Damn You Al Gore!

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore says that we everyone just replaced one lightbulb in their home with a compact fluorescent bulb, it would make a big difference. Most of the bulbs I would think of changing are flood lights, and the only place I can find compact fluorescent floods are online, so it took me a while, but I finally ordered one.

It sucks.

The light is bright (brighter than the incandescent it replaces, actually). It doesn't flicker or hum. The light is a little cold for what I would expect from a bulb labeled "2700K", but it's okay.

The reason the bulb sucks is because it takes a couple of minutes to warm up. When I first turn it on, it's no more than 25-30% of its rated brightness. Which, at in the darkness of 6 in the morning, is pretty damn depressing.

So now I have this bulb I hate. It's rated for outdoor use, so I'll probably use it to replace the flood over my front door, since I don't have to look at that when I turn it on. I may try to buy another brand, but I'm not sure that will make a difference.

The frustrating thing is that this warm-up probably is apparently a relatively new phenomenon. Only bulbs manufactured in the last 5-6 years have this issue.

The Premiere

On Saturday, almost eight months after we started filming, The Valley Of Fear premiered at the MET Cinema in Oakhurst, CA. I drove up for the day.

(Yup, it's along way to Oakhurst from Mountain View)

The cast, crew and friends had lunch at a local restaurant, saw the movie, and then had a party at the director/author's home. Two friends of mine drove from the Bay Area to see it, and my sister drove up from L.A.

I am really happy with how it turned out. Many ultra low-budget independent film producers make movies with terrible acting, no coherent story, etc. You can definitely tell that The Valley of Fear was made on a budget, but we've got good acting and a good, funny story that engages the audience. Everyone I talked to really enjoyed it.

And I'm happy with my acting. There are a couple of scenes I wish I could do over, but in general I think I did a pretty good job.

The producer will be shopping it around to various film festivals. The hope is that a distributor will want to pick it up. We're all hoping it becomes a camp classic, but even to get a distribution deal would be a tremendous accomplishment. I don't know what the odds of that happening are, but it certainly seems to me to be within the realm of possibility. I'll keep you posted.

As for me, while I'm excited to see what will happen with it, I'm sad that the production is over. I had a lot of fun making this movie, and hope I get the chance to do something like this again.

(And yes, the first paragraph of the newspaper article is referring to me)

Folsom 2006

Today was Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. It's not really my scene, but I usually go for a few hours every year. This year, I hung out with a bunch of bloggers, including Dan, Garrett, Michael, JR and Kalvin. I was sort of low on energy, as I drove 350 miles Saturday for my film opening (more on this later).

Incidentally, this was Dan's first Folsom. As as you can see, he got right into the spirit of things:



P.S. This is for Michael; he knows why it's here:

One Thing Finishes, Another Starts

It's taken me three months, but I've finished my next draft of Swimming the River. I sent a copy to the Santa Cruz Actors' Theatre Full-Length Play Contest earlier this evening. I should probably send a copy to Magic Theatre as well.

On the starting side, The Valley Of Fear premieres tomorrow at the MET Cinema in Oakhurst, CA. The Bay Area premiere will be sometime in the future. The producer and director are looking to get it into a Bay Area film festival in the next few months. The Camera Cinemas in San Jose also sometimes will show a locally-produced independent films a couple of times in an afternoon, so it may appear there as well.

Salon

I got an email today from The Meeting Game Salon

5-Minute Dating - San Francisco
Friday, October 6th, 6:30-8:30pm

I went to the first-ever gay speed dating event run by this organization, nearly ten years ago.

(And I still have no idea what they mean by "Salon")

Speed Dating for Gay Men.

All I remember of it is that they bought a lot of dessert from the fanciest, most expensive dessert place in the Bay Area and put it out for sale. The cake started out at $5/slice. No one bought it.

The price dropped sharply as the evening progressed.

Enjoy short, structured, individual conversations with as many gay/bi
men as you can "date" in one night.

The last time I went speed-dating was in 2001. Two memories of that. First, I made the mistake of mentioning that I was taking Mandarin classes. Everyone thus assumed that I was a rice queen (I'm not).

Confidentially select those you'd like to see again, and be notified of those who feel the same way about you!

My second memory is that, aside from my friends, I was the youngest person there. By ten years.

"A shorthand version of a year's worth of dates!"(tm)

Well, that should go by fast.
(Lord, did they really trademark that cumbersome phrase?)

