LONELYPOND PRESENTS

Ha…that amused me. Enjoying the Olympics, although the curling tournament seems to take as long as the entire Winter Games (did you know a good set of curling rocks costs $1500 (acc. to Wikipedia) and there’s Curling for the Wii). But it’s fun to watch. Little Brother #2 only watches curling and hockey. The last Olympics he claims to have developed a crush on the Japanese curling team; I have yet to inquire about this year’s favorite.

Quick summary of stuff:

Really want to see Judy Dench as Titania in Midsummer. Once again, Sarah Hemming envy strikes. Midsummer is one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays and I’m developing a movie related project (or two).

There’s a new Stirfry Neon chapter. Current adventure: The Lady Lost or What Was I Thinking When I Turned That Corner.

Blink Kitty Love has been dormant for a month while I steep and work on tigers — Happy Year of the Tiger. Almost done with my tiger meditation period, including an excellent animation. Look for it here or the Twitter announcement (aka follow me @lonelypond).

I am considering some Blink Kitty Love changes, taking things a bit more experimental and exploring the world around the band…or just exploring the world and having fun with my unique animation style and humor. I’m much better at contained stories than an ongoing soap opera kind of thing and the best Blink Kitty Loves are when I’m inspired to comment/riff on something happening now. So I’m going to take that thought and see where it goes. I had a lot of fun putting in some hard work on my Year of The Tiger animation and I think it’s the best I’ve done yet. So I’ve been considering what I could do if I put the work into a longer story. The Olympics has me thinking: what’s my gold medal event.

The Lonely Pond annual meeting surprised me — it always does, but this year it wasn’t in the good way. I’ve been mulling over what happened for a couple of months now. We stalled right at the beginning with a restructuring discussion and didn’t get to my grand plans. The rest of Team Lonely Pond wants to be involved and doesn’t want to give up the company or the name, but they don’t want to commit the energy to take us to the level I wanted to go for reinventing Shakespeare on the web. So we’ve put the company on hold and I have consultants available. So I’m scaling back to one project at a time and dealing with the realization that I can do what I want, but I have to be certain that I have the enthusiasm to carry it through by myself. Which means I’m revisiting some earlier ideas that I once loved and are sitting on a shelf for no real reason at all.

Pop Culture Reviews + News:

I like Lady GaGa — I’ve been wandering around singing Paparazzi. It’s Little Brother #2’s fault; his taste in music sometimes surprises me. Caught Justin Bieber’s cover “Love Me” of The Cardigan’s LoveFool and it’s simply ludicrous. I hate when there’s an American Idol style remake of song that rolls on Radio FlashCatFlash (yes, I mean you Adam Lambert’s Mad World. Alison Iraheta’s Someone To Watch Over Me seems to be the only one that doesn’t cause me to twitch but that’s a song with multiple covers already and might be my weakness for brunettes showing.)

The Web Files is branching out with their new Buzz edition, covering events + news around the wonderful world of web series. Host Kristyn Burtt has great energy always, but especially when she’s prowling an event with a microphone, capturing the spark of the moment.

Smallville: took a break from the Olympics to catch the Wonder Twins episode. Not bad. I think we might be back on Team Smallville, although their color and emotional palette remains a bit dark for me.

My robot loving buddy @spacehospital is showing episodes from their first season on KoldCast TV. It’s insane fun with puppets, models and special effects.

Starstruck — bah, slow, boring, a really poorly paced + badly written version of It Happened One Night where Sterling Knight plays the spoiled heiress part. Well acted but characters not believable. And let’s be honest: Brandon Mychal Smith should have played the lead in a better written movie. He had one musical number and he brought enough energy to it for the whole movie. Disney once again loses points for their lack of showcasing multiracial actors.

Haven’t seen The Lightning Thief because Gayle wants to finish the book first. Oy. Love the How To Train Your Dragon Olympic themed commercials.

OK, curling calls. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

Wishing you health, happiness and prosperity in this Year of The Metal Tiger.

Aside from that, in an Olympic mood — waiting for curling + snowboarding while watching women’s hockey. Blink Kitty Love has a new post up about their favorite Canadian musicians + Winter Olympic sports.

