Phoenix Rising

Well, I am out of surgery (actually, I’ve been out for 2 days, but this is the first time I got down to where the laptop is – and haven’t bothered to ask the lovely wife to get it for me). The surgical process was not horrible. Lots of people coming by asking me the same questions (“What’s your name? Birthdate? Why are you here?”) I got to the point where I could recite the answers to most of the questions before they asked. The nurses shaved an uncomfortably large amount of my stomach and groinal area. It seems like half the hospital got a look at my wang. Whatever. The anesthesiologist came by and at one point said “OK, I’m going to give you something to relax you.” I don’t remember a damned thing after that until I evidently woke up a little when they were taking the tube out of my throat. For the record, this shit hurts. Abdominal surgery is difficult on the patient because you use your abdominal muscles for just about everything. Getting out of bed, coughing, taking a shit. This was laparoscopic surgery, which is probably better than the normal ‘open’ hernial surgery. But since I had a hernia on both sides, lap was more efficient.

The place where my IV was put in hurts a little, and when I’m not moving much I’m not in any pain. But if I try to do anything, like, say, get up to go to the bathroom, then my abdomen hurts a lot more. That is easing significantly, although I had to drug myself again last night to get to sleep. I’m not taking any pain pills during the day, because I am just that much of a stud. Or something. They gave me oxycodone (percocet, I guess), for the record. FAR too many of them, in fact. 40 pills, when I’ll probably need at most a half-dozen.

Some other health issues were revealed during the surgery, but I’m addressing those in the process of losing weight, so I’m not TOO worried about them…assuming I can lose the weight.

Some thoughts, in no particular order, and as they occur to me, with the possibility of pissing some people off:

Just sent out the final-by-god mix of the show I was directing short-term for Pendant. We’re doing the commentary tomorrow night, and the show goes live Monday. Very late completion, which was 100% my fault. Procrastination really fucked me on this one, and by association, the show and Pendant.

My assistant director was extremely capable technically, but let’s just say needs some work on some things he thinks he’s good at. That’s fine, I’m good-ish at the things he’s bad at, and picked up where he dropped the ball. He did teach me quite a bit about how to use Audition.

Some of the actors for Pendant really stepped up to the plate when the chips were down. One actor had really bad sound quality, and we asked him like 3 weeks before air-date to find a way to get us redone lines. He managed. And then a different actor was asked to re-do a line this past Tuesday, and got it to us that night.

I feel I should write a short treatise on music in audio dramas, but right now, I’m a little disillusioned on the whole subject. Perhaps when I’ve had some time to chill out, I’ll put together a post-mortem on my directing experiences, in the guise of such a thing.

I will still be involved in Pendant, but only as an actor. Directing takes too much out of my life with my family, and my lovely wife has been more than patient with me while I finished this project.

I have a vague interest in forming a local audio drama group (and I know at least one person who has already volunteered to act for me), but the one thing I lack is a writer who’s willing to work in the format I’m interested in directing. OK, one of the things I lack. Other things are “Time”, “Money”, “Time”, “Motivation” (particularly right now), and “Time”.

Am I glad I said “Yes” to working on Dixie? I don’t know. Until this last episode, I would have said absolutely. In the long term, I believe that I will look back on most of it if not proudly, at least with some sense of “Wow, I did that.” There are scenes I know I messed up, and if I hadn’t putzed around, they could have been made much better. There are scenes that I think rocked some serious sock action. There’s at least one scene that I think is completely fucked, but I couldn’t fix it. I think right now, that scene is really bothering me, and once I get some perspective on it, I bet the whole thing will just be water off a duck’s back. Right now, it’s more like a monkey on my back.

There’s a 50th episode celebration (I don’t consider it an anniversary) reel being assembled for the show. I don’t know right now if I have the interest in doing a submission for it. I can’t think of anything funny to do, and don’t really have the improvisational skill to come up with something by the deadline. And judging by my submission for the Superman:Last Son of Krypton 50th episode reel, doing something serious would be full of suck. And, you know, currently pretty damned bitter about the whole thing anyway. No doubt I’ll hear about this in the next day or two. Nothing to be done about that.

