RULE NUMBER 8

John's Pizza - 'The Contradiction'

Gem at John's Pizza

Adam at John's Pizzeria

Butter Lane Bakery - Gem's local cupcake discovery

Local park in East Village

RULE NUMBER 8

Building The Seal Skin

Greetings again friends and family,

its been a while between posts for me...and its been a while between comments from you! Not that we are bothered by the one sided relationship we are having with you all...but just to prove to us that someone is reading these can someone please drop a "hi" into our comments. Coolio.

This will be a long one so hang on tight.

Well, lets pick this thing up on Friday night. Gem and I planned to meet at Bleecker Street Records at about 5:30ish to have a quick browse and then wander down to our fave pizza joint from our last visit - John's Pizza. Given it was the end of the week i was pretty desperate to have a drink so we detoured to The Slaughtered Lamb on the way down for a quick beer by the fire place....sweet.

What can we say about John's Pizza...ummmm...lets just say that it is very tasty and very...very large. We ordered a biggie with half meat-fest and half vegie-fest - i call it 'the contradiction'. Despite eating about 10kg's of pizza we then decided to stroll down Bleecker St with a large ice cream from this boutique joint called Cones. We were getting funny looks strolling down the snow and ice covered street with a cone full of...well coloured snow and ice! To put it in perspective i liken it to those sun desperate poms who hit the beach for the day in Australia...in winter...wearing jeans and jumpers. By the time we got home our insides and outsides were frozen.

Saturday was a bit of a cold one so we decided not to explore too much, instead opting for back to back movies - Black Swan and 127 Hours. We saw the former uptown at Union Square which is near my work. Very cool movie...and i wasnt at all impressed by the erotic bits with those two physically blessed women ;)

We headed closer to home to see 127 Hours. It was a pretty good film and the story is simply amazing. Could i cut my own arm off to save my life? I think i would prefer to have a crack at someone else's arm first. That dude is very inspiring in a disturbing way.

By the time we got home we were hungry again...i think the pizza had passed! We decided on this cool Thai place that delivers great food at a very cheap price - perfect. I ate too much....again.

Sunday was a nothing day - it was simply freezing (-6) outside and the wind chill factor made it somewhere around the -15 mark...WTF? Us Perth people are not built for that kind of weather. We stayed in and chilled out but i managed to make it to the gym to try and work off some serious eating. When you come out of the gym with sweat on your face you can pretty much feel it freezing as you walk into the wind. I felt great after the gym and didnt eat much during the day...so...we decided to pig out again!! This time it was home delivered burgers from Paul's (not a lot of creativity in some of these restaurant names). Biggest burgers i have ever tried to eat...of course i ordered two. Jared Munro will be interested to learn that 'Snakejaw Rule' could only manage one and half of these bad boys! Nevertheless, i felt sick again. The winter seal skin is developing nicely.

Woke up today with only half of last nights burgers still in my system thanks to my rapid fire digestive system. I had a mental hang up about the weekends eat-fest so i hit the gym. Its important i get respect for my pre-work gym session because it was cold....reeeally cold...-15 before adding the wind chill.

ummm...thats the Ads & Gem update. For those who care little about my adventures in the NY workforce (well kinda) feel free to turn off now.

Well, the editing course that i am two weeks into is going very well. I am learning a truck load so far and its about to get serious. i really hope i can retain this knowledge. Last week we ended our two weeks of intensive Final Cut Pro (one of three major editing software platforms used commonly in film and video work) by cutting a film trailer for a film that was screened over here a few years ago. It was called Darklight and it was a real piece of poo...BUT...it had a $2,000,000 budget and some of the footage looked quite cool. It was made by and for the science fiction channel over here. Anyway, due to some familiarity with the software i managed to bang out 3 trailers at different run times to form a kind of campaign. The powers at be were fairly impressed but there are some talented people in this course who produced some equally good work. I was also cutting some other narrative based scenes from another feature made locally a couple of years back. I really dig cutting all of this stuff...fun and challenging.

Friday we screened the trailers and got notes etc... The night before we got free passes to a small industry Q&A with Craig McKay ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0570947/ ). This guy is one of the top editors in the game and has worked on about 60 films in a 40 year career....very impressive. Some highlights you might know are: The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate, Copland and one of the biggest ever editing jobs - Warren Beatty's epic film Reds. The latter took 2 years to edit. He has been nominated for 2 Oscars and has won numerous other awards for his work so it was a great experience to be up close and personal with an industry legend. It also gave a good opportunity to hang with a few of the guys from the course...

For the next two weeks we are switching software to AVID MEDIA COMPOSER which will be a challenge for me. 80% of the industry over here uses this platform so its a must have bit of knowledge. We are also switching from drama & sci/fi to comedy editing...we studied The Big Lebowski - one of my all time favourite comedies as a sample of good storytelling. The Dude abides.

other things worth mentioning about NY:

1) i walk a bit over a kilometre each day and ride the train for 3 stops uptown. My ankles and knee are holding up but the cold aint easy and the steps up and down the subway are annoying....aside from that i dig the walk and being out in the elements. i basically just commute to work like a normal New Yorker.

2) People walk REALLY fast over here. Even when i am not in pain and walking at a serious pace i get overtaken by every female on the sidewalk...except my skink like lady. i kind of understand it...fast pace lifestyle and cold weather means walk with purpose. Sometimes i adopt that mentality and picture myself walking like Jason Bourne on my way to a hit...but...generally i put the ipod on and cruise at my own pace.

3) Some people here are seriously crazy...and funny. On thursday i saw a busking dude wearing normal clothes with a Boba Fett helmet on ( http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=boba+fett&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1280&bih=680 ). He was playing movie themes like Axel F on an accordion. When we were walking down 14th St after seeing the movie on Saturday there was a dude running down the middle of the road screaming profanities at an unknown person. 14th St is a major, busy road!

4) On my way home i walk past the smallest radio station i have ever seen. its basically a shop front - maybe 3m x 2m and its all glass at the front and a mirror at the back. Its very cool and on my usual home journey its hip-hop time so i occasionally stop and check out the vibe amongst the black dudes...it also has the distinct smell of the devil's lettuce so i try to breath deeply as i walk past - passive smoking marijuana cant possibly be a sin ;)

5) my music taste over here has been mixed to say the least. Karnivool, Drones, Mos Def, Kanye West, KDH, The National and a bunch of soundtracks are common threads. Its weird listening to 'small' Aussie bands while walking the streets of NY....i dig it the most.

6) Shopping update: Gemma has been shopping up a storm trying to get lower half stuff before her belly bubble grows too much. i have bought a couple of pairs of Timberland boots - the only boots that work with my glass limbs. I have also dabbled in the bargins with a couple of hoodies and a shirt...I will make a couple more purchases but i think the real shopping will be done by my other 1/3 once she gets some partners in crime.

7) We sad to be missing some key friends events - birthdays and what not - but I am chuffed to be a newly named groomsman for my good friend Sharpy at he and Alison's wedding in April....quick work buddy - looking forward to it.

ummm...ok, thats it.

Next post will be on the weekend so stay safe until then.

Miss you all.

Ads & Gem x