Thoughts & Stream of Consciousness, rough and ready, from an award-winning filmmaker and author you’ve never heard of, while walking off long Covid, and listening to podcasts…walking day: Tuesday, June 25, 2024.
Weather for the day… nice day, starting out, 62° with no wind and blue sky 71° when back at home.
Podcast is WTF? Marc Maron with Jewel Episode 1550 - Jewel
I have to say, I loved Jewel when she first hit the airwaves. Great voice, attractive, talented. She seemed to disappear for a while, off and on. I saw her recently on a Roast of Rob Lowe from 7 years ago when she was awesome (Nikki Glaser kicked ass, as usual), and now on this podcast. This is an amazing person and an amazing podcast episode! Fell in love with her on this podcast all over again. Intelligent, wise...very interesting interview.
Also this: Ride with the Devil (film) 1999 US revisionist Western film dir. by Ang Lee starring Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jeffrey Wright, Jewel in her feature film debut, also Simon Baker, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, James Caviezel
Based Woe to Live On, by Daniel Woodrell,
Based Woe to Live On, by Daniel Woodrell,
I wrote in my last blog about Jason Lockhart playing the role of "Rowan" in my film "Gumdrop". a short horror. I was saying how he was fulfilling the function that the character Luca Brasi did in The Godfather. So I messaged Jason on Facebook and he wrote back saying that he thought it was his best work as an actor in my film. I also really liked his work other works with Kelly Hughes, especially their short film Green State.
Anyway, I worked with Jason on a few of Kelly’s films. I think my most enjoyable and memorable one was Kelly's seemingly never-ending project he started years ago that I believe he had titled "Suffer of Witch" (or was it "Mephisto Box"?), but it has had several titles.
We had a day of shooting at a church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Prior to that Kelly and I had held auditions for potential actors at a venue in Seattle El Corazon (it was the Off Ramp when I used to go there in the late 1980s. I’ve never taken auditions from actors before although I had been sent out on them myself.
Anyway, I worked with Jason on a few of Kelly’s films. I think my most enjoyable and memorable one was Kelly's seemingly never-ending project he started years ago that I believe he had titled "Suffer of Witch" (or was it "Mephisto Box"?), but it has had several titles.
We had a day of shooting at a church on Capitol Hill in Seattle. Prior to that Kelly and I had held auditions for potential actors at a venue in Seattle El Corazon (it was the Off Ramp when I used to go there in the late 1980s. I’ve never taken auditions from actors before although I had been sent out on them myself.
We had a baby and needed some extra money so I signed up with Mode Talent Agency back in 89 or 90, who sent me out on some auditions. One was for a thug character of three. Tyne Daily of Cagney and Lacey after that series had ended in 1988 was going to be in a movie, Face of a Stranger. She played a homeless woman that another woman, Gena Rowlands, befriends. In the film, Tyne gets beat up by three street thugs. I was vying to do that. I thought, how cool to be in a movie where you get to beat up "Lacey"? Alas, I didn’t get the part.
I remember another audition for I think Maxwell House coffee? It was for a guy having lunch in a restaurant and the gig was that he turns around and gave a really strange look at somebody. This was my first audition ever so the producer said to face the wall (that threw me off), and then to just turn my head around and look at the camera and give me the weirdest look I could come up with.
I was ready for just about anything, but that one left me stumped. But she was very nice and repeated herself saying to just give a weird look, don't worry about it, just have fun with it. So I did it. She had me do it a few times and then said thank you and the next person came in and I headed out. I didn't expect to get the gig. I was correct.
It was a while later while I was watching TV when I saw the commercial. The guy they chose for the part did a good job, I’ll give him that. But how fun would that have been?
Anyway, I didn’t last long with Mode Talent. But it wasn't anything I did wrong.
The owner and lead agent had to take a trip to New York or somewhere. He was gone for a week or two. He left the company in charge of his two female underlings. Big mistake.
I was ready for just about anything, but that one left me stumped. But she was very nice and repeated herself saying to just give a weird look, don't worry about it, just have fun with it. So I did it. She had me do it a few times and then said thank you and the next person came in and I headed out. I didn't expect to get the gig. I was correct.
It was a while later while I was watching TV when I saw the commercial. The guy they chose for the part did a good job, I’ll give him that. But how fun would that have been?
Anyway, I didn’t last long with Mode Talent. But it wasn't anything I did wrong.
