Changes

Had a phone meeting with winner, Tom, today about how we are going to translate his blog into film. We have some ideas but as there are so many possibilities we're not even close to a decision yet. However, I am leaning towards doing a series of webisodes - probably about 5 minutes each, that capture the essence of his blogs. What do you think?

Also, I decided that there are so many other aspects of my life I want to talk about that I really don't want to do here, so I have started a new blog. If you're inclined, check it out: http://sutapants.blogspot.com/ On it, I hope to keep everyone updated on my new feature film project, Ekstasis, my new novel, The Rain Queen, I am about to publish through Amazon.com, the Chocolate Mojo movie, and the occasional rant.

goodnight!

WINNERS!

So am very excited we finally announced our big winner - Tom Trevino, of the Chocolate Mojo Blog!!! Congrats to Tom! He is a phenomenal writer and we are extremely happy he is wanting to be involved with the production of the film, although we don't know yet in which direction that will go. So keep an eye out for updates and all that.

It's been a crazy couple of months and obviously I haven't blogged in a while. I know the delay in announcing was kind of a pain in the butt, but to be quite honest the economic "crisis" has caught up with us, and we're working on regaining our footing. We will move forward but probably in baby steps for the time being. Hopefully we will be out of this slump shortly. :::fingers & toes crossed::: I guess only time will tell. More to say, certainly, but it's late. Will try to write again later this week.

Cheers everybody (especially Tom!)

Fun w/ Light

Last week, Josh and a friend of ours went out and messed around with Light Graffiti. I just absolutely love it! This is my favorite out of all the ones we did. Do you see the flower on the bottom.. that's me, well my hand, holding the flower. I want to do a huge light landscape of all sorts of objects, ala Cy Twombly, where you keep finding new objects in all the chaos. I love it, maybe because that's what life feels like to me.

Luminaria

Aside from hitting dead stop traffic and having to maneuver my way around downtown to park at the alamodome then hoof it up and down 3 flights of stairs, under a freeway and over a fence to get to my screening of "Ennis Does Southtown," the Luminaria Arts Walk in San Antonio was awesome! A lot of people made it out and no audio problems during the screening, whoohoo!. The cool lighting and the music and art was really exceptional and it makes me very proud of my fellow San Antonians. Where are all these people hiding the rest of the year?! I want to know.

A couple more weeks left until we find out who wins the 1st Season of the Blog4Reel Competition... can't wait! After that, we'll be working on the site (behind the scenes) to add the new features.

Life has been hectic these last few weeks. My car broke down on the freeway and after having it looked at twice and towed by a neanderthal who threatened to impound my car cause I wouldn't give him money that I didn't even owe him, discovered my car was unrevivable for less than 2 grand (Btw, never use Aaron's Towing). WTF?! So now I have a new Scion XB and I love it! It's nice to not hear the whistle of the wind (I had a convertible) and it's nice to feel safe and secure on the road too. So all good things in the end, eh?

Inspiration for the Uninspired

Enough of this depressing bulsh, I think it's time for another deep thought by Jack Handey. I still haven't come up with a good one on my own, and I thought it would be easy!

"I think a good movie would be about a guy who's a brain scientist, but he gets hit in the head and it damages the part of the brain that makes you want to study the brain."

thoughts

How is it possible that people can get so screwed up that they stop seeing, they stop seeking, they stop believing there is relief, much less hope, much less joy?

To me, my whole life, even when I was half dreaming half awake I always knew there was something better. I always knew there was something beautiful that existed, even when I couldn’t see it. Something simple, like a sunset, or the smell of jasmine on the wind would remind me. Nature always speaks the truth.

How does someone stay in an abusive relationship for years upon years upon years and convince themselves that’s their obligation to god? What kind of god wants someone to live in constant fear? How do you tell this person that there’s another way? That they don’t have to suffer to be good? And what kind of fu**ed up culture creates thousands, maybe million, of people who believe exactly that same way?

