Okay, so ’The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)’ is doing really well at the old Albuquerque Little Theater. Come see the show that Barry Gaines of the Albuquerque Journal said was "so awesome that I literally pooped in my pants and had to change them". Okay, so he didn’t actually say that, but his review was very nice. You can read it in the March ninth edition of the Journal.

And don’t forget to mention the MYSPACE DEAL when making reservations! This will allow you to get ten dollar tickets instead of the normal twenty-two bucks you’d have to lay down for this hilarity. (505) 242-4750 is the number to call.

This show includes humping puppets, pink tights, and my Daniel Day Lewis impression! So don’t freakin’ miss it!

Okay, so everything is finally back to 'normal'.

All I'm going to say right now about Halloween this year is that Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights = AWESOME. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. It combines the best of childhood Halloween good times and adult Halloween party times.

The wedding and honeymoon are over and behind us and Mandy and I have settled back into normal life together. It's pretty awesome in the new house, we have plenty of room, we just bought an elliptical (exercise equipment), we put up our Christmas tree and lights and I've been sick with a cold and a stupid painful wisdom tooth. In the midst of all that, Feels Like Sunday has been playing some sweet shows lately and we're pushing our new record, check out a couple of the new tracks on our myspace and email me if you want a copy of the record. It's a steal at ten bucks.

Hamlet is DONE. And when in say 'done', I don't mean the ruff cut, I don't mean that I still have some tweaking to do, I mean finished. Credits, music, sound, picture. They are all as good as I can make them with my present skill and equipment. Nothing more to be done; but I must say, this isn't a Lucas abandonment of the film. I didn't just say 'fuck it' and decide it was finished. We kept tweaking right up until the night before we went down to the theater to preview it; and the flick is pretty damn funny, at least Jason (the director) and I think it is. There were a couple of parts that lagged right up to the eleventh hour, but with some last minute sound and music, it all turned out funny. I'm pretty damn proud of this little movie, and for our first feature film, it turned out totally sweet.

Hamlet The Vampire Slayer has its world premiere at The Guild Cinema on December 8 and 9 at 10:30PM. Admission is only $7.00. Check it out or we're not friends anymore. And if you can't make it but still want to be friends, a DVD will be forthcoming (at some point, no promises).

Other than that, I'm just threading projectors for a living. Ugh. And playing a lot of ping pong. Yeah!

Heyo!

Thought I'd do a little dance in the form of a blog because my internet access is about to become more limited until I get it hooked up at the new house. Here's what's going on:

I quit my job. Today, September 11 is my last day. Everything's all wrapped up but I'm stickin around for some cake (possibly for a send off to me, but mostly because it's my boss' birthday today. Imagine that, the E.D. of the ACLU's birthday is September 11. Lame ass Bush supporters, go nuts.)

So, if anyone has any employment opportunities for me, let me know. I have no idea what I'm going to do now, but I needed a change and, for monetary reasons, need to find something new pretty damn quick.

I've started writing a new screenplay. It's going to be feature length and I'm probably going to be collaborating with my brother on it over the next few months and get it produced this winter. I'm really excited about this because I don't do a lot of writing, but I feel like I've got some pretty sweet ideas for this story.

Hamlet The Vampire Slayer is all but done. I worked about 15 hours on it this weekend after getting notes on my cut from Jason and Ryan. I cut it down to a slim but fast 85min, and now all I have to do is add some sound effects and music and I think that Jason (the director) is going to be happy with it. Anyone involved with this flick who wants to see it before the premiere in October (probably) can get in touch with me and come over and watch it. Any time is fine with me, I ain't got no job.

I'm moving. Mandy and I need more space. Our apartment is sweet, but too small. Most of my stuff is in storage, but now we have a two bedroom with two baths and a two car garage. So that means that I'm finally going to get to be in the same house with my ping pong table (although the back yard isn't big enough for the trampoline). So now you can get in touch with me about Hamlet and ping pong! I'll take any challengers because I dust Mandy pretty easily. It's not because I'm good, it's because she doesn't try.