In any case, it’s late, and I have to be off to bed. For the record, I’m leaving comments open, but I am unlikely to respond to comments on specific subjects.

Stay safe, Pendant…and…Good night!

In September of 2009, the first pick-up game of soccer, I had played for a good two hours in goal. Not doing much, there weren’t THAT many shots on net. But as I switched out with another player and started trotting forward, I felt a twinge in my right groin area. I figured it was a pulled muscle or something, didn’t go back to soccer that year, and moved on with my life.

In November of 2009, I went to a swim meet where I was acting as a timer. This involves a lot of standing (like 4 hours straight – now I know why it’s a form of…enhanced interrogation) and leaning over the pool edge to look down as swimmers hit the wall. This resulted in a very painful right knee. So, I went to an orthopaedic doctor to check out my knee, and while he was there described some of the symptoms of the groin problem. He said “Knee: Stretch, exercise, it’ll be fine. Groin: Not a sports hernia, but MAY be a real hernia. If it starts to hurt, go see [doctor who also happened to be my son's cub scout pack leader].”

In early summer of 2010, I was playing soccer, and full-on dislocated my kneecap. This, as they say, sucked. I was SURE I was going to go into surgery for this. The doctor (a different one than before) said “Wear this knee brace for 6 weeks all the time, and then wear it whenever you exercise.” So I did that. So far so good.

About two weeks ago, I started noticing more significant pain in the groin. So, I finally buckled down and made an appointment with [doctor who also happened to be my son's cub scout pack leader, back when he was a cub scout]. That appointment was today.

He said, in effect, “You do not have a hernia. You have TWO!” That’s right, I’m the ‘proud’ parent of bi-lateral hernias (that’s one on each side of my groin, instead of a double, which is two on one side). The solution: GET THE KNIFE, BOYS, WE’RE GOIN’ IN!

Blech.

I’ve been vaguely interested in the idea behind electronics for some time. I’ve never put it into action… UNTIL NOW!

I have created ..well, duplicated the Mooftronic Mini-Synth. Twice, in fact. Well, one and a half times. One for me, one for my son. He did about half the soldering on his version…which doesn’t seem to be working. I hope we don’t have to re-do the whole damned thing for him.

It’s actually kind of lame, I was hoping for purer tones, but it’s more of a buzzing noise that MAY have some relation to the diatonic scale. I’m not sure. Ah well. Still a good learning experience.

Starting last episode, and moving onto this episode, my assistant director and I have started a new (for me) method of doing the episodes. He enjoys (at least to some extent) doing the scut work: cleaning lines, selecting takes, and doesn’t enjoy or at least thinks I do a better job of sound effects and music. We both use Adobe Audition so we don’t have to mess with converting session files around. So, what he does is this: Cleans the lines, does take selection, preliminary placement. Then, he ships the edited MP3s and the session files (and the occasional sound effect if he has one he likes) to me via drop.io, and I refine the timing, put in sound effects and music, and ta-da, completed scene.

OMBWTFBBQ why did I not know of this before? With all the bullshit out of the way, completing a scene is RIDICULOUSLY fast. Things that take a week or two before now take a day or two. Of course, my life is interfering in the completion of an episode that’s airing in two weeks, DETAILS DETAILS. Out of the four “scenes” in the episode, I’ve done 3 completely (including music), and the 4th one is prepped to go. Assuming there are no REALLY weird sound effects, I SHOULD be able to get it done tomorrow or Thursday at the latest for review by the bossman, who has promised to do a quick turn-around with the review process, and we should be able to do the commentary as soon as this weekend.

But now, BED SUMMONS ME like an apprentice mage summoning his first demon from the lowest depths, losing control and having his soul eaten by said demon.

OK, that analogy went really bad really fast.

By the way, Dixie 48 has some REALLY funny stuff in it. At least, I think so.

rfrancis and I had this discussion on Dino a week or so ago, and I’ve been mulling my thoughts on the subject to clarify them before releasing them into the wilds of the intarwebs.

