Quotation of the Day: "Reason #1067 why advertising sucks" Edition

"I think my own addiction to narrow distractions while writing is a hard wire left from my days in advertising; if you aren't coming up with an idea, you check email to see what other crisis looms. I have found this a terrible and difficult habit to break." , former advertising creative director and current novelist Jeff Abbott, in the comments section of Paul Ford's 43 Folders guest post about "Amish Computing"

Revolution of the High-Tech Luddites

terrie YAMO

I've been a dork all my life, but I'm still just barely a geek. I love the toys (DVR, nano, anything from Adobe); I fear the code.

My boyfriend, a.k.a. "The BF", who has about 20 extra computing years on me (but is a year younger, damn him) also likes the toys but is very, very good with the code. A genius, in fact. No, seriously, it's been quantified. He also has greater facility with the pen tool, better hair, AND a penis. If I couldn't cook, I'd kill myself.

The point is, dude knows his way around a computer. He'd better; he owns seven of them. (I think. I officially lost count on Sunday after we brought the new 17" PowerBook home from Fry's.) Yet from Day One (and I know this, because I have the emails to prove it) he described himself as a "high-tech Luddite". I chuckled to myself reading that way back when, and made a mental note to have sex with him as soon as possible because that shit is HOT.

Anyway, ten months later, I'm marveling over not only how right he was, but how right on. Code isn't the enemy; coding, like writing or painting or...cooking, might even be considered useful in some circles. It's the shiny object factor of computers that'll bring you to your knees.

The way I see it is this: back when I was 10, I had a prodigious creative output. In addition to going to school full-time and maintaining close relationships with an elite but good-sized circle, I taught myself to draw, kept a diary, sent letters, wrote horrible plays I forced my cousins to act in, and not only administrated but provided news coverage for an entire doll village of 50 (in three columns...with a t-y-p-e-w-r-i-t-e-r).

How did I manage to do all of this and still have time to ruin my eyes reading under the covers?

Well, there was none of that pesky cooking to get in the way, to be sure, but there was also the now-quaint practice of doing one thing at a time. You wouldn't think of talking on the phone while you watched TV while you did your homework because: (a), you'd get your butt stomped for not taking your homework seriously; (b), you'd get your butt stomped for hogging the phone when there might be an important long distance call coming in; and (c), you'd get your butt stomped for having the TV on, period.

Compare this, if you will, to today's scenario: me, at the G5, on hold with the phone company, watching (insert crappy TV show here) playing in the upper-left hand corner of the screen, listening to (insert crappy talk radio show here) playing on the radio, updating the ER website as I back up files to the external hard drive, peeling off every now and then to stir whatever's (yes) cooking on the stove.

Maybe I will kill myself.

Or maybe I will just say "no". No, I don't need a second digital cable box hooked up to the computer. No, I can't realistically keep up with 45 feeds*. No, having 10 different email accounts (at last count) isn't making life easier; it's making things exponentially more complex, which is making me exponentially more scattered and anxious.

I've talked about paring down my offline crap; now it's time to tackle the electronic focus-fracturers. No more slave to the electronic overlords, I; from now on, it's Paul Ford's Amish Computing all the way.

My escape plan combines elements of the methodology laid out by the geek bible, Getting Things Done, by David Allen mixed with tips I've culled from my online brethren (Lifehacker, Lifehack, 43 Folders) to help me in my quest.

Call it irony if you will; I think of it as poetic justice.

Geek-style.

xxx
c

*Pared down from 71 at the start of this post because of the deep, deep shame I felt upon seeing this hideously high number.

Photo of dork playing a dork in a dorky play taken by some yearbook geek from E.T.H.S. circa 1978

Keeping it in the 323

From the time I decided to become an L.A. actor, my life has been one telecommunications nightmare after another, a hellish mix of pagers, cell phones, forwarded voice mail, forwarded home phone, dedicated fax lines. (And a P.O. Box, because yes, even Gapâ„¢-casual fake moms have stalkers.) This year, my descent into the Hades that is the Los Angeles telecom megalopoly accelaterated sharply when I started spending copious time at The BF's pad, a.k.a. my country house, a.k.a. that place dead-smack in the middle of The Silver Lake Cone of Silence.

Apparently, the wealthy folk whose million-dollar homes ring the Silver Lake Reservoir do not like tatty cell towers cluttering their views or mutating their DNA. Which is fine for them but sucks for me, since it takes my brilliant telecom workaround, forwarding my land line to the cell, and metaphorically drops it on its head from a 15-story window.

