> tapioca world tour

The smell of my mother’s perfume has almost been neutralized by my open-all-day bedroom window. Now, no evidence of her brief visit remains, other than my neatly-folded bed and full stomach. I can’t determine whether the emptiness makes me sad or if I feel nothing at all…which makes me imagine the day I will lose my mother, and how shocked I (and everyone) will be to watch myself completely fall apart and not be able to pull it together for years and years and…anyway,

so, you wanna hear something awkward? My landlords have just separated, but instead of the wife moving OUT, she’s moved into the vacant apartment on the first floor. “You can pay the rent to me from now on,” she told DD, and what could he say? We’ll be moving shortly anyway. Seems like there’s no better time for it.

I cut my hair tonight, promptly after watching Mean Girls, which would have been funnier had it starred Christopher Walken instead of Lindsay Lohan. Just saying. But back to the hair — I’ll post before & after photos tomorrow. Can’t say which looks better, honestly, but there’s something emotionally gratifying about feeling lighter — less weight on one’s head, I mean — and I always opt for radical change over physical beauty, because risk-taking inspires respect, but conforming to the standards of femininity stunts one’s best development and, quite frankly, is awfully boring. So there you have it.

One other thing: the word “fresh”, as in “Don’t act so fresh, Johnny, or I’m pulling this car over!”
Let’s bring it back, people.

ONWARD.

There are big Save Darfur rallies happening in San Fran and DC this weekend.

The other day, Sudanese Parliament member (also a human rights lawyer who’s a member of the opposition party against the government) Salih Mahmoud Osman came to work to give us an update about Darfur. I videotaped his presentation with Dr. Fashir, another Sudanese advocate, and will get a 2-minute clip from their presentation online over the weekend.

All this crazy stuff is happening. Correlatively, my mother’s coming to visit — tonight.

I don’t know what it means — your new set of knives,
the wide sky and the old sea soon to be below your window
which will remind you of how a city’s not supposed to be
but is: both full and empty, all at once.

Yet I remember the era of patterned socks and bugs
crawling around our kitchen. You must remember
the smell of the rooftop, wet streets and the sounds the train made,
warning of its approach the same way the future screams
before it attacks.

Now you’re a bloody mess and I’m worse.
Now you’re a kaiju monster, I’m on the bleachers with a camera.
I’m on Manni’s bicycle. Now you’re dancing to the same song and I’m
staring out my bedroom window to the dead fish in its
dying pond. Now it’s summer and we’re both unemployed.
You’re an almond croissant. I’m wine on the wall.
You’re a dead bum in the driveway.
I’m an ambulance.
I’m a quesadilla and you’re holding Jonah and we’re both
singing hip hop, hip hop, hip hop trying not to notice
how serious everything really is. You’re in a blue car.
I’m in a blue car. We’re finding the fort, finally, up a hill,
we’re finding a parking spot, we’re shouting a boy’s name
out the window with no idea that years later, he’ll hear.
I’m a mess. You’re a riot. We’re behind barred windows.
I’m a big yellow rose, you’re a red wall, we’re in
someone else’s living room in New York City and the whole place
smells like smoke and confusion but I call it freedom
and you giggle and we drive

all the way home the same way.

This is cool: U.S. campaign for Burma is starting an initiative to invite anyone with a camera to videotape a 10-minute or less birthday message to imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner and rightful leader of Burma, Aang San Suu Kyi. The initiative is called Beaming Burma and I think it’s a neat idea.

Visiting Southern Thailand last month was like a glorious punch in the gut for me: the staff of Grassroots HRE, who not only support undocumented Burmese workers in Thailand but are themselves undocumented workers in Thailand, were amazing. Their mutual support and commitment to a Free Burma was moving. Now I finally understand the real human struggle behind all those Free Burma bumper stickers. Every Burmese person I met was so kind, so humble, so helpful, and so very nationalistic — that is, to the Burma not imprisoned by a violent dictatorship.

That said, this is a cool video opportunity. Go to it!

