Erase My Head

Last night, I had these weird dreams that I was in a kind of Manhattan Matrix sharing a strange meal with some guy named Andre. He was drinking espresso and saying how out-of-touch human beings are these days. How we're not really living.

"If you're just operating by habit," he said, " then you're not really living."

I'd heard about Andre, yet I was amazed by how transfixed I was to his intelligent conversation ~ so rare these days. Because of him, I felt inspired to pay attention to every last detail of my life, to re-awaken (And I thought I'd be bored, stuck in the same location for two hours with this guy.)

Two hours into our meal, we were interrupted by a really humorless, creepy guy with electrified hair. He told me, in a whisper, that I had an alien child and he was not going to take care of the child any longer. He started ranting at me while I stared at his hair. I chose to not hear him. I didn't want to hear him. I tried to re-focus and concentrate on Andre who was able to continue talking as though nothing had happened. But something was happening!!!

Finally, I jumped up to escape. The electrified guy followed me as I put my coat on. I walked outside, and was transported into a weird Pleasantville. Suddenly, all my surroundings were in black-and-white. But this wasn’t Pleasantville. I didn’t see Tobey anywhere. In fact, I didn’t see any other people around. I kept hearing all these strange noises and smelling these ominous fumes from factories nearby. Concrete, Run-down buildings everywhere I looked.

The electrified hair guy followed me to my car. He handed me something, wrapped in virginally white gauze. I was skeptical. A gift? How unexpectedly weird. I don’t even know this guy.

I unwrapped it to find the alien child did exist. I shrieked.

“No, No!!! It isn’t mine!!! This is Rosemary’s. It HAS to be Rosemary’s”

The electrified hair guy said nothing and walked away. Then, the alien child looked at me, rolled its eyes into its head and stretched itself out like a tree limb, umbilical cord. Then, without warning, its insides exploded in front of me like a Cornish hen. Blood everywhere. Pencil shavings fell from the sky. I felt like I'd lost my head.

Then I woke up, and decided I seriously need to change the order of items in my Netflix queue.

“My Dinner With Andre” followed quickly by David Lynch’s weird, twisted cult horror film, “Eraserhead” was enough to make me crazy (and more than enough to make me wonder if David Lynch is ever anything less than completely odd.)

“Seriously, David? I’m a little concerned…”

At any rate, if you don’t have the money or the inclination to do LSD or some other psychedelics, you can have the experience by watching “Eraserhead.”

Had I not been sober, I probably would’ve been found shaking with espresso-induced caffination and cowering in a corner of the downstairs closet this morning, vowing never to
have sex again. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

Ah, the power of celluloid.

Copyright © 2007 Kendra Liedle
Photo Credit: Elisha Cook Jr/flickr

www.davidlynch.com

Anonymous Content

Hmmppfffth [A Big Eeyore Sigh]

"There are days when I wish this blog was anonymous~"

*For those of you who are particularly un-enlightened, Eeyore is the rather melancholy donkey in Winnie The Pooh

A Hairy Hollywood Situation

This whole writer’s strike business is getting hairy…really, really hairy. Now that Warner Brothers is rumored to be cutting up to 1,000 jobs and the Golden Globes have been reduced to a press conference, I don’t know what to think.

Will the Oscars be next? What’s a fashion designer to do? Some days I wonder if it will ever end. For awhile (back in November,) I was thankful for my freedom, sans WGA membership. As an unaffiliated writer, I could write to my little heart’s content while supporting the WGA union writers and their cause.

“Hey, I’ve got no guild to tie me down,
To make me fret and make me frown…”

But, like Pinocchio, I was just lying-- fooling myself that this strike would eventually go away. And now, it’s only getting hairier…literally. This month’s New Yorker has an article entitled, “Strike Beards,” in which they propose, among other things, that this business of Conan O’Brien and David Letterman’s beard-growing is some symbol of solidarity for striking writers.

So yesterday, I had a hair-brained idea. Why don’t we all just grow our hair out?

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers can do their best to ignore the writers on the picket lines, the little guys losing their jobs, the awards show telecasts that are falling away like dominoes, and the strength of writers' words in all of this, but they cannot possibly ignore our hair. It’ll just keep growing and growing, like the list of casualties from this strike, now a war of pure stubbornness.

