Go read O'Tim

His ongoing commentary of Movie Madness is the stuff of legends.

Next round will be up soon...

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Get over there...

...and wish O'Tim congratulations for the arrival of his new son!

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The Glory of Film

I'm a digital fool. I loves the technology, loves the digital camera and iPod and digital video editing and the cool fun stuff that used to be reserved for "professionals." But there's still a beauty in film -- both still and motion picture -- that digital just can't yet duplicate. O'Tim's recent posts about his road trip to the Southwest is a great example of combining new-school technology with old-school beauty, with him taking hundreds of digital photos, and a number of rolls of 35mm film. Go check out his cool shots.

Here are a few B&W film pics I took a few months back while vacationing in San Francisco. They're all of Alcatraz from a boat out on the harbor. These are scans of the prints I had made, and the scans definitely don't do the prints justice. I had Wolf Camera do the developing (I used Tri-X b&w 100 speed film), and they did a marvelous job. The grain in the shots adds so much texture. Anyway, here's a digital delivery of film prints, for your viewing pleasure.











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Bookworms.

All kinds of people have this meme up. Jen, Paula and O'Tim to name but a few.

I'm game. Here goes.

1. One book that changed your life?
Catcher in the Rye. Read it my sophomore year of high school. That's when I knew I wanted to write.

2. One book you have read more than once?
The Milagro Beanfield War. Few books have ever gotten me to care more about a main character than this one.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?
One Hundred Years of Solitude, because that book makes me believe in magic.

4. One book that made you laugh?
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The entire series of five. I read it once every two years or so, and I laugh out loud every time.

5. One book that made you cry?
The Grapes of Wrath

6. One book you wish had been written?
How We Cured Cancer

7. One book you wish had never been written?
None.

8. One book you are currently reading?
I'm never reading one book at a time. I typically have three or four going, and depending on my mood at bedtime, I'll continue with one of them. Right now I have going: Screenwriting 101: The Essential Craft of Feature Film Writing by Neill D. Hicks; Dead Man's Walk by Larry McMurtry; Lonesome Traveler by Jack Kerouac; and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

9. One book you've been meaning to read?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.

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Writing about writing.

A few peeps over in Me Peeps sidebar, namely O'Tim, Jen, Pillock and Paula (and sometimes PJ, thought not enough), write about writing a lot. Specifically, their own writing. I devour that stuff. As a writer who writes writing, I'm fascinated by other writers and what they go through to get their writing written, whatever sort of writing they might be writing. Or have written. I also love reading about other peeps' triumphs and failures, the woo-hoos and the aw-shits. Maybe it's just me, but hearing other people talk about dealing with the same shit I deal with, albeit in different ways, different times and sometimes different countries, makes it a lot easier for me to get back on the horse, dig my heels in, hit the ground running, deal with adversity, pick myself up, put my nose to the grindstone and whatever other cliché you fancy using.

So I'm thinking, maybe I should write about writing, specifically, writing my own writing. Not all the time, mind you. I still have to post pictures of my boy every once in a while to remind you that I can be sufficiently sappy. And I have to post Thursday 13s because I'm a lemming. And I have to post a rant here and there because otherwise I become constipated. But in between those, I'm going to write about my writing.

I'm also finishing up the now one-month-and-a-half-behind-schedule (you) essays. My apologies to those of you who have been eagerly awaiting its launch, and particularly those of you who contributed (many!). What I really need is for someone who can take the design I created and help me program the rest of the site, because that interweblogosphere programming stuff is a real mindfuck sometimes.

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