Circus Envy

The following is a cross-post from Jim Williams' blog at:

An Open Invite

Hey Friends,

As you may or may not be aware, I am a partner in a small production company here in Central CT, Elmwood Productions. Based out of Plainville, CT, we are focused mostly on comedy short-film making involving puppets. This fall, we will be filming our first feature length film, Josh and Todd: A Story of a Man and his Puppet. This will be a "hybrid" film, consisting of live actors interacting with foam and fleece, "Muppet-Style" puppets of our own creation and manufacture. We are very excited about this project, which promises to be a lot of fun for all involved.

This is where you, my many creative friends and associates, come in. We will be holding auditions and screen-tests in the next few weeks, and I would love to extend to each of you an invitation to come and try out. We are looking for actors and actresses aged 18-35, with varying ranges of experience and/or training. While, at this point in time, no compensation is being offered, we are offering points to cast and crew for future compensation in the event that the film gets picked up by a studio (This is fairly standard for most truly independent films.)

As stated previously, we will be scheduling the auditions/screen-tests in the next few weeks. These auditions will be by invitation only. If you are indeed interested, or if you have questions, please give me a call at 860-538-3320 or drop me an Email at EvilJim@elmwoodproductions.com .

We are really excited about this project and look forward to hearing from all interested parties.

Thanks,

Jim Williams

Sitting Still

It has been a bit longer since my last post than I intended with this blog, but such is the way of life. My week since last posting has been eventful, but there is nothing about it that I am particularly incited to write about.

Last weekend was fairly quiet for how busy it was, three games in one weekend. This weekend finds me trying Requiem again. I have to say, although I have enjoyed this character before, and I am looking forward to Role Playing with people I haven't interacted with for a while, I am very worried about the game. First of all, it seems that the entire game is against me from the moment I walk in, that should be interesting. I'm also concerned about the ST group. While I've had good times under them, I've also had serious problems with their ST style.

Sunday I'm flipping burgers for a friend's wedding then going to see Gogol Bordello at Toad's Place. I'd kind of like to catch a movie this weekend, but I don't think that's going to happen. Tonight should be quiet, and I think I may be hanging out on Friday night. Hopefully I'll get through all of Galactica Season One soon.

Here is a little treasure from the web for the day. It's a little dense in philosophical material relating to the new Batman film, but it does include one of the greatest pictures I've seen in a long time.



The Philosophy of Batman: Schopenhauer Edition

The Worst Joke Ever

This is how my week has been.

Can't Get There from Here

I'd like to call a mulligan on yesterday. Work was work, and that's all I have to say about that. The real difficulty began when I got home.

After a long weekend, I was looking forward to doing laundry and sitting on the couch eating dinner and watching Battlestar Galactica. OK, I wasn't looking forward to doing laundry, but I wanted to do the rest. Starting with dinner things went downhill. I was making fried chicken when Jenn showed up at the house with Gwen, Chris and Rachel. Excited to see Gwen I left the stove and spent some time with my daughter. A minute later the smoke started billowing in from the kitchen as I had burned dinner.

Ah well.

The crew left, I grabbed what was salvagable from dinner and sat on the couch, grabbing the 360's remote and hitting power. Noticing nothing happened on the screen I paused to wonder what was going on and saw the three red blinking lights. Went through all the troubleshooting steps and nothing. I have to send it back.

OK, we have another DVD player.

I hooked up the DVD player in the living room and popped in the disc; disc two of season one. I finished watching the episode that I was in the middle of and grabbed the next disk from Netflix sitting on the end table. I put it in and started watching the first episode. For those of you who haven't seen the show, each episode starts with a recap of recent goings on in the show. I recognized none of them from the disc I just watched. I popped out the dvd and looked at it: "Season 1, Disc 4". That's right, I put them out of order in my queue and got Discs 1, 2 & 4. Three was the next disc in queue.

sigh

So I watched the Tudors. I did some more laundry. Finishing all of my darks, I had a few whites that I threw in with the last load just to fill it out. I now have five or six pink undershirts and a pink mexican shirt.

OK, I'm done. I went to bed then.

Today, I go to Yankee Stadium. Let's home I don't get hit by a bus.

Summer Turns to High

Here we are, another monday morning. The weekend has passed and I'm back at work, doing my job, which takes more than 40 hours a week, and someone else's job because they are out of the office. Nevertheless, while I watch my computer chug away, calculating excel files and generally preventing me from doing anything work related other than calculate those files, I find myself typing into this blog again.

Whenever I sit down to write I wonder if what I put in here is worthy of comment. I want this blog to be a little better than the LiveJournal account I had previously. I want the quality of writing to be more professional, I want the content to be less bitchy and more thoughtful. That being said, I want to discuss what I've done, what I'm doing and what I'm thinking. I'll try to find that thin line.

This weekend was interesting. I went to Rathbun's on Friday and I must say its nice to hang out with him again. Its been a while since we spent time together. Gwen wasn't cooperating, wanting to stay awake all night. Though I think it was a combination of so much going on around her and the heat - there is no AC over there.

