Trash out Thursdays

This is a story that begins when I began my shift at a watering hole local to central Overland Park.  I began working here almost two years ago as a way to earn some extra money.  It has since become a place that I go to get paid to vacate my house for reasons other than filming something.  As such, I really have no life and am very money hungry, but more to the point.

Thursdays bring in quite the group of eclectic has-beens, nerver-weres, and never-had-a-chances.  This is due in part to our friendly staff and atmosphere, mostly however; it is directly attributed to $.75 alcohol.  So as the night goes on I decided to guard the back door, this is to ensure no one enters without paying the cover as well as making sure no one tries to sneak out the back with booze; A no-no in the great state of Kansas.

At some point in time I notice two very enthusiastic dumpsters fires that are not too pleased with the cover charge.  From here on out they shall be characterized as "Lithium Fire" and "Old Smokey".  LF is about 24 by my guess while OS is about 45.

OS was not very happy about having to pay the cover but LF had convinced her that it was a good idea and that they would enjoy themselves here.  Now upon entering our bar something was said to LF that brought about a reason for her to pull her pants down and show us her bare ass.  Now first off, I dunno if she is unnecessarily proud or just stupid, but this is something that no one should have been subjected to, especially so soon in what would turn out to be a long winding relationship.

Unfortunately for me, OS needed a cigarette as soon as she got inside and proceeded immediately out to the patio, where I was posted in the corner.  Of course she found me and began to talk to me about:  How she had been drinking since 2PM (it was around 10PM). How LF was a closet meth user.  And how proud she was of her three sons, one of them being named Michael as well.  Well, his name is actually Tristan Michael.  He likes to go by Michael, which we let slide for now; but come adulthood that mother#@$er is Tristan.  Now while she was talking to me about all this LF decided to disappear into the darkness of our bar.  Furthermore, all the other bouncers had discovered that I was being verbally abused and decided to add their own two cents in.  We have walkie talkies with ear buds so of course OS can't hear all the terrible things they are saying about her, how much I appreciate these thing apparently, and all the terrible things I would do to her given the chance.  I'm sure you can guess what they were saying so I won't go into the terrible details of that.  On a side note, they were all impressed that I didn't lose it once and kept a straight face the whole time.

Finally I am free of her as she needs another drink... or so I thought.  Turns out the guys had purchased a rose from the flower lady that peddles her pedals to our customers.  They then promptly gave it to OS and told her that I thought she was the tops and deserved it.  I stayed outside and began talking to other patrons when I see her return to the patio, but this time she has a man with her and they proceed to head out to the parking lot to exchange... things (vomit).  She returns back to the bar about 5 minutes later and finds me as I am hiding from her behind other customers on the patio.  She proceeds to tell me how sweet I am for getting her a rose and how much she appreciates it (all news to me).  Well I didn't want to make her feel like a shit so I went right along with it.  The guys thought that this was just too funny and were so proud of themselves.

By this time LF has resurfaced and is pissed off at these other girls, when the other bouncers ask her why she says because "She didn't take her medicine. She's a lil bi polar, and drinking doesn't help it".  I walk away and laugh and claim victory, because if I am going to give a rose to someone (without my knowledge) I apparently picked the right dumpster fire.  OS heads back out the parking lot with yet another guy, LF is bouncing around angry, people are laughing at me, and we aren't even really that busy.  Anyway long story short towards the end of the night I told OS to make sure she called me and gave her the bouncers number that actually gave her the rose saying it was from me.  LF is that last person out the door, berates the other bouncers for being rude because they would use their tongues to clean up the spillage on her cleavage.  She says nothing to me because she knows I'm "interested" in OS.  How ya like meh now!!!

The Apple is bad

So I have just recently upgraded from a 2007 Macbook Pro to a 2011 Macbook (trust me it is actually an upgrade) and have also recently made the switch from FCP7 to Adobe Premiere CS5.  Everything was going perfectly fine and well until I had to pull in some pro res footage from a shoot many moons ago.  Being that I shoot with DSLR predominately, I up until now had never realized this to be a problem since CS5 natively works with the the H.264 footage from the DSLR.

