, and moving around the country offers us the chance to do just that. In addition to our week-long road trip from Alabama to Delaware with detours along the way, we also took getaways to Virginian wine country, the Jersey shore, New York (city and upstate), Winnipeg, Montreal, rural Vermont, and, of course, our beloved Minnesota.

So ends another eventful year. I can hardly wait to see what the next one brings. Happy holidays to all of you out there!

A night in New York

The city was hopping this weekend, and we faced the hustle and bustle head on. We sardined it in Rockefeller Center, browsed the window displays on 5th Avenue, caught a glimpse of Alec Baldwin on the street while eating dinner, and spent the night at our accommodating friend Ben's place in the East Village. Oh, and there was one other thing...

David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE (he prefers it typed in all capital letters) was playing in one theater in the entire city, and we were there Saturday night. It should come as no surprise to anybody that I liked the film. It is bizarre and uncompromised, beautiful and haunting. Only time will tell how I rank it among Lynch's other work. I remember finishing my first viewings of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive with a similar feeling. His movies leave me in awe, yet somehow unsatisfied. They come close to making sense but purposely do not. That's what leaves me wanting more. I'm anxious to see IE again--to literally feel it projected on the screen (the volume was so high, the entire theater vibrated to the opening shot of a needle grinding on a record), to refresh my fading memory of the hallucinatory visions, to try to figure it all out.

A lot could be said about the movie--a lot has already been said--but I'm not going to go into detail here. There are plenty of reviews online that discuss it at length, if you're interested. Try to see it for yourself when it gets a wider distribution, and then let's discuss it over a cup of coffee or a Heineken.

This means I'm pumped

INLAND EMPIRE. NEW YORK CITY. THIS WEEKEND.

The further adventures of Bread Man

Here is a little follow-up to the first Bread Man clip that has been online for some time now. Technically this one was created before the first one, but I haven't given it as much play because it is so deeply flawed. The spatial relations are off. You don't get a sense of where the three characters are positioned in the room. I blame it on a lack of pre-production. Maybe I'll remake it one day, this time mapping it out better beforehand. Actually, no, Bread Man has evolved since the first incarnation you see here. Some new adventures lie ahead for him, and there is no need to go back and revise the past.

The Bud Light Film Crew shoot on Wednesday was a success (I think). I'm about wrapped up with editing my footage. The most difficult part was keeping it under the time limitation. It's tricky to cut 50 minutes of footage down to a minute and a half, yet still cover all of the necessary moments and keep it from looking choppy. To be a good editor you need to be able to sacrifice terrific, but slightly less necessary, shots for the sake of the whole. Web videos are good practice for me because they need to be short and lean in order to hold the fickle audience's attention (no offense). Don't use the Bread Man videos as examples because they were edited three years ago for a TV screen, but my first Bud Light video, due out in January, will hold up on that front. I dare you to find an ounce of fat on it.

Some blabbering and links

The weekend flew by as always. It was off to a poor start on Friday night when I got stuck at work until 11:00pm--such is the life of an IT professional, I guess. On Saturday we raked and mowed the yard, which actually didn't take that long because, hey, we don't have a very big yard (and I'm perfectly fine with that for now). We also picked up a Christmas tree, did some browsing at the shipyard shops, enjoyed a nice dinner at Toscana, and watched Nacho Libre on DVD, which I liked more than I expected. On Sunday we did the usual chores around the house and had some time to relax. I took inventory of some of my older videos and realized I have a lot I want to post online. From the Cottage Cheese files alone, I could go on for quite a while. As a matter of fact, you can expect to see another clip posted here by the end of the week. Hopefully, I should say. Before I commit to anything I should let you know that I will be shooting the first video in the "Bud Light Film Crew" series this Wednesday night. I'll have about a week to do the editing, which is not a lot of time for something like that, but I think I've cleared my schedule enough to get it done. I am a little nervous about shooting something I don't have complete control over. It has been a while since I covered any sort of live event, like the upcoming Best Bartender Contest. This will be more simliar to my Campus Scope work than anything I shot in my own house with me as the only actor (i.e. probably any video of mine that you have seen). It will be nice to shoot something without me in it for once. I should have a lot more freedom if I can remain behind the camera. Okay, I'm blabbering. I wonder if anybody even read this whole paragraph.

I got a kick out this--the two commercials I was paid to help with last summer have finally been posted online. If you look really close, you can see part of me in both of them. Here's a hint: you can probably identify me best by my watch. The rest of me is laying on the cutting room floor somewhere. Oh well, my primary responsibility was to assist with the lighting. If you want to see the results of an 18-hour day of work, go to this website and click on the links in the left column called "Thanks, Mom" and "Thanks, Dad."

