Automatic - Incident On Filmore Street

INCIDENT ON FILMORE STREET:

I had a dollar and 25 cents - the bus was 25 cents.
I Picked it up at Grant Avenue and sat in the back the lone passenger watching the city go by and wondering if there were any mashed potato budds left in the box. Not a popular item at the house as they tasted like cardboard (they just looked worse) no one at flat begrudged me my feast.
We had turned into the Fillmore District which would be San Francisco's inner city and down Filmore Street. We were still far from walking distance to Market Street a safety zone and light years from the Mission when the driver stopped the bus. Everybody Out he announced to the passengers - everybody and the sum total of the passengers being me. Hey Mister I said why are you stopping. He told me this is as far as he was driving and he'd be going home to get some shut eye. But Mister you're leaving me in the middle of the Fillmore. Don't worry kid he said they'll be another bus along after awhile. Be cool and you should be OK.
I stood in the deserted street of ominous tenements and watched the bus disappear over a hill.
I was trying to decide if I should try walking or hold on to the small island of light around the bus stop when I heard a voice behind me.
Hey you little bastard what you doing here.
Just waiting for the bus, I said turning slowly. He was a tall middle aged man the color and texture of a tobacco leaf. He wore a long dark overcoat his hand was in his pocket and he lifted it just enough to show me the walnut handle of a revolver. Come over here, he said not unkindly.
I walked over to the doorway he was standing in. He had tired and creased brown eyes but there was an intelligence that lived in them. I'm 'fraid you're gonna have to give me all your money.
I told him I would be more than happy to unfortunately all my money was only a dollar.
Don't fuck with me man empty your pockets. Turned them all inside out with what flourish I could muster and handed him the dollar. You really do only have a dollar, man this ain't my night now is it. Where does a little fuck like you come from walking around with one damn dollar in his pocket. Kansas City I said as of the places I lived that would give me the most credibility as a rube.
KC shit man I'm from Kansas City - Kansas or Missouri?
Missouri man I'd never live in Kansas, I noticed I was starting to fall into his speech pattern.
I told him I saw Sony Terry and Brownie McGee in KC.
Shit man those boys live over in Oakland just across the bridge most likly theys just passing through.
They were fuckin cool any way you look at it though I said stuffing my hands deeper into my pockets trying to ward off that cold wind that blows across the bay.
Here kid he said pushing my dollar toward me if this is all you got take it back this ain't worth my time and energy. Take it easy and watch your back.
Hey man wait I yelled after him as his slouched figure headed down the street. He turned annoyed and said What now.
I said man you're not going to leave me here alone - someone less reasonable could come along after you're gone.
So what am I now a fuckin babysitter. Grudgingly he turned and joined me at the bus stop and we talked of this and that.
In the distance a bus emerged from the fog and he look me up and down one more time and frowned.
Listen kid you gotta understand I'm a professional thief this is what I do - I'm sorry but I gotta take that dollar.
I handed him the dollar and said any chance I could have a quarter for the bus.
He spat and something that may or may not have been a smile crossed his face and he handed me a quarter then with out another word turned and hunched against the cold headed down the street.
I never saw him again but then I never thought I would.

