A series of disconnected observations

If the Saints can win a Super Bowl, the Eagles really should be able to. Yet it seems impossible.

The Pink Starburst is the undisputed King of Starbursts. The Yellow is the slow half-prince who’s kept locked in the basement. I say this not just based on personal likes, but on observing bowls of Starbursts at parties. At the end of the night, it’s filled with just Yellows.

Things that are beautiful are often dangerous. And things that are dangerous are often beautiful. And yet, dangerous doesn’t have to equal bad. And sometimes something is so ugly that it is also beautiful. And what does all this mean? Who knows.

There is nothing more annoying than kids pulling on your shirt constantly throughout the day yet nothing more comforting than that same kid slipping his hand into yours while he walks beside you. Kids: The Power to Annoy or Comfort is Within Their Hands.

Doritos really had a bunch of crappy ads for the Super Bowl this year. Was that wasted money? It seems like it.

Celebrities are just people. I would say better looking people, but take away the professionals who paid to make them look great, and I’m not sold on that. I would say people with more issues, but that’s not really true either. Maybe they’re more charismatic, but then there are normal people who possess a lot of charisma too. So I’ll just revert to: Celebrities are just people.

95% of people are going through life like the kid at the 7th grade mixer who desperately wants to be asked to dance but doesn’t want to look that way.

Once people hit about 70 they’re like High School Students hitting their Senior year. All bets are off and they can say whatever they want now, they’ve earned it.

Family Drawing Hour at the Getty Center

One of the things I absolutely love about living in one of the largest cities in the world is that there are world class attractions within easy driving distance. It’s strange, because in some ways I feel like we’ve been treating the two years plus that we’ve lived in LA as this extended vacation, where weekends are comprised of day trips where we explore something new and amazing. I love this aspect of our life out here.

It’s especially great when all four of us can agree on a place that we love visiting. We all love biking along the beach in Santa Monica. We all love Disneyland. We all love Lake Arrowhead. And watching a Disney premiere at El Capitan. And visiting the Santa Monica Pier, and Malibu Creek State Park.

But then there are places that we’re split over. Lyric and I love hiking Temescal, but Ollie and Darby aren’t always so eager. Ollie and I love a good museum or zoo, while Lyric and Darby aren’t so sure most days.

And until today, the Getty Center was a place that only I seemed enthused about visiting. I adore it. It’s a showcase of architecture, and once you exit the automated tram (driverless) and reach the top of the mountain, it feels like you’re entering a city on a different planet. I love the gardens, the view of LA below, the waterfalls and waterways. The Monets, Manets, Degas’ and Cezzanes… I’m always eager to get back there, which is met with uniform “what else can we do”?

But today, with Darby otherwise occupied, I made an executive decision. Lyric, Ollie and I were going. I told them they couldn’t complain because I was taking them to Disneyland tomorrow. They were good sports about it.

The Getty has a pretty fun family section, where we got to build our own replica of a sculpture.

And Lyric and Ollie always have fun climbing on the stone wall. One time we played duck duck goose on this yard, and two children looked like they wanted to play too. I encouraged Lyric and Ollie to invite them to play. These kids accepted, and proceeded to only choose each other, meaning that now they were playing duck duck goose and we were just kind of sitting in a circle watching them. It was a bit of a bummer actually.

But then the completely amazing, unexpected joy of the day revealed itself. We were handed a schedule and a “Family Drawing Hour” was listed. Curious, I signed up. Lyric thought it would be boring. Ollie thought we’d be drawing a bug, like we did on one of his field trips, so he was excited. We gathered at the appointed time, and it started out pretty boring. But then the magic started. We were all given our own palette and thick paper and taken to see specific paintings. We sat in front of the paintings, and were encouraged by three excellent artists to improvise off of what we saw. They gave us all fancy new colored pencils. Lyric and Ollie were really into it – it’s such a joy to see your kids completely invested in creativity.

Ollie especially impressed me just because – while Lyric often draws for long periods of time during the week – I was sure Ollie would lose focus. He didn’t.

