Dave Aye at the San Diego Film Festival

Brian and I have been going to the San Diego Film Festival this weekend. Best film so far: the short film "West Bank Story," a spoof of West Side Story showing a conflict between a Jewish fast food joint and an Arab one. Lots of dancing, lots of singing, lots of laughs. http://www.westbankstory.com/

Worst one, in my opinion: one with a rape scene where the guy knocks the girl down, gets on top of her, holds her hands down, does it to her, and says he loves her. Yeah, right. I have seen that type of scene a thousand times before, and it gets suckier every time. If you are gonna do a rape scene, bring something new to the table. (I am not bothering to find a URL for this one.)

Same thing if you have long silences in your film. Few directors could do that. Hitchcock was one (and he always was building to something with them). Can you think of any other such director right now? I can't. In this film fest, the best films were from directors who knew that you have only so much time in your film, so they delivered as much content as they could in the precious time they had. Unless you are a Hitchcock, silence is lazy. (Think about it: does a script with "Character stares into space for 3 minutes" sound interesting?)

Another wonderful comedy short: Day of the Grackle (http://www.gracklefilm.com/). A live action cartoon. Check it out. Well, check out the trailer.

I am gonna find out what it takes to enter a film short into such a film fest. I love film fests. I love comedy film shorts. I saw lots of good ones. And I am making my own. Check my video page for my Movie Trailer short (and more to come).

Saw a good film at the fest this evening: Trudell, about a Native American political activist/musician/poet/writer. http://www.trudellthemovie.com/ (Watch out; this web site likes to expand and take over your screen space.) Very good, except for the Q&A session. Some guy started talking about "sacred feminine." Since I have had to study The DaVinci Code for the book I am working on, I have read that phrase way too many times. If I see or hear it one more time, I am gonna puke.

My attempt to boogie-board on Thursday was a bust. Waves were too low. But the ocean is still beautiful.

OK, don't feel like writing anything else. So here it goes to posting.

Now my barber's Mac is the master.

It is now Darth Vader to my iBook's Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He had a wimpy G4 Powermac tower; 450 Mhz G4 CPU, 20 gig HD, 350 MB ram, DVD reader. He wanted to be able to burn DVDs.

We decided between upgrading this Mac or buying a new one. The decision: we took it to We Fix Macs, and did a BIG FAT UPGRADE.

Now my barber's Mac is Darth Vader to my iBook's Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He now has a Muscle Mac: 1.5 GHz G4 CPU, 120 gig HD, 850MB, Superdrive. (Well, a muscle mac compared to most other G4s.) And he took his 17 inch flat panel display from his home and plugged it into this one. Oh yeah, he also has OS 10.4 (Tiger) and iLife 05. This Mac is fast, fast, fast. I cannot believe how FAST it starts up. I know I will help him burn a few DVDs; bet it will be FAST about that also.

That beats my iBook: 800Mhz G4 CPU, 60 gig HD, 1.2 Gig MB ram, Superdrive. Good enough for me now, and for a year or more beyond. But not good enough to keep a twinge of envy out of my head when I see my barber's Mac. The master.

Maybe in a year or more, when I have to replace my iBook with a MacIntel laptop, I might want a Powerbook instead of an iBook. Maybe. I have a year or more to decide.

(My first rather autobiographical blog post. Whee.)