My gift to China

This morning my oldest daughter got on a plane on her way to China. That's right, China. That China. The real China. No fake General Tso bullshit, China china.

I have been thinking about this all day. First, this is a daughter who can handle herself on the world stage. My fear is that she will cause some sort of international incident while traveling. I have her my advice, which is generally, meet a super model on the plane and stay in your hotel room. This has worked for me in the past and I figure it is a decent way to see the world.

I asked her to guest blog while in China, but she refused. I asked her to clean her room too, same answer.

If there is an update, I will post it, but in the meantime, one of the worst parts of being a hands on parent is the day when your children become functioning adults. This may not be the case with this particular daughter, but the day is on the horizon and that is both great news and kind of sad.

Because you are too busy

First, this just in. A poll in Seattle asked readers what would happen at the World Series tonight. Results are a little shocking. Many said the Giants would win, some thought Texas may win and the vast majority of voters thought that former president George Bush would be killed by rabid zombies. Thank you Seattle.

Here now, because you people are so fucking busy that you could not make it to Washington DC to celebrate fear, or sanity, or vaginas. Whatever. Some of the signs read:

"Is this the line for Justin Bieber tickets?"

"No more giant turd sandwiches politics."

"I'm here for the gangbang."

"Bacon is good for me."

"Number one threat to America, gay mexican muslim bears."

"This is fun, we should do it more often."

"Queers for fear."

"Ironically, this rally is insane."

Contest continues

That's right, 35 smackerinos are available if you can bother yourself to come up with 3-17 words in english. Send an email and explain why you, or someone else, could use 35 bucks. Then, if and when you win, you get a gift card at the CSN powerful websites of stuff.

All true.

Email mergatroidfilms@gmail.com and splain yourselfs.

Seriously.

I have received almost 30 emails, some went over the 17 word limit, which was unfortunate. Then again, they won't have to worry about how to spend 35 bucks.

Love you.

Election coverage you can count on

I have started my official countdown.

Freedom, never tasted so sweet

Finally a give away. Is the word giveaway or give away? I should check that before posting, but again, it is the weekend and I am lazy. Now, I am following some very specific rules on this giveaway, because it is not something I personally am giving away, although that too could be negotiated, if you know what I mean and if you do, please let me know what I mean. So I have to put this link in the first paragraph to get the 35 dollar gift card, or better, give YOU a 35 dollar gift card. So point your browsers at the coffee tables and you too could end up with something, like a 35 dollar gift from CSN's amazing and sexy stores.

This is a serious contest, well, I take that back. It's not serious, or a contest, it is a gift card given away to a lucky someone and YOU know who you are.

So, let's have some fun. Send me an email HERE and explain in 3-17 words why you are so desperate for a 35 dollar gift card. What I will do is print out all the emails, spread them on the floor and let my uber lesbian house cat Momma Kitty figure out who deserves a 35 dollar gift card.

Pretty cool, right?

I know, we need a time limit. Lets say, by midnight of Halloween, Momma Kitty will be plenty drunk by then and the magic will happen.

Oh, a notice from Momma Kitties attorney, Beth Libitard, who wanted to make things clear, "the winner does not get momma kitty." Thank god for Beth Libitard.

OK, so get on it. What are you waiting for? Did you check out the coffee table link? Are you on it or what? Email me, and I am kind of stupid with links, so if the link for emailing your 3-17 word essay does not work, try this, mergatroidfilms@gmail.com.

Good luck to everyone.

Magic light

A few years back I flew to San Francisco to interview an artist. While the video below is not the one I created, it is the same artist, with new work that he has installed at Madison Square Park, another location I shot for a series of videos I did for the Madison Park Art foundation.

Elevator magic

So, I was walking down the hall this morning, heading to the elevator in our office building, and all I could smell was some sort of perfume that was intoxicating. I turn the corner to the elevator and there, standing, waiting is a beautiful, young woman, emitting the scent of the gods.

Usually, in my quest for fun interactions on elevators, I try and start a conversation, but this morning, I withheld. See, beautiful women bet talked to way more than necessary. In my life, I have a long term study on beautiful women and some of the results I have found are, well, shocking.