There is a huge spider in our new house. I'm talking like, a big, brown motherfucker that could probably eat our dog. Mandy wants me to call some pest control that will come and remove it and set it loose in the wild. I'll get on that as soon as I finish this blog.

We bought 15 bottles of cheap champagne yesterday for the wedding. I like having that much hooch around, it makes me feel like if I have a psychotic break from reality, it'll be easy to drown my craziness with bubbly liquid and then break bottles.

I'm going to the fair tomorrow. There I will eat a deep fried candy bar and think about what will happen next.

This week Weber (one of the guitarists in my band [for anyone who lives in a cave]) broke his elbow. We had a show scheduled on Friday night and we thought he might not be able to play. But the show was a 'Pop Tribute Night' with a dozen bands each playing only three pop covers, so Weber decided to tough it out (thank god) and we played Huey Lewis and the News' 'Power of Love', Inxs' 'Devil Inside' and Michael Jackson's 'Beat It'. The MJ song, due largely to a rippin' Van Halen style solo from Web, predictably brought the house down.

And it was a good thing that we played, too; because if we didn't, we couldn't have impressed my new best friend, Billy Zane. That's correct; I (and pretty much everyone else who was at the Launchpad on Friday night) met either Mr. Billy Zane, SNL's Rachel Dratch, or a combination of the two. And while I don't have much love for Mrs. Dratch, in my opinion her appearances on 30 Rock are the weakest parts of that show, I freakin' love Billy Zane. We're talking about the guy who shot at Leo on the Titanic, the guy Owen Wilson told Zoolander to 'listen to' because he's a 'cool dude', the demon who was after Christ's blood in that Tales from the Crypt movie, and (who could forget) the hero on horseback in the purple tights from 'The Phantom'? And I tell you what, Mr. Zane IS a cool dude.

Then, on Saturday morning, it was off to Denver. We left the dog with Mandy's grandma, packed up our i-pods and hit the road.  On the way, we stopped in Raton and Mandy bought a cool flavored water in a half plastic bottle with an aluminum can top. The container was super cool, but the beverage tasted like cough syrup mixed with shit.

When we got to Denver we met up with Mandy's sister and her roommate and my brother, who is in film school. My brother and I discussed the possibility of shooting a film over his Winter Holiday, which I am totally excited about. Then we watched a short film that one of my brother's friends made. It was shot on 8mm film and began with Lloyd Kaufman getting his head squished by a chick in knee high leather boots; and it only got better from there.

Saturday night we didn't do much, just had drinks and played card games, but on Sunday we headed downtown to the art museum, which is home to Andy Warhol's Soup Can collection and (for some odd reason) the bat that Lou Gehrig hit 4 home runs in a single game with; as well as tons of other awesome art. Mandy and I had a good ol' time making fun of silly art and people and looking in awe at the good art. My friend Maria came to hang out with us and we colored and cut out paper horses and sent personalized post cards to ourselves. In a 'reflections' book in the 'Asian Art' exhibit I wrote 'Samurais are cooler than Ninjas' and my brother drew a flip book about poop.

After that, we headed to Casa Bonita, which turned out to be everything that I ever thought it would be! If you don't know about Casa Bonita, it's billed as 'the world's most exciting restaurant', and it gained even more recognition when South Park did an episode about it. The restaurant is home to cliff divers, wandering mariachis, people in gorilla suits, an arcade, horrible food, puppet shows, and the infamous 'Black Bart's Hide Out'. A fine time was had by all.

On Monday we ate breakfast at one of Denver's 10,000 local dinners. We sat out on the patio and it was quaint, the people were friendly, and the atmosphere was peaceful. But then things took a turn for the worse. It took 45 minutes to get our food; and when I finally got my (delicious) biscuits and gravy a swarm of bees descended on us and we had to shovel our food into our bellies and run for our lives, which was lame.

Then we went to the huge 'Virgin Records' in the 16^th street mall. I got a bunch of CDs for 8-10 bucks apiece, which was sweet. My picks included a Tom Waits album, some Van Halen, and a Flight of the Concords album that Mandy found for 4 dollars. I almost bought the soundtrack to the Evil Dead musical, but it was $20 and I figured I could find it for cheap on the internet.

