Smart Kitty

It's been a year since I started working for myself. This is a big deal. Woo! Yay me! I've made enough to support myself in the manner to which I've become accustomed, and that is no small feat ... recession, blah blah blah economy etc.

I only expected to be able to do this for three months (maybe six). So a whole year? Cowabunga!

Sure, I thought I would accomplish a hell of a lot more than I have. (Like way more. Like maybe I did one thing out of 10.) Some of that is attributable to the tough times. But really most of it is attributable to my own lack of ambition.

But! I am working on a book proposal right now, and even have an agent all set to pitch it to the New York muckety mucks. That's something that wasn't even on my radar when I started this whole no-job business. Little Marshy is no slouch!

September is when I will buckle down. I will be tough with myself! Does that sound like me? Not at all!

I read a really complicated story in "Newsweek." It was political, emotional, personal, annoying, touching and creepy all at the same time. What struck me the most were all the points the author didn't make, the conclusions she didn't draw and the questions she didn't ask. She could have done this on purpose -- to keep the story manageable and focused, to be respectful to the subjects, to nudge the reader to think about things, to stay objective or avoid sensationalism -- for any number of reasons.

But the journalism or the writer's style wasn't what struck me. What struck me was that filling in those emotional blanks would make an incredible book or movie (or if you want to aim lower, episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit"). I know the news is a common source of inspiration for fiction. I'm not blowing anyone's mind here. But I think the plot of real life isn't the part to pay attention to; the characters and motivations are.

(You can read the story here. As a warning, it describes some awful crimes against a child.)

If you did read it:

The dad is obviously a smart man. So he must have known that the restrictions about where sex offenders live that he worked so hard to get passed would not have stopped his daughter's abuse, because the abuse happened in his own home and was perpetrated by someone he invited to be there. (To be clear, I am not blaming him or saying he knew about the abuse. The nanny was a sick person who terrorized a child.) The emotions this man must have been feeling! The complicated way he used his job and power to deal with those emotions! The impact his emotions and the actions they inspired had on an entire state! And in the end you can see he's thought about all those things and changed the way he thinks and acts. Talk about character development.

Almost as a throw-away, the author adds that the daughter is doing well and now works in the nonprofit scene helping abused children and is married to her childhood sweetheart ... the same one her abuser manipulated her into dating in order to make things look normal. This boyfriend is the one who encouraged her tell her parents about the crimes. What she does for a living and who she loves are tied to a terrible experience! Yet she is happy. She feels peaceful! How does that happen? Now that is complicated and interesting!

I don't have the stomach to imagine what motivates someone to do such terrible things to a kid. But if I did ... what kind of person does such things and then sends this child love letters from prison?

That is all. Sometimes that is how I read articles.

So that post title is misleading, in that I am not posting any video but rather am just talking about making a video.

I got a video camera and filmed a bunch of stuff I plan to edit (with help!) into a two-minute funny thing. Whether it will be funny or not remains to be seen. However, here are some thoughts I had about it.

1. You know who has enthusiasm? Young people! Everyone in this video is at least 10 years younger than me. And they had a lot of energy and life. I think I vampired some of it from them, because I had more energy and life after hanging around them. Yes, vampired is a word now.

2. When people ask you if you are doing something for college, you just say yes. Even if you aren't in college! You know why? People like when college students go around doing things and don't want to hassle them. They want to encourage learning. Learning!

3. Sound and light equipment! Why aren't there more consumer options for this? Finding a consumer video camera of decent picture quality is easy. But do you want people to be able to hear and see what you are filming? That is harder. There are almost no reasonable consumer mics to buy. I rented one that was worth over $5,000! It was really silly to see this ginormous boom mic connected to a camera the size of my hand. Lighting, well, there is more stuff out there for that but it also is a little hardcore once you get past something the size of a flashbulb.

4. Real life doesn't look very real on camera. Seeing things like normal pictures on the wall, cars driving by, people in the background ... actually makes stuff look more fake. Strategically putting up a bunch of pages from a magazine looked more like lived-in decor than actual paintings and photos. No wonder actors are confused by what a real face looks like and get crazy plastic surgery. The camera distorts reality! Some sort of philosophical point about that!

5. It is frustrating to not know how to do things!

6. Pulling around a person on rollerskates = not the same as a camera dolly.

7. Businesses are nice about letting you film them ... unless they are a non-descript parking garage. Then they warn you not to get any footage identifying where you are. It is a parking garage!!! It looks like lights and parking spaces! If you can identify a parking garage that does not have signs (which this one didn't), then you spend too much time in parking garages.

8. I laugh a lot. We filmed a lot of scenes where sound was unnecessary so you just hear whatever is going on. Nine times out of 10 what was going on was that I was laughing. You know what's funny? Everything everyone does.

These are fresh shiitake mushrooms. I grew them from a little mushroom farm. Look, I grew something! This harvest came after a week (but excludes two big ones I already ate).

Thanks to Joy and Kyle, who gave the kit to me for my birthday and have grown many many things, including mushrooms.