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Showing posts from March, 2010

Glass Half Full

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There was a howl to the wind yesterday morning, almost like screaming a message while tears of raindrops stream down my windows. I heard sirens going off every ten minutes or so, indicating that perhaps a tree had fallen down or an accident happened somewhere. I thought at some point during the day, the electric will finally let up and I would be left with a candle, a battery powered laptop with no internet connection and the sounds of mother nature giving me her wrath. On top of everything else, while I was working, the rain had somehow managed to make its way in from the skylights, dripping slowly onto the side of the leather sofa. I had to place a huge pot underneath, which gave me a tempo of rhythm that somehow was driving me to the brink of insanity. “Plink, plink, plink, plinkity-plink, plink, plink.” The classical background music didn’t help much at this point. It just made it more “dramatic” if anything. I had planned on doing a promo video for a local gallery nearby, but wi

Imperfect Christians

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The other day, I was talking to my friend Ellen, who happens to own a local Christian store with many trinkets and bits of jewelry with spiritual sayings and symbols. She had mentioned how some customers will walk into her store and will ask her detailed questions about Catholicism or they ask her beliefs upon a Christian-based semi-controversial topic. Some ask out of sincere questioning, while others will ask just for the mere purpose of a good debate. Why “religion” has to be so debated upon is beyond me, but I do understand it since my earlier blogging years were all about debating upon Christianity and different views, beliefs and whatnot. On the wall, there are framed pictures and items that say, “peace and love”, to which I believe is the perfect description of God. For others, “God” is the wrath of the creator - death and destruction for all who go astray and fear for being. ..human. Religion then starts to sound pretty scary, doesn’t it? For these people, it also means cor

The Misconceptions About Twitter & Facebook

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Granted there are many people who don’t think Facebook or Twitter are very useful, while others feel it’s their biggest source of promotion due to whatever business they’re in. My question is: is too much promotion for your business on either social networking sites a good idea? Even though I use it for both: promotional business marketing (for others and for myself) as well as socially interacting with my personal friends and family, there is one rule that people should take into consideration: do not mass email everyone in your Facebook account about an event. Send an invite through Facebook instead. If it’s a small party for just a few people---fine. I’m speaking of people who are promoting their shows, broadcastings and other things through personal emails, but in bulk. If you want to promote, put it on your page and it’ll send right into your feed for people to view at their leisure. Simple. These days, Facebook has become more “looked down upon” if you’re one of those ‘status

Hoarding Emotional Baggage

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Lately, I’ve been fascinated with the TV show, “ Hoarders: Buried Alive ”, where they show people who store ‘stuff’ in their houses until it practically hits the ceiling. It’s not just ‘stuff’ either, it’s old food left out and tons of garbage that hadn’t been taken out in like over a year or so. They claim they have some emotional attachment to these ‘things’ or ‘stuff’ or ‘crap’, but I say it’s a load of shit.. .literally. What makes a person want to live in a pile of rubbish? You can’t even walk through the room without climbing and struggling around their “emotional attachments”. I don’t mean to poke fun at their mental illness, which is what psychiatrists are calling it --but for someone like me, who has a huge OCD problem (as far as cleaning goes), I can’t understand it. If I see one tiny little strand of cloth from a blanket or other on my carpet, I freak out. It. must. go. My mom kept a super clean house. She cleaned that monster every single day of her life. She’s still ne

Learning Experience

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Sometimes things in life throw me for a loop. I’m learning a lot as I’m now experiencing the world of filmmaking. There is so much involved aside from filming and editing. For my documentary, I’m seeking gays and lesbians of whatever faith, to come and talk about their experiences with adversity and talk about their childhood growing up, which includes stories about ‘coming out’ to the family. In fact, stories about their families are very important in this film. With participants that I am familiar with or who are in my network, I’m not strict with them about signing release forms and contracts. It’s a nonprofit film with contributions from those who want their voices heard, to which I’m grateful for. I never ran into a problem until recently. I totally understand that everyone wants to look their absolute best on film, but sometimes you just have throw your arms up and chuck it up to either bad lighting, bad location or just simply, bad outfit. I don’t know. But to my surprise,

Pain In the "Butt" . . .