The vast majority of women in the super beautiful category are, get this, boring morons. I know, when I first discovered this, I was shocked too.

It probably all goes back to childhood. Most kids have to go out of their way to get noticed, but teachers, parents and friends. Some do all sorts of stunts just to get a little attention. Except the beautiful kids, they get noticed for doing nothing more than entering a room. From a very early age these kids, genetic freaks really, think that just by showing up, they are doing the world a favor.

Which is kind of cute for a while, but as they age, they keep expecting the world to embrace them with open arms and as we all get a little wiser, we realize that just because someone is sort of beautiful, hot, sexy, whatever - they can also be dramatic, insane and liars.

So I did not take pity on the beauty at the elevator this morning. I paid her no attention at all. In fact, I kind of laughed when she got on the elevator going up and immediately she pushed the button to go down. I smiled, looked at her, she got all excited like I might say something, because as a beautiful woman, she expects all men to say something, and I looked at my cellphone and forgot she was in the elevator with me.

She sure did smell good though.

Seriously

Time to dance

Swag

Another marketing guru as asked me to shill for them, offering free stuff to you, loyal and semi-retarded readers.

So, todays big question is, do you even care?

Some software company is asking me to use their product, write a review, post it and then I get not only their product, but I can give it to you, loyal and semi-retarded readers.

So, generally, when I am forced to confront such complex issues, I contact my attorney, Beth Libitard, who handles my divorces, my pre-nups and of course, the serious charges I faced a year ago when I was "caught" impersonating the Pope.

I will get back to you, this would be, breaking information. My lord, updating these blogs is a pain in the vagina.

Selling out

Dear Blog Readers,

I have been asked to take part in some sort of giveaway program that would allow one of YOU to win some sort of cookware thing. I know, I hardly ever give anything away, if you do not count my recent stained t-shirt giveaway, but that was really specifically for college freshmen, so I do not count it.

Now, I have to come up with a plan to give away, say a frying pan, or some sort of kitchen device. I pretty much have my choice of all sorts of cool things, and so what I need to do, and maybe get some advice from you, is what sort of system should I put in place to give away this as yet unknown item. Suggestions?

Drop an email.

And since I am not pandering to advertisers, I could use a trip to Seattle, if an airline PR doofus is reading. Or a flight to Amsterdam, I left a t-shirt there too.

Wedding fun

For my first wedding, the invites were done as fortunes inside of fortune cookies. We actually found a baker in Seattle that did nothing but fortune cookies, so it was just a matter of printing the tiny little invitations.

That was long before video and the internet. Instead, people now do this:

(actually, I do these sorts of things for people too, but that is not the purpose of this posting)

President makes it better

As part of a video collection on You Tube in support of gay teens who are the victims of bullies, even the President of the United States has chipped in. Could this have happened under another presidency? It didn't, which says a lot, because bullies are not a new thing.

Elevator exchange

Maybe I should just not go above a certain number of floors. It seems that the worst conversations happen when I am traveling above the 20th floor.

Today I was delivering a film to a client and I got on the elevator in a fairly new, pristine building. Before the doors could close, a tony little hand reached in and hit the sensor. The doors opened and in waddled a tiny man. He must have been south of 4 1/2 feet, but he looked like a professional, dressed in an expensive suit and wearing the look of someone on his way to an important meeting. In my eye, at that height, wearing a nice suit, he looked like a tiny little business man, or a kid pretending to be a tiny little business man.

We made eye contact, me looking down, him looking up. Hello there I said. He looked a little more at me, trying to discern if my tone was one of humor, friendship or just someone being kind. I would imagine, with his irregular size, he gets a lot of comments. He nodded and said hello. As the elevator doors closed I said Nice suit. Again, he looked me over and then said "what's your point?"

