The Travails of the Astounding!

Chandra rolled into Pittsburgh one Tuesday night, and drove off again the next day. Not after we walked out of a small chunk of the bill at Pamela's. (Don't worry we made it right the next week). Then almost exactly one week later, Chandra returned! We walked in the dark woods and saw the sun rise over distant tree lined mountain tops.



We heard the crickets chirp and snore, until we realized that people live in the forest too. We saw a wall of mist slowly grow before our eyes until it looked like the very real and palpable barrier to heaven itself. We ran around, caught a race of the National Senior Olympics. Printed thousands of pages of Fat Tuesday scripts on 5 papers in 20 minutes, got our neighbors to call the cops on us because of my poor parking advice and attended a Fat Tuesday Kickoff party.



That my friends, went VERY well. Four to five dozen people crammed into Zooty's to pledge their support to our creative cause, and I think I felt something happen there I'm not fully sure about just yet. More on this as I mature. Let's just say, making movies is two types of jobs, maybe three, and I can see how it can be easy to be good at one part of that job but bad in the other. Which would explain the oodles of highly budgeted crap that gets released every year.

Anyway, Eric and Incredibly Thin and the rest of the Dark of Noon bunch really came through, the evening was a great success for all involved, and really helped to generate a great deal of energy and excitement for the whole thing. I missed Mickey, and on more than one occasion my thoughts returned to last summers revelries. Don't fear Chemers, theres plenty of fun just round the corner. And by fun I mean 20 hour shooting days.
Yay?
Oh man, check out this cool picture Chandra took of me,
no photoshop no effects, weird huh? That's one of the few pics we actually have of the party. Too busy having fun and pressing palms I guess.





Later on that life, I saw a free Aimee Mann show. I'd snagged a really good spot ahead of the first row and managed to get some decent photos. I'm not tooting my own horn here, (YES I AM), but Aimee's tour photographer liked my spot so much that I let him use it and we traded info in the hopes of swapping photos later on. NEAT! More on that as developments arise.
Aimee was good. She really has a tremendous strength, that fascinates me. It comes through live, but with her it was all about the music, and I appreciated that. No great theatrics, or stage performing, which might have been boring for people who were just there for free music, but I found that once she had announced that it was her last song I had lost track of time entirely. I had become lost her tales of love and loneliness. At one point, a guy with a bouquet of flowers walked up to the stage and offered Aimee one between songs. She responded; "Sorry, buddy, but I'm kind of in the middle of a show here." hah! Her guitarist however, obliged the old man, who wore a great big smile, and as he walked away, Aimee said: "I don't know why i invite my dad to these shows anymore." HAH!
Later on that night I watched News Radio with Jim and Quinn. And was reminded of how I once spent a summer with Izzy watching this and Star Trek with complete satisfaction. Man, that Phil Hartman was something special wasnt he?