Turning point.

My life, reloaded.
by AC - permalink

So in the last week, my entire life has been turned upside down. Ok, that's a little dramatic. Let's say I've found new meaning, after finding a long lost love, and I've never been so hopeful that things are going to be very good soon. Not right away, and there's some hard work ahead of us, but I'm up for it. In fact I can't wait. It's too soon to go into details, but I'm happy. Anxious, nervous, but happy. Look for a massive post on this soon, which nobody will read.

Seems like everyone I know is sick, so I'm sort of hiding out in my bedroom today. Watching a live stream of the Griz game (via Channelsurfing.net), babbling on IM, etc. God the Griz are down 20 in the 4th. This is ridiculous. They've already beaten Houston this year, and they don't even have McGrady tonight. The defense is nonexistent, and there's still no explanation for it. They're making Scola look like a fucking All Star, and they shut him down completely in the first game. Warrick and Stoudamire need to be traded now, they're killing the offensive flow. Bah. Whatever.

So the Christmas season came and went, it was marginally less annoying than usual. In fact Christmas day itself, despite a grating, endless family get-together, was the best I've had in years uncounted, thanks to Jen. I get the feeling a lot of posts are going to be ending like that soon.

UPDATE, 1AM: Forgot to mention, I haven't updated in a while because this blog was flagged by a Blogger robot as being a potential spam blog, locking me out. It took a week for it to be cleared again. WTF is that about? And why is it impossible to contact Blogger directly by email? Look into it, they have no contact information anywhere. All you can do is post to the Blogger support Google group and hope someone answers. That sucks, Blogger-owning Google overlords. Fix it.

Somewhat off.

Blah.
by AC - permalink

Feeling curiously tired and discombobulated (long word of the day), especially considering I slept all day. Well, it wasn't really "sleep" so much as a long series of continuously interrupted naps. And I didn't even go to bed until 7:30am, so maybe it's not so curious. This is so fucking boring, okay moving on.

The Li'l Film Fest went down Saturday and it was a hell of a thing. Giant, huge rush hearing people laugh at my short when it came up, especially as it followed Oddly Bouyant's faux-commercial starring Markus Seaberry, which was hysterical. The film turned out great -- not perfect, but funny and I think my idea came across well. If not, who fucking cares, people laughed!

Somehow I ended up sitting three seats down from Craig Brewer. I didn't really talk to him, but that probably wouldn't have turned out well anyway. I have a very strong suspicion that I would have blurted out something like, "Yeah, I'm glad you thought it was funny. Ah, you know, listen you should know that I've seen 15 minutes of a bootleg of Hustle & Flow, but otherwise I really don't know anything about you at all... I hear you do films." Not awkward at all.

Anyway it was also a pretty bittersweet night. Morgan Fox announced that after February the MeDiA Co-op will no longer be able to use its current space at the 1st Congo on Cooper. Then Sarah Fleming said that she and Chris Reyes are just flat out of the time it takes to keep the Li'l Film Fest afloat, and that Live From Memphis will not be producing it anymore. Fortunately there is definitely some hope on the horizon on that end; way, way too early to say anything about that just yet, but I do hope to be involved one way or another.

Oh, I have two of my final grades, in my two toughest classes, although "tough" is relative compared to those other "courses." Anyway 95 and 99 is a hell of a start for me. I never, ever expected to do this well. I mean that was the plan, but jebus, when did I get all book-smart? Where was this a goddamn decade ago? If I can't keep this going in the Spring, I'll be... well, not too shocked, but not very happy about it either.

Li'l Film Fest 8: Resolutions

Dig it, y'all.
by AC - permalink

Here's the official press release for the Live From Memphis film festival this Saturday. Come out to see some awesome short films, meet some cool people, and support some local filmmakers. I guess that last part would include me (wtf?).

Live From Memphis is pleased to announce "Li'l Film Fest 8: Resolutions (you know, the new year's kind)."
This festival marks the end of our 2nd year of Li'l Film Fests and we're very please to have made it this far.
A special thanks to all the filmmakers and local attendees who have made the past 2 years a truly unique and exciting experience.

Who: Local Filmmakers
What: Li'l Film Fest 8: Resolutions
When: Saturday, Dec. 15 @ 2pm
Where: MeDiA Co-op (1000 S. Cooper St.)

The following is a list of accepted films and filmmakers for "Li'l Film Fest 8: Resolutions:"
"Paper Doll World"
dir. Annie Gaia
"Absolute Resolute"
dir. Rachael Moeller
"Resolutions"
dir. Oddly Buoyant Productions
"Resolutions for the Irresolute"
dir. A.C. Gwin
"You Say You Have a Resolution"
dir. Marguerite Hibbets
"L'Hippopotame Vert FTW!"
dir. Edward Valibus
"I Resolve"
dir. Donald Meyers
"Nunca Mas (Never Again)"
dir. Angel Ortez
"First Things First"
dir. H.G. Ray
"Untitled"
dir. Benjamin Rednour
*Look for bonus entries by Adam Remsen and Sarah & Christopher!

For More information please contact Sarah Fleming at 901.523.9763 or email to info@livefrommemphis.com. We'll see ya' there!
Support Local, Promote Local
Live From Memphis
www.livefrommemphis.com

Where am I?

Oh, right, I still have stuff to do.
by AC - permalink

Sometimes it's nice to just sleep all damn day. I topped several consecutive late, late nights working on stuff for finals week and getting almost no sleep with a badly-timed late night out. Sort of sleepwalking right now, but I'm wrapping up my XHTML final project; after tomorrow I'll be done for the semester. Anyway, I went out to see Annie in the karaoke finals at what I'll politely not call a redneck bar. It was worth it though, both for her "giant parrot singing Tracy Chapman" act and for some girl named Michelle's bluesy take on Purple Rain.