DD’s in Chicago. Ry’s stuck in NYC. It’s raining outside and I’m still in my pajamas, watching French New Wave films by Godard from the 60s. Yesterday was Alphaville, today’s is Le Petit Soldat, which tops off the other eight or nine I’ve already seen. We’re on a kick to watch every Brando film, Godard film, Cassavetes, and Kurosawa film ever made. I like Godard’s movies because they go completely against the conventions of today:

Someone’s always reading aloud in Godard films. People speak in poetry, half the time, and they frown as they speak. Improvisational dialogue and oddly-timed voiceover narrative is intriguing and different. His portrayal of women makes me puke, though: their incalcitrance, their lubricious, fickle attitudes, plus their unfailing youth & beauty (Why, Godard, when there are so many normal-looking women who can also act?). But he uses wide shots and long takes, tracking motion instead of cut-cut-cut close-ups, which these days is refreshing. If he focused more on reality and less on the ideal of beauty and the ideal of politics and the ideal of masculinity, his films would be much better. Then again, I’m just a little girl with a little film crew and I have no idea if Rezeroing has even won audience award yet.

Tra la, tra la.

it’s friday & freezing

we had our heart-to-heart in the alley, finally,
the bruised sky making no excuses, its few stars
content to hang around alone and as
they burned against the night and you spoke i thought
well, it’s about time,

because it is and you should know that,
not that it’s ever easy. you should know that too.
in another place and time, what would i do?

Tapioca Productions’ lovely film REZEROING is now available for all of cyberspace to enjoy:

www.stream-video.net/Benjamin/RezeroingV1.wmv

Note from Ben: To view this, right click on the link to select “Save as” or “Save Target As” and save file to your hard drive. Don’t try to stream it online, it will not play well.

“Treasures found near Jesus’ ‘Sea of Miracles’”
“LA woman has rare case of Bubonic Plague”
“Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise welcome a baby girl”

Dude, why are they feeding us pop culture poop? What real news do they NOT want us to know? At the bottom of all these headlines was a small blurb about McClellan’s resignation.

Nevermind world news, like the fighting and impending drought in Somalia, the religious riots in Egypt, or the rocket attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Geeze, what is going on?

Tonight we wrote haikus, the kids and I. We picked words at random out of National Geographic to use as the theme of each poem. E. is 7 years old, and I. is 9. Here they are in all their glory:

LAND

such a big place, earth.
land is always evrywhere.
never stops, no no.
- [by E.]

URBAN

tall, tall buildings here.
evry place, evrywhere such
changes can now come
- [by E.]

There are buildings there.
It is so extremely big!
It’s the city.
- [by I.]

grass is great, the green
expanse and air, blue skies, but
smog is comforting.
- [by me]

Re-zeroing, Tapioca’s short film for the 48-hour film project is screening tomorrow (Wed) night at Kendall Cinema at both 7.30p and 9p. You can either buy tickets there or order online. It’s not as good as Brick, which I had the pleasure of seeing the other night, but it’s high-def and decent and was a blast to shoot, and seeing the other films is always pretty cool. So come on down!

Good people,

I bought a new MacBook Pro, on which I intend on installing Bootcamp (Beta) so I can run Windows applications. However, this requires that I also install Windows XP, which I don’t have a copy of. Can anyone, um, help me out? (While you’re at it, I could also use Macromedia Studio 8 and Final Cut Pro 5 HD and DVD Studio Pro, but, you know, one thing at a time.)

Much obliged. You know where to reach me.

PS: comments still don’t work, but will be working again soon…

Yesterday DD and I drove up to Mount Monadnock to photograph/videotape M. & S.’s pre-wedding Ancient Greek-themed all-day rural festivities. Between the rope swings and the tire swings and the sheep and the ponies and the kids and tetherball and lakes and streams, we found a teepie (tippie? teepee?) during down time. It was a good day, a cool place, great weather, fun people. And now Easter has come and gone, and I am not in Philadelphia, but that’s ok.

Also, happy Passover to all my Jews and partial-Jews.

