The Other Goatdog

There's another goatdog, and he's a big asshole.

I was googling myself, as I am wont to do—in the privacy of my own home, so don't judge me!—and I decided to look into the other goatdog who shows up rather high in a google search.

He's a regular commentor on the Lawrence (KS) Journal-World's website. We have some things in common: both of us are anti-Bush and anti-war. But there's a difference (at least, I hope there's a difference): he's got an obnoxious one-track mind about it, and he manages to insert it into every conversation.

In a 2004 poll about Lawrence residents' favorite cheeses, after posting a recipe, he said, "Bush is a war criminal and I hope to see him hang." When asked about what's on his 2004 Christmas list, he said, "To see Bush hang for his war crimes."

He's diverse, though: when asked about his tips for beating the heat, he turned to poetry: "You're going to lose your war! / You're greedy christian war! / You're going to lose your war! / Your greasy christian war!" Same went for a poll about what kind of return graduates get from their education investment.

How should we celebrate Earth Day? "Remove the greedy fat christian pigs from the planet." What's worse, potholes or road construction zones? Let's compare Bush to Hitler instead. Will the smoking ban in Lawrence reduce the number of heart attack victims? "Dead Kansans - Boohoo."

To the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, and to googlers worldwide: I am not that goatdog. I'm a kinder, gentler goatdog.

Who Are You, Anastasya Makeyeva?

And why have 14,000 people opened my review of The Rider Named Death in the past 15 days looking for you? And an additional 8,000 have clicked on your person page, which is a dead end.

I know that you are a Russian model, and that my site is one of around 42 English-language sites Google produces when readers search for your name (it was at six before last weekend). But still. My other reviews feel neglected. Nine Songs, which is the worst movie I've ever paid to see, attracts only around 500 readers each month, and those readers tend to include the term "nude" or "sex" in their searches. But not your fans, Anastasya Makeyeva. Only 160 of your fans asked for pictures, and they just want you—your state of dress or undress is irrelevant to them.

I'd like to think that your presence on my site is generating more traffic to the site in general, that I'm gaining new fans impressed by the fact that I watched an obscure Russian movie, but I doubt this is the case. They click on that one review and move on. At least they're doing it in droves.

Crane Movie

As many of you may know, I am working on a movie about a crane-phobic guy whose fears are realized when construction cranes attempt to murder him. It's going to be really over the top, with fake-looking effects and a lot of my main character acting afraid of things that aren't there.

Production started about a month ago, when I filmed part of the end sequence, where Bob (played by my good friend Shawn) attempts to hide in a building only to discover that the cranes have massed in the parking lot and are preparing to destroy him. He pretends to be a crane and sneaks by them. Or, they convince him to join them. I haven't decided which. Anyway, I filmed Bob running up some stairs and onto a roof. It turned out mostly well; one shot was out of focus, but otherwise it was great, all two minutes of it.

Sunday, my small crew (the zombiemaster and my favorite art historian) and I went out to film another sequence: Bob running up more stairs and discovering a giant tower crane at the top. I picked a very busy street, thinking that it would be pretty empty on a Sunday, but I was mistaken. We spent most of two hours waiting for people to clear off the staircase. There are three kinds of people in the world: those who see a camera and try to get out of the way, those who see a camera and ask you "You guys makin' a movie?", and those who are oblivious to the camera and walk right through your shot. Since I was shooting on a public street, I couldn't really be angry at them, but it got a little frustrating.

We then went to the south loop, where developers are building many, many condos, using many, many cranes. I filmed (videoed? I'm using a digital camera) Bob growing progressively more agitated at the ubiquity of cranes along his walk to work.

After that, we went to eat and then to my apartment, which was standing in for Bob's apartment. In this sequence, Bob gets home from work and doodles around until he hears a mysterious scratching at the door. When he opens it, he sees, to his horror, an origami crane sitting on the bannister, an homage to Blade Runner. (Well, it's not origami, but it's made of paper.) He runs downstairs and into the basement, where, to his continued horror, he encounters an even bigger crane—a seemingly self-propelled Tonka crane.

All in all, it went well. The footage turned out pretty good. I'm still not crazy about the way digital looks, but without it I wouldn't be able to make this movie, so I'm not complaining. Shawn was good as Bob, and the cranes were suitably crane-like. It will probably be a month before I can shoot any more, and the next shoot is going to be a lot harder: it will all be at my office at the ad agency, which is standing in for Bob's workplace, and there will be lots of dialog to rehearse and shoot. But I'm looking forward to it.

Art

I made art! It's been a while. MetaChat, an offshoot of a site I frequent, sometimes does exquisite corpses. You get the leftmost 15 pixels of the previous person's image, which becomes the rightmost 15 pixels of your image. My section, inspired by my friend Jeff's "automatic collages" and enabled by source advice from my favorite art historian, uses chunks of prints from Hendrick Goltzius, Wenceslas Hollar, Jacques Callot, and Bronzino, with additions from a Wisconsin plumber's website.

It's been a long time since I've done anything art-related (not counting filmmaking). A long time ago, I made a few collages, and I did a few logos for Shane's Interdenominational Hockey League. But this is the first time I've used Photoshop "properly": layers, the rectangle tool, light effects, etc. It was a lot of fun, and I think I'll be doing more of them.

Update: I did another one! (I should mention that the reason there's a naked person in the center of each composition is that the exquisite corpses have the theme "How naked go the sometimes nude," from a poem by Robert Burns.)