Getting through Chuck, Season 2 in between sports and LOVING IT. GuestStar-A-Palooza — so far, I think my favorite is Dominic Monaghan in Chuck vs. The Third Dimension — I have never seen Lost so this is just a straight forward nod to good comedy. Gayle was surprised to be reminded that he was one of the hobbits.

Missing working on my new Twitter fiction, The Lady Lost or Turning That Corner Wasn’t The Brightest Idea I Ever Had, but too many other things going on and I really want to get back to it when I can get into a good writing zone.

Loved Phonogram: The Singles Club #7 (5 page preview or review) and am mulling over some art, interpretation and communication thoughts which might steep into something worth sharing. I am currently at the fulcrum of art is an individual understanding/effort/experience but communication makes us a community. And sometimes, you just howl. There will be a Phonogram: Singles Club book with all seven issues collected; it’s worth the read.

But right now, Olympics….I’ll catch up with FT links sometime. Snow delayed mail delivery so there’s a pile to go through. Which is always kind of fun.

Good night, happy New Year and thanks for stopping by.

3 A.M. Antidote Haiku:

Wrote anxiety
haiku so true it panicked
This poem leans laughward

Haiku (Untitled):

Edge of Love Lashing
Curling In Cutting Away
Never Now Always

AAll right, so I’m miserable at actually taking time off; what I really need is a vacation in a city with museums, theatres + public transportation. I did get to catch up on a few web series while stressing about relaxing though.

My Movies You May Have Missed (@MYMHM) buddies reviewed one of my favorite movies to watch and laugh at: Noises Off.

Congratulations to @TheWebFiles for their Clicker Award Win as “Best Web Original Non Fiction Show” and to @SPWrite for her series Life With Kat & McKay qualifying as a Finalist in the “Best Web Original Comedy” category.

Web find: BJ Fletcher, Private Eye — very funny, very gay, very Canadian detective series — one of the characters is named Georgia Drew so that might tell you how much fun creator Regan Latimer has with all your favorite detective cliches/memories while bringing something very fresh + funny to the web series world. Plus, I finally get to work a long lost Lois Lane reference into a blog entry since George, the loyal sidekick, is going to journalism school to be an investigative journalist like LL. Great cast, great fun, watch it.

This was going to continue into a discussion of the differences between the YouTube, web series and indie film world from my experiences with each, but I’m saving that for another day when it’s not 1:33 a.m. Good night all.

Greetings, o most loyal and amazing blog visitors. Happy 2010. I’m going to give you a fairly thorough round up as I would really like to be taking a couple of weeks for some R + R while it’s cold and all my baser instincts are saying, “Stay under the covers, it’s warm.” I am not particularly good at the R + R things so I may be forced to resort to things like read all the Harry Potter books, read all the Sarah Caudwell books, read all the Terry Pratchett Watch themed books, read my MFK Fisher + Elizabeth David, dig out my Raymond Chandler and Peter Cheyney, read through the pile of newspapers, watch all the movies I’ve borrowed from friends (Tristram Shandy, Bubba Ho-Tep, Steam Boy), watch the movies I watch every year and skipped in ‘09 (the original 3 American Pies, Tomb Raider, Bring It On, The Bandwagon, Strictly Ballroom, etc.)

So to tide you over, there’s the new Blink Kitty Love, all the old Blink Kitty Love, the band website and this:

Lunch With Tristram Stuart who feeds people from discarded food to highlight wastage.

Article about really cool jazz pianists CD collections I can’t afford.

The FT’s this year in culture quiz…

Stefan Stern’s suggestions for movies to watch and pick up business tips from this season (for the rest of you who don’t do R + R).

Very cool story about a native Gypsy theatre experiment/troupe in Spain. I am always amazed by the effect theatre can have on both audience and performers.

Umberto Eco’s latest looks to land on a list of fun reads.

