A Toothless Life - Back Stage Boogie Band - Dir. Jeph Porter

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A Toothless Life

The Ways I'm Going Blind

Back Stage Boogie Band

Dir. Jeph Porter

Why does this excite me?

Because it's the first step in the creation of a death ray! I knew those scientist couldn't be trusted! You heard it here first!

Web 2.0 - the movie

The Machine is Us/ing Us

more here

Happy Halloween!

What is everyone going to be? I haven't decided.

Here's a skull you can make for yourself.

Clean 'dem dishes...

A while pack I did a post featuring my friend Lauren Adams and her photography. And while checking my Google Reader (which if you haven't used, it is amazing) I saw that she kindly linked to my other blog The Strange Case. So I figured I'd do her one back and write something up on her page.

DirtyDishes... is a look into the everyday life and mind of Lauren. See her sleep, drive, and work and find out what she likes to do from day to day. She's pretty good at keeping it updated so if your hankering for some voyeurism this should do the job. I honestly think I see her more online then I do in real life. But at least its something.

Anyway, check it out, subscribe to it and keep up to date. She needs to figure out how to allow comments though because some of these things are just begging for it.

Reptiles on the loose!

Probably one of the funniest things ever. Amazing what people will believe if they want to.

New Homepage

So if you pop over to dirtycricket.net you can see a new homepage I put up.


This is the start of "the portal" if you will. From there you can access this blog and what will be the press kits for various films of mine. I'm going to be adding more features as time goes on, so keep an eye out.

p.s. click the boat

2012 stuff

I have a friend who interviewed Daniel Pinchbeck for a documentary he is working on. The impression he left me with was that all the book selling and stuff went to his head and now he's sort of a douche. But then again I would be too if a bunch of hippies liked my book.

Atlas Shrugged a book in review

So I finally made it through the brick that is Atlas Shrugged. And after one thousand one hundred and sixty eight pages in my centennial edition I’m wondering how I feel about it all.

I read The Fountainhead at the end of this summer and I was so floored by the philosophy set down in that book that I wanted to continue it into Atlas Shrugged. And it does continue as Ayn Rand herself says on the first page of the book:

“To all readers who discovered The Fountainhead and asked me many questions about the wider application of its ideas, I want to say that I am answering these questions in the present novel and that The Fountainhead was only an overture to Atlas Shrugged.”

Beautiful, an overture, I love music. And I did discover The Fountainhead and I was asking “many questions about the wider application of its ideas”! How could I go wrong with Atlas Shrugged?

Well I think the problem is, I don’t like her “wider applications.” See to me The Fountainhead was and is much more philosophical in nature and Atlas Shrugged is much more political and economical, hence the application. Just like Marx was a philosopher and Lenin and Stalin where politicians, the same can be said of these two books; my apologies however for using a communist analogy when discussing the works of Ayn Rand.

Because if you are not familiar with Rand you should know that she hates Communism. I suspect this has a lot to do with her being born in Russia in 1905 during those revolutionary years that lead to the cold war Russia we all know and love. And seeing what that particular form of Communism did to Russia, her homeland, I’m sure no one can blame her for taking such a disliking to it. But I think that is a very important part of the narrative of her life that one must consider when interpreting the ideas she lays down in Atlas Shrugged.

The overall message being summed up in the oath the central characters take:

“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”

But women, they can do whatever the hell they want.

And that is the basics of her philosophy that she introduces in The Fountainhead and “applies” in Atlas Shrugged. She is a champion of the ego and a believer in selfishness. Not that one should take as much as one can for oneself, but rather that one should take pride in ones work and one should not compromise for anything but the fulfillment of ones desires.

After reading The Fountainhead my first question was: Wasn’t Hitler fulfilling his desires? Aren’t people that rob and steal attempting to fulfill a desire to rob and steal? Where is the line? Well Atlas Shrugged has the answers, apparently.

