Woke up early and took a nap. Came into work half an hour late. Took a couple of minutes to remember how to work everything. Served an irate Italian only speaking customer, had one kid puke up in front of me, served hot summer clothed babes and got stared at by scary yellow shirt staring guy.

It was weird as hell to be back there. Though the store had changed a little bit, I remembered everything in the job and there are a lot of associated memories from when I last worked there which was really surreal at times to remember. Some good, some bad, but it was certainly interesting.

Anyway, this is brief. Malcom is coming down tonight and there will soon be much drinking and rejoicing of the old days really soon. Ready and waiting for the hangover tomorrow.

So Valentine’s Day turned out to be pretty amusing…

Another day off, getting appropriately bored at home, I took off to town to hang about and possibly buy more chips for my recently re-emerged poker habit (w00t gambling!). There, I seemed to bump into my largest count of people to be bumped into in town. Cause usually, there are a lot of people I run into when I go anywhere (being Hamilton) and it’ll be a random ‘hello, whats up?’, but there were at least double the usual amount today. ‘Singles stragglers’ one person said, ‘being at home is too much of a singles thing to do on Valentines Day”. Dunno if he’s onto something or not there.

And not long after that, I caught up with Skott and others and we went to Karapiro to wakeboard where I sucked balls and water and spent a good portion of my time trying to subtly get a game of poker going when we got back. But it was a beautiful evening on the lake. Water was perfectly calm and surprisingly warm. The only drawback was near the end of the day, casting off for one of the last rides, the boat suddenly stopped accelerating and on closer inspection, the propellor had actually fallen off. Got really dark quickly as we were searching for it too and will just have to leave it til another day or two to try and find it if it’s still there.

Hope y’all had a nice/crappy Valentine’s. Mine was a nice relaxing one before I’d have to start work again tomorrow. Though pity we didn’t play poker afterwards.

Happy valentines day!

Watched Babel tonight. Good, but not great. Very well made and a lot of fantastic stuff going on… The acting was amazing, the camera work, the editing, the direction… it was all great. But the film just felt so bleak and isolated and although that was the point and a recurring theme of the film (which had a lot of great subtle political critisms in it too), it just felt a bit too much. Too obviously going for the critic pleasing audience and expecting awards and stuff. And it totally deserves it too, though I can see where the division of people can be on it. Still recommended viewing to all.

Next up will probably be Stranger Than Fiction, though I’m really tempted to see The Last King of Scotland next as well and have yet to catch up on Blood Diamond, which I still really want to see… decisions, decisions… there are just too many good films on right now for me to watch all of them. Typical awards season. Love it.

A slightly new and hardly noticeable update of this site’s design…

Added a slightly different layout to most other pages around and changed some of the fonts, as I discovered the one I used previously isn’t usual part of most windows or mac font packs and this one is as close to how I originally had it. Also note there now a total of about 50 header images up for your viewing/refreshing pleasure.

Film subsections are going to be the next upload and hopefully, finally, new artworks after that.

Currently reading Neil Gaiman’s collection of short stories Fragile Things which is really, really good and should be read by anyone and everyone.

Also, one must check out the latest Hot Fuzz trailer, cut alongside Robert Roderiguez, it’s great and can be viewed here or just download it here.

And links from Robbie, this is the coolest greatest music video to have come out for a long time, if not ever. Download it!

And awesome midi music remixes to be heard here.

Just a tad overdue this brief post… but almost all the scenes for Pictures of You have been shot. Just one hospital scene to get out of the way next weekend, some pickups of cutaways and computer screens and a few aerial shots to do and my job should hopefully be done really soon.

To pick up some quick, much needed money, I’ve also started up my old job at the video store again. And the awesome part of it is I’ll be on my old rate again, which was pretty damn good for a video store.

For the most of today, I’ve been slogging away behind the desk, updating and revising the website oh so slightly. You probably won’t be seeing any changes til tomorrow or Tuesday as there are still a lot of things to be tested and such before uploading, but at least there will be 30 new header images up in the morning… yay.

After nearly a one week break, we shot two more scenes today, including one scene we had shot earlier in the schedule, but had to abandon halfway through due to changing lighting conditions. After several attempts to reschedule that scene in somewhere for the rest of the shoot, several times actually… it’s finally been shot.

Also another scene at magic hour done and tomorrow will be our second to last day! It would have been our last, but there was a fall through on one location, which leaves it to be shot next weekend once its available again.

Meanwhile, I finally got to catch Couch Soup last night as part of a rather packed audience. Which I will remind anyone in the area, their final Hamilton performance tomorrow night, 8pm Meteor Theatre. Go. Funny. Greatness.

And also started shooting on Spit Takes: A Mouthful of Comedy last night and shot the most complicated scene first (involving 13 people in one take). The rest should be a cakewalk and hopefully all photography will be done by the end of the month and it’ll be cut together relatively easy by the end of March.

Tomorrow will be a long day/evening, but should be a good one oh… I forgot to mention earlier, but a congrats to Nigel and Shirow on their engagement and I look forward to drinking in celebration with them tomorrow night… after drinking from wrapping… flipper yay.

Now I’m gonna get a drink of water, arm wrestle a panda and go to sleep. Cause I can and pandas got nothing on me.

Got to the place a few minutes late and the doors were locked and no lights were on in the lobby. Figuring I got the wrong location, I drove like mad to the New Place Theatre at the uni, figuring maybe its there instead. As luck would have it, there was absolutely no one around and so it was a mad rush to a poster I remember seeing outside of Chi Chi Delux. By this time I knew I was probably too late to make it to even half the show, but at least I could have figured out where it was exactly for tomorrow night… I was right. It is at the meteor and it definitely is at 8pm… not something like 8.05pm.

So… all in all. Got lost, got confused, got locked out, got annoyed and got drunk instead… awesome.

Going to see Couch Soup tonight. Got more details, it’s on at 8pm every night til Saturday. Tickets are $12/14 each and you’ll laugh. Or else.

Also discovered this youtube series called Chad Vader. Most amusing stuff. First episode of several…

Plus, as a big fan of Back of the Y, I encourage you to download and watch the trailer for The Devil Dared Me To and laugh and look very much forward to seeing it. Awesomely obtainable here.

Days off…

When I moved back down to Hamilton, I simply pilled as much junk into a whole bunch of boxes and drove like crazy back down. Weeks down the track, and those boxes took up half the very little floorspace that I was sleeping in.

Room is now clean, gardens have been done, lawns mowed, cars washed, my car tidied… I’m either compensating for the lack of filming getting done or just avoiding some proper work that I haven’t done yet.

But filming is nearly over and I crave money. Talked to the old boss at the video store and it looks like I’ll be picking up a few shifts there, at least to get me a little income again.

Been going back over Slice of Life stuff again, and proposals are being drafted up for TVNZ so fingers crossed it’ll at least be a nice proposal.

Oh and if you’re not doing anything on any nights from tomorrow til Saturday night, go watch this year’s run of the Couch Soup play. Gets more funny and amusing every year and I highly recommend any and all to go watch. It’s at the meteor theatre um… I think… and… um… I’ll get back to you on that actually.

And a repost of DJ Shadow’s Six Days music video by Wong Kar Wai, only because I’ve had this damn song and video stuck in my head for the last few days and no matter what, I can’t seem to get it out… hot.