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Years ago, smoking wasn’t a big deal as it is today. People smoked in their offices, classrooms, malls and dare I say it --restaurant and bars. It’s not like they didn’t know the risks of smoking, it was probably more due to the fact that more reformed smokers were emerging from every corner. I remember walking into a bar with my little pack of Marlboro Lights and smoking at least a half of pack while being there. Anytime I drank I ended up smoking more. I started smoking at the age of twelve. My friend and I had joined a few other people and we walked up into the Appalachian trails, sat on top of a mountain, made a campfire and lit up a few unfiltered Paul Malls. Our friend’s father was with us, and as odd as that sounds, he wasn’t exactly a role model. We were actually grateful for that. My mom came to pick me up at my friend’s house which was probably no more than a mile away and immediately, she smelled the smoke on me. I insisted it was because of the campfire, but she knew...

Is It Enough?

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This morning while Madelene and I were having breakfast, we were watching a small interview with the cast of “ TRANSform Me ”, seen on VH1. Three transgender women travel around the world to give extreme makeovers for other women who are in need of a transformation---on the inside and out. Some of the video clips I have seen were really amazing, but that’s not why I’m writing about it. The three women who host the show are all beautiful women, who were once men. Each of them transitioned beautifully, fortunately.... My question is: what about those people who transform to another gender who don’t exactly ‘fit the bill’, or transform smoothly? I too, agree that it’s all about how a person feels on the inside that reflects how they appear on the outside, but what if the outside isn’t quite meshing up to what’s on the inside? When I was young, before the age of thirteen, I remember people would mistake me for a boy. It first dawned on me when I was visiting my mom in the hospital tha

I Love Them Dearly...

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All I hear lately is gloom & doom from my parents. They go on and on about, “When we die” , along with, “We’re not gonna be around forever you know.” I totally get the ‘inevitable’, but what gets me is, they used it to their sick little warped advantage. So I twist it around and say, “You know, if I get hit by a truck tomorrow or stabbed by some burglar”- ---and automatically they gasp with horror and scream, “STOP THAT NOW!!!” I mean, if I’m traumatizing them, wouldn’t they stop to think for a minute that they’re doing the same thing to me? My dad insists that when he dies,  that I keep him in the huge freezer so we can still collect his social security checks. Beautiful concept. “Hey ma, can you grab me the frozen chicken next to dad’s left arm?” I mean....really? What if the power goes out? With all this “death talk”, oddly enough nobody in our family talks about the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what to do’ plans when our parents decide to jump out of the first floor window. I love

I'll Be Back...

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Have you ever come home from being in the city all day and it’s either, “Oh wow I love city” , or “Oh...muy...GAWD - I will never go back there again?” I’m having one of those moments this morning. Sunday must be some sort of half off sale at every goddam store on the corner because traffic was just a bitch. Instead of using all the good ol' subways, I thought I’d be smart and take my own car in. “Smart” involved hitting every fricken pothole the size of moon craters because of the previous storm, making my little caboose fly onto the other side of the road and Madelene screaming, “That’s gonna fug up your rims!” ...Really? As if I planned to target every single one of them. We got to our destination, met up with the great Chantal Carrere for the interview of the documentary and finally started having a much more pleasant time. After the interview, we had to head to the show to meet up with our friend Amy Beckerman . 
 Mad and I hadn’t eaten all day long. We totally forgot

Imperfections

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Have you ever gotten so caught up with bitching and moaning about how people act or why they do the things they do? Have you ever found yourself wondering why someone lives a certain way or lifestyle that is “seemingly” destructive or, something you’d never dream of doing? There are so many ingredients to a person’s makeup - so many different details that were added into their lives that make them who they are today. Ingredients may include: traumatic childhood past, alcoholism, abuse, religion, persuaded political views, home environment, education or a lack thereof, financial statuses, various people in and out of their lives, unfortunate gene pool/mental illness, self-esteem whether high or low and a bundle of other factors that may affect the way a person “chooses” to live, or for some people, how the cards were dealt. Their character make up is a product of what they were taught when they were young. Everyone is so different from another. Has anyone ever judged you for the way y

Make Believe

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There’s no doubt that life gets boring. There are so many things people do to entertain themselves, whether in a constructive or a destructive way. It depends on the personality type. Your life could be filled with work-related stuff, kids, school, errands, etc., but when you come home to rest, sometimes it feels like, “Is this it?”   Perhaps you see your friends traveling to far off places, vacationing with their loved ones perhaps twice a year and think: when do I get my break? Maybe you have absolutely no time to do anything but cater to other people. Regardless: life can seem redundant. We all get into ruts and try to put on a “happy face” and say “yes I am very happy with my life”.  And that may be so - in the bigger scope of things, but truly: are you happy? There are adrenaline junkies who get high off of the mere thought of doing something a bit risque and end up being miserable once their fifteen minutes of their adventure has finally fizzled out. It’s lacking “constant