Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead

Most of you know I've worked on documentary television and films, as well as  other random commercial, scripted feature, and reality television projects.

People who work in film and television can often become a bit critical of their audio-visual entertainment. It makes sense: if you know what goes on behind the scenes, you're more likely to be critical when something isn't done well. Like a chef at a shitty restaurant, you want your entertainment to be good and when it's not, it's frustrating.

But to be honest, as much as I can be critical of movies and television, I've also tried to relax a bit and just enjoy my viewing pleasures.

A rare gem in the documentary world is to find a documentary film that is both informative and really entertaining. Supersize Me is a great example of a film that accomplished this. Michael Moore does it sometimes. Religiosity did it mostly.

But the most recently documentary film that has caught my attention (thanks to Marcus who found it for us) is called Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead. And it just so happens to be streaming (recently released) on Netflix!

I highly recommend you see this movie. I won't give too much away other than it's about a dude who was fat, sick and nearly dead, and his journey of healing and transformation.

If you don't have netflix, try these links to view a streaming copy on your computer, or you can go to the movie's website: http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/ and support the filmmaker by buying a DVD.


http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/watch-1926963-Fat-Sick-and-Nearly-Dead



Please let me know what you think.


Here's to your health!

Told Ya! (Now will you see Temple Grandin?)

I hate to say it, but,

okay, maybe I don't hate it that much because clearly, I'm going to say it...


I told ya!!

Now if you haven't seen Temple Grandin yet, maybe you will now.

If you have seen Temple Grandin, tell a friend!

Temple Grandin is fantastic and Emmy agrees. Temple Grandin won FIVE Emmy's, including one for Claire Danes' performance as the titular character, and one for best picture.

See this movie. It'll make you laugh and cry. Truly a remarkable film and story. I suspect HBO will re-air it, and it should be available soon on netflix. I was able to view it on a friend's DVR, so if you don't have DVR yourself, make a friend who does. And as always, let me know what you think.

Trailer

Nighaaa, beef! Moo!

A few years ago, I spent a month in China working on a documentary feature. The film was called Nanking and overall it was a very positive and eye-opening experience.

But this blog is not really about the documentary, though I probably should write a blog about the film. This blog is about beef jerky, sharing, and crossing language barriers.

With the exception of our translators and a lead PA/2nd2ndAD, the majority of the crew we hired in China did not speak English. All I can say is, the translators were an absolute necessity. Thank God for them.

We had several Americans that we traveled to China to work on the film. One of them was our Camera Assistant Anthony, who I've worked with and seen only sporadically throughout the last 8 years. Great guy. Great sense of humor.

So, we're filming in a relatively thin-walled building that doesn't have enough space for Anthony, myself (I was line producing but realistically, I was doing the call sheet, budget, and sort of managing the Chinese and American crew so who knows what my proper title was - Line Producer is sufficient, I suppose). Anyway, I was outside with Anthony and the Chinese gaffer, whose name I unfortunately cannot remember. We (the Americans) nicknamed him Palak Paneer because he spoke mandarin with what sounded like, to us, an Indian accent. Inappropriate? Maybe. Funny? Definitely.

So, Palak Paneer is sitting in the grip truck, a Vanagon looking thing that was really more of a van than a truck; Anthony and I are hanging around outside.

Palak Paneer leans out the window with a bag of something that resembles dried leather strips and gestures to Anthony. Then he whispers, with his Indian-sounding mandarin accent/broken English/mandarin. "Ant-tony, Ant-tony...Nighaaa, beef! Moo!"

Anthony and I immediately busted up laughing. Firstly because the words were so funny. Secondly, because it was so damn cute and funny with Palak Paneer hanging out the van window in a generous attempt to share his beef jerky. Also, just in case he didn't have the name right, he made the animal sound - "Moo" so we would be sure to know what animal product he had in his hand. The word "nigha" as I understand it, translates to "this" so you'll hear it often in mandarin conversations.

Immediately I felt bad for using the nickname Palak Paneer and vowed to learn how to pronounce his proper name.

The moral?

Share your food. In your language, or your friend's language. It actually doesn't matter, the message will come across.

Nigha, beef! Moo!

The People Whisperer - My Video for Oprah!

Oprah has a contest for people to get their own television/talk show, and I thought the show Marcus and I have been developing around the work he does with his clients and students would be a natural fit. When the show gets made, I'll likely be the host and resident Hypnotherapist, but for this short submission, we centered things around Marcus. But getting this to Oprah depends on how many votes the video gets... So, all you have to do is go to Oprah's website by CLICKING HERE and voting by clicking the GREEN button below the video.

