Random thoughts on the state that's hi in the middle and round on the ends...

Well, regardless of how my stay started, I cannot deny that this is one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in outside of my own which is good since I have three more days here and they’re pretty jam-packed. It’s so comfortable that I fell asleep during Ghostbusters, which I started around 10 last night and I didn’t really wake up until around 8 am! This is especially remarkable since I haven’t been able to get more than five hours of sleep for the past couple of weeks...too much to do and, at that point, so little time in which to do it while the buses were running. Room service was ace, too, and that certainly helped calm my whiny self down. A turkey herb wrap and a house salad omnomnomnom. I think my room service guy was a vampire, though, because he was all like, “Do I have permission to enter your room?” No, dude, I want to gobble my food out in the hall. Which I would have, if I had to.

The next paragraph has spoilers for season eight of CSI: Vegas. You have been warned.

I watched a random season nine episode of CSI: Vegas last night on broadcast television. I’ll reserve my judgment on the lovely Laurence Fishburne for once I’ve seen more than just the single episode, but the whole dynamic seems off now (the CSI fans are probably saying, “Well, yeah...duh...”) And I don’t know if George Eads was ill during the filming of the episode or what, but Nicky seemed especially off, with puffy eyes and slightly slurred speech -- they wouldn’t give Stokes an alcohol problem after Warrick’s death, would they? It was the parachute episode, with Charisma Carpenter and Erin Daniels guest starring...which was especially wonderfully strange to me considering Lauren Lee Smith was a series regular during season nine. If you can follow that without a map, you’re awesome. This is one of those times where I wonder if the CSI casting directors cast for the fan fiction writers.

Anyway, I bring up CSI because while, yes, I know I’m in Ohio and that I’m only an hour north of Ye Olde Homestead, it was still a shock to see the Football Hall of Fame on the commercial for the nightly news. I used to pass the Football Hall of Fame quite often in my childhood. I still think it looks like a citrus juicer... I’ve never been in the Hall of Fame so I have no idea what the heck is in the juicer part of the building. Don’t feel bad, Cantonites. The theatre at my old high school looks like a giant toilet. I can’t find a proper photo of it, but trust me on the toiletyness of the building.

Okay, so even in spite of my trip thus far being very Cleveland (according to my mommy), I still have a little bit of...I don’t even know what, for the home state. It’s not affection, it’s not disgust, it’s not homesickness, and it’s not fond memories. And I’m not even going to Canton! Maybe next trip, whenever that might be. I suppose it will be forever undefinable. I must say that it’s nice to see more motorcycles and Harley emblems (not necessarily on those motorcycles) than Mercedes Benzes and Lexuses...Benzi? Lexi? How are high-end cars pluralized, anyway?

Hotel Confessional - {name redacted}

So, I’ve arrived in Cleveland. All was well at first; the plane ride was nice, got my bag pretty quickly, got right into a cab with a nice, if not exhausted-looking, driver who had a thick accent, but spoke slowly and I could understand him. The drive to the hotel was nice, too. We don’t have a whole lot of multi-storey houses in Florida because of the storms and everything’s made of brick and is, to me anyway, visually interesting. Saw a couple of little Indians logos and not a palm tree in sight.

Then I got to the hotel.



It’s bigger than I thought, but it was - is - pretty empty. I checked in early, 1:30 or so, but the lady at the front desk said that I was expected early so all was well. The lunch buffet closed at 2 so, if I hurried, I could get something to eat since I hadn’t really had anything since I woke up at 5 in the morning. I got my key and with a sigh of relief, I headed to the fourth floor and to my room...only to find that it hadn’t been cleaned yet.

Okay, that happens, but I’m travel-logged and hungry and really just wanted to get into my room and settle in. So, I schlep my stuff back down to the front desk and get a different room - computer glitch apparently - and schlep back up to the new assignment. It’s nice, not ginormous, but it’s ready for me and that’s fine. I look at the clock: 2:05. Okay, not a problem, this joint’s got restaurants and stuff so I’ll take pictures of my room, as I often do, and check everything out.

The restaurant closed for lunch at 2 and doesn’t open again until 5, but you can apparently order room service via the internet! Sweet, so I grab my laptop and try to log on...and it’s not working. I call their IT and they have no idea and then I call the front desk and they have no idea, either. As far as I know, there’s still no internet. Well, I’m not just hungry, I’m HONGRY by this point, but I don’t want to order Pizza Hut. I’m doing well with my weight and don’t want to kill it, so I go to check out the vending machine for like peanut butter crackers or something: coin operated and ancient. Doesn’t bode well for the machine’s contents. Okay, there’s a gift shoppe in the lobby! I’ll go see what they have! Now, the gift shop was open when I walked into the hotel. I know because I was there. But I went downstairs and there was a sign in the door: “CLOSED. WILL REOPEN AT 4:00pm.”

