I discussed my affection for the show Cowboy Bepop a few entries back (CLICK HERE for the Bebop Entry). I recently rewatched the theatrical Bebop film, but I have to say I think it lacks something the TV show has. Haven't quite put my finger on what element fell out...

Monday night I rented a DVD of the final 4 episodes of Bebop, because I always miss the two-part series closer. The first of the two parts was good, but it was the second part that had me riveted. So much happened in 23 minutes that I was stunned, especially the resolution given to the characters. This final "session" also had a really sad and beautiful image that I found incredibly striking. It's a super-slow motion shot of a dying person seen falling in profile, behind whom a flock of birds are seen flying. The following shot snaps back to real time as the body hits the ground with a sickening thud. Amazing work!

A funny contrast to this was a strange little documentary I rented called Plaster Caster, about the legendary groupie who has since the late 1960's been making plasters casts of the private parts of some very public figures: musicians. I first became aware of this story back in the 70s upon hearing the KISS song "Plaster Caster", but my youthful naïvete prevented me understanding exactly what the song was about. Anyway, the documentary is only so-so. The camera work wasn't very good and the editing was kind of clumsy. The titular woman is nothing like what you might expect of someone with this kind of extreme hobby. She's nervous and shy and easily flustered, and she treats the entire affair very clinically. In fact, her approach is so deadly un-erotic one wonders that her subjects ever rise to the occasion. Most peculiar.

The tempation here is to comment on how various rock lengends stand up to each other, but I think I'll just leave that well enough alone...

CLICK for the official website of the Plaster Caster movie

Posted by molyneaux at 12:27 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:01 AM PDT

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While poking through my weblinks today I rediscovered an piece about the work I did for the Cyber Studio design discs that was published on a website devoted to that software series. I was interviewed for the piece back in 2002 I believe. Funny to think I was doing 3D animation 15 years ago!

CLICK HERE to read the article on the Design Discs!

Speaking of web links, there's a very clever animation called "I Love Death" that Nick pointed out to me recently, set to the music of a band called Lodger. I was really taken by the absolute simplicity of the graphic design and the execution.

CLICK HERE for the "I Love Death" video (requires Shockwave Flash).*

*-This will be a real slow download if you're only on a dialup connection...


CLICK HERE to download PC Flash Player if you don't have it installed

or...

CLICK HERE to find Mac OS versions of the Flash player

Posted by molyneaux at 1:53 AM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:02 AM PDT

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The past few days have been pretty low key. I finished all my week's work late Thursday, so I gave myself a 3 day weekend to play around.

Friday the 19th
I got together with Christopher Moore today, and after showing me all the work he and his partner Russ had done on their house in the hills above San Pablo, we went to a Chinese buffet were we stuffed ourselves to the gills. Oof!

After slogging back through rush hour traffic I stopped at my usual coffeehouse and wrote a new Teaser for the script I am rewriting for the Starship Exeter guys. I wrote about 40 pages of a previous draft and realized it was going nowhere, so I'm starting over and learning from my mistakes...I hope! I'm pretty much just taking the broad elements from their original but changing the story fairly radically. Trying to write anything Star Treky without making it a yap-fest is tough, but I'm giving it my best shot!

Coffee and writing done for the night, I wandered over to an "Empty House Party" held by my friends Deb and Shana in their terrific new apt. just two blocks from my place. Heck, I can see their bedroom window from the topmost landing in MY building...but lucky them, I'm no Peeping Tom!

Saturday the 20th
This lazy Saturday began with my sleeping in, then strolling down to the once-a-week Farmers Market and coming home with yummy fresh oranges, samosas and nan bread. Oddball combination! A bit afterwards Christopher Gray called from Rhode Island to tell me that he and his fiancé Lee are coming for a visit starting next weekend. Hurray! Christopher is one of my all time favorite people. I met him my first full day in the Bay Area when I started at Psygnosis, so he's been part of my world here since day one. He moved back east last summer and I've missed him.

This was followed by an early dinner at Le Cheval, a Vietnamese restaurant in old downtown Oakland with Christopher (Moore) and his partner Russ. After a nice visit I returned home and worked on my online résumé, as I'm starting to do some serious job hunting.

Sunday the 21st
Naturally, I jinxed the weather by yesterday telling Christopher Gray how sunny and warm it's been for the past two weeks. Sure enough I open my big trap and this morning it's cloudy out. *sigh* Becky popped and suggested going for brunch at Cheers, a nice little restaurant out on Clement St. in S.F. where they serve you hot fresh baked bread as soon as you sit at your table. Mmmmm! Post brunch I suggested a drive down the coast. We stopped briefly at the pier in Pacifica to marvel over how green the water looked and watch as fishermen pulled crabs up from the sea. We then moved on to Half Moon Bay, where we walked a trail above the beach. A tad cool, but not cold enough to merit more than a sweatshirt. I love the sound of the surf... ahhhh!

