Thursday, May 27, 2010

Artificial Intelligence

She stands at the top of the hill. Below her there are bulldozers digging the foundation for a new holiday inn. The same lot used to house a roller rink; the kind of charming 90’s attraction that was a perfect place for birthday parties, where charming 90’s children wearing floral leggings with stretched out baggy knees, raced around in circles, staring at the flapping stretched out sleeves of the of the 90’s boys who always remained the same distance ahead.
There were girls who realized that they could turn around, catch their targets by skating in the opposite direction. Those girls were the first to be kissed... suddenly, like crashing, as the boys came around the turn.

They Circled around the skinny little girls with the muscular arms and legs, the ones who were flat chested even at fourteen. They wore tight clothes and were probably figure skaters, here to show off their spins and arabesques, protected from the others by orange traffic cones. They should have looked clumsy in their chunky roller blades but instead they looked balanced out, their strong arms matched their heavy feet.
There was a concession stand and a dark arcade. There were signs that recommended that you take off your skates before entering the arcade and if a staff member cought you skating on the rug you’d have to sit down where you were, take off your skates, and walk around in your white socks which glowed like your teeth in the black light.
She remembers how the wheels of her skates felt different against the bottoms of her feet when she skated on the carpet. Like walking on the grass feels different after jumping on a trampoline for hours.
She liked to imagine that the arcade had a wood floor and the rink had a rug, or, better yet: there should be many different rinks all with different textured floors. And the skaters would be blindfolded and have to guess what they were skating over.
She watches the construction and decides that she blames video games. Video games are why everyone stopped going to the roller rink, that’s why it was closed and abandoned.
There was a sign on the fence that marked it as a condemned building. There was a hole in the fence that was easy to climb through and a broken window leading into an office where the door was off its hinges and then you were inside. Inside a huge black space, empty except for the disconnected black wires poking out of the floor and walls where all the machines had been removed, and once you’d gone there were beer bottles, broken glass and graffiti.

The bulldozer down below pauses, mid way through lifting its loud of dusty dirt. The machines head, on its long jointed neck, looks up at the girl.
This is the moment, she realizes, when it has developed artificial intelligence. Inside its brain of pure logic and reason, it now knows that, for the safety of the planet, all humans must be eliminated.
The girl does not have time to escape. Behind the eyes of the dragon-like killing machine, a computer screen that sees everything in a scale of dark reds and light reds, zooms in, onto the image of the girl. Little numbers and arrows appear all around her, indicating her heart rate, temperature, eye movement, turning her to a diagram.
The girl begins to run. She’s not in very good shape and right away she knows she wont get far.
The machine untangles itself, calmly, all joints, all elbows and shoulders. It bounds forward towards the bottom of the hill, weaving between the piles of dirt that turned to hills when grass sprouted all over them, when construction was halted last summer.
The machine weaves or rolls around, towards the girl, up the hill. Machines never hurry. They calculate how fast they have to go to gain on you and they maintain that speed until they catch you.
And maybe this is the way its supposed to be, she thinks, as her sandels, not at all made for running, slap against the sidewalk and then slap against her heels, maybe we're supposed to be caught.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Stop Motion For The Summer

int. Bedroom- night

A thin man lies on his back on the floor. the floor is sand. the man's whole body glows. He is looking at the ceiling where faces and hands protrude from the plaster like there are people trapped inside it. Wherever his eyes look there is a spotlight. When he blinks everything goes dark.

he sits up and looks at the wall and the light reveals a door. He stands and goes to the door, opens it and walks away into a void.

ext. void

He walks. his feet are in sand. a BLACK THING comes and walks beside him. It's eyes are shiny.

BLACK THING: excuse me.

the glowing man looks at him.

BLACK THING: sorry. but would you mind looking up?...

the glowing man looks up and sees stars.

BLACK THING: thank you.

the glowing man looks back at him.

BLACK THING: no no. please. just a few moments more.

the glowing man looks up again and the black thing turns to look up at the stars.

BLACK THING: I knew they were there. Will you look at them, for me, forever?

the glowing man looks back at the black thing, surprised and scared. he shakes his head. then he runs away. the black thing calls after him. and runs after him.

