I love being on vacation. I want to do it all the time. But then I might get bored of it.

Good drive down to Florida this year. We did a couple of hours Friday night after I got off work, and then the rest on Saturday. I ended up driving most of Saturday, because Dad was reading. Yep, that’s right. My Dad, the man who rarely reads more than a magazine every now and again, is now almost halfway through Catch-22. I recommended it to him after I read it and loved it last year, and we finally decided that this trip was the time he should read it. To be honest, I was completely prepared for him to give up, but he’s really enjoying it. Mom pointed out to me that he really does enjoy reading when he’s got time and doesn’t feel like he should be doing something more productive, which is really right. I’m just really glad he’s liking it. And I finally convinced Mom that Reading Lolita in Tehran isn’t really about Lolita and that she might like it and not get corrupted by the presence of Lolita. And she is liking it! So far my book recommendations this trip have really panned out nicely.

Meanwhile, I read an entire Agatha Christie mystery today. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I’ve read a lot of Christie novels before, but not this one…and I saw it written up on a few “best of” sort of lists recently, so I thought I’d check it out. Really great detective novel. Agatha Christie is such good vacation reading…light, easy, fun, and makes you think only in an enjoyable “solve the mystery” sort of way. So now I only have seven books left to read on the trip. Yeah, I way overdo it. Always have.

I haven’t been down to Pensacola Beach since Hurricane Ivan devastated the place two years ago. My parents were down last year, so I’d heard about it, but even now it’s still pretty bad. The beach is completely flat in most places, no sand dunes. About half of the condos are still out of commission, and the road is in the process of being completely redone. Construction equipment everywhere, and piles of sand and debris that have been sifted out of one another. I’ve seen it after hurricanes before, but never like this. And this is two years later! Dad’s amazed that it’s taking so long to get stuff fixed…I’m speculating that some of the labor force has been siphoned off to New Orleans, but who knows. Maybe the condo owners are just still arguing with the insurance companies.

The condos we used to rent aren’t opened back up yet. The ones we’re in are pretty nice, but there’s no pool or tennis courts. But there’s a great balcony overlooking the Gulf, and I get to sleep in where the TV is, which is fine with me. ;) And I’ve just discovered that there’s a wireless internet connection (obviously!). Although I probably would’ve gotten more reading done had I not discovered that I can use the internet. Oh well.

I GOT IT TO WORK! 12 Firefox tabs and at least four or five different forums, plus tons of time spent trying to get it to work on my own Apache server with no luck (although I did finally get php to connect to MySQL on my machine, so that was a major unrelated breakthrough), and then Google threw me onto a page with good instructions on how to set up databases and stuff on Dreamhost, which happens to be where my website is hosted. And after reading so much about the wordpress installation and going over the config settings time and again, it all started fitting together, and fifteen minutes later, I have a wordpress blog set up on my domain…which is what I wanted to do two weeks ago and gave up in frustration. See, I knew with enough determination I could do it. Now I just have to see if I can figure out how to install and customize layout themes to see if I want to make this my primary blog…

To ponder: The majority of independent film as an aesthetic of the “moment.” A series of memorable moments more than a cohesive whole. Opposed to mainstream film, in which every moment must serve the main point of the movie, whether it be plot, humor, or action. Generalizations, of course. Needs more thought. (This has been brought to you by Things I Think About While Driving Into Work.)

Including my reactions to Rize, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Downfall, The Canterbury Tales, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, among other things.

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That was another great theatre-going experience to mark down in my book. The Tivoli was PACKED OUT. I got there just before seven (when the show was supposed to start, but it didn’t get started until 7:15), and there were people lined up outside, not able to get in because it was sold out. Wow. All to watch a bunch of ten-to-fifteen-minute-long shorts that amateur filmmakers wrote, shot, and edited in one weekend. Of course, given that they were all made here, each filmmaker probably only had to get twenty or so of his friends to show up to fill up the place. Still. It was great to see that kind of support for the filmmaking community. In total, 48 teams set out on the project, and 40 of them completed their films on time (the rest are shown, but not in competition). Those films were split up between four, I think, different screenings. Each audience member got a ballot to vote for their three favorite films in the grouping, and the votes will be counted and a “best of” will screen next Thursday. I sort of want to go, but I probably won’t. Especially since I didn’t get a ticket while I was there tonight, and it’s probably sold out already.