Well not me.

But I can’t share if you won’t listen.

And you can’t learn if you don’t hear.

But eventually the burden will be too great to bear.

And that is a good thing.

The day you can’t keep your eyes shut any longer.
I hope I'm there to see it and Celebrate!

Ant on an Apple, Part II

Rushing & Worrying is completely pointless, I realized clearly tonight, because there's nowhere to be but here. So take your time and enjoy it, make the best out of it, expect the best out of it. Trust yourself and the thing you're in. It couldn't hurt just to try it, right? See if it works?

And might as well enjoy it cause this is the only moment exactly like this one. Enjoy who you are, what you've learned, what you dreamed so far; and enjoy the one's you're with, the ones you taught, the ones you learned from, even if you hated them at the time.

I talked with my favorite auntie on the phone over the weekend. She sent me a condolence card about gpa passing and honestly it made me feel more emotion than I did when hearing gpa died. Maybe something's wrong with me or maybe I really don't believe in death anymore or maybe it just feels much better to feel the love from my aunt.

We talked about the economic situation, I mean I guess that's what all republicans and probably most democrats are talking about right now. I suppose it's hard not to worry as you watch your retirement slip away. Maybe I've lived without healthcare (insurance) too long, I'm used to the risk. I live on the edge. :) But I also think that although things are crazy fubared at the moment, I really believe things are gonna be okay, maybe better than okay, maybe really great - a place with clean air and calorie-less Twinkies made out of spelt. I guess it couldn't hurt to hope.

Magical Car

Everything will be just fine once you learn to enjoy the ride!

Ant on an Apple

Do you ever just stop and contemplate the fact that we're standing on a rock spinning a 1,000 miles per hour and revolving around a burning star at about (or so I read) 67,000 miles per hour, and we can't even feel it? That's what it must be like to be an ant on an apple. In those moments, just for a flash, sometimes I think you can. And not necessarily on mushrooms or vicodin. (that's just an off-color joke for any Christian Conservative reading my blog, I mean dad) :) luv ya!

Sad Bears

Ran across this photo tonight and felt compelled to post it. It's been a strange week or so... actually a strange new year altogether. My cousin, who is more like a sister to me, almost bleed to death in the process of delivering her baby. After much stress and drama and FUBARity on the part of the hospital, she and baby Lukas are now fine and recuperating. My Gpa passed away last week. I was actually at peace with that; it was my estranged father calling me and leaving this bizarre message that freaked me out. Not bad, it was sweet actually, just totally and completely unexpected. I reacted from a place of fear about him coming back into my life and hurting me again. Took me about a week to regain my footing and look at it from a different perspective. I had to realize that I am not the same vulnerable little girl. I am a strong woman and nobody can hurt me unless I allow it. Why is parent stuff so complicated?! I know, I know.. they are our first Gods, bigger than Zeus and Poseidon. Anyway, I'm feeling much more open and compassionate towards him but I also have to be very aware of my boundaries. Ain't nobody gonna mess w/ this Biatch! :)

Surprisingly I've been handling everything really pretty well. I've been listening to a cd by Ester and Jerry Hicks on the "Astonishing Power of Emotions" and I have to say it's been helping a lot. Every time I start to feel stressed or negative I just "pick up my oars" and stop fighting to get upstream. As they say, everything we want is always downstream. If you're feeling anything that isn't good, then you're moving against your own natural flow. So why do we always struggle to go against the current? Habit, I guess. I don't know about you, but life is too precious to fill it with any kind of angst.

One of the recent highlights was meeting the man who I think is going to play Ekstasis in my upcoming play & film, Ekstasis. His name is Ukwanni and he embodies Ekstasis in a way I had never imagined. That's the beauty of the creative force - it brings you that which you didn't even realize you needed.

