journal page 3

she walks like
she's angry at the world
july 22, 1999
help me out with this.. i was exploring neighborhoods looking for a place to live today and there was a "retarded children's clothing thrift store" in this downtown strip. that's exactly what the sign said. now, are these used clothes only for retarded children, or are these used clothes for all children but.. were previously worn by retarded children? and in either case, do they really need to put RETARDED all big up on the sign? if they're for retarded children, why are they for retarded children only? do they have to wear some kind of special retarded children's clothes? or if the clothes are for any children, is it really necessary to alert everyone that they had been previously worn by retarded children? and up on the sign, for chrissake? and isn't the proper word like, 'disabled' anyway? it seems pretty messed up no matter how you dice it. kara thought that maybe the clothes themselves were retarded. like they were children's clothes and all, but the buttons don't match up, the sleeves are all lop-sided, or the pants have like three legs. that kinda makes more sense i guess. ross found the store in the phonebook and gave them a call. they answered, 'retarded children!' and he got scared and hung up.

to answer your singular burning question, no i did not buy any retarded children's clothes. i did buy some retarded children though. but that was at another store.

i just gave it a little more thought - maybe these used clothes are indeed exclusively for retarded children and they're like fireproof or glow in the dark or with built-in flotation devices. like safety clothes or something? do they even make those? please share the answer if you have it. this is clearly bothering me. and my newly acquired retarded children are all upset now. i just had them out washing the car and they have absolutely nothing to wear. i'm kidding. please don't look at me like that.

july 13, 1999
really high fever and lots of yellow bitter medicine. been sick for the past few days. making pouty sick face right this moment. rob had bronchitis a couple weeks ago and i lent him my obi wan kenobi power bracelet and he was all better in two days. going to buy fifty more and roll around in them.

dragged myself out shopping last night and in my bleary state i thought that instead of "UNSCENTED" the kleenex box said "UNCENSORED" and figured that must be some pretty out of control kleenex. heh.

i stumbled across the homepage for the "museum of corpses" in thailand. i'm not sure what the main attraction is, but there were lots of pictures of dead bodies floating around in giant vats with happy tourists posing and waving in front of them. i guess they have some famous criminals in there and occasionally they toss some siamese twins in a vat or whatnot, but mostly it just looks like a bunch of blackened dead naked thailand people floating about in big jars. i was telling daniele about this and upon agreeing that it must be pretty embarrassing for the corpses, realized that i'm not really happy with the choices there are in what to do with myself when i'm all dead and stuff. neither of us want to be buried, because that would be claustrophobic and things would get pretty nasty in there after a little while. she wants to be cremated but i'm really not into getting all burnt up into nothing. being frozen or something wouldn't be so bad, but then you're all preserved for people to do creepy things to later on.

so i came to the conclusion that i want my body to be shot off into space in a little rocket. and put a little window on there just in case. that would be nice, because then atleast you'd be sort of getting somewhere when you're dead and you get to fly around and it'd be neat to end up on the other side of the milky way in x amount of billions of years. i figured my entire body weight may be a little cost-prohibitive and too heavy to launch and propel very fast, so just my severed head would be fine. propped up next to the window. daniele said she'd get really creeped out if she knew my disembodied head was flying around above her somewhere in space.

but i think i got my fever down and i'm getting work done again. on the verge of finishing a scene involving hats that's been frustrating me to no end. did you know an anagram of my name is "NEED TO FRZLDHT!" what does that mean?
or how about, "FED THE LORD, ZNT." fascinating

don

july 4, 1999
the first portion of scenes for the new film are more or less done and my hand is numb from inking all day. the poor little video camera i've been pencil-testing with for the past 6-7 years is slowly breaking down into shambles. the fellow is currently bound together with duct tape, and everything it shoots comes out HOT PINK. moreover, if you tap it, jostle it, adjust it, tilt it, spite it, taunt it, and/or breathe on it wrong, the lens shorts out and goes blank.

not to be outdone, my car decided to break down late friday night, after i spent the whole day running errands in los angeles. upon pulling onto my street after the long drive back, mr.engine made a sudden gaggy chorking noise and died, literally right outside of my place. i coasted out of control for half the block staring blankly at the dashboard and wondering why the brakes didn't work yet my radio was still pumping out the funky grooves. i don't know anything about cars, but slamming the emergency brake at twenty miles an hour makes all sorts of loud and crazy sounds. wheee!