And even if I wanted to forward my phone to The BF's land line (which I most decidedly do not, a girl has her limits), I couldn't, since the BF, self-employed in the VFX world of film & TV, is doing the same forwarding between cell-and-home dance I am. Nothing like having your best corporate client ring your boyfriend's pants while they're on a bell.

Anyway, about a month ago, in utter frustration over shitty cell reception when there was some, missed calls when there weren't and a few really scary races to auditions, I gave up my main land line (the other is for the fax/DSL) and ordered Vonage.

Holy-fucking-crap! My number rings at home! My number rings at my country house! And it really is my number, my one and only number, because Vonage lets you port your old landline number to your new Vonage account!

There are a few small kinks I need to work out. Hauling the Vonage router around with me is gonna get old, I can see right now; I'm looking into the possibility of a second router or at least an additional power supply (the heaviest part of the gear). There's a little dropout now and then, thanks to less-than-perfect DSL.

But for anyone splitting their time between two places, especially two places with crummy cell reception, or fearsome of losing their actual, memorized phone number in a cross-town move or another area code split, Vonage might be just the ticket.

xxx c

Somewhere in the Night

Lesser noir is fun. Like all noir, it's generally filled with Famous Character Actors of the Golden Age: faces that started looking 35 when they were barely 20 and never looked too pretty to begin with, your Harry Morgans and Thelma Ritters as opposed to your Alan Ladds and Veronica Lakes. But with lesser noir, whatever didn't make it to the top of the pile along with The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity, you get to figure out what about it didn't work. Somewhere in the Night is chockablock with Famous Character Actors, Harry Morgan is so far down the list, he's not even credited, and sports direction by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and story adaptation by Lee Strasberg (er...come to think of it, that could be the problem right there).

But if you ask me, what doesn't quite work about it is that its stars are...um...shall we say, 'less than luminary'? John Hodiak has a reasonably long IMDb, but he also sports this farkakte moustache that says "dashing-but-dangerous leading man" less than it does "Rodolfo 'Chance is the fool's name for fate' Tonetti". And Nancy Guild ("Rhymes with 'wild!'"), while unquestionably hot, is...well, when you've done almost as many films as you have husbands, it's no wonder you're not a household name 50 years later.

The story, an amnesia plot with a pretty predictable twist, is good-ish noir, and whoever lit and styled the thing did a damned fine job, but the really absorbing, fun element of the film is (are?) the performances.

Not as much fun as the new Wallace & Gromit DVD release, of course (run! don't walk!), but not a bad way to pass a late-Friday night.

Bourbon optional. Well, in some households, anyway.

xxx c

OTHER FILM NOIR REVIEWED HERE: Out of the Past, with Robert Mitchum

Image via the loathsome Amazon.com whose so-called customer support makes the USPS look like Neiman-Marcus.

Transparency is key, except when you have spaghetti burn on your nose

rezshotYou eagle-eyed regulars who haven't just stumbled onto the c-trix (ouch!) by accident, fodder for future issues of our regular Friday feature, Searches, We Get Searchesâ„¢*, will notice the new decoration on the sidebar. Yes, it's the communicatrix, out from behind the grease pencil (see right), for all the world to see.

It's a fairly accurate photo; in the world of headshots, it's positively uncanny how much the damned thing looks like me. I've had casting directors clutch me and weep with joy when I show up looking pretty much exactly like my picture. Well, not really. But there have been comments that some of my brethren might do well to stay within 10 years and 100 lbs. of their current "look." Caveat actor...

I'm still sustaining a gravy-related accident from last week**, and am currently sporting what is quite possibly the worst haircut I've sustained in years, so it doesn't look exactly like me. But it's damned close on a good day, with the right lighting and some piece of perfectly-hued clothing near enough to bust out the blue in my eyes. (Did I mention I own a lot of navy blue and red? I do.)

Anyway, for a year, I fretted over the horrible message I'd be sending about superficiality and the inside not being the most important thing and women-shouldn't-be-objects blah blah blah.***

Then I remembered how I've made my living for the past 20 years, and uploaded the damned thing.

A hoor is a hoor is a hoor.

But at least I'm a transparent hoor.

xxx c

*Sorry, but the searches have been almost overwhelmingly of the blue variety lately, and I'm getting weary of finding the #1 URL bringing people to the blog is 'filthy horny XXX butt sex chicks' 'who used to be in advertising'. I mean, I'm a good sport, but even I have my limits.

