don's journal

it is november now, which means it's almost easter and of course that means it's time for the easter eel. children have already begun to dress in kelp, in hopes of attracting the easter eel to their neighborhood. the easter eel hides leathery egg sacs filled with chocolate across the land. happy easter, kids! NOW RUN, HERE COMES THE EEL

november 2 2012
i've heard that when greyhounds retire, after spending their whole youth racing at the dog tracks, they become monstrous couch potatoes. you can never get them to race again, and you practically have to drag them outside just to take a walk. lately i feel like a retired greyhound. i dusted off an old project from the shelf today and have been doing a bit of drawing for it, probably the first time in several months i've drawn anything at all, and i'm finding it very difficult to get interested in drawing a single thing. i'll make a few stabs and get up and do something else, make a few more stabs, drop the pencil and leave again. i think i like this project again, it's feeling loose and weird and unpolished and i want it to stay that way, the writing is fine, but i don't have the least bit of interest in drawing anything at all and the simplest thing feels like a massive chore. i wonder if after a hundred thousand pages of animation i've reached my hand's lifetime drawing-things limit
october 29
the new dvd's been done for about a week now and i've had very little to do. over the years i've grown so used to leaping straight from one thing into the next... since i'm not doing another short next, having nothing to get to work on has been strange and unfortunately not so great. i feel like a dog waiting around anxiously for an owner to come home. day to day i'm not sure what to do. it is hard to be normal. i guess i'm going to clean the house and start painting some rooms. i cut my hair too short and now i look like a bat.

october 24
when a person with an artificial heart dies, how do they turn off the heart? does it keep beating until the autopsy?

october 20 someone very hairy stayed in this hotel room before me
october 19 descending into LA tonight we broke through weird swirly clouds that were illuminated by the city lights below, milky green and orange

september 27
creating the texts for all the close-captions on the new DVD. it's times like these when i have to write out, "the lion king slippers scream horribly" that i really wonder what the hell i'm doing

strange but true: what are commonly mistaken for tapeworms emerging from a cat's bottom are in fact miniature scrolls, which, when unwound, will reveal a little message from your cat
september 26
the new dvd won't let me finish it, for weeks i have been obsessively fine-tuning to get every color just right in the hd masters while hunting down inexplicable gamma shift after gamma shift... re-rendering, re-exporting, re-testing. it is sort of amazing that no matter how careful you are, weird little one-point brightness and saturation shifts are maddeningly inevitable at every turn of this process, transcoding, down-converting, and i've been trying to overcompensate a bit one way for one inevitable shift, compensating colors the other way for the next, trying to get everything to look just right on every monitor, fixing, fixing, fixing. and so then tonight i hear that "it's such a beautiful day" has just won the grand prix at the "linoleum" festival of animation and contemporary art in moscow, where they have been accidentally screening our murky, pixelated blurry rough cut DVD, with editorial time-code burned across the bottom of the green-tinted, cropped frame.

the feature film version of "it's such a beautiful day" has also been making the theatrical rounds now and i've been finding myself more or less babysitting computers through most of the days... some festivals still want 35mm, but many now want the short in blu-ray, or the short in quicktime, or the feature in blu-ray, or the feature in quicktime, or the version of the feature with the additional material in quicktime, but with this codec, or the same but in PAL, and it is a never-ending cycle of exporting and burning and shipping and keeping track of it all. i think the picture looks fine digitally projected though i am having to get used to some new drawbacks... we were told the first screening of the feature film in los angeles ended when bill stands there staring at his rental car, with keys in his hand: the blu-ray inexplicably skipped ahead ten minutes from there, straight to the end credits, and most of the audience sort of shuffled out confused before anyone knew what had gone wrong. this one still hurts.

ive been watching a really great bbc documentary about early human development, where they demonstrate through dna tests how everyone on the planet alive today who is not a black african is directly descended from a single tribe of people who successfully migrated out of africa 70,000 years ago. just one group of only a few hundred people wound up producing everybody else, every asian, european, eurasian, south american, who ever lived. 10% of everybody in europe alone can be traced back to the genes of just a single unknown prehistoric woman. everyone is african and everyone is intensely related. it is staggering to think how massively critical every small thing this handful of people did must have been... who happened to be attracted to who, who wandered in the right direction to go seed half of india, one of them gets a flu and half the planet does not exist.

this box of weird pita chips next to me has scattered images of little single pita chips printed on it in random spots and in the corner of my eye i keep thinking they're bugs and have to stop myself from swatting at it. 100,000 years later, a giant lumbering box of pita chips, grazing in a marsh, flinches uncontrollably every time a branch above its head sways in the breeze

september 14 is it bad that this cat likes to eat scotch tape? like, three rolls so far?

september 8 of the two cats who think they live here, one is very easy to please doing cat things and is always happy go lucky. he seems to understand that he is a cat and he knows his role. the other is very moody and he seems to be slightly smarter, and slightly older. he seems to understand that he is a cat and it makes him sad because he does not want to be a cat.
tonight i heard a clicking in the house and found a click-bug hanging in the air, stuck in a spider web. he just hung there clicking helplessly, for what seemed like hours

september 3 the nicest bugs come out latest at night. little hovering green things

august 31 there is a halo around the moon tonight
august 30 i think only a few days more and my work on remastering everything for the dvd will be done. in the deepest pit of it a few days ago i very nearly accidentally released everything in mono. whoops. i miss the sun
august 27 ten days ago i dreamt i was in the army. and in the army we mostly played with toy wooden trains on battlefields. those brio ones with the magnet connectors on each side. with great focus, me and my team connected toy trains really long and were commended for it. this work was somehow very important. there was war and carnage all around, meanwhile. a few nights later i dreamt there is a new planet that has drifted extremely close to earth. so close that in certain areas a few cars float in the air, stuck between the gravitational pulls of the two worlds. at the nearest point on this other planet, some christian scientists have built a massive, cool-looking building with giant animatronic statues out front, called the museum of energy. i go to visit it with my mom and when you get there you realize it was constructed at a weird perspective, so it would only look cool from viewing it from the earth. inside we realize it is just a massive boring antique store and tourist trap. i also remember i'd even been there before. my mom pets their giant antique store cat and i am bored.

august 21
unfortunate film festival jury bio: "Nancy Denney-Phelps is a journalist writing about European animation and festivals as well as a prod."

august 20
somewhere, late at night during the darkest hour, a tired animator is walking around the block again

august 13 the olympics officially close, in explosion of shit and noise

august 12
so here's what's going on. we've been booking a bunch of theaters for all three chapters of IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY to make their debut in this fall, newly edited together, as a seamless feature film. the first screening of this is actually only in a week or two and i've been feverishly trying to get everything ready in time, as well as uh, find ways to pad the feature film running time a bit. i've also added that new shot to the very beginning and given it a new title card and new end credits to fit this new form and it all seems to work ok. the feature film version of the entire trilogy is gonna be called IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY, same title as the third chapter, to, well, make things as confusing as possible. have also just whipped up a very simple new theater lobby poster for this. meanwhile, the big new DVD, quite related, should be ready to pre-order around the beginning of september. ok i think that's everything. the summer is going by too fast.

i have been immensely depressed. it might be from turning on the tv but i don't know. thunderstorms forecast tonight

august 10 just like that, all the cicadas have stopped singing. they must be gone now for the season and the sudden silence outside is strange and a little eerie. i watched a prometheus making-of thing. did you know charlize theron is operated by 12 puppeteers?
i've decided to try a second career, as a fortune-teller. please let me know how many of these are accurate: https://twitter.com/FREE_FORTUNES

august 7
i dreamt i tried to impress someone by casually picking up a little framed picture and scrutinizing the back of it.
so the dvd packaging is finished, the menus and extra stuff are finished, but the actual movies are somehow still unfinished. the remastering job is still crawling in the mud on its belly, staring at colors and dirt and colors and colors and then putting its head in the mud again, but i have given myself the deadline of finishing it all up by the end of this week. at some point on my birthday we hung a batman pinata in the front yard and attacked it with a tennis racquet. batman's head was still hanging from the tree the next morning and from a distance it sort of looked like i was the victim of a hate crime. because i like this neighbor cat so much i was given a birthday cake in his shape. i don't even know these neighbors and i was thinking how strange for them to ever learn we ate their cat in effigy after hanging this black thing from my tree.