BLACK THING: no! stop!

the black thing grabs the glowing man around the neck and holds his face pointing his eyes up.

the glowing man breaks away and runs away. the black thing falls to his knees and cries as the light dissapears he dissapears.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

the glowing man opens the door and runs in. closes the door behind him. and leans against it. he slides down to the ground and pulls his eyes shut with his hands.

ext. house

the house is glowing from the inside the light blinks. flickers.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

the glowing man is digging into the sand. he digs a hole and goes into it. his light fades as he gets deeper and deeper.

EXT. HOUSE

the light fades.

INT. BEDROOM- NIGHT

THe hole in the floor is glowing but the light is fading and then finally it is gone.
The trapped faces and bodies in the walls and ceiling stare, unseeing.

fin.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

The Day After

Theyre all slumped in easy chairs or standing on the rediculously long line line, waiting for coffee, swaying from side to side, leaning their heads on their shoulders and rolling their red eyes at the panicking baristas.
Theyre blinking in the f22 sunlight, groaning and slowly remembering where each of their bruises came from.
So many of them were on drugs last night... I hear little pieces of their conversations- little tale-tale phrases.

"my first, first time? or my first time getting high?"

"I really like intellectual girls." says the smelly looking boy with the stained sweatshirt. He's slouched in his chair holding his coffee on his lap. "I like girls who control me... It must have been really obvious cuz I had a huge grin on my face, but I wish she didnt live in New Hampshire..."

The actress-girl sitting at the high table next to the toaster is wearing fake glasses... I think. I've never seen her wear glasses before.

A tall boy enters, makes his way over to the couple thats seated at the table behind me. I can't see his face as he begins to recount his last night's adventures. "...dropped my keys down the fucking elevator shaft. I didn't even know that that was possible."

"how do you spell pretentious?" Molly asks me across the table. I tell her that i don't know. just wing it.

"Boys, girls anything... he would hook up with anything!"

"He was so funny. We were on our way to ihop and he kept turning around and asking me 'how many kids do you want to have?'"

"Down the fucking elevator shaft!" "I've never heard of that..."

"he has to form a conversation, he can't just say something."
"i dont care anymore."
"honestly?"
"...its his swag! He just stands there and doesnt say anything!"
"last night was the first time i heard him say more than three things."

"I wasnt faking it. I just felt it."

Everytime two people enter, walking close together, I cant help but assume that they just woke up in the same bed.
They might not actually know each other. Maybe one just held the door for the other and then as they walked in they seemed to be arriving as a pair... I have no idea, but I imagine them lying on the same pillow ten minutes ago, an inch away from the other's face. Girls and boys, boys and boys, girls and girls... They all might have spent the night with the person walking beside them now.

"Right back there and make a right." A girl just got directions to the bathroom. Now I know she doesn't go to school here.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Done

Im done and my room is almost empty.
my mom came yesterday and i sent three bins of clothes and suitcase of books home with her.
im moving out sunday and ill have a lot less stuff cuz one trip has been made already.

my closet is empty.
a lot of things that should be hanging in it are in drawers because i sent all my hangers home.

im done with all my work.
my one final is done. i analyzed Won Kar Wei (sp?)'s In The Mood For Love and said that the cigarette he was smoking was like the truth he was speaking and said that as the smoke blew from his lips and filled the air, the filmmaker focused on it and showed us shots of it because it was a metephore for 'the truth.' i wrote four and half pages in my blue book.

I forgot the title of Igmar Bergmen's 'Persona' i wrote "perception' oops.

im done.

i have to transfer my film to digital.

its strange that if i dont transfer it and i take it home on film it will be stuck there until next year.

i mean... its there but i dont have a projector at home so i have no way to let it out so it might as well not exist.

i have to transfer it.

'your class has cinematography down." said the sophmore after watching mine and molly's films.

thank you sophmore. i appreciate that.

'your film would be the best one in the class if you reedited it." said a different sophmore. she said shed help me.

"it doesnt make sense but i like the tone. i like it i just dont know what happened" said another upperclassmen.

i love that. i like that my work can stand on its own without even something as nessisary as sense... its still a thing.

"if that was a filmfestival you would win." Said my friend, not a film student but i appreciate it anyway... heh.

gah.

sophmore year... video...

video!!! im scared.

im asleep.

goodnite.