Today’s movie-related question:
What is your favorite filmic twist ending?
Answer with a gif. pic.twitter.com/9DiqmIpIng— Joseph Mallozzi (@BaronDestructo) May 22, 2020
Came across this article today about Manitoba’s plans to restart their film & television industry:
Manitoba could be the first jurisdiction to reopen its film industry on June 1, but physical distancing on film sets could be challenging. https://t.co/Jwwe5LIkTn @CBCMarina
— CBC News (@CBCNews) May 22, 2020
My favorite part comes about halfway through the article: “Film productions are only allowed in Manitoba if cast, employees and the public can keep a separation of at least two metres from one another, except for brief exchanges, the province said.”
Sure. Good luck with that.
So, how’s everyone doing? What’s new and/or exciting? Akemi’s balcony garden is coming along nicely, and she’s giving the bread another go. I, meanwhile, am still trying to make sense of the stock indicators and just the stock market in general. I think a good rule to follow is to buy whatever stock the US government is pumping Monday morning (ie. Big Pharma companies announcing promising tests results high on excitement but low on details), then sell the stuck Monday afternoon before everyone else realizes they’ve been had.
I don’t know. Maybe I should just give up and focus on more productive pursuits. Like making interesting pasta shapes using whatever is lying around my kitchen:
Joe,
trying to follow the stockmarket on a micro day to day basis is a loser’s game. I can tell you from experience. You can’t beat just buying a few good quality stocks and holding on to them , and spend your time on more rewarding pursuits, like growing herbs, baking bread and writing scripts !
Is Akemi leaving her plants out overnight? I’m leaving a few of mine out tonight, and it’s not supposed to be frost, but I feel like I’m leaving my precious babies out there to the wilds! Of course, if they were at ground level and not the deck, the deer would have had them long gone already.
That pasta making doesn’t look that difficult. I was going say I might give it a try, but who am I kidding. I’m really kinda (super) lazy! Also, I do NOT like getting my hands messy. I can’t stand the sensation of stuff on my hands. I have to wash it off as soon as possible.
That would be so cool to have deer come up and eat your veges. We only have kangaroos that do that.
https://allmoviegifs.tumblr.com/post/63633551324
The Usual Suspects, final twist, was amazing, and I don’t think it is fair what the world has done to Kevin Spacey, he remains one of the best actors ever.
Anything else besides kitchen objects? Cufflinks?
Not much interesting happening here in Kingston. We were virus free for a few weeks, but then someone returned from travelling from somewhere and discovered they had picked it up. The Public Health Officer, though, said they did the right thing as soon as they suspected they had Covid-19: isolated, tested then quarantined. Luckily they had had few contacts after returning. Frustrating, but it gives me hope that people are taking it seriously and eventually, there may be hope of at the end of a very long tunnel. I’ll have try and avoid Covid news for a while. It’s the same old, same old all the time and life is already repetitive enough now.
I think you should learn Spanish and then teach me.
or maybe you already know it….
New and exciting? Not really. Still struggling with my sleep and meds schedules.
Manitoba might be smoking moldy weed. I can see it now: An action show where instead of the cops taking down a drug lord, they spend 40 minutes looking for him and at the end yell at him using harsh language.
I say 40 minutes since most shows now are 2/3 content and 1/3 ads. In my day, a show was 52 minutes of beat down action (like The Invaders) and 8 minutes ads that actually made sense; like “Only your hairdresser knows for sure.” “Bounty, the quicker picker upper.” “Pop pop fizz fizz oh what a relief it is.” Now it’s all a bunch of drugs with side effects that are so bad, the ad spends the whole script just on the side effects. Also, ads for cars that nobody but moguls can afford, and ridiculous insurance ads.
My point is that until the pandemic is over, it’s going to be hard coming up with ideas in which people can interact with each other more than talking on zoom or wearing masks. Manitoba is jumping the gun (or shark as the case may be) IMO. As a fan, though, it blows that we are not going to see new content for a while, unless it’s CGI heavy. Can you imagine filming Dark Matter or a new season of Stargate during the pandemic?
“Well, he won’t bite us because we may have the COVID and are just asymptomatic.” – Col. Shepard.
“Yeah, well this Wraith just flashed his eyes at me…and not because I’m better looking. He’s also a Goa’uld.” – Rodney.
