Strictly Personal

Dumb.

Continuing from my post on ticklebooth:

One of the greatest speeches. The best presidential speech I have ever witnessed. With such high expectations, with so much pressure, in a friggin’ stadium, with the biggest audience watching - he simply nailed it. It was so emotional even though there was nothing fluffy about what he said.

As I walked my dog afterwards, I realized that his focus must have been on intention. Behind every word, he did not emphasize the poetics of it but the why of it. I never understood how people were inspired by speeches. My cynical outlook saw speeches as verbal punches. And though there were many punches that landed on McCain. I was truly inspired. I was set to motion. Powerful stuff. My adrenaline is rushing.

I can’t stop thinking about it. Couple of belated thoughts. When one learns anything incredibly difficult, they are taught to be in the moment. Writing, acting, sports, relationships. The fight is to be immersed in the moment. Obama is the master of his moment.

Before he went on, MSNBC commentators said it might take him about 30 minutes to just simply read the speech, without pauses and emphasis. This was a problem. The plan was that at 10pm, a quick introduction from Senator Durbin would be made followed by a short video about Obama who would then walk out to deliver his speech that was supposed to begin at 10:15 eastern time. Television networks would cut to the local news around 11pm. That left Obama 45 minutes to make his case. He couldn’t just read the speech, he had to speak it out loud. If he simply read it, it would sound like Al Gore’s speech from earlier that night. He also had to have the proper entrance and exit worthy of a 70,000 stadium audience. Two minutes for entrance, 8 minutes for the exit. The Obama people were hoping for some quick soundbites (favorable of course) from their anchors before they switched off to the local channels. This could somewhat overlap with the exit. So in a sense, Obama had about 35 minutes tops.

Now if you didn’t know all of this, you wouldn’t have thought about it twice because Obama nailed it, along with the proper entrance and exit, the proper pauses and crowd interruptions. Everything worked. Here is how:

A couple minutes before 10pm, Senator Durbin started his intro. Obama’s intro video finished around 10:13. I was nervous. Around 10:14, Obama finally manages to get the crowd to quite down and starts his speech. Only a minute headstart, Obama must have felt the pressure because after brief thank you’s, the next 2-3 minutes of his speech seemed to be on the express train. I don’t remember anything he said in the period. But if you look at the text, it is classic Obama material. But because it had been said before, he flew past it. I remember wondering “this feels like a blur”.

It was only when he reached McCain, did he finally slow down. He was back to his normal pause and reflect kind of style. It kept slowing down but never to a point where it was eating up time. His pauses were just enough, his pace was steady but full of intent. Thinking back, this is what made it magical, that with all of these external time pressures, Obama relied upon his internal rhythm to keep pace. There was never a disconnect with what he was saying and feeling or acting. It was beautiful.

Now I didn’t get a look at the clock to see when he finished because I was pumping fists and jumping in elation. It was like a watching a incredible game with your team winning. But it felt like, he finished around 10:50pm. I could be very easily wrong here but there was plenty of time for the Michelle & daughers, Biden’s and all the rest to come out, wave, watch the fireworks and leave. All before 11pm. The anchors were buzzing about the speech before it cut to local networks. Incredible!

The photos in the story just pops. The contrasting colors, the almost-black & white foreground contrasts beautifully with the striped color background. Hidden messages seep out in all of organized chaos.

Story - direct link to photo.

My little podcast will be part of a Matinee/Evening Block of films that will be shown at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro, North Carolina. Showtime: September 6th at 6pm. Tickets are 4$. Great venue, great festival!

This is one of the premier festivals in the area. And they have a photo of my mom in the program, how cool is that? Woohoo!

Shopping for tennis shoes is like visiting some kind of oddball hell. Where every shoe is white and either ugly or close to ugly. Sneakers in general tend to be on the uglier side of things. Male sneaker designers design shoes that have all kinds of fantastical bells and whistles. There are bubbles in the soles to make you jump higher or whatever. All kinds of vents, you know,to give your feet some air. Then there are the ridiculous lines that run all over the place of a sneaker which have no cohesion, no balance, nothing that speaks simplicity. Sneaker designers are trying to appeal to the 5 year old boys within adult males where little boys imaginations were sparked by silly details on toys.

Tennis shoes are even more ugly. It is all about white because, you know, it says tennis. Tennis balls safely moved from white to yellow and yet the shoes find it difficult to make that transition.

After doing an extensive search, the only tennis shoes I could find that matched quality and style ended being a dud. I keep sliding off the base of the shoe. It is bulky and incredibly uncomfortable.I tried a couple of other shoes at a store, they felt like crap. What a mess!

Ever since I hooked up my Network printer, I have been in love with wireless printing. Sitting in the living room and hearing your printer print in the office is an incredible feeling. I have grown up in an era of fingers-crossed printing where you hope everything works, that all the wires are plugged, all the drivers installed and that there is enough ink. Having it so simple now is easy to get used but still carries a certain magic.

So, asking for a iPhone printing feature is liking for a car with awesome rims. I don’t need it but it sure would be nice. I guess one of those obstacles is the amount of drivers one would need to install for all of the wireless printers out there.

Then there is the question whether one needs it in the first place. I print electronic receipts, especially from sites that don’t send you an email. To do lists and Photo-related apps could also use a print feature. You could always send it to your computer and then print from there but that feels like a waste of time. (Here is clever tip that uses email to create a network-like print option from an iPhone.)

P.S. If you don’t print photos at home, get a laserjet. I never have to worry about ink, not for another year at least.

• Celtx: this is what I use most of the time.
• Scrivener: it has a screenplay module which I don’t use, mostly because it doesn’t translate well into Celtx. But the fullscreen mode is so awesome, so much so that I am writing my feature length screenplay within this application (in novel format). When I am done, I will port it over to Celtx.
• Montage: checked it out when it first came out and wasn’t sold. Should try it again.
• Final Draft: the expensive industry standard.
• Movie Magic Screenwriter: another expensive industry standard.
• NovaMind: motivation behind writing this. Looks great for organizing elaborate plots.

Atom Egoyan’s best work. One of the biggest reasons for me to quit business school and become a filmmaker. It was my secret film that nobody (at that time) had seen or even heard of. When people talked about their great films, I thought about Exotica. I aspired to make this.

I was working at the now defunct 68th Street Playhouse when the movie opened there. This is one of those movies I could watch over and over again. It was made for me at that moment and place in time. It was perfect for someone who couldn’t see it all the way through. Perfect for an usher to steal a moment and watch a scene from the movie.

• Love the structure. Eternally moving. Even now those characters keep in that tight circle.
• The powerful ending. It is not never about the plot as it is about healing and mystery.
• The scene where he sits there in that bare bedroom and turn on & off the light. Damn good. That was me then.
• The space of the strip joint. It was so well established. You wanted to be there.
• The see through mirrors at the strip club.
• Then there are the mirrors in customs, like the strip club.
• The gay relationship was odd.
• The conversation between the searchers. I can’t remember what they talked about but it just has this beautiful sadness. Love blossoming near death.
• Exotica = pets, exotica = sex.
• Perfect casting.
• The DJ’s intro to the girls. “What makes a teenage so enticing” monologue. It is brutally honest and yet introspective. Even today, when I buy fast food, I still remember his line that goes something like “they haven’t been spoiled with fast food”.
• Those haunting home videos.

Boy, I hate hearing myself. At least Andy sounded good, he has that warm radio voice. Listen to it here.

World peace excretions as I like to call them.