so don is now motionless. everyone i know is out of town this weekend, so in lieu of watching the fireworks or going out at all, i will be lighting my carpet on fire.

i had this dream several years ago that i was on one of the cliffs overlooking the ocean around here with a few friends. it was late at night and sort of foggy and humid and there was a party far below on the beach that featured a giant three story rose that was all lit up alongside an equally huge tic-tac green couch. i remember thinking, "geez that's quite a couch they've got there." i wandered away from my friends to this really dark end of the cliff, where straight below a deep part of the ocean flowed directly up against the cliffside.

and if you leaned over the edge and squinted your eyes just right, you could barely make out the gray shapes of several murky cars deep beneath the surface that had driven off of the cliff over the years. and as each current passed slowly over them, the undertow would quietly blink their headlights off and on. the countless flashing beams of light deep under the ocean were pretty to look at, but i was afraid to go any nearer because the water was haunted.

i send all of you happier things. in the form of this star. *

don

june 14, 1999
we were driving around yesterday and got stuck behind this big ugly truck with a personalized license plate that said, MAD DOOG. what? so MAD DOG was already taken? and MAD DOOG is the best you can do as your second choice? MAD DOOG?? you jackass??!

work continues on the new film. will wrap the latest scene this week and will continue writing the short as i go, along with a couple of other projects up in the air. did you know that in france they had otter pop knockoffs but they were flavored lemon, cola, and mint? yeah got a lot of culture in france. so anyway the new film is getting there, and i hope to have animation close to being all done by around the end of the summer.

people sure are goofy..
CUI TINGXUN, a teacher in China's Shandong province, was practising the esoteric healing art of qigong with his wife when he suddenly attempted to gouge her eyes out, saying he had received instructions from a 'greater being' to change her facial features. Cui then attacked his wife's jaw with his teeth, saying her mouth smelled badly, before finally decapitating her with a meat cleaver. Police found him holding the shoulders of his wife's torso, exhorting her to sprout a new head. Hong Kong Eastern Express, 7 May 1996

june 7, 1999
12:50 am
back from cannes, finally lucid, and with a little time to write. our first screening was disastrous. of the dozen shorts in competition, the french fates would decide that only ours would get screwed up technically. throughout the film, there was a LOUD, incessant BUZZING noise like an angry giant industrial groany bee coming out of the right speaker. it drifted in and out of the film hypnotically, easily drowning out half of the soundtrack, and driving me to ANGRY. the crowd was clearly perplexed, half of them laughing uncomfortably at the film they were being prevented from penetrating, others cocking their heads towards the speakers all confused - despite the many language barriers that night, we were all suddenly speaking the international language of what the fuck? came very close to storming angrily out of the theater in a flurry of wonderful upset-auteur cannes cliches, but somehow remained pinned in my seat, staring bug-eyed at the right hand speaker that was belching out such sad and horrible buzzy clangy noises. upon speaking to folks afterwards, most naturally assumed the horrible noises were intentional, like some sort of screwy eraserhead-industrial-abstract-artistic-statement decision on my part. cringe.

through an interpreter, i argued my case with the french projectionists that no, my print wasn't defective, and that they had somehow messed up the screening. the notion was completely beyond them until we checked the print in another room on another projector, and voila, the buzzing was gone. IT IS A MYSTERY they said, and that was that. the second screening, with the jury, went fine, and we got the good reception we were waiting for. but not before amassing the sweat rings right up until then.

the coolest thing i saw at cannes. every young person zips around on little motorcycles and scooters in town, it is apparently the trendy thing to do over there. add the masses of people crossing the streets whenever they feel like it. a beautiful young girl pulls up on a little motorcycle and stops at an intersection, as a huge crowd crosses the street in front of her in all directions. she pulls out a cigarette and a dozen young boys all immediately whip out lighters and matches in unison right in front of her. of course don the world-class photographer doesn't have his camera on him and misses the shot. although elsewhere he did have it on him in time to capture strange and impromptu photos of the back of david lynch's head.

i somehow got motivated to get back to work last night. nothing too exciting to report from that front just yet, other that i'm almost ready to move on to the next scene and that dirty filthy piggies shouldn't be out so late playing those drinking games.

hope to have photos up from france this week.

don