frankwu

frankwu @ 2008-05-11T20:24:00

2008-05-12T03:25:22Z

Crazy Prediction No. 315

2008-05-07T10:08:38Z

In 8 years, this woman is going to be elected Vice President:

Who is she?
Kay Hagan, who, last night, won the Democratic primary for the Senate race this fall in North Carolina against Elizabeth Dole.
I'd never heard of her before today, but I like what I see. She understands the importance of alternative fuels and taking care of the environment; she believes in the importance of high tech and saving jobs. She's an impassioned and articulate speaker. She's likeable. Neither shrill or strident. Not bitchy at all.
She has positions which are immensely reasonable: encourage more people to become teachers, balance the government budget, and undertake a responsible withdrawal from Iraq (the fact that her husband was a Viet Nam vet and she has two nephews on active duty now will help win her friends in military circles).
She's also got a sense of humor: Her website features an image of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers. The message: Send Liddy Dole back to Kansas with Bob. How'd she get to be a Senator for North Carolina anyway? She's not really from here and doesn't really give a crap about NC. And, unlike Kay, she doesn't even have a husband with the residency to vote for her!
Kay will follow the popular tactic this year of associating Dole with Bush every chance she gets (Dole toed Bush's line to the tune of 49/50 votes in 2002, Kay will remind everyone). She'll link Dole to the war.
And, with Democrats voting in record numbers this fall, she will be swept into power with a bunch of other Dems.

And by 2016 she'll be a rising star on the Democratic landscape.

One of the major effects of the 2008 Presidential campaign, no matter how it ends, will be that having a woman and/or a minority on a major party ticket will not just be a novelty, but a necessity. The old conventional wisdom was that you needed geographical diversity. (In 1960 and 1988, for example, the Dem tickets had both a northerner from Massachusetts and a southerner from Texan.) The new conventional wisdom is that future tickets will need racial and/or gender diversity. (On the Democratic side, I mean. The Republican party will be run by white men until they run out of white men, which will be never.)

If Obama loses this fall, then Hillary runs in 2012, and all Kay Hagan bets are off.
But I think Obama will win this fall, partially because every time the country tanks, we throw away the leading party (one major exception being 2004). Plus Old Man McCain is sounding more and more like Montgomery Burns, with his anachronistic references to things that don't exist anymore - Czechoslovakia, the League of Nations, the 20th Century. No, Obama wins this year. Then, in 2012, if the country is doing well, I doubt that even Clintonian hubris will make her run against an incumbent from her own party - as Ted Kennedy did, disastrously for all involved, against Carter in 1980. Clinton will especially be convinced not to run if the Democrats engineer her into the governorship of New York, which they may do as a consolation prize.

By 2016 Hillary will simply be too old. She'll be 61 on election day this year (did you know that?). In 2016, she'll be 69. If McCain's too old now, if Reagan was starting to slip into Alzheimer's in his second term, then Hillary also will be too old. (She knows that the Dems' best chance is this year, and that's why she's running so desperately.)

The Democrats will need a woman or a minority in 2016. Hillary's old and out by then. Kay Hagan, she's the one. And who knows? Maybe after 8 years as VP - and here I'm really going out on a limb, esp. since she hasn't even beaten Dole yet - maybe, just maybe, in 2024, Kay Hagan will be elected the first female President of the United States.

Hey - I said it was a crazy prediction, didn't I?

Are we done yet?

2008-05-07T06:15:46Z

OK, so Obama crushed Hillary in North Carolina, despite Hillary and Bill's best efforts, despite the Rev. Wright thing, despite the charges of elitism (from the superrich Clintons, indeed), despite the foolishness of a gasoline tax break that the economists don't support. And, despite a huge outpouring from Republicans trying to prolong the fight, Hillary JUST BARELY won Indiana, 50.9% to 49.1%. There's almost no statistical way for Hillary to win 50% of the pledged delegates. Her campaign's broke, and there are reports that she's loaned it more money - in contrast to Obama now passing 1.5 million donors. MSNBC's Tim Russert is calling Obama the presumptive nominee, as is HuffPo's Arianna Huffington.

