Ebby & Buñ Slideshow

Created using flickrSLiDR

I figured it was high time I embeded a slideshow featuring the best picts of my two favorite kitties. The slideshow app has some cool features in it - you can control the speed of the show and if you click on one of the picts, it displays title and description info. Nice!

Incidentally, fellow Flickrers, I discovered two really cool website tools to make life better for us Flickr users. The slideshow above was created using flickrSLiDR, which is pretty basic as slideshows go - this just mirrors the same layout as the flash-based slideshows you can access within the Flickr page, but using this service allows you to embed the slideshow into your blog or web page by copying some HTML that flickrSLiDR generates. The second website (and incredibly helpful tool) is Picnik.com. Using a flash app within the website, you are able to make adjustments to the photos on your flickr account - all online. This is great for doing basic color adjustments or cropping, but they also have some fun features like effects, text bubbles, and different borders and frames. They have a "premium" service which they charge for, but all the basic editing tools (which is all you're really gonna need if you're taking decent picts in the first place) are totally FREE. Handy if you've uploaded something in haste only to realize that it needs a bit of work after the fact.

Bowls' MacLean's "Dream"

Here's a blast from past pulled deep from the annals of "Bowls & Mugs". This was a short that Bowls directed where I got to participate almost exclusively as an actor (which, afterward, gave me just pause to pursue it as a career!). I also helped "score" the movie on my 4-track tape recorder using my new guitar effects pedal. You can even hear Bowls whispering, "This ssssucks!" on the audio track, but somehow, with enough reverb, we managed to keep in. This was shot in the apartment that we shared with Chris Sebela and Scott Greene in Edgewater, Chicago, which was more like a house with its downstairs rooms (both occupied by Bowls and myself... art imitiating life, hmmm). My belovedly deformed cat, Repugnance, was a new resident at our duplex and so we naturally worked her in as well. I was finishing up shooting FAMILY TIE and mentally getting ready to move out to NYC and start up GOD with Danny.

Truth be told, I had nearly forgotten about this project until years later when Bowls told me that he'd finally edited "Dream." I was like, "You edited what? When did we do this?"

But probably the best story about DREAM is how I managed to use perscription eye-drops for one of the cats to generate some tears. The solution dilated my pupils to painfully wide black holes in spite of whatever light was in the room. This happened the night before Chris and I were set to go on a road trip to Kentucky to see Ray Davies perform, then up to Sandusky, OH to spend a day at the amusement park Cedar Point. The constantly blinding sunlight beneath my sunglasses on top of sunglasses wore me out mentally and physically. It was a lesson learned the hard way, even though, as an adult male, it should have never happened in the first place!

The Family Tie Poster

After a few revisions, this is the first official run of the poster image for FAMILY TIE. It's "official" because I've placed an order for 250 color postcards with this image that I'll be picking up when I'm out in LA next week for Vividas. It may yet change because I don't want it to forever say "THANKSGIVING 2007" and i'd like to make it a goal to get rid of these by the time the launch happens next month.

Thanks to Alan Greene and Bill Watson for chiming in with some helpful suggestions along the way, and of course Anthony Lopez who helped stage and shoot the poster image.

But this is kind of exciting because somehow with the poster image in place, it feels more and more like it's really a done and finished project (I originally wrote 'product' but decided that felt too cynical). It will feel good to have this weight lifted when i can move on to something else.

Family Ties

yay! my movie THE FAMILY TIE is FINALLY FUCKING COMING OUT! it's been a ridiculous sort of long process between making it, thinking about it, editing it, doubting it, then saying "fuck it" to finally releasing it, but the wait is gonna be worth it (or not). more on this coming soon, obviously...

oh and check out the official site - familytiemovie.com