This is the most disgusting display of commercialism that I have seen since that Mexican food company accidentally bought a tasteless toy plane crashing into the WTC. The toy was meant to be put in bags of candy, and the distributor claims it was a mistake and that when they buy toys for the candy, they don't know what toys they get beforehand since everything is bought en masse).


However, the disgusting web of lies that The National Collector's Mint is weaving around this coin is reprehensible. They are currently airing commercials on television peddling this product.


This is a direct quote from their website:


Today history is being made!  For the first time ever, a legally authorized government issue silver dollar has been struck to commemorate the World Trade Center and the new Freedom Tower being erected in its place.  It's the U.S. territorial minting of the 2004 "Freedom Tower" Silver Dollar from CNMI.  Most importantly, each coin has been clad in .999 Pure Silver recovered from Ground Zero!


No, this is not a misprint. The silver used in each gleaming dollar coin is from Ground Zero! You see, when the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, a bank vault full of .999 Pure Silver bars was buried under hundreds of tons of debris. After months of salvage work, many of the bars were found. Now, the same silver that was reclaimed from the destruction has been used to create the magnificent 2004 “Freedom Tower” Silver Dollar.


Most viewers first heard about this coin via The Daily Show thought it was a great joke. But scarily enough, it's not actually a joke. Not only is the NCM grotesquely profiting from the horror of September 11th, they are now profiting from the Ground Zero workers, who are suing the lease holders of the property because no one informed them that they were going to be exposed to toxic elements. Those workers, who worked feverishly to clean up the site, are becoming the second wave of casualties of September 11th as illness sweeps over their numbers.


This coin is in no way sanctioned by the National Mint, nor is it true U.S. currency. It's just someone's grand scheme to make a tacky dollar.

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I was sick a month ago and had to be out of work for a week. Ever since, I have had my trademarked sexyphlegm cough/voice. And ever since last week, I've felt like my ears were being pressurized the way they are in airplanes, or when you change elevations as you're driving.


Back in Maryland, I hardly ever got sick. I got sick maybe once a year. Also, I never even had allergies. I barely had to use my inhaler. When I lived in California, I lived off my inhaler because it was always hard to breathe on account of my chronic bronchitus. But when I moved to Michigan, then to New York City, then to Maryland, my lungs were fine.


Well, now that I'm back home in California, I'm getting sick all over again. Like I said, a month ago I was sick. And now it seems like I'm getting sick again already? I need my inhaler more than I've needed it in the last 4 years, but I've used it all up and don't have insurance to go to the doctor to get another one. Not for another month or two at least. And then I get BlueCross BlueShield, which is awesome, because I need an inhaler, Z needs blood pressure medication and new glasses and I need contacts (wearing my headset on top of my glasses at work gives me some killer headaches).


I'm starting to wonder if California is hazardous to my health...

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I bought The Sims 2 on Saturday. And might I say that it is awesome. We had some trouble getting it running. Every time it loaded the neighborhoods, the screen flashed red and white like a disco ball. But luckily I have a damn smart husband who fixed the problem for me, and now I get to enjoy The Sims 2 along with millions of others.


The kind of god-like control was always verging on the Cliffs of Freaky-ness in The Sims. But I think it's been taken one step further with The Sims 2. In the original game, you had the sort of a third-person omniscient perspective you'd find in a fiction novel. But with The Sims 2, because you can inhabit the little home right along with your Sims, you're up close & personal. And sometimes I wonder if that's just a little too close for comfort? I mean, these sims have facial expressions and it's very intriguing, but how close is too close?


We also picked up a collectible pirate ship game called The Pirates of the Spanish Main. I think it could possibly be the only collectible game that we could get our friend, El Hombre (aka The Man aka Lorie's Husband), to play. But even he has surprised me in how fervert his distaste of anything labeled "collectible" can be. Now, we're not talking collectible action figures where you see a 24" Treebeard and you say, "Wow! That's cool! I think I'll collect it..." but more like games where what you purchase is a mystery, this usually remains in the realms of collectible card games but it does span to other games as well like HeroClix, Mage Knight, and Metallic Falcon (all of which are WizKids games).


I play with The Pirate Ship Revenge, and for some reason I just really liked the sound of that. But then I remembered that The Princess Bride sneaks into my everyday vernacular more often than I realize, and Wesley as The Dread Pirate Roberts was probably why I really thought The Pirate Ship Revenge was awesome.

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I have spent the last 5 hours listing listing crap on eBay.


Blah.


It took so freaking long.



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3 years and 2 days ago, I was living on the Upper East Side of New York City. I was fulfilling my dream by going to NYU and studying dramatic writing. I was having the best week of my life.


3 years and 1 day ago, I was in New York City having the worst day of my life, along with 8 million other people.


I did not shed a single tear yesterday. Which is a first, because the other two years had been big mourning days for me. I think I'm finally moving past everything.


I've come a long way in three years...


I've graduated college with honors in English Literature and Writing. I'm married. I've lived in our country's three biggest cities: New York, DC and now Los Angeles. I have driven across the country in a U-Haul with a cat. I've seen the Grand Canyon and a KUM & GO gas station. I am fulfilling another lifelong dream of mine by working in the film industry.


I'm pretty happy nowadays.


A lot can happen in three years.




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I've gotten a promotion. It isn't more money, not yet anyway, because no one was being given raises for at least two years because the company is so new. But their second year anniversary is coming up, but then again they did buy that company jet....