Click HERE for a pic of me on the Pacifica Pier

Click HERE for a pic of me at Half Moon Bay

Posted by molyneaux at 6:28 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:04 AM PDT

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Another gorgeous day out! After visiting with neighbors Marc and Alyssa and their baby Madeline as they had lunch at a local taqueria, I struck out on the big weekend walk that I didn't get to last week. As with the Trestle Glen walk on the 28 Feb., I started off with no clue as to where I was going and just followed my nose.

This time I went up Grand Ave. and crossed a pedestrian walkway over I580... just because I'd never gone that way before. Then I zig-zagged up and down little residential streets until I hit upper Piedmont Ave. My right ankle sometimes gives me trouble and it was aching more than usual on the first part of my walk, so I figured it would maybe be a short one, but by the time I reached this point it had stopped bothering me so I decided to press on.

At lunch Alyssa had jokingly asking if I was going to the Columbarium, and as I was a block away, I decided to go onto the grounds and then walked into St. Mary's cemetary directly behind it. From there I got a new perspective down onto the small lake that I normally only see from a restaurant I go to very infrequently.

Being that I was this close to the end of College Ave. I decided to just head up there and to Rockridge. Just about the time I was toying with walking all the way to downtown Berkeley and then taking BART back, I heard my name called out. Deb -- a woman I know from the Piedmont Ave. coffeehouse I frequent -- was there with a friend of hers, and I ended up chatting with them for well on an hour.

Click here to read about Rockridge

By this point the afternoon was fast running out and I decided to go for dinner at the Cactus Taqueria. After stuffing myself to the gills on enchiladas and guacamole I decided to forego Berkeley and head home via a relatively direct route as the sun was on the horizon.

CLICK HERE FOR A MAP OF TODAY'S WALK

As with my previous walks I noticed lots of buildings and neighborhood details that I've missed in all my years of driving around. The smell of flowers was most everywhere as well, making it a delight for the nose as well as the eyes. I gpt home just after dark, listening to the water lapping the edge of Lake Merritt on my final few blocks

I checked my mileage as I made the map of this way, and it looks like I clocked in about just a hair under seven miles.

Posted by molyneaux at 8:31 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:05 AM PDT

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I was up waaaay to late last night working on the website for my online résumé (http://www.mpmolyneaux.com), designing the as-yet-unposted pages on my work in wireless gaming. As such, I didn't get up until 10 a.m. I met John and Becky and the three of us got lunch in Rockridge and then hung out at Piedmont Park. John sat in the shade and read while Becky and I walked the paths. Gorgeous weather, still. I wonder how long it will last.

Posted by molyneaux at 7:11 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:39 AM PDT

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Ah, the Bay Area; where the weather is predictable only in its unpredictability. Less than two weeks ago a rainstorm turned to hail mid-afternoon, and now for the past few days it's been sunny and warm. So warm, in fact, that I walked back from coffee this morning sans shirt!

Posted by molyneaux at 3:02 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:06 AM PDT

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Friend, performer, and man of bionic hips, John Sugden asked me if I would videotape the most recent play he was putting on with his students and the Woodside Priory in the hills south of Silicon Valley. Naturally, I said "$@#% no!" but he cried and begged and I finally acquiesced because of my sterling character, my generous nature, and the fact that I desperately need him for reshoots for my short film Flight Control.

Anyway, I braved sluggish traffic and got to the school just in time to tape show, which I recorded on both my digital video camera and one John had borrowed, operated by a student. After the show was over, I set the second camera up to record the next performance from one locked off position. My plan is to edit together these three recordings and make a DVD John can copy for the kids.

The play they performed was "The Mouse That Roared" (subtitle "The Wrath of Grapes"), based on the 1955 novel by Leonard Wibberley (and made into a mediocre 1959 film with Peter Sellers).

(The story concerns a microscopic country called Grand Fenwick, which is going bankrupt because a Californian winery makes a cheap knock-off of their only export. When their protests to the U.S. go unanswered, they decide to declare war, assuming the Americans will be victorious and do a "Marshall Plan" on Grand Fenwick, thus reviving their economy. But, when their intentionally futile invasion force of men with 14th century costume and longbows arrives in of New York City, they quite by accident capture a government scientist who has created the most powerful explosive in the world: a cigarette pack sized "Q Bomb" that will level 2000 square miles if detonated. Suddenly, Grand Fenwick is the super-est of superpowers, and the question becomes what to do now that they have defeated the United States!)

