Adventures In Goat World

Goat World Has Moved

2008-07-16T22:03:00.001-07:00

I've made two major switches in the last couple of days: I've moved to using WordPress to publish (which should hopefully eliminate a ton of the ftp problems I had with Blogger), and I've switched the blog to an easier-to-remember link.

The new address of the blog is: http://www.ellenshapiro.com/blog.

For those of you who need to update your RSS readers:

The Main RSS Feed is here.

The Comments RSS Feed is here. You'll see a few comments from my brief attempt at using Blogger comments, I'm still trying to figure out if/how I can import all my Haloscan comments.

So come on over and join the fun! Or at the very least, the time-wasting.

Technology Will Be The End Of Me

2008-07-15T19:31:00.000-07:00

Oh, Blogger. You make me crazy with your refusals to publish and your half-assed FTP impementation.

But oh, WordPress, trying to switch to you is making me EVEN FUCKING CRAZIER.

Why didn't I learn something useful in school, like PHP programming? Then I could figure out what the fucking problem is.

More to come, possibly over here when I'm done tearing my hair out. In the meantime, feel free to tell me how fugly that design is.

How To Write Off Both Your iPhone And Your Trip To New Zealand

2008-07-09T21:19:00.001-07:00

1. Write a website that specializes in taking apart Apple products as soon as they're released.

2. Realize that the first people in the world to get the new iPhone are in New Zealand.

3. Fly to Auckland to be fourth in line IN THE WORLD for your iPhone, so you can immediately take it apart and post pictures online.

4. Write the whole damn trip and the price of the phone off as business related.

5. Enjoy some gorgeous New Zealand scenery.

The Most Complicated Evil Plot I Have Yet Devised

2008-07-09T20:11:00.000-07:00

I think I've figured out how to land myself a job interview next Friday.

This theory came to me as I was waiting for my Chinese food for an hour and 15 minutes. I really had to pee, but I just KNEW the guy was going to come while I was in the bathroom.

Sure enough, I said "Oh the hell with this, I'm not waiting any longer," and the guy came while I was in the bathroom.

This always happens to me: I wait and wait for what's supposed to happen to happen, and then when it doesn't, I start doing something else, and THEN what was supposed to happen happens.

Working from this trend, I've come up with a plan to have at the very least, a job interview by the end of next week.

My job finishes this Friday, and I had been planning (barring a sudden settlement with SAG) to try and leave town next Thursday for about a week and a half to visit my dad up in Idaho. I'll be driving, so I'll be stopping in Vegas on the way up next Thursday if all goes to plan.

I knew Dark Knight was coming out next Friday, and I really want to see it in IMAX, since they actually shot some of it in IMAX and I hear it's brain-meltingly awesome.

So of course, I got online to see if there are tickets to the midnight IMAX screening in Vegas (and I'd like to pause here to note that IMAX tickets in Vegas are cheaper than regular movie tickets here), and there were.

So now, my evil plot: I bought my ticket to that midnight Thursday showing in Vegas.

By purchasing that ticket, I have close to guaranteed that something will come up in L.A. and I won't be able to leave until Friday or Saturday, maybe not even at all.

Clearly, as I'm packing my shit into the car to leave on Thursday morning, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to interview me Friday morning, maybe even for a job that starts Monday.

And if my frustrating luck does not continue to hold...Well, I'll get to see the Dark Knight in IMAX on opening night then spend a week in Idaho with my dad. It's pretty much a win-win.

Caption Contest

2008-07-08T22:42:00.000-07:00

Chaplin likes to come sit on my lap while I'm trying to read things on the computer. Fortunately, my computer has a built-in camera so I can capture him making goofy faces like this one:

If only I could figure out how to make the flash less bright so it wouldn't completely blow out his fur.

Now soliciting comments to improve upon the the title posted at Flickr (linked from the picture).

How To Increase The Chances That I Will See Your Horror Movie

2008-07-07T22:30:00.000-07:00

Start by calling it "Mutant Zombie Vampires From the Hood!".

And actually, you can pretty much stop right there, because the title is just that awesome.