**During an extremely Lucy moment last weekend, I burned the exact tip of my nose with boiling-hot spaghetti sauce, a.k.a. "red gravy", a.k.a. "The Red Lead". As The BF said, it looks like I have a target on the end of my nose. Or, as my ex-boyfriend who was over meeting with the BF and I over a new creative project said, "There was no way I was going to bring up that THING at the end of your nose."

***Also, freaks. Let's face it, there are a lot of you out there sporting serious wood over the thought of a CHICK BLOGGER. Even a pre-AARP model like myself, we're just BILFs to you.

Sleep eludes me

47564397_d84da66378It is Birthday Week here at my country house, a.k.a. The BF's pad. To celebrate Day 4 of it, I just sprinted downstairs with the trash while The BF snoozed away in bed, where all normal people who were up until 1am four nights in a row should be.

I see you people out there, with your fitness and your dog walking and I wonder: how do you do it? I mean, I used to do it; I did it for most of my life. If commercial work continues to dry up at this pace, I may well be doing it next year. But right now, I wonder how you do it? How do you get yourself in bed early enough to get yourself up at this hour? Who are all these people watching Letterman and Leno? How the hell do they drag their asses through a day of actual work on less than six hours of sleep? How do they get themselves to sleep, period?

The only way sleep happens for me anymore is if I run myself down to exhaustion. I've approached it with the past several days' activity, working on the weekends, running around to movies and events on school nights. And yet, I can't even nap. I mean, technically I have the time to nap, but when I lie down to take one, the three-year-old in me who doesn't want to miss any of the action takes over and bam!, I'm wide awake.

So the only thing to do is get up and work. (Don't kid yourself, blogging is work, just with really sucky pay and no health benefits.) Work yourself into tired. Write something really boring on your blog. Maybe find a Flickr photo to go with it. And occasionally, glance out the window at all the industrious people jogging and driving to jobs that actually do have health benefits and pretty soon (yawn) you start (yaaaaaawn) to...

Thanks, everyone. I think I can sleep now.

xxx
c

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Flickr photo by maggie3000

Quotation of the Day: Blogging Will Eat Itself Edition

"Comments can be a conversationalist's delight, a feast of reason andflow of soul, a modern day Algonquin Round Table hosted by yours truly, except that I'm no host at all, just a figurehead sitting at the table staring into space and ignoring what you say, never responding to your questions, having already emptied my thoughts on the topic into the post, my mind occupied by my next post, leaving you to speak amongst yourselves until you realize no one's chatting or listening, it's all so cold and sterile, and you shiver as so you push your chair back and edge your way out of the room hoping there's still time to get in on the happening conversation scene at 2Blowhards."

, Outer Life, in a blog entry about the comments on blog entries

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10 reasons why Elizabethtown may be the best movie of 2005

etown ctown

  1. Proves once and for all that an actual script is not necessary to secure major financing.
  2. Replaces ho-hum filmic "tricks" like plot and character development with highly illustrative musical montages.
  3. If you don't like the ending, you can wait around five minutes and there will be another one. Twice.
  4. Will rid your boyfriend of that pesky crush he's had on Kirsten Dunst.
  5. Will rid you of that pesky crush you've had on Legolas.
  6. Not enough quirky romantic comedies invoke the memory of Martin Luther King in the name of cheap emotional credibility.
  7. Will ensure that no one accidentally spends tourist dollars in hillbilly flyover states for years to come.
  8. Provides much-needed outlet for Susan Sarandon to show off her famed facility with broad physical comedy.
  9. Overproduced website provided much needed salary and health benefits for at least two code monkeys and a web designer.
  10. Provides the communicatrix with a much-needed outlet to vent her considerable spleen.

xxx c

Capote

We blather on about Truth-with-a-Capital-T fairly often here at communicatrix, partly because we spring from soil rich with mendacity and partly because we feel it's an important concept to stay in touch with if one is an artist. (Ahem.) Early on in Capote, the main character, played excellently by Philip Seymour Hoffman, makes a big flap about The Truth, specifically, how he always hews to it. Of course, the rest of the movie is about how he twists and turns it and even, in one harrowing jailhouse scene, abandons it altogether. Because of course, there are few artists who aren't ready and willing to abandon The Truth when it gets in the way of making art. Especially brilliant, megalomaniacal artists who are trying to fill an emotional black hole with fame and adoration.