The application of her philosophy is nothing more then controlled Fascism. She paints a picture of strong almost god-like characters who are above and beyond the normal person, or “second-raters” or “looters” as she chooses to call them, and they adhere to a code of conduct that includes such rules as: No violence is to be used unless used against them first (Which is so horribly broken at the end of Atlas Shrugged when one of the characters kills an innocent man, his only crime being that he is a victim of society and thus in Rand’s point of view not worthy of his life). Two, no one should “give” anyone anything without proper value exchange (i.e. cold hard cash). And there are a few of other loose ideas they claim to follow, but of course can be broken whenever their superior intellect sees fit to change the rules. So basically you have Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and a bit of current U.S. politics tossed into a room and told they can’t kill anyone unless they have a really good reason. And of course Hitler says the Jews are breaking the economy and starts killing them, Mussolini says something similar and starts killing poor people and The White House just shoots the first brown person is sees and claims they had a bomb.

In short Rand is painting the exact opposite of Socialism, which we all know is Fascism, that’s why the German’s and the Russian’s didn’t get along during WWII. But once you’re knee deep in Atlas Shrugged it doesn’t appear that way, thus making it very effective propaganda. I’m no friend of stupid people or people that don’t want to work or think for themselves and just want to steal other people’s money, but at the same time she makes me feel like I should go knock on the door of Exxon Mobil and cuddle up with their CEO and tell him I still love him.

The thing that makes her arguments so strong in fact is the major flaw of her work. These god-like characters she presents do not exist, no matter how hard she tries to tell you that they do.

“I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don’t exist. That this book has been written, and published, is my proof that they do”

What? A bunch of dedicated industrialist who are out there producing their little heads off with no concern whatsoever of anyone else but themselves published this book, even helped you write it? If these people do exist what the hell do they care if your book gets published or not? What the hell do they care if your message gets spread or not?

“My personal life,” says Ayn Rand, “is a postscript to my novels; it consists of the sentence: ‘And I mean it.’ I have always lived by the philosophy I present in my books – and it has worked for me, as it works for my characters. The concretes differ, the abstractions are the same.”

And this is the second paradox that I find in Ayn Rand’s work, of which she hasn’t provided an answer yet. If her philosophy states that we should only be concerned with our own selfish desires and do nothing to compromise that how then does she explain her desire to spread her message to the masses? I understand she got money in exchange for it, but in exchange for what an abstract idea? That’s hardly metal or rock like her characters exchange.

I find it interesting that she only have one abstract artist in all of her books that is portrayed in a good light. Most are seen as sniveling intellects who talk out of their asses as a way of getting out of doing real hard labor. The one respectable artist is a composer who claims that he only gives concerts for people who truly appreciate his music, as if that is the value he exchanges, well that and a lump of gold. But is he endowed with some super human power to be able to detect who is appreciating his music and who isn’t?

Answer: yes.

Or worse, are industrialist AKA rich people the only people worthy of hearing beautiful music?

Answer: yes.

Never mind the idea that art inspires people to action or inspires them to a level they never through possible before they experienced that piece of art. O wait, that’s the fucking reason she wrote the God Damn books! She wrote the books and the following non-fiction ones, and spent eighteen years traveling around promoting her philosophy for second raters, for the looters, for the very people her philosophy teaches us to hate in an effort to inspire them.

That’s very nice of her but it’s an important contradiction to point out.

When I first read The Fountainhead, I was inspired by the possibility of my own greatness. A flame was reignited in me that had begun to dwindle. I felt the power in believing in my own ability to feel power. And to me that is the single greatest lesson to be taught by Ayn Rand. The point of the rant above and the lesson I learned in Atlas Shrugged is that Ayn Rand is not a god-like person as much as she wishes. The point is, no one is. And you can’t expect people to be that perfect or you fall into the same trap religion falls into.

Man is not a god, and if he thinks he is that is arrogance and it will lead to destruction. I have said here before that I believe man has the potential to be great and I still believe that, but it is important to remember that we are still on that path and until we get there we shouldn’t act as if we are there.

