What you know.

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You know that you care for some­one … so much so that some­times you feel that your heart, your soul, per­haps even your entire being will explode from this thing, this feel­ing that seems as if it's too big for you to hold.

You know that you have done things for her that have forced you to step out­side of your com­fort zone. You know that this will, with all like­li­hood, con­tinue to be the case. You're okay with this, you really are, because you real­ize that ulti­mately, this is a good thing. She should push your lim­its, she should chal­lenge you. In a way, it excites you — exhil­a­rates you, even. You know that you don't regret this.

You know that you would gladly step in front of traf­fic for her, that you would do any­thing to ensure that she never feels a moment of sad­ness, of doubt, of unhap­pi­ness. You know that noth­ing that's worth doing is easy or painless.

You know that you trust her. You weren't entirely sure of this before, but you know why that is now. You know that there's no doubt in your mind. You know that trust is a two-way street. You know that you have to trust to love, and that with­out this, you're doomed.

You know that you're not per­fect — never were, never will be. You know that you make mis­takes, that some­times you're scared. You know this bet­ter than most. You also know that you can't go through life afraid of your­self, your feel­ings or oth­ers. You know that you're tired of let­ting fear dic­tate your feel­ings and your actions. You know that you can't stand for this any longer. You know that you gave her a chance, and you can't go back on that now just because you were afraid. You know that's part of the gam­ble, part of how it goes. You know that she deserves a chance. And so do you. You know that it's time to trust someone.

You know that you hurt her, and you hurt for it. You know that hear­ing her cry and know­ing that you caused it is quite pos­si­bly the worst feel­ing in the world. You know that's why you couldn't sleep last nite. You know there's noth­ing that can take that sting back. You know that you've made it more dif­fi­cult for her to trust you. But you also know that you're com­mit­ted to make this right, to show her that the whole of you is much more than the snip­pets of you that have brought you to this situation.

You hope that she sees this, and that when she does, she'll know what you know, and know that it's for her. (And for you.)

25 Random Things

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To appease those of you on Face­book who have end­lessly tagged me with this meme, I present to you 25 ran­dom things about me. The facts are free, the snark will cost you…

  1. While I've spent nearly my entire life here and iden­tify as a Col­orado native, I was not actu­ally born in Col­orado. (Real answer: Kansas.)
  2. I have a Bacon num­ber of 3. For those of you who don't know, the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is a game where­upon any actor/producer/whoever in the film indus­try can be linked to Kevin Bacon in under six degrees. (Me -> Tales from the Crap­per w/ Eli Roth -> Inglou­ri­ous Bas­terds w/ Cloris Leach­man -> New York, I Love You w/ Kevin Bacon.)
  3. I have never used or tried an ille­gal drug. I have no par­tic­u­lar moral objec­tion to them or those who do; I just don't like the idea of requir­ing an arti­fi­cial influ­ence to enjoy myself.
  4. Although I'm not par­tic­u­larly fond of the color, I have owned three red cars.
  5. I par­tic­i­pated in a Daugh­ters of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion speech con­test in fourth grade. I can't remem­ber what the speech was about … all I do know is that I went about seven min­utes over the allot­ted time. Still got sec­ond place.
  6. Most of my friends call me Duckie. This comes from the movie Pretty In Pink and is thanks to Amy. I don't even turn my head any­more when some­one says 'Chris'.
  7. I have also never smoked a cig­a­rette or any vari­a­tion of them. I con­sider this a byprod­uct of being raised by a fam­ily full of smokers.
  8. In front of a crowd of over 500 peo­ple, I was once jok­ingly intro­duced on stage by my then-boss as the head of our company's chap­ter of NAMBLA. Despite this, I con­tin­ued to work for him for nearly two years afterward.
  9. I have per­fect vision and am not aller­gic to any­thing. Yeah, you hate me.
  10. I got my first taste of video pro­duc­tion in junior high while work­ing on my school's TV sta­tion. We had, for its time, a state-of-the-art facil­ity and I learned edit­ing on a three-screen, two-VTR Pana­sonic deck. Since then, I've done free­lance edit­ing, worked on dragon*conTV and worked for a film stu­dio for five years.
  11. I once did some writ­ing for Kevin Smith of Clerks fame. I can't take credit for the movies, though. Those are genius enough on their own.
  12. I let­tered in high school, but not in a sport.
  13. I once did jello shots with Fran Drescher. She's really quite nice, and doesn't sound remotely like her char­ac­ters on TV.
  14. Back To The Future Part II is my favorite film in the series. Not entirely sure why.
  15. I started at a new school in sec­ond grade. One kid tar­geted me for ridicule and it went on for months until I decided that I had had enough. At lunch, I walked up behind him and held a fork to his throat for about 30 sec­onds until two teach­ers pulled me off of him. I'm much calmer now.
  16. My cat is named after Detec­tive Lennie Briscoe from Law & Order.
  17. I love Col­orado and all, but I hate the cold and I've never been ski­ing. I should prob­a­bly move some­where else.
  18. I was nearly expelled dur­ing my junior year of high school for a writ­ing I had posted on a web­site I had at the time, and I prob­a­bly would have been kicked out had I not threat­ened to call lawyers at the ACLU (of which I am a mem­ber) for vio­lat­ing my free­dom of speech.
  19. I started learn­ing web­de­sign when I was 14. I started charg­ing for it a year later.
  20. My first job was as a dish­washer at a soror­ity house when I was 15. Not a bad gig, but that's the clos­est I ever got to food service.
  21. I suck at Gui­tar Hero, but I still enjoy it anyway.
  22. I can't draw to save my life, and I'm also not that good at cook­ing. I would like to get bet­ter at one of these.
  23. I can't go to sleep with­out some­thing play­ing in the back­ground. I find the silence unset­tling. DVD com­men­taries seem to work best.
  24. I really don't get the obses­sion that some have with pro­fes­sional sports and find the idea of some­one mak­ing mil­lions of dol­lars for know­ing how to play one well mor­ti­fy­ing. I guess there's just some things that I'm not meant to understand.
  25. I'm deathly afraid of two things: heights and spi­ders. If you use this infor­ma­tion to your advan­tage, I may have to kill you out of principle.

