Gaming Goals

So I somehow randomly came across the above video. It got me thinking about several things, but it also took me back to my childhood and how influential games were in my life.
I'm not taking about the video games that have taken over so many people's lives these days. They took over my life when I was a teen, but I had to head over to the local bowling alley with a bucket of quarters to try and top the Space Invaders score. I couldn't just plop down on my couch and engage with a virtual world.

I'm talking about real world physical "games", including Monopoly which I usually won, more out of attrition because I was willing to play for hours upon hours; other players would practically give me their properties so they could go to sleep. 

Basketball

My buddies and I used to play on the Venice Courts all the time. I actually slam dunked once. Not during a game and it was a volleyball not a basketball. But as far as I was concerned I dunked. I recently visited the Venice Courts and I could barely jump up to hit the backboard, forget about slam-dunking. So once again slam dunking on the Venice Courts is on the "to-do" list.

Burning Man

It looks like I'm going back again. This year I hope to run the Burning Man 50K; I've finished it twice already and it tends to help me moderate myself for the first few days, so as brutal as it sounds it actually is good for me. 

I've always wanted to set up a hopscotch course on the level of the one the Roman Legionaries.  Hopscotch began in ancient Britain during the early Roman Empire. The original hopscotch courts were over 100 feet long and used for military training exercises. Roman foot-soldiers ran the course in full armor and field packs to improve their footwork

What better place than BRC to attempt to duplicate the game? There's plenty of space and probably more than a few people who would be up to the challenge. 

Mongolia

One of the trips I hope to make this year is to Mongolia to see the Naadam Festival, which is also locally termed "eriin gurvan naadam" (эрийн гурван наадам) "the three games of men". The games are Mongolian wrestling, horse racing, and archery, and are held throughout the country during midsummer.

I practice versions of two out of the three; ironically the one I have the least experience in is horse racing even though I come from a rodeo family in Texas that has several world champions in barrel racing, roping, steer wrestling, etc. My uncle Whit is a rodeo legend who once "performed" in Madison Square gardens. I, however, have spent very little time on the back of a horse.

What first sparked my curiosity about the event is my obsession with Gehngis Khan.
I have always been obsessed with history. At one point I imagined being a history professor. It's rather ironic how much I thought I'd end up being a teacher, a university professor and then I dropped out school and ended up home-schooling. I suppose on a certain level I found my calling.
One of the books my daughter and I listened to on our cross-country adventures was Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. 
His influence on history is absolutely amazing, especially considering his humble beginnings. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

Back to Monopoly

I just went on-line to buy a Monopoly game. 

Wow!!!

There are like a billion versions of the game now. And that's barely an exaggeration.

 

Love Lost and Found--The Film Business

​I have always loved movies.

I grew up in Los Angeles, so many of the streets and locations that were showing up on the TV and movie screens were my backyard, so to speak. My next door neighbor was a working actor in shows that I had actually seen. One of my schoolmates father was a director of shows like Fall Guy and the Bionic Woman.

I worked as a set dresser for the first time when I was 17; I was paid under the table because of my age. 

I went to college intent on majoring in film, but switched to drama/dance because the professor in film was a self-righteous prick. I quickly realized I was probably too big and too old to have much of a career as a dancer and I knew the statistics of "working" actors.  To add to these realities was also my feeling of being isolated, thousands of miles away from my home town, at a small liberal arts college of around 800 students spread out across acres, which during most seasons was fun for wandering but when winter hit, everyone tended to stay huddled in their own dorms; mine had around 30-40 people and we were definitely getting stir crazy.  At one point, I instigated a food fight that almost got me expelled.  

I left a couple of weeks after that fully intent on returning after taking off a year. I was doing the "gap" year before it was a thing. 
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For better or worse my gap year became a gap decade and then a gap Grand Canyon and finally after taking on-line course, going to junior college; petitioning for some of my high school AP classes to be credited, slowly getting a few credits here and there, I realized a college degree was probably not for me. I also had reached my goal of making a hundred thousand bucks in a year and I wasn't drowning in debt from college loans like so many of my friends.