I knew then I might be digging a hole for myself, but I just replied that the suit looked nice. "Alright," he said, "here we go. You got a thing for shorter people?" "I do not" I said. "You look at me like I am abnormal." "Well, if the shoe fits." "What's that supposed to mean, because I am shorter than you, I am some sort of freak?" "Not exactly a freak, but a size of human one does not see all the time." "That's an interesting way you couch your bigotry." "Oh, that is not true, I am not a bigot, just a person who seems to point out the obvious." "You are saying it's obvious I am a shorter man?" "Duh." "Well, I don't like your tone." "Well, as I said, that is just an adorable suit you have on." "Adorable?" "Yes, adorable." "Oh, no fuck you too." "Seriously? I point out that your suit is adorable and you lose it?" "Your entire attitude is one of prejudice and hatred." "Yeah, but that's my attitude with almost everyone."

The door opened on my floor and I walked out.

How to meet really really really stupid women

This video is designed to show European men how to meet vapid, banal and possibly retarded American women. I am here to help my foreign born brothers to better understand the mysterious American woman.

Picking the right candidate

Oh sure, I get all your emails and some of them I read. You want me to decide who is best, who deserves you vote. It is more complicated than you can imagine. But once in every lifetime a candidate comes along who speaks for all the people. A candidate who is not interested in the perks of the office, the graft and corruption. A candidate who cares.

Jimmy McMillan makes me want to move back to New York, just to vote for him. You are right sir, the rent is too damn high.

Winter is here

That is totally not true. It is another beautiful, sunny day in Pittsburgh. In my dream winter was here.

A strange dream too. In it I was sleeping, much like I was actually doing when I had the dream, so it was a multi-layered dream in so much as I was sleeping and dreaming and dreaming of sleeping, if you can catch my drift. Then, in my dreams dream, I could hear my mother screaming, so I got up, in my dream to see why my mother was screaming, and she was standing next to a window screaming at something outside of the window.

Now, if you knew my mother, who is no longer with any of us, you would know that screaming at windows was not out of character.

In my dream I ran up to her to find out what she was screaming at, and I looked out the window. There was a snow plow, plowing snow and hitting a car. My mother was screaming at either the snow plow, or the car, not quite sure.

We never had snow when I was a kid, because I grew up in Southern California, and the only snow that existed was being snorted by rock stars and bank presidents. So, in the dream, snow on our childhood street would have been, well, dreamy. It would also have sent my mother into a hissy fit, thus the dream.

What does it all mean? No clue.

But, I have to say, its been almost 5 years since my mother passed away and it was nice to see her, even in a dream. Which is to say, even in a dream she was loud, screaming and mad at something completely out of her control. Yes, by god, I do miss her.

The hurricane that I love

Many years ago I worked as a weatherman for a small group of radio stations on the East Coast. Well, not specifically as a weatherman, but a decent portion of my job was to turn on my microphone and hear a DJ say something like, "now it's time to check on the weather, Matt are you there?" I would babble on about sun or rain, snow or slush, sometimes, depending on the DJ and the stations format, we would talk a but about something else, then he/she would announce a song or commercial and I was gone.

That said, I like hurricanes. I like the force of a hurricane, the power and beauty, the way it will touch down and do its damage and then disappear. Hurricanes leave a mess behind as it willfully moves on to its next target, a target that is never easy to discern.

There is something beautiful about a hurricane. The way it does not seem to care about anything else, if you are in its path, it will hurt you. If you are not in its path, but you house is, it will hurt it. There is a simple logic to hurricanes, stay calm, stay clear and stay awake.

Sometimes our internal life is a bit like a hurricane. On the exterior, we are calm and controlled, but inside, in our brains, everything is a mess, falling a part, being thrown against the walls of our skull. I also like people that have an inner dialog that does not always match their external appearance. I once had a date in Seattle that, externally speaking, was beautiful and reserved, but interior wise, a complete and utter mess. I snuck away while drinks were ordered, never bothering to look back.

My sense is that many people, especially in this economy, are feeling as though there is a storm brewing, either on the employment front, of inside of themselves, where the threat of a long dry spell could cause long term damage.

