SeeingEyeBlog » frustration

My married valentine

Jason — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 07:39:16 +0000

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.

Year end wrap up

Jason — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 02:38:57 +0000

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.

Busted

Jason — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 07:25:09 +0000

I am now convinced that the last dealer ever to deal me a card was named Brad. It’s not that I don’t like playing cards or the excitement of winning big money. It’s how utterly pissed off I get when I lose any amount of money, whether it’s mine or not. Tonight my mom was winning in blackjack and gave me $100 in chips and insisted that I sit down and play. I had been standing and watching, having a very good time being the good luck charm. (Everyone with me won at least $400)

Brad, the dealer, swept in my $100 in chips inside of 5 minutes, and I was betting and playing the right way. I won three hands and lost thirteen. Since this money was gravy from my mom’s winnings, it was essentially play money that I was betting. I should care less if Brad the dealer takes it all. It’s not even my money. What I don’t understand is how my blood pressure and pulse skyrocketed after I got up from the table.

I tried to mask my contept for the entire idea behind casinos. I’m too talented and intelligent to believe I’ll ever get something for nothing, or that the odds ever change in games of chance. I might be old-fashioned, but I prefer to receive either a good or a service for my money, and I know that the services I provide will eventually be worth over $100/hr, which will make me a millionaire, before I’m thirty if I made the odds. The casino certainly wasn’t doing me a service by making me share my personal space with the dregs of humanity who walk around with walkers and/or rolling oxygen tanks, who are slowly embalming themselves with the tar and formaldehyde in their cigarettes, and giving me a sore throat with their second hand smoke. Get the hell away from me you bunch of losers.

Unable to mask my contempt, I took a walk to find a bathroom, thinking it would render upon me some kind of peace. All I found were more angry thoughts and bitter memories, all surfacing at the same time with an overwhelming ferocity to them. Random, disparate, dismal memories from all phases of my life, all being forced on my psyche by some force wishing me ill. And again, all I had done was lose $100 of what was essentially play money.

City slicker survival skills

Jason — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 02:56:14 +0000

I just got back from a camping trip from Catalina island with my brother-in-law’s brother, and some of his cousins. There were five of us, and I was told it would be a “survivor” trip, where we live off what we could procure from the surroundings. They brought fishing poles and a spear gun, and assured me we would have plenty of fish. I was excited because of the idea that we would really be living off the land, and exercising survival skills.

On the first day I saw one of the guys start eating a protein bar on the hiking trail, and I got my first clue that I might be the only one actually follwing the rules.

The second inkling came when we got to our destination beach and made camp near the northern end of the island. A couple of the guys spotted a cache of food that was dropped off by a pickup truck and abandoned. It ended up being food for a large group of boy scouts who were hiking in. So they stole a bunch of their food, and justified it by saying it was a life and death situation.

They ended up catching two fish the whole time, largely because their drive to fish went down after they started stealing food. The youngest kid with us (who just finished jr. high) found a pile of buffalo crap that apparently looked like pumpkin pie, stuck his finger in and scooped up a mouthful. I still can’t understand what was going through his mind as he extended his arm to the orange pile. I’m completely dumfounded, as we all were when he told us about what he ate.

My frustrations mounted higher after I hiked two miles to find water, and brought it back like someone in a third-world country. I was proud of finding the water by surveying the most likely part of the mountain. When I got back I learned that the rest of the guys had hiked to a civilized part of the island to buy food and water. I’m sure they were proud of their “survival skills.”

The trip was ridiculous, but it would be fun to try it again with some real survivors.

Living 1099

Jason — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 21:32:54 +0000

If you don’t know, I work as a freelance cinematographer on many varied projects. I don’t have a “day job” and I don’t have a regular employer. There are a few clients who regularly use my services, but the bulk of my work is with a new company every time I take on a new project.

