So during the week before my presentations, I was spending a lot of time practicing, and worrying. More worrying than practicing actually. As a result, I slept pretty poorly, and when I did sleep I had nightmares.
I know myself well enough to quasi-interpret my dreams. Granted, I have the occasionally totally bizarre, not-at-all-understandable dreams like the one with the surf-bro talking, human hating/killing stegosaurus mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, but those are usually rare. In all honesty my dreams are pretty lame these days. I think that's symptomatic of age, and familiarity with the reality of my existence. Instead of having dreams of wondrous events, flying or super hero powers, I have two modes of dreaming: 1) Dreaming about normal every day crap or 2) Dreaming about crazy terrifying situations that may or may not take place in reality.
The second mode is 90% of the time, a result of stress or anxiety stemming from something going on in my life, and typically it's work or school related. Somewhere around 10-15 years ago, I somehow managed to develop a strategy for dealing with my anxiety dreams. When I was younger, most of my anxiety dreams involved me falling from something, and during the fall, I'd wake up panicked. The way I countered this was what could be considered a temporary lucid dreaming technique. Whenever I'd start to fall, I'd realize that I was dreaming, and then tell myself I was either going to bounce, land in water or glide to safety. After I started using those techniques, my brain stopped feeding me falling dreams and then expressed stress via having some person or thing attack or chase me in my dreams. The way I countered that, was simply by fighting it. In some cases, I had Neo-like control over my body, and severely kicked ass. That was pretty cool. In the past 5 years, I have a new anxiety foe in my dreams and the only way I can describe it is 'evil concentrate'. Now, first and foremost, I don't even believe in the concept of 'evil'. 'Evil' as force is assigned to many things: people, objects, places, fictitious characters that people believe in(the devil), tigers that attack people when they are stupid enough to get into their cage in the zoo, etc. However, the only place I felt it was nearly applicable was to people, and after years of reading about the criminal mind as a hobby, I simply think that what people will describe as 'evil' is actually 'crazy'. Now with that in mind, the fact that my brain is telling me that 'evil concentrate' is attacking me in my dreams, makes me pretty powerless. How am I supposed to deal with something I don't even believe in?
It's hard to describe what the 'evil concentrate' feels like. I'd say it's a mix between a black hole and a bad acid trip. If you've never tried acid or had a bad acid trip, then a bad acid trip is like a living nightmare...wait that doesn't work, this is a nightmare. Ok, a bad acid trip is like questioning whether or not you are going insane and about to die at the same time. The black hole feeling in the dream comes from a feeling like my body is slowly being crushed to the ground, or that full body paralysis is setting in. It's kind of awful.
Last week, during my Siggraph stressing, I had one of these dreams. Usually these types of dreams take place in a house or some kind of confining structure, which usually makes it more scary because I don't know of an immediate escape route. However, this time, I was in an open field, and a huge hole opened up in the sky. Instead of being crushed, I was slowly being dragged upwards into this giant hole. The environment for the dream was very nice: Sunny day, blue skies, a big open grassy field, but this whole was giant and dark. It was warping the sky up and inwards. Once again I felt physically powerless, and just had to go along with it. Whenever this happens, I have a slowly building sense of terror as the force of the evil is more apparent on my body. This dream had a different variable than my standard nightmares - I wasn't alone. I had someone with me that, for whatever reason, I felt compelled to protect. I think this stems from the fact that I had co-presenters in each of my talks last week. With that in mind, I started to think quicker about what options I had to save this person, and myself from this fate. Even though I was thinking of all the ways I could actively combat the hole in the sky, I discovered the resolution by accident. This is going to sound cliche and cheesy but, I combated the evil by laughing. When I was heading up into the hole, I grabbed the generic human who was with me, and said 'Pretty terrifying isn't it?', as this person had never experience my nightmares before, and when I said it, I started laughing which is what I always do to try and calm someone who I'm concerned about. When I started to laugh, the force of the evil over my body lessened, and my sense of terror diminshed. So I joked and laughed some more and very quickly, the evil concentrate disappeared.
