Hooray for a Big Turnout!

I am so excited right now! Last night was the first Student Film Production Club (SFPC) meeting of the year, and we had a GREAT turnout (despite the torrential downpour and ominous yellow-tinted sky). I'd say there were about thirty or forty people who showed up, and every person I talked to was excited about the club this year and equally serious about participating and making films.

When we first started out the meeting, I was definitely a bit nervous. I mean, being President means I am in charge of running the entire meeting. And while talking in front of people is usually something I really enjoy, it's not as easy to do when you have to simultaneously hope people like you while working really hard to invest them in something that you are crazy obsessed about. I felt like there was so much pressure to make SFPC sound super-duper amazing so that everyone would want to come back again.

But thankfully once the meeting started rolling, it got progressively easier to speak in front of the club. Hopefully I wont even notice the jitters by the end of the semester.

Anyway, the official meeting lasted only about thirty minutes. It was just a basic "Why SFPC Rocks" meeting, so we gave a quick run-through of all the things that make us awesome, including (but not limited to):

>>> $15,000 worth of (good) equipment -- including a camera and 16 ft of track

>>> fun events like the 24-Hour Film Blitz -- a no-pressure movie-making event perfect for beginners

>>> plans for a SFPC-organized road trip down to the Austin Film Festival

>>> serious projects (like SFPC-sponsored short films -- with money attached)

>>> a mentoring program with the local high schools

>>> RedBud Film Festival -- our end-of-the-year film fest with awesome prizes

>>> AND MUCH MUCH MORE!!!

Haha! Are you convinced yet?! =)

Overall, it was an awesome meeting. And after we finished with the meeting's official business, we broke up and I encouraged people not to leave right away. Instead I challenged them to try to meet at least five new people before they left. And I think it worked, because everyone stuck around to chat, and people didn't start leaving for another half-an-hour after the meeting was officially over.

On top of a successful turn-out and (what seems like) a lot of enthusiasm from everyone, a little personal victory was that I was able to shake hands with every single person who came to the meeting. And by the end of the evening, I had almost everyone's names down too. I've forgotten a few since then, but coming from someone who normally forgets everyone's name less than thirty seconds after they've introduced themselves, that's a big accomplishment. Let's hope that one lasts.

Well Said (and Rather Timely)

"He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted by bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?"

-- Shylock (from The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare)

From a Friend's FB Status:

You can tell a lot about a man by the way he handles three things: a rainy
day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas lights.

-- Quite fitting on a drizzly day like today.

What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes,
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes?
There's only two things that money can't buy...
And that's true love & homegrown tomatoes.

Ever since being the lucky recipient of a bunch of little homegrown tomatoes yesterday morning, I can't get this song out of my head. It brings me back to camping in Paradise Valley, Montana, and going to see an old country/folk band play at a small diner nearby (tucked into the hillside on the side of the highway). I think the band was called Paradise Players, and they sang all these classic old country songs that we used to listen to on tape all the time.

In fact, we listened to their music so much that I still have most of their songs memorized, and I haven't heard them in over ten years.

So after singing this song to myself all day (but only remembering the refrain), I finally looked up the lyrics. And then the "Homegrown Tomatoes" song took me back, so I had to google the Paradise Players and see what they were up to. Doesn't look like they are still a band (not surprising since they played forever ago), but I did stumble upon a little homemade YouTube film of a Fourth of July parade in Livingston, Montana, which is right around where I used to live for a year or two growing up.

Favorite parts of this little treasure:

0:38 -- So cute!

0:57-1:37 -- I love this small-town parade. Everyone looks so happy!

4:35 -- That float is actually pretty impressive.

6:10 -- So so so adorable. I challenge you not to yawn as well.

7:17-8:24 -- Makes me miss small-town living a little. A very little.

"I think God must have been a cowboy at heart,

Cause he made wide open spaces from the start.

He made grass and trees and mountains and a horse to be a friend,

And trails to lead ol' cowboys home again."

- "God Must Be a Cowboy"-- sung by Dan Seals

Coffee with the Hortons

A week or so ago, I had arranged to meet with an old professor of mine on Monday (today) to catch up on our summers. But we'd forgotten that today was Labor Day and therefore he wouldn't be in the office. But instead of canceling or rescheduling, he invited me over to his home for a cup of coffee with him and his wife.

I have been to their house a couple times before for various networking/dinner parties that they hold every so often for creative minds in the Oklahoma area (they call it a Writers Block Party), but never have I been to their house on a quiet Monday morning for coffee.

