One Thing

Beth posted a meme that I was going to answer in her comments section, but it came out to be so damn long I would have felt guilty clogging up her blog with my crap.

No more blog clog.

I'll present it the same way she did, first listing the questions, and then listing my answers below.

So, here it is, The One Thing.

1. If you could recommend only one book for others to read, what would it be and why?

2. What is your one favorite song? Why?

3. What is the one thing that is the biggest time saver in your life?

4. What is one gadget you couldn't live without and why?

5. If you could recommend one film for others to see, what would it be and why?

6. What is the one cure or preventative measure you believe in and for what ailment?

7. What is the best advice you've ever received and from whom?

8. If you could introduce the entire world to just one band/musical artist, who would it be and why?

9. If you could convince others you meet or know of one thing, what would it be?

10. What do you believe is one of the greatest ways of wasting money and how do you combat it?

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

1. If you could recommend only one book for others to read, what would it be and why?
The Green Mile, by Stephen King. It’s a work that truly demonstrates King’s talent as a master writer and storyteller, elevating him above the horror genre he helped make famous. I never was a fan of his horror novels – I’m still not – but this story is fantastically conceived, beautifully written and cleverly told. If you think you don’t like Stephen King, give this one a read.

2. What is your one favorite song? Why?
“Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin,” by Journey, a lovely song about pain and comeuppance! LOL! It’s a simple melody, it’s easy to remember the words, and Steve Perry shone perhaps his brightest vocally on it. I love belting tunes in the car or when I’m home alone, and this is one, on a good day, that I can nail the high notes!

3. What is the one thing that is the biggest time saver in your life?
Somewhere around age 30 I learned to stop worrying about all the little crap. It may not actually save me any time, but time sure seems to go by more quickly without worrying whether or not that client took the joke wrong that made him laugh out loud… Of course, now there’s the problem of procrastination… more on that later….

4. What is one gadget you couldn't live without and why?
The toilet. It eases stress, affords a place to sit and… uh… think, and, when you get up, you’re able to flush away one of the day’s annoyances. I suppose I could do without the computer/internet. I could satisfy my writing jones with a typewriter…or pen and paper, if it came to that. And I could use the phone to communicate immediately with friends and family. But take away the toilet, and what have you got? A nasty hole in the floor, that’s what!

5. If you could recommend one film for others to see, what would it be and why?
“It’s A Wonderful Life,” 1946, Frank Capra, director. Forget for the moment that it was played to death by every TV station that could get their hands on it in the 1980s. Forget for the moment that NBC now milks it to death with commercial interruptions. Discover once more the magic of the story that it tells of one nobody’s importance to the people around him, of the impact one person has in his lifetime on an untold number of lives, and that no one is a failure who has friends. Yes, it has that pasty, post-war sweetness of other movies of its era, but no one has yet been able to recreate its message with quite as much power or real emotion. Give it another chance.

6. What is the one cure or preventative measure you believe in and for what ailment?
Pooping. I’m not being fecetious (that typo is intentional). When I was a kid, I used to get a lot of headaches. When I’d complain to my mother, she would ask me if I’d had a bowel movement that day. Of course, I’d argue with her, “What’s pooping got to do with a headache?” To which she would simply ask the question again. Finally, when I said, “No,” she would ask, “Do you have to?” At which point I would stop and think, and realize that, indeed, I did! I’d go, and then a while later she would ask how my headache was, and of course, it would be gone. So today, when I have a headache, it’s the first thing I ask myself before I pop pills or guzzle a quart of water…and to this day it still is often the cure!

7. What is the best advice you've ever received and from whom?
“Always have something to fall back on,” urged my father when I (briefly) pursued a career as an actor. It’s how I found video production. And it’s what I fell back on!

8. If you could introduce the entire world to just one band/musical artist, who would it be and why?
It’s a band that needs no introduction, of course: The Beatles. In existence as a performing and recording entity for a mere ten years, their influence on music and the recording industry itself still ripples and reverberates today. Few bands willingly flex their musical muscles the way those four did (few bands have the musical muscles!), and they exposed many fans to numerous different musical styles that they might otherwise never have visited.

