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March 31, 2005"Sin City" tomorrow, sure enough...
My original plans for this evening revolved around attending one of the midnight screenings of "Sin City" here in Los Angeles, but my efforts to cobble together a posse were about as successful as Gary Cooper's in "High Noon"--the main difference being that my failure to russle up reinforcements didn't leave me with the prospect of facing a mad-dog killer all by my lonesome.
Instead, I'll go see it sometime tomorrow, well before the precociously foul-mouthed middle-schoolers get out of class and well before the evening rush. Gotta love that matinee discount...
I've been working a lot lately, which is wonderful, but between that and finishing up my master's degree, I've been burning the candle at both ends--and the respective flames just reached my fingers. Of course, this is infinitely preferable to not having any idea how to make a buck come the end of school in June.
Not much else to report at the moment. I did dabble in a little bit of home improvement, I'm proud to relate. Specifically, I discovered that individual packets of Sweet'N Low, when jammed into the offending crevices, will prevent a loose windowpane from rattling in a strong wind.
Posted by patrick at 02:24 PM | Comments (1)
March 28, 2005
Pseudo-Sapphic silliness...
A story shared during the post-Easter-dinner coma:
My mom and my aunt are in the habit of having lunch with each other on Sunday afternoon, after which they usually grab something at Starbucks, or go shopping, or what have you. Well, on the particular Sunday afternoon in question (a week ago, I believe), they looked through a rather ritzy home in Riverside during an open-house.
It should mentioned that my mom and my aunt don't really resemble each other.
At one point, when the realtor is out of earshot, my staunchly conservative aunt whispers to my rather liberal mom that the realtor probably thinks that the two of them are a pair of home-hunting lesbians.
The two of them finish looking through the house. As the realtor walks them out onto the front porch, what does my mom do but grab my unsuspecting aunt's hand in hers and say, "Oh, Honey, I don't know if we can afford this!"
Sometimes, I forget how cool my mom can be.
Posted by patrick at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
My faith in retail bookstores is slightly revived!
I had to go and grab "The Tale of Genji" in all of its 1,120-page, translated glory this afternoon from the local Bookstar. I'd never actually stopped in before, though, so it took a few times up and down Ventura Boulevard before I spotted it, which was a right pain in the arse. Luckily, the streets of L.A. took pity on me and opened up curbside parking for me right in front of the store just as I was pulling up--and with 1:25 left on the meter, at that.
I had a delightful conversation, albeit brief, with the bookseller who rang me up, a middle-aged African-American woman dressed in warm autumn colors and a matching headwrap. She'd noticed that "The Tale of Genji" had been put on reserve earlier in the day, and she told me how much she's been meaning to read it. She ticked off the three English translations of it most widely known--Waley (the first, much shorter translation, which I kept encountering in used book stores), Seidensticker, and Tyler (the most recent, which is what I bought today)--and enumerated their various strengths and weaknesses. She asked what had brought me to "The Tale of Genji," and when I told her about my upcoming class, her excitement was genuine. I ticked off some of the reading list at her insistence. Abe Kobo, Mori Ogai, "The Tale of the Heike," she knew 'em all--and probably would have known the rest of the authors and titles, too, whose names escaped me.
It was wonderful to encounter somebody working at a big chain bookstore whose love of the merchandise was so obvious. I worked at a Barnes & Noble during the Christmas/Hanukah season one year, and it was disheartening to see how many of the employees treated their job like any other position in retail. I had expected--rather idealistically, as I came to realize--that a bookstore would attract and subsequently hire book-lovers. There were those sorts among them, but for many of them (especially among the younger crowd), it was simply a job. They could have been selling clothes, or Ginsu knives, or car parts. It was all the same to them.
I don't have a whole lot of use for stores that sell new books--I know I can usually find the same thing for much less, if I'm patient, and so I'm just to chintzy to cough up the dough for a new copy. However, if I do find myself needing to shop for new books from now on, I'm hitting that Bookstar.
