The story of what's been delaying Retun to Pennsic

So here's the story: My first delay was in getting the video tapes converted to digital media. I had to wait until the money came in to do that. The money came from a new job I acquired. This proved to be a double-edged sword. The job got me money, but took my time.

I also came to discover that my computer has a hard time using Adobe Premiere when there are too many files being drawn from and when the project is too long. I got the idea that a laptop would resolve some of these issues, being as it would have a new OS, more memory, and be portable, allowing me to edit when away from home.

Santa Clause bequeathed me with a spanking new MacBook Pro, which then put me in the dilemma of wither learning a Mac-compatible editing program like Final Cut, or using Windows on a Mac so I could continue editing with Premiere. I chose the latter.

At first I was told to use Parallels to install Windows, so I bought the program and installed Windows, then Premier, then noticed that Premiere was running a little wonky. Someone then said the boot Camp was the way to go to install Windows on a Mac.

The trouble is that the latest version of Boot Camp only works with Windows 7, and I only had windows XP. So a friend provided me with a copy of Windows 7.

But when using Boot Camp, one should back up one’s files. The external hard drive I was using did not have enough space to hold all the files on my new MacBook, so I was burning disks to open up the space. Then one day the external hard drive failed.

The troubleshooting guides led me to research file recovery companies. After recovering form the cardiac event that the prices they were charging gave me, I head from a friend that it’s possible tat you don’t need “file recovery,” it could just be a simple hardware problem.

It turned out that the USB jack had broken off of the circuit board, the disk itself was fine, so the company that sold me the HD provided me with a dock. But the HD would not fit into the dock. They said they would provide me with a new casement, but forgot to get it to me until I called them a week or so later. Again, the HD did not fit, but I figured out that I needed to detach the little circuit board on which the USB input jack had been attached, and then everything fit just fine.

Then it seemed that I could no longer simply move the files from my MacBook to my HD, so I had to burn disks. It took me a while to figure out how to burn disks on a MacBook. In fact, I wound up using an XP program and doing the work in windows through Parallels. Then it looked like the disks were blank after burning.

Both of these things turned out to be false alarms. I figured out how to move the files, and that the disks were not really blank. In any event, I finally got all my files backed up and was ready to run Boot Camp and install Windows 7.

What followed was a continuation of the Kafka-esque nightmare that has been plaguing me. I shall spare you the minute details, but merely say that it involved having to burn and re-burn disks, load drivers onto one thing and then another, a search for some internet access that would not stall out during a download process, and two late nights at the Apple store.

Now it looks like I may have to plunk down about $300 one way or another; either to buy a new copy of Windows 7 so I can load it onto my MacBook so I can continue editing in Adobe Premiere, or to buy a copy of Final Cut, render what I have done in Premiere already, and learn how to use Final Cut as I go.

And I hope to have something to screen by the end of the month.

Battle of the Nations!

In the coming weeks I will be giving more details, but for now, let;s just say that I am in training to try out for Team USA at the Battle of the NAtions.

The Battle of the Nations in an international medieval combat & vculture competition and festival. It has been going on for several years in Eastern Europe, and is run by a Russian company, as I understand. This year it will be held on April 29 - May 4 near Warsaw, Poland. For the first time ever, there will be a team of Americans going over.

There will be a national practice in Springfield IUllinois in a couple of weeks, and I will be there, doing the best I can to prove that I have the "stuff" to be part of this team.

As I said. more details will be forthcoming, but for now, you can see more about the team at http://www.usaknights.org, you can see more about the event at http://battleofthenations.com.ua (click on the tiny British flag in the upper left-hand corner for English), and you can see video of the event here...

Dream reminder of high school reunion

Today is an anniversary reunion of my class at Stuyvesant High School. I have never been much of one for reunions before, especially when they are at posh clubs and cost over $100. But this time I was reading all the posts on the Facebook group, and actually getting a little interested. Unfortunately, by income level right now is too prohibitively low to buy a ticket, but a fellow alum offered to pick up a couple of tickets for those of us in my condition

Since accepting the offer, however, Life has gotten in the way of my remembering. I shot a documentary at the Pennsic War, got a new job, performed in the Faux-Real Theater's Oedipus Rex, and have been dealing with trying to get the money owed me by my last job. Earlier this week, however, a Facebook post reminded me.

