SeeingEyeBlog

My luck has been consistently down when it comes to meeting a girl I like who is NOT attached to someone. More to the point, I’ve had an unusually long streak of girls who want to go out with me who were attached, married or otherwise. And I’m sick of it. Why do I have a happy valentines day message on myspace from a girl who’s dating someone else? In fact, what is she doing on the computer on valentines day if she’s with someone? I don’t intend any offense, and she’s a nice girl. It’s just an easy example of what’s been happening a lot lately.

What is with this generation of women? They seem to outnumber men in their non-committal attitudes toward relationships. Everywhere I turn I find myself attracting women who don’t seem to have a hard time reconciling their boyfriend or husband at home with a yes when I ask them out. And sometimes they’re the one asking me out, and it’s only later that I find out about their significant other. Did the last generation of women burn too many bras for their own good? Have they answered the question “Are men necessary?” with a “Not really”? Whatever happened, they have certainly tasted some kind of perceived freedom during women’s liberation, and from my experience, it’s gone to their collective heads. And now we’ve got intelligent women walking around virtually asking for sex without much semblance of a relationship. Do any of them seriously think that is sexy, and/or desirable? That appeals only to a man’s most base desires, and although we men would all on the surface rejoice in the steady stream of no-strings sex, deeper down we find it repulsing huge waste of time and money.

If I didn’t want to acknowledge individual responsibility, I’d say my self control comes from the fact that I’m a man, and as a man in a patriarchal society my freedom to be non-committal was my birthright, just as it was to my fathers and their fathers for millennia. As such, the taste of that freedom is not as fresh and intoxicating as it is for women, who are just now tasting it for the first time in fifteen thousand years. Therefore, the differential between the sexes regarding the potential to exercise our sexual options now favors women. It results in a reversal of some typical stereotypes, namely, men (like me) being more docile and loyal. I’d say that if I fell for it. Being faithful to a relationship is not a passive trait, but one of the most active things a man can do, even though there are few outward manifestations of it. Inwardly though, it requires discipline, which is a responsibility decidedly individual.

So the next time an attached woman says yes to a date with me, I’m going to ask her about the guy who’s either waiting for her to get home or at work making money to help buy her that dual-income, no-kids, non-fat-mocha-latte lifestyle. Don’t hang yourself with the bra your mom tried to burn, honey. Remember who puts up with you when you’re on the rag, crying as you watch Extreme Makeover. We are your emotional rocks. Acknowledge it and embrace it, you’ll be happier that way.

I just received a call from a company for which I did a corporate video this time last year, asking if I wanted to do another one this year. Getting the call sparked a desire to do a year end recap and take stock of my life a year down the road.

This time last year I was unemployed, having just gotten back from a month-long job out of state, and the corporate video was my first job in a month of looking for work. My unemployment was a result of my firm decision to only accept cinematography jobs, as opposed to doing lighting or camera assistant jobs. It was a tough gauntlet of bills and expenses with no way of paying, going from interview to interview getting rejected with lines from producers like, “…we liked your reel the best, but someone else offered to do the job with their own camera for free…”, all the while turning down work that I would have otherwise taken had I not willed that career step. My girlfriend of three years was breaking up with me in her heart, waiting another month before telling me about her decision.

In January, I was in the lowest point emotionally that I had ever experienced. But things were about to change professionally. I received two feature scripts within a month, and got both jobs. By March and April, I started shooting for NBA Television and Major League Baseball, making huge cash and got to meet a lot of great athletes. After wrapping the first feature, I went to work as a colorist at a post house, learning the ever-important craft of color-correction, a skill that will serve me well as digital cinematography becomes the norm. After coloring a feature film, I started working on a prime-time network television drama called Fashion House, and made a huge splash there as a great camera operator in the eyes of the directors with whom I was working. This was the first time I was working with seasoned, experienced directors as opposed to young upstarts. After Fashion House in August, I shot the second feature I was offered back in January, Yesterday Was a Lie, a black and white film noir which turned out beautifully. I returned to operate on the next television show, which turned out to be Wicked Wicked Games, on which I made some good friends with cast members. It’s airing now and I’m proud of my work. On a day off, I shot a quick short with a contact I met on one of the features, and I surprised myself when I told him on the phone that I didn’t want to be paid, since I was making enough on my TV show job. I could have easily made a quick $400, but I am finally able to “give back” or whatever you want to call it. I’ve been making a lot of money and have been able to completely obliterate my revolving credit, pay down my student loans, and start investing a lot of money.