The owner and lead agent had to take a trip to New York or somewhere. He was gone for a week or two. He left the company in charge of his two female underlings. Big mistake.
According to hi, they really screwed his business over. The first time I went in there he said he really liked my look. He took a headshot got some info about my skills, and experience and put it on the back. He said, you know I really think we could send you to the Stephen Seagal people. As a stand in or something, you look just like him from the back. I said, Yeah? Well, whatever.
It was a few years after that when I was commuting to and working in Seattle. I was walking to work along 1st Avenue from the ferry (to Bainbridge Island, we lived just off there in Suquamish) when one of those “duck “amphibious vehicle tours vehicles (now defunct) that we used to see around Seattle. I heard the loudspeaker saying something to the tour group as they went by about Steven Seagal. I had a ponytail at the time as I do now. I looked over and everybody was looking at me. It honestly didn’t make me happy.
I know a lot of people thought his action on screen was fake. It was, but it wasn't. As I heard it, the reason he looks so weird on camera fighting is that they had to slow his action down so much since the camera wasn’t capturing what he was doing, which subverts your technique. They had to come up with another form of fighting which was unfair as far as critiquing his fight scenes.
My understanding of him now is he seems to be kind of a bully. I had first taken Aikido 1980 as a gym class in college. I had done various martial arts, initially Isshinryu Karate which I had started in 1965.
The thing that made me love Steven Seagal so much when I first saw him in a movie, Above the Law, was that I was so sick of the lazy screenwriting and situations where the good guy comes into a bad guy with a weapon at an innocent hostage's throat or a gun or whatever, and tells the cop to put their gun down. Then the cop puts it down! Give me a break!
Seagal was in a scene like that, but then he just kills the criminal! The first time I saw that movie I literally cheered in my living room. Having studied Aikido, I knew what he was doing in his films. Some of my friends made fun of what he was doing and I'd have to tell them it may look weird or wimpy, but it's highly effective.
Years later, I was finally living near an Aikido dojo for the first time. We were living in Squamish, Washington and my wife saw there was one nearby in Kingston, where one of the the ferries were. The dojo had started at the community center but eventually, moved to Poulsbo, which was 4 miles from our house back then.
Eventually, I ended up on their board of directors for the nonprofit educational school, dojo. Very nice group of people and I much preferred Aikido over any other martial art I've done. Yes, there may be tougher ones. But then you don’t understand the history of it the history of its founder Morihei Ueshiba, O’Sensei.
I had read everything about Aikido I could get my hands on. I became the dojo historian of sorts by default. When our Sensei was instructing a class and referred back to something in Aikido history, he got into the habit of looking at me to expand on what he was saying and I would tell the class what I knew about that technique or history.
My understanding of him now is he seems to be kind of a bully. I had first taken Aikido 1980 as a gym class in college. I had done various martial arts, initially Isshinryu Karate which I had started in 1965.
The thing that made me love Steven Seagal so much when I first saw him in a movie, Above the Law, was that I was so sick of the lazy screenwriting and situations where the good guy comes into a bad guy with a weapon at an innocent hostage's throat or a gun or whatever, and tells the cop to put their gun down. Then the cop puts it down! Give me a break!
Seagal was in a scene like that, but then he just kills the criminal! The first time I saw that movie I literally cheered in my living room. Having studied Aikido, I knew what he was doing in his films. Some of my friends made fun of what he was doing and I'd have to tell them it may look weird or wimpy, but it's highly effective.
Years later, I was finally living near an Aikido dojo for the first time. We were living in Squamish, Washington and my wife saw there was one nearby in Kingston, where one of the the ferries were. The dojo had started at the community center but eventually, moved to Poulsbo, which was 4 miles from our house back then.
Eventually, I ended up on their board of directors for the nonprofit educational school, dojo. Very nice group of people and I much preferred Aikido over any other martial art I've done. Yes, there may be tougher ones. But then you don’t understand the history of it the history of its founder Morihei Ueshiba, O’Sensei.
I had read everything about Aikido I could get my hands on. I became the dojo historian of sorts by default. When our Sensei was instructing a class and referred back to something in Aikido history, he got into the habit of looking at me to expand on what he was saying and I would tell the class what I knew about that technique or history.
Eventually, I redesigned and ran the website because I was doing that for a living, as well as being a server administrator and other things back then for a four state Blue Shield company.
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Getting back to Steven Seagal, my first break with him as a kind of martial arts or filmic hero was when I heard he had married Kelly LeBroc. eveEry guy I knew after Weird Science came out was a fan of hers, for obvious reasons.