i am depressed that on surveys i am no longer in the 25-35 age bracket. the 36-49 bracket is completely terrible. i also seem to be gaining weight. i can't get my arms around my front so i use a stick to hit the keyboard

august 4 i had no idea that pringles are actually compressed human ashes

july 29 in the original "star wars" screenplay, r2d2 was named kevin

july 21 the cat who thinks he lives here is terrified of thunder. at the first sign of a storm he hides in a bush or crawls low to the ground to hide behind my legs, shaking, making little chrips. he never gets used to it. the other cat who thinks he lives here is totally unfazed by thunder and doesn't even seem to notice it at all. so fear of thunder is not a universal cat thing. cat 1 is apparently inventing his own unique feelings of danger towards the big loud noises where there was no original cat instinct to be afraid: even when it is no longer a rational or new fear, since thunder has proven thus far to not be harmful to him. does this not suggest then that he has an imagination? that he is projecting something irrational and scary that might come to get him? human imagination supposedly evolved from fear: fear of the dark and of the unknown and of big scary noises invented bigger monsters in our heads that kept us inside of our caves and early mammal burrows at night, safely out of the jaws of nocturnal predators or plunging from dark cliffs.
july 13
at the supermarket today the strawberries were marked "limited edition"

july 10 when i was walking through my front door with my tripod i had a vision of me walking through the front door very old. and i had a vision you were very old and in florida

july 9 we've been doing a series of screenings of the "everything will beok" films in japan. google translate does not help me very much with these audience responses we are receiving, but i really can't stop reading them. i like these so much better than the regular english reviews:

- The roar of a Film Festival being held in Bausushiata, will be screened the first time in Japan, "What a nice day", the latest work of the trilogy "all okay Kit" Don Felt Hearts! ! Was just completed in the spring of this year yet, Kanketsuhen of the story of the building.
- "Hearts say yeah yeah felt roar! !"
- " Don felt Hearts sold out brochure rainy day ..."
- " We have seen Hearts trilogy felt. Can not think of anything in an absent sort of way. I leave the soul. I've seen the limits of the brain"
- " Hearts felt I wonder, Bill was the universe, the head can not keep up, I wonder what! ! Only once in what I do not! ! Chapter 1 and 2 are also delicious - I look many times"
-" Watch Hearts trilogy screenings felt a roar. I saw a great sense of Nye also outrageous."
- "We have seen in the anime called bow Don Felt Hearts. Up from the expected value did great success, enjoyed accordingly."
- "Left brain ... has moved gradually. Trilogy, about a shock, shock was "all right kit" Don Felt Hearts. Was too terrible. But I do not want to write yet I finished swallowing and chewing it "was good", because there is no change to the bad impression this should, Yappari, was good to come."
- "Felt Hearts, Truly full human! !"
- "Part 1 part 2 is there seen that somewhere before, but at that time did not come with pins. Love!"
- "3 Hearts trilogy felt I had to look at it 's such I die someday, too. Rather than pessimism. The final narration that Usobui only. Some people lose their shape also someday be forgotten universe. But you know, counsel me gently at the same time also be a human descendant of "now" that this society is formed subsequently born in mind and I certainly do not form by"
-"Hearts roar is felt, was an enormous sense of immersion. It, (or what I had seen up to now) ... this scene was like Kke. Deployment of the final chapter ... and a little surprising. Or look a bit crossed my mind ... magic window."
-"We saw the animated movie called Don Hertz felt depressed, salaried workers next door I have cried tears holding, face full of super movie euphoria all the people who come out! Frail human life is Please do not look so want to die violently!"
- "Was a warm movie that scale can not believe the outline of the man of Hearts trilogy building felt, of a slender person is to talk about the thickness of the life out gradually, that would have led to the world beyond. Showing great signs of a building filled with around through the roar."

july 8 if i were telling you a story and said, "so this guy is walking down the street and he's going, dum dee dum dee dum, when an air conditioner suddenly falls from an apartment building and nearly hits him," how is it you immediately know what i'm talking about when i say "dum dee dum dee dum?" where does "dum dee dum dee dum" come from? who was the first person to use those musical notes to illustrate a conversation, and how was he understood? is this from early cinema when everyone's actions were scored? was it from earlier, when people would maybe whistle as they walked? discuss.
i have been shooting a couple of little things around town for the upcoming dvd's menus, and one of the things came out looking unusually great and gave me an idea... we've been making plans to bring the three "everything will be ok" films back into theaters this fall, newly edited together as a feature film, and now i think it will also include this shot nobody has seen yet.

june 26 i've found some old footage from 2006 originally shot and intended for the "volume 1" dvd, but deemed to be not good enough. i can confirm now that it is also not good enough for "volume 2". i'm hoping this thing can be ready to go in just a few more months. in other news, sleep is boring and overrated and i have no use for it.

june 23
anytime in conversation when somebody says, "not to _____," they are about to do just that.
june 21 any trip to an antique store between two people will consist of them each saying "you should totally buy this," neither of them ever serious
june 11 you always see people in the stands at basketball games cheer and stand up and give each other high fives, as if they just did something

june 6 it's getting hot. still slugging in front of the computer every day re-remastering these films. they are looking surprising and amazing, i am noticing things in the older titles now that i've never seen before, but it really drives your eyes sort of batty and i can't wait to be finished. last night i wanted to color correct the sky. it was too magenta.
i want to make an insect documentary. today i saw venus crossing the sun. need to mow the lawn. the neighbors on either side have just mowed and now i look like the neighborhood animal.
hey, "beautiful day" won another award the other night, the golden zagreb award for innovative artistic achievement at animafest in croatia. please have a drink on my behalf and say something awkward to a beautiful woman.

i think these pants sharnk. sharnk. SHRANK. SHARK! PANTS SHARK! RUN! BUT RUNNING DOES NO GOOD

may 21 work has spread to giving all three films in the trilogy a fresh HD remastering pass, cleaning more bits of dirt, improving colors, telecine jiggle, fixing little lab problems never noticed before, blah blah blah. i have a new computer here dedicated to all this work, which has the unique distinction of being both incredibly boring and extremely complicated. i get frustated very easily at the software but rest assured by the time i'm done it will all look mostly sort of good, with not too many scenes accidentally deleted. the days are very short while sitting around doing this stuff, easy to get locked in dull routines and suddenly you are waking up every morning and thinking, like, what, i have to feed myself again? soon this will be done and i can get to work on the more fun things on the dvd maybe. the neighborhood cats keep dismantling birds on my front lawn. every other morning there is a new dove head and wing. i doubt the one i call bucket is the guy doing the killing because he is mostly sort of sleepy. bucket always shows up to eat the remains though. he looks sort of ashamed as he does it, like "well i guess i gotta eat this now"

many years ago when i would go to the grocery store and only needed a couple of things i would always try and find at least three things to buy. sometimes i would have to look hard for buying a third thing, or just buy nothing at all. because if i bought only one thing i was afraid the checkout person would think, "wow he must have really needed THIS." and if i bought two things i was afraid she would think, "i guess he is going to go home and somehow use THIS with THIS." buying things in numbers of three and up though and i'd be in the clear. i don't think i do this anymore.

may 9
saw the avengers today. so many movies would be improved if the hulk just showed up in the third act and started smashing shit up

it's been hot and sleepless here, with spectacular thunderstorms all week. am about two weeks now into work on the new DVD, digital remastering trenches on "beautiful day" right now, cleaning up bits of dirt and stuff, patching up random old odds and ends of chapters 1 and 2, and replacing all the characters with photorealistic three-dimensional smirking animals. actually i can't remember if i've already mentioned this, but we're going to seamlessly link all three chapters together for the first time by knocking off the end credts of 1 and 2, thus creating a... uh, well, longer thing. there's also a load of homework to do for the rest of the new DVD, deciding which bells and whistles to include and which things are better left buried out in the yard, but i think i am somewhat ahead of schedule on all this stuff. if there were actually a schedule. i have run into one interesting dilemma with the clean-up work for "beautiful day," in that there were maybe four or five little hairs stuck at the very top of my camera gate through maybe two rolls of film, just barely poking into the frame. they're not distracting, but if you look up, they're there. they appear in maybe a dozen shots in the movie. it would be very easy to crop them out but cropping any shot would be bad, and so the usual solution here is to carefully paint them out with a tricky matte or a meticulous clone stamp... which i've slowly been doing... but at the same time realizing, and this will sound strange, that i kind of LIKE those hairs in a few of the shots. maybe i've just gotten used to seeing them in theaters, but they break up the space kind of nicely in some scenes and i like how they're frequently sort of just hanging ominously over bill. so at least as of tonight, i think i'm actually going to just leave a few of them in the movie. i've never heard of camera gate hair being used as a creative choice before. and no doubt in 100 years from now people may think, wow he must have spent a lot of money digitally creating those amazing fake camera gate hairs for his visual metaphor. but now you will know the real story.