Share this with everyone you know. Voting closes July 3. YOU WANT TO SUPPORT The Video? CLICK HERE to now vote at Oprah's site. Remember, YOUR VOTING NOW Really Makes a Difference. We didn't do it alone though. We had a lot of help. As you can see, Marcus was on camera a majority of the filming, so that left a lot of the logistics to me... I did too many jobs to mention, including sound mixing, producing, and production manager, but I promise I'll hire out once we get funding. We had an amazing DP Allan Palmer, an amazing producer, and Jayme who gracious gave of his resources as well. Also, we could not have done this without Marcus' students, who graciously gave of their time and energy. All in all, it was amazing, and we got it all done in one week. Thank you everybody! One last reminder to VOTE!

P.S. If the links above don't work or if you want to forward the exact link, please use the full link here or try pasting this into your browser.

http://myown.oprah.com/audition/index.html?request=video_details&response_id=19017&promo_id=1
__________________________________________________

If you miss my regular, writing blogs, they will start up again now that I'm done with this project. Stay tuned for more, though we must ROCK THE VOTE! until July 3rd!


If you received this from a friend and want to subscribe, click KatieStrandWorld, and enter your email address on the right column. Thanks!

Memorial Day Dreams

Last night I had one of the most unexpected dreams I've had in a while.

Here's the background of the players:

I was working for this guy, Jeremy, who I worked for in 2008 for about 2 months. Jeremy was a friend of mine and he had hopes of selling his company to me when he retired (with the money I'd make as his protege), as he liked me, and thought I'd do the job well. It was in music business, by the way.

Well, I did not like the job and the job did not like me. It might've had something to do with his #2 guy, who was unclear and difficult to work with - for me at least. It might've had something to do with the fact that a lot of my professional life has been spent working behind the scenes in television and film. Some may think the tv/film industry is crazy and weird, but it is usually organized. At least the stuff I work on which tends to be fully-funded, documentaries or commercials that are actually seen by more than family and friends. No offense intended to the low-budget stuff, but I've heard the low-budget productions are beasts of disorganization and disgruntlement. From what I understand this usually arises from giving too many inexperienced people jobs they don't know how to do. The ones who are experienced can't always tame the beast to make things run smoothly, so there are lots of snags and unforeseen obstacles.Well, the music business made the television and film business look ethical, organized and sane. (At least that's how it felt to me.) Ultimately, I left the job. Jeremy and I, unfortunately, haven't really hung out since then. But he pops into my mind from time to time, and I miss his friendship. He's crass and hard-nosed, but ultimately a good, smart guy with a great, albeit sick, sense of humor.

Here's the basic run-down of the dream:

I was working for Jeremy again, only I was hired by a few of the guys that I hired as interns during my brief stay in his company. Jeremy was out of town. His #2 guy was no longer with the company. There was something about that in the dream. Oh, yes. There it is. (I had to dig it out of my dream memory.) #2 was fired because he started using and dealing some sort of drugs again. No bueno. So anyway, I'm working at his company, sort of as the office manager or something (a job, for the record, I am not interested in), and all of us who worked there (a very pleasant bunch this time around), went to Jeremy's house to fix something up before he returned from his vacation. When Jeremy returned, this previously single and child-less man came home with a wife and child. The child was brown (which Jeremy is not, nor was his dream-wife), a la Sandra Bullock's adoption, and his wife was a 40 year-old woman who was gorgeous and retired rock-star or something.

The dream ended with me working at a tall, almost star-trek like station (but set in dark wood) that was 6 feet tall and like a command station. Well, this thing would not stop beeping. Like a truck backing up, beep.....beep.....beep.....beep. Every 3 seconds. I kept pushing buttons and I even turned it off and it still beeped! Turns out it was Marcus' dialysis machine signaling something wasn't working right and I had just integrated it into my dream.

I had to call Jeremy this morning to tell him about my dream. It was nice. I was a little nervous, but ultimately we had a nice little chat and we have tentative plans to get together next week. He has no brown child that he knows of, though maybe that's in his future.... The power of suggestion.

I plan on doing a full interpretation of this dream since I know how to do that now (part of hypnotherapy training), so I'll let you all know if anything interesting arises. I am curious to learn what my subconscious mind is venting or trying to tell me.

Maybe it was brought on by Memorial Day. I know Memorial Day is for remembering those men and women who died serving our country, but maybe my subconscious wanted to extend it to loved ones I've lost touch with. So, it gave me this dream to facilitate reuniting. Looks like my subconscious is my friend again, after only a few days of distention and resistance. Whew!

More Interesting Katie Strand World Posts

 
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• Foreplay is overrated
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• The Hawaiian Islands and Washington D.C.'s sand-paper circle-jerk about Health Care
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My Addendum to "Choose a Job You Love..."