I Can't Feel My Legs

2008-07-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

Noted: 35 miles is kind of a long way to bike.

Also, I need a better seat. Ow.

Happy 4th of July!

2008-07-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

While you are barbecuing various items and drinking yourself silly, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (and whoever cut the CPSC's video to the soundtrack) would like to remind you to use care with your fireworks this year:

Hat tip: Consumerist.

Damn You, Elliptical

2008-07-04T11:07:00.000-07:00

First, your distance calculator decides that I'm running a thirteen minute mile.

If I could run on a treadmill without incurring extreme pain, I feel like it would be maybe an eight or nine minute mile. Nothing to write home about, but certainly not as horrifyingly slow as a 13 minute mile.

Then, you arbitrarily reset sometime after I've gone a mile and a half into the 3.1 miles I need to finish my gym triathlon, and I have no idea how much further I have to go.

I wound up doing another mile and a half after I noticed it had reset and still coming in at 1:59, but I probably could have made it to 1:55 if I had actually known how far I'd gone in the few minutes between when I saw I'd crossed 1.5 miles and when I noticed it had reset.

Bah. I'll probably do one more of these before I try my Batshit Crazy Plan of doing a full Olympic-length gym triathlon during the Olympics. That'll be double the distance I've been doing, and will therefore probably take about four hours.

At least I was able to verify that I've dropped my swim time to just over 15 minutes to do 15 laps from just over 18 minutes to do 15 laps. Yay, progress!

A Stab At Explaining This SAG Nonsense

2008-07-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

Trying to explain why, even though it does not appear the Screen Actors' Guild is actually going to strike anytime soon, I am frustrated with the lack of progress in the talks, is a little hard to explain.

The stalemate has brought all feature production to a grinding halt, and because of the weird timing of the pilot I'm on (even if it gets picked up, it won't go for a few months, and almost all other TV in town has already started up), I had been looking to hop on a feature when it finishes in a couple weeks.

So, why is a stalemate a bad thing for feature films? Well, I'll try to explain.

Were the Screen Actors' Guild to strike, everything would shut down immediately because without actors, there is nothing to shoot. That's the easy-to-explain, apocalyptic part.

In a stalemate, which is where we are now, the actors are not striking, but they have not signed a deal and could theoretically strike at any time.

With a stalemate, TV shows keep shooting because they have all the actors under contract for basically the entire year. Were a strike to happen, they would give the crew an unpaid hiatus for the duration of the strike, and then everyone would come back to work when it's over (assuming a short strike of about a month or so, which everyone is).

With films during a stalemate, you run into the big problem of actor scheduling: While television shows have the principal actors under contract essentially year-round, every film has a very short window in which its principals are under contract.

For example, pulling a name that's fun to type out of the air, let's say Jake Gyllenhaal is scheduled to do a film that starts tomorrow, and finishes in early September. Then, he's scheduled to go on to a second film that starts in mid-September.

If the actors strike, it will eat up all the time that he was on film #1, and they still lose him to film #2 in mid-September. The fact that the strike is happening does not push everything back, it just makes the time disappear.

Why is this a problem? Well, the main issue is that because a SAG strike could completely fuck up actors' schedules, major films can't get what's called a completion bond.

This is a very large insurance policy that will pay the a substantial portion of the cost of production should the film not be completed for some reason beyond the control of production (actor is hit by a bus and/or drops dead in the middle of production, earthquake destroys Los Angeles during shooting, whatever).

The insurance companies don't want to give completion bonds right now because if Gyllenhaal starts shooting film #1 and SAG strikes for a month in August, he will still have to move on to film #2 on the same schedule. Film #1 could potentially only be half-finished and largely unusable, and the insurance company would be on the hook for the money.

If you can't get a completion bond (and right now, you can't unless you have a waiver from SAG, which you can only get if you're a small independent production not part of the AMPTP), the studio will not give you the money to make your movie.

So everyone on the features side is pretty much sitting tight, waiting for SAG to make a deal. Once they make a deal, plenty of stuff will start up, and hopefully many of us will be gainfully employed once again.