Atlas Shrugged, presents the idea that man is god, well some of us anyway, and that everyone else should submit to these god-men. I disagree. There is value in helping your fellow humans. The value is the overall wellbeing of mankind. However Rand's philosophy provides a check on that by reminding us that there is a difference between helping and giving. Are we helping the genocide in Darfur by giving them aid that is just stolen by the mercenaries? Or would we be helping them if we sent in troops and stopped the slaughter? Right now I feel like we are ignoring them because we adhere to closely to Rand’s philosophy. Our interests are in Middle East oil, so that’s why we are there. Although I can’t help but wonder what Rand’s take would be on the Bush administration. Would it not be of benefit to look beyond the here and now and help our fellow humans?

Just like any philosophy it should be considered with the plethora of other philosophies that one can read and digest into their own personal philosophy. And in a way, Rand’s philosophy supports this, almost a philosophy of philosophy in the idea that one should form ones own world view of selfish interest to ones own desires. What if you selfishly want to help your friends? What if it is your desire to give your money to the poor and needy? Rand would probably claim you are lying to yourself, but how would she really know?

Overall I think there are very valuable lessons to be learned from Rand and her books. I for one have learned many lessons that have and are going to profoundly affect the way I live my life. But just like anything else it should be considered critically and you shouldn’t live by it just for Ayn Rand’s sake, I don’t think she’d like that anyway.

Amazing

O the possibilities....

Sand Beast!

Video Sto

I just posted a bunch more videos. You can access them all now by clicking at the links up above right under the header image. I hope that makes everything a lot better. let me know what you think.

A Most Ambitious Experiment

A Most Ambitious Experiment
2004

Written and Directed by Jeph Porter
Based on the short story of the same name by Mike Krath

Wife - Nora Lahey
Husband - Mike Fagin
Police Officer - Colin Durbin (voiced by Jamison Acker)
Banker - Jim Speers
Banker's Assistant - Chris Blough

Shot by Ryan Speers
Production Design - Andy Patch
Grip/PA - Adam Kolegas
Sound - Jamison Acker

One of the first things I did at Columbia.

Singularity

Singularity
2003

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter - George
Ali Barnes - Girl

Filmed in the Fox Hole attic in Decatur, among various other places.

If you're interested you can buy the novelist version of this movie over at Andrew's page. Its quite a different take on the concept, but worth the read.

ElevenNineFortySeven

ElevenNineFortySeven
2002

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter - Stranger 1
Andrew Johner - Stranger 2

It get's a whole lot stranger then that

Meet George

Meet George
2003

Written and Directed by Jeronimo and Jeph

Jeph Porter - George
Andrew Johner - Friend/Alien
Mary Bhnkey - Mother
Brandon Williams - Father
Rachelle Diggs - Alien

An early piece I did with Andrew while he was drugged up after surgery.

Video

2002
ElevenNineFortySeven


2003
Singularity
Meet George
Stanley's Day

2004
A Most Ambitious Experiment

2005
The Oldest Bottle

2006
The Kitchen Trilogy - Part I - TOld U So!
The Kitchen Trilogy - Part II - The Cat's in the Box
The Kitchen Trilogy - Part III - Take a Bullet

Doing some updates...

I'm trying to make this blog a little more comprehensive so you'll have to deal with some seemingly out of context post. They are just things that will go in the top bar eventually and they need to be on here so they can be linked to.

Also, I'm finishing up a music video for my brother's band A Toothless Life. Look for that in a few days. 

And still working on a million other things. They Young Philosopher, Limbo, Avatar and a press pack for The Oldest Bottle. 

Hopefully I'll have some more stuff up here soon.

Late Night Links

New York Times: A Nation of Christian's is not a Christian Nation

David Sedaris on French health care.

Atheist on the Rise!

China's Great firewall turns it attention to RSS

Scientist may have found the appendix's purpose

A short and boring story…A brief history of Dirty Cricket

The Past

Often times people ask me where I got the name Dirty Cricket. And I respond, “it’s a short and boring story”. At least that’s how it started.