My internalized existential crises have become so routine I don’t even notice it anymore, therefore I needn’t keep asking the same question using different words — (What am I doing with my life? Should I get a higher-paying job? Should I leave the country? Should I go live alone somewhere no one knows me and adopt a Burmese child and buy a small condo and an urban garden? Should I take video editing and jazz piano lessons? Should I stop eating formerly-caged animals?) —

Meanwhile, the world is spinning. Really, it could all be ending. [Poem reference: “The world is spinning/ really, it could all be ending/ which would explain the warm weather in winter/ and your affection.”] I think it’s time for another week-long group writing exercise by the ladies at Horny Ghandi. Either that, or summer needs to hurry up and arrive. Then we can all hop in the car and go to

concerts:: According to GP, there are some cool free outdoor shows coming up in NYC this summer. Check them out: Angelique Kidjo, Ani D., Calexico, Yo La Tengo, and Jose Gonzalez, to name a few.

In other news, the US administration is going down in flames, as usual, the Save Darfur rallies in DC and San Fran are coming up at the end of the month, and soon I’ll be living on Dorchester Bay, sipping lemonade while watching the seagulls and the airplanes collide, which is a metaphor for my life in general.

Bring it ON.

Clouds are a heavy grey over Cambridge right now. I’m going to one of the 48 screenings tonight. Very exciting.

I took a day off yesterday. Too much going on, too much to think about, and I’m too tired these days. Yet as much as I enjoyed sleeping til two, selling my beautiful laptop for half of what I paid, and sobbing alone in a borrowed car late at night, the world spins on and we spin with it. Or so it seems.

Here’s a shoutout to BB in Bolivia: SHOUTOUT!
Here’s a shoutout to Shiva in Madrid: SHOUTOUT!
Here’s a shoutout to Peter in Peru: SHOUTOUT! YA!
Here’s a shoutout to C. & G. on the island of Kona: SHOUTOUT!

Please email me if you know of any interesting-sounding upcoming film festivals. Thanks!

What: an external drive or other mass storage device.

Why: to move a bunch of my AV files from a PC laptop to a Mac laptop.

When: tomorrow. Just tomorrow.

Who will be my hero?

Woo! So welcome to the new design of TWT 2006. It’s nothing special, but I was able to customize the CSS successfully, and I’m happy about that. Tomorrow I sell my beautiful PC laptop, put down a deposit on a new apartment, pay the $400 international roaming charges on my cell phone bill from my business trip to Asia (had I known the NGO wouldn’t pay, I wouldn’t have brought the dang phone), and jump into the deep abyss of credit card debt to buy a new MacBook Pro by the end of the week.

Anyone have any credible money-making ideas? Because I’m all out. Of both ideas and money, and I could use both. Think about it and let me know. Thanks.

Ok, so the 48 hour film project is officially over now. Drama drama on the high seas of post-production, mostly regarding personality clashes and immature little boys, but other than that, everything was peachy. No, we didn’t turn in our film on time. Yes, the acting was great and the shoot was excellent. Yes, we’re going to make a “real” short film for a “real” film festival in upcoming months. Yes, I was overwhelmed by love for humanity (or at least cast and most of crew) during this project. Yes, it reinforced my desire to start a multimedia production company. No, I’m never hiring men who can’t take directions from women again. Yes, we are available to review your script and possibly make it into a movie. Yes, you can make your philanthropic check out to Audubon. Make sure to add 20% to cover overhead.

Every year, we get closer and closer to glory…

Thanks to everyone — even those whose heads I wanted to tear off, and who wanted to tear my head off — for your collaboration on this. Onward, upward, and our film screens at the Kendall Cinema next Wednesday, April 19th. And you might be able to watch footage of our team (and me, looking awful, talking about our team) on CNN next week. Stay tuned for details.

PS - Check out DD’s still photos of the shoot from the weekend.

It was fast: he clipped the wire where my impacted tooth is slowly making its way into place. He changed ties and then they made me wear those AWFUL tight rubber bands again to pull the tooth down for rizzo. I’ve been cheating the past hour, took the rubber band off. Can’t take the pain! Wow!

Progress hurts, man.

Yeah, Wordpress has been upgraded to version 1.5, hence the abandonment of stylesheets, etc. Give me a few days, preferably after the 48 hour film project, which Tapioca Productions begins in 5 hours, and this blog will be looking better than it does right now.

Onward!