Sunday, December 19, 2004

Taxes and the future

This will probably be my last entry before Christmas, as I'm about to fly home for the holidays. Yesterday, P and I went to the mall to do a little Christmas shopping, and it wasn't nearly as packed as I expected. I hope that doesn't bode ill for retailers this season, but then times are still rough for a lot of people. We went to a Purdue Alumni event last week at which the speaker claimed 70% of Americans will be self-employed in 25 years if current trends continue.

If he's right, I wonder if that will be the logical conclusion to (almost) unbridled capitalism. Will we become a nation of salesmen, everyone trying to hustle everbody else? Maybe that's too harsh a word, but once we all find out what it's like to try to sell our services/products to those who want/need them, I wonder if we'll also learn how to see through everybody else's sales pitch. There's a lot of faith put in "market forces", but the fact is the best guy for the job doesn't always get the business, money corrupts, and if everybody's worried about their next sale, the culture of this country's going to change-and probably not for the better.

Michael Moore makes the point in Downsize This that if it was true that corporations' only responsibility was to their shareholders, every corporation would sell crack cocaine-huge profits, loyal customers, low overhead. But the fact is, they also have a responsibility to many other groups (the government, the community that supports them, their employees); they just don't like to admit it, maybe not even to themselves. I've never attended business school, but I've seen enough on the subject to have an idea of what those people are being taught. The inevitable result was visible to everyone over the last few years.

I don't see anything wrong with being rewarded for doing a good job, but what message is sent when executives are rewarded for doing a bad job? The example that comes to mind is when millions of dollars in bonuses are awarded despite plant closings and layoffs. I don't think it would mean the downfall of these companies if these executives would forfeit their bonuses-not their salaries, people-to keep these people employed through a downturn (and in fact, this has happened, rarely). The employees would undoubtedly be that much more loyal and appreciative, maybe even more productive. I imagine the reply is, a company that expected such a good turn would not be able to attract high quality applicants for those executive positions. I guess it depends on your definition of "high quality".

In the last couple of years, the big automakers have come around to supporting government-run health care. The reason? The benefits they pay current and retired employees (won through decades of union bargaining) are believed to be more than the raise in taxes they're likely to face under a government health system. And in the current tax climate, they're probably right. After all, if the Republicans can just continue borrowing to avoid raising taxes long enough, they won't have to worry about the consequences.

Taxation should not be a dirty word. If the country decides it is worthwhile to have national health care, or more homeland security, or a trip to Mars, we must be willing to pay more for it. If recent history is any indication, raising taxes does more for the economy than lowering them (see Clinton vs. Bush II). This may be counterintuitive, but there it is. When business grads decide priority number one is to pay as little tax as possible, they sometimes make decisions that are morally compromised from the start. I know accounting rules are complicated (I was an accountant for several years), and interpretation matters, but if you're always trying to tiptoe the line, sooner or later you're going to step over it. I wish everyone would take a little step back to find surer footing.

Friday, December 17, 2004

One time, at band practice...

For the past few days, I’ve been listening to Elliott Smith’s posthumous album, From a Basement on the Hill, since I got it for my roommate for Christmas. His voice is very soulful and ephemeral, and along with Billy Corgan’s gives me hope that my own voice isn’t too strange to someday record some decent songs of my own.

I was in fifth or sixth grade when I first discovered rock music, about the time kids first started “going together”. Up until that point, the only music I was really familiar with was the country that my dad played in the truck and the garage, church hymns, and the themes to cartoons, TV shows, and commercials that all kids know by heart. The first rock song that really caught my attention was “Shot Through the Heart” by Bon Jovi, although at the time I thought he was saying “Shock to the Heart”. I taped it off Q102, Cincinnati’s pop rock station and the only station I listened to when I had a choice for many years, and brought a tape player to school to play it for a girl I fancied at the time. As I recall, she just shrugged it off, and the lyrics aren’t exactly encouraging for young love, but I only understood about half of them at the time.

One day, when I was a teenager, I was listening to the huge, faux-wood-paneled stereo in the living room (complete with record player and 8-track!), lying on the floor reading something and singing along. I was kind of caterwauling as a goof, which I sometimes did, when my dad walked in and surprised me by saying something like, “One thing’s for sure, you’ll never be a singer!” with a smile on his face. I just smiled back and let it slide, seeing no reason at the time to try to convince him otherwise, but inside I was thinking, “I’m going to prove you wrong.” He didn’t mean anything by it, but the fact was I loved to sing but had never really shared that with anybody.

