Change in Animals: Year of the Tiger!!!

On Feb.14th 2010 the lovers celebrated Valentines Day. Romance aside, this day brought a greater significance this year: The start of the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Metal Tiger! Only furries could realize the potential of both occasions! [P.S. “Furries” is a sub-culture where you make love and role play while dressed in legit animal costumes.] I don’t know about you, but I am incredibly excited! I was born in 1986 making me a Fire Tiger. This is my year!!! I sense that great things are on the way!

Congrats if you were born in 1998, 1986, 1974, 1962, 1950, 1938, 1926, 1914, or 1902- this is going to be a great year for you too! And a HUGE congratulations to those born in 1902- if you are 108 years old and on the internets right now, this is definitely your year! And if you were born within the last 2 days of 2010 and you’re reading this, you are a baby genius and every year should be incredibly exciting for you!

Okay Lazer what’s all this horoscope la-di-da talk about?

Well, for those of you who don’t know, I’ve been way into astrology and horoscopes since about July ’09 (I’m a Cancer on the Leo cusp, btw). I generally start my day with breakfast and checking Horoscope.com. Horoscopes don’t provide absolute advice, but rather guidance which has been very beneficial and accurate for me over the past 7 months.

The way I see it, astrology is based on planetary configurations, which determine things like time of day and season. Society and lifestyles are in turn organized around these variables. So to me, it seems natural and beneficial to better understand astrology and how planetary configurations affect me as an individual even if its effect may be indirect.

I’m also fond of Feng Shui: The Taoist teachings and concepts of how to live in harmony with nature and one’s environment. The concepts are quite practical for leading a healthy life in balance with the elements and positive and negative energy, or “Qi”. Architects and interior designers often operate with an understanding of Feng Shui, which could also just be common sense at times.

For example, a bedroom should be a peaceful space with positive energy. It’s a place to rest and make love. If you work from home, it would not be a good idea to have your work desk also in your bedroom. The space is confused with work and rest. This makes spaces like college dorms, sometimes difficult to live in. It means your roommate could drunk vomit over both your bed and desk in one blow.

But the principles of Feng Shui are designed knowing that the perfect living situation rarely exists, so there are a lot of techniques to improving the “Qi” or energy of your living situation.

Still don’t buy it? Put it this way, we need both air and water to live- they are a necessity. Feng Shui teaches how to balance these elements in our surroundings. Some techniques are as simple as opening every window at your place once a day to allow the elemental wind energy to circulate.

Coming from a filmmaker’s perspective, I often approach Feng Shui with a visual approach. For example, I’m very concerned with lighting and natural day light and how it interacts with people and spaces. Plants need light to grow and humans need light to process Vitamin D. Studies have shown that human deficiencies of Vitamin D often due to a lack of sunlight can influence depression (I don’t have a bibliography for my blog so you do the research and figure out if these are all lies).

So light plays a huge part in our lives. Basically, we need light to see things (and photograph them). I believe a lot of healing can be done visually. I’ve devised certain visual treatments for myself because I don’t have health insurance. For example, if I start to get sick, the first thing I do is clean my apartment. The visual “idea” of clutter produces a negative energy in the space that affects me psychologically which can later turn indirectly physical.

An extreme example similar to this idea is found in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange when Alex is forcefully exposed to hours of horrific movies and images as a radical psychological treatment that also has a strange physical effect.

Okay, what the hell… I went off on a long tangent to say that I think astrology and Feng Shui are pretty radical and beneficial to my life. Even if you don’t buy in to it, if you're a Tiger, this is your year baby! Go over to Horoscope.com and read your several horoscopes to get some inspiration for the New Year! Make some change! Do what you want to do in 2010! Have fun!

Nipple Pinches,

-Lazer

Change in Oil: The Obama Gas Station

I was driving around Detroit today doing some pick-up shots with a car mount for a short film. As we rounded a corner, we discovered change with a new gas station: THE OBAMA GAS STATION!!!

WHAT?!!!

I really don’t know what to make of this… The Obama Gas Station currently sells traditional fossil fuels… We can only hope for change in the future with a greater push towards alternative fuels to end our dependence on foreign oil.

I didn’t go inside to see if there were Obama candy bars, Obama cigarettes, or Obama high fructose beverages…

I don’t know what else to say about this so here’s some photos...

