Empty Harddrives, Scattered Thoughts

Let’s not kid ourselves here.  I am not the prolific blogger I once was.  Well, if we’re to be really honest I suppose I should amend that to read, “I am not the prolific blogger I like to imagine I once was,” because ultimately, I never blogged THAT much.  Once or twice a week was always my maximum.  I think this is partially because I hate the word “blog”.  It sounds like a dry-heave.  When I first started hearing it however many years ago I thought to myself, there is no way that will ever catch on; it’s just way, way too stupid.  Anyway, here we are, though.

So, as many of you already know, I suffered a bit of a technological tragedy last week.  My computer, essentially, committed suicide.  I think it was because I’ve been making it work too hard, lately, and it was tired of the abuse.  The logic board broke.  So I took it to the friendly Mac store, and they told me they’d fix the logic board, but that the data on my hard drive wouldn’t be touched.  Long, painful story short, it turns out that she didn’t know what she was talking about: they ALWAYS wipe your hard drive when they replace the logic board.  There’s not really any reason to do this, as I can determine, except  to drive up the sales of external hard drives and their Time Capsule services.

Anyway, 50in50 was left more or less unscathed (I think… I still don’t know that for sure) because almost all of it was on my external.  My big problem right now, is that I lost Final Cut Studio 3, which is, of course vital to 50in50.  I have friends with FCS 2, but because I’d been using 3, my projects wouldn’t be back-compatible.  Nice.  Anyway, this will work out, and hopefully very soon.

On a completely different subject, I think a lot about what 50in50 is, and what I want it to be.  Is it art, or is it comedy?  I get the feeling like the project is often viewed as something in between the two.  That’s partially a statement on the value Americans place on comedy (think about the ratio of comedy to drama that gets nominated for Best Picture, for example), but it’s also because most of my episodes have a little comedy and a little drama mixed together.  I recognize that this makes my episodes less “marketable” in some ways, but it’s also a truer reflection of how I view the world.  But then again I have to ask, am I doing this to give my treatise on life as I see it, or was this meant to be some hardcore character training that would get me ready to one day audition for Saturday Night Live?  Again, maybe it’s a little bit of both.

I could, and probably should, eventually do a whole blog entry on the above paragraph.  Maybe I will.  God, I hate saying “blog”.

It’s been good to be back in 50in50 land.  The fund-raising hiatus felt interminable.  When I’m in 50in50 mode, it’s amazing to me how fast ideas come.  It seems like I’m constantly pulling out a pad of paper or my voice recorder to get something down, talk out a premise, explore a bit, etc.  That feels really, really good.  It’s the opposite of waiting, which feels like a gray void.  Still, though, there are times when I have to force myself to sit down and write.  Just write SOMEthing.  It doesn’t have to be good.  It doesn’t have to be something I end up using, but I have to get that ball rolling, and then trust that things will come.

Speaking of, it’s time to force myself to do some work on the next episode or two (or three).  I’m not yet sure how my computer situation will effect 50in50’s timeline.  I’d hoped to have another episode out this week, but I’m not even sure I can import my footage without Final Cut Pro.  I promise I’ll do my best!

Cheers, my friends,

Brent  2.2.10  2.12am

~ by 50in50 on February 2, 2010.