april 29 it's really good to be home. there's so much work to do. somehow last night in my sleep i managed to completely remove the pillowcase from my pillow
april 21 hello from minneapolis where i somehow found myself in the mall of america which is a pretty great mall if you wished ordinary shopping malls had more crushing existentialism and the constant echoing screams of people on rides. i finally slept great the last couple of nights
april 19 hi from the memphis airport, the screening last night felt really good, maybe the best q&a of the tour, and nashville also went well a couple days ago though i have to admit i can barely remember any of it now, let alone most of the screenings immediately prior to that one. unless i think very hard about something very specific to each town it is all just a bright impression of faces and stage lights, haven't been sleeping well at all this week and dreamt i was in the passenger seat of a car, riding with strangers on a slow street with traffic in the other lane flying by impossibly fast. it was evening and we stopped at a railroad crossing to wait for a train, about a dozen cars from the tracks, with bored pedestrians milling around the traffic with drinks, wandering, arguing, a vague sense of unease among them, and as the bullet train thunders closer we notice a handful of teenagers gathered along the crossing, jumping back and forth across the tracks, thrillseekers getting ready to dodge the train at just the last moment! they all leap together as the train flies past and it narrowly misses all but one, a young man who's yanked under in a flash of steam: jesus christ, jesus christ!, someone in the car is shouting as the teenager's friends, hooting and hollering, hoist the top half of his severed torso, still alive for a moment, bleeding and disemboweling all over the pavement. we sit there frozen and stunned with our hands over our eyes as the pedestrians, having faced the wrong way, carry on with their drinks and disagreements, oblivious to the evening, and i think "i've had just about enough of this," and consciously withdraw from the dream and wake up too early in a city i can't remember.

april 18 memphis and madison have both sold out in advance: this leaves the very last stop on the tour, minneapolis, as the only city left with tickets still available. EVERYBODY DRIVE TO MINNEAPOLIS
april 17 oatmeal cake with caramel and vanilla ice cream in bell buckle, TN.
april 14
hello from charlotte. a big bike race is scheduled for today so the roads are closed and people are playing tubas. i took a bus to find something to do, and a guy in a suit eating cheese poofs with orange fingers said he was crying on the inside so i gave him two dollars. it's gotten to where i can't remember what any of the hotel rooms looked like from last week, which theaters on the tour were which, or what city i will be in tomorrow. the airports, hotels, and theater lobbies are all just a hurtling blur of sameness now and i usually need a landmark or specific event to jog any memory of what a theater or town looked like from just a day or two ago.
i happily haven't needed to take a sleeping pill in a few weeks now, bringing ear plugs everywhere has been magic. if you drive each plug deep enough into your ear canals, they will put direect pressure on either side of the brain, which knocks you straight out. ITS GREATE. in strange new hotel rooms night after night, they really have become a must: thin walls and loud tvs, early morning noisy housekeeping, door slams, fire alarms, people screaming "my god my god is there still anyone left in the building," etc.
april 13 sometimes honey nut cheerios taste like blood
april 12
these were from tampa
april 11 airport observation: why do most adult males dress themselves like large toddlers? hello from atlanta where the weather looks beautiful and i am set up in a cozy cottage. the last time i was in atlanta i was downtown a lot, constantly harassed for change by crack addicts at every corner. i then stepped in human poop and had to abandon my converse, wrapped in a plastic bag and apologetically deposited in an anonymous office wastepaper bin as we cut through a hotel lobby. so...... improvement!

april 11 yesterday i asked for a "zip lack bog." :( i guess at least my early signs of dementia are hilarious

april 10 gone for 2 weeks, home for three days, tomorrow back on the road for another 2 weeks. having been on about 30-40 flights in the last six months i am some sort of leathery road warrior now, an efficient packer with knowledge of all exit rows and different airline soda availabilities, video ipod loaded with things to watch on every flight, headphones on and disappear. really looking forward to the tail end of the tour now... was considering adding additional screenings in new cities but realized i was weighing whether or not to add shows by counting how many more flights and connections i'd have to be on, and decided maybe this should be the end. one last round! let's go, see you soon

idea for fossil themed snack food: trilo-bites
they're PREHISTDELICIOUS

april 6 hello from jacksonville: one more show tonight, then home for just a couple days before yet another two weeks back out on the road. the q&a chat in gainesville last night felt kinda abbreviated and strange. the last few days i have also learned from various news articles that: "rejected" was real (wow), "wisdom teeth" is in german (had no idea), and that my films are "widely criticized for being misogynistic" (wait, what??). i hope to reach the end of this strange dimension we're drifting through soon. still, florida has been really great for this:

WILSON! WILLLSOOOON!! I'M SORRY, WILSON! WILSON I'M SORRY!

snake legs and thunder elk
april 3 2:43am
from new york to boston, where i'd never been before but unfortunately only had one day, so my boston experience has been confined to a two block radius. but a thumbs-up to your trader joe's down the street. i DJ'ed the preshow music live tonight from my ipod and mostly did not screw up. from one hotel room to the next, tomorrow is florida. my collection of little sample size shampoo and conditioner bottles grows.

this is really good for you right now (not sure what's up with the pic):

april 2
in NY julia took this pic for my new photoblog series in which i get angry at different foods


april 1

march 29 four sold out screenings + one bonus show and we're all done. thanks nyc you were all too kind this week and made me sort of feel like a strange little bird whose head you really wanted to pet
march 28 so "wisdom teeth" reportedly caused a nice elderly couple to flee the theater tonight, in terror and dread. is this kind of sad, or badge of honor? it's a shame it was the very first film in the entire program that did them in. for their evening's entertainment they got about two minutes of horriblenightmare before being driven out of the room :(

i do try and offend at least one old person in every city, but usually i just sort of push one over and run

march 25 your favorite songs on a sleepless airplane at 7 in the morning sound better than in any other setting

march 23

planted catnip for the neighborhood cats and within an hour it was trampled and shredded to bits. so they don't totally destroy it, i've now become the idiot who chases cats away from catnip

march 20 home for a few more days and then spending a week in NYC, a couple days in boston, and then a drive across florida. i am so happy there will not be any more snow for the rest of the tour as i've seen too much of it already this year. snow in sundance, snow in cleveland, chicago, snow in toronto, snow in fargo. by snow i mean cocaine
toronto had some amazing bootleg dvd shops, some of them offering titles in ANAPOMIMIC VIDESCREEN and in fargo i got to play the theater's pipe organ. i also forgot my credit card in a bowling alley filled with people in big lebowski costumes who dreamt of bigger things.
there are now five new projects i'd love to get off the ground in the next year, and only one of them is a movie. i am wondering if any of them can ever actually happen. i've been sort of lazily writing around the house, doing laundry, planting things in the ground, staring at clouds, not sleeping at night
thunder tore through the neighborhood a couple of days ago and deeply rattled all the cats who think they live here. i'd started giving one of them concentrated catnip in a sock and after having the initial wild reaction, he would suddenly just sort of lay there totally still, staring off into unblinking nothingness for several minutes ("is he dying?"), and i swear in moments like these he can clearly see the very edge of the universe but he just can't express it, for he is a cat. following the storms last night there was the smallest inchworm you've ever seen dangling on a thread in the night and i shot a video

march 5 it's very cold here in toronto, where the wind sort of cuts through everything you've got. i'm staying in an unusual hindu-themed bed and breakfast, only there is no breakfast but a free-for-all little cabinet downstairs filled with soap, granola bars, and diet sodas. plus a purple bejewelled elephant in the corner of the room. had a solid screening tonight, after which i learned that the new canadian 100 dollar bill is made of plastic and engineered to smell like maple syrup. so as america focuses its energy on building more bombs, canada has been hard at work figuring out how to make its money smell like waffles.

