Flirting is Funny

I've recently had the pleasure/irritation of buying stock footage for a TVC that my company recently finished. The irritation is the actual process of going through the footage, getting the director to choose one, quoting, and then actually paying for it. Basically the whole process. The pleasure has been Anna.

Anna laughs at everything I say. She giggles when I ask her about her weekend. I don't help the situation because everytime I speak to her I like to use my suave, fancy England in my sexy, deep voice... which is very sexy and suave. I am very attractive when you don't actually have to look at me.

So Anna and me have been flirting, doing the half business half social thing. She sends me through the loopholes to find her on Friendster, which I do, and she turns out to be a cute Chinese girl. Just my type. We back and forth and forth and back and finally I decide to ask her out for coffee (just in case she's terribly boring or it goes REALLY badly. One coffee later I can get the hell out of dodge. Daytime is also neutral and Coffee Bean is either the Maker of Dreams or the Preserver of Boring Status Quo).

I ask her for coffee and she giggles, and then we have the following conversation.

Me: So how about this weekend? I'm actually not busy, for once.

AN: Finally! This weekend is ok for me too... normally I spend it with my fiance but he's golfing this weekend. It has to be on Saturday evening though, coz I'll be in KL trying on wedding dresses and then I'll be free.

Me: *single silent cough*

Crashing and burning? I've made it an art.

Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

So I'm gymming like a bastard these days. Handsome Surfer Boy gave me a fantastic program of circuit training, core development, and then I do my normal cardio. I feel...heldy as the Indians like to say. I either go to the gym at Fitness Last near home, or this fancy run-down country club near work. The thing about the country club, is that they LOVE their nudity in the men's locker room. They thrive on it. It's a throwback to the bathing culture of Europe... and I suppose Japan and increasingly, China too.

So in the locker room, everyone just goes stark naked. This is also particularly funny because the country club's patrons are truly the captains of Malaysian industry and the really powerful dudes who just HAVE to get some golf in during the weekends, otherwise their lives are incomplete. You could wear a towel around your waist, but then everyone looks at you like "what are you trying to hide, sonny?". I'm sure they also just want to know where they rank in the ancient male game of "Whose Dick is Longer?", which is fine, because hey... I play that game too.

So (third paragraph that begins with So... English purists everywhere are cringing), there I was... naked and shaving at the sink at the end of the counter. Out of nowhere, a middle aged Japanese man with this crazy beard that only the Japanese can pull off materializes next to me. He's massaging his face, trimming his beard, and going through his motions when he turns to me and goes:

NJM: Excuse me... you look very famiriar.

I look at him and recognize him in an instant. He's my ex-girlfriend's boss. I've only met him once, years ago, at a terrible company party (the party was terrible, the company I don't know). He probably remembers me coz I went up to him and said "KANPAI!" after I had kanpai'ed a bit on my own. I obviously don't want to deal with explaining the whole situation to him, so I just say:

ME: Er... I don't know. I don't think we've met before:

NJM: Are you shuah?

ME: Well, maybe you've seen me around the club. I'm always around these days.

NJM: No... I met you somewhere outside.

Then, I thought I'd be really smart and throw him off the scent so I said...

ME: I work in advertising too, so maybe you've seen me around the post-production houses? I always like to follow post.

NJM: Ah so des...

A quiet moment passes before he wisens up and says:

NJM: How do you know I work in advertising?

ME: Er... well, what I mean is that I work in advertising too... like I go to the club AND I work in advertising. I didn't know that you work in advertising. Where do you work?

NJM: I work at Brand X Agency and I'm the MD there.

ME: Oh ok... anyway, nice meeting you.

NJM: Ah, yes yes.

And he walks away, butt jiggling with each step as he hums some strange tune under his breath. I really need to work on my white lying skills. They are going down the drain.

Angry Minnie

Angry Minnie
Originally uploaded by koobz.

I found the following on the wall of a 9 year old girl's room. I thought it was great.

"One day, Minnie was walking to a cave. She saw in the cave there was an angry monster. The monster bit her. And she became angry. And she married him. The end."

Anyway, I'll post more about the shoot after the edit. It was a bit of a catastrophe. The Chinese mom talent pulled her back on the first shot. The babies refused to stop crying. Everything was fraught. I will be relying heavily on my offline editor Jordan's magic to help weave everything together.

Rock steady.

One Toe Through the Door

Tomorrow will definitely go down as one of the milestones of my life to date. I'm about to direct my first TV commercial for a premium diaper brand. It's not a terribly big project, but it counts nonetheless. They are going to show it on TV, which means it is important (to some people). We are shooting on DigiBeta instead of film. They are two small testimonial spots involving Mom and Baby talking about the diaper and how their lives are infinitely enriched by it. Mom does all the talking... Baby has been uncooperative so far. That's the problem with working with kids 9-12 months old. They just don't care.