As one of the executive producers on the film, Hoffman is at least partly responsible for getting so many of the details right. The cinematography is exquisite, bleak and stark in the killing fields of Kansas, rich and warm in Literary Party Town, a.k.a. Manhattan of the 1950s and '60s. The casting (with the curious exception, for me, anyway, of Clifton Collins Jr.) is top-notch, and the performances are so good you don't pay attention to them.*

It's not an especially moving movie, though, which I find odd given the subject matter (the film focuses on Capote's years researching and writing In Cold Blood, his non-fiction masterpiece about the Clutter family murders, a senseless and gruesome multiple homicide in West Kansas). I can't put my finger on why exactly, but I've a feeling it springs from being too close to the material: clearly, Hoffman was a guiding force behind this picture and doubtless he felt very connected to the material somehow.

Still, in an age where the measure of a great movie is rapidly becoming the number of times you don't look at your watch in the theater, Capote stands out. It's beautiful at the very least, and engrossing at its very best.

Intellectually, anyway.

xxx c

*This includes a smallish but wonderful performance by a very lovely and talented acquaintance of mine, Miss Bess Meyer, as Perry Smith's sister.

Image ©2005 Sony Pictures Classics

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Poker? Liquor? I don't even know her!

Having wrapped our photo shoot just hours ago, I can finally reveal the reason behind my crazed exhaustion of late: Introducing...THE MONSTER CHIP!

That's right, poker fans. Just in time for the holidays, poker chip drink coasters that card sharps and style hounds alike can groove on.

And these ain't no crappy, mouse-pad material sponge jobbies. They're big and fat and gorgeous, with inserts designed by yours truly, the communicatrix, to celebrate all that is biker, poker, and Vegas, baby, Vegas! Manufactured with High-Quality Composite Material through a Patented Process, The Monster Chip coasters have the look and heft of real poker chips...only big enough to hold your drink, dude. You think they look cool? Wait until you hold one in your hand.

They're the brainchild of one of my former Groundlings Sunday Company pals, Mark Thomas Miller, who oversaw every step of The Monster Chip creation, from inception to production, with plenty of yelling at wise ply-the-designer-with-food-and-high-end-booze tactics in between.

Anyway. They're beautiful, they're useful, and they're going to be sold at an eminently reasonable price point.

Hey...I'll drink to that!

xxx c

Searches, we get searchesâ„¢

searchesWherein we shamelessly mock others for our own amusement and to bump our hit count up of a Friday. communicating with the deceased (MSN)

Search turned up no results; are you sure you didn't mean "communicating with the diseased"?

free clip art of a snack room (MSN)

Man, that is gonna be one KICKASS monthly newsletter!

rhymes for sad (Google)

Gstaad? Hyderabad? Wait! Wait! Upanishad!

Poorly Designed Flyer Sample (Google Canada)

$#(@#&$ rude-ass Canadians! I suppose you could do better!

WHAT IS CLIMB FOLDERS DISEASE? (Ask Jeeves)

Whaddya wanna bet this guy wishes he'd paid more attention when the English teacher covered homonyms...

what a man searches for when looking for a wife (MSN)

Anything but the communicatrix...

garth margie's dark place (Google UK)

Dunno, but I'll bet it's quite different from Margie Garth's dark place.

mrs potato head funny pics (Google)

Sorry, we're fresh out. Could we interest you in a Mrs. Potato Head executed in the style of the Dutch masters?

Possible contractions for using false eyelashes? (Ask Jeeves)

Look, no more grammar questions today. My head hurts.

maltese whore david pics (AOL)

So many Flickr groups, so little time...

xxx c

Quotation of the Day: Vaguely Homesick Edition

chicago mashup "Chicago is one of those cities I've rarely heard anyone say a negative thing about. Sure, all big cities have their problems, but with Chicago the positives always seem to outweigh the bad. Chicago has it all , an established public transportation system, a downtown set on a grid, neighborhood parks, lakes and rivers, and that electric energy that only happens when thousands of people from every walk of life all live within a couple of square miles. Like Manhattan, Chicago simply feels alive when you walk through it. Yet unlike Manhattan (at least for me), Chicago feels unencumbered, and more spirited."

, Todd Dominey talking about (my) sweet home, Chicago, on his blog, What Do I Know?

Photo: GoogleMaps/Flickr mashup on the communicatrix's Flickr