We'll see what happens. Again, I'm in a bit of an odd spot with scheduling, but hopefully by the end of July this will get sorted out, and I'll land on something or other. I'll probably get an involuntary break of a month or so, but hopefully not much longer.

I hope that sort of clarifies for those of you who don't have to deal with this glorious horseshit on a daily basis what's happening and why, and why while people in LA are worried about this, most of the national entertainment press is pretty much ignoring it.

The Thing That Really Sucks About Coming Into The Office On Sundays

2008-06-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

The building where our offices are located is basically a ghost town on the weekends, and in order to save money and energy, the folks here have elected to keep the air conditioning off.

This building was built in either the late 50's or early 60's, so the idea that each suite can control its own air conditioning is laughable. Everything has to go through Engineering, and they have very limited to nonexistent hours on the weekend.

Now we've tried to explain to them "No, there really will be people working, so please turn the A/C on" for the last several weekends, to very limited avail.

We're only planning on being here for a few hours today, but it's 9:30 in the morning and it's already quite hot in here. This will be a real fun and drowsiness-inducing few hours.

The thing that really kills me about them killing the A/C is that none of the offices, at least in our suite, have light switches. So the big, annoying, fluorescent lights that just suck down energy are on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether anyone's here or not.

Way to be energy-efficient, guys.

A Glaring Omission

2008-06-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

I realized that I haven't said anything here about the death of a man I consider one of my comedic heroes, George Carlin.

Partly, I think it's because I don't want to acknowledge that he won't be around to call everyone on their bullshit, as I hoped he'd be for the next few years.

I don't know that going through a list of my favorite routines of his would do much good, particularly with YouTube links to most of them already having floated around for the last week.

He had an incredibly intelligent take on almost everything, so I was stunned to learn while reading the voluminous obituaries that his formal education ended at the ninth grade.

He was incredibly gifted at finding the tiny absurdities in life, and dissecting them into ten minute monologues that had you falling off your couch because you were laughing so hard.

He often stayed away from political humor because of how dated it becomes, but when he did choose to address politics, it would stay relevant for years after (check out the beginning of Carlin's Jammin' In New York to see a relatively rare example).

But Carlin always had a unique take on everything, and as modern life gets more complicated and sillier, I'll miss his fantastic ability to dissect the madness.

Carlin was less than a year younger than my father, and their paths briefly crossed when the senior partner in dad's firm argued the FCC v. Pacifica Foundation case before the Supreme Court (and sadly, lost).

I think that's another reason it's hard for me to picture Carlin gone: Although Carlin fought health-destroying addictions for years and had three heart attacks, I never saw him as an old man because hell, he was younger than my dad.

He was also still constantly performing. I got my last email from Ticketmaster advertising his latest show only a couple months ago, and he had plans to tour this fall. He can't be gone, he's got gigs, and he lived to perform.

It's a damn shame his heart gave out on him well before he or we were ready for it to, but the fact that hundreds of hours of video of his comedy exist brings some solace to those of us who will miss him and his perspective terribly.

So I'll leave you with his own thoughts on death: The usual slaughtering of sacred cows, the notations of the way we address the things we fear, and the weird things we say to try to comfort other people when bad shit happens.

Miscellany From The Last Day of Shooting

2008-06-28T00:22:00.000-07:00

A few bits of errata, Laz style:

-- Because we were on a Wednesday-Sunday shooting schedule, I had taken to calling each day "Fake ____". Like Wednesday was Fake Monday, Thursday was Fake Tuesday, Friday was Fake Wednesday.

Today, the last day I have to deal with this shift, I found a flaw in my cunning plan: I forgot that it was Fake Wednesday, not real Wednesday, and that therefore the aqua aerobics class would be taking over the pool at 9 instead of 9:30, and got kicked out of the pool halfway through my laps.

-- Are you really really bored? Try to identify the candy bar simply by looking at a cross-section. I went 14 for 20.

-- I am extremely excited to see Wall-E tomorrow. Almost as excited as I am to actually have a Saturday off.