It was so much fun! The two of them, along with a group of old friends, had taken a trip up to Montana this summer to explore Glacier National Park, so they told me of their adventures and put on this DVD in the background that was basically a slideshow of gorgeous pictures of the park. It made me so homesick. I miss the mountains!!!

We also talked about my plans for after graduation and about my internships in France and Philadelphia. They have children right around my age, so it was interesting to hear their insights as parents into the recently graduated life, etc.

And then, right before I left, we were talking about gardening and the wife mentioned that they had an overabundance of peppers in their garden that she didn't know what to do with. Well, I swooped in and took that opportunity to mention that I live in a house with a bunch of girls and that I was sure we'd love to take a few peppers off her hands. Not a problem.

Sure enough, she came back with a HUGE basket of delicious-looking little red, green, and yellow peppers. All of me! She doesn't know which ones are the hot ones though, so that should be an interesting experiment. And then, after gushing about how wonderful it would be to have fresh vegetables in our house, she invited me to come outside and look at her garden. And then she gave me MORE vegetables -- a pile of fresh baby tomatoes and a bunch of fresh basil leaves. Yum!

I can't wait to get all fancy-shmancy with my cooking, now that I have some wonderfully fresh ingredients to use. Anyone know of anything good to make that involves peppers, basil and/or baby tomatoes?

The "Lizard Brain"

The other day I found another site full of inspirational videos THAT I LOVE, which are along the same lines as www.ted.com. This site is called 99% and it's a channel on Vimeo (which is a site a lot like YouTube, except with higher-quality films -- "a respectful community of creative people").

The neat thing about 99% is that they focus on what happens after inspiration strikes, and all their talks are about how to turn that great idea into a reality.

The most recent film I've watched on 99% is The "Lizard Brain."

Synopsis of Lecture:

"What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship," says bestselling author Seth Godin, arguing that we must quiet our fearful "lizard brains" to avoid sabotaging projects just before we finally finish them.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

. . .

"If you want to view paradise, simply look around and view it. Any thing you want to, do it. You want to change the world? There's nothing to it."

--Willy Wonka

It's That Time of Year Again...

Today's the first day of Sooner football, and the atmosphere is electric. Our house had College Gameday playing on our TV from the moment Brittany (our true football fan) woke up this morning.

And once the pre-game festivities begin a couple hours before kick-off, there will be zero productivity for the rest of the day. It's all tailgates and crimson & cream and "Boomer! Sooner!"

Can't wait!

We play a video like this before every Home game. And people go crazy. I'm not going to lie... it fills me with pride to watch it.

Go Sooners!

In My Inbox Today

My Dixie Wrecked!, (super lame name of my community league soccer team)


Happy 9/02/10! Get it? 9-0-2-1-0.

-Cap (our team captain)

Current Thoughts...

Last night I didn't do my homework. Just deliberately didn't do any of it. And I had quite a bit of reading and brainstorming and emailing and drafting to do. Instead of being productive, my housemates/best friends and I sat around the table for an hour or so talking about our uncertain plans for the year after we graduate. Then I went to bed early.

This morning, I woke up early with the best of intentions. I was going to do my homework before the upcoming class, like a good student should. But one of my roommates had the television turned on to the morning news, and I got sucked into watching the live speeches being made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (who, I might add, were all much nicer and more articulate than I'd expected, whatever that means).

At one point, I was so involved in what was being said that fifteen minutes of crucial homework time slipped by. Remembering abruptly what I should actually be doing with my time instead of keeping up with world events and informing my mind or whatever, I jokingly (kinda) threw my notebook down.

Gesturing emphatically toward the television, I almost yelled at Valerie, "THIS is history being made. THIS is what I should be paying attention to, but I'm stuck needing to read stupid Shakespeare!"

Valerie just laughed at me. "Have senior-itis already?"

Hmm... Yes. In this case, yes, yes, a thousand times yes. The world and its happenings are so much more important in the grand scheme of things than reading Act 2 of The Merchant of Venice or writing a reflection paper on Stranger than Paradise.

And no. I don't have senior-itis.

That would mean that I was ready to leave here. That I was ready to get out of this comfortable little bubble of film screenings, analytical papers, and clearly-defined expectations. That I didn't need this anymore.

But let's not kid ourselves. I still need college terribly. Because no college means real life and having to define myself by something other than "student" and "film major." And with my future (at least my very immediate, very near future) so uncertain and fuzzy, I'm not sure if I'm ready for that yet.