The fact that Steven Seagal had married her, gave him big points with all of us. Until they divorced and she was interviewed on some news show on TV. When asked about what happened to her marriage, the distant blank look on her face said it all to me.
Something very bad had happened to this woman. And that I believe fell directly on her ex-husband. Over the years I kept hearing some very impressive or disturbing things about him. His history in how he ended up in Japan is fascinating. He married the daughter of a sensei who owned a dojo and held his own in Japan. Which especially back then was a hard thing for a white boy from Lansing, Michigan to do.
I kept hearing reports of him on film sets, basically being an abusive Aikidoist. Stuntman didn’t like working with him because he didn’t seem to know how to pull his punches. Or maybe he just didn't want to. I get the feeling he enjoyed it.
When you watch the documentary put out by his dojo, they talk about the hardstyle he taught in Aikido. Stephen Seagal himself says he followed O’Sensei’s original harder style. Originally having any evolved out of the martial art Samurai used. As opposed to my original Isshinryu Karate from Okinawa which was designed to protect legally disarmed farmers who were forced to use farm equipment because that’s all they had, inorder to occasionally protect themselves from fully armed samurai.
I don’t know if Seagal could’ve ever been a great actor, but he could’ve been a great Sensei had he not had such an ego. Some of the reports of women speaking out against him and men complaining about him seem to have to had some truth in it.
I can’t even watch his movies anymore, not for decades now. I liked his first few movies done by Warner Bros. Once he went independent, there’s a good movie here or there, but I lost interest. His reality TV series, Steven Seagal Lawman, was interesting about being a cop.
Starting mile two, it's starting to get warm out.
Anyway, getting back to Mode Talent Agency. While the owner was gone, the two women were apparently borrowing money from clients and not paying them back. Bad enough they'd borrow money from clients, but to not pay it back? Sleezy.
The fact that Steven Seagal had married her, gave him big points with all of us. Until they divorced and she was interviewed on some news show on TV. When asked about what happened to her marriage, the distant blank look on her face said it all to me.
Something very bad had happened to this woman. And that I believe fell directly on her ex-husband. Over the years I kept hearing some very impressive or disturbing things about him. His history in how he ended up in Japan is fascinating. He married the daughter of a sensei who owned a dojo and held his own in Japan. Which especially back then was a hard thing for a white boy from Lansing, Michigan to do.
I kept hearing reports of him on film sets, basically being an abusive Aikidoist. Stuntman didn’t like working with him because he didn’t seem to know how to pull his punches. Or maybe he just didn't want to. I get the feeling he enjoyed it.
When you watch the documentary put out by his dojo, they talk about the hardstyle he taught in Aikido. Stephen Seagal himself says he followed O’Sensei’s original harder style. Originally having any evolved out of the martial art Samurai used. As opposed to my original Isshinryu Karate from Okinawa which was designed to protect legally disarmed farmers who were forced to use farm equipment because that’s all they had, inorder to occasionally protect themselves from fully armed samurai.
I don’t know if Seagal could’ve ever been a great actor, but he could’ve been a great Sensei had he not had such an ego. Some of the reports of women speaking out against him and men complaining about him seem to have to had some truth in it.
I can’t even watch his movies anymore, not for decades now. I liked his first few movies done by Warner Bros. Once he went independent, there’s a good movie here or there, but I lost interest. His reality TV series, Steven Seagal Lawman, was interesting about being a cop.
Starting mile two, it's starting to get warm out.
Anyway, getting back to Mode Talent Agency. While the owner was gone, the two women were apparently borrowing money from clients and not paying them back. Bad enough they'd borrow money from clients, but to not pay it back? Sleezy.
My wife at the time, my oldest son's mother, was an artist and a gourmet cook. She had painted a sweatshirt for me that I wore into Mode Talent one day. One of the attractive women running things in the owner's absence, really liked it. She asked if my wife would paint one for her, of her. So I went back and asked my wife who said sure, for $50. I told the woman and she agreed. My wife painted it and one day handed it to me and said not to let it go until I had money in hand.
I got down to Mode and I gave the woman the sweatshirt who just loved it!. She started to give me a line about how she’d pay me later. But I said I can’t and that I was told not to release it without funds in hand. She tried to parlay into paying as little as possible. But I stuck to my guns. Reluctantly, she wrote me a check and reluctantly, I accepted it. But I'm happy to report the check did not bounce.
