Posted: September 23rd, 2006 under Internet Video.
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After a few months of ignroing my film, a couple weeks of editing it, a panicked 48 hour stretch of saving it from hard drive catastrophe, and another few weeks of finishing up the sound, my intermediate film for NYU is finally complete, and I’ve made up some DVD boxes to mail copies of it out to my cast, crew and supporters. I’ve also already submitted it to one film festival.

About the film: A Ninja and a Pirate are pitted in a struggle as old as time: they both quest for the heart of news anchor Josephine and the minds of the wider public. As the battle intensifies, their tactics become desperate, coming to include kidnap, murder, and leafletting. The Ninja and the Pirate, written and directed by Benjamin Harrison, is as bizarre as political farce/action comedies come.

You can also peep the script on my writings page.

Posted: September 21st, 2006 under Miscellaneous.
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Days after the initial Pluto decision came down I saw a photo of a London billboard, possibly photoshopped, that read, “If you start to treat Pluto like an asteroid, it starts to act like one,” and depicted the beleaguered heavenly body crashing into the Earth in a ball of hellfire. The decision was quickly retracted, though how much said billboard had to do with the retraction, remains unknown to me.

The decision seems to have oscillated quite a bit over the past few weeks. I have read several news items about the Pluto decision, but have remained surprised when decisions are announced and then retracted and put up for discussion again. I had the impression that the initial decision was final—I wasn’t going to live by it, obviously, but that was the decision. But every time I loaded the CNN Science page there was news on just what sort of a thing Pluto currently was. Asteroid? Planetoid? Binary planet? Full fledged planet along with the Moon and dozens of other, lesser hunks of rock screaming around the sun? Maybe the confusion surrounding the Pluto decision could be enough to send it into a suicidal rage, making one last arc toward Earth to punish us for our insolence. The Pluto Decision sounds like a mid-nineties action-sci-fi film anyways.

But the more I think about Pluto being un-planeted in connection with my own impressions of Pluto I begin to think that maybe its response would be quite to the contrary of that violent image. Maybe Pluto, on receiving word that it had been rejected from the nine by a small group of members of one smug species living on the third, would pack up its satellites, giving up on its aeons-long trek around the sun. The vigil it had kept since before our species was aware of its own planet, much less Pluto. The object, now going not by Pluto, but by 134340, would wave its eccentric orbit farewell and drift off into the cosmos, never looking back at our cold, uncaring solar system.

Posted: September 12th, 2006 under Writing.
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A couple of years ago I traveled to Japan and got a sort of red carpet treatment part of the time that I was there because of the people I was traveling with. One night we went to a very old and ornate restaurant that seemed rather anomalous in Japan for the fact that it was not their traditional, lightweight mode of construction, nor was it the hyper-chic modern steel, concrete and glass now popular in the world’s post-industrial cities. It was more of the former, but with an opulent splash of Chinese influence, including lots of gold detail work and an oriental red warmth to it.

My party and I stayed in this restaurant, in our own private room, eating for hours, and I remember feeling a bit guilty because it seemed that if we hadn’t been there they would have closed much earlier, because the normal clientele had left. Late into the evening, and a bit tipsy I arose and began to sleuth out a bathroom. I walked up a flight of stairs into a deserted part of the restaurant and heard a pointed cry of agony. I looked around and in a small auxiliary kitchen, a white man with a curly mullet and a heavy build whom I had never seen, was lying on the floor with his hand draped over a sack of rice. Dark blood poured from his hand and stained the rice. Noticing me, he emitted another cry of pain and I ran over to him.

He was extremely pleased to discover that I was an American, but was a little too pressed for medical attention to explain who he was or why he was there. He asked me to call what he explained was the Japanese equivalent of the 911 emergency hotline that I am familiar with. There was a phone on a wall nearby, and I called for him, but realized I would have no way of talking to these people as I then (and now, for that matter) spoke no Japanese. He told me I needed to speak my name into the phone, press “one” and then “two” and I would get an operator.

I complied and when I was finished he surprised me by hefting himself off the floor, and taking the phone, breathing heavily and explaining the situation to the operator. He presently hung up, sauntered over to a countertop and picked up a dish towel, which he used to wipe all the blood off of his now obviously not cut hand.

He laughed at me, and explained that I had just assented to seizure of my personal belongings from my hotel room and that there wasn’t much I could do because under Japanese law I had just entered into a legally binding contract over the telephone.

Shocked and enraged I yelled at him that he’d made a horrible misstep in trying to pull his scam on me because I had insurance and we would come and find them. I don’t really know what I meant, but it was just some nonsense I was yelling as I commenced to throw my fists against him. The man wasn’t really prepared for the fight and I quite handily took him out of commission.

——————

Many of you will have already realized that the above was not a true story. I’ve never been to Japan, and have never fallen victim to such a scam. It was actually the plot of a dream I had last night. I woke up realizing that that didn’t actually happen to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of the construction of the scam before, albeit with something other than the telephonic element as the clincher — perhaps being used in France?

Posted: September 3rd, 2006 under Miscellaneous.
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