Monday, December 28, 2009

More Dead Young Cute People

There's another one. ANOTHER ONE. This one's called "Frozen." Three people take the last ride on the ski lift on a Sunday night, when no one will be back until Friday, and it gets stuck too high for them to jump, and the temperatures are goin' DOWN. Oh, yeah, and wolves. There are wolves. Frostbite. Astonishingly, no one gets their tongue stuck to anything.

Idiots in jeopardy. Or is it rude people in jeopardy? (there appears to be some good reason for these youngsters to be abandoned by the guy controlling the ski lift - they were, um, rude-ish)

Has this happened? Can it happen? Could someone please point me in the direction of newspaper info on this subject? I live near a bunch of ski areas, and one hears about people wandering off in the wilderness, or getting caught by avalanches while snowshoeing (which is, of course, the only winter sport I am currently doing). But I've never heard of anyone being "left behind" as it were on a ski lift.

Come on people: "Closed For Christmas". I'm waiting. I need to see this movie. But I don't want it made by the idiots who do "Meet the Spartans" or "Scary Movie 4." It needs to be done by someone who knows how to make it funny but not stupid.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Legal Folderol

This came via a layered set of sources. Cory Doctorow of bOINGbOING fame blogged about the Comical Case Names on the website, Lowering the Bar.

Linked next to that is, of course, the Case Law Hall of Fame. These are all PDFs that will download to your computer, should you have the sterner stuff required to get through them.

Personal favorite so far is Fisher V Lowe, which begins thusly:
A wayward Chevy struck a tree
Whose owner sued defendants three.
He sued car's owner, driver too,
And insurer for what was due
For his oak tree that now may bear
A lasting need for tender care.

I mean. Come on. (Almost) the whole damn thing is written this way.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Milestone

It finally happened. My name is in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb for short) for a real flick. Now all that has to happen is for someone other than the director and all his best friends to see it, and then perhaps other movies can be made.

The movie is called "Sans Vie", and I am currently listed under Film Editing, Sound and Visual Effects.

Never thought I'd make it.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Friendly Boegle

RG & I hit Portlandia this weekend to visit our dear fiends Boegle and Ler, at least paritally to view Boegle's first foray into directorhood. Might I add, successful foray.

The writer did a very good job of throwing dramatic bits into an otherwise comedic evening. The final lecture of a dying theatre critic. A strange take on Bruce Springsteen's influence on the Brothers Grimm, and why copywright laws are a bitch. And the one Boegle directed, How to Have an Argument, which was a Monty Python-tinged piece of absurdia involving a lecture that never quite gets off the ground, and some very upset theatre patrons. Great fun, well-acted and generally a wonderful way to spend an evening. Especially since they tagged along afterwards to our hotel and ate and drank with us till the wee hours.

They are our best buds. There, I said it.

In many ways, having the new house is going to be the most fun, cause if they want to come up, we'll probably have room for them. Of course, if it's NW Folklife, they get first dibs on the best guest room.

(we only have one, but don't tell them)

Life improves daily. My job is gradually morphing into a day job, where even though I do have plenty of responsibility, it is keeping well out of my evenings. I'd like to think that when the house closes, I will be able to move everything that is currently in the basement of our little cottage into the garage of the new place without too much difficulty, while the contractors rid us of our sparkly popcorn ceiling.

Other highlights of the trip to Portland - Powell's Bookstore: A Reader's Mad Fantasia of Too Many Books. A lovely consignment shop where RG found a couple of items, and near which Ler and I found slices of heavenly pizza. There was the purchase of pastries.

And for another thing, I bought beer.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Roulette Wheel of my Mind

Watching as the wheel goes spinning, spinning, and then waiting for the ball to drop, skitter, bounce it's way around, until it finally settles on --

a blank spot between numbers.

That's not right...

My creative juices have dried up like last year's cat barf.

Tonight, we finally see the DVD release of the movie, "Sans Vie." It will be at a bar/restaurant in Capitol Hill. I will probably meet people I haven't met before (like most of the actors), and I will have to come up with a plausible excuse as to why I haven't been able to help one of the actresses come up with a promo reel for herself. I have a few already worked up that are both plausible and accurate, so it won't be difficult.