First Unitarian Church
1187 Franklin Street at Geary

It's at the same place as in 2001. Thank Jesus for the Unitarians.

Admission is $25 advance, or $30 day of the event, on a space-available basis.

I doubt I'd get much out of it. Plus, it's a hassle to get up to San Francisco by 6:30 on a weeknight (traffic and all that).

Still...

Geek Out

Star Trek Inspirational Posters

e*Trade

Note to anyone thinking of opening an account with e*Trade: if you don't give them a physical location as a mailing address, you will not be able to transfer money out of your e*Trade account. You may not even be able to see it. My company opened an e*Trade account for me for stock-related compensation, and because the only address I gave them is my P.O. box, after a recent sale I found that my proceeds just vanished.

Ugh.

After a phone call today, I faxed e*Trade a copy of my driver's license, which should clear things up.

In a few days.

Feh.

Today

I was going to post something for 9/11, but Dan said it best already.

Pictures

I've put lots of pictures from my trip on my other website. I'll add some more over the next couple of days, but for the moment I have pictures from the Katrina disaster tour, Biloxi, the Decadence parade, and some random shots from around the city.

Living

Thought #1: don't blog after being up for 18 hours, after having gotten only five hours of sleep the night before.

Thought #2: why is all the food in my house so bland? Oh...of course.

So, yeah, I'm back. Some thoughts on S.D.:

• It wasn't really as wild as I thought it would be. A typical Folsom St. Fair has much more nastiness than what I saw the entire week. Or maybe I just wasn't in the right place, or maybe it was because...
  
• There were far fewer people than expected. I asked a number of other attendees, and they all agreed that it was a surprisingly small crowd. Smaller than at any time since the early '90s.
  
• It was a very Southern crowd.
  
• The entire city was very welcoming. Lots of businesses in the Quarter were sporting rainbow flags. The tour guide on my New Orleans Katrina disaster tour, a retired schoolteacher and grandfather, made a special point of welcoming S.D. tourists.
  
• If you have a partner or boyfriend don't go to Decadence. Just don't. Unless you need a reason to end a relationship, then by all means, go!
  
• Don't buy souveniers after having a few cocktails. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with enough mix for eight dozen beignets.
  
  
  
• New Orleans is coming back, whether you like it or not.
  

Because of the sparse attendence, I'm very glad that I made other plans for Thursday and Friday. On Thursday I rented a car and drove I-10 through Mississippi and Alabama, to see the damage and add two to my list of visited states. I had lunch in downtown Biloxi at the Ol' Schooner restaurant, where President Bush visited on Monday, August 28 (I heard a report on NPR on Tuesday and decided I wanted to visit). The food was very good, the staff very friendly, and the name tags from Bush's visit were in an unceremonious pile on a shelf behind the counter.

I spent all of 18 minutes in Alabama. That was enough.

On Friday I took the Gray Line Katrina disaster tour. It was three hours long and very sobering. I'm very glad I did it, though. I saw devestated neighborhoods, damaged levees, and a hell of a lot of determination to rebuild (and very little patience for those elsewhere in the country that don't want New Orleans to rebuild).


On Saturday, there was a free concert on the corner of Bourbon and St. Ann street, featuring Jeanie Tracy, Inaya Day, and Amber.


On Sunday, there was the parade. It was only thirty minutes long, about half of its usual length. That evening, I met a very outgoing man from Mississippi who made friends with a local resident. She ended up inviting us to her home in the Quarter, where we hung out in the interior courtyard with her neighbor and his two tenants for a couple of hours. The bad part is that I missed the height of the debauchery. But it was a reasonable trade: I got to see a bit of the real New Orleans. Unfiltered. It was, for reasons I can't really explain (and, no, not drugs) an experience that was more vivid, more alive, than anything I've felt in a long time. I'm still trying to figure it out.

I'm Back...

And I have no idea how to write about my trip.

Like this:




or like this:



?

Neither is the whole truth. And if you think you're going to get the whole truth in this blog, think again. I will say this, though:

I had one very hot night.

And one very cold night.

And one where I got away from Bourbon St. and saw the true New Orleans, unfiltered.

Part of me would really like NOLA to be just a playground. But the city seems to have other ideas. Two trips there and that city seems to be making a habit of...not being gentle with me.



Sorry for all the mysterious shit. I am fine. Really.

But I do need to do some thinking.