What's this?

Hillary's cancelled her scheduled morning TV appearance?

Maybe she'll bow out gracefully.

One can hope.

There is also talk about how to do this all strategically. Blogger kos suggests that Hillary should wait until after the May 13 W. Virginia primary. Right now she's got some 57% or so in the polls, and it would be embarrassing to Obama for Hillary to pull out and then clobber him in WV. Also, Hillary can leave on a high note. Also, if the superdelegates all rush in at the right time, then Obama will win with the popular vote in Oregon, and not with the superdelegate vote, which would look bad.

These things have to be done delicately, or else you lose the magic spell. Of course, nothing this campaign has been done delicately or elegantly, so who knows.

Monster typists in color

2008-05-06T07:26:08Z

These are the monsters, Kenji and Benji, who type up multiple copies of scripts for the next day's shooting.

Art by the mighty and powerful Todd Tennant!

Maker faire!

2008-05-04T06:23:21Z

Went to the Maker Faire with Brianna today! Such overstimulation - wahoo!!! Cheekeetooot.

In this picture, I am sitting a restored American WWII truck. The dashboard, curiously, had a sign saying that you should NOT put aircraft grade fuel in it. Which is odd, since the owner said that he put in diesel, gasoline, all sorts of stuff, and it ran just fine. (Anybody have any thoughts on that?)

In the last picture, I am sitting "in" a Schwimmwagen. This is a German amphibious WWII vehicle. The owner wasn't around, so I couldn't get permission to sit in it. But we decided to pretend.

(fotos by Brianna)

Movie physics

2008-05-04T04:31:49Z

OK, so several of the comments about "what takes you out of a movie" involved really bad physics.
"Iron Man," for example, has several scenes wherein Mr. Iron Man falls or is thrown a tremendous distance, and yet somehow survives. He's thrown against concrete walls really hard and really fast, and survives high falls. Even if his power suit prevented bones from breaking, the internal damage from the sudden g-forces would be lethal - they would shear arteries, rip out organs from the surrounding connective tissue and reduce his innards to lumpy gravy.
And, yet, somehow, I really really liked this movie because everything else worked - the characters, the story, the effects, the action, the humor - it all worked.

Now.

Here's a trailer for a new Angelina Jolie action flick called "Wanted".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nqOoboHSQo
(Sorry, something wrong with lj settings and I couldn't cut and paste the link as usual.)

1. We see people "curving" a bullet, where you swing the gun around while firing. This curves the trajectory of a bullet so it can go around objects (like your friends) and hit other objects (your enemies). My understanding is that this wouldn't work - an object leaves another, rotating, object (like a shuttle launched from a rotating space station) at a tangent to the (mother) object's curved path. (A baseball, unlike a bullet, can curve because it is much bigger, moves slower and, most importantly, has raised stitches which cause turbulence - it also rotates at a much slower speed. A knuckle-ball, for example, doesn't rotate at all, which causes its random motion.)
At least, this is my understanding.

2. We see a guy in the middle of the street - Angelina's "pick-up." He crouches down as her car (very cool Dodge Viper) comes screaming down the street; the car turns to a stop, its door open and the car "scoops" up the pick-up.
Wouldn't this, in fact, break his legs?

3. In another scene, Angelina's path is blocked by police cars. She whips the wheel over, flipping over the Viper, through the air, over the cop cars, then landing and speeding off. (The last part I reconstruct because we don't actually see this, but we later see the car speeding off - though trailers are not necessarily time-linear in their arrangement of movie elements, I am assuming the car survived this trick to speed off.) My understanding is that this trick would do all sorts of mischief to your undercarriage and suspension system, if it worked at all.

So my questions for the great lj overmind are these:
A. These gimmicks seem to have no basis in reality - as if the movie takes place in a universe where our physical laws do not apply. Is this true? Am I understanding the physics right?
B. Even if this is true, all these scenes are really really really excruciatingly cool and make me want to see this movie very badly. They make me think that this could be one of the coolest movies coming out this summer. Is that bad?