Automatic 1-Kriston On The Line

Kriston On The Line:
Ringing.
There is a ringing.
There is a ring in my ears. Maybe not a ringing....it's that sound I hear on the television that always makes makes me reach for my cell phone in that Pavlovian way that makes me feel like a a secret idiot as I know that it is obviously the Television and and can't be my cell phone since Buffy in rerunland has flipped open her bit of plastic I still have to check just to be sure......but once again I've been had sadly it's for Buffy not me.
Ah, its a sound that assumes a recognizable form I have come to recognize as a cell phone. It sounds just like a cellphone and it stops.
There is a ringing - this time I am ready, this time I know.
This time I can't be mislead by dreams or television, it defiantly is my cell phone and it is ringing.
The giant ancient reptilian monster air conditioner precariously just barely hanging in my window is pumping out it's familiar high decibel ambient moan that I have come to love - it soothes me, it lulls me, it comforts me with the white noise of rainstorms and oceans. The ringing is cutting through it. The ringing is fucking with my rusty mechanical lover.
It is Arctic in my room in the dense Memphian heat. Wait it's not the heat it's the....ringing. The single sheet I lay under is soaked with sweat, I am simultaneously clammy and chilled to the bone and the phone is ringing and time is standing still.
Time, it feels like I've just gone to sleep minutes ago. Time what is it, that is to say what time is it? Wait this is something I can use my big monkey brain and figure this one out. The first step is opening my eyes. There is a problem, my eyes seem to be glued shut with an insidious glue primarily composed of sweat, eye mucus, nocturnal tear duct emissions and cigarette smoke.
The fucking phone is ringing. It's ringing the fucking phone it must be moments I'm dealing with not hours which makes a good case for not even being awake - but I am awake and the phone is ringing - I get it.
I shake the blood back into the paralyzed limb I've been sleeping on and rub my eyes open enough to see the dull radioactive glow of the digital clock - it's 4:58, Christ are we talking Am or PM here......it's dark out and there is the chattering of an army of predawn bastard birds chanting that I am not crazy (well i am crazy) I have only been asleep minutes about 20 of them and they were hard won minutes and I resent forfeiting them. I will my head to raise sufficiently to to find and grab the phone then gratefully flop back on the damp pillow.
The caller ID is a green pulsing blur. My glasses are somewhere in the vicinity and some blind groping brings them to hand. I hold one lens to the good eye I have left and I see the letters form the name KRISTEN and the number is UNKNOWN meaning she could be in New Orleans, La Vegas or in my driveway. Ringing.
Kristin I haven't seen or heard from her in years. though I instinctively sense where ever she is she hasn't known sleep tonight either. I haven't thought of her more than in passing though when I do it is without regret.
Every so often I have been visited by her shadow lurking behind an unrelated thought. She flash bright like an after image then fade. Perhaps a soft focus ghost movie uninvited appearance. The camera pans back from her large hazel eyes haphazardly painted to a timeless face of a 20's screen icon, soft edges, generous mouth, a ragged dark bob and that crooked smile only southern girls seem to have perfected that breaks my heart. Always.
There is a photograph of her I can see from the bed curled in the velvet naked and melancholy back to to me holding a book. It could be Byron it could be her journal it could be something just to wrap her fingers around. She is crying, me I would be taking a photograph before starting our ritual of drawing her into my arms first resistant then clinging familiar tears wet on my neck then cheek then desperate kisses and we see daylight at the end of the tunnel....but it is a very long tunnel.
Memory accelerates now as it is apt to do. Kristan straddling me a slender phantom hovering over me pale skin, small breasts swaying, strong grip on my wrists hands with chipped and chewed red nails. Locked in a tobacco and whiskey kiss. Hidden from the world by the curtain of her hair.
The phone is ringing.
A thrift store Madonna favoring thin cotton Depression Dresses, nothing underneath. A torn leather flight jacket, rodeo boots and a crooked smile. We held hands wherever we walked and always sat on the same side of the table at CK's.
And there was the sex.
Sex in the car.
Sex under the overpass.
Sex leaning against the door of the toilet of a club accompanied by an angry knocking.
Sex in the shadows off South Main pilgrims passing near on the sidewalk.
Affectionate lazy sex in the pulsing glow of the TV.
Makeup Sex.
The sex was good.
The phone is ringing.
Kirstin though she was pregnant every month. She would cry when she thought she was knocked up and cry when she found out she wasn't. Kristen needing angry evidence of love. Smashing glass, bleeding, screaming punching holes in walls evidence.
Kristen when I was late took every photograph of my history of romance and painted out the faces with white out then scattered them about like rose pedals for me to find when I came home.
Kristen who ruined a perfectly good car because she didn't know you had to put oil in the engine.
Kristen who staggering drunk swung open the door while the car was moving through no mans land and jumped out skinning her knees then scrambled up and danced around the car to the radio. Who screamed and cursed like a cowboy at the headlights till drained. While I
weary and drunk as I was had to clime out of the Oldsmobile and pick her up kicking and clawing over my shoulder and throw her in the back seat where she lay petulant her skirt over her head.
And she was the good one. I was the problem. I was the one who always needed to be forgiven.
The phone is ringing.
Kristen who even after we called it quits was likely to call me at any ungodly hour to pick her up from some desolate juke joint - though she always made it worth my while.
Then she just fell off of the face of the earth.
That was years ago, another life.
The phone is ringing.........I don't know , it's sure to be trouble at the other end of the line.
"Hello Kristin."

A DEADLY WEAPON?