Hoping to catch Nine at the local cinema…doesn’t look like Orson Welles and Me or The Station will make an appearance here; bumped Moon to the top of the Netflix queue and may soon give in to the buy Star Trek and/or Wizards of Waverly Place The Movie DVD urge…also on that list, the Cary Grant double feature — The Bachelor and The Bobby Soxer and Walk, Don’t Run, which I just saw on TCM and laughed at the frequently priceless moments.

TV: Zeke and Luther’s I, Skatebot episode looks cool, a bit worried about Wizards vs. Werewolves (Wizards of Waverly Place) — perhaps too soon after Wizards vs. Vampires and what will be left for Max, Wizards vs. really grumpy mythological creatures left out of the Twilight series — not really watching much on Nick at the moment except for late night What I Like About You, Top Gear kicks off a new season soon (Gayle very excited), I still miss Warehouse 13 and I really need to spend more time reading.

Merchant of Venice (#merven) planning not kicking into gear — but it’s early yet. Trying to get an artist for the logo, Gayle’s scheduling shows, I’ve decided to have people audition with their cool electronic gear (cell phones, laptops, etc.) Need to read through the play again; concerned about the Bassiano/Antonio axis –and no, I don’t mean in the gay way, just in the everybody’s always so concerned about Portia and Shylock, but hey without these two, I’ve got two right side wheels on a vehicle that needs two on the left as well.

The Lonely Pond Productions, Inc. annual meeting went in unexpected directions. But Google Wave worked well when the snow prevented travel. I need to put together scripts for a short live action adaptation and a few animations. And mull over movie related issues some more.

And Sarah Hemming’s “Twelfth Night” review left me grumping about people who weight down comedies with misery so I have been considering exactly how tragic the characters of Malvolvio, Sir Andrew, Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, et al are. And her Rope review makes the show sound like an excellent experience to have in a theatre.

Speaking of Hitchcock, there was a Vanity Fair photospread (thanks @njtam, a fellow Hitchcock fan) of modern stars in classic Hitchcock scenes…the women do better than the men, who seem to suffer from not being Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart.

My current favorite breakfast is oatmeal with hot apple cider for a drink, my current most likely to be worn shirt is this one (it amuses Gayle) and I heard this amazingly goofy song at one of our favorite restaurants that Google has been no help with finding the title of…the lyrics as we can remember go something like this: “you’re good cause you don’t do things like (or that) you should…you’re cool cause (cuz?) you don’t do things by the book.” Sounded like a guy singing, it was a Spanish-Peruvian restaurant where music usually has spanish lyrics, it was chanty, and if you drop the title/artist in the comments, there will be a reward.

And I think that gets you up to date — and should tide you over for awhile. Wishing you the best of 2010’s. Stay warm.

P.S. Cool toasters…I need one.

A brace of haikus inspired by the early morning moon.

Waxing Moon:
Moon bright behind clouds
Light spills ancient mystery
Thoughts wander restless

Full Moon:
Insomnia moon
4 a.m. bright dispelling
Sleep howls out of tune

ReadingThe Iron Flute, a collection of 100 Zen Koans I’m borrowing. Complicated — as a koan should be — great brush art for illustration.

Article about lute player Paula Chateauneuf and improvisation in Renaissance and baroque music.

NY Times link for a switch: “Why Good Writers Can Be Bad Conversationalists.”

Profile of the intriguing Agnès Varda, the “grandmother of French New Wave.” Nigel Andrews’ latest review of her latest film “Les plages d’Agnès,” which is going to the top of my Netflix queue whenever it comes out on DVD.

Somewhat stalled on the creative front…finished the animation for two (yes, two) new + fun Blink Kitty Loves but they need music. Jeremy (Lonely Pond sound guru) is dissolving his band and I was hoping to distract him by convincing him to be the Blink Kitty Love guitar + music guru, but he’s overwhelmed. So I’ve drafted Gayle because the longer the episode the less my musical plunking on the mini midi keyboard suits. And the longer episodes are really working from the story angle. Gayle is thinking about adding in harmonica; I just have to find a way to do that in Garageband. Or buy one — did I mention I used to play the harmonica…it was one of my favorite late night activities before I discovered the internet. I could play “Amazing Grace” + “Red River Valley” from memory.