My thesis statement: When working on a Pendant show, you don’t work WITH most of the people on the show.

Now, let me clarify that statement somewhat before everyone jumps on me like rfrancis did. When I say ‘work with’ I don’t mean ‘have input from’. I mean ‘have a back and forth discussion which leads to a better relationship (at least, better working relationship)’. In the case of Pendant, that ends up meaning better shows. By this definition, I have worked with Jeffrey, Tom, Jared, and Bruce. I may be considered to have worked with Philip, simply because I had conversations with him regarding his roles. I never had a conversation with Ryan about his acting, nor Susan (except one case where I asked for a retake of some barfing), nor Daniel, nor Rene, Perry, Steve nor any other actor in the shows I’ve directed. I’ve asked a couple actors to send in specific lines for a recent episode of Dixie (the crowd grumbling about Billingsly winning the science fair was 3 actors I asked in the chat to send in lines). I’ve asked for line re-takes for line quality or pronunciation issues. That’s hardly working with them on a long term basis.

Now, I BELIEVE (and I know he’ll correct me if I’m wrong) that rfrancis was suggesting that the idea that they’re sending him lines and he’s using those lines is sufficient to say that they are working together. Or an even more extreme case, when he, Tom, and Pete were in the same scene during Ex Tempus, he considers that working together. I don’t. There was no interaction. The three actors sent in their lines independently of each other, with (to my knowledge) no prior discussion about how the lines should be done, no rehearsals, no discussion with the directors about how they felt about it, etcetera.

Another way to look at ‘working with’ would be ‘receiving input about style/technique/etc from’. Again, I don’t think I’ve had that happen. I’ve asked a few times to people, and only when they were training me to replace them was there any feedback about my style/technique/etc. Jeffrey has done it based on the episodes I’ve sent him, but I’ve already stated that I consider myself to have worked with him.

Yet another way would be the managerial side of things, where someone like mamamoira rides herd on the slacking directors and actors, and rfrancis on the slacking writers. There is somewhat of a give and take with that, but it’s more just schedule management. They do a valuable job, not one I would like. But mamamoira has fine tuned it into a set of form letters (which I think is the most sensible thing) and “all” she has to do is keep track in a spreadsheet (I put the quotes because I don’t believe it’s all that easy to do). There’s some interaction there, but it’s not relationship building nor filling the creative needs of the shows. It’s filling the needs of the production staff, and is very valuable, but … not really working WITH the creative teams.

I don’t mean to bash Pendant here, I think there are some excellent shows, and the staff do a bang-up job of managing the process. But when you are producing the shows in the manner that Pendant does, you don’t have the luxury of bouncing your acting off the co-stars of your scene. You don’t end up with the chemistry that comes with face-to-face acting, like, for instance, Decoder Ring Theatre does. With the release schedule that Pendant has, it’s very difficult to generate the rehearsals that would aid in this endeavor (again, not bashing Pendant – the release schedule is for the most part fucking brilliant, except for this one flaw).

Anyway, that’s why I said what I said, and if you don’t like it, or if you do, there’s a convenient “comment” button somewhere over that-a-way.

Man, we need better health care in America. I mean, seriously. I fucked up my knee on Sunday. I have to wait until NEXT Wednesday to see an orthoped about it. A week and a half with no progress made. That’s gonna suck. Well, better start making ice like there’s no fucking tomorrow.

So, I believe I’m due back for follow-ups at the following places:

Elbow doc
Sleep doc

But overriding the mindless “Yeah, you’re fine now.” that those entail, I have discovered a NEW health problem…

Well, OK, it’s not NEW, but it’s newly injured. Ever since high school, I’ve had a problem where my knee does what I call dislocating. I don’t know if that’s what happens, I’m too busy screaming and falling down to really analyze it.