Now, normally, this wouldn't be so remarkable, or maybe I wouldn't remember it so vividly, but, when I was giving my last presentation on Friday at Siggraph, and I'd walked into the gigantic room full of people, I was overwhelmed with terror. I really felt like I was going to throw up. I walked to the front of the room, trying not to look at the crowd and just move to my seat. When I finally was settled a bit, I decided to face my fear and evaluate the situation. As I looked into the crowd and saw all the people, I just started laughing. It just seemed so ridiculous that I had expected to speak to about 5-10 people, and instead here was between 500-700. It seemed like a script. Of COURSE there were hundreds of people here, that's much more funny and terrifying, and makes the situation that much more interesting, because that's the kind of shit that always happens to me. So I started to laugh.... When I started laughing, this feeling of dire seriousness just seemed to leave my body. I thought 'huh...this reminds me of my dream.' So I decided to go with it. Instead of brooding over how I might fuck up, puke or faint, I just sat there grinning and kind of laughing about it.
It worked!
Granted, I was still nervous, but I was making jokes on stage, smiling, and essentially making light of the situation, which is exactly what it was supposed to be, a light-hearted fun(sorta) situation. Now, I realize this sounds kind of new-age-y, feel good, chicken-soup-for-the-soulish, but I absolutely have to stand by it as a means to deal with what is a danger free, but terrifying situation. For awhile now, I've had a suspicion that I'm problem solving in some capacity via my dreams, and after last week's experience, I'm sure of it. Now, if only I'd figure out how to get these solutions out of my subconscious faster, so I don't have to wait another 37 years to have my dreams tell me that smiling is the cure for suicidal tendencies....
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Siggraph and nightmare combat techniques.
All photos by Michi Tsunoda
So, this week at the LA convention center, Siggraph 2008 was hosted. I was asked about 2 months ago by my friend/co-worker Jen Bahan if I would be a co-presenter with her, in the Rhythm & Hues booth, to give a brief talk about my department. Jen is a rigging supervisor, and technical animation is a sub department of rigging. Knowing my fear of public speaking, naturally I said yes...
I believe it's good for my character, to put myself in situations I imagine to be humiliating, uncomfortable and terrifying. Now, this could expand to things like doing 'The Chicken Dance' at a wedding or performing in a poetry slam - but both of those things are stupid and gross. Siggraph is something someone in my shoes SHOULD do.
I really should have prepped my materials sooner than I did, but I got everything together in time. However, a week before Siggraph started, I was asked to participate in another panel talk to discuss the cracking system developed for Mummy 3, which I mentioned in my previous blog. I thought 'What the fuck? Why not?' So I said yes.
Jen and I prepared pretty well I think. We were talking about things we do everyday, so the subject matter wasn't difficult to generate, just the presentation, timing and actually saying it in front of a crowd. We rehearsed for about 2 lunch hours before our presentation day, and then the day of, we met early in the morning and practiced all day til we did it.
When it was time to go, we were both super duper nervous. There was a crowd of about 40-50 people who showed up, but there were lights shining in my eyes, so I couldn't really see them. Right before we started, Jen looked over at me and said 'Dude...I'm so nervous right now I could puke.' Regardless, she did awesome. She sounded like she did this for a living. As time went on, I settled into the talking about what I do in front of people role, and it became easier. When it was over, our friends in the audience said it went well and we received questions that made me think what we were saying actually made sense to the people listening.
Here are a few pics of the scene:
This is the booth.
Look here! Jen and I, all smiles, but really we're fucking scared to death.
Here I am with Ari. I think this picture better reflects my mood. The mood best described as 'supposed to be having fun, but instead, feeling nauseous'.
Here's our audience.
And here we are on stage.
Look here! Jen and I, all smiles, but really we're fucking scared to death.
Here I am with Ari. I think this picture better reflects my mood. The mood best described as 'supposed to be having fun, but instead, feeling nauseous'.Here's our audience.And here we are on stage.After it was over I felt great! I ran my mouth like I'd just had an endorphin rush. Whew. It went well, and it was now over.