After I hadn’t heard from Mode in a while, I called them and the owner answered. I said I hadn’t heard from them in a while and he profusely apologized saying things were a mess. He explained the two women he left in charge had been fired and he was trying to salvage the mess they had left him with.
He said they had pretty much ruined his business and told me some of the horror stories of his clients who had gotten ripped off. I told him my story about the sweatshirt and assured him I had been paid, but only because I refused to release the sweatshirt. Eventually, we hung up, amicably. I liked the guy. I never heard back from him, and that was the end of my audition career. I wondered if they had just gone out of business.
On that Kelly Hughes audition day in Seattle, I found pretty interesting and educational. He had been doing auditions of actors since the 90s when he had a weekly half-hour movie of the week that he produced at Viacom public access cable TV on Roosevelt Street, just north of Seattle.
Which was how we met online when he found that I had produced my Lost in Space documentary there around the same time he was starting to work out of there around 1993.
I had recently met my next wife-to-be back then, unbeknownst to me at the time. Just before I had finished editing my film. I would get off work downtown Seattle and drive up for an edit session and then make the commute south in the dark, to Auburn where my girlfriend was living. I had moved in with her as I seemed to be there all the time anyway, and eventually got rid of my apartment in the Sand Point area just up the street from Magnussen Park.
I finished my film and in February 1994 by contract, it was cablecast around the greater Seattle area, twice.
I got down to Mode and I gave the woman the sweatshirt who just loved it!. She started to give me a line about how she’d pay me later. But I said I can’t and that I was told not to release it without funds in hand. She tried to parlay into paying as little as possible. But I stuck to my guns. Reluctantly, she wrote me a check and reluctantly, I accepted it. But I'm happy to report the check did not bounce.
After I hadn’t heard from Mode in a while, I called them and the owner answered. I said I hadn’t heard from them in a while and he profusely apologized saying things were a mess. He explained the two women he left in charge had been fired and he was trying to salvage the mess they had left him with.
He said they had pretty much ruined his business and told me some of the horror stories of his clients who had gotten ripped off. I told him my story about the sweatshirt and assured him I had been paid, but only because I refused to release the sweatshirt. Eventually, we hung up, amicably. I liked the guy. I never heard back from him, and that was the end of my audition career. I wondered if they had just gone out of business.
On that Kelly Hughes audition day in Seattle, I found pretty interesting and educational. He had been doing auditions of actors since the 90s when he had a weekly half-hour movie of the week that he produced at Viacom public access cable TV on Roosevelt Street, just north of Seattle.
Which was how we met online when he found that I had produced my Lost in Space documentary there around the same time he was starting to work out of there around 1993.
I had recently met my next wife-to-be back then, unbeknownst to me at the time. Just before I had finished editing my film. I would get off work downtown Seattle and drive up for an edit session and then make the commute south in the dark, to Auburn where my girlfriend was living. I had moved in with her as I seemed to be there all the time anyway, and eventually got rid of my apartment in the Sand Point area just up the street from Magnussen Park.
I finished my film and in February 1994 by contract, it was cablecast around the greater Seattle area, twice.
When Kelly saw online at Stage32 (a member since 2012), a site for indie filmmakers, that I had also worked at Viacom, he said I should come to meet him and Jason and another actor Greg, at CryptiCon. It was at the Seattle Hilton in SeaTac, south of Seattle. I had been there for the 2nd ZomBcon (previously having attended the 1st ZomBcon in Seattle with my oldest son), which was also at that Hilton. So I felt familiar.
I did and we had a great time and the rest is history.
Getting back to the auditions… Kelly had me and another guy. I think it might’ve been his friend Spanky from Dead Vampires a band from the 90s. 80s and 90s maybe?
Kelly was doing interviews/auditions by himself and had us standing downstairs greeting and wrangling the actors as they arrived. Until I went upstairs and said that I’m not there as a gopher but to learn about auditions from the director's perspective.
He seemed surprised but said, OK have a seat. I’m glad I did that because it was fascinating and he has a good hand for picking unique actors. One got stuck in reading a scene and Kelly gave him a way to act that broke the actor out of his stall and he did a great read. I was impressed by that. He had few good actors. In particular one established actress. Also, a few brand-new actors who turned out to be very good. We had the late great Jennifer True on that set. I used her as voice actor for some off-screen vocals in my own film later on ("Gumdrop", a short horror). Miss you Jennifer...