Iron Man tonight?

2008-05-02T22:52:00Z

Lori Ann White has an extra ticket for Iron Man at 7:20 at Shoreline (Century 16) in Mountain View. $10.25. This is part of a big group - me, Brianna, Jim and Martin Terman, Bill & Cindi. If anyone's interested in going with us, email me at FWu@frankwu.com asap.

Please complete the following sentence

2008-05-02T17:19:14Z

It really annoys me/draws me out of a movie when _______________________.

Random pet peeve

2008-05-01T22:59:21Z

I expect the Iron Man movie to be awesome, but there's something that really bugged me about the picture below.

What's wrong with this picture?

In a word, the light sources. The two brightest things in the image are the lights on Mr. Downey's palm and chest. And yet they cast no glow on, say, the bottoms of his fingers, or the bottom of his face. This is what makes the lights look like thingos added in post-production with CGI. They are not integrated. Now, if, during filming, the costumers had actually built light sources into the palm-light and chest lights, that would have completed the illusion. If I were working on this, I would have also dimmed the overhead lights and amped up the palm- and chest-lights.

We see this in movies a lot - bright laser explosions happen, but cast no light on surrounding objects. Bright green light sabres are held inches from faces - yet cast no light, green or otherwise, on said faces. This looks fake, people.

Check out, for contrast, this painting by Georges de la Tour from 1642 of St. Joseph:

A single light source, and everything's illuminated logically, consistently from that point. Isn't that nice? I guess we've forgotten how to do this in the intervening centuries.

End of rant.

More monsters

2008-04-30T10:06:23Z

Todd Tennant, main monster designer for Guidolon, has come up with designs for two monsters - Kenji and Benji. These are two creatures who type up carbon copies (on electric typewriters) of the next day's shooting script. Yes, I said carbon copies because, as you know, "Guidolon" takes place in 1970's Japan, which happens to look just like 1970's America.

LJ type colors?

2008-04-29T18:38:01Z

It's been brought to my attention to on at least one computer my lj shows up as white letters on a light blue background. Bizarre. 'Cos on my home and work computers, it's black letters on white. Anybody else getting weird colors? (I haven't, of course, done anything to change the colors since I don't know how - or why - one would do that.)

As seen on Boingboing!

2008-04-27T08:25:11Z

As seen on Boingboing, here is the image that SuRa did in support of the EFF. Prints are only $22 plus shipping, of which 10 bucks goes to support the EFF!

Click here to buy!!!!

Shark on a Stick Party!

2008-04-26T19:19:50Z

Last night criollo had the most excellent party - it would have been the best party ever, except that SpaceKatGal is in Denver this weekend. Sadness. (Though today is our six month anniversary of dating - hurrah! But she's not here. Boo.)

At the party there were fireworks and Pin the Shark on the Swimmer, and dozens of sharks on a stick, which we all got to decorate. At one point we went outside to play with a shark rigged up with a syringe to squirt out flammable alcohol, but that didn't quite work to make a flame thrower, so we just dunked the shark into the alcohol directly and ignited the whole head. Fun! And then later we all went into the street to light firecrackers - and watch for cops. Too fun!

Here are the sharks I made (when SuRa told me about this party, I plotted in my head what to do on the five min. drive home from work, grabbed some plexiglass, paint, saw, drill, screws, etc. and assembled the Shark Vader at the party - the other shark is just gold and black Sharpie with added googly eye).

Pushing Buttons

2008-04-25T01:37:50Z

A while ago, at some convention (I forget which), I met a guy - who's white - who physically collected folks who jumped bail. He had some fascinating psychological insight into ... the folks he worked with. Feel free to comment, agree, disagree, or note your own experiences in this regard. (This is an article sub'd to Chris Garcia's fanzine "The Drink Tank").