I'm working on creating an animated logo for Post Production From The Id. I have my Mixtec death mask and the type that I want to use (though it's a little hard to read), but I'm trying to come up with a way to express it in movement that I haven't seen before, or haven't seen very recently, at least. The guys who did "Blair Witch Project" did a wonderful job with Haxan Films, with the old-style jittering film look and the German Expressionist font. Mine will look more Pre-Columbian.

Why is that, exactly? the death mask is a piece of Mixtec stone carving, the name is taken from Forbidden Planet ("Monsters, John - monsters from the Id!!!"). The typeface is Copal, which has a decorated version that looks really cool, like a Peruvian stone carving. I'm Scots, Irish, maybe German, maybe Norwegian. Not a drop of Hispanic or native blood in me anywhere. Why not go for a Norse image? That would make some sense, plus they have a nice brutal look to them.

Anyway, I don't have a good 3D program any more, and my animation program is Motion. I have Photoshop Elements and an old copy of Illustrator. Good sound program (for the musical side of it). Great to have tools, but no fun to not have an idea to use them on.

Perhaps things will improve when I can hide and work.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Sort of Not Out of Sorts

This last weekend was spent doing a little relaxing, a little shopping, and a little blowing stuff up (virtually). I also re-watched "Bob Roberts," which I may have to comment on in that other blog thing I do. Suffice to say, it made me feel all deja vu all over again.

Very tired of working and worrying about the house all at the same time. Christmas is coming, and while I'm trying to find gifties for RG, I have nowhere to hide them that she won't see when we move. Well, except maybe at work, but I hate using my desk as storage.

Anyway.

Trying to plan for this new house, which we don't have yet. Sort of foolish, but keeps one's mind occupied. Thinking about flooring for the basement spaces in terms of deadening the sound a little (already equipped with acoustic ceiling tiles), but I hate carpeting. I know I'm going to line my computer cave with sound absorption panels (which I will have to save up for, since they aren't "essential" - yet), but the main downstairs room is going to be the movie room and general entertainment space, while the living room upstairs will be the room with the other stereo, the buffet table space, etc.

So for the movie room, I'm thinking shelving across the back wall to accommodate the movie collection, and darkish walls, lined with drapery panels and can lights along the walls. Some other kind of flat panel lighting for the ceiling (the ceiling is a bit low, so I don't want light fixtures banging people in the head), but not the hideous fluorescent things they have now.

And I can't decide between a flat-panel TV (we have a relatively small one at the moment), or a projector system and a big screen. Pros? Cons? Bueller?

OK. Nap time.

Friday, November 6, 2009

A Series of Knobs and Tubes

Got the inspection report and we will be suffering from a case of knob & tube wiring, along with potential asbestos in our ceiling (blown oatmeal with sparklies). Neither of these things are totally earth-shattering, and we will be getting that nice fat $6,500 from Uncle Sam for selling a home after living in it more than five years, and then immediately buying a new one.

Some things take care of themselves.

Other issues include re-drywalling the garage with proper greenboard, re-siding same with newer, non-rotten siding, and fixing up the roof of said garage, which has essentially been tar-papered, but not shingled.

As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of adding another eight feet out the left side of the garage as a studio space for RG, so she has a nice outdoor space to do crafty-arty things in.

Small projects I can do myself.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Get your drink on in time for Labor Day

Today: drink recipes!

Killer Kool-Aid

1-1/2 oz vodka
1/2 oz peach schnapps
1/2 oz amaretto
3 oz cranberry juice cocktail

In a lowball glass full of ice cubes, pour the ingredients in, in the above order. Do not stir. It's not that they won't mix, but most of the cranberry juice will stay on top, and not seem alcoholic (though there will be a pronounced peachy aroma). So, it's a nice juice drink that will knock you on your a$$, especially if you're a lightweight like my wife and I. Also helps if the vodka is very top shelf. One of the better craft-distilled vodkas from Idaho or Washington state will do very well, and they won't break the bank the way a Grey Goose or Belvedere will.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as top-shelf peach schnapps.

Cuba Libre

Juice of 1/2 lime
Shot of dark rum + a tablespoon float
Coca-Cola

In a highball glass mostly full of ice, squeeze in the lime juice and drop in the shell (making sure there's room for the poor thing). Add the shot of rum, then fill with Coca-Cola. Float a tablespoon of the same dark rum on top. Serve.

