This arctic superstorm kinda sucks. Not a lot can get done when you’re huddling in blankets for warmth, teeth chattering. Not a lot of people want to go out and do shoots when the risk is wrecking your car on icy roads. Life in the midwest affects movie making. 
I have been re-watching, binge watching style, all of Breaking Bad on Blu Ray. I love the extended and unrated episodes. For a non-pay cable network, the creators like Vince Gilligan certainly took risks with their material. Apparently the idea was to take a good guy and slowly turn him into the antagonist. The producers were in shock when audiences kept thinking of their character as the protagonist no matter what depths he sunk to.
And binge watching reveals something else of note; the continuity. Break Bad will go into the annals of great television because of a near perfect continuity of actors/acting, art direction, cinematography, and story.
Great work is inspirational. It makes you want to do better. Not out of misguided sense of competition, but because you want to make an audience feel the way great art made you feel. Not meaning emulating the exact emotions of what you saw; No, you want an audience to be moved by your own work, to think or care about what you are showing them.
The good mood continues. My annual penny poker party was last night. Attendance was low because of the winter storm. Instead of being depressed and feeling unloved, I am overwhelmed with gratitude to the friends who did come out. I laughed so much, mostly because of this game Shane brought called “Cards Against Humanity”. Then when I got to play poker (a rarity at my own poker party I must admit), I won a lot of silver coins. My change bowl grows every year now whereas it used to diminish as I let someone play with my chips every year whilst I held court in my office chatting.
At this moment, I’m holding a little ball of happiness and hasn’t stopped glowing yet. It’s keeping me warm at night, making me smile a little. I don’t believe in fallacies like hope or destiny anymore. That’s not to say I am cynical at the moment, just not ignorant or uneducated. And yet, there exists an inexplicable positive energy in my midst.
If my cat Vladimir Jack Bauer can let his brother Lorenzo Lamas Jones on the desk, than anything is possible…
“Let them wash away these precious things let them break their hold over me”
– Tori Amos
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