When you work the way I do, fueled by a dream and a lot of passion, money becomes a problem. I have the potential to be making $15,000/week on big budget movies by the time I’m 35. As it is now, I make barely enough to survive. It wouldn’t be a problem, but Hollywood is full of deadbeat employers who either don’t pay, or take forever to pay. For example, I can do $5000 worth of work and not see that money for three months. By then, I’m down to eating peanut butter out of the jar because I can’t afford to buy groceries, let alone pay my cell phone bill or buy a tank of gas.

But far be it from me to write a sob story. I have way too much pride to consider myself a victim and go on food stamps or get welfare, as many of my colleagues do. Yes I’m out of work much of the time, but I don’t consider that anyone’s fault but mine. This post is basically just a statement of circumstances, so I can look back at it when I am making $15,000/week and remind myself of what I was going through.

As Thomas Paine wrote during the American Revolution, “What we earn too cheaply, we esteem too lightly.” I look around at a lot of people my age who are getting married, have kids and own a house already, and who are much better off than I am, unable to fix my unreliable used car or pay half my bills half the time. It’s not because of a discrepancy between how hard we work. An eight-hour day is foreign to me, but my friends with houses and wives and kids seem to have a positive cash flow with an eight-hour work day behind a desk. I work days that are never below 12 hours, and are much more intensive. Filmmaking can be just as much a tactically critical situation as a battlefield, and as a cinematographer I am a field commander with a lot of responsibility.

I think the difference between my “normal job” friends and I has to be that I need to threaten lawsuits or labor board intervention in order to receive 30% of my income. 50% is later than expected but not far from legal action. 20% of my income is on time.

Living in a 1099 world means you don’t have a regular paycheck, so you need to generate a backlog of receivables in order to stay afloat financially. This is extremely problematic in my situation because I can’t just pick up work any time I want it. Many times I work for people who will never make another movie again. I can’t just call them and see if they have work, because they’re on their way back to Indiana or wherever they came from. Other times, getting a job is a highly political, competitive process. Quality work does not ensure a job. I’ve been told that I had the best looking work out of all the applicants, but was turned down because someone else could work for free. So not only am I dealing with a high turnover ratio of producers, I’m dealing with a dilution of the market with voluntary slave labor, and many producers are unscrupulous enough to actually let someone work for free.

It forces me into situations where I have to evaluate whether the artistic merit of the project will garner results worthy of my own volunteer labor. I have done several films for free, because I thought the material would be great for my resume/reel. Producers love me when I do that, but the only reason I even had to consider working for free is because the next guy (less experienced than I) will work 18-hours a day, 6-days a week (7 occasionally) for free and thank the producer for the abuse.

The obvious implications of working the way I do are these: During a long project like a 4-8 week feature, you can’t be devoting much time to finding the next job (unless it’s already lined up). So usually, a long job is inevitably followed by at least a week, usually longer, of unemployment. When you’re working for free, the longer you work, the smaller your backlog of receivables, which means that you better have a lot of paid work coming up right after the freebie, or you’re going to run aground financially, and stay that way for at least as long as the free job lasted.

Breaking into the film business is in many ways a leap of faith remniscent of The Matrix. I’m basically jumping off a 50-storey building, hoping to land on the 30-storey building across the street, without falling to my death at ground level. The pile of bodies on the road below doesn’t give much hope, but the 30-storey building is where the rainbow ends.

Parallel parking without an engine

Jason — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:34:47 +0000

Part 5 of 7 in the series "Car Trouble"

Takes a lot of willpower.

Luckily my roommate got home before the Villaraigosites found my ill-parked Jeep (a fire hydrant ticket in LA is a week’s pay). Together, we decided to parallel park the impotent beast between two other cars.

My advice when parallel parking is to make sure your engine works. As it was, we had to attempt the stunt three times, and had to do the back-n-forth maneuver once roughly in place. Doing the back-n-forth maneuver without power steering or a gas pedal is not recommended unless you’re using the exercise to build muscle tone. Of course, there are other ways to build muscle tone.

The unfortunate part about this parking situation is, it’s a Monday morning street cleaning zone. So I have another Villaraigosite onslaught coming at 8am tomorrow. I will need to do a 3-point turn and re-parallel park tomorrow morning.

