In the last 2 or 3 weeks Greta and I have had 4 sets of houseguests. It's been kind of insane. And they have ramped up steadily in terms of how stressful they've been. First our friend Peter from Bisbee, then Greta's friend from Prescott and her friend. Then our photographer friend from Germany. And now, for the past 5 days, 3 bicycle pornographers from Oregon.

I like having guests but it's hard to stay focused and to get work done and to stay sane when our small home is so disrupted over and over. Especially because as a filmmaker I have a lot of requirements in terms of equipment and space and concentration, especially when I'm editing. Hopefully things are going to turn around by tomorrow.

Meanwhile I'm still psyched about my experience last week working on Video The Vote on election day including footage of a little episode with an off-duty Border Patrol agent that evening. And of course I'm psyched about how the election went. It's interesting that now everyone and their brother, especially in the progressive non-profit world, is speculating about what Obama will mean for their work, and they're sharing that speculation with all their mailing lists. I've never seen such a heady atmosphere of anticipation. It seems anticlimactic with over 2 months to go before he's actually president.

• 06:27 big day today. polls already opened here at 6, half an hour ago. the sun is just starting to rise. #vtv #
• 06:34 need to finish getting ready, charging batteries, breakfast, and then meet rest of crew in half an hour or so. then it's out to film. #vtv #
• 09:24 Saw 2 guys w guns frm az state attny ofc hanging out @ s. Tucson pollng place. #Vtv - got footage. #
• 11:06 back at studio taking a break & catching up on news. looks like my last from phone tweet didn't make it. it's quiet in tucson. #vtv #
• 12:23 Couple of friends said lines were long wher thy votd right at opening but now no lines. #vtv #tucson #
• 12:48 ok this is weird. txt tweets are coming in way slow. #
• 12:48 back in studio to upload footage from 2 polling places in south tucson. #vtv #tucson #
• 13:05 Just checkd @ Grijalva?s hq and they say no reports of prblms - all quiet in tucson! #
• 13:24 messing with Compressor to get it to compress video the way Video The Vote wants it. #vtv #
• 13:52 watching mary capturing footage she and francesca shot of a polling place (church) with a yes on 102 sign on their main sign. #vtv #tucson #
• 16:55 taking a break and waiting for more reports of poll place troubles. things have been pretty quiet this afternoon. #tvt #tucson #
• 17:06 mccain "holding out from the bunker" acccording to CBS pundit just now. is that a reference to Hitler? #
• 17:12 only 11% of kentucky results in and they're already calling it mccain's? wtf? #
• 17:18 amazed at the blurring of the line between prediction and fact on TV coverage of the election. especially with onscreen graphics. #
• 17:23 looks like we're getting another video the vote assignment from our dispatcher... #vtv #tucson #
• 17:25 Retweet: #jennyholzer POLITICS IS USED FOR PERSONAL GAIN #
• 17:26 border patrol parked outside polling place on tangerine road! we're going out to get footage!! #vtv #tucson #immigration #intimidation #
• 18:14 I guess tucson not as quiet as we thot. Heading out 2 3 dif trouble sites! #Vtv #tucson #

For the first time in my life I'm proud of my country.

• 09:36 my damn powerbook ac adapter is fried... #
• 10:48 whew. managed to locate a spare power adapter from friends.. #
• 18:22 reading email instructions from Video The Vote. #
• 18:48 #vtv lots of people and orgs seem to be planning to depend on twitter tomorrow. wondering how many times we'll see the fail whale... #

So I've lately been following this great blog/portal site called The Workbook Project. It's all about DIY filmmaking and actually mostly about DIY distribution and marketing of films, going around the middlemen of big distributors, festivals, etc. It's great. But today an entry came up that rubbed me the wrong way. It's about these 6 men (boys?) who are all filmmakers, made 4 films under some indie "company" or group called "New Breed" I guess, and now are on a tour around the country in a van, screening their films.

Ok, great. That's cool. But they're video-blogging the trip and the first video is kind of stupid. First of all it introduces it as "6 dudes and 4 films in a van" or something like that, and nowhere in this video does it talk about what the films are about. Instead it's full of dumb little "dude" moments where they're standing outside of the van cracking dumb jokes and making fun of each other about totally irrelevant shit. Is that supposed to make me want to go see these films? Why?

Interestingly enough, a glance at their tour schedule reveals that they were already in Tucson for a few days last week, but I never heard about the screenings nor do any of the film titles ring a bell at all. I probably saw them listed in the Loft's calendar and had no interest in them at all. Maybe they're trying to cover up the fact that these are mediocre films by surrounding them with ridiculous buzz. But c'mon, this is just the kind of buzz that would drive me screaming in the opposite direction from wherever these "dudes" are heading. If they wanted me to learn, or re-learn once again, that most males, even most indie filmmaker males, are obnoxious dorks who spend most of their time just trying to prove how cool they are, well, they've succeeded, but that's about all I've learned from their vlog so far.

It just disappoints me given the level of material usually posted on The Workbook Project.

• 09:10 trying to decide if i should go get some scones from Epic #
• 11:36 reading about how Friendship Park is getting blocked off, completely, by la migra.. www.nytimes.com/2008/10/22/us/22border.html #
• 15:10 amazed we only have 13 days left till the election. #

At a McCain rally some racist wingnuts were handing out weird Obama "Change" bumper stickers that had the muslim crescent and star as the "C" in the word change, and a soviet hammer and sickle. Muslim republicans and even some (more) rational conservatives confronted them on it. Here's a pretty good video about it by the American News Project:

http://www.americannewsproject.com/videos/158

• 10:49 just finishing reconfiguring the backyard for increased chicken grazing. #
• 11:34 noticing i have 82 gigs of music in my mp3 collection, and 82 days worth of listening. about a gig a day. hmm. #
• 13:57 exporting finished November Indymedia Newsreal. #

• 09:28 yuck. just found out Amazon (via IMDB) acquired WithoutABox in january. bleah. more monopolization. "vertical integration" is what u call it #
• 11:32 trying to get rolling #
• 12:50 labelling bike porn postcards with local show info #
• 16:47 just got back from fixing my front brake at BICAS #
• 17:02 bloggng on Tucson Weekly awarding Dry River "best anarchist collective" award: detritus.net/steev/mt/archives/001061.html #

The local rag I love to hate, the Tucson Weekly, issued a "Best of Tucson" award to Dry River, the little group that runs the infoshop down the street from me and that I'm an on-again, off-again member of. The Weekly determined that we are the "best anarchist collective" in town. Here's the entirety of their explanation:

Anarchy may have gone out of style with the passing of St. Joe Strummer, but here in Tucson, there are still a few flying the black flag. What they do is kind of a mystery. We know they take camping trips, practice consensus decision-making and, mainly, facilitate a space called Dry River. Dry River commandeered the Best of Tucson

• steev's blog