journal page 11

october 25, 2000
exploratory surgery
red plastic cowboy
10:00pm
back from travels, back to work. put new photos up in the gallery. it's nice to see that things have returned to normal over here. the scary lady is back stomping around outside of the jack in the box and i even saw gas mask guy staggering alongside the road the other day. he had a light blue rag hanging off of his other rags. good to see him adding a splash of color for the season. 're-animator' is on cable, i don't think i've ever seen it all the way through before. zombie uses his intestines to strangle somebody, brilliant.

so anyways, we launched straight into a third sound session for the new project last sunday and have now topped over sixty actors doing vocals. i am hoping this will be it this time, but you never know. lots of work to do.

my explorer book has gotten better. more malaria and people eating boots. there was one guy in an expedition who started eating his partners and they weren't even starving.

october 8, 2000
"This is really a lovely day. Congratulations!"
7:54pm
to promote their new dog movie, disney has a new life cereal toy ~ for 3.99, you can send away for your very own plastic barking spoon. you'll howl over this fun way to start your day. dip this spoon into milk and it starts barking. make your checks out to 'life cereal's barking spoon offer'. i am excited to get my very own barking spoon. i have had dogs bark at me before, but never a spoon. it would be a nice gesture if disney shipped crates of their new barking spoons to the starving children of the world so that even though they have no food with which to enjoy their barking spoons with, i bet they would have a pretty good laugh. i am saddened that i have been reading cereal boxes.

have been also reading a book about british explorers in the early 1800's. i'm not sure why i bought this book, but pretty much anything non-fiction is fair game with me i guess. it's full of arctic expeditions, people eating boots, and yellow fever on the congo. ahoy!

animating continues while finalizing travel plans for next week. getting work done, things have quieted down a little with 'rejected' and i don't need to be quite on top of its promotion 24/7 so much now and things are back to normal. draw draw draw. the pencil tests are looking dandy. poor old test camera is on its last legs. everything it shoots is not only hot pink but is now all flickery. not sure how soon until the old fellow finally drops dead. travel notwithstanding, have sunken back into boring routine life of animator boy. draw. walk to beach. draw. eat bread. erase. read. you know, how is it possible that *anything* could take 6-8 weeks for delivery?

all-righty, i'll catch you all when we get back from new orleans and chicago. meanwhile, here is the latest from rob...

=======================================================
The guards inside confiscated his plastic sword and cap gun. He smiled and headed towards the elevator. As the doors opened to the 69th floor a little girl commented on his pirate shoes and big fluffy shirt. Paul climbed over the guard railing quickly and waved to the girl before letting go. The empire state building is surrounded by a series of balconies that were constructed in the twenties. The suicide rate has reached over thirty from the observation deck on the 69th floor. Paul connected with the 23 floor roof at a speed aproaching 100 mph. His pirate sword was later thrown away. The cap gun is believed to be stolen.

september 27, 2000
muggy
12:25am
ran out of paper, so no animating for a few days. my olympic fever has escalated to *olympic dysentery*. how can you say no to people's entire lives shattered by the way they jump into water? the kangaroo boxing was exciting, as was the duck catching. the belgians were great. i am looking forward to the synchronized whittling tonight and eagerly await the advent of "knife fighting" and "ridiculous battle royale" as medal events. they say 2004. that will be super. i actually just finished watching some of the synchronized swimming. the commentator said during one of the routines, "it is as if they're swimming as one." time to turn off the tv.

september 19, 2000
that's just the honey glaze.
can't you tell by my swagger?
2:52am
yes, don has got the *olympic fever*. three channels of pointless sporting bliss. backstroke preliminaries? ok! women's weightlifting? sure! it is all very sad. although i have to say i am terribly creeped out by the little four foot ripply flopping gymnast girls. somebody clearly put in the batteries wrong in those...