PUSHING BUTTONS

Blacks, Hispanics, Whites, and Asians all have different buttons that set them off. So says a bounty hunter I met at a sci-fi convention. Well, my pal wouldn't actually label himself as a bounty hunter. But he used to track down people who skipped their court dates, physically "bag" them and haul them in for a reward. Sounds like a bounty hunter to me.

He said that the trick is to get the target to lose control and do something stupid so he's vulnerable to bagging. Over the years my pal learned that folks of different races had different triggers.

Once he was trying to bring in a big black guy, who was holed up, on the second floor of a building, holding a girl (possibly his girlfriend) hostage. Threats of extended jail time didn't work. Nor did the possibility that many people might die. But when my pal used the "N" word, the guy lost his mind. He got so angry that he threw down his gun and stormed out of the house unarmed, intent on beating my buddy to a pulp. Stupid. As soon as he was out the front door, an associate threw a sack over his head and in moments he was tasered and "bagged." The N word. That's what got him.

Racial taunting doesn't work with Hispanics. You need to tell the target that you're going to fool around with his girlfriend while he's in prison.

None of that is effective on White people. The key is getting their friends to turn on them, which is surprisingly easy. My buddy knew the target was hiding in his mom's house. He checked it over once, twice. Nothing. Then he told the target's mom that she could lose the house if she didn't turn him in. It was a lie, but she immediately coughed him up. She told my friend that the target was hiding in his bed. He'd checked the bedroom, and he wasn't there. "No," the mom said, "you don't understand. He's in the bed." The target had carved out a cavity between the two mattresses, so he could hide between them unnoticed. Clever, but not clever enough if your mom is scared of losing her house.

In another case, my pal was interviewing the target's best friend. The guy wouldn't give up any information. Then my buddy told him: "You could go to jail for obstruction of justice. [Another lie.] And there you will have lots of dates with Big Charlie." That was the button. Perhaps there was no fear of God there, but there was certainly fear of dates with Big Charlie.

With Asians, the story is completely different. Shame is a big deal to Chinese people. Shame of not meeting expectations, of not having an education or job or girlfriend that's good enough. How do you bring in an Asian guy? You call him up. You remind him he's missed his court date, and he apologies and shows up for the next date. In a suit. Woe betide him if you have to speak to his parents.

I found it most interesting that racial epithets only worked with Blacks. I've personally been called all sorts of names over the years, even blamed for Pearl Harbor (which was orchestrated by the Japanese, and I'm Chinese). I've been told to "go back to where I come from," but Connecticut's too boring for me. Being called "Chinaman" or "Chink" or "slope" or "squinty-eyed" isn't enough to make me want to beat someone to a pulp. So I find the sensitivity some have toward the N word fascinating.

Over my lifetime, I've seen half a dozen changes in the socially-acceptable term for folks of African ancestry. It used to be ok to call them "Negroes". Then that became taboo, but the word "colored" was ok. Then there was a shift, and woe betide you if you said "colored," unless you were talkin' 'bout the NAACP. But it was ok to say "Black is Beautiful," or call someone an Afro-American. Then Afros went out of style, and we were supposed to say "African-American." Now people have realized that it's exhausting to keep saying all the syllables in "African-American," so "Black" is ok again. Every once in a while I still hear an elderly person say "darkie," but that makes me cringe. But even the N word has come back, especially if you're an angry Black man or a character in a Quentin Tarantino movie. I like the fact that they're slowly taking back the N word. The way that homosexuals have reclaimed "queer" and "gay" and "fag." That's cool.

As for myself, I proudly and publicly call myself a "yellow man."

Because, ya know, "Yellow is Beautiful."

Funniest lyrics ever

2008-04-23T17:36:36Z

I usually don't listen to country music, but flipping through stations last night I heard...

