this is josh g

I read a news item today that would make a good short story or short film. In San Diego they were preapring to have to kick these seals off a beach that they’ve made their own. This part of the beach is meant to be for swimming, so some swimmers complained about it, and a judge upheld a motion to force the city to clear the beach of seals. Various pro-seal enviros were outraged. And the seals are federally protected, so the city couldn’t kick them out by force.

The city decided they would try and run the seals out of town by having a guy walk the beach with a loudspeaker system blasting the sound of barking dogs. There was this great bit at the end of the story about how they were pretty sure that the pro-seal groups were going to be so angry, they would physically assault the guy.

I started think, who is this guy? He knows the risks, he needs the cash, he’s kind of an odd jobs guy. What makes him decide to do it? How long will the job last? And who are the pro-seal fanatics who are going to beat this guy up? It has a great sort of showdown at high noon tension to it, and there will be seals in it, and a loudspeaker blaring dog barks. Got a great feel to it.

Not sure how it ends, but definitely at some point he gets knocked to the ground and the speaker falls over, breaking a bit so the barking becomes distorted and weird and we go to a wide shot of the beatdown with this crazy noise blaring.

They were going to send cops out with him, so somehow they’ve got to become distracted, maybe the pro-seal folks stage a massive crime diversion that calls the cops away.

There’s also something I love about the idea of a militant pro-seal group.

Schwarzenegger ended up giving the seals a reprieve, sparing us all the drama and the violence, but it’s crying out to be a short film, I swear. Or maybe I’ll write it up as a short story. Hmm.

Read the original story here.

UPDATE – more ideas:

– the guy (our protagonist) ends up doing it because he’s sentenced to community service by a judge

– he got busted on drug charges and at one point has some kind of revelation about how strange it is that he was jailed for love (of drugs) and the protesters beating him up are acting out of hate (even though they are supposedly acting out of love for the seals)

– they try various other methods to get the seals out which don’t work (high pitched bubbles, etc.) before coming up with the dog barking

– maybe the protagonist is a woman? makes the beatdown even more intense

Dig it. The cups part is particularly spectacular.

Cups.

A mindblower for Friday. We watched Herzog’s latest doc "Encounters at the end of the world" the other night, and it’s pretty darn great. There’s all kinds of amazing-ness going on in there, as Herzog takes a trip to Antarctica to see what the people down there do, and why. Perhaps not as mind-blowing for me personally as "Wheel of time", but still, just an absolute amazing trip into the wonders of nature, reality and humanity. Here’s a truly unbelievable part about the sounds of these Antarctic seals…

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Yes, those are the real sounds of the seals!

I know we’ve all seen lots of these infomercials, and laughed ironically at them. At one point when I was working on Weddings of a Lifetime I ended up working with a bunch of guys who made an infomercial that i loved (something about a microwave reflector that allowed things to stay crispy in the microwave) and those guys knew they were making something that college kids would geek out over when stoned late at night.

Still, for some reason I find this mesmerizing.

I have to say, I’m tired tired tired of all the MW boring tribute crap…

That said, I love Jay Smooth, and he uses MW’s death as a platform to meditate on camera awareness, brand management and what filmed images will mean to the future…and he does it really well…be sure to stick around for the end to see the woman dancing bit…

I can’t get this image out of my head. Maybe you won’t be able to either. I feel sorry for us both, but it’s good to have company here.

Hey, we love Pes, right? The bombing thing with the peanut, the mini rubix-cube mayhem, the chairs having sex…

I like this one a lot…it’s short, but somewhere in the middle of it you find yourself kind of forgetting that he’s skating on a guy — it begins to seem weirdly normal…or normally weird…

Chali 2na’s voice is just so amazing. I’ve got his other solo album, and I guess he’s got a new one coming out, and it’s all just kind of ok, with a handful of tracks veering into really good. But in Jurassic 5 he totally shines, as this voice that’s so powerful but so fun somehow — he brings it to most every track.

This video is pretty good. The guy who sings the chorus isn’t that good (plus, what’s with "watch us bubble"? that ain’t gonna be cool) and Talib Kweli shows up and doesn’t really do anything special (which is rare?), but Chali 2na is still awesome, and the video has some fun touches. The text is cool.

Also this is the first time I’ve been able to see the face behind that voice, and I have to say he…pretty much looks like I thought he would. The beat is also pretty sci-fi fresh. Dig it.

Chali 2na "Lock Shit Down" Ft Talib Kweli