A Deadly Weapon?:
I played in a band called The Readymades. We opened for Blondie, The Police, Talking Heads and Roxy Music at Oakland Coliseum.
We never got signed.
One night we were playing a club and general madness was the atmosphere (which was sort of the whole point).
I caught out of the corner of my eye a guy throwing a beer bottle at me. I could feel a cool breeze as it passed my ear and it smashed on the drummers kit raining glass everywhere.
I saw the fool who had thrown it and in the spirit of the times we were living in smashed him on the head with the microphone.
I did not think much of it after that events like that were not unusual at the shows of the time and if you threw a heavy bit of glass at someone a pop on the head was not an unreasonable response.
When I got off stage there were two uniformed cops waiting in the wings. They told me they loved the band and I was under arrest for assault with a deadly weapon.
I got taken to a small holding cell for the rest of the night as it was too late to process me. The cops amused themselves by tossing fireworks into the cell. It actually was pretty amusing.
The next day I got taken to jail. Here I was walking down the row of cells in my Beatle boots, skin tight black pants, poka dot shirt, odd haircut and I had not opportunity to wash off the makeup on my eyes.
The first words I heard were "save the butter from dinner boys". The guys in my lockup up were pretty cool to me though and I would often run into them on Market Street and catch up.
The only thing that saved my ass (literally) was that we were opening for Ultravox that night and the concert was being promoted by Bill Grahm a powerful promoter with some of the best lawyers in San Francisco. I think they somehow pleaded me down and worked it out and we played that night.
There was a saying that went around that time period it was - never trust anyone who has not spent at least one night in jail. Maybe it still holds true.

KELLI COMES TO FLORIDA

KELLI'S FIRST 24 HOURS IN FLORIDA:
Kelli visited me in Miami several times and romance and longing was waging
war with inertia and the fact that she was seeing a boy.
Finally however she was free as was I and she moved down to live with me in Miami. Uunfortunately this was not to be the end of the story. The day she arrived I was distracted and did not generate the affection she deserved after her journey. The very next morning we had to get right in the car and drive five hours to a friend of Kelli's wedding in St Petersberg.
She did warn me that it was a celebration and she would be drinking and having fun and in my limited capacity I did understand that.
I did not know these people well but I did know that the groom and his friends had just completed training that would turn them into killing machines to do what Bush needed done in Afghanistan. So I put on my suit and kelli a pretty dress and we drove to the wedding. As is always the case with us we got there moments after the ceremony.
The guests were like nothing I have have ever seen. Wedding attire was flip flops and shorts. Every T shirt had an opinion. The father of the bride (a small town lawyer in good shape with a rock hard beer gut) took one look at me and came to the conclusion that I must be crashing - I don't think anyone ever dissuaded him. There was allot of drinking and not much in the way of conversation other than the amazing realisation that everyone but me (and possibly Kelli) knew all the words to Leave This Longhaired Country Boy Alone and sang it repeatedly.
I spent most of the evening in my car listening to the radio and walking my dog up and down the beach. Afterwards there was to be a reception at a kind of condo timeshare affair.
Since Kelly was having a good time and as promised getting inebriated I spent some time on the phone and Internet seeing if I could find us a room - I could not.
I stayed as long as I could stand it over an hour though it seemed like days then told Kelly we really had to leave. She said she would like to stay a bit longer and I told her I would wait in the car till such time in the near future she was ready to depart. Finally after sitting in the car for another hour I went back up to tell here we had a 4 or 5 hour drive and it was 3 in the morning and I would really like to go. Voices were raised and The Father of Bride appeared and put his face about an inch an a half from mine and started yelling about southern womanhood and threatening me. I did not take this too seriously and raised the flat of my hand to his fist and asked him to calm down. Suddenly from behind me one of the soldiers ponced. I didn't see him coming and am ashamed to say did not have the opportunity to land even one punch. He landed a myriad of blow mainly to my kidneys and nose. He would know how he just fished training and was stupid drunk. after all whats the point of giving someone a Gun if the can't shoot it.
He got to try out all his moves.
I made my way to the the street and the bar across the way, Kelli was crying. When I got to the mirror I was surprised that they let me in as my face and shirt was covered in blood.
On the ride home I told Kelli to tell me everything I did wrong as many times as she wanted to and then to please not bring it up again - she came pretty close to keeping her word. We found Miami about 8:00 the next morning. I was in serious pain for several months and our relationship never recovered. After six months she moved back to Memphis.
I often wonder if we had never gone to the Hillbilly Wedding if things might have turned out different. Most likely not.