If there is one thing I learned during my tenure as a weatherman is it this, predictions are hardly ever accurate, preparing for the worst keeps you ready for almost anything, and even when we are prepared, when we have taken all the proper precautions, when the hurricane actually hits, we will never be the same.

Inquest this

A few weeks ago I wrote about a Native American carver in Seattle who was shot by police. I had a strange and magical connection with this carver and it saddened me that he was now gone. Police had shot him, presumably when he refused to put down his knife.

Now, the King County Executive has ordered an inquest into the murder.

"Today, King County Executive Dow Constantine ordered an inquest into the shooting death of John T. Williams by Seattle police officer Ian Birk on August 30, 2010.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg recommended the inquest after his office reviewed investigative materials from the Seattle Police Department—including interviews with 16 civilian witnesses, officer witnesses, extensive physical evidence including audio and video tapes from Williams's shooting, and presumably the Medical Examiner's report that Williams wasn't facing Officer Birk when shot.

The KC Prosecutor's public inquest is a fact-finding mission that reviews the facts of the shooting before a six-member jury. The purpose isn't to determine the guilt or innocence of Officer Birk; however, Satterberg could seek charges against Birk stemming from the inquest. A civil suit could also result from the inquest."

Good.

Wedded bliss

I am having second thoughts.

After attending almost a million weddings in the last few months all I can think of is how sweet weddings are and how much fun weddings are and how I royally screwed up the only wedding I have ever been a part of.

Why, just this last weekend I had a priest get mad at me when I volunteered to take a few confessions. When did priests lose their sense of humor? I guess, fucking children wears a priest out.

Marriage really is for young people.

I think the magic of marriage, the ceremony and tradition are really necessary for people under, say, the age of 35. Thats arbitrary, because I bet there are people who get married later in life who enjoy it, love it and cherish it. What I really like about weddings is the tradition.

One of the most important aspects of the marriage ceremony, at least for me, is to gather all your friends and family in one place and declare your love to them, and that promise to honor and respect the other person is key. Because when you gather all these people and you tell them that you will love this person until you die, and stay with them in sickness and in health, and build a life together, you are basically telling all the people there that you are no longer a player, no longer a wolf in a decent suit.

And your friends and family know this and most will guide you through life.

A short tangent. When I was married, and trust me, it was not a bad marriage for a fairly long time, I would go out with friends, without my wife and we would get ourselves into some fun times. A few of these fun times had be close to someone who was either cute, or sexy or both. There were many moments that I thought it might be fun to cross that line and maybe, you know, pounce on a hotty. I did not, for the most part. I add for the most part, because what one does and does not do is hardly the point. Friends would take me aside and remind me of my vows. And I would return home, to the loneliness and strangeness and bask in it. That is what marriage did, it turned my friends into the relationship police.

In the end, and is often the case, vows ended up being kind of passe. It's not the vows that keep people happy and together, it is the people and while in the midst of so many weddings, I kept thinking how lucky they have been to find one another, to love one another and to share these moments with the people who are most important in their lives.

Something about catholic marriage ceremonies, they always talk about babies. Getting married is part of this cycle, where you get married, you have babies and you die. Big cycle, but it happens. Now, in America, many people don't do that, many have babies, and then get married, or do not get married at all. Many decide to get married and not have babies, or find out they can not have babies. There are no rules, but these catholic ceremonies sure do focus on babies.

There was a point to this post and now I have lost it.

Maybe it is this, like bike crashes, marriage is a once in a lifetime thing, you should do it once and that's all.

Hating Microsoft

If ever there was a company that just did not get modern society, after inventing much of it, that company is Microsoft. This company had so much going for it, back in the late 80's and now, it is just a joke on almost every level.

Now, I know, there must be something this company does well because it stays in business and continues to employ a shit load of nerds, but to be honest, none on my nerd friends would work for Microsoft if you gave them a girlfriend and a car. It is a terrible company, in both working environment and product development.

Do you crave an example? How about a shitty commercial to show off an even shittier product?

Getting better

When ever I am in bed and out of control, I like to look at people who have a better outlook than I do.