march 3 a day off in chicago. went to the art institute and held hands with a class field trip as an instrumental version of a smiths song played. tomorrow i get to toronto. traveling alone to so many places takes its toll quickly... yanking back and forth between big crowds and lights and bustle to suddenly sitting in a quiet little room by yourself in a strange place again. most of my time is spent waiting, for an airplane, for a ride, for the movie to be over in a new theater lobby. indeed i've probably heard some of these films from backstage now more than i've actually seen them. but most of the time the people make it worth it. MOST OF THE TIME.

march 2 tornadoes got in my way to indianapolis today and i'm suddenly stuck in chicago with nowhere to go now for two days. all that was left behind in this borrowed flat is a liquor cabinet, popsicles, and a wii. it's as though i'm locked inside of a bad human zoo exhibit.
so for the first time ever i had to beam a Q&A into the theater via skype for indianapolis... it felt terribly lonely and strange to be projected on the screen out of a completely empty silent room but it seemed to go ok i guess and hopefully with the help of skilled puppeteers onstage few people there could tell the difference.

february 28 all 750 seats in chicago have just sold out so we're adding a 2nd chicago screening, tomorrow at 10:10 - tickets now on sale i think

february 24
hi cleveland. somehow we're staying in a retirement home. friday is larry's birthday and we're all welcome to cake in the lobby.
the tour swings wildly between very interesting things and very boring things. mostly i spend a lot of time waiting in the wings for the movie to be over. today i bought an overpriced chimera. there is nothing but dark sleet and wind outside. we were going to see some mythical creatures but they werent open yet.

february 22 screening tonight in columbus, ohio, where christopher columbus first set foot upon discovering the new world. friday we screen in cleveland, where i am looking forward to finally seeing versailles

here's life in a day in its entirety which is worth your time if you have it. make screen big and etc:

february 12 been back in austin for a few days, where it's raining ice and the cats don't leave. next up is dallas, ohio, and then a lot of very cold places. by the time this is over i think i'll have hurtled through something like 50 q&a's in 30 cities around the country and probably twice as many interviews. it's maybe not a good sign that i'm not halfway there and am already really tired of myself... when asked the same inevitable questions on a loop there is a danger of turning into a creaking phonograph with a microphone and i'm going to try and jettison everything i've been repeating a lot til now and see if i can dig in totally different directions on stage, even if it gets a little weird. also maybe some card tricks. how grand to release a movie without ever having to talk about it. onward and upward. here are a few things from the last 2 weeks and 6 cities february 6 played the "talking, feeling, and doing" 1973 psychotherapy board game for children with the late night audience. sorry

february 2 went from sundance and snow one morning to a beach in monterey that afternoon and today i'm in seattle. one of my suitcases exploded, possibly related. olympia show was ok last night. my room was crawling with ladybugs and i was never really sure if this was adorable, or bad. they had a hertzfeldt-herzog double feature so got to see "into the abyss" which is pretty great. you know you've been on a long trip when you're cutting your nails in a hotel room. the northwest is kind of strange right now. i feel like a ghost

for some reason sundance invited me to take over their twitter account for a day during the festival. here's part of the transcript

sundancefest: ok people. the #sundance feed is all mine. for $1000 i will tweet about your film. for $5000 i will tweet about your product. -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: on behalf of sundance i'd also like to congratulate director don hertzfeldt on his 2012 juryprize for universal achievement in great awesome
sundancefest: going to try and see the new zellner bros movie "kid thing." will duly sit and tweet all plot details for you throughout film -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: while you wait a favorite sundance midnight short: calvin reeder's 2007 exploitation weirdo "little farm" www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDFaLFA5VBY
sundancefest: "it's such a beautiful day" screens with some great animated shorts for the last time at 7 at holiday village! come say hi -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: i have three extra tickets. find me in town and i'll give them away. first hint: i am surrounded by snow -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: the free tickets are gone! wow, you guys are fast -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: 6th visit to #sundance and the first time seeing a squirrel ride on the back of a cat in a little saddle down main street -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: wait i am now being told this did not happen
sundancefest: hey, also playing tonight: "room 237." if you're not here at the festival, kubrick fans go track this lunacy down someday. -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: also, the new frontiers piece "evolution (megaplex)" -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: omg this q+a is NOT going well. the audience is eating a screaming woman and beetles are pouring from the director's face -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: 2 dogs with 3 legs in THE SAME PLACE AT THE SAME TIME. come on, you've totally never seen this before http://bitterfilms.com/dogs.jpg -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: and now a new feature for the twitter feed, movie reviews of things i did not see at #sundance -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: "the house i live in." totally amazing. a truly impeccable lack of tickets throughout this entire production. -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: "west of memphis" wow. devastating. scheduled at the same time as all my own screenings. stays with you for hours after not seeing it -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: is it considered tacky / bad form to use #sundance's twitter to find investors for the animated feature i'm writing? cough. -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: we'll need several million dollars and a strong team of animators and artists. probably in europe. do speak up -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: please don't say "kickstarter" -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: flying out tomorrow straight to more screenings: seattle, portland, olympia, and eugene. i am going to look smeary -@donhertzfeldt #sundance
sundancefest: "brittany and i had to wait an extra 20 minutes for the redstone express just to see our second-choice movie. #iamthe99%"
sundancefest: favorite response today: "did you figure out their password? does #sundance know about this?" -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: in the store there was a "punky brewster" dvd with a price tag obscuring the title and at first i thought it read, "penis browser" -@donhertzfeldt
sundancefest: ok so i'm told i'm being cut off early from the #sundance feed now for something called "the awards ceremony" #conspiracy -@donhertzfeldt

january 22 hello from park city. weather report: heavy snow, 20 degrees, frozen hair, your windows will make long, low wooshing sounds all night. the first screening was good yesterday, saw a couple of other movies and later trudged through a blizzard to reach the taco bell at the summit of everest. sort of laying low today and also we discovered this hotel has a lord of the rings pinball game in the basement. second screening tomorrow at noon, so many things on my list to see and people to say hello to.

often during q+a's my left elbow will suddenly jettison my forearm over the audience's heads. please catch and return thank you


january 19 packing for almost 3 weeks on the road and just realized i don't think i own this many pairs of socks. see you soon in sundance/olympia/seattle/portland/eugene. possibly in a laundromat

january 8 2012 for the last few years i've had a dream sort of recur where i'm on a big airliner that for some reason has to make a routine emergency landing, onto a six lane freeway or in the middle of a village in africa, and we then have to drive the rest of the distance in the plane, looking out the window at cars and people go by, with a vague sense of relief. it's raining here and i've sort of been in slow motion for weeks. i should probably be writing but there are too many heavy things

my niece: bear! i get bear! it's in my woom! [runs to get bear] bear! now cuddle him! again! again!! now they're underwatah! and DANCING

i am no longer the cassette tape in your car
december 19 denver, san francisco, all four screenings wonderful, thank you,. ive been home again for a week, sort of not unpacking, sort of slugging around the house, watching a load of movies, sort of working on this new script again as well as somewhat thinking about the graphic novel that has been half buried in the yard for a very long time. i think i'm going to add a robot to it. most things seem to be improved with the addition of a robot. but i will probably paw at this script for a while first. 2012 is going to be busy with these things and we're also announcing a whole mess of tourdates. the ground is slimy with rain and leaves butthe sky just turned really pretty
sf, denver december 4 ""your xmas present will be the *thought* that i might remember your birthday"
reached the bay area, driving too fast in a weird rented cube with four more shows down: SB and LA, thank you, somehow we did it, three q+a's in one night, sold out screenings and a lot of complimentary mr pibb, a strange hotel room with a silver bean bag chair and view of palm trees and purple buildings. i actually forgot to pack my toothbrush. for the teeth in my mouth. the other teeth i have a separate brush for. san francisco you're next november 20 the first three shows are checked off the list and the movie is out of the oven and floating around the lower atmosphere in a fancy little suit. i added one last-minute short to the program lineup the night before the first screening and i think that was a good move. the two austin shows sold out in advance faster than anything i've been involved with and you will be pleased to learn that the majority of my q+a's no longer consist of glares, gardening tips, and long, slow groans. west coast you are next week, briefly, and then a whole bunch of stuff is being cobbled together for the first few months of the new year. i am going to paint some rooms around here. we resawed a hole in the house a few weeks ago to get the 2nd giant acme camera inside. the cameras look handsome standing together and i've given them horse's names. here is austin and houston:

