A Trip to the Apple Store
The experience could make you start your own blog.

  posted by John : 4:02 PM

 
West Coast Wedding


If you have broadband internet, click on this photo of Scott's preacherman book to download a slideshow of photos from Josh & Christine's wonderful wedding.

Its 61 megabytes - couldn't get it smaller without losing quality. If you'd like a disc of the photo files to add to your collection, send your mailing address to john at dayowl.com.

  posted by John : 2:09 PM

 
At the Getty








Sharon, Jesse and I had lunch and a quick look around the Getty Museum. Beautiful gardens. This was the one touristy thing we wanted to make sure to do while in LA. The views would have been great but it was a bit foggy. I thought the wheat-sheaf-like arbors made of bound rebar were great. These pictures also illustrate the dynamic range of an early model camera phone.

  posted by John : 9:19 AM

 
My Dad - Dec 16th 1923 to May 16th 2006


This is a picture taken of my mom and dad on the last day that we visited with him, about 10 days ago. He passed away last night, peacefully. Died of old age, as they say. He'd been getting progressively weaker over the past few months, though he had little comebacks here and there and was pretty lucid for the most part. But in the last few weeks he seemed to decide he was at the end.

My family has arranged his funeral events to allow us to make Josh's wedding this weekend. From there we'll fly to Toronto for the ceremonies.

  posted by John : 7:28 AM

 
Jajah
I'm always looking for a way to pay less for phone calls. This site initiates a call between two non-internet phones...



  posted by John : 9:40 PM

 
Immigration rant
I can't believe how much louder the talk of attempting to secure the US-Mexico border is getting lately. And we'll hear more of it from W himself in his TV speech tomorrow night. Yet it doesn't seem like anyone much mentions cracking down on employers of people who have snuck into the country. I would venture a guess that at least 80% of the guys building subdivisions around here aren't legally eligible to work in the US. But without them, the houses wouldn't be built - without much higher costs that is. The hypocrasy of blaming the workers, or the porous border, is ridiculous. The supply of low cost workers is going to find its way here one way or another as long as the demand is allowed to exist.
  posted by John : 8:55 PM

 
Dust and Asch
Tonight we went to the premiere screening of Woody Guthrie : Ain't Got No Home, which will air on PBS in July. Its a very interesting look into many aspects of Woody Guthrie's life, some of which I never knew. Like that he was hired to write the Columbia River songs for a documentary the Oregon government was making about the hydro-electric projects on the river. He had one month to write the songs, and came up with about 28 of them. Very difficult to make a movie about a person who's legacy on film amounts to nearly zero feet. But it held my interest throughout, and in fact I would have liked to have seen alot more included. No Arlo, and no Dylan. Their absence is felt, but then again a deeper focus on less-known details of Guthrie's life may have been achieved without their input.

  posted by John : 7:42 PM

 
Home
After three weeks away it feels great to be back in lush and humid Texas. Enjoyed sleeping in our bed so much I didn't get up until noon. Its been raining heavily each of the past few nights so the creek is full of chocolate milk and the spring has begun to flow. Time to cut the grass. Victor only smells a bit like a skunk now (he was sprayed about 10 days ago and Sharon had to give him the tomato sauce and enzyme treatment).

  posted by John : 12:54 PM

 
Leo & Margaret
What a great party. Most certainly a good time was had by all. Click here to download a 43MB zip file of pictures from our camera of the wedding and reception. Here's a few outtakes...











  posted by John : 12:18 PM

 
United 93
This is a real horror film. Without any giant snakes on the plane.

  posted by John : 12:05 PM

 
Stick a fork in 'em
Hot Docs are done. Last Wednesday we saw a few that were so-so. The one most noteworthy was an early film by Serge Giguere of a New Year's party in his Quebec family home in the mid 1970s. He came from such a big family - 15 kids - that even though this was the first time he'd brought a movie camera into the house, they just went about there business, giving him a perfect subject for a verite film. Like any event, parties have a natural arc to make sense, and more importantly perhaps, define the scope of the project.

Friday night, the lovely Sophie joined us to seen Herzog himself introduce his film My Best Fiend. We all really enjoyed it. The film portrays Klaus Kinski as an aspect of the collaborative being that is a Werner Herzog production. A demonic aspect that rears up in frustration like a child whenever its needs aren't met. Kinski appears about as manic as a person could be and still function in the world. Yet, he's quickly forgiven and much loved. Very interesting to see how the tension his presence brings to the film manifests itself in the final result onscreen.

Saturday, one last Herzog film - Little Dieter Needs to Fly. This time we were joined by sweet Fran and Adam, the ever travelling Toronto-weekender. Herzog explained that he sees the story in this film as "some unfished business". The part he mentioned was that off-camera Dieter had explained to him that all his fellow American POWs all hated each other to some degree. This is one part Werner wanted to explore further, and so is now in post production on a new feature film of Dieter's story.

Today, Sunday, Sharon and I got up early after a late night of carousing at Leo and Margaret's wedding party. Pictures to come. We're heading back to Austin, on separate flights. Mine is on United airlines and so far has taken me over Pennsylvania and into Dulles airport where I have an all afternoon layover waiting for a flight to Austin. What better time to go see the much lauded movie United 93? It starts in 5 mins...


  posted by John : 9:56 AM

 
Hot Docs Days 2 and 3
Saturday night we saw two short films by Werner Herzog from the mid 1970s - La Soufriere and The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Stiener. These reflected different aspects of his approach to subjects. With La Soufriere he went to an exotic land to look death in the face by visiting the site of an impending natural disaster where only two or three citizens of the town at the base of a brewing volcano remained. With "Woodcarver" he focused on one individual, sharing his quest to seek out the edges of life and death in his pursuit of world-record breaking ski-flying jumps. This was the more captivating of the two films. Though we've seen plenty of spectacular crashes on ski-hills, rarely do you see it shown at 1/20th speed, as Herzog shot his competitions on super high speed film. Walter Steiner flys 500 feet through the air on skis and the film captures the feeling of flight very well. Sharon would like to have seen more woodcarving though.

Sunday we saw three films...

The first, Walking to Werner, was about a guy who oddly enough resembled Klaus Kinski physically and also mentally - when he was at the lowest point of despair in his 1,200 mile walk from Seattle to Los Angeles. Enjoyable, and impossible to fault a film where the maker exposes his vulnerabilities in a walk across the country. I asked the director afterwards when it was that he was walking in the Big Sur area, and it turns out it was just a week after we were there and stopped to talk with the walking Mr. Swords - the man with the lace skirt, flip flops and shopping cart walking from San Francisco to Huntington Beach to get his $175 back from the police.

My Grandmother's House. This would have been better IMO if the "artiste" director used a simpler approach and didn't pursue the high contrast film-look or insert all those scrawled titles with backwards Ns, as if drawn by a child. I guess those little treatments are what won this film awards at the annual festival in Amersterdam. Reaffirmed for us that its hard to like a film where you don't identify in some way with any of the characters.

Wordplay. A pretty perfect study of crossword puzzles and the people and events that surround them in the USA. Coming this summer to a theater near you. Nothing earth shattering, but I thought it was fun and very well made.

Lesson for today - if you're making a first-time documentary and don't want to have wasted your time in the end by having nobody watch it, just get someone recognizable like Bill Clinton to appear in an interview. Or thrust someone like Werner Herzog into the story without their permission, and if its a good story they might come around and help you out in the end.

  posted by John : 7:12 AM