Adieu L.A.

This weekend I take my leave of the City of Angels and strike out for the City of...Franciscos. I'm coming out of retirement and going back into Visual Effects. No longer will every night be a Friday night, and everyday a Saturday; no longer will I be able to drive downtown for my Chano's fix; no longer will I be retireded. I have 2 days to pack everything I'll need for the next two months and then I'm off. It's a rather sudden decision, I know, but some of life's best adventures often result from spur-of-the-moment choices such as this. I wish I had time for a Coming-Out-Of-Retirement Party. Perhaps I'll just wait the two months until I retire once more, returning triumphantly to Hollywood in my grand chariot ('92 Honda Accord) and have an even bigger bacchanal then. It will be a true occasion for rejoicing, and rejoicings call for drunken orgies, do they not?

Why am I coming out of retirement? Because the circle is not yet complete. When I was a senior in the Film program at Berkeley I applied for an internship at Industrial Light + Magic, George Lucas' effects company in San Rafael. I didn't get it, and I ended up interning as a storyboard artist for an independent film studio in SF. At the time I had no idea that a career in the VFX industry awaited me post-graduation. Now, almost ten years later, I'm going back up north to work for the first studio to which I ever applied. This cycle of my life will have reached its denouement. The epilogue will echo the prologue, and I will be finished with visual effects, poetically speaking. Then I can cast off the shackles of digital artistry forever and the real retirement shall begin. Let freedom ring.

Why I'm not working

"They deem me mad because I will not
sell my days for gold;
And I deem them mad because they
think my days have a price."

"How narrow is the vision that exalts
the busyness of the ant above the singing
of the grasshopper."

"When my cup is empty I resign myself
to its emptiness; but when it is half full
I resent its half-fulness."

"How can you sing if your mouth be
filled with food?
"How shall your hand be raised in bless-
ing if it is filled with gold?"

~Kahlil Gibran

Press the Meet

I'm in a very good mood due to transcripts of Bush's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday. It's good to know that Junior's command of the English language is as scandalously weak as ever. This exchange (cut and pasted from The Washington Post) is my favorite:

Russert: "You said ‘the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency, Saddam Hussein is a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.' You gave the clear sense that this was an immediate threat that must be dealt with."

Bush: "I think […] I called it a grave and gathering threat. I don't want to get into a word contest, but what I do want to share with you is my sentiment at the time. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America."

Russert: "In what way?"

Bush: "Well, because he had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons, that he had the capacity to make a weapon, and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network."

What is he SAYING? I need a English translation, please. As far as I can tell, he seems to be recalling that he THOUGHT Saddam had weapons, therefore his sentiment at that time was that Iraq was an immediate threat to the United States. Well, he was wrong. And not only is he unrepentant about that misconception that's led to over 500 American deaths, thousands of casualties, a $500-billion-plus U.S.D. deficit, and for the first time, a palpable Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, but he's STILL trying to make it appear that he was right. And is he actually calling Tim Russert a liar? Just because the administration's new favorite phrase is "gathering threat" doesn't make it retroactive. Obviously he doesn't want to get into a word contest because he would lose. His spin doctors are in the O.R. and are working overtime, but according to polls, the public has been waking up in the past week. Dick Cheney and my mother appear to be the only two Americans left who believe Saddam played a part in the 9/11 attacks, since Bush and Rumsfeld have both been forced to retract statements promoting this mad hypothesis. The fact is quickly becoming apparent, however, that Al Qaeda was never in Iraq...until the U.S. recently allowed them in.

I can't WAIT for Kerry (or ANYBODY!) to debate this illiterate fool. I might actually re-subscribe to cable for a chance to be ringside at that event: the war hero vs. the only president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.