Reflections on D*C 2008

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This time last year, I was (very) seri­ously con­sid­er­ing not return­ing to dragon*con as a staffer. 2007 was a drain­ing, hell­ish year for the 'con and eas­ily the one where I enjoyed myself the least. There were large, intense prob­lems from minute one and the hits just kept com­ing. Every­one seemed to be strung out — men­tally and emo­tion­ally drained by the end, and I just wanted to go home. For being the one event I look for­ward to every year, that's pretty bad. I always told myself that if it ever got that bad, I would get out from under work­ing the con­ven­tion and just show up as a paid attendee.

I'm glad I chose to give it another try.

2008 was redemp­tion for me per­son­ally, and by all accounts it seems, for tech staff as a whole. We had our issues as we always do, but unlike 2007, we weren't con­stantly bar­raged with demor­al­iz­ing and hor­ri­ble events that hit one after the other like a destruc­tive wave.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Get the "cluck" outta here!

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I haven't spent any time post­ing here about my time at Troma, but I plan to, all in due course. Until then, I want to share with you, my loyal read­ers (all two of you), a para­graph of a great review over on DVDTalk:

If you don't already appre­ci­ate Troma's style, this one isn't likely to change your mind but those who 'get it' will find a lot to love about this mam­moth three-disc col­lec­tion. Poul­trygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead is a ter­rific return to form for Kauf­man and Troma and the film is as hilar­i­ously enter­tain­ing as it is an equal oppor­tu­nity offender. Crass, juve­nile, and gen­uinely dis­gust­ing, it's never the less a clever and cre­ative film and Troma has pulled out all the stops with this jam-packed release. Highly recommended.

Poul­trygeist! is a spe­cial film to me, which seems odd to say, given its sub­ject mat­ter. Spe­cial for two rea­sons: 1) it's the one film that I saw from its gen­e­sis all the way to com­ple­tion while I was still with the com­pany, and 2) from a purely ego­cen­tric stand­point, it's the one Troma film that actu­ally has my name in the credits.

So, for the unini­ti­ated, watch the trailer above and then go and pick up Poul­trygeist! Night Of The Chicken Dead exactly one week from today: Tues­day, Octo­ber 28, 2008 — just in time for Hal­loween! Avail­able in local big box retail­ers every­where, as well as Amazon.com, and the Troma Stu­dio Store!

Comment response meme

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So I replied to someone's ver­sion of this, so I guess that means I'm on the hook to post mine as well. :)

COMMENT HERE AND I WILL:

a) Tell you why I friended you. (no such thing as friend­ing here)

b) Asso­ciate you with some­thing a fan­dom, song, color, photo, etc.

c) Tell you some­thing I like about you.

d) Tell you a mem­ory I have of you.

e) Ask you some­thing Ive wanted to know about you.

f) Tell you my favorite user­pic from your pro­file. (only applies to peo­ple on LiveJournal)

g) In return, please post this on your own site/journal/blog.

I'm really inter­ested to see who responds to this, all three of you that read this site.

And yes, I will post about dragon*con soon, I promise. ;)

[HT to Jeff.]