although i am currently heavily caffeinated, i have been kind of bummed out because the supermarket has really lame halloween toys this year. also because i've now reached that well-known point after which a new film is completed and you are totally broke - sunk every last penny in order to wrap it all up, while income from it has not yet arrived. it's a stage that lasts about a month in which there is sulking. your film's popularity becomes both a blessing and a curse wherein you have to finance a gazillion film prints and mass postage in order to screen it at every festival that wants to freely feature it and pocket 100% of the ticket sales as you watch the film travel off to wild, distant blinking lands that you yourself will never be able to afford to go. and you become a little too used to eating the two dollar sourdough loaves, one half for lunch the other half for dinner. mmmmm, bread! bitter starving artist? "your smells will come back and return ten fold." but the waggling rabbit knows not of smells but only of his magic soup hat. suddenly his face becomes prune-y and emits a mysterious vapor.

i haven't animated anything for a few days thanks to the la jolla trip and will have to un-lazy myself again tomorrow night. i read that magazine article last month about the poor bastard who was driven off the road by some random person and his van flipped over a cliff and smashed and trapped him inside and he was stuck in there half-dead for days trying to desperately saw off his left arm with this tiny little knife in order to free himself while all these furred little woodland creatures ate all his fingers. what a lovely story i am suddenly sharing. meanwhile, the scary lady outside the jack in box is not there anymore. and i haven't seen gas mask guy in many months. i am wondering where they went.

so anyways, work continues...

september 4, 2000
drum, bunny, drum
1:37am
taking a wee break from animating the new thang. i tried to explain earlier to cap'n rob all of the complicated animation processes i will need to go through in order to pull off this new film. "jesus christ!" he exclaimed, "that's going to take FOREVER!" vote of confidence from the home team!

brian "chunk-style" hamblin (lily and jim) is officially on board on the new project to lend a hand with massive dialogue breakdowns. for those of you who don't know what that is i'm too tired to explain right now but it's what allows an animator to lip-synch previously recorded dialogue. so anyways it is good to have him on board and with rob, tim, and becca we're all one big snuggling happy family.

the reason i'm writing tonight is to share the very first heads-up in regards to an upcoming online charity auction. every so often we donate a few rare or interesting things to charities we know and this is one of those times. much more info coming up regarding the who's and what's on the news page in like a week or two.

i am looking forward to seeing some of you at the la jolla show in a couple weeks. i am supposed to sign things and say hi to people. i shake hands. please, no hugs.

don

august 29, 2000
manatee
12:00 am
have been instructed to 'update the damn journal'. i still feel its too early to talk about the next film and i don't want to steal any thunder from 'rejected' which is just out of the gate but already digging around the backyard and doing its thing like a happy doggy - that is, if films were doggies - but this new thing is already moving along on its on terms and demanding i animate it and i feel remiss for not starting to write about it. so i can report that animation is already pretty much underway on this new thing and a ridiculous amount of vocal work has been recorded. may see the light of day late next year. it's been difficult settling into a project though, i'm sort of poking at / trying to get seriously working on 1 1/2 projects right now with three or four others flitting about my head from time to time and i really REALLY need to clear the junk off my desk and just focus on one of them. it doesn't help that tonight is one of those nights where everything you write and everything you draw doesn't come out right and you are resigned to watching boxing on mexican channels where they don't even wear mouthpieces and are really sluggish and are all in their 40's and 50's with like 200 fights to their names. and stare at the ceiling and ask, "WHY?? WHY?!?" and feel guilty. so i have been captain restless. that and i bought one of those CD burner dealys this weekend and it's a nice toy but seems to take pleasure in freezing up my computer half of the time it is turned on. so anyways i look forward to seeing some of you in a couple weekends at the spike and mike show in la jolla where i am supposed to be. though i do not fear returning to san diego freeways, i will be safely wrapped up in pillows and blankets this time making soft cooing noises from the back seat and let somebody else do the driving.
2:27pm
they have invented a food eating robot. it is called "chew chew the gastrobot." it converts bacteria into electrical energy and runs on meat. i think i am going back to bed now

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