I got the chance the summer after my freshman year in college, when me and two friends from high school got together to play in the garage at one of their houses. I clearly remember the first time I sang out loud, to Tesla’s “Signs”, as they played along on their guitars to some tabs C had printed off the internet. We continued to get together on breaks from school for a couple of years, and they also taught me how to play guitar as we recorded a bunch of songs on my CD/tape player, especially K since we both went to Purdue and ended up roommates our senior year. I still have those tapes, but I missed our big moment.

On Halloween, 1997, K, one of our other roommates, and a couple of fellow students we hooked up with had a full-blown band and played a show at a house off campus. It was fantastic, but we didn’t tape it because it was our first gig, and it could have been terrible. We did make some mistakes, and even played two songs over again as an encore after our second set, but it went great. The next week, the band completely broke up and we never played another show. I still kick myself for not recording that Halloween show, since we could have erased the tape anyway, but at least I still have the pictures of me in my Australian cowboy hat, singing myself hoarse for probably a hundred people or more and having the time of my life.

Over the years, I taught myself to sing and play guitar at the same time, which was harder than I expected, and even wrote about a dozen songs of my own. In Dallas, I hooked up with a couple guys in my apartment complex who also played guitar, and we tried to form a band, going so far as renting a storage area to practice in, but sadly nothing ever came of it. With another guitarist, I scored one of my short films, and I recorded several songs on my computer with the help of a non-linear editing program.

I lost my singing voice for about a year and a half when I swallowed a mouthful of Coke wrong at work in Dallas and strained the skeletal cartilage in my throat. (How’s that for dumb bad luck?) That was one of the reasons we gave up on the storage area band. Now it’s back, and Austin being what it is, I’m tempted to try again. Hope springs eternal, and I’m not thirty yet.

P.S. I had to rewrite this entry from scratch, because I didn’t take my own advice: always write long e-mails, blog entries, etc., in Word first, so if something goes wrong you still have a copy of it. Good advice, if you can remember it.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Entertaining possibilities

I disappointed myself by spending most of the day reading Entertainment Weekly today. I've had a subscription pretty much since 1994, when I first moved up to Purdue, and they pile up pretty quickly. Inevitably, there are some I want to keep for various articles or features, such as their "Best of" lists, but as I sort through them I come across issues that I realize immediately I don't want to keep, but some articles in them deserve a second read. So I'll end up reading a dozen articles I've already read in the course of throwing the magazines they're in away, and I end up spending hours at it. Sometimes, they're even good enough I decide I want to keep that issue after all, but usually not.

I have a pretty impressive collection of useless entertainment trivia built up in my head after a decade of reading EW cover to cover every week, and I've been trying to figure out how to put it to good use. I recently signed up for the Wheel of Fortune e-mail list, so I can be notified when they're scouting in the area and try to get on the show. I think I could do well at that one. Jeopardy is a little too arcane for me, but I should probably apply for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? as well. The questions on that show were sometimes criticized for being too easy, and I think it's still on at 12:30am or something, with a different host.

Reality TV seems to break down into two subclasses: the game show writ large (Survivor, The Apprentice, Fear Factor), where the game takes over the contestants' lives for a period of time, anywhere from a day to several months; and relationship dramas (the Real World, Wife Swap), where there aren't any winners or losers, just people in a fishbowl making entertainment for everybody else. I don't watch much of it, but of the ones I have seen, the more real the better. For instance, the first season of Survivor, which I caught bits and pieces of, seems fundamentally different from the subsequent seasons just because now everybody's ready for their close-ups. They're all aspiring actors/models/TV show hosts, and they see spending weeks on the show as the means to get there, rather than an end to itself. Survivor's hardly alone in that respect, but it kind of started it all in the U.S., and all the rest of these shows now start out infected with that mentality, which is probably one reason they face diminishing returns. The whole genre has been on the wane for the last couple years, so we can look forward to more crappy sitcoms that at least employ writers, if nothing else. Maybe the competition has resulted in better scripted shows, I don't watch enough to tell, but Lost is my current favorite, and that show would've never gotten made without suits willing to take chances.

How's that saying go? "Necessity is the mother of invention." How about, "Desperation is the mother of risky programming"? I like the sound of that.

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Learning curve

Today we shot at a photo studio, and the steer showed up for a little fun. Cars would occasionally honk as they drove by us, as if to say hello. We were set up in the front and side parking lots, and of course any honks or catcalls would've ruined the audio if we'd been taping any, but we weren't most of the time.

