The Small Things

My friend just stopped by the copy hut and showed me how to quickly make animations using Adobe ImageReady. I can't believe I never knew how to do that before. I had made crude animations in Flash and iMovie; but it was super-easy in ImageReady because I already knew the Photoshop interface.

That made me think about wanting to break out of print production/design into the shimmering world of animation/special effects, etc. But for now just a hobby.

There is something sort of quaint about setting type and making things fit on the page. Granted, it's not as cool as editing an idea you thought up and adding meaningful special effects, but it probably beats washing windows. Unless that is your thing.

Last night my girlfriend and I drove my first college roomate home from a poetry slam in East Bridgewater and went up to his apartment for a while to watch Saturday Night Live and for me to barrage him with questions about his time being a waiter at Legal Seafoods. Maybe I am the next Studs Terkel. i am genuinely interested in hearing about other people's jobs.

But I was sort of apprehensive about parking my car in his neighborhood near Old Colony Road in South Boston. So I moved it when I saw a spot open up across the street from the apartment. And today on Boston.com I saw that a person was shot dead friday night at carson's Beach, which was right down the street from there. I don't like to generalize a neighborhood and say that I don't feel comfortable parking there. But there did seem to be a lot of listless teens, of all persuasions, skulking around with not much to do. There were also midnight barbeque's going on.

Last Wednesday night, before having dinner with my mom and sister and seeing Augusten Burroughs give a reading I was stopped by a casting director with a videographer in tow and asked if I wanted to try out to be a jury member on a mock trial of Pete Rose on ESPN on the 17th. The show will be about if he should be let into the Hall of Fame. (I ended up not getting picked to be a juror - BK 7/20/03)

It was sort of fun being interviewed on camer, it reminded me of when my friend Stephen and I used to make Tom Greenish videos in High School and harass tourists, cover ourselves with whipped cream, etc. Well, I covered myself with whipped cream. I think this was pre Karen Finley to boot. Well, before I was aware of Karen Finley at least. But my obsessive reading about Andy Warhol's Factory Days in the 60's probably put the idea in my 16 year old head.

Anywho, I haven't heard if I got picked yet. The lawyers are going to be Johnny Cochran and Alan Dershowitz.

Burroughs was entertaining - but then I started thinking about how he was only 6 years older than me and that if I wasn't trying to do anything special with my life on top of working, paying bills and being in relationship - that I better start soon. Not something to achieve fame per say, but just something to internally say to myself that I achieved my potential in some area of interest.

Well, that is about it. My cat has been hiding under the bed seeking the cool spots and laying down in front of the fan. I don't think she is overly concerened with leaving her mark on the world, though she does like to rub up against things and leave her scent. Maybe we are not that different after all.