Then we headed home. I chugged two red bulls and sang along to the whole first Weezer album, then we listened to a Norm MacDonald CD that was hilarious. When we got home Mandy and I played a Karma Sutra game that she got at her bridal shower. The game is awesome, it basically draws out the whole process of doin' the nasty so that guys like me don't throw a chub in 30 seconds and fall asleep sticky and ashamed. Maybe I shouldn't have written about that, but what the hell, it was the perfect ending to a totally sweet weekend. 

It just occurred to me that babies are idiots. I have only recently started to think about the possibility of having children of my own, and the concept of having to teach someone how to speak and count and look both ways before crossing the street is completely foreign to me. Children don't know anything. It seems like they learn quickly enough, but they start out with a completely blank canvass.

How am I not going to exploit that? As soon as ol' SB Jr. pops out of my wife's vagina, I know that I will immediately start filling his head with misinformation, and there's nothing I can do about it. I love messing with people, especially children.  I imagine all of this will go well until the first lie is discovered, but I don't anticipate that will happen until the kid is at least 4 years old, at which point I will confess all of my sins to him and then take him to Casa Bonita to make it up to him.

Why? You may ask. Why would I torture my child this way? The answer is quite simple really. I believe that if someone is going to look like a person, they'd better act like one. If children are going to continue to be born with toes and fingers and eyes that open and close, then they should be able to use the brain that is in their head. Learn it up, Sonny! There'll be no free ride here! If children were born all undeveloped and the whatnot, like how plants grow, maybe I'd leave them alone. If kids came out of the womb with four nubs and eyelids that refused to open, I'd cut them some slack. And really, that seems the better way anyway. Our most prominent physical tool is our brain, so why have fingers before we are able to properly manipulate them? Why have legs before we can comprehend the concept of walking? Those little digits are just creepy.

Plus, it would give new parents one more thing to be excited about as the child's body developed. 'Oh, look, Honey, Jr.'s got his first tooth and his right thumb today! Take a picture!'

I see little children running around on legs that they can't even control and I want them to fall. I want them to rip their little overalls. You're too little to be running around like that, child, now fall down! Yes!

If you haven't read the end of the last book and don't want anything spoiled, quit reading now!

First of all, don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of Harry Potter and I believe that 'The Deathly Hallows' is the cap to a masterpiece of modern literature; but I am sorry to say, I'm a little bit disappointed. I really think that the end of the final Harry Potter book has exhibited some of the largest flaws in the entire series. It's as if Mrs. Rowling had planned this ending from the get-go (which she has said many times that she had) but never made a single change to the climax as the rest of her story became the complex and exciting masterwork that it is.

My first problem with the last hundred pages of 'Deathly Hallows' is the way all loose ends were tied up with three major plot revealing passages. One of the things that made the HP series so enchanting was the ways in which J.K Rowling was able to reveal her gigantic world to us. It always seemed as though there was an entire wizarding world out there in her books, but everything that we were to learn about that world was filtered through the eyes of 'The Boy Who Lived'. We learned spells and met new faces and heard tales from long ago right along with Harry. Hardly a passage occurs in the books that does not concern him and is not explained from his point of view, and for most of the series, that was what kept us interested and what left so many things unexplained until we needed to know them.

In the last book, however, it seems as though Rowling wanted to keep several things from her readers (and her protagonist) until the very last moment, but had no realistic way of actually revealing them to us (and him) in the end. Consequently, the last hundred pages are bogged down with the explanation of all the mysteries that had yet to reveal themselves, and not in a realistic or exciting way as in the other books.

First, Harry's look into Snape's final thoughts. Why would Snape give Harry all of those memories of Lilly other than to help the reader understand why he was so cruel and why Dumbledore trusted him so much? Then, a deceased Dumbledore finds Harry in limbo and proceeds to tie up all loose ends between the two of them. This just seems like an easy fix to the complicated problems that arise when we find that we are never able to talk to someone who has left this life; and all Mrs. Rowling has to say in defense of this encounter is, "Of course, it's all in your head, but does that make it any less real?"