I sighed and trudged back up to my room where I looked at the Pizza Hut menu, the hours on which said open from 11:00am to 10:00 pm. So, I call the number, get the hotel restaurant and they say that Pizza Hut opens at 4. By this point, I’m freakin’ whiny, I’m hungry, I’m tired, and I feel grody after the flight. And it’s 3:30. In my best Cartman voice I said, “Screw you guys, I’m taking a shower!” I know, I could have just gotten a cab and gone to a restaurant, but I’m just not feeling it. There’s a restaurant in the hotel, you know? I’m tired and was looking forward to chillaxing in my room.

It’s 4:37 right now...just a few more minutes until I can get room service.

On the plus side, I’m on the same floor as the festival / convention so I don’t have to go far to get to where I’m going...and the air conditioning works...and I had a nice, long, kind of hot shower...and the mattress is nice and soft...and it’s nice out, even if I’m inside.

At least my mom got a good laugh out of it!

(This was posted at 5:59 pm and I'm about to go into a food coma. I'm not usually cranky if I haven't eaten, but today was all like, "Argh!")

Airport Confessional -- Charlotte-Douglas International Airport

Just got off the plane to the most glorious bathroom break ever, replete with the tastiest mint I’ve ever had the pleasure of putting in my mouth. Where am I, you ask, that still has bathroom attendants that give mints and other essential toiletries? Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, NC. The time is 10:32 in the morning and we landed in thinning fog; the sun is not burning through the windows and my poor little Goth eyeballs are safe and happy. This airport, at least this wing of it, feels smaller even than the one I just left, no easy feat considering SRQ International isn’t all that big in the first place.

I love flying. It’s not something I get to do very often so it’s always a treat. I hope, if I end up flying around more and more in my career, that I never lose the wonder that I have when I fly. I tend to sleep through the actual flight part, at least when we’re up above the clouds and all you can see is cotton for miles and miles, but I really enjoy the take off and landings. Especially this time. I’ve never seen a rainbow from above before and I saw at least six before we reached cruising altitude. And we passed underneath a cloud formation that looked to me, thanks to the miracle of matrixing, like a white phoenix. I couldn’t get a picture of it, though, so some random clouds will have to do. Just trust me when I say it was very cool.

I like to look around at my fellow passengers during take-off and landing. It surprises me just how many don’t look through the window during the really exciting stuff, much less when we’re soaring over the earth at a bazillion miles an hour. Like I’d mentioned previously, but with much different wording, I think a lot of our problems could be solved if people just looked around.

I think they’re going to start boarding soon. More to come from the land of Cleve!

Airport Confessional -- SRQ International

It’s 6:49 in the morning. The sun is just beginning its ascent in the east, midnight blue giving way to the delicate orange, yellow, and pink of the rising ball of fire some 93 million miles away. The airport is nearly deserted now, two full hours before my flight is scheduled to depart and there’s a nice sense of calm about the place that will soon be broken by wailing infants, wailing businesspeople, and wailing travelers. I can understand why the ticket agent at the desk was annoyed that myself and one other traveler were here so early; its so peaceful.

I’m on my way to a film festival in Cleveland, Ohio, which is roughly an hour north of the place of my birth, North Canton. I haven’t been back to the Motherland in 17 years. I haven’t even been to this airport since I returned from my untriumphant move to New York back in 1997.

Out on the tarmac, the airport workers are connecting what I hope is our plane to their cart so they can move it into position near the gangway. I hope I have a window seat, I forgot to check when I checked in.

I love to fly. It’s utterly terrifying to think about logistically, but none of that seems to matter when they open the throttle and you’re rocketing down the runway and then up up up into the sky. It’s so wonderful to look at the world from a different perspective; I think more people need to fly and to be seated at the window, so they can look at the world on which we live and how it’s really not that bad a place and could be better if we’d all just get over ourselves.

*****

“Bad Moon Rising” just started on the airport radio station. Is it bad that the only thing that comes to mind when I hear this song is Kevin Kline and Tom Berenger zooming down the road with the top down on a Jeep? No, I don’t think about An American Werewolf in London, I think of The Big Chill. I used to watch that film over and over when I was a kid, even though I really didn’t understand most of it until I was older. I never understood that the opening credits, and the body and the stitches, was the Alex they were talking about, though I understood that Alex was dead. I always thought that the girl who was dressing the guy was really nice to be dressing him, maybe it was his mom. And that he had strange wrists. I probably thought that was Glenn Close dressing Kevin Kline or something.