The Semi-Finalists Voting for Blog4Reel is going strong! And I'm super excited to see we're getting new bloggers (and I have no idea where they're coming from, which is great). Great things ahead!

Sleep well, sad bears.

Time 4 Another Deep Thought by Jack Handey

"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk."

Are you people drunk? :)

I think I'm going to try to come up with my own deep thoughts. I'll get back to you on that.

Revolutionary Life

I saw Revolutionary Road over the weekend which left me feeling "empty and hopeless". I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I enjoyed it, that much is true. I just don’t know if I care anymore to celebrate the ability of movies to make me feel bad. They must think it’s more difficult to do the opposite, I guess, not excluding butt-related jokes, but you can’t really make a whole movie around that, or at least you shouldn’t. At the very least, I guess, it reminded me that we can unstick ourselves from the ruts we get into and it's less about what we're doing than the frame of mind we're doing it in. Yars.

My new fav thing to watch is on Showtime, actually - "United States of Tara" with one of my favorite TV crushes from Sex and the City, John Corbett, and the always fabulous Toni Collette. It’s really clever and interesting and Collette perfectly pulls off the various different personalities she portrays. Oh, guess I should have mentioned, if u haven’t seen it, that it’s about a woman who has Multiple Personality Disorder, although on the show I learned it’s now classified as DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), so see fascist anti-television groups out there, TV is educational. And sometimes, delightfully, funny. I’m going to have to check in with our equally fabulous Blog4Reel judge, Kris Lawrence who moonlights as a TV critic and find out if he approves. I usually get all of my TV recs from him. His column is awesome. Check them out if you get a chance:

http://www.lvrj.com/columnists/Christopher_Lawrence.html

Oh and if you want to see the most charming music video (shot in stop-motion), check this out. The song, by Oren Lavie, is also really beautiful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

New Beginnings... although isn't every beginning new? Hmm..

Happy New Year, Bitches!.. um... I mean Bloggers! I can't believe it's '09. Can you? I hope y'all had a beautiful Christmas and New Year. The holidays were VERY relaxing. I can't say I accomplished much. I had intended to work on all these projects, but no, no... that did not happen. But, I'm fine with that. I think that sometimes we Do Do Do so much and we just need to try BE-ING for a while. I made the picture shown above with my friend and fellow blogger, Susan Seydler. I'm completely enchanted with the "light" pics. I have some others I'll try to post later.

Blog4Reel is getting ready to move into the second round of voting here in a couple weeks and I can't wait to see who the top ten are going to be! For more information on specific dates, be sure to check out #7 in our FAQ's:
http://www.blog4reel.com/faq.asp

I'm also happy to announce that we have finally found the perfect web designer for the site, Mark Fergason. This guy is, and I'm being modest, a genius. He knows his ASP coding, which is what the site's designed in. He's also, and this is unusual, a normal guy. :) Most coders have a hard time communicating with laypeople like myself. Not so with Mark. He's not your typical geek. In fact, he doesn't even like your typical geek things like video games and Star Trek, Star Wars and every other film that has the word or an actual "star" in it. It's weird. But good for Blog4Reel. He's already working on adding some new and awesome features and we'll soon be expanding to include other blogs, blogs that aren't really designed for the competition, to the site. We will become a Haven for all Blogs! WHA HA HA HA! Sorry, I got a little over-excited there. :)

This year is going to be a great year, I just know it. My first goal is to get psychotically organized. Yes, me. Organized. It can happen, and it will! First order of business is a new filing cabinet. Whoohoo! Also planning on taking a belly dancing class... which should be fun. Casting for Ekstasis is going pretty well.. have been getting some pretty good responses there. Hopefully I'll find the perfect people for it. I'm sure I will. And finally, our new video, "Ennis Does Halloween" is almost done. Y'all are gonna love it! Or else. Whaahahahahaha......... I think I've drunk too much of Madhatter's (http://www.madhatterstea.com/)hot cocoa today...........