So, next was Friday's presentation. I was expecting Friday's presentation to be even easier. It was the last panel of the day. We were presenting in the 'Bend Me, Break Me' category, which focused on various simulations systems seen in recent films. There were two groups from Dreamworks, one group from Digital Domain and us. Me and Jason Bayever. Jason was the guy who spearheaded the 'crackHorse' project, and I was the end user who did most the R&D and developed the film ready aesthetic performance of the technology the programmers created.
I'd already spoken about this subject a little in my booth talk, so I wasn't as nervous. Also, Ari (Dr. Ari Shapiro - graphics scientist) had pretty much put the presentation together for us as a god damned sweet favor. During the week, Jason and I, being the types of pessimists who like to label themselves 'realists', discussed what we thought we'd see at the panel. We figured: a small room, 5-10 people, boring presentations etc.
A mild affair for all. No problem.
I, we, were wrong. When I showed up at the convention center, Jason met me out front and the first thing he said was "Dude...the room is HUGE. Like 500 people huge." me: "But it's empty right? There's no one here?" Jason: "No! They are all here, they are just in other conferences now." Secretly, I was holding out hope, thinking "Whatever. No one will show up. It's the last conference of the show. Who wants to go to that?" So, before our presentation, Jason, Ari and I scanned the material briefly and ran through some rehearsals. Jason, who is normally a great, lucid and smart speaker was running over his words, losing his train of thought, and getting very nervous. In watching him, I got nervous. I was feeling like a veteran already, due to my one little talk, but Jason's nervousness made me think I was in for something bigger, and oh yes I was. I pulled my part off just fine with a little coaching from Ari, and I felt ready to go.
While we were packing up, Jason said "I'm a little worried that our technology won't play nice when were up there." He's worried that the laptop we'd planned on working with wouldn't play with Siggraph's technology. I was like "Dude...it's Siggragh. They have mini-dv converter dongles out the ass". And so we were on our way.
On the walk to the room, I noticed a crowd gathering around us all headed into the same area. It was the room. The same room we were about to speak in. It was huge. Like 500 people huge as Jason said. Also..it was PACKED. I haven't been this scared since I've fought in a martial arts tournament, or actual street fight - ie several years. I thought I would puke and or faint. We get in there and realize somethings wrong - at least with my perspective on this.
Here's a break down of the room:
Room
403 AB
Dimensions
104 x 82
Square Feet
8,528
Ceiling Height
20'
Maximum capacity
1,000
Anyhow, I shucked the emotional assault my brain was dealing me to the side, and got on stage to test the equipment. It looked like it was going to work. So, feeling somewhat safe, we sat down to wait. I practiced my stuff while the other two demos went first, and Jason listened to them. I could not concentrate on any thing except the thought 'We need to get this shit done as soon as fucking possible.'
After the two presentations go, it's our turn. I bring my Mac up and plug it in. We wait.....hmmm......nothing's happening..... The tech assistant starts to go ballistic in that 'tech dude who's failing at his job in the publics eye' kind of way. We try to help, but nothing we do collectively, gets what we've written and been rehearsing, out of the lap top, and on the big screen. There were lots of psychedelic images on the screen jumping around rapidly. I tried to joke the audience out of their discomfort 'Hey guys I just shit in my pants! Who wants to wrestle? No no no, I said 'I'll be DJ'g in just a few minutes.' while pointing at the screen. I think I got a 5-10% laugh share. ie, 25-50 people snorted or chortled. That's not very good.
So we couldn't fix it. We decided to let the guys after us go first so they could their part done and over with, and we can sort our tech issues out in the meantime.
During this time, we copied our entire files over to a friends laptop, converted the file from ppt. to Keynote, rebuilt all the video file paths, and then it was time to go again.
We now try our friend's laptop.
It doesn't work.
We try my laptop again.
It doesn't work.
At this point Jason is mad, and he's very effective when he's mad. He essentially said to the Siggraph staff 'You do this, you do this...you do this and I'll do this.
It worked! Jason brought up the raw, out of order, unedited version of the presentation as it had been burned to the Siggraph server that morning. We said fuck it, and went forward with it.
