In much the same way that the Iron Chef show on Food Network has made a big deal about marking their 2000th and 2001st dish, I am going to mark another important #2000. On December 12, 2000, I took delivery of a brand new Nikon Coolpix 880 digital camera. A few years earlier, when I bought my very first digital camera, I bought a real big piece of shit because I didn't know if I would really use a digital camera all that much. When I bought the Nikon, I still had doubts on whether or not it would be worth the hefty price tag I paid. Well, there is no wondering needed now about how much use I'd get out of a digital camera, because on Sunday, June 3, 2001, I took my 2000th and 2001st photos with my Nikon at the Waffle Spot restaurant at the King's Inn in Mission Valley.

Yes, in about a week shy of 6 months, I have taken 2000 photos. That's an average of about 87 photos per week, 12 photos a day. What can I say? I love this camera. A special occasion requires a special setting, and what better than the King's Inn, which not so coincidentally was the setting for the wonderful movie 8 West, as well as the hotel that Cami's parents spent their honeymoon at. So here the pics are. It's us, hanging out with the waffle guy at the Waffle Spot.

Monday, 4 June 2001 8:30pm

L

ast night I saw one of the greatest movies I've seen in a long time, and I'm guaranteeing that some of you will absolutely hate it. Moulin Rouge. The previews really let very little out about the true nature of this movie, which as it turned out, was a crazy, wacky musical. The experience however, was somethign akin to being half-conscoius while under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug while listening to a "cheesy listening" radio station like KyXy in San Diego or KOST 103 in LA, or whatever the equivalent is, in your town, the station that plays only the cheesiest love songs from the 70's 80's and 90's interspersed with the pathetic whinings of phone-in listeners dedicating songs to people that don't love them anymore.
Doesn't sound that appealing to you? Ok, so I guess that was a bad description. But the movie does have some really crazy arrangements and medleys of some songs with themes that just about anyone who has ever been in love, or wanted to be in love could relate to. And they are put together in a very smart manner that conveys the message, which when combined with the story, and the absolutely stunning visuals, you get one very bold artistic statement.
Which obviously was too much for some people to handle, as a lot of people I know that saw this movie really like it, Cami noted that there were a number of people who walked out of the movie theater in the middle of it. So if you watch it... go with an open mind. It bucks a lot of the conventions of what we're used to seeing in American film and television.
I guess one of the reasons I liked it so much was that it was very theatrical. No, not just in the sense that it was about a stage show, but in its presentation. Over the years, we've been conditioned to look for strict realism on film and TV. Most television shows are made to look as close to real life as possible. Even in the crazy fantasy or sci-fi type shows and movies, everything is supposed to look as "realistic" as possible.
You look at an episode of Beverly Hills 90210, or any sitcom, and you see the inside of homes. And even if the things going on inside these homes are completely absurd, the insides of these houses still look exactly like real life homes that people would actually live in. Absolute realism, all the time.
Live theatre, on the other hand, well, it's pretty impossible to recreate real life like that on the stage, unless maybe your show is set only in one place and it's inside somewhere. But if you're doing a show where the script calls for multiple locations, inside and outside, well, for all intents and purposes, it's impossible to recreate every scene with perfect realistic accuracy, just because there is a finite amount of space back there in the theater, and there's only a limited amount of time that your audience will be willing to wait around for you to bring up the next set.
So in many ways, in this century, the live theatre has responded by moving away from strict realism (or naturalism, if you wanna get all technical on me), and in many shows now, we see very stylized visions of the set, where even the set design itself speaks some kind of message, and can look very different from anything resembling real life. Or it can have no set at all (like Our Town). Or whatever. But theatregoers have come to accept that. Whereas on film or TV, if something just doesn't look anything like it would in real life (like a gigantic blob for a room), people get confused, or just don't like it or think something like "that's so fake" or something.
Well, Moulin Rouge is sorta like that. It's not a movie that's a representation of anything close to what real life looks like. It's more like an artistic experession of a story that represents what certain moments in real life feel like. So don't get all freaked out when you watch it.
I just like it so much because it was so creative in many ways, so bold, and the story was nice too. And it also sorta made me miss doing live theatre. Like it reminded me of a lot of the reasons why it's good and why I liked doing it in the first place.
Especially with the people walking out. If you can make a show that makes almost everybody happy and everyone likes it, and yet, it's still pushing boundries enough to move a couple people enough to get them to walk out of the theatre in disgust... well then you know that you're sitting there, right on the edge. Which to me, if you're an artist... is right where you'd want to be. Indeed, it was those moments hearing the head stage manager say over the headset "I see a couple getting up and leaving" during a show that were really some of the most satisfying moments in my theatrical career. Especially when the rest of the audience was having a great ol' time :)

Wednesday, 6 June 2001 1:30am (Thursday Morning)

S

o I'm sittin' at home, just chillin' out maxin', relaxin' all cool, and all, playin' on the computer cuz I don't go to school, when Cami comes home from work for lunch, as she usually does. And as usual, I haven't even been outside of my room yet because generally right after I wake up I turn on the computer and start working if I have any work to do. So I go out into the living room to say hi to Cami and she says, "Hey Bryan, where's your car, I didn't see it."

"What do you mean, 'Where's my car?'"

Yeah.

Oh well. It's just a car.