Ah, the last of the movies from my 519 class. This one is notable for several reasons:
1. it stars my freshman roommate, Richard Bloom, who lives in LA, working as an assistant and art dept coordinator. He did acting as an undergrad, so it was fun to re-connect with this little piece, 8 years after we lived together.
2. it is certainly the video I think of when I think of the art I made over these years. Weird, static, unbalanced, closeup shots. A surreal, improvised story that is larger than what we end up seeing in the film.
3. I reshot parts of it as the final project for the class, so two version exist. This is the re-edit, which is marginally better than the original.

phone calls from the dead from tripp millican on Vimeo.

like ray, i compose posts in my head all the time. i haven't yet found a system for documenting them easily, so most die on the vine. and these days, the time i actually find 'free' are times when i am drained or momentarily free. so let's see how i do with a dump of bits and pieces that have probably piled up:

1. the new underworld album, 'oblivion with bells.' i wasn't in love with it the first time i listened, but it has begun to grow on me some after 5 or 6 listens. i still think the first three tracks make an excellent 20 minutes-ish of listening; the jury is out a little more about the rest.

2. i've moved my ticket to la a bit, so that i can be there in time to attend a screening of cece's movie, 'i'll believe you.' cece and i grew up a couple doors apart from each other; she is out in la writing and acting. she is lead in this movie, shot in '03 and finally seeing a limited theatrical release this weekend.

3. we are moving offices at work tomorrow. this means that today is the last day i will be working in downtown sf proper. monday, i will be reporting at the new office, right by the giants ballpark. one day, i might even work up the energy to tell you what i do for a living these days. needless to say, it involves media and programming. a lot of both.

4. i just saw an owens and minor truck, parked on a road. i'm on the train, rolling up to the city. o&m was the first place i worked out of college, with matthew, on their internet/intranet sites. that's been about 10 years and feels like 4 lifetimes, so it always surprises me when little things like trucks pop up.

5. i took my mac mini in on halloween to get repaired. the consistent kernel panics had turned into the machine failing to boot. when the guy at the genius bar tried to turn it, it wouldn't do a thing. a pretend brick. so they took it to repair. "5 to 7 days." on day 7, i called apple. my motherboard had died. so they had ordered a new one to put in. guess what? that one was defective too. so they had to order another one. and that's why we are on day 9 of the repair.

even better, apple's site says 'repair in progress' and offers no more information. and when i called and got the above info, i was also told that there 'was no eta'. awesome. i look forward to the repair taking forever. i'm unsure at what point i can ask for compensation, nor am i sure what i can actually for. which means i can't really ask for anything. i have no desire to be the guy who tries to get a free copy of leopard or something. (like the guy next to me at the genius bar when i dropped the machine off.)

5. rachael is out of town now. i stayed up until 1 last night, playing videogames. and then screwed up the alarm clock. this i blame on the fact that she is the alarm clock setter of the two of us. i turned it on when i went to bed. sadly, we have 2 alarm clocks and i turned on the one we no longer use. so my alarm was set to go off at midnight, having never been changed from the last time the power went out. i woke up in time, mostly. still, i see another night of not moving from the tv in my immediate future. (for two reasons: 1. i have to wake up early for this flight to la and 2. nick never responded to my email about going to see dmitiri from paris tonight for 10 bucks.)

6. programming time.

it's halloween.

so spooky halloween to you! i point you to this discobelle post of fun halloween music. i am currently rocking out to the halloween mix*. loudly, as i am the only one in the office right now.

(* track 15 on this mix: The Bulgarian (ft. Spoek) - The Zombie Door (Vox version) turns out to be rather filthy. the chorus seems to be 'jack it like a zombie' repeated. just letting you know so you don't, say, for instance, blast it in your place of work for everyone to hear.)

due to a miscommunication of sorts, half the team is working in san jose today, with two of us up here in the city. not a big deal, but annoying, as i had to buy a train ticket to get up here. goodbye 11 dollars it turns out i didn't need to spend.

also, mike sent me a list from the av club of bad horror movie villians. shockingly, i have not seen most of these films. more shockingly, mike claims to have. and triply shocking — morty, from 'the fear', jack frost (the evil snowman) from 'jack frost', or the gingerbread man from 'the gingerdead man' are not represented. i might have to call sheningans on the article now.

also, i need to tell you the taglines for 'jack frost': "He's chillin…and killin"
and for 'the gingerdead man': "Out of the oven… and into your heart!"
wow.

and i am in a funk. for a multitude of reasons.

but this morning, walking into the office, i passed an older, bald man with horns attached. i, myself, am wearing my old devil 'headband' which is an easy, lazy, pretend costume. but it was great fun to pass someone else in the street who had dressed up the same way. we said hello to each other and it made me smile a lot.

that made the trip up here worthwhile, i would say.

in other news, robert goulet died. this is not huge news and, sadly, i remember him most for his excellent emerald nuts ad last superbowl.

and if we want to really cheapen his memory, how about will ferrell impersonating him singing the thong song?

today was better than yesterday. i'm speaking about the daylight hours, because last night was pretty awesome and deserves its own post.

yesterday sucked. i was in a rotten mood for a variety of reasons and everything that i cam across evoked one singular response. so unrelenting was this message that i had to make a new desktop for myself to fully enjoy it.

to provide background and explain the roots of what i was muttering, watch this:

and then have at my desktop:

yes, my friends, as i explained to my manager: elvis had his tcb ("taking care of business"). i have my tfb.

this letter from geico to optimus prime outlines the type of thing i would really like to see in a transformers movie:

$6,564,239.44 requested reimbursement for repairs to a truck part called the "Autobot Matrix of Leadership." You stated this occurred in "an ultimate confrontation between good and evil," with a Ms. Meg Atron and a Mr. U. Nicron causing the damage in question. Mr. Prime, I have checked every known car- and truck-part catalog published in the United States and have found nothing even resembling that part, never mind any part so expensive.

Nononono!

but the banana was rotten, thats the gross part.
not really. anyway… here's something i did last night fucking around with my 16mm film projector and final cut.

paris hilton goes to jail
from trevor