 

  

 

Change in Sleep: The Filmmaker’s Schedule + Dementia

It’s 1 am and I go to sleep. I wake up at 5 am to start day 4 of a short film I’m shooting (I'm the director of photography.) 5:45 am I’m loading my car with the equipment- over a hundred pounds of camera cases that I have to carry down 3 flights of stairs. 6:10 I’m in Ann Arbor on the road to set but first I have to pick up the assistant director to car pool and a production credit card at another location. 7:12am we arrive on location 12 minutes late. We’re shooting at a jazz club with a lot of lights, camera setups, scenes, live music, and extras (thanks to all the extras for coming out.) All of this leads to a long shooting day. I have a shooting schedule that has the day planned out with estimate times. Unfortunately, our original schedule accounted for optimism (or dementia) and not reality. Optimism schedules our camera wrap for about 11pm and leaving location with cars packed by midnight. But reality put us down for camera wrap sometime around 2 am with cars leaving location around 3. After dropping off my gaffer (car pool switch option) I return home at about 3:45am. Whew… the day is over! …not quite… At this point, I take the opportunity to carry the hundred pounds of camera cases into my apartment- why the hell did I sign a lease on the 3rd floor? It’s 4 am and I’m done…

I would tell you the rest of this story, which moves from logistics to dementia, instead of writing about it but there’s the kicker: It’s 1 am yesterday and I’m going to sleep with a soar throat. I wake up at 5 am yesterday with a horse voice. Optimism schedules my voice for the whole shooting day because communication is essential on a film set. But reality will only allow a few takes of my voice. After lunch, I’m whispering to all the crew as loud as I can. By the end of the night, I am MOS (for non-filmmakers: this means rolling only camera and not sound.)

It’s 4 am and I’m exhausted. I would jump in bed but I have to pee. I’m in the bathroom with my pants unzipped but my feet are sore, my back hurts, and I’m way too tired to stand up… So I have to pee sitting down.

It’s 4:20 am and I’m still sitting on the toilet. I sort of remember peeing but I’m not sure. I stare at the hair brush on the sink. I follow single hairs through the bristles as if I was in an intricate maze. A maze where the walls move if you jump up and down because the floor is a trampoline.

I get out of the maze and then try to figure out which hairs are whose: Kelly’s (my lovely girlfriend) or mine.

It’s 4:24 am and I convince myself that I’ll never have a hair solution. I justify my dismissal with the remembrance of an old Sunday School fact: “God knows every single hair on your head.”

My feet tingle sorely and I look down at the light blue shag rug, which feels extra squishy at the moment. The bathroom lights start a fluorescent like flicker even though they are incandescent. The light creates a texture on the rug that looks like ocean tides. My feet squish into the sand and the water is cold. I kick some sand on the back of the bathroom door when I realize the imperfections of the door's paint. I imagine a very tired painter who has to paint my whole apartment in one day. Struggling with lack of sleep, he paints the bathroom last. Anxious to be done and to rest he uses more and more paint that ultimately drips and bubbles. Whether or not he’ll redo it again is his decision.

It’s 4:28 am and I let out a weak cough which hangs in the air creeping around the bathroom as if it was a smell from a cartoon. I follow the cough to a small cup on the counter with a candle in it. I wonder if I can make fire by rubbing my hands together. I wonder how long it would take the candle to melt and whether or not my throat would feel better if I gargled hot wax.

I shudder from a cold breeze that puts the candle out. My sweatshirt is on but I don’t know how it works. I’m still cold even with that.

It’s 4:34 and I cannot remember how long I’ve been sitting on the toilet. I’m still not sure if I went so I’m not sure if I should wash my hands. Then I realize I’m really sick and need to wash my hands. I wonder if I could gargle the antibacterial soap and kill whatever bacteria that is inflicting this awful amount of pain on me.

It’s 4:35 and I’ve been sitting on the toilet so long I probably have a ring around my bum.

Yes, I do have the toilet ring around my bum.

It’s 4:36 am and I can’t remember if I’ll remember these interesting shots of words so I get up to go get my laptop. I pull my pants up without wiping- hopefully I didn’t forget that I pooped and thus skipped a wipe. Should I go back and do one for safety?

I return to the bathroom with my laptop and sit back on the toilet. I try to recall my thoughts while typing and keeping up with my fast flow of current thoughts. I certainly could have typed this one from my desk… I’m not sure why I came back to the bathroom. I wonder if anyone else is sitting on their toilet with their computer at this exact same moment. I consider signing on AIM to see if anyone is available to video chat and witness my state of exhaustive sleep deprived dementia.

It seems as though a still camera appeared on the bathroom counter. I pick up the camera and try to take a still photo of myself. I push a triangular button to review it and it turned blurry. I thought of taking another one but realized this was the most accurate self portrait and document of my current state.

I start to doze off for a second but wake to myself deficating. Good thing I’ve been sitting on this toilet for nearly an hour. Otherwise, I could have made a real mess.

I continue to type in hope of completing the record….

I’m not able to right this all down before falling asleep. Hopefully my dreams are as interesting as my blurring thoughts.

I proceed off on a tangent and write a quick poem after staring at my computer for a solid five minutes:

Finder the Universe

Floating hands on the keyboard

The Universe at my desk 

The digital screen of my eyelids 

Drips like plasma 

But to touch is to believe 

Tangible and reality differ 

So can we believe the digital screen? 

When I’m dead I’ll leave a screen saver

[I woke up @ 3pm and discovered that I actually did write all of this… I’m not sure what it all means… P.S. My voice is still lost.]