Hi folks,

Honey and the rig at rest, out West.

Still on the road after five days on the road. We’re somewhere in Mexico, Honey and I, déjà vu all over again from ten years ago, the Zero trip, albeit with a smaller rig, smaller dog. Me, I’m older and sadder and wiser and wondering if I have it in me to do this again, the added stress (due or undue?) being that -- in the making of a film as opposed to the writing of a book -- if I don’t get it now as it happens I don’t get it at all.

Sorta like life. Whoa. Heavy.

This film is starting to come together in my head, a structure and point of view forming, maybe even a voice. The voice is the tough part, finding it (or facilitating it finding me), maintaining it. 

Yes, films have a narrative voice too, and I’m not talking about narration. 

Haven’t done any interviews yet, just road stuff, some Honey stuff, some dumb ass monologues I stumbled through pulled over at rest areas or truck stops or sometimes while driving, the camera bungee-corded to whatever worked in the cramped quarters of my Ranger’s cab, my ad hoc super-wide angle attachments (two wide angle converters piggy-backed) taking it all in, Honey eyeballing me from shotgun as I tried to explain myself, justify myself.

Don’t explain anything, Allan. Just do it. Let the victims of your imagery figure it out, have their own rushes of insight. Make them pay attention.

Hey: No looping!

But why no interviews yet?

Gotta get into the water, need some Glide Time, boy do I ever, so keep rolling, Allan, west then south, where the points are uncrowded, warm, and the locals simpatico.

One of the 16 fixed camera positions I improvised for road shots.

The PVC pipe can slide way out, giving me a precarious, wild ass POV for road shots. The PVC pipe on the front can be raised three feet higher than shown; the camera can be pointed at the road ahead or back to shoot Honey and me in the cab. I trigger the Canon HV20 with a remote device. With my super wide angle set up, I’m getting some interesting road stuff.  

The return trip in May will be crux of this, I think, accosting fellow travelers, people at random, challenging them on what they know, think they know, casually and with mustered humor pointing out that while I don’t know the truth about anything, neither do they.

My final questions if I get this far without fisticuffs: 

“What’s the most extreme treachery you’ve ever experienced?”

“What’s the most extreme treachery you’ve ever perpetrated?”

Larry King From Hell.

 #

Okay. We’ve added some stuff to banditobooks.com.

Surfgasm is a short clip from Arsen Brzostek’s excellent surf flick Going With the Flow (more about that to come) with our own soundtrack. Should raise a grin, and an approving nod at the excellent logging by Kevin Connelly and Jesse Timm (the short nose rides are me, mostly at my former home break at Big Turkeys).

Crocks of Shit is an addition to the Alert the Media/Orwell was an Optimist section of the site. 

Donnie is an homage to my best friend from high school, killed in Vietnam.

Ocular Penetration is a subject I’ve been meaning to get to. I’m outraged by it, as I assume you are, and am relieved that it’s finally being dealt with by our sorry ass lawmakers, via the Ocular Penetration Prevention Bill, now before Congress. Like many other important matters, the mainstream media will not go near the Ocular Penetration problem.

Okay, back on the road. I’ll be in touch.

Allan

In my effort to make Bandito Books fly, I’m still offering a free Zen & Zero DVD to anyone who forwards my Filmdrunk.com interview to 20 or more friends. Lance at Filmdrunk is helping in this and we’re trying to make it go viral, via some refinements to the pitch.

So if you’d like to help and get a terrific film for doing so, go to www.filmdrunk.com/post.phtml?pk=807

Oh. If you go to Part Two of the interview and look at the comments, you’ll find I got into a verbal tussle with a couple jerks who called me a kook and a nutcase for pointing out that cell phones don’t work on commercial airliners at cruising altitude.

I know this to be the case not only from studies done and expert testimony, but from my own experience: In a dozen commercial flights I’ve never gotten even one bar (of cell reception) above about 2,000 feet. Friends I’ve asked to perform the same experiment got the same result.

One of these name-callers claimed he’s made many cell phone calls from commercial airliners at altitude. He was lying. As you all know, I don’t suffer fools and liars well, and I don’t like being called a kook or a nutcase, especially by a fool and a liar. (Those of you who have read CYGAWA know what I mean.)

So I challenged him. The moderator, Lance, would hold $10,000 we’d each wire to him and we’d take a flight together. If he could reach Lance via cell phone at above 12,000 feet, he’d get the 20k. If not, I would.

Predictable results. When challenged to back up their bullshit, actually put something on the line, fools and liars show themselves to be what they are, fools and liars.

My point here, though, is that of all the other commentators (Filmdrunk gets tens of thousands of hits per day), not one chimed in to say that I’d caught this fool and liar in his foolishness and deceit. In fact, I was called more names. I was even branded clinically insane.

On a microcosmic level, the silence on the part of the Filmdrunk commentators (the individual jerks who called me names are unimportant, statistically) is in fact an example of why the world is so fucked up.

Another view of my jury rigged camera set ups.

(My favorite set up is the Honey Cam, a little sports camera that I strap to Honey’s head with an ace bandage, for her point of view.)

Denial. And on top of that, fear; in this case, of ridicule (from their fellow commentators). As I say in CYGAWA and repeat in the interview: “Notwithstanding evidence to the contrary, people believe whatever makes them feel most comfortable about themselves.”

To sum up the irony: The Filmdrunk commentators in branding me a nutcase (and the hordes who were silent) proved my very point about denial: via denial, though, none of them realize it. Right: a beaut of a catch-22.

Orwell must’ve grinned from the grave.

On the bright side: I’ll soon be surfing a warm water point wave.

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