Jason started out pretty nervous for about 30 seconds, but he then clicked into Jason mode and just owned it. When it was my turn, I simply said what I'd been planning on saying, but I had to improvise a way to get the order of the slides to match conceptually. I brought a little bit of science into the talk, but nothing too techy, because that would have lead me to pulling Hans and Ari into the talk and I didn't want to extend it anymore.
When all was said and done - it went really well! A lot people pinned me down after, asking about concepts in the film. The last guy was the Siggraph Beijing Chair and said he'd like to get in touch with me about talking in China sometime next year. That would be pretty sweet. We'll see if he follows through.
To be cont'd..
There's more I need to write...it will be in part 2. It's about the nightmare combat strategies and techniques I've used over the years and how/why they work.
So, next was Friday's presentation. I was expecting Friday's presentation to be even easier. It was the last panel of the day. We were presenting in the 'Bend Me, Break Me' category, which focused on various simulations systems seen in recent films. There were two groups from Dreamworks, one group from Digital Domain and us. Me and Jason Bayever. Jason was the guy who spearheaded the 'crackHorse' project, and I was the end user who did most the R&D and developed the film ready aesthetic performance of the technology the programmers created.
I'd already spoken about this subject a little in my booth talk, so I wasn't as nervous. Also, Ari (Dr. Ari Shapiro - graphics scientist) had pretty much put the presentation together for us as a god damned sweet favor. During the week, Jason and I, being the types of pessimists who like to label themselves 'realists', discussed what we thought we'd see at the panel. We figured: a small room, 5-10 people, boring presentations etc.
A mild affair for all. No problem.
I, we, were wrong. When I showed up at the convention center, Jason met me out front and the first thing he said was "Dude...the room is HUGE. Like 500 people huge." me: "But it's empty right? There's no one here?" Jason: "No! They are all here, they are just in other conferences now." Secretly, I was holding out hope, thinking "Whatever. No one will show up. It's the last conference of the show. Who wants to go to that?" So, before our presentation, Jason, Ari and I scanned the material briefly and ran through some rehearsals. Jason, who is normally a great, lucid and smart speaker was running over his words, losing his train of thought, and getting very nervous. In watching him, I got nervous. I was feeling like a veteran already, due to my one little talk, but Jason's nervousness made me think I was in for something bigger, and oh yes I was. I pulled my part off just fine with a little coaching from Ari, and I felt ready to go.
While we were packing up, Jason said "I'm a little worried that our technology won't play nice when were up there." He's worried that the laptop we'd planned on working with wouldn't play with Siggraph's technology. I was like "Dude...it's Siggragh. They have mini-dv converter dongles out the ass". And so we were on our way.
On the walk to the room, I noticed a crowd gathering around us all headed into the same area. It was the room. The same room we were about to speak in. It was huge. Like 500 people huge as Jason said. Also..it was PACKED. I haven't been this scared since I've fought in a martial arts tournament, or actual street fight - ie several years. I thought I would puke and or faint. We get in there and realize somethings wrong - at least with my perspective on this.
Here's a break down of the room:
Room
403 AB
Dimensions
104 x 82
Square Feet
8,528
Ceiling Height
20'
Maximum capacity
1,000
Anyhow, I shucked the emotional assault my brain was dealing me to the side, and got on stage to test the equipment. It looked like it was going to work. So, feeling somewhat safe, we sat down to wait. I practiced my stuff while the other two demos went first, and Jason listened to them. I could not concentrate on any thing except the thought 'We need to get this shit done as soon as fucking possible.'
After the two presentations go, it's our turn. I bring my Mac up and plug it in. We wait.....hmmm......nothing's happening..... The tech assistant starts to go ballistic in that 'tech dude who's failing at his job in the publics eye' kind of way. We try to help, but nothing we do collectively, gets what we've written and been rehearsing, out of the lap top, and on the big screen. There were lots of psychedelic images on the screen jumping around rapidly. I tried to joke the audience out of their discomfort 'Hey guys I just shit in my pants! Who wants to wrestle? No no no, I said 'I'll be DJ'g in just a few minutes.' while pointing at the screen. I think I got a 5-10% laugh share. ie, 25-50 people snorted or chortled. That's not very good.