--Our entertainment this evening was chasing the mouse that lives in the kitchen all over the office. My PA was taking videos of this with his cellphone, one of which has me saying in the background, "Well, the mystery guy who lost his clothes finally called back."

No, I will not be posting these videos.

--We finally finished shooting!

This has been a fun show, and a very good learning experience. The shifted week thing has been an absolute bear, but at least it was only for three weeks. I pulled a couple sixth-day paychecks, which is helpful in the realm of "Mama needs a new pair of everything."

I'm back to a normal schedule for the next couple weeks (well, I'll be in for a couple hours Sunday, but nothing like my schedule previous sundays of 5pm-5am), and then I'm scrambling for a new job. Gotta love the freelance world!

Not Dead Yet

2008-06-25T20:38:00.000-07:00

Most of the fleas I've been battling, however, are. Huzzah! I hit a bunch of the rest with a big-ass can of Raid this evening, and they do not seem to have recovered...yet.

Unfortunately, because of my high sensitivity to the bites, I'm still absolutely covered in them. Even the smallest ones take well over a week to go away, and the bigger ones will probably last much longer.

The intense itching is driving me completely insane (even taking a crapload of antihistamines), and I've been downgraded to Flamingo from Gay Leopard - It's not just pink spots anymore, I'm totally covered in calamine lotion.

Anyway, hopefully this will prove itself resolved in the next week or so, and y'all will never have to hear about this nastiness again.

When Fleas, Six-Day Weeks and 5:30 PM Call Times Collide

2008-06-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's been hellaciously hot in L.A. this week, so the fleas that I thought I'd gotten rid of are back with a MASSIVE vengeance. The only real solution is to flea-bomb the house to kill 'em all.

The problem is, flea-bombing is a stupidly elaborate and time-consuming process, since it has a tendency to cover everything in a sticky, disgusting, chemical-filled film. You therefore have to cover some stuff up in advance, and wash a lot more stuff off afterwards.

I'm also working ridiculously late (or early, depending on your perspective). Our crew call was really late, and my call was 5:30 PM. That means they expect to be shooting until at least 5:30 AM. You know it's going to be a long night when the thing that will cause filming to stop is the sunrise.

All that in mind, here is my rough schedule for the next 36 hours:

Now-6AM: Work in my office where they've turned off the air conditioning. Possibly longer.

6-7AM: Drive back to Santa Monica, try to obtain a flea fogger at Ralph's (the grocery store).

7-8AM: Prepare apartment for fogging by putting all open food and dishes in either the fridge or the dishwasher and sealing.

8AM-9AM: Drop Chaplin off for flea dip, go to pet store and get flea fogger if Ralph's didn't have one.

9:30 AM - Set off flea fogger. Flee to Nate's house and take a nap for 2-3 hours while flea fogger does its bit.

12 Noon-1PM - Go home, open windows and let apartment air out.

1PM-2PM - Return to Nate's and napping, let apartment finish airing out.

2PM-3PM - Retrieve cat from groomers, take him home. Start to clean up.

3PM-9PM - Continue cleaning and laundering. Probably pass out from exhaustion. Hopefully will not die from whatever toxic fumes remain in my apartment.

9PM-11PM - Wake up, realize I never made it to the gym and that now I have to go in the morning. Finish cleaning.

11PM-6AM - Sleep.

6AM-9AM - Get up, go to the gym, go to work.

If I don't post for several days, send help.

Once More, With Feeling

2008-06-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

It's always fun to read a story in Variety and, before reaching the end of it, start mentally calculating how much plasma and/or heroin I'll need to sell to make rent.

Gee, I Wish I Could Bike To Work

2008-06-18T23:16:00.000-07:00

I bought my first $50 tank of gas tonight. $50.45 for 10.970 gallons. For those lazy at math, that's $4.59 a gallon.

I fear later this summer as gas continues to spiral up, my credit card is just going to melt one day.

It's Time For Another Good Idea, Bad Idea

2008-06-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the Tenant Services folks in the building where our Production Office is located:

Good Idea: Throwing a picnic for the tenants to kick off the summer and show your appreciation of their business.

Bad Idea: Serving Chili at the picnic, to a building full of people whose office windows do not open.