A mile in 5,000-lb shoes

Jason — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:21:37 +0000

Part 4 of 7 in the series "Car Trouble"

What is it with me and my Jeep, that we constantly end up without a spark in the engine. Not a week prior, it drove flawlessly for two miles to the store, and then after 15 minutes of sitting, it couldn’t be aroused. And again tonight, on my way to work, it can’t get it up again.

This time I was filling up with gas at a station a half-mile from my house. I couldn’t believe it was happening again. Jeep Grand Cherokees must need viagra after 10 years of service, because this hunk of metal can’t get it up reliably. It’s so bad that I’ve started driving around constantly with my bike in the back, just in case this type of crap happens again. Sure enough, I was right.

I tried hooking up my portable jump-start battery to see if I could get her started, but it still wouldn’t even try to turn over. It was exactly the same symptoms as last time, when I thought it was my alarm system. What am I supposed to do a half mile away from home sitting next to a gas pump?

Well, the ground is level, no hills, so I decide to go for it. I usually expect the unexpected, like the time I didn’t have a ride home from Burbank airport, and no cash on me. I decided to walk 20 miles to West LA.

I can honestly say that it was one of the largest oxygen debts my body has incurred, as I pushed my heavy SUV a half mile back to my house. These vehicles are light enough that you get excited about actually being able to move it at all. Yet they are so heavy that you can’t generate hardly any speed with one person’s torque.

My greatest fear at this point is the Los Angeles parking enforcement, those mindless Villaraigosite zombies that would take candy from a baby. There was nowhere to park once I got to my street, so I had to set her down next to a fire hydrant.

My feelings right now can be summed up by Michael Drayton beautifully at the end of the 11th Sonnet of Idea:

You do bewitch me ; O, that I could fly,
From my self you, or from your own self I !

And also, for some reason, Ringo Starr’s Don’t Pass Me By was echoing in my head the whole time I was pushing the fat tub back to port.

Albino alligator dentistry

Jason — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 07:07:57 +0000

Part 2 of 7 in the series "Car Trouble"

It’s 11:15pm and I’m pulling pieces from my triangular wedge of Brie cheese like pulling teeth from an albino alligator. Along with sipping a particularly strong barleywine, it’s all I can do to keep myself from taking a baseball bat to some poor random inanimate object. Apparently today I was standing downwind of the fan. I’ve had a run of bad luck, but rather than sound like a country song, I’ll limit myself to articulating the straw that put me over the edge.

Today I went to work like any other day. I was doing a shoot for Major League Baseball, and I was having a great time (other than splitting my thumbnail from my thumb while setting up). Really, it was a good shoot, and I was working with some good people.

When we were done, the east-coast producer bought me lunch in exchange for some time-saving directions to her next shoot. We stopped and ate, building bridges for 15 minutes. Then when it was time to leave, I get in my car, turned the key and….please insert another 25 cents.

It didn’t even try to turn over. Something was locking out the starter completely. The battery was fine, and everything was running great 15 minutes ago. What could possibly have changed in that time?

Just then, (being parked near a Jiffy Lube), a ‘trusty mechanic’ came strutting over, heading straight for my battery terminals and disconnecting the positive. Had I been faster, I would have stopped him and told him that anytime the battery is disconnected and reconnected, the alarm system arms itself with no way to disarm it, save one dubious remedy known only to certain Mexican mechanics who reset the alarm the last time it was in for service, but couldn’t tell me how to do it myself (what a curious thing, that language barrier).

Anyway, this guy grabs my battery and disconnects it. Inside I could wash my windshield with him, but I politely ask, “Whaddya think?”
“Oh, you sometimes have to clean the terminals, you know on the battery.”
“Yeah, but the battery was fine 15 minutes ago.”
After spraying some handy aresol foam, “Ok go ahead and start her up.”

Just as I thought, a deluge of sound suitable for a torture victim in a Chinese prison. “Thanks for your help, but it looks like my alarm is locking out my engine.”
“Oh yeah, well it must be your alarm then, not the battery. Yeah, I’m sure that’s what it is.”