9. If you could convince others you meet or know of one thing, what would it be?
The world is NOT going to hell in a hand-basket! The television and print news media make their money on viewership and readership, and the only way they’ve been able to succeed at it is to appeal to the human desire to be entertained and thrilled. Stories about murder and car crashes and child predation and people getting ripped off are high drama, and we eat it up like flies on the proverbial pile of poo. Of course, stories about happy people and how great things are would get boring after a while, because nobody is getting screwed! The long-term effect, however, is that we tend to extrapolate the little world we see on our televisions and apply it to the real world. How many of the 300 million people in America WEREN’T murdered today? How many children WEREN’T molested today? Honestly, those who were make up a vastly tiny 0.0000001 percent of the entire population. And though, yes, terrible crimes as they all are, it is FAR from epidemic. These types of crimes have been committed against others throughout human history; it’s just that with the far-reaching, high-access global media we have today, we hear about more of it than we ever realized was happening. So go back outside. Let your kids play in the yard. Run with scissors. Don’t wash your hands before dinner (and if you do, CERTAINLY don’t use anti-bacterial soap). You’ll live.

10. What do you believe is one of the greatest ways of wasting money and how do you combat it?
The greatest way I waste money is by having an ATM card. If I have money in my pocket, I’m going to spend it. If I have the ATM card in my pocket, and an ATM close by, I’m going to get money, and I’m going to spend it. I don’t know whose ATM card it is, but it works, and I spend the money. I’m kidding, of course. But that’s how it seems. I always seem to be down to several singles in my pocket when I swear just a day or two before I had a couple-three twenties.


There. Yeesh! More insight into my mind than you ever wanted. Blame Beth. And then visit her blog.

And, of course, now that you've read mine, you are required to create yours. Now hop to it!

Churning Onward

I finally finished posting the London blog. I never expected it to take me a full month to get it up there, but I hit the ground running pretty much as soon as I got home.

The very next day after returning home, I was off to Colorado Springs for two nights, and then our office was still in the midst of a move. The upside is that I got to spend about a week going in to the office wearing shorts and a t-shirt. The downside is that I did still sweat my balls off loading office furniture onto and off of a truck, and taking down a whole studio’s worth of drape and drape track.

And then it was back on a plane across the Atlantic, this time to Stockholm, Sweden, in preparation for a client’s 10-day Baltic Sea cruise. I was in Stockholm for two nights, and then aboard the Regent Cruise Lines “Seven Seas Voyager,” with ports of call in Helsinki, Finland; St. Petersburg, Russia; Tallinn, Estonia; Visby (Gotland), Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark.

All ports were in countries I had never before visited, and every place was a wonder to behold. I must say, however, that Tallinn and Visby were the most picturesque and gorgeous towns I’ve ever visited, no disrespect to Prague, which comes in third…maybe tied for second…

And time churns onward… only four days home and I’m off again, this time in Washington, D.C., for a week. Nothing as glamorous or as interesting as a 10-day Baltic cruise, but then you can’t eat jelly donuts every day, can you?

Enjoy a few photos from the cruise…


Somewhere in this shot you can see our ship....
















Stockholm....































Helsinki....






























St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, formerly Petrograd, formerly St. Petersburg, all since 1917!), though 2 photos certainly can't do it justice....




























Tallinn....
































Visby, on the island of Gotland....

Hot Fuzz

On the flight home from London, I perused the United Airlines entertainment guide and came across a description for “Hot Fuzz,” a film “by the makers of ‘Shaun of the Dead.’” I never saw “Shaun of the Dead,” so I didn’t know what to expect, but the description otherwise intrigued me.

This particular flight offered individual screens for each passenger, allowing personal viewing of a choice of about seven films. Clearly unaware of what to expect, I punched up the channel for “Hot Fuzz.”

On the surface it’s a story about a London cop who’s just too good. His arrest record is 1000% higher than his colleagues’, and so, because he’s making the rest of them look bad, he’s sent away to a small town where, historically, nothing happens. And of course, nothing there is as it seems.

Deep down, however, it’s a good-natured spoof of the Hollywood genre “buddy cop” movies, and manages to send up those movies quite vigorously, as well as entertain in its own right. They nail just about every cliché along the way, from ridiculous car chases to the cheesy lines the bad guys – as well as the charismatic good guys – spew at the climax of a scene, to the impossible gun-fight scenes, to the painfully touching sweet scene at the end.

My biggest surprise came when I heard the ‘f’ word clearly in the dialogue. I checked the guide again and discovered that this film was presented without editing by the airline, so all language was intact! I guess it’s only allowed on international flights, but I’m not complaining!

The “Shaun of the Dead” gang also apparently love blood and gore, so there was a fair bit of that throughout, though it only added comedically to the film.

Bottom line, if you like intelligent spoofs of mindless films, if you don’t mind some raw language or some (funny) mild gore, if you want to laugh yourself silly, oblivious between your headphones while others stare at you as though you’ve come unhinged, buy, rent or otherwise view “Hot Fuzz!”