This is not your Mom's Rum & Coke mixup. The lime juice adds a pleasant tartness to cut the cloying cola flavor, and the float on top gives you fair warning of what you've let yourself in for. DO NOT USE DIET COKE. You're drinking alcohol, for cornsakes' - why cut out a little sugar when the alcohol is way more fattening and bad for you? Oh, and the alcohol itself: Gosling's Black Seal from Bermuda. A splendid sipping rum, I also like it for mixing where a dark rum won't make the drink look like mud (never use dark rum in a mojito, for example, unless it's a chocolate-mint mojito). Black Seal has tons of flavor, feels more hearty than Meyers', and it's relatively inexpensive.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Therapeeyootic

I'm seeing a shrink. A real one. Not a therapist, but a real Psychologist, dealing with cognitive-behavioral stuff. Working our way through my tangled mindfield, I have met two others of me, and they are not quite the enemy. One is my adolescent self, a bit of an anarchist, an anti-authoritarian type who lives for fun, for play, and for whining. The other is my authoritarian father, the critic, the one who knows the "right" way to do things, who suffers in grumpy silence or yells at those who transgress against the "rules." They are both useful to me, but they have each been known to take over.

He asks me to talk to them directly, and then move to their chair and talk back to me in my (now empty) chair. It's a weird experience, talking to an empty chair, and then going and occupying that space, and becoming that person. The work was awkward at first, but I'm/we're getting better at it. At first, it felt like acting - fake. But when you say something to that other person within you, what that person wants to say back is almost always right there, waiting to come out, and it can be quite surprising to find out what these people who live within your brain think of, well... you.

Not sure who I expect the end result to be.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

We Encourage Home Invasions!

So Thursday, our potential new home will be inspected by a fellow who can point out everything that needs fixin'. And either we say, "Fix it," "pay us to fix it," or "screw you, we don't want this pile of poop".

Big decisions.

While I like buying a house as much as the next guy (especially when the next guy is a masochist with a toilet fetish), some of this stuff really starts to wear me down. The level of paperwork is astonishing. I think wars have required fewer forms.

Anyway.

So this house has a decent little lot, a view (who knew we could afford a view?!), a garage that smells funny (might kill the sale), fireplaces and bad carpeting. We will probably live in the upper floor while the lower floor gets a cosmetic upgrade, and we'll need to keep the cats out of the lower floor until I find every little access to out of the way weird areas that they might hide themselves in. Not that I don't want to give them the opportunity to hide from us when they need their space, but I also don't want to accidentally wall them into the space under the stairs, or the funky storage area next to the electrical panel.

Keeping them from pooping in out of the way areas is also of paramount importance. Muzzlepuff in particular seems to have bathroom issues, though he's getting better all the time.

It's a pretty big house in a very nice neighborhood that is isolated from the rest of the city. Hard to get out, hard to get in, which keeps the neighborhood very, well... neighborly. Or is that Mayberry? My commute will be loooooonger. There are buses, though, that will take people right to wherever in the downtown, and for our yearly folklife visitors, plenty of room in the basement to play in.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Die, Yuppies, Die!

While I love a good horror jolt as much as the next person, why is it that many horror films coming out these days are of the "get yourself in a bad situation, then die slowly and painfully, until you're dead" type? I ask this, because I've just seen the trailer of yet another one, called "The Canyon." Yes, folks, you heard it here first: the Grand Canyon is a deadly wilderness of fear, terror, snakes and wolves. You're gonna die if you don't follow the rules, and maybe even if you do.

So, what have we had: "Deep Water" (death by accidental tourist abandonment); "The Descent" (death by poor cave choice and cannibals); "The Ruins" (death by carnivorous plants surrounded by multiple warning signs); "Turistas" (thanks for the liver); and so on, and so on.

While many real-life wilderness adventures are pretty grisly (the guy sawing his arm off with a Leatherman in order to not die of thirst and hunger whilst trapped by a big boulder is pretty harrowing), why do we have to continually invent stories of a) people behaving slightly stupidly, which leads to b) un- as well as necessary mutilations of various pretty young bodies, leading further to c) terrible death? Horror stories used to end with at least one person making it out alive, who then has to suffer for the rest of their lives with survivor guilt, but we don't have to watch that part... "28 Days Later" was an overall grim little movie, but it wasn't totally devoid of hope.