So, to sum up, I think a bluesy rock sound will work for Blink Kitty Love, but we need to find Gayle some computer time.

Weekend plans: finally watch “No Reservations” which has been sitting on top of my TV for ten days in its red Netflix envelope + get my iPod to transmit video to my TV in something other than black and white. And dig out Fried Green Tomatoes and read a book, darn it.

Good night, all.

Peter Aspden on Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing + how maybe not making a choice (as an artist) can impact + amplify your effect.

Paul Levitz is back on the Legion — YES. Levitz is stepping down as president + publisher and DC is revamping under the Warner Brothers aegis to take on the mega muscle that will be Disney/Marvel.

Great article on Winston Churchill + the fighting spirit.

Saw Ellen MacArthur on Top Gear; superfast sailor; fastest lap in their old Stars in Ordinary Cars derby. Here’s her blog; want to track down her book.

What the heck, @nicolaz + her partner @kelleyeskridge have started an editing business, @sterlingediting. (Yes, I love Twitter; it’s where I, @lonelypond, win friends + influence people; you have been previously warned; and if you influence or amuse me or annoy me in that grit making a pearl happen fashion, hey, you may very well get a mention right here.) I wish them well in their new endeavour. It is the best of feelings to collaborate on something you love with someone you love (oh, no, verging on sentiment — gak* — definition 4 my favorite. Must sleep more — refer previous entry)

Back to FT and other links (but what about the Legion you say? That’s not British. That’s a glitch not a tangent or even a segue. Caught me, but true love supersedes all.)

I actually find myself in sympathetic agreement with the usually too fluffy, but in a pleasant way, for me Susie Boyt as she struggles with going on holiday and running into a “novelist’s self help manual”.

Profile of Gustav Metzger, artist determined to push the world to survive.

Need to read this book judged by it’s cover.

And a review of Twitterville the book. (I prefer Twitterverse myself, but I’ve yet to write that book.)

And that should tide you over while I get some sun, listen to Radio Blink Kitty Love, lunch, work on that other book, and have a Thursday. Enjoy yours.

Lonely in the night
But not for people. No, Sleep
Dreams but not of me

Well, none really. I have a stack of movies — we started the Netflix account + some borrowed — that I’d like to make a dent in. The list? Soapdish (Netflix) — ever watch a soap opera, ever laugh at Sally Field and/or Kevin Kline (yes, A Fish Called Wanda is a must see) — then Soapdish is a can’t miss. What else? Blythe — one of my theatre peeps — loaned me Tristam Shandy(movie/book skipping back + forth with the excellent Steve Coogan) + Bubba Ho Tep (Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis kick some mummy ass) at the end of #tamingshakespeare so I’d like to watch them so I can then arrange a meeting to get my first three Scott Pilgrim graphic novels BACK (yes, I am suffering from a lack of a nearly complete Scott Pilgrim graphic novel stack by my bedside.) Oh, and long ago my former editor + anime/animation connection Mel loaned me Steamboy and although I am reluctant to pop it in, I do want to give it a try. Most of the anime movies I’ve seen are too warcentric for me.

Speaking of movies, my buddies at The Web Files (@The WebFiles) continue to do excellent work and thanks to them I have met my new friends at Movies You May Have Missed (@MYMHM) — we’ve been having snappy conversations the past couple of weeks about remakes + Netflix + streaming movies. Both shows did fun, crossover episodes with each other this week and left me with a craving for MORE movies — The Web Files ep + MYMHM ep. It’s pretty amazing what’s out there on the intrawebs. Check it out…

And, self plug, follow @blinkkittylove’s feed on Twitter, check out the episodes on their blip.tv station, or have some musical fun with lyrics at the Blink Kitty Love site.

Have a great weekend. This is my new favorite song.

I am planning* on curling up with the how to manual for ToonBoom’s Studio 5 program so I can figure out how to have some more Blink Kitty Love fun. Crush you later ; )

*Unless I decide to get distracted by Jane Austen or Harry Potter or my three weeks behind stack of FT’s. Or one of the cats decides the 500 page manual is her (or his) new favorite nap spot. Come back Tuesday to see what won.