I'm On It

For many, social media is a way to connect, stay informed and follow the comings and goings of those people whose lives are more interesting than yours. But, who are those people? They are the humans among us who are more important, more together, more hipster than you. Etiquette and accepted social mores? Nonsense. There are no words or feelings out of bounds. Grammar and punctuation? For amateurs. Spelling? Bah! Who needs it when we have numbers and symbols to guide the less enlightened to the proper path? But, you cry, they are so cool! I want to be one of them! Well, if you must... here's what you need to do, you sad, sad little gnome. 1.) Be Snarky First and foremost among the rules for imposing your world view is to set up the basis of the conversation. Don't ask if Kim Kardashian is dumb. Say it! And then follow up with your assessment of her level of dumbness. Comparisons are good here, too. Bag of rocks, dumb as a stump, etc. It doesn't matter...

While I find it hard to say "no" to my wife for anything, it would have been unthinkable this weekend. After all the help she has provided with my latest production, (scheduler, costumer, mom-wrangler, puppeteer, seamstress... the list goes on), I would have really felt like an ungrateful slob had I refused to help out with the event she had arranged. Our local Applebee's provides non-profit groups with a great way to raise funds by allowing us to arrange a Pancake Breakfast. My wife Gina scheduled one for our church, and today was the day. That meant being up, showered, dressed and in the car by 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I know for some of you, that doesn't sound like a big deal, but for someone who rarely falls into bed before 2 a.m., there is really only one word for it... $@#@^%&@*@! Still, having worked in the restaurant business for over a dozen years served me well. It didn't take long before I felt right at home plating food, washing dish...

Last minute script changes, shuffling the characters around and one really cool camera angle later, today's scenes shot for "A Caterpillar's Tale" are destined for the editing deck. While the actors looked at me with blank stares, I explained how we would be shooting things out of sequence, in order to adhere to our hard-stop time. Being stage actors, they are used to starting a scene and plowing through to the end. This is, no doubt, a strange and disconnected way to perform. Being kids, they have parents who expect to pick them up at the time that I said we would be done. So, in order to make that happen, I needed to shoot in groups of segments, guaranteeing that no one but me knew what was going on. And, as a side note... I shot everything I needed and was still finished ten minutes before the hard-stop time! Yay me! But as a director, I know what I want in the way of shots, and as an editor, I know that more is always better. So, to the all-t...