We're going to have slow grim death in a shopping mall one of these days, because a group of kids decide to throw a party in the shopping mall, get locked in, accidentally kill the security guard in a horrible escalator accident, and then slowly die of thirst and hunger over the next thirty-six hours (with one or two possibly trying to survive by eating the dead security guard) because the mall is - "Closed for Christmas."

Friday, October 16, 2009

Other News

The house closed. RG and I live in a small cottage with all four cats.

Phrases That Stick

"What is the word I'm looking for?"

RG used this peculiar phrase the other day, and I had never thought about its meaning before, but what does it mean? I know what the person means when they say it, but is there a deeper meaning?

Or am I just jerking off?

What word? How can you look for a word, when the word is in your head? Do you have a catalog of words that display in your brain? I think that's how my brain works, but what about a blind person? If they can't see, how can they see what a word "looks" like? Is it the braille version? Do they see a series of dots? Or do they see a conceptual image of what they think the word for the thing they're looking for looks like? If a blind person is hunting for the word "squirrel", what is the word they see? What is the thing they see?

With me, there's comparison: "looks like a rat, but with a fluffy tail and cuter."

To a blind person, the comparison might be: "looks like an eggplant, only moldy, with the stem still attached."

Yes, I'm making that up, but what would the comparison be? I don't know any blind people, but I'd love to hear what this phrase means to them.

Monday, September 21, 2009

What For?

I've come back from vacation to work. The house is almost (but not quite) sold. I need the money. But I'm not doing anything useful or purposeful in my job. As a matter of fact, my job is not what I signed up for, and even if it was, I'd still be having an existential crisis.

I work to maintain a status quo that is misguided at best. My job is to aid and assist in creating more landfill and waste. I make it possible for people to buy large amounts of stuff that they fill their homes with, and consequently have to throw away packaging, the previous thing that the new thing replaced, and ultimately, the thing itself, which must then be replaced later with new versions of the previous thing.

On top of this, the decisions I make are ignored by folks higher up, since they don't jibe with maintaining a different status quo, the nature of which I can't go into without getting myself fired, and solving the problem. Suffice to say that, when presented with a better mousetrap, my bosses are only looking at the brand, and cook the results of the test to reflect their views. So much fun doing R&D when the conclusion is foregone (which we should have known).

Toilet paper will always be a best-seller.

As a codicil to the previous statement, my stomach is currently running circles around my spine, and I can't keep food down. Something must be wrong. I can't keep doing this, and I'm not sure what I should do.

Monday, August 31, 2009

Scraping Away The Pain(t)

Never hiring another handyman again without first going to Angie'sList. This guy took all week to paint three spaces and a bunch of molding. We also paid for him to uncaulk and re-caulk the tub; he did the former and told us that we could do the latter as soon as the space was completely clean. Never caulked a thing before in my life, and this caulk that I bought is NASTY. I had no idea that nothing cleans it up, except maybe gasoline.

Anyway, I made it look alright, but I'm not terribly happy with the results, and I wish I'd used something else (assuming anything else exists to do this sort of work).

But the painterman. After chiding us about our ridiculous precautions of taping the drop cloths to the floor in our living room and kitchen (which came out great, and spotlessly clean), he paints all of his spaces with no drop cloth at all, leaving us dried paint on our linoleum kitchen floor, on the sealed tile in the laundry room, and on the unsealed stone floor of the bathroom. We spent half Saturday just cleaning up after him. I became suspicious of his experience with spray-painting when I found the box for his spray painter in my back yard, just-opened.

Growl.

However, except for a couple of details, the house is ready to go on the market. Stagers are coming today to throw in furniture. I will be going back to replace a window in the attic (already got the piece of cut glass), and shaving off the bottom of one door that has always been a little tight. Seal the front deck and I'm DONE! Pictures by the end of the week and on the market before Monday. Yowch.

Now we just need to clean up the space we've moved to.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Owwwwwww....

Painting hurts. All of me is slightly achy and my walk looks like something out of Night of the Living Dead - and not in a good way.