november 10
it's still hard for me to believe fewer than ten people have seen "it's such a beautiful day" yet, i am clawing around the walls waiting to show this to you. a secret screening was held in montreal earlier this week for a few film festival staffers at the sommets du cinema d'animation de montreal (dec 3+4):
..............................................
"After the 23 minutes, when the lights turned on, I heard that the four of us were all crying quietly, and nobody said a single word. I don't know if you realize what you "did" - how big (?) is "this" - how far you make us go during these 23 minutes. My English being very poor, all this sounds quite stupid and empty for sure, but I just wanted to tell you that after the screening, I thought :
1. If there is one human being like this on Earth, it's ok. Then, it's ok.
2. I would like you not to burn or explode as they all do one day or another (the unique artists like you).
Thank you for everthing, merci pour tout."
..............................................
thank you marie-pierre and marco -- tomorrow night a screening at the bradford animation festival in the uk. next week usa premiere shows in austin and houston, and beyond. hello, hello hello i'll see you soon

november 7 getting tired of doing interviews and will now answer every question with, SNAKES.
"As an artist, what would you like your audiences to take away from your films?" SNAKES.

october 29 the new movie is finished: signed off on the first release print a couple of nights ago after a long week of color work while living in the most murdery motel in glendale. tonight is santa barbara, tomorrow moving the big camera out of the studio and trucking it to austin. i shot "rejected" on there in 1999 and everything else since, all the way through a good 90% of "it's such a beautiful day. the movie is finished + the end of an era...

october 24
subliminal arrows woven into the pattern of the airport carpet, to suggest movement. my flight smelled like ham

october 22
tonight i am declaring the soundtrack officially finished. almost four months to record, edit, and mix. off to the dolby lab tomorrow. collapse onto floor. i hear this soundtrack in my sleep and my soul is empty. the cat here likes to sit in boxes. also i have thought of some more album titles for you:
- let's go get haircuts!
- loud, gay chirping
- space groan
- i'm dancing in yellow
- everything is rubbable
- slithering to the lake
- i'm thinking tacos
- all animals can scream

this makes me happy. when i am 52 and sad in bed, please wheel a little tv into the room on a cart playing this, saying, "dooooon...."

october 7 the sky looks fake tonight and there are geckos all over the house and the wind keeps knocking over my plant. we have been beaten over the head with repeated little technical problems on "beautiful day" for the last three weeks.... time lost to lab errors, unexpected busywork, nonsense. the film is in no danger but i can't remember the last movie where in every department something seemed to be going wrong, all the time. most of it is out of my hands now except for the soundtrack which i am hoping not to go and ruin at the last minute. barreling very quickly towards the premiere date in mid-november. but i think we'll get there

october 4
this headline was on my news page today:

jaundice sounds like a girl's name
sept29 you know how in the dark crystal those machines suck the souls right out of the faces of the little pod people? that was actually protools. they were just working on their soundtrack for the third month. when i close my eyes all i see are wavelengths. it's finally raining tonight but i feel like angry chewed gum. but in happy news we should have a few opening tour dates to announce soon



sept 14
k needed help thinking of a slang compliment for "nice legs." i came up with:
meat columns
torso danglers
lower arms
i think i am fired from helping any more

sept 12 just locked picture on "it's such a beautiful day," i think. final running time about 23 minutes exactly, longest movie to date
sept 11 3:53am
i've just synched the last note of music to the last frame of the movie.... better late than never.... things are rattling in ways i wasn't expecting but i can make it work and i think we'll have a locked picture soon [famous last words]

this just in from the grocery store: a gentleman purchasing a six pack of clamato to the tune of "we built this city on rock and roll"
september 4 i think we might be ready to sneak the movie out to a few theaters somewhere in november. i am finally running out of stuff to fix in this sound mix. if the new footage comes out right, i think one more round of editing and we'll have a final cut. so i am painting the kitchen. i also bought a new thing to put some things in and now the living room looks better. today i met some dogs
hey look some pictures from "it's such a beautiful day" are over here look do you see?
august 28 2011
roll 16 is through the camera and in the fridge, i can't believe i've gotten up to 16 now, much of it being re-re-re-shoots, and i will dive deep back into work on the sound mix tomorrow, and i am adding this extra final thought so that i can find a way to fit yet another comma into this sentence, and, well, maybe three more. late at night the cats hop the fence to watch us swim and now it's become sort of a clockwork routine for them

august 24 film history: turns out that "leave the shutter open" option on the animation motor is a relic from the days of rotoscoping.... you'd flip that switch if you wanted to use the camera as a projector and load it with live action footage that you'd project down to the table for tracing one frame at a time. thus, you'd need to leave the shutter open after every advance. i noticed the other camera i have here has the same little archaic switch on it too, only this one's got a massive piece of very old red tape glued angrily across it, keeping it from ever being set to the "open" position. it seems this has beleaguered many a cameraman in the past. tonight the grocery store smelled like soapy pee and there are baby geckoes all over the house. wait that's not how you spell geckos
august 20 something of a disaster today.... it turns out the four rolls of footage i'd shot since may are all unuseable... the camera here in austin has been weirdly leaving the shutter wide open after every frame of animation was shot, thus capturing my hands moving the artwork in and out of position throughout every scene in a mess of overexposed blurs and blazing horror. i admit it looks experimental and very pretty, but it will give everyone seizures and the sudden appearance of giant hands will probably change the story in a negative way. so remember that simpsons halloween episode where homer keeps getting attacked by a cursed krusty doll? and finally they find a hidden "good/evil" switch on the back of the doll, and someone says, "well here's your problem, somebody had this doll set to evil." i've learned the camera has its own evil switch i wasn't aware of, an inexplicable stop-open switch that's been unknowingly set to leave the shutter hanging open through the last several hundred feet of animation. and i'm still trying to wrap my head around why on earth anyone would actually want to design such a thing for an animation motor that would, by design, ruin any frame-by-frame photography.... burbank, what have you done?
even though most of the ruined footage were reshoots that we could carry on without, it also contained the very last 30 seconds of the movie, which i didn't otherwise have coverage on. so the soundtrack's just about finished, all the other footage is there in the movie, we are just missing that last 3% of it... and though it is tempting to simply end the movie on "scene missing" cards, i will now shoot more camera tests, confirm that the evil switch is now properly set to good, and power through these reshoots. again. more. shooting. this will probably delay the movie being finished by a couple of weeks, but in turn that will probably delay the actual release of the movie by about a month

august 19 a week ago i dreamt i died in a plane crash. in spirit form, i could still contact people by sending thoughts directly into their heads... but they all assumed they were simply wishing i were still around, and dismissed my telegraphed messages as their own sad imaginations
august 16 i just accidentally texted someone, GET IP GAAG. i guess i'm just not going to explain it and see what happens
august 15 red ants have taken over a bedroom window and seem to be building something out of mud. tonight a car drove into a house and i stubbed my toe on the uneven sidewalk and we swam under a full moon
august 7
the cicadas in the trees rattle at all hours, the days are reaching 106 degrees, and the cat here can fluently pronounce the consonants "R" and "W."
i am getting mighty tired of listening to this soundtrack every day. there are few creative things left to do in there now and it's getting down to all the technical boredom, re-recording, polish, polish, polish, please don't put the headphones back on me. there are also reshoots and new takes left to edit in, about 800 feet of footage that i still haven't seen. all downhill to the finish line, but i've grown so mind-melded with the movie it's hard to believe there will one day be an end
there were a lot of cops out tonight and people yelling at children in the grocery store. the quote of the week was, "now your floors will never be moist." here is an unrelated picture that karinne took

" with little plumes of cigarette ash dancing off your black wings"
july 18 sometimes i mix up the word sparse with parsley and end up thinking things like, "income this month has been sort of sparsely."

