snacking update

it's been three weeks since i started the no-snack experiment. results so far:

• i've dropped three pounds (1 pound per week = 3500 calories per week = 500 calories per day. makes sense. i was probably eating about 500 calories in snacks per day).
• i feel thinner even though i would say i look the same.
• i drink more water (instead of snacking).
• i am less attracted to sugary food. in fact i don't think about it much at all. i used to crave sugar regularly. i wouldn't say that craving is gone altogether, but much reduced.
• i seem to naturally select nutritious foods during meals.
• i enjoy the food i am eating more, much more. knowing that what i am eating is it for the next few hours shifts my attitude toward it.
• i am less compelled to eat seconds, which for me was about hording, competing, racing and probably has something to do with being trained as a child to clean my plate for seconds.
• i feel more in control in my life. this one was unexpected.
• i never feel bloated.
• it has been easy to stay faithful, even enjoyable, unlike any other food regime i've tried.

edge portrait

this idea came to me late one night: to take a bunch of little pictures of someone, just of their edge, then layer them to create an outline portrait. here's the first one.

body stuff

okay, i'm sick of putting on weight. i'm a gay man and figure is important! so, i'm giving up snacks. i've tried diets, workouts, eating this, not that, eating that, not this. i've carefully combined foods, been a vegetarian, a carnivore, i've forsaken dairy and i've eaten pints of ice cream in a single sitting. i've slimmed my belly in photoshop. so, rather than add another impossible-to-maintain practice, i decided to keep it simple and real: no snacks.

i can tell its working already. i'm hungry before meals--a nice feeling actually--that's so different from the perpetually stuffed feeling i've grown accustomed to (as has my belly). stomachs hold only so much and this no-snacker "plan" takes advantage of that. i figure three meals a day, no snacks, that's just about the right amount of food for me. if i only eat two or three times a day, how can i really overeat? there's just not room. when i'm hungry, i tend to be attracted to healthier food, too, so i don't really have to worry about downing too many sweets. i do like a little chocolate before meals!

at dhamma dhara, where i meditate, we get two meals a day. in ten days i usually drop 5 to 7 pounds. i drink a lot of water, a dixie cup or two an hour. at least two of the pounds must be mental trash going out the door! but a lot of it is real weight loss, which just goes to prove that i'm on the right track with snackhibition. the two meals are breakfast and lunch, both vegetarian, no snacking between. this regime produces deep sleep with vivid (and informative!) dreams.

it's been fun to notice when and how often i feel like snacking. since i seem think about snacks almost as much as sex, it's clear i was a snackaholic. i'm thrilled by the sense of control i'm feeling when i ignore my snack attacks. not being a victim to an open bag of chips is profoundly empowering. going into a meal knowing i can eat it all guilt free makes dining almost ecstatic. americans are terrorized by food and the food industry. they've convinced us we need food all day long. forget drugs, it's time to declare a war on snacks.

Star Trek Phase 2: Behind the Scenes

On the Set of Star Trek Phase II: Making of the Child By Matt Bucy
View in HD  Download 404p Version  Visit Matt Bucy's ExposureRoom Videos Page

i shot this video last fall during the production of a new episode of classic star trek called "the child." peter west assisted me with shooting and editing.

Maine Media Workshop

i spent a week in rockport, maine last summer at the maine media workshops. above is a short exercise i directed. we had two hours to come up with the story, choose a location, light and shoot. it was fun to screen this at the end-of-week showcase. it got good audience response. it had a beach boys "good vibrations" soundtrack, but i nixed it here. mara laine came up with the story idea--to use books titles as a dialog--which was great, and i came up with the idea to use the bookstore ladder as a dolly as well as the device that connects the two characters. jim mcgathey directed the lighting and championed the use of "kino on the floor", which i didn't like at first but i have to hand it to him, it works! he also stars. george lamboy set the lights and kept us all in order! i'm afraid i can't remember the name of the actress (apologies).

interviews

i'm in new orleans shooting interviews for a friend, tim wolff, who is directing a film, "the sons of tennessee williams". it's about gay social clubs, the men who pioneered them in the 1960s and 70s and the men who sustain them today. gay men in new orleans took a unique path to carve out rights for themselves. they produced fantastic costume balls that provided a non-confrontational, but edgy, interface between straight and gay culture that tested and ultimately prevailed over anti-gay laws.

our little town

a great video by eva sollberger about our annual halloween parade in white river junction. it's part of a series eva makes called "stuck in vermont".

star trek phase 2

here i am in my second episode, seated 2nd from the left.

my friend peter west came along to check out the production for a few days. we're going to be flying to new orleans next week to help friend tim wolff shoot his documentary about gay krewes. i'll be there with peter for a week.

burp

excuse me. i am still here. but, boy, have i not had time to write! advice: never plan three intense projects for one summer with the hopes that two of them won't happen. like people who don't like cats and always have cats jumping on them, they will all happen. and all will require your undivided attention, just like a cat.

got me some new thangs

i got new glasses. i got a macbook. together, these resulted in this picture.

lights

dreamland's got lights! a generous donor gave me about 30 lights for the dreamland performance space/soundstage today. they're old, but in great condition, generally, and should allow me to set up a lighting grid sooner than later with the ability to light small performances decently. i think i ought to be able to use these for film production too, but they lack barn doors and filter holders and are set up to clamp onto pipe rather than c-stands. very excited!