I'm Still A Guy - Brad Paisley

When you see a deer you see Bambi
And I see antlers up on the wall
When you see a lake you think picnics
And I see a large mouth up under that log
You're probably thinking that you're going to change me
In some ways well maybe you might
Scrub me down, dress me up oh but no matter what
remember I'm still a guy

When you see a priceless French painting
I see a drunk, naked girl
You think that riding a wild bull sounds crazy
And I'd like to give it a whirl
Well love makes a man do some things he ain't proud of
And in a weak moment I might walk your sissy dog, hold your purse at the mall
But remember, I'm still a guy

I'll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
'Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

I can hear you now talking to your friends
Saying, "Yeah girls he's come a long way"
From dragging his knuckles and carrying a club
And building a fire in a cave
But when you say a backrub means only a backrub
Then you swat my hand when I try
Well, now what can I say at the end of the day
Honey, I'm still a guy

And I'll pour out my heart
Hold your hand in the car
Write a love song that makes you cry
Then turn right around knock some jerk to the ground
'Cause he copped a feel as you walked by

These days there's dudes getting facials
Manicured, waxed and botoxed
With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotiony hands
You can't grip a tacklebox

Yeah with all of these men lining up to get neutered
It's hip now to be feminized
I don't highlight my hair
I've still got a pair
Yeah honey, I'm still a guy

Oh my eyebrows ain't plucked
There's a gun in my truck
Oh thank God, I'm still a guy

Am I just trying to distract myself and convince myself that the election and therefore the country and therefore the world are not going to hell in a handbasket because Hillary (the lying deceitful bitch) won last night?
You betcha.

How they did the computer effects in Star Wars

2008-04-21T21:04:35Z

Larry Cuba, who did the computer effects projected on the screen in the briefing scene in SW:ANH explains how he did it.

One of my main beefs about this sequence has been that the laser dish in the computer model isn't in the right place. In the Death Star we see onscreen, the laser dish is ABOVE the equator; in the computer model, it is in the equator. Cuba doesn't address this directly, but he does say that he was building his computer model (really impressive work) based on a single matte painting of the Death Star - which didn't show the laser dish at all.

The way he builds up the segments of the trench is really amazing.

Word of the Day

2008-04-21T19:31:09Z

Today's Word of the Day is: Suctorial

From the book "The Crab and Its Relatives," by Philip Street:

Phylum Arthropoda ... Sub-phylum Crustacea ... Class 4. BRANCHIURA. A small group of temporary parasites known as carp-lice, which are strong swimmers but attach themselves to the gills of fishes, both marine and fresh water. They feed on blood drawn from the gill filaments by a suctorial mouth."

Suctorial. That's an excellent Scrabble word.

ZOMG

2008-04-20T02:09:21Z

Speaketh thee thy "Pulp Fiction" now as Shakespeare, cur.

Movies, movies, movies

2008-04-20T02:04:14Z

In between working on polishing up the final images for "The Exquisite Corpuscle" project, I've been watching a lot of movies lately. Going to the theatre, instead of renting. Part of the idea of that is that, in a theatre, I get to hear the audience's reactions.  It was really a learning experience watching "Guidolon" being played in a theatre. Some audiences really got into it (the best audience we ever had was at the Sci-Fi Channel/Sci-Fi Museum-sponsored film festival in Seattle - they got it). Other film festival audiences didn't laugh at all - they just didn't understand the humor at all. There were some things that always got a laugh - like Guidolon making choking sounds after he says "Oh, I die, Horatio, the rest is silence." And the midget Mexican wrestlers. But some of the jokes no one ever laughed out loud at in any audience. Oh well.

This is good information to have as a filmmaker.

When we saw "Aliens V. Predator: Requiem" last year, the audience was really not that into the movie - despite all the slashing and killing and mayhem - UNTIL the scene wherein the mother alien force-feeds baby aliens into a very pregnant human, and then the baby aliens all burst out of her belly. Wow, that scene was horrifically repugnant and awful in every way, BUT the audience really got into the movie after that. They were cheering and laughing much louder afterwards - but for the third of the movie before that, the audience was completely cold.