Confucius is credited with many wise and sometimes humorous expressions. One of my favorites is, Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

(It's worth noting that my first exposure to Confucius was my father saying, Confucius say, don't pee into the wind. I don't even know if that's a real Confucianism! Thanks, Dad, for many things but especially, being a major influence on my sense of humor!)


Most anyone over the age of twenty-five knows that, while the Confucianism above is right-on, the application is sometimes...more complicated. I love story-telling and two branches of that for me are music (all aspects including writing, playing and performing), and film-making. I choose these two things as my primary professions because a) I've been singing since age three and playing piano since age five! But music was somewhat unreliable about making steady income so I needed a second thing so I choose b) film-making, which we'll use as a general term to include all aspects of television, film and commercial production, since I've worked in all three bastard-children of the film business. My professional life has been some blend of these two things for the past 8 years or so.

But as I've gotten older, I've realized that while the aforementioned vocations do fulfill certain needs in me, sometimes, especially with film-making, I just don't feel like it. Coincidentally, when I don't feel like it usually coincides with when I'm doing logistical work in film-making, but it has caused me to reassess.

I suppose what's happened is that I want to help people more than film-making or music has allowed me to. I suppose any profession has the potential to help people, and maybe I'm in the process of parlaying these two vocations into more benevolent acts, still...it's led me to explore other things. In 2008 I got a master's degree in Spiritual Psychology. I'm in the process of being a certified Hypnotherapist. I'm working on a relationship book and supporting Marcus on writing his book. I'm taking classes. Again.

But what's the moral here? Well, I suspect that even if I found something that I absolutely loved to do that also made me enough money where I didn't have to think of or do another... I still might be taking classes and seeing what else I could do. I suspect that's just me.

When I was younger, I felt like this was a liability. I felt more restless in my constantly-seeking-Susan-ness. Now, I kind of like it. Though I've made some modifications. I've found that if I keep it to three, my holy trinity of sorts, things go better. What that looks like, is me focusing on three main things and not allowing other interests or distractions to pull me off-course (as they often did in my younger days). So my holy trinity right now is: Music; Writing (blog & book); and Hypnotherapy. The beach volleyball, film-making, martial arts, cooking and spiritual coaching are all fun and enjoyable, but they're in support of the big three. For financial reasons I look for and take extra film work when I need extra money, and I plan on parlaying music, writing and potentially hypnotherapy into television shows that are entertaining, creative and support people living more fulfilled lives. (Creative ideas still in development, and probably not all three in the same show. Though what a trip that would be!).

So what's the addendum to the Confucianism, Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life?

How about Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life... Also, stay curious and open. What you love may shift and grow...

More Interesting Katie Strand World Posts

• The Primal Diet & Running
• Chop Wood, Carry Water, Do Taxes
• The male member revealed
• Play with the Girls
• How to tame the psycho hose beast
• Oh boy, that's a good question! or How to Deal with the Census
• These boots were made for walking
• If I were a Ninja, I'd wear these shoes
• How my friend Sally became the new First Lady
• My Boyfriend has Autism...Maybe
• Raw Primal Papaya Custard - The Nectar of the Gods
  
• And All the Cows Said Moo!
• If you were John Mayer, you would too
• Tiredness - Varieties of and unforeseen side-effects
• Foreplay is overrated
• Food should be As God Intended or Why isn't everything we eat organic?
• Yelling - One of the Highest Forms of Compassion
  
• The Cove - Louie Psihoyos' Oscar speech & a guide on how to create change...
• My Favorite Things...Arrabiata Recipe - Fresh, Organic, Vegan or Primal
• My Favorite Shows on Television...or how David Duchovney & Jesus are likely Good in Bed
• The Hawaiian Islands and Washington D.C.’s sand-paper circle-jerk about Health Care
• My Buddha has Termites...A Lesson in Infinite Joy
• The One-Date-Wonders!
• I had to learn SIGN LANGUAGE when I moved to Los Angeles
• Guys can make a game out of anything
• Hello? The power of CONNECTING and how technology has changed things
• Popping the question is better than porn!
• Bravo, Stephen Colbert & Co! and your Olympic Vancouverage
• Songwriting is like SEX
• Born To Run by Christopher McDougall - Inspiring a inspiring all of us to be more in the FLOW
• A moment of silence for all the plastic surgery ca...
• Ricky Gervais should be the new Simon on American Idol
• Muscle SURPRISE! The key to physical, mental & emotional fitness
• I think my boyfriend's a snake...
• Release... Sweat & Power
• MY FAVORITE THINGS! - Vibram's Five Fingers
• Dick Morris... How do you sleep at night?
• Rusty DePass, Gorillas, and Obama, oh my!
• Michael Jackson - Troubled Genius

New Music
&
Posts 

at
Katie Strand Music

• Please Don't Leave Me
• Going To California
  
• Come Back
• Home