Lastly, the trailer for Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE appears to be online, albeit on YouTube and in really poor quality. Regardless, the trailer is absolutely fantastic. Watch it here. I was just thinking how all trailers look the same these days. You've seen them--any preview for an action movie or thriller builds to a climax of extremely quick shots... then the title, set to some dramatic music, comes in before the one final blurt of a demon child or an explosion with some dude hanging off a cliff... you get the idea. Lynch's trailer has nine shots in it, yet he manages to lay on the dread and build anticipation masterfully. I'm so going to love this movie.

Well, that's the news from this corner of Wilmington. My life may not be interesting, but I'm going to write about it anyway.

A brief review of The Fountain

We saw the enthralling The Fountain the other day. I'm not sure why some critics adamantly dislike this film. The visuals are amazing; the acting, superb. The structure is inventive and daring. No, I do not recommend it to the mainstream public, who might be looking for a cookie-cutter plot or some neatly packaged ending. This is an all out art film, but one that is surprisingly easy to watch and absorb despite its complexities, its serious tone, and some heart-wrenching scenes. Seeing it in the theater was so much more satisfying of an experience than my previous one in the theater--watching the funny, yet somewhat boring Borat movie. In fact, days later, I can't stop thinking about it. That is what makes a film a good one.

Viva la Montreal

The above photo was taken by my ultra-talented wife during our vacation in Montreal, Quebec. It is undeniably the most astonishing photo from our trip.

So about our trip... we left Wilmington last Saturday and drove north, spending the first night in upstate New York and the next three in Montreal. After that we made our way to rural Vermont where we spent the holiday with some relatives of R’s. We returned home on Saturday night, giving us enough time to prepare for the upcoming work week.

Montreal was cool—figuratively and literally. We spent our days exploring the city, drinking coffee, touring the bio-dome and Olympic park, finding excellent places to eat, and eating a lot. R was able to practice her French when we interacted with the locals and I was able to embarrass myself a bunch by knowing very little French at all. We spent our nights drinking wine and warming up by the fire and in the jacuzzi tub at a great little bed & breakfast located in the city's downtown. Overall, it was worth the drive and a wonderful escape.

Thanksgiving was everything it should be: eating ‘til you drop, rowdy family (three kids between ages 3 and 9, as well as three dogs), and relaxing. R’s uncle is a professional chef, and he cooked a good meal. I’m still partial to my mom’s cooking, but it’s difficult to not enjoy a grand turkey dinner. On Friday we worked off some of our caloric intake by hiking up Mount Elmore and enjoyed a wonderful view atop the firetower located there.

Tomorrow it’s back to work. December has the makings of a busy month. There’s so much to do at work and at home before we head back to Minnesota for our Christmas vacation. Yikes!

Drunken Laundry

Stationary camera? Yup. Starring Jeff Finc and nobody else? Check. A Wilford Brimley impression? You got it. It could only be one thing -- another movie made by me. This one I actually shot a few years ago and recently re-edited for the web. I cut it a little bit shorter and changed the music from a Modest Mouse song to one by EmptyGym. I hope you enjoy it.

How to disappear completely

One night last week I met with a group of four guys from Out-and-About magazine who, I believe, are in key roles to shape Wilmington's image or at least the image of its night life. I've been in contact with one of them for a while now and even created "PC vs. Me" with his purpose of getting people out of the house in mind. Well, I think we may have finally decided where I fit in with the publication of their magazine. I agreed to shoot and edit a 60-second segment each month that will be posted on their website and do the following: (1) show people in local bars having a good time and (2) advertise for Bud Light. We're going to do things like cover the Best Bartender Contest at Kahunaville or tape people giving the camera their favorite pickup line and then whittle the footage down to a minute for each segment. There are more details, but I don't want to share them yet. The first video is due by the start of the new year, so you shouldn't have to wait long to see what I'm talking about.

On Saturday I had another opportunity to pursue my hobby. I traveled down to Maryland to help a friend, who I met on Jack of Clubs, shoot a faux commercial for a video production class he is taking. The project is about at the level of "PC vs. Me," which you know is not too high, but I enjoy working on small projects like that. My friend had some expensive equipment at his disposal, courtesy of his school, so that increased our production value right there. I'm not going to be involved with the post-production process for this one, so I'll be curious to see what the finished product looks like, especially since I did have some input into it. I contributed to the concept for the commercial by suggesting the use of a very simple--yet impressive looking--technique I once applied in a short video that I included on my Cottage Cheese DVD. If you have half a minute, take a look at the experiment I'm referring to. It is titled "Disappearing Act."