july 17 i have about five minutes of film left to narrate and edit and will then have finished a rough draft of the soundtrack from beginning to end. it seems i am adding and discovering much more new music to include here and there + possibly skipping a lot of the music i had originally planned (as well as written), which gives me the strange dilemma of my long-ago-shot page of music credits being completely wrong and incomplete at the end of the movie. it is annoying and expensive to have to go in to reshoot a single page of credits, but if that's the most annoying problem i have right now i guess things must be going pretty ok

july 6
"you are the king of selective listening"
"i am the king!"

july 5 .......i'm about 1/4 of the way through carving out a skeleton sound mix and finding the right beats... meanwhile rearranging shots, yesterday finished one last roll of film, and am happy to report now that the movie is at least not going to suck... things are slowly sticking and tugging in the right directions, sometimes surprisingly so. animating, writing, and shooting for almost a couple years without arranging any of the scenes together is always a strange thing, seems like sculpting something in pitch blackness with maybe a tiny bit more light let into the room as you go, but it's only months later when these first edits and sound touches let in enough light to actually see the thing you've been chiseling for ages: "oh, i've got his head on backwards" - "oh, obviously this has to go here and i need one of these" - "wow, this is really just terrible"
i meant to type "exposed neg" on this can of film and accidentally put, EXPLOSED NEG
quote of the night, observing a clumsy fall: "if you had a sparkler in your ass that would have qualified as a firework."

june 23 2:35am i was a lot like cat today. i got up on the roof, i ate a lot, and now i'm sleepy. early sound work continues. i don't remember the narration being this hard before to actually get right. rewriting, changing music, etc. the air is warm and wet tonight from last night's storm and everywhere in the darkness all things are hissing and chirping and going rrrrrrr

june 22 the sky is thundery now and my bread tastes like pancakes

june 16-17 i realized i am missing one minor shot, which gave me the excuse to order yet more film and add a few other bits and pieces... one involving a strange little thing on a beach which i am going to draw tonight. the furnaces are burning hotter now and i feel i am slowly pounding this thing into some sort of shape, or at least something vaguely shaped like a movie. with everything finally flowing in order it's much more clear which sequences need a little more of this, and which need a little more of that. just saw "the tree of life" tonight and liked it very much, though after discussing it i realized that through the whole movie i'd thought sean penn was the other brother, which i guess sort of changed the whole thing for me. also took the wrong freeway to get to the movie theater, mere seconds after reminding myself to take the other freeway, so it seems like maybe there's a recurring something-wrong with me.
i fed the cat who thinks he lives here leftover beef chow mein and afterwards he looked up at me and said, "thank you very much, that was fantastic."
may 31
the first assembly of "chapter 3" has just been stitched together, it clocks in at just under 22 minutes though more footage is going in and more footage is going out. this is nerve-wracking to watch.... it is always easy to panic when you see about two years of work quietly whiz by like nothing... i'm probably shooting roll 13, all retakes, this weekend on the new film stock kodak's introduced to replace the stuff i usually use... their promotions make it sound like the stock's so versatile that its emulsion can capture the ghost images of your dead ancestors and then melt the screen with colors. which luckily is exactly what chapter 3 is all about.

may 12 well, it's getting exciting... the footage looks really great and some of it makes me want to run around... as i suspected though, the camera's shutter action began breaking down midway through the week, and by rolls 10 and 11 there are frequent bursts of overexposed frames interrupting every shot. suspecting this, i'd shot everything really fat and i'm pretty sure we can cut around all of it. meanwhile, i was forced to not use registration pegs for some of the really experimental stuff, and i think something also got misaligned when i printed many of these frames, resulting in many shots that are weirdly jittery, like a strange earthquaking hand-held look... so put together a lot of this material basically looks like i was desperately trying to finish the movie while under intense machine gun fire. but i think i will be able to use some of these weird flaws to the footage's advantage. maybe.

there's a handful of scenes in there that could be better though, particularly the last shots of the movie (rather important), and i'm therefore going to need to rethink and reshoot them here in austin with the screwy blind camera. could finishing this movie be any more dramatic? camera one has taken sniper fire! land the airplane, blind camera! land the airplane!

may 1 wasps have started living inside of one of my lawn chairs. it's like the worst chair you can select now.

april 30 austin. "it's a wrap." uh, until i see the footage and inevitably have to go back and reshoot and fix and a bunch of stuff. but we can pretend. 1600 feet of animation shot in 8.5 days, a new record. going to sleep now.
april 25 back in santa barbara, five days into shooting, 10-12 hrs a day at the camera, everything hurts. the giant stacks of animation left for "chapter 3" are formidable but i should be able to plow through by the end of the week. every late night i drive back and think i see blurry figures and faces in dark corners of streets. the magic camera stand blew out a light today and lately the shutter has been getting stuck on frames, but damn it, it still runs and we flow together like old times. when i re-opened the studio for the first time in seven months, the door wedged on a massive pile of junk mail that had amassed beneath the mail slot, damp and literally rotting from leaking rainwater
april 14, with nothing to do until i go shoot next week, i shaved my beard off and sat down and began writing this feature screenplay i've had hanging in a tree for years. in one twelve hour plus sitting i have poured out 33 finished pages and am feeling rathergreat.

april 9
i just accidentally sent an email signed as "dion" :(

april 8 i drove by the google street view car today. maybe i should have waved or done something fun but i sort of sadly drove past like i was in trouble. also i think the conflicting sudden impulses of all the different fun things i could do on the spot would've collided and i'd have just sort of thumped against the driver side window. the woman behind the counter at the post office looked like she'd been crying all morning. also last week we were almost run over by a high speed police chase. (not the woman in the post office)

"I do not like the picture at all, -- in fact I cannot find words to express how much I dislike it.
-- You were never physically attractive to me; you are neither graceful nor beautiful, and you evidently know nothing of the laws or properties of beauty.
Otherwise you could not have sent me such a picture, as it could only disgust me.
Whatever liking I have had for you, it has never been of such a character that I could be otherwise than disgusted by such a picture as that.
It is unutterably coarse and gross and beefy. It is simply unendurable."

march 27 2011, i think i finished animating today, i think. unsettling. i am restless. according to the journal i started drawing this way back in october 2009, easily another life ago. i can't remember when i started writing, i doubt those first drafts resemble this much anymore, it's grown and grown and grown into something sort of weirdly great. stacks and stacks of stuff waiting here to be shot, plenty of months of production work still ahead, but my nights of drawing little round headed things in successive motion seem to be over for now. everything will be ok turns five years old this year, what a long way to tell a story. the weather here is good. once the summer humidity hits, you don't want to go outside much other than to swim. cats melt and can be poured into convenient six packs

march21 a glimmer of good news....the austin camera passed its test with flying colors, looking clean and free of bad things. of course i am shooting almost blind on it (no working eyepiece, framing things by squinting straight into the little reflex mirror) but i should at least be able to get some easier shots tackled here in case i'm not able to get it all though the magic camera in santa barbara. i still can't believe i own two of these beasts, resurrected from life support, in different states. today a turtle scowled at me for an extended period of time and i put a plastic wolf tattoo on my arm. we were going to hike but sara brought the wrong shoes.
march16, 17 sxsw is happening and downtown is wall to wall shuffling tote baggin hipsters, rockstars, aggressive LA types, hula hoop girls and ukeleles, no parking, and warily passing drunk white guys post-beaten up and left bleeding on the sidewalk. so i haven't been going downtown very much. but i did see the new werner herzog cave documentary and it's pretty great. i also saw a michael stipe thing, followed by a band that screamed "geiissshaaaaa!" a lot while we ignored all the motion around us and talked about the end of the world while watching the terrifying radioactive news coming out of japan on a small blue screen. also last night i had to cut a wasp in half but in the morning it was a moth.
i've just booked a flight back to santa barbara in one month to shoot, so now i have to buckle down and actually finish the rest of this movie. really hoping to shoot some of the simpler stuff on the cri-ppled camera wondering what it's doing in my house, i shot a strip test on it today to make sure the gate is at least not full of bug hairs. incidentally kodak has forever discontinued my usual film stock for these cameras and i've just bought the last four rolls of it in existence... i guess there's a replacement stock but it's 200t instead of 100, and change scares me. we found ourselves drinking with davefoley the other night, who wound up curled up in the dirt in his suit. blame geoff. last i saw him he was doing that thing where you go down a staircase walking carefully backwards on all fours. i am still not altogetherhere but i just found a cookie to eat. quote of the day: "it would be funny at first but i am sandy and determined"
march 7 who wants to go to ikea thisweek? march 6 down to maybe three shots left to animate, the last three i've been stalling for weeks for not having figured out yet ....one in which a character is viewing "stunning works of art," the sort of scene you immediately hate yourself for writing when you sit down to actually try and deal with it. need to grimly stare these down as quickly as i can this week and then book a long trip to the santa barbara camera, i wonder if she misses me. every day i've painted a different wall in the house. quote of the week: "if i was run over by a bus would you go barf on a stripper?" i think i had something else to tell you but i can't remember
this is maybe the most interesting article you will read about "wisdom teeth."