There has been a rash of teens killing themselves, gay teens, who are being bullied and harassed at schools around the country. First, something I told my children when they were younger. Bullies are fucked up. It's true, well, I may not have used those words, but bullies are damaged people who are taking their self hatred out on others, rather than doing the internal work to make themselves better.

See, even with young people, some are just nutty, or come from terrible families and they take that out on innocent and weaker people. Bullies have an amazing ability to spot weakness and prey on it. Thus you have young gay people getting bullied by idiots.

So, A Seattle writer has started this project "It Will Get better" or something like that, and people are posting short videos that show that you can survive the torture and torment and find a better life.

Here is my latest.

And maybe when I get better, I may make a video too.

Friday beauty

Helping gay kids to be super gay

I am writing you on behalf of Liberty High Schools Gay/Straight Alliance Club. We are located in Liberty, MO, a conservative suburb of Kansas City. The GSA has not been active for two years here due to lack of sponsorship and a "controversy" three years ago when the GSA made shirts that said “Gay? Fine By Me” which caused some tension in the community, eventually leading to the shirts being banned from school. This year I have sponsored the club for the first time and so far we are up to 31 students, which is huge for us! We have many great ideas and plan on recognizing National Coming Out Day, Day of Silence, LGBT History month and doing many activities to promote acceptance of everyone in our school....

The problem is we are on a very limited budget and fundraising for a club of this kind in this area is difficult. The bullying here is absurd and with the recent suicides of many teens, we need to do all we can to make sure these students feel welcome, valued, and know they have a safe place in school. We will not be getting money from our district due to our budget problems created by the economy and our former superintendent. If you could find it in your heart to donate a small amount, it would create a HUGE difference and allow us to continue our mission here. These 31 kids—and growing—deserve a great GSA club and I am trying all I can to allow them that opportunity here.

John Barreca
Special Ed. Teacher/Alliance Club Sponsor
Liberty High School


Donate?

Elevator chat

So, this morning, in my new long running attempt to talk with people I encounter in elevators, I spoke with a man with a "jew-fro".

Those of you who are not of the Jewish persuasion may not be familiar with the "Jew-fro" look. In young Jewish men, it is generally curly hair that is all over the place. In older Jewish men, it is the same, but a more expensive city and often times showing the ravages of time with a receding hairline.

So, I push 7th flood, and right as the doors are about to close, receding hairline Jew-fro sticks an arm into the closing doors. My first instinct was to see if the old elevator had the electronic mechanism that picks up movement, or would I witness the removal of one Jew-fro owners arm.

No suck drama. Door opens, balding Jew-fro enters and I congratulate him on his non-loss of an arm. He smiles, says that this is just how his day is going and I, being the guy trying to engage people in elevator conversations asks, "having a bad day?"

"Oh, don't get me started. My wife, and let me tell you, should be ex-wife, wakes me up with the question, isn't today the day you get the MRI? and she was right, of course, because she is always right, but she is not so loving as to wake me in time to prepare for a medical procedure, just wake in time to remind me I am about to be late for a medical procedure, so I am rushing out of the house, with no breakfast and no coffee and this pang of anticipation because whenever any of us have a medical test of anything done we face the possibility of results that may or may not be welcome. I am thinking this as I start my car and I look up and coming out of the garage is my wife with a piece of paper, again with the paper, again with the last minute, and she hands it to me and I am thinking that it must be the insurance paperwork, or possibly something from the ordering physician or something of equal heft, but once I roll down the window and she hands it to me, it is a list of things she would like me to pick up on my way home from work. I have a medical test and a full day at the office, but on my way home I am not expected to pick up organic laundry detergent because my wife who should soon be my ex-wife, has, as she ages, gained a new appreciation for anything organic and expensive. I agree to pick up the detergent..."

At this point the elevator doors opened to my floor. I interrupted my new friends diatribe and told him I must be going and he kind of apologized and I just smiled and walk away.

Pretty Stupid

If you are stupid and still angry that Sarah Palin aint representing you, then god damn, you got lucky, cause the dummies amongst us done got themselves a new pony to ride.