Which is what happened at soccer today. A guy named Eric, a really nice guy who just had the bad luck to bump into me in a way that caused my knee to go. He was really upset, or at least pretended really well. Dunno if I’ll be playing soccer again soon, going to call the Ortho doc tomorrow to see if I can get an appointment right away.

dirque just posted a story about someone representing the NRA called him and basically lied about the Obama Administration attempting to pass a law criminalizing gun ownership (which is flat out not going to happen). I didn’t want to post on the subject of gun control on that post, because it wasn’t about gun control, it was about how the NRA used lies and fear to attempt to extract money. But I did have something to say about gun control, and thus:

I’m not in favor of guns, in general. They’re dangerous when not used by individuals who are trained/qualified to use them, and for the most part are not used for the (stated) purpose for which they were bought (for instance: home protection). And most people are not trained/qualified to use them.

That said, even I as a Progressive of some sort understand that wanting to own guns is within the scope of the Constitution, and it would be stupid to pass a law to disallow your average citizen the right to own guns, if they want.

HOWEVER, it’s my opinion that the gun laws as they exist right now are insufficient to control the spread of firearms to individuals who seek to own weapons for less than legal means. The NRA stands against the idea that guns should be regulated at all, as far as I can tell. Thus, the guy down the street who is slightly mentally unstable can pick up his AK-47, throw on his flak vest and run down the street shooting at me, because I don’t agree with his viewpoint. Completely unregulated gun ownership would result in a literal arms race as Wacko buys a pistol, I buy a rifle to make sure he can’t get close with his pistol, he buys an assault rifle to out do me, I buy a bazooka, etc…OK, a little extreme there, but you get the idea.

People who are pro-gun talk about how incidents like the Virginia Tech shootings or Columbine wouldn’t happen if everyone was allowed to carry a gun, because they say when an armed individual saw that VTDude was shooting other students, they would pull out THEIR gun and shoot him. There are some problems with this:

1> VT dude (Cho) used a .22 pistol and a 9mm pistol. Assuming full access to larger weapons, do you think he would have stuck with those weapons? No, of course not. Would he have purchased body armor of some sort? I bet he would have. Thus, guy with a .45 and no body armor and an interest in not getting shot (i.e. would not risk his own life to get a clear shot on Cho) versus a guy with an AK-47 or 6, body armor and no concern about being hit. In that fight, I’m picking the guy with the bigger gun.

2> I would argue that shooting a person is a little different than shooting targets. Sure, you could say “I did it because otherwise I would be shot.” I don’t disagree with that statement. But when you’re being shot at, would you actually risk your neck just to get a hopeful shot off? It’s iffy. Even in the military it’s unclear how many soldiers fire rounds during live fire battles (S.L.A. Marshall says only 20%, but the information does not appear to be based on any actual evidence).

And of course there is the “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” argument. It doesn’t appear that gun ownership at home contributes significantly to the death rate (in 1991, 551 children were killed in accidental shootings, according to USA Today). But tell that to the parents of the 551 kids. Or their friends. I’ve always disliked the “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” defense, because all the person saying it is trying to say is “Let someone other than the parents have the responsibility to protect their children.” I don’t agree with that. But I don’t want to have to monitor every parent of every child that my children visit. I don’t want to find out that my kid got shot by some kid whose parents are alcoholics and didn’t take care of their weapons (and I have a specific parent in mind, here).

When they get old enough (which may be soon for the older), I’m going to try to find a way to expose my children to firearms in a safe manner, so that they understand that guns are not toys. But I don’t want guns in my house, in my neighborhood, or in my children’s schools. I’m sure there is a way to allow individuals who are trained and qualified to own firearms. The Constitution allows it in some form (the discussion of the exact intent aside). But the NRA’s viewpoint is flawed and dangerous, and I oppose it.

The pool is opening tomorrow. Yay! I’ll get a chance to start ignoring my plan for exercise…I mean go swimming for half-an-hour every day.

But, wait, what is this, I have Pendant work to do? I do. Rats. Well, that means Sins of a Solar Empire will have to wait. But its siren’s call is so alluring!

I will have to carefully structure my time to make sure I do the following things during my non-work hours:

1> Spend time with the family
2> Get Pendant work done
3> Take over planetary systems