Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

Now what? I know.

That’s it. It’s over. I just turned in my Drawing portfolio, which means I haven’t any classes left. Not this semester. And I haven’t even tried to sign up for next semester on account of not knowing about money for classes or hours for a job. So no more classes. I’m no longer a Student, I’m just Unemployed. I don’t have any more forced assignments left, no more classes which were nearly my last semblance of social connection with the outside world. Running out of money. I desperately want a pizza, but I know it’s not in the budget. I haven’t got the money for pizza, and if I do, I won’t have money for other things like rent and heat and water and the rest of my food, so why an extravagence like pizza?

A little bird told me the Edge, which has been camped out near the local cineplex for several days now, was giving out passes to a free screening of The Hot Chick tonight, so I hopped on my bike in the midst of trying to finish my Drawing final assignment, and tried to get one. Alas, the person there told me the person in charge of giving out schwag was at lunch, and if I come back, I could have my chance at fabulous prizes. I wasn’t particularly interested in fabulous prizes, but if I can save $5 and see a movie I was going to see anyway, I’m all for it. Except I needed to finish my drawing assignment, so I left empty handed. After I turned in my drawing assignment and left (that’s it, that’s all we were there for) I walked back over to see if there were any passes left, but of course there were none, though they offered to sell me a The Hot Chick Soundtrack CD. No thanks.

So now what? Well, I do have an interview at ASU next week to try to get the Graphic Design position, so I’ll have to spend some intervening time putting together a web portfolio. I don’t have one because I’ve never wanted to be a professional web designer. This is a good opportunity to work with people on the forefront of developing standards for interacting with all kinds of multi-dimensional data, something I am quite interested in, and which uses skills I happen to have, or can quickly learn.

Oh, and I have already begun work in my head on a sort of “Part 2” to Forlorn, and will be getting the research materials I was looking for for the story of my love life sometime in the next month or two, from various sources. And I would like to get some new paintings down on canvas before the end of the year. And now that my final assignments are turned in, I should have more than enough time to get my place cleaned up, dishes & laundry that have been waiting an age to be done done, Christmas decorations up, and a few other touches I have in mind. And then it will very quickly be January and if I don’t have the ASU job by then, then I’ll have to find some other jobs fast, regardless of pay and skills match, just to make ends meet. And then school will start, with or without me.

I know and I don’t know and I’m not worried, but it is a concern of mine. I think I’m going to go down to Mill’s End and have a drink I can’t afford and start working on that new novel. To clear my head, to settle me. To get me back to feeling good after spending the last week or two focusing on Marc’s comments has made me literally ill. What a day. What a long day. It grows longer all the time.

Heil Santa! Heil Santa!

So, I was sitting here, trying to determine what I would watch while waiting for Taken to begin, while I get started on the last six or eight hours of work for my final Drawing assignment, and I came across the all new Invader Zim Christmas special. I tried calling around to my friends to let them know, but they either didn’t answer or didn’t have cable, so it’s just me here watching Zim convince the world he’s Santa. He’s introduced a new Christmas tradition: Everyone in the world will build a giant teleporter that will send all humans to their doom. One human seems to questions this, asking “Will being teleported to our doom be Christmas-y and fun?” Zim, of course, responds that it will, and the humans begin work as slaves to Zim.

Excellent quotes from the episode:

“Heil Santa! Heil Santa!”

“Gaz! I’m trapped in a frozen wasteland!” “Who isn’t?”

“Will you believe the giant robot boy who launched Santa into outer space, or will you believe me, the Easter Platypus? Easter shrimp for everyone!” “Yay!”

I should be sleeping, or drawing

I should be sleeping right now. I’m a little under the weather. Feels like a virus invading the cells in the back of my throat. That overall soreness my body is feeling is actually a side-effect of my body’s attempts to dispose of the virus. That runny nose is just to annoy me. Watching Star Wars Episode II on an 8-story screen made me feel quite a bit better, actually. That was a lot of fun, and it was good to begin feeling better. But I should be sleeping. I probably should have just gone to bed at midnight when I got home instead of going to see the 12:30 Empire. I probably should have gone to bed when I got home from that over an hour ago instead of writing that review and making this post.

Or, if I was going to be awake from 12 to 4AM, I should have been working on my homework. I’ve got a really good start on my drawing assignment. The pictures got taken and developed Friday (thank you, Angela) and I’ve got 85% – 90% of the shapes penciled into the drawing. Another hour or two of that, then probably another 6 or 8 hours shading everything very carefully. I was able to do an amazing job with charcoal sticks and charcoal powder on an image with cloth and flesh and sky in it, but I don’t know how well I’ll do with pencils and graphite powder (which you may not realize behaves in a totally different manner than charcoal powder) on an image with hard, flat surfaces only.