I picked up some script writing software and am going to town. Some swallows living under our garage porch are about have some chicks leave the nest. And I finally have gotten a chance to paint on my model again.
A colleague of mine bought both Google and Amazon stocks when they were about 300 USD few years ago. Most of his friends said he’s crazy. He kept those stocks until now.
Manitoba, according to the article someone posted yesterday, is quarantining people for 14 days when they come in. They are creating a little island. The cast/crew would have to leave their families, so you’d have the problem you posted about the other day And for how long? Depends on the production. In the case of a tightly scheduled 10 hour t.v.series? Say, four months. That’s four months away from your significant other. OR, if they are with you, four months which they will spend in isolation, waiting for you to come home.
What did production companies do during the AIDS crisis? Remember how scary that was (and still is)? No one knew how it was transmitted, there were NO treatments and it was a long painful, horrible death. Surgeons were afraid to operate on HIV patients, and family members/nurses were afraid of interacting with them, too. I remember very well the fear that went around. I had a classmate die from AIDS. Remember when Princess Di hugged the AIDS patient? That was a great moment and she was a class act.
I loved the pasta shapes making video.
It reminds me how i used to find all sorts of fun everyday things in the house, in my youth, to use as molds for making candles.
Whats new & exciting??
Well, lets see here…
I’ve finally learned how to do that ventriloquism, throw your voice, trick I’d been dying to learn for ages.
My toilet bowl lid and I now have the funniest, liveliest, conversations
any human should be so privilleged to experience in their lifetime.
Albeit, seriously …
As you might imagine, living in the hardest hit zipcode in all of Greater Orlando
has been quite the difficult challenge.
A minimum 2x each week, Someone relays a new story of a local area neighbor having a heart attack
after contracting Covid19 and either dying or having a serious brush with death.
This last week it was Marika. 42 years old. A single mom, working in the hotel industry,
with an aspiring engineer son in middle school. Hotels were deemed essential here
so she did not qualify for unemployment or state assistance and did not have enough in savings
to afford the luxury of staying home to wait out the outbreak.
She died at home only 1 day after her test results came back positive.
According to my neighbor Barbara, who relayed the news to me,
Marika didn’t have any living relatives so no one knows what is to become of her son.
I did not know Marika very well but hearing her sons fate may soon be
in the hands of the state foster system broke my heart.
Vincent is in his 50’s. He lives close by.
I met him last year when his adorable, but slightly hyper, terrier managed to break leash
and come running over to make friends with me, near the entrance of a neighborhood 7-11 store.
Vincent said he was very surprised by that because Mitsy is usually extremely shy and cautious
with strangers when she first encounters them.
I made sure to say hi and stop to chat each time I saw them there after.
Vincent has thus so far survived his brush with Covid, but remains very ill.
To make matters worse, the Florida DOH, by order of the governor, has been technically doing
everything in its power to ensure the hotter zones data is not fully and properly updated.
Thus, way too many people in this area are now easing up on mask wearing and social distancing because they desperately want to believe the crisis has somehow magically disappeared.
And even as the number of folks becoming ill continues to increase in this local virus hotspot,
there is still little testing and isolating available in our immediate area and what we do have is not so easily accessible, or even do-able, for all who seek it. Still No police patrols enforcing social distancing, as they had in other areas of Fl, and only a very small handful of local retail businesses are very strongly encouraging daily mask wearing and making sure to have wipes or sanitizer consistently available at their check out registers.
And everyday I continue to wake up to this reality, quietly wishing I got stuck somewhere such as where John or Gforce lives where the case counts are not so bad and they do not live in fear a simple trip to the supermarket could kill them, I just try to be grateful ‘that I did wake up’ to make that wish.
Also very thankful that at least I did not get stuck somewhere like NY where it is a thousand times worse.
Having patience here is of course the key.
It may very well take a year to get this viral beast under control,
but I’m confident we will succeed.
In the meantime, it continues to be my hope
that more people find their humanity and realize their fellow human beings are not merely statistics
they see on a screen. “I” am not a statistic.
Hi. I’m Drea Crysel. Your fellow human being. I am at high risk.
I cannot afford the luxury of remaining in isolation 24/7 and ordering groceries online for the next 6-12 months or tele commuting from home for work. But Please, I don’t want to become seriously ill or die.