Way back in the mid-nineties my long time friend Andrew Johner and I had been making short stop motion animation movies; one day we were making a particularly epic film that required credits! This involved recording a Power Point display with the camcorder propped up on a pile of books. In all those early years (5?) we never once managed to get a tripod or a working battery for Andrew’s parents High8 camera, thus tethering us to the longest extension cords we could find and within range of a table or chair to set the camera on. Anyhow in typing the credits I went to write down the name of our production company and I turned to Andrew and said, “We need a production company name” and Andrew touched by a muse, or perhaps recalling some collection of word he had heard said, “How about Dirty Cricket?” I nodded my head and said, “Okay.” And that is the origin of Dirty Cricket.

The name anyway

As time went on I moved away from Decatur, IL and went to Columbia College Chicago to study filmmaking. Every effort that I did there was a Dirty Cricket film in whatever incarnation it turned out to be. Many of those are here on this site and there are still more that will be put on here.

The biggest advancement in Dirty Cricket however came in 2004 when my freshmen year roommate Jamison Acker and I decided we wanted to make a feature film. I wrote the script with a few close friends and we amassed a group of people that where willing to help us make it happen. Under the newly established Dirty Cricket Films LLC we planned a fundraiser, “Cricket Fest” and mailed out over 500 letters and request for donations. The party happened and we raised over $5000 in profit. It was a startling success.

However, after the momentum of the party things began to dwindle. People who had more pressing things dropped out of the effort and as script problems delayed everyone the idea of a small group of sophomore college students producing a massive post-apocalyptic feature length film became truly daunting until finally I was the last one left. And eventually I too saw the folly of such a rush and gave it up.

The lessons learned however, made the whole thing worth it. And in a certain way that was my goal in stimulating this event. I knew that if anything where to be done it had to be forced and I, as I often do, chose the hardest path. My father didn’t tell me many things when I was growing up but the one thing he did say was “Aim high” illustrating the idea that if you aim high and if you miss your mark you will still fall higher then if you had aimed low. So with this in mind I advanced the unimaginable idea of producing what would otherwise be a multimillion-dollar film. I convinced myself it could be done and I’m pretty sure I convinced several other people it could be done as well. And there was a lot of let down when we fell.

The following spring however we produced The Oldest Bottle with the funds raised from Cricket Fest and that was also a success both in production and post-production (all though it took well over a year to finish). And it wasn’t until recently that Jamison and I decided not to renew our LCC and Dirty Cricket as an official corporation vanished.

The Present

What Dirty Cricket eventually became was what Andrew, Jamison and I where already doing. We were creating and experimenting with art. And that is still what drives Dirty Cricket to this day. Andrew, or Jeronimo as he later went by, and I did produce a few more projects up until very recently, the last of which being Stanley’s Day and if the opportunity arises to work together again I would gladly take it. Jamison and I are still partners and we have big plans for the future of Dirty Cricket.

The Future

This website is the first step in what I see as the future of Dirty Cricket. With the ever-increasing power of Internet media I foresee a day when the web is the primary source of film and entertainment. I want to put the tools that are emerging and already is good use in the hands of Dirty Cricket.

Would Ayn Rand Tip?

I've been reading Atlas Shrugged right on the heels of finishing The Fountainhead, which is an amazing book that really reaffirmed a lot of things I think I always thought about life but didn't know it. (if that makes sense) And being so shaken by it I quickly picked up Atlas Shrugged, well slowly; its a pretty hefty book rounding out at about 1400 pages. However I'm not as impressed with it as I was with the Fountainhead. Atlas is much more about politics then it is about philosophy. Of course politics is a form of philosophy, but it isn't the same and I think it cheapens whatever was so powerful about The Fountainhead. But that's a tangent I don't want to go on, mostly because I've still got about 300 pages left to read and I don't want to condemn the book just yet. But I do have some thoughts after burning a thousand pages so far.