The play was pretty well done for kids in middle and high school. John's staging was fun, and the cast was huge (there were 44 students in various parts), as were some of his alterations to the script to make it more timely. The material is certainly dated, but as I was watching I could see how one could update it. Makes me wonder if I should look into the rights...hmmm...

Posted by molyneaux at 10:33 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:07 AM PDT

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In my new efforts to get out and about more, and to explore my neighborhood of the past nearly seven years, on the 28th of February I decided to go out for brunch and then just start walking. My thought was to go up Trestle Glen, a very nice road with very expensive houses more or less due east of my humble abode at Lake Merritt. I've driven up and down the road a few times and always thought it was beautiful, and decided it would be a prime candidate to see on foot where I could take in all the homes and yards and stop and smell the roses (or whatever flowers happened to be on the way). I zigzagged off onto side streets at various points and discovered cute little bungalows, amazing homes, and one really big beautiful but sadly under-maintained apartment building.

My original thought was to go until I was tired, as Trestle Glen is mostly a gradual uphill that gets to San Francisco steepness near its finish. But, the end was only about two miles, so not as far as I'd thought. Being that I'd gone to the highest point of the walk I planned, I decided I'd take a longer route home, down Park Blvd. and nearby streets, and then around the far side of Lake Merritt. After I got home I mapped the walk on Mapquest and realized I'd gone about seven miles without feeling at all worn out. This emboldens me to take even longer walks in upcoming weeks!

CLICK HERE for a map of today's walk!

Posted by molyneaux at 8:41 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:25 AM PDT

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One thing I find irritating about this Blog builder is that it doesn't let you make post-dated entries. If I don't write an entry the day something occurs, I can never actually set it for that date. Grrrr...

Anyway, I'm going to try to fill in a few things that happened on dates over the past week-plus.

I met Becky in Berkeley (there's a song there) to get dinner and a movie. After a lovely meal and good wine at a nice Italian bistro, we went to see a film that was the official Norwegian entry for the 2003 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film: Kitchen Stories.

I had to think about this movie for a while before writing about it. It was a well made picture and I was always interested in where it was going and in seeing how the situation would resolve itself. It was funny in a warm smile rather than a laugh out loud sort of way. But in retrospect the film felt a little...slight. Even as I revisit this entry later, I still don't have a lot to say. I enjoyed it, but I don't think back on it at all.

Posted by molyneaux at 8:13 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:09 AM PDT

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I'm a big believer in creative work within limitations, both external and self-imposed. I don't see boundaries as walls that stop you, but as purchases that allow you to climb within a structure. I embrace Orson Welles' statement that "Art without limits is its own worst enemy."

That's one of the reasons I like the TV series Cowboy Bebop. It is a show that works within a framework of self-imposed limitations, but is unusual because a key part of this structure is informed by musical forms rather than traditional narrative ones. While "Bebop" is the name of the vessel the leads travel in, it's much more than that. The improvisational form of jazz relates to both the free-form nature of the series (stories do not follow a rigid formula) and to the lives of the characters, who are making it up as they go along but riffing on their individual themes. The musical component is not thematic only, for music plays a big part in the series, from the jazzy big band title sequence through the original compositions that appear throughout the "sessions" (episodes). Even the session names are mostly song titles ("Honky Tonk Women", "Sympathy for the Devil", "Bohemian Rhapsody").

Even the series title is more thematic than literal. There are not Cowboys per se, rather Cowboy is the lifestyle of individuals struggling to make a living out on the frontier. The show follows three none-too-lucky bounty hunters, a youthful hacker and a "data dog" on various adventures throughout the solar system. Each character has a past that is gradually revealed over the course of the series' 26 episodes (and one feature film), and the whole thing has a definite beginning and ending. It's beautifully designed, spare on dialogue, and frequently relies on cinematography to convey emotions and story points. It's also got one of the hottest title sequences I've ever seen, and it has some relatively decent science to its science fiction (ships have centrifuges to generate artifical gravity, ships without fuel coast to their destinations, etc.). All pluses in my book!

The most surprising thing about my liking this show is that it's Japanese animation, aka animé, a genre I've never cared for both in look or content. But Bebop doesn't often traffic in those animé conventions that put me off, so I've become quite taken with it. I know it's not likely to be everyone's cup of saké, but it's surely one of mine.

Click here for a good Bebop website.

Posted by molyneaux at 1:02 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 12:29 AM PDT

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