The dealmaker in my fantasy world of ending this god-awful strike? Writers and supporters alike would continually grow out their hair, chop it off, send it to the studios gates and picket locations, and start all over again.

So that’s it. That’s my hair-brained idea that's so simple and so crazy, it just might work. Send the studios hair-- Bushels and barrels and mountains of hair. Let's get all Grimm's Fairytales on them.

The Strikers could even wrangle those Teamsters into making hairy, daily shipments. (I’m sure they’d also donate some protein-rich locks for the ever-growing pile, too.)

Sure, beards are a good start, but me? I’m a girl, but I come from hearty German and Russian stock and my hair grows faster than weeds after a rain. So, beware.

At this point, and I don’t think I’m alone here, I’m willing to go to all "lengths" to get the entertainment industry back on its feet. Let the AMPTP finally give in and give the writers something workable and something fair so we can all leave this abysmal reality world and get back to the fantasy world we all love creating.

As a Writers Guild spokesman said in the above-referenced The New Yorker article:

"As long as it calls attention to the issues at stake and gets the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers back to the bargaining table...we're all for it."

Thanks to Peter in Chicago (author of the esteemed, filmmaker101 blog) for directing me toward the New Yorker article, “Strike Beards," and inspiring this post.

Copyright © 2007 Kendra Liedle
Illustration By: Panshipanshi/Flickr. Go to flickr.com to visit artist profile.
This article was published as an op-ed at: associatedcontent.com

A Big Thank You...To A Script Goddess

A Big, Heaping HUGE thank you goes out Script Goddess (who edits the blog Script Supervisor Forum) for referencing my article on "Green Filmmaking And Studio Worm Farms" in her discussion of being a little more eco-friendly there on-set.

I'd highly recommend her site too-- [Link above]--not only for her fun, on-set stories and content, but also for her ever-growing list of fellow film and tv crew bloggers.

Need a new year's resolution? Take a tip from Scripty and reuse that on-set water bottle that you normally abandon like an orphan child every time you get distracted.

"Each day in the US more than 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most end up in landfills or incinators, and millions litter America's streets, parks, and waterways."

*According to the Container Recycling Institute*

*Container Recycling Institute
*MSNBC: Plastic Bottles Pile Up

Rose Parade Floating - Not For The Faint Of Heart

For years, my father and I watched the Tournament Of Roses Parade on our dinky, little television, somewhere in the Midwest. According to my personal diary accounts, this tradition goes way back into my childhood. Like clockwork, I’d be there at the kitchen table, promptly at 8 a.m. on January 1, with a bowl of steaming oatmeal before me and eyes primed for floral creations beyond my wildest childhood imagination.

Years and years later, I found myself living within a short commute of Pasadena, California, long-time home of the Rose Bowl Parade.

“Such a shame,” I thought, “to be soooo close and yet never take the time to actually go there…on Parade Day…and watch it LIVE!”

Each and every successive year of my adulthood, I’d contemplate a New Year’s Eve of scouting out my chunk of Pasadenian concrete and staking my claim to a prime position for the early morning festivities of January 1. Just as predictably, every year that passed, I’d decide that “Next Year” would be my slumber-party-on-the-pavement initiation to Rose Parade Fandom. The problem though, is that, although I like the Parade, I’m only a casual fan. I’m not a Rose Bowl Parade fanatic in that I’m willing to suffer in order to establish my spot in line. No, no-- comfort (and joy) is my M.O. for the holidays and New Years alike.

So, this year…I decided to volunteer to actually work on the City of Burbank’s “Oktoberfest” Float entry for the Parade for a more hands-on Rose Bowl Experience than merely watching the floats…er, float by.

Only after getting my hands gluey--after hours and hours of painting glue onto fake, foam edeweisses like some sort of scolded Von Trapp Family Singer--did I completely understand what a phenomenal task this float-building actually is!

By Day Two, I had been upgraded to cutting flower petals, which apparently they won’t let just anyone do. I thought this would be a good thing…Flowers, Yes! No more crusty, gluey rice kernels and natural cotton stuck to hands!