There was one actress with her mother who was watching us like hawks and didn't want to leave her teen daughter in a room alone with us. We offered for her to stand in the hallway, out of sight of her daughter's vision, with the door open and that satisfied her. You just don't want a parent messing up an actor's reading because of being self-conscious or something. Plus, the director needs to feel free enough to work with the actor without feeling self-conscious themself. The girl did really well and got used for the film.
Kelly had picked one actor, Noel T Austin, who was a very interesting character. He also did body suspension art. And he was interesting-looking guy.
Kelly had picked one actor, Noel T Austin, who was a very interesting character. He also did body suspension art. And he was interesting-looking guy.
I remember Kelly’s friend who played the doctor in the film, Ernie (Ernest Rhoads, AKA, "Hellen Bed") and I were in the main part of the church upstairs. while Kelly was filming a “group therapy session“ in the basement. I think I played two characters in that group therapy scene. I just changed my clothes with one of me wearing a hoodie on my head with my head down the whole time and holding myself and a coffee cup like I was strung out.
While he was doing that, we were trying to give Noel directions upstairs. He was sitting in a pew with a straight jacket on, stressing out a bit about how he was going to act out the scene. So we offered him some advice basically trying to help him relax.
So when Kelly finally shot the scene, we thought Noel was very good. Kelly thought it all well very smoothly, until I mentioned to him the 45 minutes Ernie and I had spent with prepping him.
I also acted as "sound" on set that day. That church had no heat on. There’s one scene where the doctor (Ernie) and a character are walking down a flight of stairs. You can’t see below their waist, but if you could, you would’ve seen me lying on the ground with a digital recorder, recording the dialogue and steps as they walked.
A couple days later, I got really sick from being on that set. For whatever reason. We do suffer for our art, if we do it right, at times. But I'd avoid the suffering when possible. Research has shown it's just unnecessary. At least we don’t let it stop us, which is doing it right. It's just how you have to do it.
I still haven’t auditioned any actors for any of my films. I used to run the projector and show our family films when I was a little kid, did any splicing needing to be done. I’ve always been fascinated by film and cinema. Got a great education of sorts from the European auteur director's movies who were shown on PBS in the 1960s and early '70s.
My first film I produced at Western Washington University on phenomenology for two of my psychology professors. My second was the Lost in Space 25th anniversary documentary I did at Viacomm. I could’ve used their equipment, but I used my own. Again, I should’ve used their equipment, but you had to sign it in and out, as massive pain in the neck. Especially if the equipment was unavailable when you needed it.
And then digital editor broke and they had to ship it to California. It didn't come back until a month later. When I showed up to edit one day, they said just to use one of the other editing bays, but none of the other VHS editing machines would work with my master tape. So I had to wait. I should’ve seen the signs.
Eventually, the editor came back and my master tape worked on it. When it was cablecast, I sat at home watching it and about 80% of the music I had put on the soundtrack couldn’t be heard. Then in the credits, there is a big list of music which had to leave people wandering...WTF?
So that was seen by the public in early 1994. An art film and a documentary under my belt at that point. Then in 2019, my oldest son was living downstairs with his girlfriend in basically a separate apartment in our big house I was renting after we sold our home of 15 years. I suggested we shoot a film. He thought it would be fun.
So I wrote an eight-minute film. Just a POC, proof of concept that I thought I could actually produce. It was a lot of fun. Two years in that house, then he moved to another town and I moved a mile away to a smaller house that was cheaper and where I got the idea to shoot Gumdrop.
Getting back to auditions, I skipped them and simply stole some of Kelly‘s actors and friends. The guy who took care of my rental house when I moved to Bremerton, Tom, we got to be friends. He’s the one who found the house I live in now, because he lived in it years ago.
The previous tenant they kicked out of here before me, hadn’t paid rent in months, had three big dogs that destroyed the yard and wrecked the house. So Tom and I spent July 2018 remodeling the house. I moved in and started paying rent in August.
Skipping forward to Gumdrop, Tom and I got to be close working for a month on that house in the heat, sweating and painting, fixing things and going to lunch and talking.
Actually, I had used him as a voice actor on my audiobooks at the previous house. So we kinda got used to working together on my having him read my writings as I directed him. He had actually studied voice acting in school. Kelly Hughes had studied, I think something similar in school. His podcasts, Rising Star are well done. Both of these are after they graduated high school
Tom was interested in acting in the film and suggested his son, who he suggested his kids. As I'd acquired some of Kelly’s stable actors, no auditions needed.
