writer, photographer, web person from Washington, DC.
Check out my latest article iPhoneography: We’re Just Getting Started. In this short piece for the Pink Line Project, I provide some tips on how to best use your iPhone as a camera (hint: don’t use the flash) and advance the notion that the iPhone is the Polaroid of our age.
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart starts off as a hilarious farce, an inventive look at the future gone wrong. All your paranoid fears about the Department of Homeland Security are well-represented as a bureaucratic error throws Lenny, the book’s narrator, into absurdist peril.
But the novel is much deeper than that. It’s not just a farce, it’s an honest and painful look at a nightmare vision of America. In this dystopia, our country is obsessed with sex and shopping, in hock to the Chinese and teetering on the edge of financial collapse (not too different from today).
The book steadily grows darker and darker as history unravels – we feel for the characters who are so clueless about the inevitable reckoning. And we feel for this country, all the values we hold dear – democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty – all imperiled by decades of folly.
That’s what this book is about – Lenny’s collapse into middle age is mirrored by the collapse of America. Ultimately, it’s a very upsetting book. You don’t want the country to end up this way. The book is dark and funny but it’s also a warning to us as a nation to get our act together. Otherwise, the future will be very cruel.
Several years ago, I was sitting in a bar with a bunch of coworkers. We went out a couple times a week for beer, always to the same place. They were fine people but, good lord, how many times can you hear the same old stories?
While we were rehashing the same old petty little workplace dramas, a group of staffers from the Portrait Gallery came in. They had more interesting things to say than me and my coworkers, for they were talking about art.
It was then that I vowed to get more involved in the creative scene in DC.
In 2010, I was fortunate to not only sample a lot of what the city has to offer, but also participate in it. Continue reading “2010: My Year in the Arts”
Check out Something Found in the Ashes in the Washington Post. It’s my op-ed about the lessons I learned from the November fire in my apartment building.
It’s been a busy couple of months for the finalists of the 2010 DC Shorts Screenplay Competition. Since the live reading of short scripts we did in October, here’s what our writers have been up to:
Interview Date – this funny romantic comedy won the competition. Grant Lyon and Mike Lemcke are now raising money on IndieGoGo to fund production of their film. Check out their video to get a taste of what the movie will be like.
Catching Up – local DC moviemaker Mary Ratliff has already finished filming! Her script was a finalist in the competition. Catching Up is a touching drama and received a lot of publicity in Pulaski, VA, where it was filmed. (I first heard this script at a reading. A little girl in a prison? But it’s a true story.)
Surreal Estate – this script by Lori Romero was a finalist in the competition. She and her husband Tom have been busy with Cyphers. Check out the webisodes of this online series about a mysterious conspiracy.
Break Up, Break In, Break Out – local filmmaker Kelli Herod is figuring out what to do next with her script about the funny side of breaking up.
The Dressing Room – writer Jackie Boor does more than just write screenplays. She has a really interesting book coming out. Inside the President’s Helicopter is the reflections of Lt. Col Boyer, a senior pilot during the LBJ, Nixon, and Ford administrations.
Now that’s a talented bunch of writers 🙂
The Washington Post recently had an article about DC in the movies, highlighting director James L. Brooks for really getting Washington. From All the President’s Men to his latest, How Do You Know?, he displays an excellent understanding of the culture of the city.
We’re not like Chicago or LA or New York. The people here are different, with their own unique challenges and motivations. New Yorkers may think that, just like there are no good bagels in DC, there’s no real “there” in Washington. It’s a transient city, with no realness about it. (Or, as a friend of mine from NYC once said, there’s no “bounty” to it.)
There’s a grain of truth to that assessment – it is a transient city, drawing in and expelling different political classes with each election. But most DC residents don’t work on Capitol Hill. They somehow manage to function without being part of the political class. Continue reading “The Movie That Gets Washington: Broadcast News”
Check out my latest article for the Pink Line Project on great gift ideas for local photographers. While geared primarily for photogs in DC, there are some gifts good for shooters anywhere.
This month’s meeting of WordPress DC was an introduction to themes and theme development.
WordPress DC is a monthly meetup group of WP developers, designers and bloggers. The meeting was held at Fathom Creative, in a beautiful second floor space overlooking 14th St. With hardwood floors and track lighting, it’s pretty enough to be an art gallery. And it has been – just last month, this space was host to Instant DC, an exhibit of amazing photos taken by cellphones. (It’s hard to believe but just a few years ago this building was an auto repair shop.)
There were about forty people in the audience, most of whom were WP developers, though there were also designers and bloggers, like me. And since developers were present, there was, of course, free beer. That seems a requisite for geeky meetups. Continue reading “WordPress DC: Introduction to Themes and Theme Development with Thad Allender”
Check out my Pink Line Project article on gift ideas for aspiring filmmakers, including membership in local organizations, such as Women in Film and Video and Arlington Independent Media. Making a short film doesn’t need to be expensive and DC is filled with filmmakers willing to help out.
One thing I’ve learned as a judge for DC Shorts over the years is that there are plenty of good technical people. They can get the sound right and light a scene correctly. And every city, it seems, contains talented actors who can make your script sing.
The hard part is getting the story right, in making sure that you have a script with a beginning, middle and an end. Something with an identifiable protagonist and stakes that really matter. My article concentrates on the storytelling part of filmmaking. It’s easy to pick up a camera but much harder to tell a good story.
A good chunk of the recently released WikiLeaks documents deal with the problem of a nuclear-armed Pakistan in the grip of radical Islam. Despite the billions of dollars in US aid they receive, they are unwilling to cut ties with the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
One diplomatic cable on the New York Times site is called Will Extra Aid Persuade Pakistan to Cut Ties to Extremists? American diplomats discuss whether giving Islamabad more money will lead them to cut ties with the Taliban.
The author concludes:
There is no chance that Pakistan will view enhanced assistance levels in any field as sufficient compensation for abandoning support to these groups…
Islamic terrorist groups like the Taliban are key element of Pakistani security. They provide a hedge against India by securing Afghanistan and by causing problems for India in Kashmir. Continue reading “WikiLeaks and Shame by Salman Rushdie”