Damn. In kinda a flux right now. I am working and setting my apartment up - which is going really well. But I have been broke for the past two weeks - I have become somewhat of a recluse. I work and go home and that is about it. And since this paycheck - only the third since I have started working - will be going to pay rent and my gas and electric bill, I guess I will be broke for another two weeks. The thing is - since I chose to live in El Paso and not across the border in Juarez - things are quite slow. There is literally nothing to do. I have no money to go out and am not the type of character that will usurp benefits off of my friends. I don't have a television yet, so I can't watch my DVD's - all I have right now in form of entertainment is my digital clock radio.
It shall pass I assume in time - but right now I sure am in a funk about it. Just editing my book wiles away the time. I really need to start going out and being sociable again.
What is happening to me?

Nostalgia is a disease.
I had done a thing yesterday that I regret and have learned unlike Lot's wife - don't look back - never look back.
With that said - onward with the progression. I have bought more furniture for my apartment and am becoming quite pleased with the out come - if it out come. I have decided on a espresso/black/nickel color scheme - muy sympatico. Finished wrap up photography for Meth and am completely shameful of results - it projects as a first semester student film and I want to toss the whole thing in the trash. I guess I have lost my edge as a filmmaker - I remember before everything I made was great and fresh and inventive - now it is plodding crap. Perhaps a career as a writer is the path I will pursue.
Speaking of - Borrowed Flesh is still this ugly disgusting monster that I am trying to control. As I glance over page after disgusting page dripping with sex and drugs it just puts me into a funk - but the story must be told, right!
Last night as I was walking back to my apartment around 11pm - coming around the corner was this guy named Tony - a big hulking mess of handsome just released from jail a few days hence and I have kept an eye out on him - spreading my intentions through various webs of gossip and faggot hear say. A tall muscular bad boy with thick lips, goatee, penetrating eyes and pelon. Anyway, we stood on the corner and then inviting him into my swanky pad in the making - Tony and I sat and had actually a very pleasant and funny talk. Confessing his love for transsexuals, he invited me to troll the fag bars here in El Paso this coming weekend - why not? Wouldn't you?

Hands in pockets I cut across San Jacinto Plaza as wind whips around me and dark thunderous clouds undulate on the twilight horizon. I pass the tramps huddled in someone else's clothes - "I saw RJ the uthuh day - he was lying in an alley butt naked totally fucked up strung out on some shit." - board the bus with consternation.
On the stretch of Texas Ave. where there are old rotting factories and silent warehouses and the fat power cables buzz and crackle, I get off and it is dark dark dark - no streetlamps are working but I make my way to Eva Theater anyway and slap down my fiver to the short fat woman behind the booth. Two obese Mexicans eye me as I enter the foul smelling theater and I make a b-line to the men's toilet. There was no one and I mean no one else in the theater - which I thought was quite odd.
The floor, walls. sink and toilet was splashed with blood - above the sink there was a great red/brown glob of gore and blood as if someone had tossed a bag full of that stuff violently at the mirror and it had splattered all around the small room. I quickly exited - the souls of my shoes sticky from the floor coated with blood. Someone really got what they deserved...
One of the fat guys that were eyeing me whispered, "I tried to warn you before you went in there."
"What the fuck happened?", I asked lighting a cigarette. "A fight? Damn that was a lot of blood."
"No - no." He smiled. "That was only paint - someones idea of a little joke."
I stared at this fool in disbelief, "That is not paint. I've seen blood before and that is blood!"
As some Asian cooch was being banged by a bald tired and petulant looking "stud" onscreen - one of the fat guys wrapped his hands in plastic shopping bags and went to the horrid task of cleaning that shit up. Poor guy.
Oh well, about fifteen minutes later a hot young guy came in and we hooked up...

Started filming Meth last night. Went around and found some locations to shoot. We have decided to use Kevin's apartment for the interior scenes. It is small and he has agreed to let me 'industrialize' it. I'll pay someone to clean up the mess afterwards. Last nights shoot went very well - as long as the coffee flowed, the crew and I stayed up till 4am filming one damn scene! Those damn cockroaches wouldn't hit their mark! Got starstruck, I reckon. But the dailies look awesome and Kevin did a chilling job - I think this is going to work.

Below is the exterior scene where Kevin's character finds the mysterious video tape outside his door. The lighting worked out well and the shoot was fun - except for the old fat lady in curlers and flayed flip-flops that kept complaining we were making too much noise. C'mon it was only 12 midnight!

Another exterior location - a little clean for my taste. Cutaway shot to be used for mood.

That's it for right now - tonight we have a couple of scenes to rehearse and I want to film that 'dream/hallucination' scene before dawn - will spend the day making the deformed paper mache head for the Mystery Man. Quite scary.

Everything is coming up roses.

I have moved into my apartment and left that drudgery of tramp life behind. My job is good and I am making sufficient money to support myself comfortably. Now it will be a matter of a few short months to get my apartment in order.

I have decided to sever all ties to those crazy tramps, thieves, and weirdos. Bueno - not so much the weirdos - kinda keeps my life interesting.

Ok - the novelization of Borrowed Flesh has grown into a 978 page monster. It's time to put that fat bitch on a diet. Will start editing and rearranging the prose - it is dictating itself like rapid machine gun fire spewing out of my laptop with a life of its own. Like a larvae of some creature ready to hatch out and unleash its horror upon the face of this Earth. However, I do like the shape it is becoming. It will be a thrilling read.

And!!! I am back in the director's seat again. I have borrowed a Panasonic HDC-DX1 AVCHD 3CCD High-Definition DVD Camcorder and a couple of theater lamps and am going to attempt to film an old script I wrote back in my junky days. It is a short called Meth; a brooding little nightmare about methamphetamine addiction - 99% of the film takes place in a old hotel room with one actor. I think Keven C. can pull it off - he seems to be a gifted actor. Last evening, Victor, Kevin and I sped around the warehouse district of El Paso in a semi-drunken hoot getting exterior shots and scouting locations.

Avanti!!!