It has been a very quick almost 2 years since I joined production. Abandoning theatre and the arts to, essentialy, sell out and start again at the bottom of an altogether different industry was a big leap of faith. It wasn't hard to do though. The time to move on was right and I had reached an impasse of some kind, real or imagined.

When talking about my career, God has been provident and I have worked hard over the last two years. I have never had so much focus in my life and the dividends are starting to pay off. I'm starting to get addicted to the mental sharpness that comes with paying attention. It really is quite brilliant.

So tomorrow I will get a nice chair, my very own monitor, my stopwatch, and someone will keep the peppermint tea flowing while I furrow my brow and think. Even if I don't know what I'm doing or what my next step is, I'm going to keep the brow furrowed. Occasionally I will close my eyes and hold my clenched fist over my mouth. I will talk to myself. I will wildly gesticulate in the corner. I will make ridiculous small talk with my clients and have lunch on a specially segregated table with a table fan already set up and use metal cutlery instead of the usual plastic forks. I will not repeat "Cut" in a loud voice. I will merely whisper it under my breath, audible only to my 1st A.D. I will establish eye-contact communication with my Director of Photography. I will torment my Art Director about the color progression from wheat to taupe. I will scream with joy and relief and thank God and my bosses from the bottom of my heart for this amazing opportunity. Once you get a good first toe in, the next step is to kick the door down, but one step at a time.

Lastly, for the first time in all my life milestones, or at least the ones that you can suitably prepare for (big exams, virginity, leading role in a play etc), I find myself prepared. I've paid attention, worked hard, sucked up, and I GET this. I haven't GOT something this much before (besides chicken pox and love... I'm still recovering from both). Defending my ideas and my direction during pre-production meetings has been like defending a thesis (at least I'm imagining it to be) and after FIVE rounds of defending and minor changes to my work, we are about to go to war.

Shit, did I pack my calculator? Do you want to come in for some coffee and then stay for breakfast? Positions please. Two minutes. Ok guys, stand by here we go. Roll Tape. Turnover... anddddddddd ACTION.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.

The Horny of Africa

I like using metaphors when I talk. In fact, sometimes they go out of control. Someone pointed this out to me the other day and I justified it by likening my use of metaphors to a herd of elephants that research scientists have managed to attract to their research outpost, only they did such a good job of attracting the elephants, that they created the stampede. So the scientists benefit from having SOME elephants there, but all their field equipment has been destroyed by the rampaging pachyderms.

Those bloody elephants.

My latest metaphor is for the age old battle that occurs within every man.

The battle between head, heart, and penis. Head says one thing, heart pleads one thing, and then the penis does whatever it wants in the first place.

Imagine Man as Somalia. I remember reading somewhere that life started somewhere around this region. Anyway, his head represents the United Nations. His heart represents the aid organizations, missionaries, and other volunteer groups. His penis represents the tribal warlords... which is especially apt since they both live in the bush.

The United Nations are usually imagined to be the well-thought out, metered, and rational approach. The heart goes after the morals, the underlying social issues of right and wrong. The tribal warlords, fuck dude, they are pretty single minded/headed creatures. They want what they want, they want it now, and unless it is a surprising show of force and lobbying from the UN and the Red Cross, they are going to do whatever they want.

The problem with tribal warlords, is that anybody can be one. All you need are a bunch of cousins and a rocket launcher. It doesn't even need to be a very good rocket launcher, just as long as you can blow something up. The tribal warlords come to Mogadecisionmakingissue and create a ruckus. The UN shows up with their blue helmets and do whatever it is they do, directing traffic or escorting bureaucrats, all the while trying to point the problem in the supposed right direction. The aid groups drop flyers from the sky and appeal to innocent bystanders who neither have blue helmets or rocket launchers. The warlords, convinced they are right because of the overwhelming urge to blow something up, try and be patient. I suspect it isn't patience but merely enjoying the bumbling show of "leadership" and "guidance" provided by the other two. One day they get bored, and suddenly it's Black Hawk Down.

The warlords are celebrating. Their rocket launchers are spent. The UN releases a strongly worded statement. The aid organizations rue the day. The warlords? They don't care. They just shrug and go "I dunno"... You guys got us in this situation anyway. We were just trying to be tribal warlords and suddenly we've got 2 other groups telling us that we can't have our warlord fun. More justifications from both aid workers and the UN as to why and what has happened. The warlords replenish their ammo and set their sights on juicier targets... and on and on it goes.

So now how? How do you stop the tribal warlords? How do the aid workers get more organized and more funding and able to print flyers in more than just French? How does the UN show that it is a serious force to be reckoned with, since both aid workers and warlord associations think they are just a joke?

*sigh*

Negros, you know what I'm talking about. We are all Somalia.

I definitely am.

Educating the Natives

When you are the AD and the talent, you are still the AD.


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It would have been fun to run into Umfufu. You know Umfufu, the buck naked bush bitch who rides a zebra.