I have to say I was amazed how good Tom was and double surprised about his son. I love the scenes of the two of them together in the film. I almost feel like there were two lead actors.
So that’s my situation with auditions. I have been on them professionally. I have experienced them through a Kelly Hughes production. I do believe the quality of your actors as well as the quality of your soundtrack music really elevates your film without you doing any extra work.
Starting my 3rd mile...
Damn voice-to-text and the notepad on my phone are pretty problematic. I tried to go to the top to type something as I have trouble getting there, I have to scroll forever up (or down). Just simply touched the screen and suddenly I was at the top of the screen. Then had to scroll all the way back to the bottom.
Or I have voice-to-text issues that I cannot get right and I have to do it manually. One of my biggest issues in editing this when I get home is correcting voice-to-text errors. Granted, some of those are my fault. Some of those are because of ambient noise or wind but a lot of times it’s just me wishing for better software.
And I do now do this using my Apple Airpods.
Apologies to Jewel and Marc Maron on their podcast episode today. My listening to podcasts on this thing just kind of happened. I couldn’t think of things to say for a blog so I thought I’d listen to podcasts and when I had a flash of a thought, I'd write it out to share with people.
Tom was interested in acting in the film and suggested his son, who he suggested his kids. As I'd acquired some of Kelly’s stable actors, no auditions needed.
I have to say I was amazed how good Tom was and double surprised about his son. I love the scenes of the two of them together in the film. I almost feel like there were two lead actors.
So that’s my situation with auditions. I have been on them professionally. I have experienced them through a Kelly Hughes production. I do believe the quality of your actors as well as the quality of your soundtrack music really elevates your film without you doing any extra work.
Starting my 3rd mile...
Damn voice-to-text and the notepad on my phone are pretty problematic. I tried to go to the top to type something as I have trouble getting there, I have to scroll forever up (or down). Just simply touched the screen and suddenly I was at the top of the screen. Then had to scroll all the way back to the bottom.
Or I have voice-to-text issues that I cannot get right and I have to do it manually. One of my biggest issues in editing this when I get home is correcting voice-to-text errors. Granted, some of those are my fault. Some of those are because of ambient noise or wind but a lot of times it’s just me wishing for better software.
And I do now do this using my Apple Airpods.
Apologies to Jewel and Marc Maron on their podcast episode today. My listening to podcasts on this thing just kind of happened. I couldn’t think of things to say for a blog so I thought I’d listen to podcasts and when I had a flash of a thought, I'd write it out to share with people.
That worked out really well, except for the political podcasts in post-production editing made me think I’m somebody’s crazy uncle. The confusing thing for some is sometimes I use satire and it’s not recognized. Or I go over the top because I’m annoyed by how abused reality has become. We all make mistakes But then whatever I find is incorrect. I correct it
I’m hoping as all should, that in this election Trump loses, and hopefully goes to prison. Preferably to end his life there, one way or another. I can drop the political podcasts then, although I will still stay apprised of what’s going on in the world. We have to. And then I can find more art and creator-based podcasts.
I’m a fan of the show Hacks, as you may know and I listen to their podcast, which is awesome. Non sequitur...
I’m hoping as all should, that in this election Trump loses, and hopefully goes to prison. Preferably to end his life there, one way or another. I can drop the political podcasts then, although I will still stay apprised of what’s going on in the world. We have to. And then I can find more art and creator-based podcasts.
I’m a fan of the show Hacks, as you may know and I listen to their podcast, which is awesome. Non sequitur...
I got up this morning to watch The Daily Show. Very much looking forward to seeing Jon Stewart again on his Monday show that I watch on Tuesday morning, off my DVR. And guess what? This time no Jon Stewart!
I thought the episode was very good but there’s only one Jon Stewart. So where the hell was he? The thing that really annoys me and I believe is one of the tenets of Purpleism is when you’re going to do a switch on your audience, have the decency to address it with them! And on the last night's show, they didn’t mention a word about where Jon was.
On the health front last night, I was watching “Crime“ the Scottish police procedural with Dougray Scott. Series two is getting good. I wanted something to munch so rather than make a whole bag of popcorn, I have these tasty crackers I use for meat and cheese. I just munched on a few of those.
Then I woke up too early this morning. Didn’t take any melatonin last night to get to sleep, which is a success. Though I woke up too early. I put on NPR to doze to and then woke up again later and felt very weird.
