THE HAPPS

i'm not going to apologize for being really shitty at updating this blog. i'm just not. so get over it.

i am in a garage in olympia, washington. it's furnished with a futon, a dvd player, a tv and prototype of an experimental electrolysis engine that runs on water. i am watching the extras on the life aquatic dvd.

i'm in olympia, washinton because it's relatively close to portland, oregon (my new home). i'm here on the type of business i won't get paid for. i made this business connection on the world wide web (namely facebook; have you heard of it?)

i'm here helping a few ambitious guys from NYU film school to make their micro-budget (i'd guess less than ten grand) feature length movie. i'm in charge of sound, and today i established myself as bestboy in spite of the fact that i don't yet know what the bestboy responsibilities are on a film set. i'd never met any of the other crew members when i got here but they are turning out to be great guys. for the next month i'm sleeping on an air matress and sharing a room with nandan (pronounced nun-dun) rao. He's the director of photography for the film and he's got one of the coolest cars i've ever seen. it's a 1972 Cooper Mini that he imported from new zealand when he has 16 years old. it's about half the size of the new BMW minis and it's even still got the steering wheel on the right side of the cabin (technical note: despite the right hand drive, the transmission is traditional american configuration with first gear at the upper left position.) i've been tagging along with him to his always informal meetings with director zack weintraub. tonight was a day off from shooting but instead involved a trek to locate and procure a canoe for shooting tomorrow's summertime rope swing scene on the deschutes river with the two 15 year old lead actors who are playing 17 year olds in the production. if this film sounds at all interesting please visit http://lotlmovie.com for details and extremely up-to-date coverage of the project.

to say the least, olympia has held nothing but good experiences for me (although a few long hours) and i've already met a lot of people. all of these people seem to be interesting in their own ways and i'm glad to have met each and every one of them.

dateline: prior to july 7, 2009

the beginning of the month of june saw me returning from a great week-long trip to lake powell with my family. my oldest sister, holly, helped me pack up my stuff and clean my apartment. we set out with two cars and a u-haul trailer en-route to portland from logan on the first day of june. just two hours outside of cache valley, my subaru broke down on the side of the highway. it ended up spending the night there in southern idaho while holly and i continued our drive to boise. with much appreciated rescue from my dad, grandpa, and grandma the old subaru rolled into the capital city of the gem state the next day and was quickly checked in for diagnosis at a boise mechanic shop. diagnosis failing fuel pump (which i like to think of as the heart of the car since it delivers the vital fluid to the engine). my graduate school entrance exam taught me that fuel pump is to engine as heart is to muscle tissue.

3 nights in boise while waiting for repair. 600 dollar repair bill. the highway out of boise long and littered with anticlimactic excitement. a new life. a test of character. potential. potential for neither success nor failure but likely something in-between.

after extremely slow email, phone and in-person negotiations it was decided i would not be immediately gainfully employed through my first attempt. this led to long days of handyman tasks, resume advances, sleeping in 'til noon or more, a new love for domesticated canines, and increased discovery channel viewership.

the last month has been a bit of a blur. the next month will likely result in a similar blur with an underlying theme of film-making with would be strangers in olympia, washington. we're slated to wrap on august 8th and from there i foresee that unknown potential i mentioned earlier. income will be paramount on my to-do list followed closely by shelter i can call my own which may be followed by musical endeavors in pdx.

as you trudge though this post you may be asking yourself, "what's the bottom line here?" where is all of this going? i'll oblige to answer such an inquiry with the following:

bottom line: i dearly miss the friends and family i left behind in utah (or the ones in finland). i want them to know i'm doing well. i hope that those friends and family are doing better than i and i hope against hope that i will see them all again. the thought of only seeing them for a temporay visit is quite literally (at very least it would seem) heart breaking.