Would Ayn Rand tip? I thought about this the other day as I wrote down a small tip on my credit card receipt and thought briefly about what it meant. Rand stresses the notion that it is important to never give anything. Everything must be exchanged for compensation. And yes, a tip is in gratitude for service, but isn't the waitress getting a pay check? I'm not paying her directly for her service, that's what the business does. And some say that it is expected for you to tip because the waitress doesn't make enough money to live on her check alone. But why is that my responsibility. I'm already paying the owner money for the food and service why do I need to give this waitress anymore?

Now before I look like a dick I want to say, I do tip. I think its important because waiters and waitresses do get paid shit for the most part and rely on their tips for a lot of things. Which is sad, because its almost got to the point some places where waitresses literally don't make minimum wage and instead get a tip share that makes up the rest; putting the burden of half of their check on us. But even in a perfect world its right to tip and that is exactly my point which leads me to my main issue with Ayn Rand's philosophy on this level.

Last night I spent an amazing evening with some friends, two I have known for years and two that I had just met that evening. We went to the new people's house and I experienced some of the best hospitality I have ever experienced. They made us food, showed us their art, listened to things that mattered to us (and where actually interested) and played a game of cards with us. I left with such an amazing feeling, that I haven't felt in a long time. And it struck me that whatever is at the heart of that feeling is what Rand is missing. We could live in a society where everything is exchanged for value and perhaps things would proceed more smoothly, however I think there is value in giving. There is selfishness in selflessness. And one step further, there is no such thing as selflessness.

Rand seems to advocate a cold world where the only human interaction is the exchange of money (and lots and lots of sex, which no one seems to pay for ironically). Sure she talks about other forms of value, often in cryptic passages that probably lead to her books being mammoth. But she makes no bones about the fact that their must be an exchange and paints those who don't engage in that as "looters" or "second raters". Well I will argue that she is wrong based on the fact that we can't help being selfish. If someone is looting from you or not fulfilling their potential its because thats what they want to do, maybe not consciously and maybe at the manipulation of someone else but there is a choice that has to be made there and they are doing the choosing.

So, we've selfishly decided that its right to tip, and that its right to give food to your company because we are exchanging something of value, good company. And perhaps that's what Rand's trying to say but I feel like it gets clouded by the hard economic stance she takes in Atlas.

Again, I haven't read Atlas Shrugged all the way through yet, so there is a good chance she'll still surprise me, I'll let you know.

Q: How Do You Get Liberal States To Turn Republican?

A: George W Bush.

This article is very intriguing, and I will be researching more when I get the chance.

The Potential Man (cross post)

This was origionlly posted at The Strange Case my other Blog that focuses on the nature of belief.


A couple of weeks ago Nathan and I had lunch at Small Bar on Division. It was a warm Sunday afternoon and we met for a fellowship. The purpose was not to discuss religion or God, but being that this was the first time we had seen each other since the start of this blog it was an inevitable topic.

I don’t remember the specifics of a lot of our conversation because most of it was a slow dance down to the point of contention in our belief systems. I believe it sprang from a discussion about Nathan’s post on science and my response. Which was more or less defining the aims of science verses the aims of religion. And it is my flaw to unfairly associate belief in a higher power (God) with religion. I don’t know if I see it as a flaw though, because in my point of view the two are inseparable, a veritable chicken and the egg. But other’s will tell you, Nathan perhaps, that they can be taken apart. And that point of contention eventually lead us down an interesting path, at least from my point of view.

As you do when talking abstract philosophy you tend to walk on stilts that look ridiculous to anyone not in the conversation so I hope that by diving into this you can follow.

We where talking about what the idea of God does for humankind. And I’m going to obviously rely on my impressions and ideas mostly because I honestly can’t remember much of Nathan’s. Sorry buddy but I’m more important to me then you are. Anyway, he can fill in the gaps in the comments. Okay, enough wasted time here I go.