My title also doesn't really change, although a whole slough of new responsibilities are coming my way. For instance, I'm going to be working more on the pre-production of the commercials, you know, rather than just managing the office. In fact, I sat in on a conference call for a bid with Chevy today and transcribed the conversation. I transcribed the conversations for three main reasons: 1) So that everyone has the same amount of information and so no one is left behind on the creativity uptake. 2) In case they want to shoot this commercial in another country, which is often the case, there is always a lot of paperwork to fill out and they can supplement the paperwork with the transcription, which cuts down about 75% of the call volume. 3) It gets me familiar with the pre-production process.


You know, for people who make probably 6 figures a year (not including decimal points), they are not an articulate bunch. In fact, they repeat themselves repeatedly (heh) in a way that is the complete opposite of eloquent. As I went back to revise the transcription, I found myself editing their comment because they were superfluous (and because the writer inside me just couldn't bear to give people something to read which technically I had written that was "written" so poorly). I revised about 80% of the phrasing because I just couldn't stand the sentence fragments, dangling participles, and the over-usage of the word "cool." I am probably 30 years younger than everyone who was in that conference call, and it was the 23 year old who was getting uptight about the intelligence of the conversation. Everyone always automatically understood each other, even when they were being hopelessly vague, or nonsensical. I guess when you're a director who just wants a job, you're going to put up with agency splooge because in the end you're in control of where the camera goes. You're in control... until the agency sees the final cut, and then they say, "We want more footage of the product." Then it's back to the editing board. But I digress.


I'm also going to start writing treatments for the directors. This is infinitely cool because theoretically I could make a living writing treatments as a way to support myself through grad school. I see how much treatment writers make ($900 flat rate... and that's for a treatment of a commercial. I can't imagine how much a treatment writer makes for a documentary or a feature).


Lydia, my boss, and basically everyone's boss, went to the doctor today and the doctor told her that she is to stay in bed until her son is born (she's about to pop, but she isn't supposed to pop for another 25 days, and she was supposed to go on leave in 10 days, but now she's leaving us sooner than anticipated). She is the head of production and post-production, so she handles everything. She works like 12-16 hour days, but still shows up every morning at 8:30 AM on the dot. We're currently in the midst of working on about 15 commericals, not including the ones we're bidding on. This does not include the documentaries either. I answer the phones, and seriously, she'll get anywhere from 3 to 5 calls at once, everyone needing something different, and she'll systemically talk to each one of them. I can't imagine why she has high blood pressure and the doctor is making her de-stress her life... Sheesh.


We were already planning for the time when Lydia was going on maternity leave, but it's getting bumped up 2 weeks ahead of schedule, which is a problem, since the lady replacing Lydia has only been there two days shadowing Lydia and she could barely remember our names. Anyway, that is forcing a lot of the nitty gritty details of pre-production upon Lisa and myself. I'm going to start making pre-pro books and maintaining our pre-pro book website. The pre-pro book is like the guide that keeps everything together and on track. It has the director, the producer, the agency, the client, the talent, the pre-pro crew, the production crew, the post-pro crew, location scounts, vendors, storyboards, and everything pertinent to the job in it. So I'm going to have to keep in close contact with everybody to make sure I get all of the necessary information so I can keep them on track.


The coolest part of my job, though, I think will be the location research. Lisa and I will be given specific things to look for, like windmills, and we'll systemically search the Internet collecting as much information (and pictures) as we can. Then we'll narrow the selections to the most asethetically appealing ones. So she and I are going to play a big role in where commercials are going to be shot.


I may not be making more money at the moment, but I think my job is hecka cool.



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So I missed out on going to a taping of Jeopardy. I felt a little left out--damn this whole working nonsense! I've never been to a taping before. But I guess I live here now, so I'm sure I'll make it to some show eventually. I'd like to go to a taping of Joey, since I never got to go to a taping of Friends or Seinfeld.


I spend 10 hours a week in traffic. I am not exaggerating. Oh okay, maybe I am. It only took me 53 minutes to drive into work this morning, but last night it took me 76 minutes to get home, so really it all averages out to about 2 hours day to drive 34 miles (round trip)... In one year, 52 weeks of driving, that is 520 hours of traffic. That translates to about 22 days of my life spent in traffic. The average commuter in Los Angeles, according by the report on MSNBC, spends 93 hours in traffic. I feel really jipped. I am going to spend about 5 times as much, uh, time, on the road than other Los Angeles dwellers.


I find this infinitely depressing.


We really need to move closer to my job. I don't want to waste nearly a month of my life in the parking lot known as the 405.


Although, I must say I am enjoying the books on tape (well really CD) I borrowed from the library. It's keeping me amused. Better than the radio, anyway. L.A. may be huge, and have a pleathora of radio stations to choose from, but I hate them all.


The books on tape serve as a constant reminder of much I'm in the car. Last week, I went through two books, one was over six hours long and the other was over four hours long. I'm currently listening to the unabridged Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, and the narrator is actually really good (not as good as Tim Curry in my opinion, but still good), and this one is over 8 hours long... It's Thursday and I'm on disc 6 (of 8) already. I guess I'm right on track as far as ratios are concerned, hours of driving : hours of books on CD.


But it's still depressing.


I'll tell ya man... as much as I love my apartment in the Valley, I think when the lease is up in November we're moving closer to my job.

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Wow. I was able to drive all the way home from Santa Monica and stop at RadioShack and buy a digital organizer for $29.99, be hit on by the employee, and still make it home in less than an hour!


I feel special.


Not by the pick-up line, but by how efficent of a driver I am!

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