So we couldn't fix it. We decided to let the guys after us go first so they could their part done and over with, and we can sort our tech issues out in the meantime.
During this time, we copied our entire files over to a friends laptop, converted the file from ppt. to Keynote, rebuilt all the video file paths, and then it was time to go again.
We now try our friend's laptop.
It doesn't work.
We try my laptop again.
It doesn't work.
At this point Jason is mad, and he's very effective when he's mad. He essentially said to the Siggraph staff 'You do this, you do this...you do this and I'll do this.
It worked! Jason brought up the raw, out of order, unedited version of the presentation as it had been burned to the Siggraph server that morning. We said fuck it, and went forward with it.
Jason started out pretty nervous for about 30 seconds, but he then clicked into Jason mode and just owned it. When it was my turn, I simply said what I'd been planning on saying, but I had to improvise a way to get the order of the slides to match conceptually. I brought a little bit of science into the talk, but nothing too techy, because that would have lead me to pulling Hans and Ari into the talk and I didn't want to extend it anymore.
When all was said and done - it went really well! A lot people pinned me down after, asking about concepts in the film. The last guy was the Siggraph Beijing Chair and said he'd like to get in touch with me about talking in China sometime next year. That would be pretty sweet. We'll see if he follows through.
To be cont'd..
There's more I need to write...it will be in part 2. It's about the nightmare combat strategies and techniques I've used over the years and how/why they work.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Surf Trip to Oregon
I've already sent this link out to a few people, but I tend to miss addresses often.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmygordon/sets/72157606460499995/show/with/2721227934/
Here are some pictures Michi took from this past week, where my old friends from High School - Dax, Dirk, Roosey - and Michi and myself, rented a beach house in Pacific City, Oregon.
We mostly just spent the time either surfing or lounging. I'd never been to Oregon before, and Michi and I wanted to check the state out, and the city of Portland specifically.
Most of the surf pictures are from Kiwanda Shores in Pacific City, OR.
Which can be found here:
View Larger Map
The last set of surf pictures are taken at 'The Boy Scout Camp'. I don't know if this is a secret spot or what...
It can be found here:
View Larger Map
Oregon is essentially a secret spot on it's own from what I can tell. Whenever I told people here in LA that I was going to take a surf trip to Oregon, the response was unanimously "Oregon???". With the exception of my friend Evan who said it would be huge, windy, cold and sharky (he wasn't totally correct, but I could see how it could get that way), no one seemed to know that Oregon is surfable. You can chalk that up to either typical Angelino ignorance of any geographic location that isn't, LA, SF, NYC or Vegas, or the fact that Oregon is not typically featured as a hot surf spot ever. I imagine Oregonians would like to keep it that way - sorry for this blog dudes.
The surf was uncrowded, and the surfers I encountered were not aggro like you'd find in Ocean Beach, San Diego. I'd heard they hate CA surfers, but I didn't speak with any of them. As far as I'm concerned, surfers hate other surfers in general. All that brotherly love talk is just that, talk. You love your surfing friends, but any douchebag that paddles over to the peak you were alone on a few minutes ago, is the enemy. The average surfer skill in OR reminded me of what you'd see in LA at El Porto, but not on the level of Orange County or San Diego, so I felt pretty comfy as my surfing skills have rusted tremendously since I've left San Diego. The water was freezing cold. It was as cold as it gets during a SoCal Winter. The first day, I got ice cream headaches so bad from the water, that I thought I was going to puke. The days after that, I just timed my paddle out to the set intervals, in order to avoid duck diving. The wind was pretty intense one day, enough to blow us down South, but it never seemed to destroy the wave shape. The waves were thigh to shoulder high pretty consistently over the trip. Despite any wind present, the waves always seemed to keep their shape, until the last day where it had rained over night. The ocean all up and down the coast was very stormy and messy.
The best part of the trip was reuniting with Dax, Dirk and Roosey.