(And speaking of used books, I snapped up a signed copy of Harlan Ellison's "Angry Candy" for a measly $10 the other day. Score!)
Posted by patrick at 02:26 PM | Comments (2)
March 24, 2005
A little something-something about "Koi Kaze"...
With school, work, and last week's birthday, I haven't had a chance to say anything about "Koi Kaze" yet, the first volume of which has been out for a few weeks now. I'll keep this brief, as it's too damn hard to wax eloquent about much of anything at 6:30 in the morning that doesn't have to do directly with one's bed, the crisp, cool sheets therein, or sweet unconsciousness in general.
It's been heartening to track the positive feedback (i.e. here, here and here) that the "Koi Kaze" has garnered thus far--especially since some of the online buzz indicated that people were girding their loins to pass judgment on it, sight unseen. Granted, an anime series about a brother who falls in love with his significantly younger blood-sister veers into decidedly taboo waters, but what irked me was folks' willingness to write it off based solely on that aspect.
Does "Oedipus Rex" condone or celebrate patricide, regicide or incest? Of course not, but it's still damn fine theater. To write it off solely because it includes mention of verboten acts would be to throw out the dramatic baby with the bathwater. What does one do with Shakespeare, then, in such a toothless, knee-jerk world? What about "Chinatown," or "The Arabian Nights"? "The Decameron"? "Lolita"? "Maus"?
The list, as they say, goes on and on.
It all comes down to how a topic is handled, not what topic is handled.
"Koi Kaze" is some of the most challenging VO work I've had the pleasure of doing, and when I compare it thematically to the other work I've done, it occupies a category unto itself. I finished recording the last of Koshiro's lines recently, and although I'm glad that the second and third volumes are headed towards general release, I'm a little sad to have ended my journey with him.
If you're looking for an anime title in which character grapple with real-life problems in a very real-life way, I highly recommend it.
* * * * *
You know, now that it's been announced that I'm directing the English dub of "Girls Bravo," I don't have to be so evasive in my blog as to why I haven't updated in weeks and weeks. Instead of saying, "Yeah, I've been busy these days," I can come right out and say, "Yeah, I've been busy these days...and it's all thanks to working on 'Girls Bravo'!"
That said, "Yeah, I've been busy these days...and it's actually had nothing to do with 'Girls Bravo'."
But give it a few weeks, man. I'll be singing a different tune then--the "Girls Bravo" intro song, specifically. It's catchy as all hell.
Posted by patrick at 02:13 PM | Comments (3)
March 11, 2005
Spring Break--time to be productive? Whaaaa?
It's not often that I can claim to have accomplished much--or anything, usually--before 9 a.m., but I seem to have gotten off to a productive start today. I zonked out on the couch last night around 9 or 10 p.m., too tired to bother with dinner. I must have dragged myself to bed at some point, because that's where I woke up at 6 a.m., uncharacteristically ready to start the day.
I've already done my taxes (ugh!) this morning, decluttered my apartment a bit, and I've just started tackling my pile o' laundry. My quarters are marshaled into stacks of three and four (for the washer and dryer, respectively), and I've got a great book with which to pass the time--"The Nonexistent Knight & The Cloven Viscount," two novellas by Italo Calvino. I'd never heard of Calvino, but Salman Rushdie spoke very highly of his writing, so I figured I'd give him a try. After all, anybody talented enough to write "Midnight's Children" seems like a pretty damn good judge of literary character.
(And speaking of things Rushdie-related, Spanish Muslims just issued a fatwah against Osama Bin Laden. A toothless gesture, compared to the very real fatwah that sent Rushdie into protective custody on February 14, 1989, but a worthwhile one, however symbolic.)
But back to "The Nonexistent Knight" The main character is one of Charlemagne's soldiers, Agilulf Emo Bertrandin of the Guildivern and of the Others of Corventraz and Sura, Knight of Selimpia Citeriore and Fez.