When I saw "21" earlier this week, the audience was incredibly silent throughout. It was a pretty good movie, pretty well acted, pretty well directed, pretty well scripted. But there weren't any really stand-out scenes, or any "ah ha!" moments where we the viewers really got into the heads of big-stakes gamblers or truly learned the secrets of counting cards. At no single time during that movie did the audience all laugh outloud or cheer or boo. Or anything. Silence. Not a good sign.

I also saw "10,000 B.C." This is admittedly a mediocre movie - completely braindead. There's not much of a plot, and the world-building is ludicrous (snow-capped mountains are only a few days' walk - or so it seems - from blazing hot deserts, and events separated by thousands of years in reality are telescoped into the same time frame). But there were fun action scenes and lots of whiz-bang imagery (the idea of using woolly mammoths to pull huge blocks of stone to make pyramids was really clever.   The audience was very small - a half dozen people for a late-night showing, but they got into it. They really dug the mammoth fight scenes. Yup, a completely retarded movie, but I liked the spectacle. I dug it, too.

Today I saw, with Jim and Martin and Lori and Gary, "Forbidden Kingdom." (When I walked up to the ticket booth, I accidentally asked for tickets to "The Magic Kingdom." Ooops.) The fight scenes were spectacular and exciting, and Jet Li was obviously just having a blast. But, after two or three fight scenes, the audience really didn't get into it until Jet Li and Jackie Chan, as the kung fu masters, started slapping around teenager Michael Angarano - ostensibly to teach him kung fu, but really because he was being a little bratty, whiney and annoying. Oh, the laughing and cheering every time he got slapped! Oh, yeah! After that, the audience was into it.

I remember watching "Star Trek IV" (the one with the whales) and not really being into the movie until that one shot of our heros standing on a street corner in San Francisco, completely lost and out of their element. That's pretty far into the movie.

On the other hand, I remember someone telling me that they were sucked into the original "Star Wars" the moment the Star Destroyer went overhead.

The lesson? I dunno. Maybe as creative people we need to put in scenes early in movies that really suck the audience into the experience, that make people forget that they're reading a book or watching a movie - instead they've fallen into a portal into a new dimension.

Go SuRa Go!

2008-04-19T05:04:57Z

Check it out:

!

This is pretty cool

2008-04-17T23:14:16Z

The Pope has met privately with a small group (5 to 6) of victims of the sex crimes committed by Catholic priests. They each got private, personal time with the Pope. More here.

I didn't really like Benedict XVI until today.

Can you imagine President Truman going to Hiroshima to commiserate with those wounded and maimed at Hiroshima?
Or the CEO of Union Carbide talking to the victims of the industrial accident at Bhopal?
Or the CEO of Nike taking personal tours of the factories?
Or George Bush wandering through the hospitals of Iraq?
Nope, I can't either.

This is pretty cool. As cool as John Paul II personally meeting the guy who shot him and forgiving him. Though it's sort of the opposite, wherein the Pope (presumably) apologizes on behalf of the church.

I'm not even Catholic, but that's a powerful example.

Random updatery

2008-04-16T07:30:08Z

Sorry I haven't written a lot lately.
This past week, Brianna and I went up to Eugene, Oregon, for Rob and Ximena's wedding. It was amazingly cool - the funnest wedding I've ever been to. The ceremony was like a silent movie. Eric Witchey played the Snidely Whiplash character who kidnaps the minister (Damon) and ties him to the railroad tracks. There was rinky-dink silent movie piano music going, too. And Ximena's brother kept razzing Rob for being a penniless writer. All in all, hilarious, 10 out of 10.
It was also really fun seeing folks again there (and meeting new folks) like Cos and Tom, and Jerry and Kathy Oltion (who had tie-dyed a tie I wore to the ceremony), and Ray Vukcevich and Kris Rusch (though I didn't get a chance to really talk to Dean Wesley Smith) and David Levine and Kate Yule and Harold and Eve and Alan M. Clark and I know there were a couple other friends I saw (apologies if I've brainfarted and momentarily forgotten you - really, sorry).
Also, the trip to the U. Oregon art museum earlier that day with Cos and Tom was just fabulous. There was a display of photos of "Angry White Men" and lots of cool Chinese, Korean and Japanese art, including this huge/miniature carved pagoda with buddhas on every level.