star trek phase 2

barbara luna in "mirror mirror"

me as a security guard (from barbara luna's website)

i briefly mentioned earlier that i am working on new star trek episodes with a dedicated group of fans. i mentioned one afternoon to an acquaintance that i'd like to do some sci-fi shorts and she told me about the production of new star trek episodes in upstate new york, about two hours from white river. so, i emailed james, the actor who plays kirk and who is the force behind the new episodes, who forwarded my message onto a guy named "sarge" and voila, i was engaged to volunteer. i couldn't wait to see the sets!

i arrived well into the shoot because i had other obligations, namely taking the production lighting course at the maine media workshop. so, i arrived well prepared to jump into studio production. but, i didn't expect to be put in front of the camera, which is what happened within minutes of my arrival. better yet, i got to act with one of the original star trek actresses, barbara luna, who played kirk's girlfriend in the episode "Mirror Mirror". she taught me how to fall when phasered.

i will be returning to the set in a couple weeks to assist in shooting "pick-ups", shots that are needed but didn't get shot during the principal photography. and i will be returning for another episode's production in october.

you can watch the new episodes here: www.startrekphase2.com

dreamland in the news

the dreamland studio made it into the news... check it out

cigarette diaries

peter and i whipped this up a couple weeks ago. he just quit smoking. rated R for language and sexual content.

vote for me

politics (grrr)

i've been loosely following the presidential campaign. yesterday i read that mccain's latest televison ad says the following: "Beautiful words cannot not make our lives better." i thought, well, that's it in a nutshell: if a politician believes that language, the foundation of so much of our culture, and the precursor to almost all action, especially political action, has no potential to better our lives, then how does one make better? it's painfully clear, thanks to the current administration, that ugly and deceitful words lead to ugly action, for which we have paid and will be paying, in blood, sweat and tears, for decades, and for the betterment of who? i believe it's difficult, if not impossible, to write beautiful words without beautiful thought. beautiful action is the result of beautiful thought. our lives are manifestly and directly made better by the beautiful: thought, words and action, an intimately linked trio. i'll be voting for the candidate whose words suggest he's thinking beautifully. sorry john.

location lighting

i just returned from a couple weeks of filmmaking. the first week was a workshop at the maine media workshops where matt seigel, cinematographer, led fourteen of us on a most excellent journey exploring the world of location lighting for film and video. we explored about ten different locations around rockport and camden, maine, where the media workshops are located, lit and shot film and video at six of them. the learning curve was steep for all of us in the workshop, i think, but i came out of it feeling like i'd been through half of film school. matt is a great teacher and i know because right after the class i found myself on the set of a fan-produced star trek episode in upstate new york where i not only discovered everything matt taught us in the workshop came true on set but also got to act with star trek original series actress barbara luna who played marlena moreau, kirk's girlfriend, in the episode, "mirror mirror." it was a great follow up to the workshop because i felt awfully proud when the director of photography told me to "get a 650, drop a single into it with a party red" and i knew what he was talking about. the episode in which i appear (for about five seconds) will be delivered on the internet next year.

new camera

i've been learning my new hi-def camera. this is a short little movie i made from shots i took yesterday, taken without the intention on making a movie, but cut together pretty nicely i thought. the subject: things that are still juxtaposed with things that move, with a brief into and outro from main street museum curator, david ford, who graciously divulged his inspiration just before heading off to a hartford historical society meeting on his bicycle (that shot got cut i'm afraid, though it was nice). i'm using a 35mm lens adapter which allows me to mount my nikon SLR lenses on my video camera. it makes for wonderful shallow depth of field and a look that usually doesn't come from a video camera. while i think the movie falls apart about halfway through, my intention was to run all the way through the production process to see how it worked, from shooting, to editing, to color correcting, to sound editing and finally compressing for the web, a process that took me through five different pieces of software. i'm happy with the result. it even sounds good on crappy little speakers!

energy

with all the hype and fear about energy lately, it's interesting to take an objective look at it. i found this chart, produced by the government. it sheds some interesting light on our current energy use (2004). the most astounding fact is that of all the energy we consume, only 38% of it gets used, the rest is wasted. for instance, of the power an electrical plant produces, only 31% is useful energy, the rest is lost in the system. compare this to nature, specifically plants, which use photosynthesis to capture the sun's energy. they do this at near 100% efficiency, wasting almost nothing, and they contribute to the ecosystem. the human habit of consuming fossil fuels contributes little beneficial to the environment (excess heat, excess carbon dioxide, chemical waste, poor air quality, etc). vehicles are particularly dismal at around 20% efficient (the other 80% is lost to friction, so perhaps in the winter they're a bit more "useful" because the heat generated by the friction is used to warm the passenger compartment!). clearly, if we're all going to survive without immense decreases in quality of life, we have to become more efficient. the easiest way is not to participate in activities that use lots of energy, and the second easiest way is to, if one has to use energy, use it efficiently. incandescent light bulbs are among the most energy inefficient devices in existence, between 2% and 13% depending on the bulb. just a tiny fraction of the energy consumed by a light bulb produces visible light! the rest of the energy produces heat. when you consider that the electricity reaching one's home is just 31% of the energy consumed and multiply that by an incadescent bulb's efficiency of 8.5% on average, we get an overall efficiency of just 2.6%. that's 3800% less efficient than your average house plant, which happens to be the most efficient energy "appliance" in your house.

mini update

i had a fun birthday a couple days ago, spread out over a weekend, in white river junction and at faerie camp destiny. my friend jon showed up in ghoulish attire for our green screen shoot that gabriel and jade arranged. otherwise, life is very busy for me right now. i really need to clean my office. it has reached levels of chaos unparalleled!