The first painting we studied is below. We were encouraged to pay attention to how the artist took a fairly plan portrait and then really pushed it past the bounds of convention with the colors and styles in the rest of the painting. They then told us to similarly improvise based off of what we were seeing.

Here’s my take. I really had a lot of fun drawing it. It’s been so long since I’ve really just taken lots of time to draw, and it felt really good and inspiring.

Here’s Lyric’s. She really took the encouragement to play around with colors and take it in a new direction to heart, and I think she demonstrates a lot of creativity here.

And here’s Ollie’s. I love that he’s not bound to trying to be “realistic.” There’s a real Picasso quality to what he drew. And it was so cool because he spent the entire 20 allotted minutes perfecting his piece.

Here’s the second painting we studied. It’s a Cezanne. For this piece, they let us use watercolor pencils – a brand new 10 pack. And we got to keep them. I suppose I should make it clear here that this was free, as is admission. You just pay for parking. Unbelievable.

Here’s my take. I didn’t even notice that I zoomed in on the face, yet it was the most striking aspect of the image for me, so it makes sense that I did. I love the sadness, the weariness that the original painting captures.

Here’s Lyric’s. She has a really cool style going on. When the docent commented that it’s obvious Lyric draws a lot, Lyric said, “Yes I do spend a lot of time on it.” And when I asked why Lyric had her woman looking wistfully to the sky, she explained that that’s the way she likes to draw all eyes, because it looks cheerful and cute.

And Ollie’s is really impressive to me because it’s obvious he’s not simply drawing what he thinks a woman should look like – head, body, arms, legs… but he’s drawing what he sees when he looks at the painting.

So, should you be in the area on a Saturday, check if there is a Family Drawing Hour. As the hour came to a close, Lyric and Ollie wanted to find more things to draw – it was a very inspirational event for all three of us. Highly recommended, and an excellent memory.

A long hike

After a long time of working late into the night on one deadline after another, I was able to take a good chunk of time today and dedicate it to hiking. Or, as I like to call it, “Jason’s Lifelong Expedition to See a Real Live Mountain Lion In Its Natural Habitat.” It was so great. I absolutely love living in walking distance from mountains and trails and incredible views. There’s something so inspirational about it.

I do believe, actually, that at this point in my life, hiking is one of my very favorite things to do. It’s just so uncomplicated. You walk. You look around you. You see something you hadn’t seen before. You think. It’s quiet. You push a bunch of things that have been bothering you – but which you’ve been ignoring – around in your head, re-organizing and re-arranging them until something changes. You’re not quite sure what, exactly, but something has changed. And then, oh, do you hear that bird call? That’s beautiful. I mean, I really like it. I love hiking with someone too, but it has to be someone that I invited along and that I know and like. Because today while I was hiking back up the mountain I caught up with a lady and decided to just stop and wait until she made her way off the trail. Because I was having a moment, you see, and she wasn’t to be a part of it.

I have even deeper thoughts about the outdoors and hiking and what it means and how it contributed to the success of Avatar the movie. (Yes, I really do.) But I’ll have to write that another time because I’ve got other things to attend to.

The Snow’s so Deep

Every year, my little family packs up and heads to the San Bernandino mountains. It’s pretty awesome, because it’s only 2 hours away from LA – yet it’s beautiful pine trees and snow 3 feet deep and couldn’t seem less like Southern California if it tried. Because money is tight (do rich people ever say that money is loose?) we normally just stay for one night at a very nice lodge in a little town called Lake Arrowhead.

But somehow we manage to make that two day one night vacation seem much longer. It’s pretty magical, to be honest. We have our little traditions.

For instance, we always stop off at the first sign of snow. Because when you’re driving up a mountain, there will be no snow at all, and then boom, there’s snow. It’s pretty cool.

And the kids will always get caramel apples at the chocolate store. Delicious, amazing caramel apples that make me wish I weren’t allergic to apples.

And we’ll each get a bag of duck snacks for 50 cents a piece and feed the flock of ducks. Lake Arrowhead has a really fun assortment of ducks. Brown headed mallards, and these cool black ducks with white heads and then also the elusive “puffin duck,” at least that’s what we call it because it looks like a puffin and mostly swims underwater.