But, alas, flowers meant straw flower—a rather spindly variety of dried flower. My job was to cut off all the light purple petals and collect them into a bottomless pit of a coffee can. After half a day of four of us working strictly on light purple straw flower petals, that coffee can was approximately half-full – or half-empty, depending on your view. My view was that I’d seen enough straw flower petals to tide me over for quite a few lifetimes.

People, lots of them, work like little elves trying to get this gigantically, enormous float thingy ready to go by January 1. So, do them all a favor : If you missed the Rose Bowl Parade, view the tediously beautiful work online at the official Tournament of Roses Parade website.

The City Of Burbank and its tireless volunteers certainly know all about the monumental task of planning and building a float. Me? I was just a tired volunteer, and my true contributions were minuscule. From here on out though, I will view each and every float with both awe and respect.

Burbank Rose Float
Official Tournament Of Roses Parade Site
Copyright © 2007 Kendra Liedle
Photos By Kendra

This article is also available at my associatedcontent.com page.

The Diminutive Dancer: Choosing Dance Classes

After somersaulting into the living room couch a few too many times, my mother enrolled me in my first dance class. Recently, I wrote about my experiences with dance and the positive impact it's had on my life. Thinking about enrolling your child in dance? I'd highly recommend it. Don't have kids? Enroll yourself....it's the New Year after all. Have fun and be good to yourself!
To read my full article, including tips on how to choose a dance class, click here.

"An early exposure to dance positions us for an athletic life. Confidence about our bodies can be established early with dance. Adults who were exposed to dance as children more easily embrace dance as exercise in later life. Dance not only has physical benefits, but also mental benefits as it increases memory and produces a feeling of well being and if taught correctly, a feeling of satisfaction."

~Sandy Portaro, Owner--Pasadena’s Athletic Garage

Photo caption: Diminutive dancers learn their first steps at Athletic Garage, a dance and fitness facility located in Pasadena, California.

Omaha: The Highlights

With holiday trips as they are, and my visits back to Omaha being more infrequent than I'd like them to be, I had to think of priorities, must-sees, must-dos, and must eats.
Here's the quick run-down of some of my faves:

*Pear's Coffee -- locally-owned and available at every Omaha grocery store. (Cozy Caramel...hint, hint.)

*The Greek Islands -- Go! Drop everything and go! I'm not kidding...I have dreams of The Greek Island's dinners with fresh Feta and kalamata olives. My family's been going there since I was a kid, so a meal there is an ultimate priority, any and every time I'm in Omaha!
The Greek Islands Restaurant- 3821 Center Street, Omaha NE 68105 - 402-346-1528

*The Old Market -- The best place to traipse around with no particular purpose, buy awesome postcards depicting the undiscovered beauties of I-80 (??) and expose your inner geek for awesome architecture. I took way too many photos of cool buildings than I'd like to admit. Had it not been frigid, I would've indulged my love of ice cream at the nearby Ted & Wally's or Maggie Moo's, but that's for another time.

*The Keystone Walking Trail -- My trip wouldn't be complete without a walk down this trail where you can see Canadian geese congregating and the occasional deer searching for the remainders of undeveloped South Omaha land (thanks to a new Wal-mart and its nationally-recognized, strip mall followers...) Keystone Trail - Bellevue Loop.
*Ice-Skating At the Old Hitchcock Park -- (now called Motto McLean Ice Arena.) I spent 2 hours indulging my inner Olympian on the very ice where I originally learned to ice-skate. The entire rink, the virgin ice, was all mine and I mean all mine since I was the only one who showed up for that morning's public-skate session.

*Dollar General Store -- Now, I wouldn't necessarily call this a highlight especially considering how spoiled I am with So. Cal's 99 Cents Stores but for my grandmother, it was a definite highlight. Her excitement for plastic products never ceases to amaze me. Rubbermaid or Glade? If only my daily life choices were that easy...Even after 2 sleep-inducing hours amongst the Dollar's aisles and a nearly constant need to bang my head against the wall, I suppose I'd have to agree that it was indeed a highlight of sorts-- if for no other reason than I got to spend the time with my grandmother.

Photo by Kendra Liedle "Bridge To Bellevue" -- taken along the Keystone Trail in Southern Omaha.
Copyright © 2007 Kendra Liedle