I'm really starting to realize just how great an opportunity this position has been for me. I'm working with people who know what they're doing, and learning fast all kinds of skills I didn't have before. For instance, things I know now that I didn't before starting shooting:

1) How to set up and break down C-stands, rolling stands large and small, and American stands.
2) How to quickly assemble and disassemble a spider dolly and its track.
3) How to set up butterflies and nets on their frames, and shiny boards and flags on stands.

I'm sure there are classes at UT lasting entire semesters that teach young film students this stuff, and here I am learning for free and getting hands-on experience with a wide range of good, working equipment (we even had a gib arm, but we didn't use it). I'm very fortunate to have this opportunity. I wasn't a neophyte when it came to productions-I had experience setting up lights with scrims and filters, for example-but I feel a lot more knowledgeable about what goes into making a movie set work. After all, my entire background was in video, which has its own requirements but is nothing like shooting on film. Earlier I wrote that I never wanted to work with film again (this was after two days of getting rained out). I take it back. I wouldn't mind working with film again, as long as I could 1) get paid, and 2) surround myself with competent people who know their jobs. We should all be so lucky.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

More shooting, good weather

Today we shot again for the short film I'm working on, once again at the ranch using a steer and a little boy. The difference was, today we had beautiful weather and it went pretty smoothly. No major problems, except when the cow wrangler got clipped with one of its horns across the head. He didn't fall down, and said he was alright after he stopped seeing stars, but a bruise was definitely forming by the end of the day.

One of the steers at the ranch is Bevo, UT's bovine mascot, who is brought out onto the field to lay down and observe, and apparently stand when touchdowns are made. He's not the steer we're using, but he's definitely a fine specimen. Our star is older and supposedly more docile, but he does get feisty (see above).

I'm just glad we're done with the ranch, even though there's more to come with both the boy and the bull.

Bevo the bovine. Posted by Hello

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Bands and ideas

I went and saw Cruiserweight, a local band, play at Emo's tonight. A little beforehand, I had been standing next to the lead singer in the outside area behind the bar without recognizing her. I borrowed one of their albums from my roommate for about 6 months a couple years ago, and there were times I had that in my car for a week or more, listening to it many times. They're pretty great, kind of punk pop rock. Amazingly, they and two other bands were playing for only $1 cover charge. That's one of the great things about living in the "live music capital of the world", you can almost always see a decent band live for cheap, if you know where to look. I'd like to use one of their songs in the opening of a movie, if I ever write it. In fact, a relationship movie like Singles (which was set in Seattle and showcased many Seattle bands) would fit pretty well here in Austin. I guess I better get to work on that.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Protests and the future

Today was my first day off in a week, so I ran some errands and went to the grocery. I also wanted to go driving around photographing murals around Austin, but I ran out of steam. Austin is full of them, many on the walls of businesses to promote whatever they sell, like video stores with figures from famous movies painted ten feet high. There's a frog mural on Guadalupe so famous, when Baja Fresh bought the building to remodel, so many people protested they ended up leaving the wall it's on alone.

Austin has a bit of a protest culture, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it can lead to anger in some people that can grow unhealthy (the above example excluded). When I read about people fire-bombing McDonald's in France, I think that society has a deeper problem than cheap fast food replacing local restaurants. Violence is never an option in this day and age for anyone who wants to be taken seriously on the merits of their argument.

Does anybody truly believe the Second Amendment unrestricted would prevent a dictator from taking over America? Can you see any gun owner you know who's not crazy or abusing some substance pointing a weapon at an American soldier under any circumstance? Gun owners are overwhelmingly conservative in their politics, the kind of people who celebrate the troops, not prepare to fight them. In my opinion, the most likely scenario for the United States as we know it to cease to exist (and I by no means believe this is likely) is for a President (especially one like Bush, who believes himself destined to rule the country) to simply refuse to leave office. He'd still call himself President, and still convene the Congress and everything that goes along with the way government is run today, but with his supporters in power there (Bush's campaign this time around encouraged fealty oaths to Bush himself, not the office of the Presidency, or the United States), he could ignore any court rulings he didn't like (President Andrew Jackson did this), order the army anywhere he needed to suppress dissent (e.g. Kent State), and if his policies were popular enough, basically rule with impunity. He wouldn't have to declare himself a king (this would be counter-productive), he could claim he had to stay on as President because of "the will of the people", or the need to eliminate the terrorist threat, but he would in effect be a king. Throughout history, kings have only ruled by the consent of the people or through the application of violence. But in America today, the people with the greatest capacity to violently fight for freedom are the ones ideologically aligned with those in the government who are taking it away in the name of security and moral values. Let me reiterate that I don't see this happening. I'm sure at the end of his second term, Bush will leave the office to whoever wins the next election, because I think he does believe in the America he grew up in. But what about the next guy?