And of course, the main event – we go sledding! Now you probably cannot tell from these pictures, but this snow is deep. Really deep. In fact, if normal east coast where I’m from snowfall could be compared to wading through a creek, wrestling with the snow on this mountain is more like trying to survive a rough ocean surf. It’s exhausting to be walking on the surface and then take a step and woosh you’re in the snow up to your hips. And then you have to climb your way out only to take 3 more steps and boom down you fall again.

(And yes, by the way, the kids can sled with just their snowpantsed bottoms, the snow is so slick and the inclines so steep. So can I, for that matter, but… well)

…A tradition I’d care to avoid but can’t seem to help but make regular is wearing only blue jeans during these adventures. Blue jeans that are soaked as if I swam in them when we’re done.

Because it is an adventure. My children like to avoid other people at all costs when we do family events. They don’t want to see or hear anyone else while we find the perfect sledding hill. This normally results in an expedition into the incredible steep and rough (and deep snowed!) wilderness. And maybe it includes me trying to leap from snow covered boulder to snow covered boulder like I’m Bear Grylles in a vain attempt to make it across a pretty wide creek. And maybe that ill-fated plan ends with me in that creek, unable to climb out because of that deep snow. And maybe all that ends with me changing on the side of the road, hoping no one catches a glimpse. Maybe.

But it’s all worth it. Like I said, totally magical, unlike any other place we’ve been in our lives, and just a really fun experience. So, for what is really the shortest vacation possible, it remains on the top of the Latshaw List of Things to Do.

very busy as of late

My apologies for the dearth of updates recently. You’d be forgiven for thinking I was so upset about the history of California’s missions that I merely clammed up all together.

Which isn’t really the case. No, it’ll take more than generations of systematic cultural genocide to silence me. In fact, I’ve simply been busy – a combination of needing to spend time with my family by day and having hard fast essential deadlines to hit by night which are keeping me up far too late and leaving little room for much else. I’m like an innocuous version of Dexter – instead rather than killing people I’m writing scripts and doing website competitive audits. On second thought, I guess that makes me not like Dexter at all. Well, we do both have brown hair.

I promise to write more soon.

Missions

Well, today I accompanied Lyric and her class to see the San Gabriel Mission – an old Spanish church founded in 1771. It was beautiful, peaceful.

And incredibly sad.

I never knew the history of the California Mission system, but it’s basically the west coast’s version of Plantations and slavery. Instead, we have the missions and the native americans pressed into labor.

The original idea was to “convert” the native people – Spanish soldiers accompanied Dominican Padres as they establish 21 missions on the coast of california. Now if you’re thinking a mission is just a church or even a large cathedral, you’re underestimating what it truly was. It was a fully functioning farm, tons of acres, barracks, wineries, cattle, and a sprawling gathering of buildings.

To convert the natives, the padres convinced them to move into the mission barracks and work for their salvation. The original mandate from the king of Spain was that after 10 years, once the natives had been properly “civilized,” the Mission, the crops, the livestock, and all the buildings would be turned over to the native people and the Padres would return to Spain or move on to other fields of harvest.

That never happened.

In the end, what did happen is that the animals that the Padres introduced destroyed the vegetation and native animals that the local indians thrived on, causing them to starve. The diseases the Padres brought with them proved to be murderous on the poor native population. And so, weakened and sick, the indians were willing to give up their own culture and try to assimilate to the strong, healthy Missions. After all, their Shamans weren’t able to stop the disease, yet the Spanish were not dying.

While they thought they were getting protection and salvation, what they got was forced labor and captivity. And their children were removed from parents at the age of 5 and housed together in dirty, unhygienic barracks. In other words, the complete and total breakdown of their way of life.

Of course, many of the natives were not happy with this arrangements, and they tried to escape. But the Spanish soldiers would hunt them down and return them to the Missions. They were never free to go.

As a person who has faith in Christ, this totally and completely angers me – truthfully as I was learning it I wondered if maybe people haven’t messed this whole Christianity thing up so badly that anyone could really be blamed for wanting to reject it. I mean really – in my opinion this is almost worse than slavery in the south. In this case it was the people who were supposed to be spreading the gospel enslaving people using the threat of damnation in order to enrich themselves.