That one I have until Wednesday to complete, but my 2D Design project is due Tuesday and I hate to admit it, but I haven’t even started, really. I keep changing my mind about what I want to do with it, but while I was watching previews before Empire I got an idea that meets the requirements of the assignment, matches well with my creative style, and (as opposed to the half a dozen or more ideas I’ve had so far that did those things) will not take forever to complete. That project involves creating a photo-montage with realistic depth cues but surreal content. I like saying “photo-montage” instead of “collage” because I’ve never really been able to create a collage I was satisfied with before. I usually don’t know what to do. But I’m treating this in my head somewhat like a giant Photoshop Ping Pong image. (Psst! Zoe! Iain! There’s a months old match there with only three volleys! Go volley! Something!) I may upload it as a volley when I’m through with it. Presumably before Tuesday at 4:40PM, when I’m supposed to be able to turn it in.

Anyway, I think I’m going to go lay down. Perchance to sleep. Perchance to get right back up again and start working on my homework. Maybe I’ll just leak snot for a while and then pass out. Or pudding.

Empire – movie review

Empire, Starring John Leguizamo, was not the movie the previews led me to believe it would be. If you watch the trailer for Empire, it may lead you to the impression that the story goes something like this:

Drug dealer meets wall street investment banker, drug dealer gives wall street investment banker a lot of money, investment banker disappears, drug dealer and his well-armed friends track down investment banker and a literal class war erupts, and since the drug dealer was the good guy in this story, he wins in the end.

Nope. Most of that is not what this movie is about. To explain, I’m going to reveal the entire movie. You weren’t going to go see it anyway, but since the only reason to watch it is for the outstanding performance by Leguizamo, knowing the story may just prepare you for the sort of turmoil he goes through.

The main character, a drug dealer played excellently by John Leguizamo in one of the most serious and emotionaly intense roles I remember seeing him in, does in fact meet and invest with an investment banker who runs off with his money, but that’s not what this movie is about. This movie is really about said drug dealer’s downward spiral.

He starts the movie the most important person in his neighborhood, with literally millions of dollars of liquid assets, a girlfriend that loves him, and a crew he can rely on and has known his entire life. He’s putting his girlfriend through college, where she makes friends with the girlfriend of the investment banker, and at the end of the first night our hero meets the banker at a party his girlfriend dragged him to uptown, she also reveals that she is pregnant with his child, and he gets shot by a member of a competing dealer’s crew. These events all coming together at once convince him that he needs to get out of the business and into something legitimate to protect his girl and his child, and of course he gets in touch with his new investment banker friend.

Except now he also has to deal with the competing dealer who shot him up, and he’s got to convince his crew he isn’t betraying them to want to get out, and he’s moving uptown, and things start falling apart. He gets arrested for the murders of the competing dealer and his crew & has to turn to his investment banker friend’s uptown lawyer to get him out of jail. His friends begin to turn on him, and with good cause; he is a changed man, and doesn’t want to involve himself with their lifestyle anymore. He is trying to seperate himself from the dangerous life he was living, but his girlfriend still feels a connection to her friends and family and neighborhood they are leaving behind and they fight about it and he leaves her standing very pregnant alone at night on a street corner in the ghetto.

Now, he’d already invested a million dollars with his investment banker friend, and right after his girl leaves him he gets back two million on his invesment, so he thinks he can really finally get out of his old life. His investment banker friend tells him about a much bigger deal, this one he needs to put of 4.5 million dollars, and by the end of the week. What do you think he does? This is where his downward spiral really gets out of hand. He contacts the woman who supplies him and his competition (played adequately by Isabella Rosellini) and asks her to invest with him because he’s short 1.5 million dollars, promising her amazing results. She tells him he just needs to keep the person he put in charge of his crew from resorting to violence re:the competition. So of course the guy shoots the competition in the head and our hero must kill him for the supplier. Except he doesn’t; the supplier’s goon has to do it for him.

In between, he is stressing out about how far down the tubes his life is going and he gets a call from his investment banker friend and asks again if the investment is legitimate, and mentions that he’s going out of his head just sitting alone in his apartment. The investment banker secretly calls his girlfriend and has her give him a visit. She pretends she hasn’t heard from him and is genuinely interested in our hero. He shows amazing resolve, and is pushing her off him when his girlfriend walks in to try to make up and instead she leaves in tears.

He gets the money together and gives it to the banker. The banker disappears. Every trace that he was there is gone. There’s a different business where his business had been, his home is empty, his phones are disconnected. That heoric battle between the drug dealers and the investment bankers I envisioned earlier? It can’t happen now because half the dealers in New York are dead, and those remaining consider our hero a traitor. He can’t even turn to his girl for support because she believes he was trying to cheat on her with the banker’s girlfriend.

The intensity of the situation is amazingly well crafted, and John’s performance was impressive. I won’t reveal the very end of things, but suffice it to say it doesn’t magically get better all of a sudden. His spiral just keeps going down, and there’s a confrontation scene where he’s almost more like an enraged, caged animal doing whatever he needs to get himself out of the situation he’s got himself into, and it is gripping in a way you haven’t seen John Leguizamo attempt before.

If Wil Smith deserved the Oscar nomination for Ali, John Leguizamo deserves a nomination at least for this performance. No, he wasn’t recreating a historical figure, but there was more depth of character and intensity of emotion all across the scale here. Not a groundbreaking story per se, but a breathtaking performance.