So, we've painted the kitchen and the living room and we're awaiting our handyman (who is a stickler for "smooth" paint) to finish the bathroom, laundry room, fridge alcove and bedroom. My basement looks HUGE, now that I've moved most of it out. If I could figure out how to distribute what I have more evenly, perhaps there would have been more room.


Computer says "no".


I have managed to throw out eight bags of trash from my basement, more than any other space in the house (actually, more than the whole rest of the house). Part of that has to do with finally being done making the floor correct in the bedroom. I didn't exactly overbuy - it's kind of like the bun/hotdog packaging joke: "Why do they sell hot dogs in groups of six and hot dog buns in groups of eight?" Well, why do you have to buy 21 sq. ft of laminate flooring and 32 sq. ft of laminate floor padding?


I threw away four pieces of board and a bundle of padding scraps the size of a St. Bernard dog.


And then there are the paint cans, which I've been told I must get rid of (even though I inherited half of them from the previous owner). Latex paint is not HazMat. However, it must be dry before it can be tossed.

Do you know how long it takes for latex paint to dry just by taking the lid off? Or (as my handyman suggested) spread a bunch of cardboard out over your lawn and pour it all out. Wait for it to dry, then pack all the paint-covered cardboard into trash bags and voila! With my luck, there will be a leak in the cardboard, and I'll end up with a variety-swirl-pattern lawn. Or it will rain, and it won't matter that there's cardboard, the whole lawn will be redecorated in new, vibrant color!

And finally (in the trash department), Apple ADB cables, SCSI, extra three-prong power supply cables (they multiply, don't they), floppy disks, books about Pagemaker, software that only runs on OS 9. I finally gave away my old Mac IIci (after removing the hard drive) and my old Apple 12" RGB monitor, which probably originally cost someone a thou. I also got rid of my 19" CRT monitor, which originally cost me over $1500. Getting all misty-eyed...

Anyway, we're almost completely out. I will be changing my e-mail soon, so that I can cancel cable in the house. My last act will be stickering all of the reusable plastic tubs that we've bought to move stuff in to indicate which tubs are light, which are heavy, and which will give the lifter a hernia. RG stays away from those. And then move them all out of the basement of this house into the basement of our temporary domicile, a lovely cottage with a view of the Sound and the Needle.

And then, relax...

(actually, HouseHunting!)

Monday, April 6, 2009

The TV Machine

More and more TV shows are capturing my brain, and fortunately, they're on DVD, so I can (instead of defining a moment wherein I must devote an hour of my day not only to programming but the detestable commercials that come all too often) waste an entire weekend watching one show from beginning of season to end.

That doesn't sound good, does it?

These shows are, in no particular order, Deadliest Catch (crab fishermen in the "Vast Bering Sea"with ice and death!), Burn Notice (ex-spies, Miami Babes, and Bruce Campbell!), and The Wire (for all you Homicide fans, same original writer, David Simon - drugs, cops, cop humor). Last year was the year of Monk and House, this eyar we've moved on to darker fare.

With Deadliest Catch, you'd think it would get dull watching guys do endless repetetive work in a crappy environment, and crustaceans desperately trying to escape their really delicious fate. But these guys are real characters, two or three ex-cons, so far one arrest, and greenhorns, who you'd think would have the humility to realize that what they're about to embark upon is hellish hard work, peopled with testosterone-fueled crazy people, who think nothing of chopping the new guy down to fishbait for simply trying to be one of the boys. When the fishing is bad, you feel the pain coming from every downcast face, knowing that they're risking their lives for a catch that might not be worth the effort. When the fishing is good, the joy comes off the screen in waves. When a boat goes down, or a man goes overboard, these men act as soldiers in war - nothing is too good for a fallen comrade.

Burn Notice is a different animal altogether. The basic premise is that Michael is a spy who has been "burned" i.e., cut off from the mothership, and left to his own devices in, of all places, Miami. This is where his mother & brother live, his ex-girlfriend (a gun-runner and explosives expert with an overactive trigger-finger), and his old pal Sam (Bruce Campbell, in what must be one of the most fun roles of his career). So Michael uses his talents to help people he comes across (to keep himself alive - all of his bank accounts are frozen when he's burned), with occasional help from the ex, from Sam, and from his mother (a cigarette-raspy Sharon Gless). There is a bit of MacGyver-esque stuff that you can learn (like destroying a car engine by melting through it with a coffee-can load of thermite, or attaching the antenna of your cellphone to an ethernet cable to use the Internet as your antenna), and overall the performances are solid. Lots of pretty girls to look at, too.