Now here is the real dilemma; since I no longer have any "Pro" software from Apple on this machine I am not able to use the free codec download that is available from Apple.  What a freaking headache.  But I have searched the bloggersphere and have found this that I will be reposting here.  Further; I followed all these instructions AFTER upgrading from Quicktime Player 7 to Quicktime Pro, so I am not sure if that step is necessary for this to work for you or not.

As I found out, thanks to Thomas Worth, one doesn’t need nor Motion or Compressor from FCP to work in Premier Pro 5 with Pro Res 4444 encoded .mov files.
You can download the Apple codecs here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1396
You’ll have to unpack the PKG file and install the codecs manually,
because Apple doesn’t want you to install them unless you have Final
Cut Pro already installed. Use a utility like unpkg to extract the
files, then copy them into /Library/QuickTime:
You can download unpkg for free here:
http://www.timdoug.com/unpkg/
After one done all that, PrPro5 and Adobe Media Encoder automatically add these codecs to Quick Time export codecs and work with Pro Res 4444 .mov containers natively, and I would say even smoother , than with .MOVs .
To me, in such setup CS5 Production becomes the best option for Mac.

This information was posted by a Sergey on September 25th 2011

Here is the link to this specific post if you would like to read the entire post.

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Thanks

I hear what you're seeing

"I am just as deaf as I am blind. The problems of deafness are deeper and more complex, if not more important than those of blindness. Deafness is a much worse misfortune. For it means the loss of the most vital stimulus-- the sound of the voice that brings language, sets thoughts astir, and keeps us in the intellectual company of man."

 "Blindness separates us from things but deafness separates us from people."

                   ~Helen Keller

Mistakes

You can't erase what it is that is yearned,
And the things that are done, are done.
To pick up the pieces from what's begun,
Try to show the world what was learned.

Weed through all the garbage, the advice
nodding at the difficult and trash, like this piece
Hoping that you'll take heed and seize these dreams
But perfect you're not, what was learned is now forgot

Closed Roads

Its been about a year.  A year since we discussed ourselves on the open road.  It was all worked out, I would do the driving and you would provide the playlists as we swept across the country.  Of course the plains would be the starting point, what else do we know really.  The beauty of this trip, this once in a lifetime trip is that neither of us knew where we were going.  There was no need for a map, just driving forward, lest one of us had the urge to lean right, or possibly left.  So much of the country to see.  So many instances to stop, jump out of the car and run across flint hills.  Pause a moment to make a snow angel in the OK dunes.  Enjoy a Polaroid with the historians of the Ozarks.  Just take a moment to look around corners and find spaces under rocks none others have found.  Too busy with the board room or that final edit.   Relegated to the passage of songs and pictures shall this trip be enjoyed; neither one of us willing to budge in the wrong directions.

October 11, 2011

Enough

Life is this game, a rat race.  Sometimes you will feel as though every goal, every task, every desire has been met, completed, and fulfilled.  Other days will find you asking what you are doing it all for in the first place.  Nobody ever ends up at the end of the street that they started heading down.  Either way, through the highs and lows, it will never be enough.

And in this rat race that will never be enough, we yearn.  We yearn for more tomorrows and gasp at the amount of yesterdays that have graced us.  Is 40 the new 30?  30 the new 20?  The truth is there is no new ages.  40 is 40 and 30 is 30.  These things will never change and the things that you wanted to do when you were 18 will never be the same things that you will want to do when you are 28.  But what matter is it to you if when you were 18 you had the time of your life?  Furthermore, who cares what you did when you were 18 is 28 feels so great.  Either way, having the ability to ponders tomorrow and reflect on yesterdays will ensure, it will never be enough.

And in this rat race that will never be enough, we yearn for which we do not have, wondering if one day it wi