According to Ryan…

Hawaii Girl is a series of videos that I shot around May. We shot five episodes. It’s technically an adaptation of a web comic I did back in High School that may or may not still be online somewhere.

HAWAII GIRL: Wake-up Time from Rymo on Vimeo

Wake-up Time, the one posted here, was the last one we shot, took the least amount of time to shoot, and was the quickest edit. If we had had another five minutes in the location, we could have gotten it perfect.

I’m telling myself that I’ll post a new episode every week until all five are posted, and I hope I’ll be able to stick to it.

Producing is a bit of an ephemeral thing when it comes to no-budget filmmaking, but I guess I did my part enough to warrant taking some credit for the project. I gave script notes, gave deadlines, and arranged most of the actors, crew, props, and equipment. I also got permission to shoot at (most of) the locations, and dealt with it when we didn’t.

Hopefully, overall, I hope I made Ryan’s job painless enough so he could concentrate on actually making the videos (which is the essence of producing). Towards the end of last year, I really appreciated that there was a genuine push to towards that style of producing in Student Upstart Films from the old model it started with, and I’m glad to see that continuing this year. It’s this type of work that makes projects actually happen– like the music video that Jovone Brown proposed for his fraternity.

Great job Upstart! Superior work Ryan!

(more Hawaii Girl)

HAWAII GIRL: Trapped from Rymo on Vimeo.

The Home Van (in Gainesville) needs bottled water, peanut butter, jelly, Vienna sausages, white tube socks, candles, tents and tarps, etc. They also need volunteers.

Put all of that liberal guilt this election has stirred up to good use, and call 372-4825 to arrange for dropoffs.

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So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies — whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross — publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors’ ideological preconceptions?

The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of Social Text. It appears in a special number of the magazine devoted to the “Science Wars.”

What’s going on here? Could the editors really not have realized that my article was written as a parody?
A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies - Alan D. Sokal

“I’m accustomed to a smooth ride
Or maybe I’m a dog who’s lost its bite
I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don’t expect to sleep through the night
Some people say a lie’s a lie’s a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

And in remembering a road sign
I am remembering a girl when I was young
And we said, ‘These songs are true
These days are ours
These tears are free
And hey…
The cross is in the ballpark
The cross is in the ballpark’

We had a lot of fun
We had a lot of money
We had a little son and we thought we’d call him Sonny
Sonny gets married and moves away
Sonny has a baby and bills to pay
Sonny gets sunnier
Day by day by day by day

I’ve been waking up at sunrise
I’ve been following the light across my room
I watch the night receive the room of my day
Some people say the sky is just the sky
But I say
Why deny the obvious child?
Why deny the obvious child?

Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
How it’s strange that some rooms are like cages
Sonny’s yearbook from high school
Is down from the shelf
And he idly thumbs through the pages
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride
Maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite
I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don’t expect to sleep the night
Some people say a lie is just a lie
But I say the cross is in the ballpark
Why deny the obvious child?”

Since I still don’t have my desktop up and running, I’ve been making room on my laptop hard drive. I found these gems: promo photos of Travis and my karaoke group, Just Duet. The whole idea, which was Travis’ brainchild, was that we’d perform a one-night-only show to open up for Inuit Jargon and Morningbell at The Shamrock.

Butch Armwrestle and Bronco Strong of Just Duet

We created this elaborate backstory: the show at The Shamrock was supposed to be the group’s last show performing together on their world-spanning, “Forever 2 Infinity Tour.”

While we performed our three-song set, we had a slide projector showing photos “from our previous tours”.

Looking back on the pictures, I just remembered that I wrote about Just Duet on my application to USC Screenwriting. I think it has something to do with why I got accepted.

All photos by Eric Atria

This is the real America. Open range as far as the eye can see and thousands of miles of fence to keep you out of it.

(click here for more…adult content advisory…)
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Enjoy…

(click below for more)
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We gave the short version to SHARP right after we shot it and it was used as an internet promo, but the extended version we shot (with characters and a plot) has just been languishing on my hard drive waiting to be finished. I still haven’t even shown the actors either version, because I’ve been spending the last year agonizing about finishing it and making it perfect.

Looking back on it (I had to dig it up so I could send the company a high res, broadcast version), it’s really ambitious, high-concept and pretty funny in some places. Maybe I’ll get the balls to show it to someone one day, but for now, screenshots will have to do.

click below for more screenshots
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While Pemex has all the appearances of a real business, at least from the looks of its gleaming high-rise headquarters in Mexico City, the reality is that it isn’t permitted to behave like one. Aside from paying heavy tribute to the government, the company doesn’t have the freedom to hire and fire at will. Indeed, it often finds itself, thanks to union and government pressure, paying employees for doing little or nothing. Example: At the Pemex ammonia processing plant in Ciudad Camargo, closed for a half-dozen years, paid workers still show up, waiting for something to do. The concept of productivity doesn’t seem to register. Worse yet, Mexico’s Finance Ministry has the authority to set Pemex’s prices, budgets and debt levels.
-by Carl Horowitz