february 22
grrrARRR
[climbs out of hole in the desert]
rarrara rrarrr arrrrrr
[lumbering around landscape with claws]

february 20
the austin flea market = machetes, cock fighting dvds, and last supper paintings
february 16 it's warm again, with fat grasshoppers in the dead lawn and happy rolling cats on doorsteps. i have about ten very difficult shots left to animate and then i'm done...
february 7 the ending is almost totally storyboarded now. i...i can't believe how many shots there are in this movie. every time i think i'm getting close it all just expands just a little bit more. but the light at the end of the tunnel is almost in sight. knocking them down one at a time. getting hard to leave the house. this movie is going to eat your face.
february 4 my friend molly sometimes teaches illustration at elementary schools: this is a kid's inexplicable drawing of two dragons dropping their plastic water bottles down a storm drain to engage in sudden battle. i want to frame it

february 3 highs in the 20s this week, possible snow tonight, animating in front of the space heater with a scarf, coat and hat
january 31 i bought a piano a few weeks ago and am happily getting back in the habit of playing every day. i have conquered two gnossiennes, one more to go. above certain phrases, most composers' notes to the musician will read something like "softly" or "brightly"... satie's fantastic notes read, "open your head," "arm yourself with perspicacity," "don't leave," and "how to achieve absolutely nothing."
there's a huge storm blowing through tonight, wind and rain throwing trees around and snow is on the forecast in two days. tonight i've been drawing an elegant creature though the animation hasnt reached elegance yet.
january 30 everybody had a bad week. crushed my finger, really smashed it, thankfully not the drawing hand but i'm not sure i've ever felt such physical pain before, like the same level of awfulness for ten minutes that leaves you writhing on the carpet exclaiming things. then it swelled up and the fingernail turned alarmingly blue with blood and long story short i learned this trick from a doctor on youtube where you muster the courage to light up the tail of a paperclip til it's red hot and drive a burning hole in the nail to drain it all out. too much information? nobody's reading this anyway. so stabbing burning metal repeatedly into my hand was how i spent the other morning. let's hope this week's a little better yeah? completed three beautiful shots so far in the ending to "chapter 3", it's really happening.
"Perhaps that is what has made us America's Pretzel."
january 24 wrapping up a few shots tonight of bill under a very familiar tree. the ending is finally up next, maybe starting the first shots in a day or two, and i'm getting really jumpy to launch into it now.
in this shot from last week i had to animate bill very, very small. this was actually spoken in conversation today: "i'm curious what dr. handy says on groundhog day."

january 15 i'm starting to stare into the future (it's eerie but i do this) + wondering exactly how long it'll take to finish "chapter 3" and whether it'll still be deliverable in time for another fall tour... and in turn how wise it will be to pull the trigger on starting tour preparations, say, over the summer, if the finish line for the movie is still in limbo. i seem to be a couple months behind where i thought i'd be. sort of began storyboarding the ending sequences which is really exciting and terrifying. they are huge.
this is a totally useless conversation i had on 8/30/09 while working on the sound for "wisdom teeth"
me: i cant think of what sound effects to put with these shots
sara: birds and puddles
me: i didnt think puddles made sounds
sara: they do whn my feet are in them
me: if puddles could sing their voices would be low and groany
me: this person in the scene is in intense pain and the screen sort of goes abstract. i dont want to use sound effects i would ordinarily put here because ive already kind of done them to death
sara: doens't pain sound like "wahwahwah"
me: well its not the person making the sounds.... its the sounds of the image
sara: i know that!
me: wah wah wah?
sara: i didn't mean a person saying that.
me: like a siren you mean?
sara: no, not like a siren like a pounding headache
me: like a low drone? waaaaaaaaaaaah waaaaaaaaaaaaah
sara: yeah that pulsates
me: "ow this really hurts! WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH"

january 11 2011 where i've been lately
january 6 2011 happy new year. is it too late to say happy new year? after weeks of compositing shots, it feels really great to actually be drawing again. hello paper. hello pencil. i've cleared a lot of shots out of the way now and almost ready to get started on the ending. maybe after one more week of all this. i don't know why but my hair seems to keep turning red
december 20 the pool is full of drowned caterpillars. heading to california tomorrow, my niece is toddling around now and the only word she knows how to say is "wow." everything is wow. which, when you think about it, is really the only word you need. at 2am tonight the moon is going to turn red and disappear.
"because you speak to me in words and i look at you with feelings."
december 11 at&t assigned the house a phone number that used to be a discount shoe store so a half dozen people a day call me for shoes. sometimes all they say after you pick up is, "where y'all at....exactly." the house still needs more attention and furniture but i haven't been doing much the last couple of weeks but gain weight and try to push these remaining scenes up the hill. my mouth felt weird today. tonight i'm working on a little shot of bill rising out of a chair, and a few little shots after that i'll have nothing left to animate but the very last scene of the movie, an amorphous chunk of story that's so free-sprawling and weird that i haven't got much of an idea even how long it will be, one minute or several. it's going to be large and difficult and an adventure to figure out, and then that will be it. i wonder how many times i've drawn that little hat.
your quote of the day: "often it's just sound effects or observations about sensations in my mouth."
your quote of the week: "ringo was scrunchy."
look, they are waving at you, from across time. they were just like you, once.
NOVEMBER 16 I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS IS IN CAPS
on paper i'm periously close to finishing animating "chapter 3," yet it's going to be a very slow crawl to that finish as it seems every single shot from this point on is gonna be difficult, time consuming, and tediously special effecty. but i'd guess i have only about five more minutes to get through. "wisdom teeth" has been sitting finished on a shelf for so long i've almost forgotten about it... showtime picked it up several months ago but hasn't decided yet when exactly they're going to show it, though it should turn up both online and on tv almost any day now. i think? here is your quote of the week: "only one apple pleases the japanese."
this is another still from "chapter 3," shot from so long ago it feels like another life

"i would have covered you in glitter glue and thrown a stuffed owl at your face"
nov 1 happy late halloween, a cat has decided he lives in my house and bangs his head nightly against the glass door. i'm sinking into a number of weird hybridy special effect shots in chapter 3 now, bouncing drawings and things back and forth from analog to digital, eventually printing entire scenes back out in the form of several hundreds of composite photo prints that'll be further messed with when i go to shoot them under the camera, one at a time. it's strange stuff and the few scenes ive tried this on look so good i sort of have to design others now in the same miserably time-consuming way. it seems like i'll probably need to return to the santa barbara camera somewhere in december to february to shoot the final rolls of the movie, which i guess isn't such a big surprise. here's a picture from chapter 3 that was shot back in june or july. will probably dribble out more pictures to the journal soon if i remember. chapter 3 will be in theaters next year. i think it's gonna rain soon

oct 9 i'm the last person on earth to have never carried a mobile phone before, i kind of hate them on principle but had to get a temporary one during the move. you may receive a text from me that is all confused symbols. sometimes it lights up and i throw it across the room

oct 7 pictured here is the "new" 35mm animation stand currently living in my house. we look at each other awkwardly like teenagers at a dance. i think it dates to the 1950s but i'm not sure. possibly in the early 1830s it was used in eastern europe to execute foreign prisoners of war. i hope to be able to shoot the last third of "chapter 3" on this so i don't have to run back and forth to california to finish the film on my main rig out there. i have quite a bit more drawing to do before i'll be ready to shoot anything again, but so far the eyepiece i have for this camera seems damaged and can't be used. i don't suppose anyone out there has a spare eyepiece for a 35mm acme? am i the only person in the world now who owns two of these monstrosities? oct 6 through all the unpacking and furnishing and planning ive left one room in the house completely empty, it only has a window and a floor and i like this very much

sept 19 animating again, on a broken chair, covered with anonymous bruises. in two weeks i have survived a tornado, a strange bald man appearing in the backyard, flooding water from the worst storm in years,
hydrochloric acid spilled on my hand, a camera abandoned for days in the rain. still no working phone until the end of the month. austin you are trying to stop me but i will never stop crawling forward.
on rainy nights the toads have orgies that carpet the lawn. sometimes their bodies get lodged in the pool filter, swelled up like little basketballs. but when there are stars, we swim.