That’s just about as bad as it can get.

Not being a Californian, I never knew this happened at all. And I’m really upset about it.

By the way, if you want to read a pretty good rundown, go here and search of “Missions” to find the section. it’s heart-breaking.

A new business card

I have struggled through having woefully outdated, obsolete business cards for quite some time now. That’s kind of a by product of moving so often and not holding onto the same conventional job for very long anymore.

But everytime I thought, “Yeah, Jason, you need business cards!” I would kind of freeze because confusion would set in. “What should the business card say?” And there in lies the problem. Should I have it say that I’m a writer? I mean, yes, I’m a writer. But a business card that just says “Jason Latshaw, Writer” just has always struck me as odd. It sometimes seems to me like “Writer” isn’t really something you should call yourself all the time, like Prophet or Genius it seems like something you should allow other people to label you more often.

If I got a card from someone that said “Writer,” I’d be slightly unnerved for some reason.

And then there’s the fact that often people ask for my card because of graphic design services that I could provide. Or maybe film editing. Or even marketing strategy consultation. And just try, I dare you, to put all those labels on one card, because everyone including me will inwardly laugh at you. You might as well add Professional Dream Interpreter while you’re at it.

So yes, this endless conundrum has left me cardless for quite some time, which has been a shame as I’ve met people who have asked for a card.

Until today, I figured something out.

A business card with – just my name and contact information. No label. Just me. I can be whatever the person wants me to be, or nothing at all. No logo, no title.

It’s so simple, really, that I wonder why I hadn’t done it earlier. I the back of the card I left white in case the people I meet want to write something themselves, like “Genius” or “Awesome Guy.”

one of those positive days

You know the kind of day I’m talking about, hopefully. One where hopes springs up through the asphalt again and you think, yeah, possibilities are endless and that’s a good thing. The rain finally subsides and it’s sunny and warm and smells good.

Everything that just the day before seemed so futile now looks like something else completely, like when you’re a child and all the shadows in your room while you’re trying to fall asleep are most definitely monsters plotting to devour you and then your parents turn on the light and, oh, that’s a toy chest, and that’s just a chair, and over there, that’s a coat rack shaped like a giraffe (don’t ask.)

So yes, today, things looked kind of up. In more than one area. So we are all wise to remember that life can kind of be a roller coaster, or a trek up the mountain, where at one moment we might be pretty high, but then there might be a plunge in the future. Just accept it and strive to be the best you through it, because actually plunges can be really fun granted you don’t have your eyes closed and jaw clenched in terror.

Just lift up those arms and scream.

If you are looking to get paid now – this project is not for you.

It’s incredible to me how often people want to get work completed for free. I feel like this is much more prevalent in the creative pursuits, though I do know that if you’re a doctor people are always hitting you up for medical advice and if you’re a pastor people are probably always asking you to pray for them or something.

Now this is kind of complicated, because in reality to break into music or movies and stuff like that, you do have to do work for free. Even when you’re established, you write on spec – speculators, like gold miners – in the hopes that people will pay you for it eventually.

So you can’t really make some kind of blanket rule that “you’ll never work for free,” because you almost have to start out with a freebie. But here’s the thing, doing free work for an established producer or director is one thing. But doing free work for someone who has less clout and contacts than you do makes absolutely no sense at all.

And yet you wouldn’t believe how many people come along saying, “You do this work for me, and I’ll share the profits with you once I sell it!” But this is at the base of things a very bad proposal, because I could just write something all by myself for free, and then enjoy all of the profits once I sell it. So why should I work on spec on someone else’s idea and then only share in half the eventual money (and, let’s not even mention the real truth, which is that this thing probably will not sell, because spec scripts rarely do unless you’re an established name.)

All this as intro to a wonderful email I received out of nowhere.

I am looking for a co-partner on an animation movie project I have been putting together for quiet sometime now. I started writing children book and later hoping to make it into an animation production for children ages 3 to 16 years.

