"Dont' Call, Don't Show"

Despite my lack of musical talent, I seem to have developed an uncontrollable songwriting habit. My wife says my funny songs are my best songs, so here you go:

Happy 40th Birthday to Me!

via GIPHY

regret

Depending on what kind of music fan you are, this story may make you want to punch me in the face.

In the early 2000s I was living in a dilapidated camper/trailer in my friend's back yard in Maple Ridge, British Columbia. It was winter—which in British Columbia means it was drizzly-cold and gray most of the time—and it was on one of those dark, drippy evenings when my friend Kirsten called and told me I had to get down to Vancouver that night to see her boyfriend's band play a show. I think the venue was Richard's on Richards, but the details are a bit hazy.

What is not hazy is Kirsten's enthusiasm for the band, with which she was at the time touring the country—handling their merch table.

"They're really, really good," she said. "Nobody knows who they are yet, but they're totally gonna be famous. Come on down. You can hang out with me and the band in the green room and then afterwards we can maybe do something. But seriously. They're awesome. You'll love them."

So, yeah. Girlfriend thinks her boyfriend's band is awesome. Yawn.

Remembering Danny Fast

Looking back, I can't quite understand why Danny Fast was my friend. He was, after all, twenty years older than me, and when we first started spending time together I was just a little boy—younger by several years than my eleven year son old is today.

I know why I was his friend, though: Danny was a celebrity.

The Lives of Fishermen

I got my first canoe when I was twelve years old. It was a dugout, which I bought new for I think forty bucks from a skilled local craftsman whose name I can't remember. A criminally low price for something he’d worked on for weeks: chopping the tree with an axe, burning out the middle, and then hand-hewing the wood until he had the perfectly shaped little boat-for-one. And a small one, at that: I was a pint-sized, introverted, and bookish little pre-teen, the child of missionary schoolteachers growing up barefoot and half wild in the Amazon basin of Peru, South America.

My Top-Ten Favorite Films (and more) of 2018

This is not a Best-Of list, because ranking art is silly. These are just the filmed entertainments I watched and liked most, and that I felt were fine exemplars of their respective genres.  So without further ado...

strength

Lately I've been thinking about how much the patriarchy sucks (in part due to the novel THE POWER, by Naomi Alderman). Perhaps that's why—when I was looking for something to doodle on to keep my hand in the ol' arting game—I chose to incorporate a couple of images from a National Geographic article about widowed women who are fighting back against marginalization in oppressive cultures.

Or maybe I just thought they looked cool.

The PINKest of all trailers!!!

Really super stoked to share the trailer for my first produced feature film, PINK, which will have its worldwide premiere at the Cucalorus Film Festival at 1:30pm on Thursday, November 8 in the historic Thalian hall. Can't make it? There's a second screening on Saturday, November 10 at 4:00pm in the Station Main theater. Go to the Cucalorus website for your tickets!

Pink Trailer from Jacob Kirby on Vimeo.

The trailer was cut by the multi-talented Jacob Kirby (who was also our first AD, on-set DIT, and pinch hitter with the boom mic).

I'd like to blame all the inappropriate stuff in this movie on our uber-talented, wildly improvising actors, but some of it's definitely on me. What can I say... I was workin' through some stuff. You've been warned :-)