sept 6 the house is beautiful but i still sort of vaguely feel like i'm only visiting. i think this feeling may pass once we saw a giant goddamn hole through the wall to get the animation camera inside.
sept 5 hello from the middle of nowhere a few days ago: arizona, new mexico, texas?
august 31 arizona. picked up the newly adopted 2nd giant camera rig on the way through LA and i hope it will be happy living with me. it seems a bit different than my other one, almost turned upside down.
moving injuries sustained so far: a cut up left hand, sore limbs, banged up leg, blisters, sunburn, as the plants sitting next to me flew forward in the car i instinctively threw out a protective arm that squarely impaled my right hand around my cactus,
a television set dropped down a flight of stairs. tomorrow to west texas and more bleeding

august 20 ive decided to give up on moving and just live sadly among my dusty box towers. ive painted faces on the boxes and given them ladies names
august 13
david mentioned someone was acting "pretty dickish." pretty dickish sounds like the name of an overweight british prostitute from the mid-1800s. she mostly serviced lonely sailors from her harborside bedroom and spent many quiet mornings staring longingly into the foggy sea. someone please write a novel about pretty dickish. someone else please make an oil painting.
"wisdom teeth" is due to be available all over the place in just a couple more months. finally, finally finished wrestling with the colors in that one and delivering it soon. some movies you think you finished long ago but realize you've been walking many miles with them still clinging to your leg
august 12 2010
my apartment and the studio are now filled with heavy horrible boxes stacked in horrible towers. i am filthy with boxes. boxes, boxes, boxes. there is still more packing to go, more throwing things in dumpsters, more surreptitiously throwing things in neighboring dumpsters in the middle of the night when this one has been filled, more covering oneself with dust bunnies and standing in corners that used to be occupied for years by furniture and now provide strange and shocking new vantage points to familiar rooms that have never been seen. i am not used to navigating my new box maze surroundings and sometimes they come crashing down around me. i have also dropped a very heavy sharp object as well as a large vacuum cleaner within inches of my bare foot (the same foot, though not at the same time), have twisted my back more than once struggling furniture down stairs (lift with your back, right? like in a sudden, jerking motion?), and found many depressing buried artifacts from ghosts of girlfriends past underneath large objects not moved in years. i think i am supposed to be excited about moving into a new house in a brand new city but mostly i just want to drink a lot.
meanwhile, each film - tens of thousands of pages of animation in ridiculous haphazard stacks dating to 1995 - is finally now being gathered and organized and placed into properly labeled storage boxes. it's probably something i should have done long ago and now have a good excuse. i have caved under the amount of work to do with this and recruited an intern to help and she encourages me to continue with the box plan every time i break down and want to burn the whole mess of them.
the garage sale we held on facebook was a roaring fun success, countless random items sent to people from the studio included wonky rare shirts, books, props from the films, sea monkeys, drawings, production odds and ends, dinosaur vhs tapes, a dvd of "lawrence of arabia" signed "i did not make this movie," photographs i took in elvis's living room, hundreds of other things i can't now remember but should probably apologize for

july 31 2:27am
finished roll 7 of chapter 3, which, depending on many factors, might well have been the last footage i ever shoot in the santa barbara studio. kind of strange and sad to think about that. the last 48 hrs have been the busiest in years. trying to work on two films while packing up all of your belongings under a deadline, i don't recommend it
july 27 today was tinted yellow. i just got through one more shot in the studio, trying to finish out this roll of film before heading out of town this weekend + leaving the state a few weeks after. i just went to the kitchen to get another trash bag and returned with only a soda
july 25 packing up, throwing out, everything must go. dust-clouded treasures unearthed from closets and boxes include a 1994 warranty from my first computer (800 mb + a fax-modem!), a horrifying rubber monkey frozen in the half-turned act of throwing an orange, a 7" copy of crush with eyeliner signed by dennis miller (what the hell?)
july 23 i think i might have gone and bought a house. it's a very sudden and terrifying grown-up feeling, and i take comfort in knowing that the house i've selected is completely irresponsible and ridiculous
july 13 dreamt last week: i was watching "chapter 3" dailies with, inexplicably, a professor from my old film school. there was very little drawn animation in it, it was mostly repurposed photographs from the 1970s: pictures of bowie, fashion, pretentious closeups of pornography, and i remembered shooting all of this but couldn't remember anymore how any of it fit into the movie and the professor grew impatient and said, "come on, what is all this shit?" as i slowly realized that i totally sucked
july 6 on my evening walk around the block yesterday: a large cooking pot in a bush, a pair of panties on the sidewalk, an old wooden chair on its side, a vhs copy of field of dreams against the curb. it's like a bad flea market lives inside of a raincloud above the neighborhood.
july 3 because you want the day to come sooner
powered through a second roll of film in exhausting record time, heading back to los angeles tuesday for another full day of lab chores, then returning to austin to look at more real estate and pretend i know what i'm doing. "is this real wood?"
last week i knocked together a beautiful frigging roger rabbit shot at the last minute on a weird lark... and on the previous roll i was even rotoscoping something... what the hell's going on here? i might be done animating in a couple more months.
tonight = doing a terrible job coloring a scene with pastels, spilled ten thousand cheerios on the carpet
june 27
don: that was close
don: their feet probably look like ground beef
j: yuck
don: in north korea they are actually going to make burgers from the shamed team's feet
don: i read that
j: YUCK
don: north korean shameful foot burgers
j: what is wrong with you?

the bottom of the door to the studio is warped outwards from water damage and has a deep splintering crack in it that a beautiful big black spider has moved into. every night when i go open the studio door she runs into it for cover
june 22 quote of the day: "at first i thought the elf was crying and i think i like it better that way"
june 21 been shooting in the dark every day for about 6-8 hours + ordered more film today to carry on this week. been going for days without speaking to or seeing another person and the scary part of that is i'm sort of ok with it. but i think my days of making movies like this are numbered. i might have half the movie in the can now, maybe more, so much work left to be done but some of it might be looking really good and if we cross our fingers we might see something beautiful
june 7

at about 10:24 you can see the light of the sunrise outside my window move across the page

june 6 this week: order film for next round of chapter 3 photography... consider september trip to europe for two screenings... consider plans for japanese tour after chapter 3 is finished... wrap up plans to release wisdom teeth everywhere this summer... look for a house to buy... don't panic... possible labwork in burbank for a day... think about going to the beach... cheer up a sad friend... draw draw draw
june 5 gabe took this great picture last week... it seems the closer you look at it the less you know

june 3 tonight i have to begin cutting out 216 little holes.
june 1 my ipod, which i've had for 5 years, is finally starting to die. the battery is shot and it won't turn on at all unless it's plugged into a wall at a very specific angle. it only can access songs intermittently, and when it does play, it will skip past several songs on its own, playing only music of its own choosing. i've already ordered a new one and its on the way. but i've been listening to the dying ipod while i work for the past few days, and i like to think it's been selecting these special songs to play in its last breath of time, as a way of saying good bye

may 30 spent the week in austin looking for a place to live... old friends, absinthe, ghosts in the fireplace
may 26 i may have written a new ending for chapter 3 on an airplane, scribbled in the open margins of a magazine. it was at first an idea for a completely unrelated new film and would be a gigantic leap to make, but i'm thinking it might work somewhat beautifully
may 23 searching for real estate is the worst thing ever. key quotes from my depressing weekend online include:
"The trampoline may convey."
"Beautiful wood & glass fron door welcome's you!!"
"it doesn't get any better than this."