I'm going to go find myself a big box of matches...

The Onion Strikes Again

2008-06-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Being friends with mostly theater geeks in High School, I rather enjoyed this (particularly the last line about the location of the Technical awards):

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds

To Keep You Entertained While I Work Another Six Day Week

2008-06-16T22:59:00.000-07:00

Please enjoy these photos of my father and stepmother's tour of the "Five 'Stans": Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

Dad's still figuring out how Flickr works, so his captions (which contain a fair bit of historical context for what you're looking at) are actually posted as comments. Although some of the comments, like this one, are courtesy of Ray Ann.

California Celebrates Naked Commercialism

2008-06-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

In my inbox this morning, on the morning of the first gay marriages in California, I found the following item from Chemistry.com, a spinoff of Match.com:

Yes, that's right. Chemistry has decided that the best way to market themselves to their generally liberal and potentially queer audience is to nakedly commercialize one of the most important court rulings in decades.

I can't even imagine that marketing meeting: "Now that gays can get married, there's clearly going to be a stampede to meet soulmates through the magic of the internet. We should take advantage!"

Crickets

2008-06-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, the dulcet tones of the Production Office when there's a 10am call and a projected exceedingly late wrap - The fridge sadly cranking along, two keyboards clacking away as two sets of hands type bored IMs to friends lucky enough to not be stuck at work at almost 11pm on a Saturday night.

You'll notice "the drone of the air conditioner" is not included on this list because...well, it's not on. And the engineer who actually knows how to turn it on has gone home. And the windows don't open here.

I'm getting a little sleepy. And I can't leave until they wrap. This is going to be a looooong evening.

At least a) I have gotten every bit of work I possibly can out of the way, b) I did my PT exercises so I don't have to when I get home, and c) I discovered that Netflix Watch Now has the Dragnet Blue Boy episode on it. This is the most gloriously paranoid half-hour of television ever.

After watching it with the poor PA who's stuck here with me, he said, "You know, this was only fifteen years before Hill Street Blues. I can't imagine how they came that far that quickly." He's damn right.

Signs You Have Lost Your Damn Mind

2008-06-10T23:55:00.000-07:00

You work a fourteen-and-a-half hour day and as you blearily walk to you car, you think, "Man, that could have been a LOT worse."

Weekend Wrap-Up

2008-06-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

I hopped the redeye to Cape Cod Friday night, and watched some Jons get married on Saturday. It was wonderful in so many ways.

The place Joel found us (thanks, Joel!) was fantastic, right on the water looking out into Nantucket Sound. It was a really gorgeous place to stay, it was incredibly fun to hang out with everyone, and it was such a nice break from the L.A. madness.

The wedding itself was beautiful, touching, and even hilarious. The dancing after the wedding was definitely hilarious, and I feel I made a nice drunken contribution to said hilarity.

In all seriousness, though, I hope to hell I find someone that makes me half as happy as the Jons obviously make each other. If I do, I'll consider myself incredibly lucky.

Although I lacked my camera, about 20 other people brought theirs, so there's no lack of documentation of the beauty of the weekend, both literal and metaphorical.

It was also my birthday on Sunday, and I'm pleased to note that for the first birthday since I turned 24, I managed to remain ambulatory for the entire day. It's those little victories that matter.

Speaking of little victories, I took no small amount of joy out of the fact that the Lakers choked both Friday AND Sunday against the Celtics.

I was slightly disappointed I couldn't find a "Lakers Suck!" shirt to wear around L.A. all week, but I suppose that given the general agressiveness and assholishness of Lakers fans, not finding said shirt reduces my chances of getting beat up and/or shot.

All in all, I had a really great weekend, and spent my day off today recovering from the whole thing in order to go into a truly delightful next three weeks of six-day weeks and a full shooting schedule.

Posting will be light for a bit, save the occasional complaint about how ridiculously goddamn tired I am.

Thoughts That Cross My Mind

2008-06-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

After blotting calamine lotion on my ridiculous number of flea bites, leaving a pattern of dark pink spots on pasty white skin: "God, I look like a gay leopard."