Finding the words...

Some really amazing early feedback on Surfing the Middle East. From an email:

"Your trip to the Middle East and your surfing and writing is inspiring to me. I loved what you wrote about having any illusions that you were solving a crisis many have failed to solve. But you were taking actions, participating, and doing what you loved and why were only certain strategies appropriate to help this deadlocked situation, why not a novel approach. If we all are bound by certain approved actions that fail what the hell are we doing."

A Republican I could vote for...

Update: I'd vote for this guy too.

Surfing the Middle East intro (outtake)

One of the things I've learned about making Surfing the Middle East on the iPad is that over-production is a problem. It is expensive, looks too doctored, and takes away from the general grit that the rest of the project seems to have. Simply, the feel we are going for is that I could have done the whole fuckin' thing myself - tho, of course I didn't. (The production, that is.)

So today, when I drove down to Sherman Oaks, California, I walked into the film editing room--where they edit major network shows--to find that the intro for Surfing the Middle East had gone fully edited and high tech. But ... the problem was that it just wasn't the spirit of the thing. "So," I said, storming out of the studio, "I'll re-shoot the fuckin' thing myself!"

And here is one of the outtakes. (Note: It is shot on the same cannon camera that I took to the Middle East ... and yes, the trace amounts of Israeli tear gas on the camera still burns my hands.)

The Best Movie I've seen in a while: A Serious Man

Not much to type about here. Just watched A Serious Man on my laptop and it fuckin' blew my mind. The flick, by the Cohen brothers, is a gross affirmation of everything smart, sadistic and scarily true about the human condition--and questioning it.

Normally cynical asshole and film reviewer over at the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw, writes:

...the movie convincingly brings us into Larry's spacey state, somewhere between shock and trance, and brilliantly suggests that he is on the verge not of a breakdown – nothing so banal – but rather an epiphany, a vision of how he has erred, how he has lived, and what the essence of his life should be as an observant Jew, a righteous person and a serious man.

Two things:

1. I rolled out of bed at around 1:30 in the afternoon today in a pre-coffee haze, only to find that conservative (and somewhat neo con) blogger Michel J. Totten has quoted me in his new piece in the NYPost. Funny. Well... because he knows my politics don't reflect the gist of his piece. Actually, it was an impulsive comment I left on his blog a few months ago, and apparently he is now using that same quote (that can be read here, but not repeated) as the closing to one of his new chapters in his book. HELL, I say, why not?

2. Apparently 49% of Nigeria supports Al Qaeda. If anyone has any opinion on this please let me know. I'm not quite sure I have the slightest idea what any of it means.

Many Muslims described an ongoing struggle in their country between fundamentalists and modernizers, especially those who may have felt threatened by the rising tides of conservatism. Among those respondents who identified a struggle, most tended to side with the modernizers. This was especially true in Lebanon and Turkey, where 84% and 74%, respectively, identified themselves as modernizers as opposed to fundamentalists.

In Egypt and Nigeria, however, most people were pulling in the other direction. According to the poll, 59% in Egypt and 58% in Nigeria who said there was a struggle identified with the fundamentalists.