Very weird like am I dying, weird? Wasn’t anything intense, but I could feel the blood in my veins and it felt like my heart was beating slow and low maybe? I couldn’t tell if it was high blood pressure. I didn’t think so, but something was not right.
I thought, what the hell, take half of Benadryl, which is my go-to remedy. The feeling I had at the time was if I had to go to the ER or have the paramedics over for a visit? I didn't think Benadryl could fix this.
But within 10 or 15 minutes? I felt normal again. So it was I guess histamine levels and the Benadryl did their magic. A lot of Covid has to do with histamine issues. For more on that you can read my book “Suffering Long Covid“. My son told me today their store just sold out of them and so I ordered them some more. I also got notified my screenplay "The Teenage Bodyguard" was an official selection at the Cinematography and Photography Awards in London. Two very nice things today. Moving on...
I thought the episode was very good but there’s only one Jon Stewart. So where the hell was he? The thing that really annoys me and I believe is one of the tenets of Purpleism is when you’re going to do a switch on your audience, have the decency to address it with them! And on the last night's show, they didn’t mention a word about where Jon was.
On the health front last night, I was watching “Crime“ the Scottish police procedural with Dougray Scott. Series two is getting good. I wanted something to munch so rather than make a whole bag of popcorn, I have these tasty crackers I use for meat and cheese. I just munched on a few of those.
Then I woke up too early this morning. Didn’t take any melatonin last night to get to sleep, which is a success. Though I woke up too early. I put on NPR to doze to and then woke up again later and felt very weird.
Very weird like am I dying, weird? Wasn’t anything intense, but I could feel the blood in my veins and it felt like my heart was beating slow and low maybe? I couldn’t tell if it was high blood pressure. I didn’t think so, but something was not right.
I thought, what the hell, take half of Benadryl, which is my go-to remedy. The feeling I had at the time was if I had to go to the ER or have the paramedics over for a visit? I didn't think Benadryl could fix this.
But within 10 or 15 minutes? I felt normal again. So it was I guess histamine levels and the Benadryl did their magic. A lot of Covid has to do with histamine issues. For more on that you can read my book “Suffering Long Covid“. My son told me today their store just sold out of them and so I ordered them some more. I also got notified my screenplay "The Teenage Bodyguard" was an official selection at the Cinematography and Photography Awards in London. Two very nice things today. Moving on...
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While I feel like I’m over long Covid now, I'm unsure. Is it one of those diseases that goes away by half-life? If you know anything about atomic structures, if something last for 10 years, its half-life is five years, and so on and so forth by half until...who knows?
If you keep doing that, there can be no end to it. It just gets so minimized that for all intents and purposes it no longer exists.
The alternative is that long Covid is gone, but damaged something or tweaked something, typically a dormant virus and so now you’re stuck with that issue.
Certainly, some people have been damaged by Covid and died from it or are permanently damaged by it. Either their brain, or heart, their vagus nerve, or blood system, or some organ(s).
I think I addressed this the other day that the scary things about long Covid is the unknown and having no effect to reproduce a remedy. Oddly Benadryl has often proven to be that remedy.
Another eminent one is hydrating yourself. When I started feeling better on the Benadryl this morning, I drank some more water. I had drunk some water but it didn’t do anything. After the Benadryl can only help.
I just passed 2.5 mile marker...
If you keep doing that, there can be no end to it. It just gets so minimized that for all intents and purposes it no longer exists.
The alternative is that long Covid is gone, but damaged something or tweaked something, typically a dormant virus and so now you’re stuck with that issue.
Certainly, some people have been damaged by Covid and died from it or are permanently damaged by it. Either their brain, or heart, their vagus nerve, or blood system, or some organ(s).
I think I addressed this the other day that the scary things about long Covid is the unknown and having no effect to reproduce a remedy. Oddly Benadryl has often proven to be that remedy.
Another eminent one is hydrating yourself. When I started feeling better on the Benadryl this morning, I drank some more water. I had drunk some water but it didn’t do anything. After the Benadryl can only help.
I just passed 2.5 mile marker...
My last blog went live at 6 AM today which is the normal time. I blasted it out to social media, the title, the link, a few hashtags and trying to figure out how I get people to understand what my walkabout thoughts blog is about and what each individual episode or article is about. That’s been a real conundrum. You can put tags in each blog posted. I also put hashtags in most of the time when I posting.