The films were of varying quality, of course. Each one was a different genre–drawn by the team out of a hat at the beginning of the project. Each team had to include a specific character (a bank manager), a specific prop (a shopping bag), and a specific line of dialogue (“Is that all I am to you?”) in their film. Some of them came up with really interesting twists on that…like the team whose bank manager worked at a sperm bank. Most of the films had interesting storylines. The downfall of the less impressive films, I think, was sound. Sound is hard, yo. Which is why I always hated working with sound, and why I chose to emulate silent film in my biggest film project in school. ;)

What was really great, though, was how much the audience was into it. Again, partly because they were watching their films, or their friends’ films, on a big screen in a big theatre, with a big audience, which is cool in and of itself. But everyone pretty much enjoyed all the films. There was more laughter and applause and hoots and hollers than I’ve ever heard at a theatre. That made it even more enjoyable. I just looked at the website for the project (www.48hourfilm.com), hoping to find a list of film titles to jog my memory, but they don’t have them listed yet. They do have last year’s listed, so hopefully after the screenings and competition are complete, they will.

Overall, great experience. Thanks, MK, for letting me know about it. (She doesn’t even read this, but what the hey.) I will definitely be looking out for this sort of thing in the future. Actually, I imagine they have more stuff like this in Austin than they do here. Will have to check that out.

You can hear Katharine McPhee’s first single and B-side here. It’s not really released for another couple of weeks, but I guess Kiss radio is special. Anyway, I point it out because the recording is actually so much better than I was expecting it to be. “Over the Rainbow” has replaced “My Destiny” as the main single, which is a great change, with “My Destiny” now the B-side instead of “Think,” which is already available on the AI S5 Encores CD. I didn’t think she could top her “Over the Rainbow” performances on the show, especially after hearing her sing the song many times on various radio and TV shows since, but it’s amazingly good on the recording. It was obviously recorded before she started losing her voice towards the end of the show (her first couple of post-show performances on the radio and TV sounded painful, almost, but she seemed to be recovering by her appearance on The Early Show last week). She’s been singing it too fast on her media appearances, I suppose due to time constraints, but she lets it linger on the recording, and it’s delicious.

And, get this. Even “My Destiny” sounds a lot better. Sure, it’s still got insipid lyrics, and it’s still overly bubble-gummy, but compared to what we heard on the show, this is way better. As in, actually listenable. In an interview Kat mentioned that they’d had to drop the key a half-step to accomodate the fact that she was losing her voice and running on cortisone and adrenaline the night of the finale, and that it sounded better on the recording. She wasn’t just making that up…her voice is in better shape here, and the key really does make a difference in the tone of the song. But I hope she gets better-written songs from here on out.

Incidentally, Taylor is People Magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelor as of tomorrow’s issue. In case you’re interested.

Sometimes I love commercials. This one had me falling off the couch.

The best part is when the voice over guy comes on and lists “crime deterrent” among the phone’s features with a totally straight expression.

And this one’s not funny, but it’s one of my favorite recent commercials. Okay, it’s mostly because I like that I’ve seen almost all of the films Kate Winslet is describing. And I like her accent. I=shallow.

If companies would make good, entertaining commercials all the time–commercials that people want to upload to YouTube and add to their favorites list and rewatch multiple times–they wouldn’t have so much of a problem with people fast-forwarding through the commercials on their DVRs. Advertisers, RIAA and MPAA: Quit putting so much effort into stopping people from using your content illegally (or not at all, in the case of ads) and redirect some of your efforts into making quality content.

I know some of y’all are into independent film. If you’re free tomorrow night, the 48 Hour Film Project is showing a festival of the films submitted last year. Basically, the project gives aspiring filmmakers 48 hours to write, cast, shoot and edit a film, which is then shown as part of the traveling festival, and I think there’s also a competition for the best film submitted.

The Shields’ and Keane’s cousin Mike submitted a film to it, and it’s showing at 7pm tomorrow night at the Tivoli Theatre in University City. I know a few people who are going, so if you wanna support the independent film scene, come join us.