Why does it always have to be the opening sequence?!?!?!

Yes, we’re finally at the animatic stage with the new Munkis Brothers extravaganza, and the opening sequence – after behaving in a suitably civilized manner in the tests – has started giving me rendering problems. The software suddenly seems unable to handle the scale of it all. It’s not enough the people I’m pitching projects to can’t handle the scale; now I get it my software too!!

It’s almost funny, the way what looks to me like a perfectly reasonable proposal, based on stuff I did for years Back Home (already scaled down to accommodate less available space and a shallower talent pool), is too big for the imaginations here. I try explaining that, if we really want to bring on the biggest event in human history – Moshiach – we need to start thinking bigger, if for no reason other than to be prepared for the magnitude of the event itself.

One can’t reason with software though. One can’t reason with Brooklyners, either (they still want it smaller and – most importantly – cheaper), but the presence of breathing bodies standing on their hind legs gives one the illusion that, with persistence, the lights will go on, even for them. There’s no such hope to be reasonably raised regarding a machine which gives conflicting messages between one software package and another in a way that, last time, took a day and a half to add up from vague hints in the documentation.

Why does it always have to be the opening sequence?!?!?!

It’s presenting most of the nuisance factors the previous one did, minus the Pandora’s Box unleashed by deployment of the new whiz-bang features in the animation software. That was a double-whammy catalogue of hassles which first crashed the software (on a typical day, once every six minutes) and ultimately wouldn’t export in any form to anything. This opening sequence is bigger and longer than its predecessor, but with less stuff in it. Basic storytelling issues – especially the visual aspects – should be resolved, right? This time, the dialogue relates to the action, which should simplify things thematically, right? OK, there was a small anomaly in the script, but I think I resolved that by extending the opening sequence by a few harmless seconds. Just skooch a few shots around to match the references in the dialogue, fill the space, and, presto! one opening sequence, as neat as you please.

No such luck.

All the big guys in CG animation say the same thing (only in 3D, with better writing, and ‘way bigger budgets!), that movies want to be big and massive and that computers want to make things small and light. That’s pretty much the technical issue I’m contending with at the moment. The zoom-out that tested so nicely is freaking out some part of the chain of software and, if it won’t render for export, it’s worthless. We’ll be pounding on the walls for the next little while, and doubtless grumbling forever over whatever compromise the infernal machine imposes on me.

More happily (well, maybe), MazalTov to Mr. Howard Jacobson on winning the Mann-Booker Prize, a serious British literary award, for The Finkler Question, with the interesting premise of a non-Jew who intensely investigates Jewish life without benefit of conversion (rather like Eliyyahu David when we first met and neither of us knew any better), pretty serious stuff, which Mr. Jacobson handles with award-winning wit. Mr. Howard Jacobson is not related to our local Jacobsons, at least according to Yossi Jacobson (yes, the Rabbi Yossi Y. Jacobson, who should know whereof he speaks, and he speaks so well!), but that was before Howard won the Mann-Booker.

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After almost ten years of serial and overlapping renewals, my cel phone contract with Sprint has finally expired. Yay! Now I’m looking at prepaid plans, which give one a lot more for a lot less than the best deal I ever got with Sprint. The downside of prepaid is, of course, the initial outlay for equipment – and I, of course, want the newest new Blackberry, which may not even be in this physical world, just an enticing series of images on Blackberry’s web site. One knows it has to be pricey. The previously newest Blackberry is pretty pricey (about as much as my Palm, from back in the Radio Daze but, one would hope, without all the bugs), but the one plan I’ve seen it attached to is less than half the cost of Sprint’s – with insurance. If I can USB it into my HP, I’ll be a happily connected man.

Watch this space for breathless rhapsodies over my new toy, once all the pieces come together.

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A week and some change from now, the silliest election season I’ve ever seen will, happily, be behind us. Or maybe not so happily. If projections are good, there could be a Republican takeover of Congress, which is never good news. To make matters worse, some percentage of these “new” Republicans will be tea-baggers. Even worse, there are 37 state governorships up for grabs – and a load of tea-baggers in that field too.

As for me, it’s a family tradition to not say who we vote for. It was the only secret my parents kept from each other, not that it was any great mystery. However, tradition must be honored, and I won’t say who I’m actually voting for, although I’ve proudly said for years that friends don’t let friends vote Republican. I can, however, offer the Officially Officious Radiojew’s Revenge endorsements: for Governor of California (of course I still care), Jerry Brown; for Governor of Texas, Kinky Friedman (my endorsement didn’t do him any good last time, either); for Governor of New York, I’m wavering between the Anti-Prohibition Party (organized by and running kristin Davis, Eliot Spitzer’s favorite madam from his tenure as Governor; rather symmetrical. Number nine, number nine …) and the Rent Is Too Damn High Party which, like its founder/candidate, Jimmie McMillan, is just plain a hoot. The Greens have ideas, but they’re going nowhere on this side of the Atlantic. One reason may be that they’ve yet to run a credible candidate for anything. Maybe they should talk to Kinky Friedman.

What I expect to happen when New York gets its first elected Governor in three years is that we, like California, will get an ancestral governor in Andrew Cuomo. It could be worse. “Crazy Carl” Paladino, for those living in the Real World (outside New York), is a tea-bagger nutjob that even the Republicans will be happy to see go away. Were I Back Home, I might think that New York deserves such a preposterous embarrassment. However, being a current resident, I’d rather not, thanks.

The talk all over the media is that the national frustration with the Obama administration is manifesting in the tea-baggers. Get real! It’s right-wing and corporate resentment of the will of the people. And I’m not even considering race as a factor, which could open up all manner of mishigas I don’t want here. Until there is genuine campaign finance reform, the corporate takeover of the U.S. of A. will accelerate, with no way of knowing where the money is really coming from. Therein lies my frustration with the New Boss; he’s too much the same as the Old Boss (and we thought we wouldn’t get fooled again!). The only good news about the Obama admin so far is their failure to put enough pressure on Israel to make the Arabs happy. Health insurance “reform” is a distasteful disaster of corporate welfare (can you say “single payer?” Obama can’t) that pushes each citizen further toward serfdom to our corporate oligarchs. Was it thirteen or fifteen separate pieces of Wall St. and banking-related legislation shot down by Republicans – with the “good guys” holding a “veto-proof majority?!?” Of course, Congress has to vote in these presidential initiatives, but that gets to be another rant for another posting. I have another meeting shortly – on another proposal – with another Brooklyner.

One final musing: The Texas Rangers beat the Yankees for the American League pennant. Yay! My personal feelings about New York sports teams in general aside, it shows that, in the prolonged absence of George W. (“Shrub”) Bush, a pretty pathetic excuse for a baseball team can recover and go on to take the American League pennant. The thought gives one hope for this country.