I kept his number just in case I needed to tap into his deductive reasoning skills in the future. I thanked him for his help, and smiled as he walked away. My smile faded as his whistling did, and I was left with the realization that he created a much bigger problem than I had 2 minutes ago.

But engine trouble wasn’t the least of my worries. I had a quarter million dollars in gear stowed in the back of my car, ready to be had by any moron who wanted it. I had to get it safe and worry about my car later. The producer, who luckily stayed with me, offered to bring the gear back to my place in her rented SUV. So we went ahead and re-packed the gear and headed back to my house.

Thank God I own a bike. After she dropped me off with the gear, it was time to search the web and try to find a remedy for my problem. My search came up fruitless, and after biking 6 miles back to the car, so did my wits. I couldn’t figure out the problem. Usually when your alarm goes off for the wrong reason, you just get out, stick the key in the door, and unlock the door with the key. Well, no dice with my car. It continued screaming rape in its high pitched voice, with all eyes on me. I disconnected and reconnected that bloody battery cable about a hundred times, each time with a different idea of how to disarm the alarm (I didnt’ receive a keyless entry keychain thingy when I bought the car).

After a violent emotional outburst remeniscient of a banshee, I called AAA. The tow guy came out and gave it his college try, but couldn’t make her purr either. She just squealed like someone faking an orgasm. 2 hours later she was still faking it, so we towed her back to a garage near my place.

At this point I was ready to take a bazooka or a tommy gun to this four-wheeled piece of crap. My entire afternoon was spent trying to undo the situation the good (but rash) Samaritan created in 15 seconds.

In the words of Walter of The Big Lebowski, “Ahh, f*** it dude, let’s go bowlin’.” That’s what I’d like to say, but alas, this is real life, and I have to wake up at 7:30 tomorrow to explain to the auto shop why my car is sitting in their garage with nothing wrong with it.

My albino alligator cheese wedge has now lost all its teeth, and is in the trash. My barleywine is in my stomach, having relocated to my brain, and I can no longer write coherently. I shall retire directly.

CA emissions test

Jason — Sat, 03 Jun 2006 22:55:06 +0000

Part 1 of 7 in the series "Car Trouble"

What is the point of having three different types of CA smog check facilities? There are Smog Test & Repair Centers, Test-Only Smog Centers, and Gold Sheild/CAP Stations.

My DMV renewal papers mandated I use a Test-Only. So today I took my 93 Jeep Grand Cherokee to a Test-Only Smog Center and failed. I thought I might fail, but was glad I only needed to test, and so I could wait two years for the next smog check before I had to repair. But the technician told me that I have to now take the car to a Test & Repair station to $diagnose$ the problem and then $fix$ the problem. Of course they don’t guarantee the car will pass smog after the $repairs$ are complete. But Test-Only center will give a free retest after the repairs are completed. It was overpriced anyway. When I pass, I’m looking forward to the $10 fee for the smog station to transmit the results to the DMV. Why do I suspect that I’ll be charged to $diagnose$ and $fix$ problems that won’t affect the outcome of the test?

Test-only stations supposedly use more accurate testing equipment than regular Test & Repair stations. But why create a new type of station that has to throw its hands up in the air when someone fails a smog? I like to think that Test-Only stations are the brainchild of some idiot in the California Bureau of Automotive Repair, who is proud of such a monumental achievement. I wonder if he drives a car that would ever fail a smog check? I don’t think so.

Traffic Cholesterol

Jason — Sun, 28 May 2006 01:56:44 +0000

I live in Los Angeles, and my parents live in San Diego. There’s a 150 mile difference between the two cities, and it is common knowledge that LA has the worst traffic in the world.

But today I was driving home for Memorial Day weekend, and the traffic was perfect in LA and most of Orange county. When I got to southern OC and then San Diego, the traffic became a plaque infested coronary artery, just waiting for that blood clot. It took me an hour to get to the 405/5 merge, and then 2 and a half hours to get to my house in Rancho San Diego. I think SD county needs bypass surgery on the freeways.