*****

It’s twenty minutes later and I’m thinking that soon I’m going to regret choosing this particular seat, right in front of the east-facing windows. But for now, I’m happy. I took some really nice pictures of the sun lifting up over the horizon that I’ll post when I get to the hotel in a few hours. Man, ain’t that a killer thought? Here I am, on the gulf coast of Florida about to board a plane (and then another one) that will take me to Ohio within four hours. It takes almost that long just to drive to Orlando from here.

I have a friend who gets all existential when she does laundry...I suppose that airports do that to me. I don’t think it’s the fact that I’m going to strap myself into a seat on a jet-fueled airplane and more the fact that I’m leaving everything I know and the people I love and heading to a place completely unknown to me (I’ve never been to Cleveland, at least not that I remember) and be surrounded by people that are, for all intents and purposes, completely unfamiliar.

I’m not a big fan of crowds, or attention for that matter. I have a hard time talking up my work. I do what I do and wish that my work, and how hard I work to bring that work to life, could speak for itself, but in this business I’ve become a part of, you need to be able to talk yourself up, to promote yourself. These film festivals are good exercise, but I wonder if I’ll have to almost split into two Loris, the me I know and the me I have to be so I can do what I love.

See? Existential. And I’m so low in the echelon as a filmmaker that it’s probably not a real question anyway.

Yup...regretting this seat now. Sun’s in my eyeballs...I’m a Goth, why in the world did I choose to get up this early?!

Film Festival business!

Whew! Gotta get out my Swiffer, this place is all dusty! It's tough to try and keep a blog when you work every shift by yourself and are pretty exhausted by the time your days off roll around. In fact, this will be my ninth day in a row without a day off, but with good reason: I'm heading to the Indie Gathering the day after tomorrow! I'll try to post more both during and after the festival...I'll have so much to say and so much I'll want to remember! It is, after all, the first trip back to the homeland in 17 years and my first trip to Cleveland ever! What a way to go back!

In other news, I've got my trailer in a contest at the Vampire Film Festival in New Orleans! The film isn't about vampires, but they accept all dark materials and this film is certainly that. In their categories, I would classify it as Goth which works out because on the IMDb, the film is listed in the top thirteen Goth shorts! How that works, I don't know, but it's there and I'll take it. :D Maybe it's based on the use of keywords...whatever.

Anyway, the contest is on the festival's youTube channel. To vote, simply click on the stars and, if you feel so inclined, leave a comment as to why you feel that way. You can access my trailer's page directly by clicking on this sentence. I DON'T want ANYONE to click one star on any other trailer just to give anyone a boost! Please be honest! I know I can't expect the same from others in the contest, but I can hope for it! Besides, how are we to learn how to make stuff better without honesty?

In other news, I have made up a few DVDs to give away at the festival so if anyone reading this is actually going to Indie Gathering, or CenFlo or any festival for that matter, and wants a copy, come on up and find me after the screening ('cause, you know, you should see it before wanting it! ;D) They're homemade so a little rough, but made with heart and that's what counts when you don't have cash.

I think that's enough of this for now. I'll try to not be so absent in the future...I can't promise much when the bill-paying job is so tiring, but I can try!!

Fantastic A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema news!

My newest short film, A Hammer Fell in Jerusalem: Anathema, has won an award at the Indie Gathering in Cleveland, Ohio! The indie Gathering takes place in mid-August.

EDITED TO ADD: We've got a screening! August 15, which is a Saturday, at 7:10 pm in Screening Room C!

http://theindiegathering.com/2009winners.htm

The film is also an Official Selection of the Central Florida Film Festival which takes place in September!

From Fangoria.com: Nightbreed: The Director's Cut?

Over on Fango.com, there's a news story about the possibility of a Nightbreed director's cut, but only if the studio sees that there is enough call for it. The film was written and directed by Clive Barker from his own novella, Cabal.

From the Wikipedia entry:

The movie centers around Aaron Boone (portrayed by Craig Sheffer), a young man plagued by dreams of a city called Midian, populated by bizarre creatures and deviants of all types who refer to themselves as the "Nightbreed". Aaron is framed for several murders by his psychopathic therapist, subsequently killed by police and resurrected by the magic of Midian. Boone joins forces with the other monsters to defend themselves from the true monsters of the story: humankind.

If you haven't seen it yet, go rent it or borrow it from a friend. After you've seen it and said "WTF?", read the article to find out how you can help get Clive Barker's original vision out to the masses. And, after you've done that, go read the novella if you haven't already.