Afterwards I headed home because I was exhausted, but then I caught myself copping out on some potential fun, said "Fuck it" out loud in the general direction of my windshield, and headed to Newby's for open-mic night, where my friends in Falling for Grey were playing. They were fantastic, btw. By 2am it had started to rain and I was nearly unconscious after basically not sleeping for 48 hours, so I decided to book and came on home, and promptly passed out for too many hours to count.

Just before heading out though, I watched the Griz get their brains beat out by Detroit. It was relatively close at the end, but it just felt like the Pistons were toying with them. I don't know what's going on with this team's defense. I mean how can it be getting worse? This is one of the most nauseating box scores I've ever seen. Two steals? Fourteen fewer assists on just four fewer made baskets? And why did Mike Miller take four shots in 39 minutes? I watched the game, and I still have no idea.

At one point Warrick was isolated and actually passed the ball to Lowry, who gave it right back! No! Okay, it was the right play, as Hak's man shifted to help on Kyle. The problem is, Hak made the shot. Positive reinforcement of bad habits is not good. But whatever. I'm still finding it worth the pain to watch Rudy Gay. I love the fact that you can see him flip a switch in his head every night when he decides to just take over, and then he actually does it. Jacob Riis agrees with me:

The rap on Gay coming out of college and on into his rookie season was that he wasn’t assertive. Well, that’s not the player we’re seeing on the floor right now. We’re seeing someone who really wants to try to take over games and take the big shots and someone who’s ability to create good shots all over the floor continues to develop and impress.

I'm not so crazy about the fact that Rudy has to keep flipping that switch back on again during a game. Why is it going off in the first place? But overall the signs are all positive with this kid.

Watch this.

Lazy post Vol. I
by AC - permalink

Let's hear it for hot bass-playing, lead-singing former stars of The Wizard.

It's crunch time, whatever that means.

That was quick...
by AC - permalink

The end of the semester is suddenly here. I managed to get caught up in all but one of my classes, somehow. I still have labs due next week in PERL and HTML, as well as a test each, and my final HTML project, but at least I'm not behind anymore after last night's marathon coding session (thanks, Mountain Dew and cheap beer). I'm done, for all intents and purposes, with my 1001 Office class. The only thing left to turn in is PowerPoint tutorials 1 and 2, and I did them this afternoon. I won't even mention that geo class. I may be kinda screwed there, but it's my own fault. I got too behind while working on my short film.

Annie did manage to submit our tapes on Monday, and I owe her for that as she and CMB were evidently editing her short until 4am that morning. It's a good thing I got in, as I've been handing out copies of a flier to my friends at school that Monica threw together in class yesterday. I have a revised version I'm going to get approved for posting around campus tomorrow. We want as many people as possible to come out to the fest on the 15th.

My mobile playlist in the car and at school lately has condensed to Deftones, Flyleaf, Portishead, and Violent Femmes. At home I'm still looping my .flv library of cool bass songs. More school work has meant less TV and more music as I'm spending hour after hour in front of my PC. All I've really made time for is Heroes (which is over now) and Grizzlies games, which are bittersweet most of the time. I've been breaking from work to play bass and write email, and occasionally to eat. Haven't had time for much else. I guess this is what the next three semesters will be like.

Finally managed to speak in person to my new advisor today, he seems like a nice enough guy. He's actually involved in planning courses for the Web tech major, so he should be exactly the guy I need. Have a meeting with him Thursday at 4, so by the end of the week I should know what kind of course load I'll have in the Spring. Trying to balance it with what I'd like to do in the local film scene will be the tricky part. Turns out a local director/musician, who I randomly bumped into twice in the last week, lives like three blocks from me. Hopefully some opportunities will open up for me there. We'll see.

Well, that was interesting.

We now returned to our regularly scheduled drudgery.
by AC - permalink

After a hectic, exhausting, and fast weekend, my short film is done. Not by choice, there are still several things I'd like to tweak, but there's just no time. It should be turned in tomorrow morning (God I hope it is) and it's just out of my hands now. From script to completion in 48 hours. Hell of a timetable for an utter n00b. I started setting up at 9:30am Saturday, we started filming around 11:30, and we were wrapped by 4:30. Byerly and I got the editing and post done tonight in around four hours. All that's left to do is show up for the fest on the 15th.

So now it's back to schoolwork, and for the first time since I've been back I'm way, way behind now. I may well end up missing my class tomorrow afternoon so I can focus on the huge amount of PERL and HTML I haven't gotten done yet for Tuesday and the paper I'm supposed to have been writing for my regional geo course. All we're doing tomorrow is introing PowerPoint, so I might actually go in and just sit there writing code. The instructor knows pretty clearly that I'm probably more qualified to teach this course than she is, and she lets me do whatever I want in class. Never thought I'd say something like that.

Last night the Griz beat the holy hell out of the Wolves, so naturally it wasn't televised. This is becoming a recurring theme and it's really damn annoying. Still, they've won three of four, and Darko's back in the lineup. The best news about this game is that it was a game they really were expected to win -- which can be dangerous for a young team -- and not only did they take it seriously, they ratcheted up their level of play quarter after quarter until they finally sent in the subs with nearly a 40-point lead in the fourth. They've put a shellacking on a few lesser teams this year, and coupled with very close losses to powerhouses like San Antonio, Dallas, and New Orleans, and a victory over Houston, I think they're still deceptive at 6-10. This season should hit a noticeable upswing by the new year.