I was moving furniture for Starving Students, which by the way may have been founded by a couple of struggling college students but by the time I signed up neither myself or any of my co-workers were going to school and most had no intention to ever go back to college. I still intended on going back getting my degree and perhaps going on the grad school so that I might one day become a professor.

It was a this point that a friend's mom who was working as a script supervisor on a movie called Scenes from a Class Struggle in Beverly Hills asked if I wanted to fill in for a few days as a set dresser, doing sort of the same thing I was doing already.   

When she told me the pay, I quit Starving Students and started my film career.

The three day job turned into a three-month job and then I was back to working various odd jobs to make ends meet. I worked as a clown at children's parties and other events, I worked at exotic fish company unpacking and repacking bags of live fish, I ushered at Le Cirque du Soleil when they came to Santa Monica for the first time, I did some retail sales jobs, I studied to become an Arthur Murray dance instructor, but there weren't enough clients for me to actually get paid, but it was fun to learn ballroom dance for free.

And then I got a call to work on another project, it was a movie of the week that went for several months. After that I never did another job outside of the film business. That was over 30 years ago.

Ridley Scott,  Twin Peaks, and Beyond 
I was extremely fortunate for so many of the jobs and experiences I have had in this crazy business. 
I worked on both seasons of Twin Peaks, first as a set dresser and then as the lead person on the second season. 
The second season is when the show "flipped" and was organized. That was when I joined IATSE Local 44. Working on that project was to this day one of the highlights of my career. We all knew we were on something special but we never knew the effect it would have on television and become the classic that it did.
I dabbled breifly in the commercial world and was lucky to work on a Superbowl spot that Ridley Scott directed 

Bugsy, Hook, Dracula and the Academy Awards

One year I had an incredible string of jobs. I had just gotten into the union and had to borrow money for the initiation and dues. I didn't know anyone in the union so I really was wondering if I had made the right decision. Then out of the blue a friend called and asked me if I wanted to work on Bugsy. That job led a set dressing gig on Hook and then Dracula. I was working on mini-series at Warner Bros., Sinatra, when I met my future wife. Actually, I had briefly met her on the Sony lot when I was on Hook, but we got to know one another and started "dating" on Sinatra.

Bugsy, Hook, and Dracula were all nominated for Academy Awards for Art Direction that year, as was Fisher King, the movie my future wife decorated. I was torn as to which one to root for, Bugsy took home the golden statue that year.

My wife would get nominated again for her work on What Dreams May Come and I was able to actually attend the event, which was pretty unforgetable .    
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Here, There and Lots of Places in Between
Over the years I have had the good fortune to work on shows that went to incredible locations. Speed 2 wasn't the greatest of films I've worked on but getting paid to work in St. Marteen for several months was a nice trade off. Tank Girl was one of the hardest shows I've worked on and the conditions we shot in was one of the main factors. It was 112F in White Sands and we had to hand carry all the set dressing up mountains of sand dunes.  I lived in Mexico for several months when I was the set decorator on The Legend of Zorro. I've worked in Louisiana quite a bit as well as in Atlanta where a great deal of  film production has gone due to their massive tax incentives. 

But I've moved back to California because I missed the ocean too much. The weather is also quite nice. I much prefer the dry heat we have to the humidity in the South. Plus it's my home and where I started this crazy career. 

It's been a while since I've thrown anything up on my blog; living out of suitcases, a storage unit and the back of my truck has taken a toll.
I didn't have much of a plan to start with; basically "Go West Old Man, Go West" or "Jonny Venice, Come Home" or "There's lots of work out here, the ocean, you're old stompin' grounds and long-time friends"; ironically not many of my "long-time friends" are still in Los Angeles; the ocean is still here thank goodness, but the town has certainly changed. This town has always been changing, but some things I didn't see coming, at least not in the magnitude I imagined.

The homeless situation is out of control. And it's not just tent cities and guys living under the freeway in cardboard houses. It's the caravans of campers and motorhomes that are parked all over the city, especially along the coast. It's incredible and depressing at the same time. 

On a different note and to address the title of the post; was anything supposed to happen on 02 19 2019?
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