Currently, I’m working on Saints & Sinners, another TV show following Fashion House and Wicked Wicked Games. This job will carry me through March, at which time I am in talks to shoot a feature film. After that, there is another film on the horizon for April or May. Overall, I think it’s been a great year for me professionally, and I am now way past many of my colleagues whose progress seemed far, far ahead of my own this time last year.

There really is no feeling like that of total exhaustion due to a hard day of work on a project you love. Laying in a hammock with a beer in one hand, enjoying the sunset after making tangible progress on the creation of one’s own hands, is more fulfilling than many things which purport to be. It is certainly a better feeling than paying thousands of dollars to fly first-class to a 5-star beach resort to enjoy a similar hammock and beer. So, as the mourning Geoffrey Lebowski pondered in The Big Lebowski, “What makes a man, Mr. Lebowski?”

Now, I have enjoyed the sunset hammock in both circumstances. In the case of the beach resort, the girl I was with had a great time, and admittedly the hammock was relaxing and the sunset beautiful, but the circumstances seemed insincere, and I was unfulfilled. Working “behind the curtain” in hollywood has made me very sensitive to the differences between fakery and reality. When I was enjoying the sunset after a day of work building my outdoor kitchen (alone), that same girl seemed to be bored while I was feeling fulfilled.

I don’t have enough information to decide whether this is a man/woman difference or if it was unique to us. But what I do know is, those men who identify with the girl in the above example aren’t real men. A man–a real man–is made by that which he makes. And of course, The Dude would add, “That and a pair of testicles.”

I had to deposit my paycheck today before work, so I chose a branch near our Del Mar location. I had been dressing nicely for work because I find that at my young age of 26, people give me more respect as a camera operator when I dress and carry myself with authority. With my nice clothes I walked into the bank and made an impression on a young teller who caught my eye. I wasn’t at her window, but she said hi from the next window and we started to talk. The teller I was at was also curious about my paycheck because she didn’t recognize the company. I said it was a payroll company for the film business and that I was a cameraman. My girl, Diana, a tall young beautiful brunette, was very interested and she told me she watches Fashion House. I guess it’s a good show if you’re into television.

I’m lucky I’m dressing better because it attracts ladies too. Diana needs to get sushi with me. Next week I’ll put my paycheck in her bank and then withdraw her phone number.

I went to the Apple Store today to replace a faulty laptop battery, which of course was in a shopping mall. I was acosted by a strikingly beautiful woman who wanted to ask me a question. How could I say no… I stopped and entertained the offer because she caught my eye, and I wanted to follow my new life rule. Her question was whether I had heard of the Dead Sea before, and of course I have. It’s in Israel and is the deepest body of water anywhere. The mineral content is such that you can’t stay submerged and tend to float. The slit from the sea makes a great skin exfoliant, and apparently this is what she was trying to sell me.

Like all my other Jewish friends, she was genuine and charismatic. She gave me a free sample, and my calloused hands became soft as her voice. She could probably sell ice to an eskimo, because I ended up buying two vials of salt for $39 each. When you buy two, you get a different product for free. I chose the facial wash for free. This was about the time when she started touching my neck and telling me that shaving was messing up my skin, and I needed a bla bla bla….I would have bought anything at this point, because she had me under some kind of spell. So I ended up with another product, aftershave or something. She gave me a discount on that, it was only $29. I’m such a pushover. I really hope I don’t have a daughter later in life, because I can’t say no to spending money on women.

I spent enough money to warrant some personal talk, so I asked her about herself. Her name is Adi, and is from Haifa, Israel. She came out here to promote the product, and will be going back to Israel in the next few weeks. I asked her if the recent Lebanese attacks into Haifa affected her family, and she thanked me for asking and said they were all safe. I think I got some points on that one because she looked at me like she didn’t expect me to be following the news from Israel (and I do only tangentially, but I still know how close Haifa is to Lebanon). Anyway, it looks like I have my work cut out for me if I want to get dinner with her. I know the dinner won’t amount to much, but I do plan on visiting Israel sometime in the next couple years, so it would be cool to have someone there to show me around. Plus, I have to abide by the new rule for life.