I have semi completed the movie trailer for marketing purposes to find movie producer. And the book it’s on his way. However, I am looking for a co-partner to come in and see what I have accomplished so far. This project is a great incentive for someone like yourself who dream of being a part of something exicted that can take your career to the next level in the entertainment industry. I have finished with the executive summary and business plan. This animation project teach children self confidence and gain their self esteem to achieve greatness. Please if you are interested and seeing more do not hesitate to contact me at my contact info listed below this email.

Now, already, I knew this was bogus. I googled the person. She’s a real estate agent in Kansas. And she’s been putting together this project for “quiet some time now.” And I don’t really know what the semi-completed movie trailer looks like, but I’m guessing it’s not impressive.

But still, I’m curious, so I write her:

This sounds very interesting. What would you be looking for a partner to do, and what is the compensation?

Now I already knew that there would be no compensation, but I enjoy seeing exactly how people are going to say this, and how they’ll spin it like it’s a good thing for me that they are willing to pay more for a six pack of Chicken McNuggets than they are for my imagination and writing.

And this person didn’t let me down.

First I want the co-partner to help me with the following:

1) children illustration books

2) children comic books

3) publishing and editing

4) promote the animaton characters through books and promotional items to get children familiar with the animation characters.

Depending on the success of the books and how well we did with promotional toys and so forth – we will introduce producer to invest in making the story into a feature movie – from there – base on how the movie did ask for a spot on TV miniseries to teach kids about good self esteem and confidence within themselves.

I know it’s a lot upfront but I have to start somewhere. and a co-partner who come with a  creative mind will be able to input his own ideas to start building up little by little a goodd foundation for children to learn themselves.

I am going to attach a copy of my Executive Summary along with a press release. Currrently our company website is under construction.

For compensation the co-partner will gain a percentage on every promotional item sales, and also royalty in the movies. If you are looking to get paid now – this project is not for you.

A percentage!? Wow!? Hey, can someone whip out an abacus for me. What’s a percentage of zero? What percentage, you ask? Oh, I don’t know, because she hasn’t specified. Oh, wait, no matter what percentage it’s still nothing? Oh, then in that case I’d like to correct her last sentence a bit.

If you are looking to get paid now, or in the future, or ever,  for this full year of work I’ve asked you to do for me - this project is not for you.

Now if this was John Lasseter, I’d say yes. but considering it’s for a real estate agent in Kansas, the answer will have to be:

Sounds great, but I don’t think it’s a project for me, based on your specified qualifications and the current reality which I occupy where things cost money. Best of luck!

To which she responds:

Thank you for your time, and please can you delete the executive sumarry and press realease sent to you.

Which can’t help but remind me of this. And in fact the entire situation – work for the promise of future monies, reminds me of this. (Fair warning, both links take you to a website where there is a picture of a girl “giving the bird,” and the writer employs a liberal amount of swear words.)

you know what’s awesome?

When you kick your own butt over the weekend to hit a deadline for a rewrite based on notes that a producer gave you, because he absolutely had to have some bigwig at some network read it on Monday. And then, when you send it to him, all spiffed up and to his specs, he tells you that you really need to talk to the other producer too, because it needs his stamp of approval before it gets sent.

And then when you finally get in touch with that other producer, who you’d been trying to get in touch with for weeks, he has a whole new set of game-changing notes that, while smart and useful, will take a long time to implement. And it’s clear that producer 1 and producer 2 didn’t talk because some of their notes contradicted and now you don’t really know whether you should obey mommy or daddy and you don’t really feel like being the conduit to their conversations and really you’d just like them to talk and ask you what to do as a united front, as good parents do.

So that Monday deadline won’t be hit after all, unfortunately. So I guess the bigwig will have to wait at least a week before he reads my brilliance.

And yeah, all of the things that are now up for grabs were in the original treatment you sent, clear as day, and never mentioned. Of course, some things do jump off the page once you actually write it, and really the notes are smart.

But it’s just great to run a whole marathon and find out the finish line is just the midpoint and you just twisted an ankle.

But still, in case it sounds like I’m complaining, please understand, I love my job.