But what with all the excitement around the NY Comic Con and reprising my role from last year in today's encore performance of "Oedipus Rex" on Roosevelt Island, it slipped my mind again. Then this morning my alarm clock went off (way too early), so I re-set it for two hours later and went back to bed.

This time I found myself in a classroom-type situation, filling out a form as a couple of women sat at the front of the room behind a table. They were advisers of some sort, and we were going over what we did in high school. Then I would go to the end of the table and take a photo of an arrangement. The arrangement included a book with a picture and short piece of text highlighting the alumna's high school career, a book mark with a picture and another bit of text, and some object that fit in somehow (memory getting hazy). There were only about 3 or four alums in the room, including me.

While I was taking the picture for myself, another female adviser, one who was sitting at a desk beyond the opposite end of the table, said to one of the alums, a fellow I knew from my homeroom back at Stuyvesant, "It says here you were present at two homicides in high school and didn't report wither one of them."

"I thought that was taken care of," he replied, in the kind of voice one would expect from someone who got caught in a bad situation that wasn't really his fault, he had to pay a high price for, and now had thought he had finally put behind him.

I said "Come on, that was 25 years ago. Give the guy a break!" As the adviser and the alum argued, I looked down at the book and saw that his page talked about how his life had gone bad. It included a quote form him?:" Yes, I had some chances, but IO blew it." I decided not to include this in the picture.

The bookmark was much more positive, highlighting his good points and not mentioning the homicides.

Then I woke up and remebered that tonight was the night of my high school graduating class reunion.

Before I go on...

I still miss my cat, Tommi.

Clinically Bereaved

Not to beat a horse or anything, but I am amazed by how bereaved I am right now.

Is there such a thing as "clinically bereaved?" If so that's me.

At any notice or thought of something that relates to Tommi, the cat that of mine who died on Monday morning, any instinctive reaction that came through living with that cat for 14 years, just makes me sad. I start crying, moaning even. Then I take a deep breath and move on. then something else will come up and I start crying and moaning again.

Lots of people I have known have died in the past two years. Friends, relatives, and friends of friends, but none of them , in fact no death of anyone I have known, has affected me quite so deeply as this.

Could it be the fact that we have shared such close contact for so long? Could it be that she never did a thing that I didn't like (that's not true, but nothing that really mattered, in the end)? could it be that no matter how my relationships with various people changed, she was always true to me?

The label in the box I buried her in says "The Truest Cat." That is true. In every way she was as true as a cat can get. Her walk, her leaping and climbing, her scratching and chewing of inappropriate objects, her stealing and attempted stealing of any chicken I ever tried to eat, her kneading and suckling on my sweaters, her dragging of socks and long underwear into the hallway (presumably as prey), her head-rubs on my shoulder when sitting next to me, her choosing of the spot right in front of the computer monitor to sit when I was working, her knocking of things off the table, her waiting for me outside the kitchen door, her "cat-loaf" pose and her "decadent kitty" pose and her sleeping by my head in the colder months, and her perfect, perfect kitty-cat face and perfectly soft fur, not too long, not too short, not too soft, not too stiff. She was never anything other than what she was: a cat. THE Tommi-cat.

She had great cat genes: that fur, that face, her little white pudsies and the crazy white ring around her tail. It is a shame that contemporary ethics and pet-population issues forced me to get her "fixed." I would have loved to have seen her create offspring, perhaps to keep with me as she grew old and to have with me now.

The emotional outpouring from me did not start initially upon finding her lifeless body by the door when I got out of bed Monday morning. My neighbor, who knew the cat, started crying instantly when I told her. But as the reality sunk in, seeing her little body lying still on the floor as I started to make arrangements and figure out what to do, that's when it came in. When I had to step over her body to go to the bathroom, and when I saw her still there when I came back, when I looked at the water dish, which I had been used to filling every day, her food dish, her litter box, the spot on the printer where she would always sit in her cat-loaf position, the emotions stated coming up. And now, when I thought to pick something up off the floor because the cat might step all over it, and I realized she was never going to step on anything again, and I will never have to chase her into my room again, and I will never have to change her litter box and clean her water dish again, I get very, very sad.