Finally, as Harry and Voldemort circle each other, ready for the final battle, Harry goes ahead and tells the Big V exactly what's on his mind… for like 3 pages. Why did all of the detail about the true master of the Elder Wand have to be spelled out like this?

I must say that I felt a bit cheated and a little talked down to as the book came to a close. It's as if Mrs. Rowling, for the first time in the series, felt that she needed to pander to the younger and more impressionable of her readers. After a novel filled with more danger, reality, foul language and violence than any of the other installments, she wrapped it up in a nice little package so the kids could sleep easy knowing that all was well with the wizards.

And that brings me to my second problem with the series conclusion. I have always been a proponent of the literary value of these books. These are the books that taught a generation of kids who normally have time for nothing but video games and i-pods how to use their imaginations again; and Harry Potter did it without talking down to them, without any flashes or bells and whistles. At the heart of the story, there is just a boy that any of us could relate to, thrust into situations that were not what he would have wanted or expected, and how he learned the strength to endure in a world where good and evil were not clearly distinguished and life and death were not handed out based on who was worthy and who was not.

These books created a world, a mythos, something that people could come together and discuss at length. Harry Potter lived in a world that, while fantastic and filled with magic, was very real in the way people behaved and the way that events unfolded. This is no children's tale, but it always stayed very accessible to younger readers.

One of Mrs. Rowling's greatest achievements, in my opinion, was the way she was able to make her character's feelings something that her readers could relate to. Anyone who has ever experienced the death of a loved one, been manipulated by an authority figure or misunderstood by a close friend, felt they had to defy authority for the greater good or that they were being unfairly sheltered by those around them could relate to the trials of Harry Potter. But in the conclusion of the series, Mrs. Rowling seems to suggest that after living in a real and hurtful world for seven years, Harry was able to kill the villain and live happily ever after.

It occurred to me when I finished the book that the epilogue was completely unnecessary. The final chapter made it seem as though Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione never experienced another troubled day in the rest of their lives. This is a pleasant thought that I would have felt was in their future without this final chapter, but instead I was lampooned with a loving description of the four heroes of the tale putting their appropriately named children on the good old Hogwarts Express, sending them out into the world that was nearly single handedly made a safe place by the titular character. It's as if the message of the books was suddenly changed to, "Okay, kids, just fight hard and persevere and eventually you'll beat all the evil in the world and get to marry your childhood sweetheart and your magical scar won't hurt anymore!" This is a sentiment that is not echoed in any other place in the entire story. Why tack it on at the end? Of course we know that the world is going to be a better place after Voldemort's demise, but is it going to be perfect? Apparently so. 'All was well.'

So I think that evolution should take care of knuckle hair on humans. I can't remember the last time I said to myself, "Man, it is cold out here! I sure am glad I have these 3 little hairs on my upper knuckle, if I didn't have these babies, the tops of my fingers would be screwed in this coldness."

And while we're at it, I think it would be fun if the intestines could extend 8 to 12 inches out of people's asses, forming a retractable 'tail asshole' with the sphincter at the end. It would be like an 8 inch hose that would make life way easier. Men could poop standing up, it would always be easier to wipe being as you could just let it hang into the toilet when you flushed (no more front-to-back for the ladies), and anal sex would see a whole new realm of possibilities open up (positions, etc).

And I came up with a new diet. It's called 'Fitness for Booze'. If you're like me, and you like to have a little drinky-poo every now and then, but you hate to exercise, then this diet is for you! It's a self imposed reward program wherein one rewards him/herself with one shot/drink/beer/soda for every half hour of exercise. Also, the activity that you complete is redeemable at any time! It doesn't have to be the same night. So, if you, say, jog for a half an hour and then do crunches and jumping-jacks for an hour, you can have three beverages of your choice that night or continue to work out at the same pace for the rest of the week and get totally wasted on Saturday. Just remember to eat a Baconator from Wendy's before you go out so you have something in your stomach to throw up!

~SB~