Thursday...far out, man!

Hey there, gangland, it's been a whirligig month or so... The first order of business is that I'm officially stepping down from my position as Editor-in-Chief of Diabolique magazine. My decision is essentially due to financial necessities; although time was a big factor, too.

In any event, it was both an honor and an educational experience working for Diabolique, and I want to thank Publisher / Layout Designer Dima Ballin for the opportunity of being the steward of his enterprise for five beautiful issues.

About a week ago, Screem magazine issue #26 came out. It is the first of several other horror magazines that I will now be writing for. For the Screem issue, I interviewed Stuart Gordon (director of Re-Animator, From Beyond, and many other films...), and we spoke mostly about H.P. Lovecraft. If you're a horror fan, you should check it out; it's a pretty good interview!

Also, I've pretty much got all of my old programs re-installed on my computer (after the crash), and since I'll now have a bit more time on my hands, I can proceed with the documentary for TITO. It's just a little making-of featurette that I'm going to include on the Tuning In, Tuning Out DVD that I'm giving to all of my investors, cast and crew members -- who have been most patient!

In the Harley news, after being told at the Illinois Secretary of State office that I could ride the 2004 Road King, that I'd basically inherited from my dad, from Chicago to Los Angeles and register it here, I called the California Department of Motor Vehicles. On the phone, I was told that I needed my mom to sign the bike over to me since she was the official custodian of all my dad's possessions. So, I mailed her the form, she filled it out, and I went to the DMV office only to be told that both the Illinois SOS office and the DMV phone representative had misinformed me. So, I mailed the title back to Illinois. Next, my mom went back to the SOS office, submitted the paperwork to have the bike put into her name, and next I will be able to return to the DMV office to finally register the bike. Unfortunately, I have to wait about three weeks until the SOS office completes the title transfer process.

All right, that basically catches you up. Beyond that, of course, there are numerous little and big projects that I'm always chipping away at on any given day. Thanks for tuning in! I'm out.

One, two, three...Wednesday.

All right, it's been about four months, so it's time for another blog post. Who says I'm not regular?

Let's see here, at the top of the heap, there's Tuning In, Tuning Out, my short film, which I FINALLY put the finishing touches on about a month or so ago so that I could submit it to more film festivals; the cut that I screened at the premiere party in November had a couple of glitches (the frame rate was off in one scene and the sound was slightly out of sync and poorly mixed in another) and things that I wanted to change (specifically the length of one or two shots and at least one sound effect).

Now I've only yet to finish my work on " The Making of Tuning In, Tuning Out" documentary, so I can package these babies up and send them out to all of my incredibly patient investors, actors, and crew members...and then I can begin work on my next film project, whatever that may be. Oh, and speaking of documentaries, the doc I made about the cross-country Harley trip that I took is now in consideration at several documentary film festivals. The trip was taken on the 2005 Road King that I inherited from my dad, and the documentary was kind of a "trial run" for a more expansive documentary road trip film project which will also be a tribute to him.

In the literary world, editing Diabolique magazine has given me some very interesting opportunities. The theme for the current issue, which I brainstormed with Brandon Kosters, is Rock and Horror. After coming up with this theme, we pushed around some ideas; I wrote a bunch of outlines and assigned them to a pretty awesome stable of writers, and ended up with nothing short of a brilliant edition. For this issue I reviewed Dan O'Bannon's book on screenwriting (which was very entertaining and inspiring), and I interviewed Kevin "Ogre" Ogilvie from Skinny Puppy. If you've never had the opportunity to speak with someone whose work you loved (or of whom you used to have a poster when you were a teenager), I highly recommend it. Anyway, Ogre's projects have always been fascinating to me from thematic and production-based perspectives, and I'd never really read anything about band members Ogre or cEvin Key that answered all of the questions that I had about the methodology of their work. Ogre was very candid and spoke to me at length about his inspirations, his stage shows, and his work in film. He also supplied me with a bunch of really cool images that I ran in the mag. I am told that this issue should be in stores in a week or so, so make sure you get a copy before they're all snatched up!