The problem with investing so much power in the Presidency, as has happened since 9/11, and promoting so much secrecy, as Bush has done since he got into office, is the loss of accountability. The Republican majority are so high on their own power right now, they don't see a downside to eliminating dissent and consolidating power. But what about when the other side comes back into power? (And if America and the Constitution survive, they will eventually.) Are they comfortable leaving the precedent of having all that control in the hands of the opposition? There used to be checks and balances, but they're eroding. If conservatives ever cease to care if their arguments are taken seriously by those they disagree with, they might change their minds about how much support those troops deserve when they're taking orders from their political enemies. That's the nightmare scenario-protestors with guns instead of signs.

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Think happy thoughts

Boy, time goes fast when you're transcribing 14 interviews and three show segments in four days. Especially when you're also trying to help out a student film on the side. We set up the shoot Friday in one of UT's studios, then got the call that our principal actor had strep throat and wasn't coming. So, we tear down some of it and leave the rest for if we can make up the shoot tomorrow (fingers crossed). Depending on how close I am to finishing the interviews, I may be able to join them, but it's still iffy at the moment. The director's faced a string of bad luck since shooting started, and I really feel for him.

In other news, I'll be heading home for Christmas in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to seeing friends and family, if only for a week. Maybe I'll get to see some snow while I'm there. Not much of that in Texas.

Thursday, December 02, 2004


Stranger in the night. Posted by Hello

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Possum Kingdom

A few months ago, I woke up at about 6:00am to a sound from my cat that was like nothing I'd heard out of her. It was like the scream a cartoon cat makes when someone steps on its tail on The Simpsons or something, only louder. After making this horrible racket, Yusuke jumped away from my window and sat growling, facing me but sneaking glances back at the blinds. Once I'd gathered my wits, I got up and looked outside, but there was nothing there. I walked out into the living room and looked out other windows facing the same area, but whatever it was had beat a hasty retreat. I did notice, however, that the gate to the path leading back behind our place was open, and I thought I heard voices talking in the parking lot out front. My instincts said they had a dog, which they'd let roam through the gate and back to my window, where my cat likes to sit and look out sometimes, scaring the bejeesus out of her.

I recommended to my roommate that we start keeping the gate closed, which we hadn't been too observant about doing to that point. So we did. But within the week, it happened again: same scream, same waking up at 6:00am, same nothing there. This time, however, when I checked the gate, sure enough, it was closed. No dog could have fit through the grating of our gate or otherwise gotten to our back patio. My new theory was that we had a possum or raccoon, and I was right. Within a week, I came home to find my roommate showing me a digital picture he'd taken of a possum on our back fence.

What do you do about a possum if you live in a city? I had no idea. Luckily, this marsupial menace hasn't caused my cat alarm to go off again since, but in the last two days, two things have happened that make me uneasy. First, yesterday I watched a cat jump down into our patio area from the very same fence the possum was on. It had tags, and seemed to just be curious about this corner of the neighborhood. However, our gate being closed, I wondered how it planned to get out again. The only route I could see was a tree whose branches reached over to the neighbor's patio. The fence was a shear six-foot drop on this side. I brought Yusuke out to the glass door where the other cat was sitting outside on the sidewalk and set her down. Right on cue, once she saw it she started growling. A few minutes later I watched this cat jump straight up to the top of the fence from the ground, gain its balance, then cross over to the other side and disappear. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, since one of the cats we had when I was a child was able to jump up and catch birds off the birdfeeder we hung from our clothesline, but still, at least that cat didn't grab hold of the feeder, he just came straight back down to earth.

The second thing happened just a few minutes before I started writing this. While a plumber was working on the tub, I heard at least two of our neighbors' dogs barking and looked outside. There on the fence was the same possum from the picture P had shown me. I took some pictures while the dogs continued going nuts, and the possum just sat there staring at me with its beady black eye. It occurred to me that if the dogs could catch the possum, our problem would be solved, so I came inside and got a broom, then went out to try and knock the possum off the fence. But as I got close, the broom handle maybe six inches from it, and the thing just sat there, mouth slightly open in its clown-white face, I couldn't do it. I thought I could see the fear in its expression at the thought of being torn to pieces by dogs, not a pretty thought. Also, I found a dead parakeet in the parking lot earlier today. Anyway, the possum lives to see another day. Hopefully, it'll take the hint and move on to someone else's yard.