Dream of being a film PA-turned-time traveller

Dream morning of 7-11-2011

So I find myself on a movie set on location. The location is outdoors, but on the grounds of a mansion or something. I am there with a friend and a kid. Gary Busey is there also, being very Gary Busey-ish with one of the other PA’s


So we are there as PA’s, but I get the feeling that we are from outside the production, since we just arrived. All the production activity is going on elsewhere, perhaps inside the house, so we are just waiting for orders, pretty much.

I wonder if there is any food available. I notice craft services, and go over there. The fist thing I see is a few slices of carrot cake and some chocolate cupcakes, about half of which have been crumbles. I pile up some of this on a plate and pout another plate on top, to save for later. I then see that there is the regular buffet, which might not have been for me and my friends, but it looked like everyone else had taken their share and they were about to pack it up.

Some guy went over and picked up a fork out of the tuna casserole and ate some, then put the fork back. I thought that was disgusting. I thought about saying something loud, but decided against it. He walked away, and I went around and picked up the fork, went over to the silverware tray and looked for a clean one. There were no dinner forks left, but there were salad forks, so I selected one of them and brought it back. The craft services lady explained that the guy was one of the greatest guys in the world, that everybody loved hi. So here I was thinking he was an asshole, but now looked like an asshole for thinking so about this guy.

Then there was a scenario shift, though the location stayed the same and my friends and I were still there in essentially the same social roles: outsiders in service to the authority. Now we were servants at a wealthy person or noble person’s household in the late 19th century. We were in our late teens or very early 20’s. One of the other servants, who had slightly more seniority but was stationally equal (and had been one of the PA’s) really didn’t like us, and was trying to do things to get us into trouble. He most especially had a trick where he would flick his hand at me and say “when I do this, you just stand there.” But I was to smart for that. When he did do it, I parried his hand-flick and struck him in the chest.

He continued to try to get us in trouble, though. My friend in this scenario turned out to be Robert, my best friend from Elementary school. The guy was whispering into his ear, trying to screw with him, and I was in his other ear, telling him so, and the thee of us were jostling each other.

It came to the point where, I don’t remember what the guy said, but my response was “Look, you’re Christian, I’m Pagan, no, atheist, he’s Jewish, and we all know Pagans! Don’t you think we know that’s not true?”

I turned out that we needed to get back to our own time. The guy tried to tell us that we needed to go down the river to the “twenty-first point twenty-third waterfall.” He repeated that number as I visualized the spot. The kid, a 10-12-year-old boy who had been with us all along, said “That’s not true, I’ll prove it to you.” And got out a pencil and paper and started doing some mathematics.

“How do you know that?” the guy said.

“It’s Math.” I replied.” We’re from the 21st century. We do that.”

Then I woke up.

Dream of Julius Knipl in a dystopian farm collective

Dream on the afternoon of May 17, 2011.

I was drawing superhero pictures for a play to be performed at the Brick Theater in June when sleepiness overcame me…

A middle-aged woman works in a near-featureless square building, raised on a platform, on a farm. She is in overalls-jump suit. She goes to the central collective where she meets with me and another friend, an older black woman. We pick some papers up from a clerk at a raised kiosk/desk. The woman talks about how things are going well with the Collective. The older black woman talks about how she used to fly all over the world doing something that she would get paid $5,000 a shot for, and how she owed a half million. I talk about how things from the past fascinate me, how I enjoy looking at printed things from the past, like posters from the “Vans.”

What are “the Vans” the older lady asks.

“They were a youth-oriented concert series sponsored by a sneaker company” I reply. Then the first lady gives me a present. It is a paperback edition of collected works of Ben Katchor, particularly his “Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer” work. I exclaimed with glee “This is the work of the guy who created Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer!” (I could not remember his name) This makes me so happy!” Tears started welling up in my eyes.

I went on to explain why this was important to me: “What fascinates me is the transitory nature of the printed media. Someday this will all be dust. So when I find, say, a sealed package of corn flakes under a shelf in Hoff’s Supermarket, or something like this I treasure it greatly.”

Note: At this point in time, there has been a breakdown in society, perhaps an eco-disaster or global war or revolution or some combination thereof. Hoff’s Supermarket is a crumpling ruin in the forgotten city that no one goes to, and I actually envisioned a square Tupperware container in which someone packed some corn flakes a very long time ago.