In my opinion the purpose of God (one of perhaps, I have a lot longer to live so this list might grow) is to provide an example of good for humans to live up to. An almighty Father, both vengeful and just who practices unconditional love but simultaneously holds a hard line for the rules is the general picture of God I was taught to believe in. Of course this is the “character of God”, as Nathan calls it and not the God of the Bible, which in that case this description is sugar coated, and can be contradicted by actually reading the Bible, but then again that’s by opinion. So the character of God is the perfect example we should all strive for.

And I agree, depending on your definition of the character of God. I was telling Nathan, as I’ve told other people, and alluded to in previous comments, that I can have a conversation with a believer such as Nathan and understand their concepts as long as I view the word god as the power within me that allows me to experience the character of god. (Note the lower case) And that is a lot of reasons why this blog exist. I recognize similar feelings and experience without God that many ascribe to God. Thus leading me to think there is something else at work there.

And that’s where my head was as I sat over a pizza that that stupid ignorant Christian Nathan so kindly bought and shared with me in a time when I was broke and hungry. And it made me think, what is it that I am living for? I’ve long given up on the idea of a meaning to life, but should I rethink that?

The meaning of life is a term that expects and answer from an outside point of view I think. It almost demands a deity to hand us a card as in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and read the answer like a talk show host would. I would argue it is the desire to transfer responsibility that springs this way of thinking. But science and reason has told us that every experience is derived from the mind, so why not the meaning of life? So it dawned on me that the meaning of life is for us to choose. That’s why there can be no one answer, and why the giant computer in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy chose 42. Isn’t it just like a machine to chose a number? And on that note, the question is probably up to us as well, but I’ll let the philosophical implications of that go for now.

But moving even beyond that we talked further about God as the ultimate good example. And the crux of our difference in opinion was exposed. See Nathan accepts that a Father God created us and watches us with love and awe. And we as his children are to be like him and to serve him. In a nutshell anyway, sorry if the mushy language mucks it up. And I believe that that ultimate good example is our own potential as individuals and as a species. I argued that by having the examples of history we can project our potential into the future and thus live our present lives to bring about the best possible version of that. Nathan however argues that it is necessary to have a separate God and thus a solid definition of good, and as a result evil. But I would go further and say that our definition of good has never been solid. In fact if you take the Ten Commandments I’m sure you can find examples in cultures around the world where each one is consider the antonym of the stated law in the Bible. (Wouldn’t that be a fun challenge?)

And even if it can be shown to be universally accepted as wrong to covet your neighbors donkey it still doesn’t diminish the fact that morality is created by community. How many times have we seen small groups commit strange acts that seem perfectly normal to them?

Now in theory the idea of an unfixed good is a good idea (is it? Ha!). But this goes back to the basics, no evidence for a God has been shown. I, and others like me, cannot rely on lack of evidence. But can a Christian really even claim an unfixed God? Hasn’t the morality of God changed over time? Even by rejecting the dogma of religion and forming your own individual view of God aren’t you shifting the morality of God? The same God that the majority would claim to this day was sending all homosexuals to hell? It is very clear that the morality of God is changing with our times. That’s why women can wear pants!

So overall, my point is the potential of humankind being our beacon in the distance. And at various times in history the ship we have sailed towards the beacon is the ship of God and religion. But as we get closer to the point in the distance we need to realize that that ship is ours and the point of light is not the kingdom of God, but our own kingdom here on Earth.

Did you follow that analogy? Well I want to say it again anyway. I think it can be shown that everyone strives for the potential of humankind even if they claim that they are striving to be like God. The harm comes in when people sacrifice what’s best for a fictional God over what’s best for humankind. It leads to stagnation and back peddling. The power of the mind to create, explore, love and express ideas is not the product of God but the product of our minds.

Okay, I’m going to stop being preachy, but I can’t help getting excited about my own personal potential and how it contributes to our race. And conversely getting frustrated by snags along the way.

So let me know what you think. Do you agree? Am I way off base? Am I standing on stilts still? Is this just a form of humanist dogma? I don’t know, let me know.