Wearing a mask or at least some type of nose/mouth covering and remaining a small handful of feet away from me in stores, restaurants, and at work shouldn’t be so impossible an ask to protect me from your potentially harmful germs.
Some have a legitimate physical health condition that prevents them from covering their nose and mouth with anything but for most who refuse to do so
it is simply because it is uncomfortable or inconvenient.
I wear a mask in stores and other indoor spaces because I care about and respect you as my fellow human being. You matter. Doing my small part to help ensure your continued existence
is not too much of an inconvenience.
I wish my continued existence and over all well being mattered to you.
On a hopeful note: Virologists worldwide are working on treatments and vaccines at breakneck speed and the researchers at University of Washington are currently investigating an antibody that may actually stop Covid 19 in its tracks. https://newsroom.uw.edu/resource/sars-neutralizing-antibody-suggests-covid-19-therapy
It matters Drea you’re continued existence. I’m so sorry for your part of the world. How old is the boy?
Thanks Kat. Yanni, just completed 7th grade, so i gather he is 13. Don’t know what your orphan and foster care system is like there but here in the states older kids tend to get frequently bounced around in group homes and often don’t end up n the best situations.
Green screen baby; I loved the inventiveness of Rosario Dawson’s Gemini Division, with her and Justin Hartley racing around CGI sets, it was such low-budget yet super creative fun, like how we world build as kids. I still have vivid memories of the dramas we created as kids with imaginary sets and wild improv. So many of our dolls miraculously survived being hurled off of fiery skyscrapers during the disaster movie craze.
“So, how’s everyone doing? What’s new and/or exciting?”
I had a very unproductive Sunday, I did nothing useful. I always feel anxious or a bit depressed if I’m not working or doing something useful.
I shouldn’t be down, Australia is coming out of COVID so of course is New Zealand, they’re pretty much crushed it. NZ kicked out the opposition leader and put a Trump supporter in his place, seriously? Talk about ‘the opposite of Jacinda Ardern. He admires the USA, if that isn’t the most anti-New Zealand thing to be.
If I’m honest I’m not feeling depressed, I’m feeling grief. When I grieve my chest hurts and its been hurting for a very long time. November to January with all the bush fires it was so hard not to scream inside, and there were times you looked at any unblemished natural beauty and cry. (Not around anyone who can see, of course). Then came the floods, then COVID. And it’s okay here. People are okay in the main. I’m starting to keep away from the news – because what you hear and read out of the States and around the world – is gutting. And there is just this blatant orange faced evil strutting around, carried on the shoulders of greed, avarice, self-absorption and power. I wish I could grab all the good people in the world and plonk them in a safe place – and protect them. Throw in also animals and plants as well. I suppose it’s why I’m homesick – I want to have my feet planted on the sanest soil I know. Aotearoa. Home.
Well, my friends say don’t ‘boil the ocean’. Pick an area you can change. That’s difficult now, it will be a while before I can do face to face training of youth. Those who are unemployed though I’m meeting up twice a week and we are testing the APIs of a product the company says it’s an Artificial Intelligence. (It’s not it’s just a bunch of machine learning algorithms). But it is interesting.
So I have to adapt. That’s how I make my money, after I train the kids companies pay to take them. What I’ve decided is to document in a book how I accelerate the kids training and into jobs. My style is not curricula based, it’s project based with multiple milestones, multiple little training modules and concrete play times which are called on by the moment, situation or challenge . I got asked last year to go set up the curricula in a NZ school, which I want to do. New Zealand is a lot more aggressive when it comes to innovation (like 3 x Unicorn companies to Australia’s one per year, this with 1/5th the population). Both NZ and Australia have a skills shortage – if I can document what I do I can scale (I hope). Being able to learn fast and get into the market with greater evidence of skills is a big need in NZ and Oz.
So I’m writing a book! How scary is that ha ha… Seriously, that’s bit scary.
Charlie the cat is well and he’s lost 1.6 Kilograms of weight. He’s now doing things he shouldn’t and couldn’t before like climbing roofs and fences. Our puggle Bacon is getting slower also, she’s got tumors but she’s still plodding along. So we just take it day by day with her. She likes dressing up too.
Hmm other than the Planet of the Apes the biggest shocker for me was the killing off of Blake Seven characters. That was a shocker.