He's stuffy, by-the-books, and more than a little reminiscent of Don Quixote.
Oh, and did I mention that Agilulf is an empty suit of armor, held together by nothing more than his own determination and sense of duty?
And here's the back cover blurb for "The Cloven Viscount":
"In this divertingly macabre fantasy, a nobleman is neatly bisected by a cannon ball in a battle against the Turks. One half of him returns to his feudal estate and takes up a lavishly evil life. Soon the other, virtuous half appears. The two halves become rivals for the love of the same woman, fight a bloody duel, and achieve a miraculous resolution."
Love me this book. Loooooove it.
Posted by patrick at 02:26 PM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2005
Wow...just wow...
It's with a mixture of admiration and horror that I realized I'm about to head out of the house wearing a shirt half as old as I am: my cast t-shirt from "The King & I," back from my freshman year of high school.
Good Lord...
Posted by patrick at 02:28 PM | Comments (0)
I'm (Spring) Breakdancing!
I love college. Always have. I love the open-minded atmosphere. I love the energy of thousands of people quietly, earnestly chugging away at making themselves smarter, more widely read, more effective in their chosen fields. I love the professor/student dynamic, especially this second time around, when I'm older and have been a teacher myself and can appreciate professors more fully as actual humans--and vice-versa, I'd wager.
Yes, I damn well love me some college, indeed.
That said, I'm very, very relieved that my school obligations are all but over. I printed out my screenplay draft tonight, and once I hand it in tomorrow, I don't have to think about anything school-related for a good two weeks. And a good two weeks they shall be.
Video games, reading for pleasure, movies...the choices abound.
Of course, having publicly declared my love of leisure in all its myriad forms, I'm sure I'll now get a call for a bunch of work all at once. But hey, that's okay, too...
Posted by patrick at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
This is the first day of the rest of my blog!
After mentioning it again and again and never actually doing it, I finally had the time and the gumption this evening to start fiddling with my new design for the site. You can't see the changes yet, as Mike's not going to unveil the new layout until I have it all set, but that should be soon.
The main change I wanted to make was that of the site's focus. When I first put this up in 2003, it was born of equal parts narcissism, can-do attitude, and curiosity. I could have my own site, therefore I would, by God! I've been lucky with regards to the amount of VO work I've been able to do as of late, and I started thinking that it would probably behoove me to partition the site into two sections and turn that fuzzy focus into two sharp foci.
I trimmed down the original site so that it operates more efficiently as a business tool. That's where you'll find playable tracks from my demo CD, my headshots, my resume, and my contact info.
The second section is my new Movable Type blog, which will become the "junk drawer," so to speak, for everything and anything else I see fit to share with the world: Casual photos, random ramblings, late-night diatribes, off-kilter links and news, etc. In other words, the usual suspects.
The main advantage to this new bifurcation, as I see it, is that the folks who come to the site will be able to get what they want without having to sift through tangential material. Friends can catch up with me via the blog without wading through the biz stuff, and business contacts don't have to deal with photos of me drunkenly contemplating the injustice of "No Parking" signs on New Year's Eve. Everybody wins.
Posted by patrick at 08:37 PM | Comments (1)
March 03, 2005
Bombs hurt people? Whaaaaaaa?
From the "Not from 'Dr. Strangelove,' but it should be" files:
'Bunker Buster' Bomb Production Halted Again
"OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (Reuters) - The plant that makes 2,000-pound 'bunker buster' penetration bombs has stopped production for a second time after workers developed anemia due to TNT exposure, officials said on Wednesday."
I love it. We'll stop manufacturing one-ton bombs, not because the thought of mashing Iraqis into a thin red paste is morally repellant to us, but because the folks enabling the destruction in rural America are experiencing minor health problems.
In other, keenly related news, we've now lost 1,500 American soldiers to BushSaudiBurton's war--1,362 of whom died after Bush announced the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003.
"Mission Accomplished," indeed.
Posted by patrick at 07:35 AM | Comments (0)