After the wedding, Brianna and I did a leisurely drive down 101 back to Palo Alto. We stopped at Prehistoric Gardens to see the concrete dinosaurs (hurrah!) - full report and fotos to follow.
We also stopped at Chapman's, which is an incredible fossil and gem store (4 miles south of Fortuna on 101). They had a whale skull on display in front (there used to be vertebrae, but they've either been stolen or sold). They had an enormous display room with huge slices of petrified wood and enormous trilobites from Morocco and a huge sphere (maybe two feet across?) of obsidian - for only $8000. Wow. Just really cool stuff. Best fossil shop on the west coast.
Anyway, so that's what I've been doing instead of posting. In case you were wondering.

More Guidolon

2008-04-16T07:12:20Z

Perhaps these Guidolon sketches from SuRa would make more sense if I explained what was going on.

In this scene, Guidolon's all bent out of shape about how badly his making his movie is going (the expression's not quite right, but, hey, this is a production sketch, not a finished drawing).

Rough version of the script for this scene:

INT. Guidolon's trailer.
GUIDOLON (sobbing, hiding big bug eyes with his wings): I am not a giant space chicken! I am not a giant space chicken! I am a cosmic avian avenger!
TRISURON (o.s.): I have an inordinate fondness for giant space chickens.
GUIDOLON: Oh Trisuron…
Camera pans to show Trisuron, doing various impressive yoga moves on the bed.

TRISURON: Relax, honey... Guido, what are you doing?
GUIDOLON: Editing, editing. There's so much to do when the shooting stops.
As Guidolon cuts film, shaking the table, Trisuron's two-headed animal stole slides off a chair onto the floor.

TRISURON: You brought that in here? Well, my therapist told me that boys are always “doing stuff”...
GUIDOLON: This movie is my last chance to be somebody. Trisuron, babe, making this movie is killing me.
TRISURON: Remember, you’re not alone. You, me, Octuron, Jerora, we’ve made dozens of movies before. We’re a team.
We see the four monsters - Guidolon, Trisuron, Octuron and Jerora - at the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We also see the foursome posed together like the “Who Are You” album cover - Guidolon sits on a chair labeled “NOT TO BE TAKEN AWAY.”

And we also see a shot of the four monsters playing with movie cameras, filming each other.
TRISURON: We can get through this together.
GUIDOLON: Maybe my dad was right. I should have stayed in medical school.
TRISURON: OK – I can help you take your mind off your problems. Let’s re-enact the first Godzilla movie. You be Godzilla – (falling on bed with arms out) and I’ll be Tokyo.
Guidolon smiles at her for a moment. Then the blood drains from his pointy cheeks.
GUIDOLON: I’m sorry, babe. I can’t… concentrate.
Guidolon pushes the editing desk forward, rolling it over Trisuron’s two-headed animal stole, which is on the floor.

TRISURON: (leaping off the bed) What are you doing? Look what you did to my stole! Oh, go... do stuff!

Guidolon turns from her to his film editor. Not because he wants to write, but because he does not want her to see him ashamed and impotent.

2 Costume Con memberships available!

2008-04-15T21:37:58Z

Due to poor planning (how often does that happen?) Brianna and I won't be able to attend Costume Con (april 25-28 in San Jose) http://www.cc26.info/

So we have two memberships available. We can sell them for, say, 80 bucks each (which is cheaper than pre-registration). So email me at FWu@frankwu.com or add a comment below if you're interested!

UPDATE: Espana has taken one of these, but the other is still up for grabs!
FURTHER UPDATE: Suzanne Rachel Forbes snagged the other. Thus: All gone!

Locus Poll

2008-04-08T21:04:01Z

A friendly reminder that April 15 is not just tax day but also the day the Locus magazine online poll and survey closes. You don't have to have a subscription to Locus or anything in order to vote.