Why can't I wrap my head around church and religion and faith, but hymns and spirituals and gospel sung in just the right way stir my soul and fill my heart?  

I can't stop listening to the first 6 tracks on Welcome Wagon's debut album!

New Cancer's Eve

Today, my aunt, who I'm especially close to, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in her pancreas.  

In working on all the hospital documentaries that I've worked on over the last four years, I've been around a number of sick and cancer laden people.  With what goes into telling their stories, the countless hours spent with them, we get to know these people very well.  It's natural to feel empathy for them and their families.

I'm asking myself now, was it really empathy I was feeling?  When it's happening to your own family it feels different.  This is someone who through the years has eaten what I've eaten, breathed the air I've breathed, who's blood isn't much different than my own.  

It's different when it hits close to home. 

  

Croquet (The Game of Kings)

Random King Family Fact:

We play croquet every Christmas (and every other family get together).

Drinks, Coats and Keys (One Night in Chicago)

My friend, JT, looking dapper in his winter hat and coat, appears a bit drunk in this photo. He's actually not drunk at this point, but it's a sign of things to come on this night out in Chicago.

After dinning at an Argentine steak house, myself, JT and his wife, our friend Todd and his fiance, spent the rest of the night at Todd's neighborhood watering hole shooting Jameson chased by PBRs. There were a number of unappetizing Red Bull drinks that lead to some of us dancing wildly in our bar stools and left all of us with a hefty hangover.

In Chicago, like New York and London, it seems that everyone, men and women, wears the same knee-length black winter coats. And they all end up in a fluffy black cluster on the bar or restaurant's coat rack. As you can imagine, it's quite a chore to locate your jacket at night's end, when you're in a druken state. And JT's druken state is more severe than most people's. We jokingly refer to it as "Weekend at Bernie's." Basically his body goes limp and all verbal function ceases. He nothing more than a tree trunk in the middle of bar room with drunks swirling all around him.  

Fast forward to the morning after and JT and I passed out at Todd's friend's apartment. I awake to the daunting task of finding our way back to Todd in a snowy, cold and unfamiliar city. Despite a bright, shinning beam of light that's resting comfortably on his face, JT is not waking up. Only repeated shaking manages to wake him.

His Jameson, Red Bull, PBR haze is worse than mine, so I help him put on his coat as a cab waits outside for us. Once the coat is on him, in a gravely voice, he says, "Where's my coat?" I say, "This isn't your coat?" Maybe I'm in as much of a haze as JT.  "Nope." In fact, it's nothing like JT's coat. It's gray, not black. It has a zipper, not buttons. And, it's an XXXL, or four sizes too big for JT! Todd's friend Shelly alertly checks the pockets for any of JT's possessions. Pulling something from the jacket, Shelly asks, "Are these your keys?" "I don't have any keys," responds JT. Digging deeper into the pockets, Shelly pulls out a second set of keys, followed by a third, fourth, and fifth set! JT, Shelly and I all look at one another and immediately realize that JT accidentally grabbed the designated driver's jacket. "Whoa," says Shelly! "I got all my stuff," remarks JT insensitively.

Shelly agrees to return the jacket to the bar it was taken from, but that does little to fix the miserable night that at least six people endured. During the cab ride back to Todd's, JT and I dream up scenarios people furiously yelling at their DD and angry drunks locked out of their homes on a bitter Chicago night.       

Over the next 48-hours we would recount this story a dozen times, each time to Todd's delight. It's an utterly perfect drunk story we all agree.  

Just hours before leaving Chicago we get word that Shelly has JT's jacket. We trek into the belly of downtown Chicago to retrieve it... In a moment of perfect irony, the jacket that's supposed to be JT's jacket is not, and now someone else is pissed off.  JT ultimately leaves Chicago with a number of enemies and a new Brooks Brother's coat that fits him perfectly.

     

Music Video

Here's the idea (I haven't chosen a song yet, but I kind of hear something hopeful sounding from The Smashing Pumpkins ):

TWO YOUNG TEENAGERS, presumably in love with each other, wait at the counter of their local Dollar Store while the CLERK fills a grocery bag with the balloons they've just purchased.  They dash out of the store, balloons in tow, before the clerk can even give them their change (which he pockets in excitement).

The young teens have now separated.  Mouth pried open, the girl has her teeth worked on by an OBESE DENTIST.  One of the pink elastics from her braces snaps and peppers the fat dentisti's cheek.  The girl tries to laugh, but can't.

The boy is hanging around the loading docks in a highly industrial area.  He watches, "smoking" his candy cigarettes, while men load and unload boxes from large, white passenger vans. 

The girl spits blood into the dentist's sink as the dentist and his BUSTY ASSISTANT make their way out of the room.

More boxes are being unloaded.  Just as the final box is being carted away from one of the white passenger vans the boy pops his head out from the under carriage of the vehicle.  

Back at the dentist's office: The girl is rapidly unscrewing tubes connected to the helium tank, hoists the metal canister up on a high window ledge, pushes the window open with one hand, and drops the tank out the window into a bush below.  

The keys are in the ignition of one of the white vans as the boy climbs in the driver's side door.  His head barely eclipses the steering wheel as he backs the car out of the lot.  

The girl is sitting on a street corner in the middle of town, helium tank by her side.  The boy's white van abruptly swerves to the shoulder of the road, upsetting the traffic.  The girl and her helium tank spring into the van.  Horns honk, once again, as the white van begins to drive away.

Montage of the white van driving through this small, suburban town.  Music is screaming from the radio.  The girl steadily fills the hundreds of balloons with helium.  The van has left behind the town for the country.  They now whiz down tree-lined country roads, past farms and ponds.  The back of the van, once barren, slowly gets filled with the girl's balloons.  It's a rainbow of colors.  

The van chugs up a steep hill that overlooks much of the town.  By this time, the girl has filled nearly every square inch of the passenger van with balloons.  The boy's head is lost in the balloons as he continues his first attempt at driving.  As they summit the hill, the girl pushes her way through the balloons to the back doors of the van.  With one swift kick from the girl the back doors of the van explode open and the balloons stream out the doors into the sky.  

The couple laughs wildly as the master plan they've hatched comes to fruition before their wide eyes.  

The final shot of the video shows the van roaring down the other side of the hill with its tail of balloons.  The camera slowly pulls away from the van and up into the clear blue sky with all of the balloons as the song fades out. 

  

  

Knee Deep

I wish I would have made this documentary.

It's a horribly sad story, but also really, really funny.

It airs on most PBS stations this weekend.

Animal Whisperer

Check out this blog:

http://pictureyear.blogspot.com/2008/10/amelias-world.html