And the Wire. What can I say about this show, except that in one scene in Episode Five, two detectives work their way through a crime scene, and not a word passes between them except variations of the F-word. 

For. Ten. Minutes. 

You have to wonder what the actors thought of those pages. They like to start each episode off with some sort of joke, and the most memorable one so far is also in Episode Five. Two guys trying to get a desk through a door, and the darn thing won't budge. More guys join in. No progress. The LT shows up, looks at them like, "what a bunch of idiots," and puts his muscle to the task. Still no progress. Everyone gives up. Finally, the guy who was trying to get it through the door in the first place says, "It must have gotten jammed up when I was trying to bring it in." One of the guys who was on the other side of the door says, "IN?" 

Classic...

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Dread of Mice

One of our cats caught a mouse the other day. It was (apologies to The Princess Bride) mostly dead. RambunctiousGrl FREAKED OUT. In her world, mice are indicative of a feelthy household. And while we are kinda feelthy (the occasional stack of dishes in the sink and too damn many books everywhere), I don't consider mouse visitations (especially in the singular) to be anything other than a stroke of luck for the kittehs. We have indoor kittehs who never get to experience the thrill of hunting their food (except of course, when persuading RG or myself that it's TIME FOR EFFING BREAKFAST GET UP GETUP GETUP GETUP).

Kitteh staff understand breakfast time. This daylight savings nonsense is actually more irritating, not for the lost sleep, but for the fact that cats take a very long time to adjust.

I took the comatose mousie outside and buried him under a patch of loose sod. I'm putting a humane trap in the basement to see if I can catch any more. And we're on a hole-hunt, hoping to patch up whatever ingress the little buggers might find in the future.

And the movie's almost done.  Really.

Monday, February 2, 2009

The Life-Changing Nothing

There is a neat website, Making Light, that repurposes or originates their own content, and I was led to it by another interesting website, bOINGbOING.net. The article that led me to Making Light is by a fellow named Peter Kleisler. I really hope his American Cargo Cult gets wider dissemination, because it takes an excellent look at the American Way of Not Thinking Too Much, and articulates it all really well, and in nice, short, punchy sentences that I can use for my own ends.

But that's not what I'm writing about today. Making Light also had a story about how a small thing can change your life. The story is about a guy (speaking to a high school audience), how he killed his best friend while driving drunk. And that when he got back to school, he was pretty much shunned by everyone. At a point where he was thinking of ending it all, one of his fellow students casually offered him a stick of gum. "The gum," he said, "saved my life."

So Making Light suggested a topic: how did something small change your life? For me, it was a movie. I was living with two guys, paying a tiny rent to stay in a small bedroom while I worked my way from $4.10/hour all the way up to $4.35/hour as a gas station attendant.  I was twenty-five years old, no prospects, not much education (on paper), and neither ambition nor any sort of belief in myself. I wasn't suicidal so much as terrified. I wouldn't have had the courage to pull the trigger, any more than I had the courage to go out and do something with myself.

The Cotati Cinema ran two screens and charged a $1. Which, even in the mid-eighties, was a bargain. On my two days off (in the middle of the week), I went to see Runaway Train, with John Voight and Eric Roberts as escaped convicts (in Alaska) who get themselves locked in the back end of a four-engine stack, whose conductor has a heart attack after opening the throttle up. The engines basically go off on their own, and the two convicts are stuck trying to figure out what to do, and how to get off without being recaptured. Rebecca deMornay does a decidedly non-sexy turn as Sara, the Hostler Helper, and she's the only one on the train with any knowledge of how they work. The movie is preachy in many ways, but I hadn't heard any of these sermons before.

Manny (John Voight): Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

And

Sara: Hold me. I don't want to die alone. 
Manny: We all die alone. 


I don't know why, but a lot of this stuff that Manny spouted during the movie really inspired me to re-think my own capabilities. To look at myself, not from my father's perspective, but from no perspective in particular. To come out from under the layer of filters I was living in.

I paid my fare to see that film four times in the next week.