I was looking at the analytics on my blog today, which are new to me, they'd updated them, and I went back and looked at my blog and scrolled down and on the right. I forgot I had a word cloud. I got this idea of. I’ll take a screenshot of that and included with my social media blast for today’s blog.
So we’ll see how that works out. I mean, if you’re kind enough to click on my link to my blog but don’t know who I am or what the blog is about, right at the top. As you know, it says this is just random shit from some crazy person walking and listening to podcasts. But it’s also turned a little bit into an autobiography of my life and craft.
My son and I have long been talking about AI and being able to talk to miss loved ones who have died. I know he could use it. It would be nice if he had me talk to after I’m gone. I do believe AI will be able to be pointed at something online or feed it a bunch of data and it will be able to re-create a person from that that will seem oddly and disturbingly real.
I've forever wanted to submit all my writings and see what the common thread would be according to be analyzed, but I can’t afford that. But AI would be doable. Soon, I'm sure.
I've put a lot of my beliefs and understandings into this blog since 2010. Eventually I could point an AI at my blog alone and have it generate a reasonable favatar of myself that my sons could one day talk after I’m gone.
I don’t think that would be possible for me with my grandmother who was my primary ethical and intellectual guide and mentor. Or my mother who, as I grew up, seemed to fade after the loss first of her dad, as she was a daddy’s girl...he was never around, always traveling the world. Then losing her youngest son, my younger brother which seem to snap her mind. It was ugly and took a year or two of his dying from liver cancer, five years before the first successful liver transplant.
And then her mother died, my grandmother, second mother, and sometimes primary in many ways.
We don’t have lots of data and information about people like that online or available. That was before the internet. I was on the Internet in about 1987 and then I worked in the internet and IT field for nearly 30 years. I may be a contender for an AI avatar. Perhaps one of the first cohort viable for that.
Anyway, we’ve got interesting things coming to us all soon and it’s going to hit us faster than we expect.
I think we need a new law t ofhat orders any political party to have to have a platform with some basic tenets country before party, because all the Republican Party is now is party before country, Trump before party. It’s killing democracy, it’s killing the cohesion among citizens and it’s seemingly trying to end America.
One of the reasons for these walks is to get back in shape after four years of Covid and long Covid and certainly aafter a bad winter and spring for me this year. But also the blog in speaking and recording and editing. It’s a lot of editing to put this blog online and I’m only doing one readthrough… but that’s also getting me in shape for creative works. It’s making me want to finish my film companion book for my documentary and that’s really important, because I have a lot of new projects I want to get working on. I just need to wrap up the previous ones.
OK, I’ll shut up and listen to Marc and Jewel.
Well, this is interesting. Marc is talking about doing a show in Seattle because he’s based in Vancouver, British Columbia now for shooting a movie. He goes home to LA every once in a while. But he said he’s walking around Seattle this week and saying that it looks trashed and beaten down, or maybe it’s just where he’s located
Maybe?
Seattle’s always been that way in some areas. With some pretty parts. But one of the reasons many of us moved out of Seattle, and I really loved living in Seattle, and my oldest son was born there. But what we’ve seen because of Amazon and Google and others... many of my friends ended up working there… they turned the city into what it is today.
Many of us who still live there, or those who moved out, have complained about how the once cool spirit of Seattle is kind of gone while now it’s all shiny and such. I don’t know, bro culture? Not really but you get the idea. Gentrification everywhere. Many of the cool venues are gone now replaced by shiny new buildings.
Almost has that coolness anymore replacd by the new and shiny factor.
So I’m wondering was Marc downtown by Pioneer Square, maybe south of that? Because that’s like industrial and it’s kind of cool but a different kind. That’s down by the Seahawk's stadium and the Safeco baseball field. Maybe. I don’t know, they keep changing the names.
Marc's second wife came from Seattle. I didn’t know that. So he knows it a little bit from the past. He says he loves Seattle, but they broke up and it wasn’t good, so there’s that.
Then he said Lynn Shelton, his late girlfriend who died was from Seattle. So he’s also got a lot of mixed feelings about Seattle but does say he loves it and knows he has a lot of fans here. I’m sure he’s had a lot of shows up here.
Well, I know this is my fault today jabbering so much with WTF? on pause, but Marc finally got around to talking to Jewel. I spent almost the entire walk just jawing my way through. Talk talk talk talk talk. I’ll have to save this podcast for the next walk.
On that note, I’ll bid you adieu…and leave you with that. It’s noon and time for lunch.
Cheers! Sláinte!