Got a chance to play around with White Wolf's Scion, which looks like it could be a lot of fun. There's enough crunchyness for the gamers who like the numbers, powers and dice rolling; but a rich enough story and background that you can just RP without really worrying about it. For those of you not interested in game mechanics, skip the rest of this paragraph. The combat system incorporates a new timing concept that they call "ticks". If another game has this I haven't seen it, so don't tell me this isn't new, its new to me. Basically whoever rolls highest for initiative is considered to go at tick 0. Every other character goes at a place determined by the difference between the sucesses rolled by the first person in initiative and their successes. For example, P1 rolls 5 successes, P2 rolls 3 and P3 rolls 1 success. P1 goes on tick 0, P2 on tick 2, and P3 on tick 4. This continues each round and ticks continue to count up. Each weapon has a rate as well, and can only be operated once that many ticks have passed, so you will continue to count up ticks and progress through the combat. We also played Formula De, but unfortunately I needed to leave mid-game.

Saturday morning started early. Gwen and I got up and got ready to go to the beach. We met up with Kelly and drove down to Rocky Neck to hit the beach. Gwen had a great time figuring out the physics of sand, banging her shovel against the bucket, figuring out that sand doesn't taste good and watching the other kids. I'm looking forward to doing something like that again. We left around 12:30 and stopped by the Book Barn. I am such a sucker for books, but I behaved and didn't buy anything. Finally we stopped at James' Pharmacy in Old Saybrook, I'll have to tell the story of that place later. We had some ice cream and went home to drop Gwen off with her mother.

That night we grabbed dinner at Moe's Southwest Grill since the line at Cheesecake factory was too long. Pretty nice for a "fast food" type place. They had pretty good guacamole and salsa, so I can't complain. Met up with Jim and Jaime after that and went to go see "The Dark Knight". I'm sure I don't need to comment at all on this film, you've eitehr seen it, heard the hype, or most likely both since it made $155.4 million, beating out the less than stellar Spider Man 3. After the movie we hung out for a bit and I didn't get to sleep until 2.

Work begs me to get back to it, so I'll wrap this now, but later I'll get back to Sunday and Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog now only available on iTunes.

Life, and how to live it.

Yesterday was shaping up to be another, very long one, but, thankfully, I got out after only 8 hours here. As of 3:30 pm yesterday I had already put in 30 hours of work. Today, I'll pull another 8 or so, and tomorrow, if I can, I'm going to leave early.

We had two showings of the house on Tuesday, I'm hoping there is some movement on it. Don't get me wrong, I love this place, but I'm ready to move on. It is hard the way things are now, almost a sort of limbo.

Gwen and I went to the Elmwood meeting last night, and I don't think I was really needed. I think, perhaps, in the future, I'll talk to Jon before I go. I offered to drive out to get the supplies, since I couldn't really take care of Gwen and help construction, but the ladies wanted to smoke in the car, so they went without me.

I've been feeling a bit like a 5th wheel a lot lately. The guy who has to make arrangements around his daughter. No I can't go out drinking on Friday. I can be there on Wednesday, but I'll have to bring the baby and leave on time to get her home. I feel like people don't understand the responsibility. And when I don't have her I'm feeling a bit left out because people are trying to plan around me. This weekend I got left alone working on something for a bunch of people while they socialized without me. All of that being said, though, is not a request for sympathy, nor a discussion of how bad I feel. How I feel is on me, I own that. This is more of an observation on how people treat me. Not all, some.

So, I started this 2 hours ago, but work has forced me to put off finishing it a few times now. I'll conclude with a quote.

"Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, cars, sidewalks, stores. Everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man." - Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver

"When so many are lonely… as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. " - Tennessee Williams

What to expect

Jon has linked out to me, so I feel it my duty to post something. I figure since this is the second post, the first merely noting its existance, and therefore strangely self-referentail, it should let you, the reader know what to expect. After typing that last sentence, this post will also, apparently, include long run-on sentences with far too many commas. I like commas, so expect a lot of them. As I tend to write how I feel I speak I will, quite often, use them when I would pause or change tone.

Nevertheless, what to expect out of this blog.

• This will, from time to time be a place for me to vent. Frustrations do better in the light of day than under a bushel, therefore you may see them here from time to time.
• Information about my daughter. She is the highlight of my life, so you'll hear about her.
• My search for a place to live and the sale of my current home. This is taking up a great deal of my life, so I'll be talking about it.
• My evolution. My wife asked me for a divorce in March and I'm trying to learn about myself since then. I spent a few months in therapy and am only now really learning what it means to be happy with myself and not have that happiness dependant on another human being. That being said, I'll discuss when I do well with that and when I do not so well.
• Pop culture randomness. I love pop culture. I adore movies, video games, music and some TV. I'll discuss my likes and dislikes.
• Elmwood and my involvement in it. For those who don't know Elmwood is the production company I am working with. More can be found in their blog.

What you won't read about in this blog.

• My divorce. For many reasons, not the least of which is I will discuss it in person, but not leave a permanent record. When it is over, I may make mention, but I will not turn this into the center of a legal battle.
• Memes. Other than the discussion of cultural traits passed on without much in the way of active teaching. Specifically I mean internet memes like the "Hampster Dance" or "What kind of fruit dropped on the grocery store floor are you?". Just for the record, since it really bothers me when people mispronounce it, the word is pronounced "meem" rhymes with seem. It's Go-Go not cry-cry or mee-mee.

That is the set up. What you do with this is up to you. I'm also going to try to end with a quote. Today's quote is:

"Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic." ~ Sheri S. Tepper