Roosey and I live in the same city, and have been around each other consistently for the last 23 years. So it wasn't a reunion so much as another trip out of town for us. However, Dirk and I only see each other once every few years, and I haven't seen Dax in somewhere around 15 years. It's great to reunite with people and see how they've changed, yet how core elements of their personalities still remain. I'm mostly happy to see how many of my friends have done very well for themselves after leaving High School: Dirk has a permanent exhibition at The Smithsonian and continues to work as a fine artist, Dax is a product pipeline manager for Dakine, Roosey has a sweet job at Yahoo!. I especially love it because all of us were either held back, or failed one grade in the public school system in Huntsville, AL. Clearly we are not the retards our teachers thought we were. At one point on the trip, we all copped to having the same thoughts of "Would you ever have thought, 20 years ago, that we'd all be together, surfing off the coast of Oregon??"
My only regret is that I was so tired from the surf sessions, that Michi and I didn't get a chance to go looking for Bigfoot. Next time Sasquatch....next time.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmygordon/sets/72157606460499995/show/with/2721227934/
Here are some pictures Michi took from this past week, where my old friends from High School - Dax, Dirk, Roosey - and Michi and myself, rented a beach house in Pacific City, Oregon.
We mostly just spent the time either surfing or lounging. I'd never been to Oregon before, and Michi and I wanted to check the state out, and the city of Portland specifically.
Most of the surf pictures are from Kiwanda Shores in Pacific City, OR.
Which can be found here:
View Larger Map
The last set of surf pictures are taken at 'The Boy Scout Camp'. I don't know if this is a secret spot or what...
It can be found here:
View Larger Map
Oregon is essentially a secret spot on it's own from what I can tell. Whenever I told people here in LA that I was going to take a surf trip to Oregon, the response was unanimously "Oregon???". With the exception of my friend Evan who said it would be huge, windy, cold and sharky (he wasn't totally correct, but I could see how it could get that way), no one seemed to know that Oregon is surfable. You can chalk that up to either typical Angelino ignorance of any geographic location that isn't, LA, SF, NYC or Vegas, or the fact that Oregon is not typically featured as a hot surf spot ever. I imagine Oregonians would like to keep it that way - sorry for this blog dudes.
The surf was uncrowded, and the surfers I encountered were not aggro like you'd find in Ocean Beach, San Diego. I'd heard they hate CA surfers, but I didn't speak with any of them. As far as I'm concerned, surfers hate other surfers in general. All that brotherly love talk is just that, talk. You love your surfing friends, but any douchebag that paddles over to the peak you were alone on a few minutes ago, is the enemy. The average surfer skill in OR reminded me of what you'd see in LA at El Porto, but not on the level of Orange County or San Diego, so I felt pretty comfy as my surfing skills have rusted tremendously since I've left San Diego. The water was freezing cold. It was as cold as it gets during a SoCal Winter. The first day, I got ice cream headaches so bad from the water, that I thought I was going to puke. The days after that, I just timed my paddle out to the set intervals, in order to avoid duck diving. The wind was pretty intense one day, enough to blow us down South, but it never seemed to destroy the wave shape. The waves were thigh to shoulder high pretty consistently over the trip. Despite any wind present, the waves always seemed to keep their shape, until the last day where it had rained over night. The ocean all up and down the coast was very stormy and messy.
The best part of the trip was reuniting with Dax, Dirk and Roosey.
Roosey and I live in the same city, and have been around each other consistently for the last 23 years. So it wasn't a reunion so much as another trip out of town for us. However, Dirk and I only see each other once every few years, and I haven't seen Dax in somewhere around 15 years. It's great to reunite with people and see how they've changed, yet how core elements of their personalities still remain. I'm mostly happy to see how many of my friends have done very well for themselves after leaving High School: Dirk has a permanent exhibition at The Smithsonian and continues to work as a fine artist, Dax is a product pipeline manager for Dakine, Roosey has a sweet job at Yahoo!. I especially love it because all of us were either held back, or failed one grade in the public school system in Huntsville, AL. Clearly we are not the retards our teachers thought we were. At one point on the trip, we all copped to having the same thoughts of "Would you ever have thought, 20 years ago, that we'd all be together, surfing off the coast of Oregon??"
My only regret is that I was so tired from the surf sessions, that Michi and I didn't get a chance to go looking for Bigfoot. Next time Sasquatch....next time.
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