MY ALMOST SECOND BRIDE

MY ALMOST SECOND BRIDE:I was sleeping soundly in my bed in Memphis on Willett Street my dog functioning perfectly well as the mammal in my life.
It is about 4 :30 in the morning and my cell phone rings.
First I incorporate it into my dream but I eventually rise to the sonic occasion and have a look at the name on the caller ID. It is the second girl that almost had the misfortune of marrying me.
I went to do a job in New Orleans (where we had been an item) and looked her up. We spent the whole night drinking and falling in love. In the morning she was in the car with me when I was driving north. A small suit case and several hat boxes and a girl in the car.
It was working out as well as things can work out with me. She had the stamina, the good heart and the ability to forgive. However she also had some serious melancholy and a bit a of a drinking problem.
Dorethy Parker is her role model and after a few drinks her accent changes from a good comforting New Orleans rythem to something that would best be used to trade quips with Scott and Zelda.
She could probubly take a chemical solution to solve part of the problem but rejects this idea. I can understand her point of view as my parents wanted to put me on litium when I was seven and I had the good sense to refuse. However it does not help much when she does stuff like trying to get out of the car in mysterious sections of town when I am still in third gear.
I am trying to decide if I should answer the phone.

JONATHAN POSTAL:THE FLAMING HEAD

THE FLAMING HEAD:I had been photographing the best of issue for the Miami New Times. The theme was Hot, Hot , Hot and so I found this magical formula commonly used in movies called Zel Gel. You put a layer a flame retardant (retard being the key concept here) and then coat what you want to set on fire with a rubber cement type of solution. Then you light er up.
I tried it first on my finger then my hand and it seemed to be only moderatly dangerious.
We lit guitars on fire, we lit basket balls on fire, we lit anything laying about on fire.
It's about 10:30 at night now and we ave an italian makeup artist that has to leave for NYC at first light.
I kind of need this guy as he does movie as well as fashion makeup and our cover girl is going to be made up as a devil girl lighting a cigarette with a flame eminating from her finger.
So the model shows up with her mom at and we start putting on the makeup at about 10:45 and we are talking horns attached directly to the skull here. So far we have been getting her ready for about an hour.
About this time she decided to check herself out in the mirror. It is not compleatly inappropreate that it is almost midnight when she first really studies her image in the mirror.
She is horrified and in fear for her mortal soul and decides there is no way she will risk brimstone for a tear sheet.
We try and explane that there is no way the Italian will be here tomorrow and it is midnight and the magazine has to ship-it would be safe to say she doesn't care so she scoops up her mother and departs. Not sure what to do I start calling every club girl I have met in Miami before that I have run into at 3 or 4 AM drinking and doing what ever elze is nessisary to to keep awake while you are drinking.
We have some luck and Karen answers her cell phone (a mirical already) and agrees to come right over. To be made up, be dressed in red laytex have horns attached to her head and her finger set on fire to ignite a cigarette. It is 4 in the morning and we can all use a light.
At this point if feel there is only one way to properly sanctify the evening so I decide to light my head on fire. I spread the Zel Gel on my dome, then a layer of the semi-cool burning fire agent and light up.
And it was good.

Reading Assignment Info

Read for Thursday the 30th

3-point lighting basics
http://www.mediacollege.com/lighting/three-point/

Key Light – 2 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2002/09_sep/tutorials/lighting101key.htm

Fill Light – 2 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2002/10_oct/tutorials/lighting101fill.htm

Back Light – 2 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2002/10_oct/tutorials/lighting1013.htm

Background Light – 2 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2002/10_oct/tutorials/lighting101background.htm

Bounce Cards – 2 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2002/11_nov/features/lighting101bounce.htm

Outdoor Lighting – 3 pages
http://www.dvformat.com/2003/10_oct/tutorials/lighting201p3.htm

What is white balance?
http://www.dv.com/columns/columns_item.php?articleId=174300599

Shooting Basics
http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/tips/index.html

Classic Hollywood Style
http://www.fathom.com/course/10701053/session4.html

180 degree rule
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdyyuqmCW14

http://s1.video.blip.tv/0080000411558/Dvplace-The180DegreeRule509.mov
file:///Users/jonathanpostal/Desktop/video_fall07.doc