You Know You’re A Dog Person When…

By
You Know You’re A Dog Person When…

You know you’ve become a total dog owner when you finish a loaf of bread, then hold up the plastic bag you were just about to toss in the recycle container  and think, “Hmm. . . . I could scoop up a couple of poops into this.” For more on greyhounds and information on fostering, please visit my wife Bonnie’s blog bonniesgreyhounds.com. Apologies to my regular visitors for not posting anything in a while. Can only promise you that I’ve been busy, busy, busy. Major announcement coming in next few days. Please stay posted. My best to you all...

Read more »

KCRA Nello Olivo’s Award-Winning Wine–Dipped

By
KCRA Nello Olivo’s Award-Winning Wine–Dipped

I’ve done a couple of posts about my friend Nello Olivo’s award-winning wines. He introduced his wines starting in 2010 and in his first year alone won over 24 state, national and international awards. He called me a few weeks ago to tell me about something new — wine dipped in chocolate. His neighbor Shari Fitzpatrick, founder of Shari’s Berries, has started to dip bottles of his wine, which have been covered in a plastic seal, in some of her fabulous gourmet chocolate, and made available for purchase as special gifts. No two things say romance better than wine...

Read more »

Light Is My Friend: Hollywood Park Alley

By
Light Is My Friend: Hollywood Park Alley

This is part of my on-going photography studies of how light plays on familiar places where we live. Almost every day, or at least every other day, I’ll walk the dogs either from the house or back to the house by way of this alley that runs behind Freeport Boulevard in Sacramento. The dogs love it for the smells — there are three Chinese restaurants in this one strip mall. Photographically, I’m always drawn to the visual texture of the brick walls, the various shades of paint, or lack of, on them, the cracks, as well as the different...

Read more »

Ed Burns Guests On New Sundance Channel Series

By
Ed Burns Guests On New Sundance Channel Series

Last weekend I posted a blog about actor/writer/director Ed Burns premiering his new self-financed indie Newlyweds (a cousin effort in naked filmmaking). This morning I received an e-mail from an east coast promotions agency asking me to share with the readers of this site about a new series that’s been running on the Sundance Channel in which Ed Burns is one of the special guests. This Monday at 8PM the Sundance Channel is featuring Ed Burns in new episode of their series The Mortified Sessions where celebrities share their most embarrassing stories from before they were famous, from awkward childhood photos to...

Read more »

Light Is My Friend

By
Light Is My Friend

I generally find harsh sunlight to be the ugliest light of all, but this morning, for some reason, it was amazing. Perhaps because it was early and there was just enough humidity in the air to allow a little filtration in the air. I shot these while walking the dogs around the neighborhood. I normally keep my Nikon Coolpix pocket camera in with me for grabbing pictures on-the-go, but for some reason I felt compelled to hang the Canon 7D around my neck with the super-wide Tokina 11-16 f2.8 lens. The distortion that the sideness of the lens creates...

Read more »

Ed Burns makes “Newlyweds” for $9,000 with a Canon 5D

By
Ed Burns makes “Newlyweds” for $9,000 with a Canon 5D

How long have I been saying to aspiring & first-time independent filmmakers that theatrical distribution is not only dead, it is nonexistent? Filmmaker Ed Burns became one of the Sundance stars and indie filmmaker poster childred with his $20,000 16mm feature The Brothers McMullen — a great film with some of the best performances I’ve scene in films. The DVD has one of the...

Read more »

Good Deeds Open Doors At Goodwill

By
Good Deeds Open Doors At Goodwill

The last day of 2011. New Year’s Eve. KCRA reporter Brian Hickey and I are sent out on assignment to cover people making last minute donations to get breaks on their 2011 taxes. Last year Brian Hickey had gone to the Deseret Industries thrift store and done stories and morning live shots at their drive-up donation area and it had gone very well, so we headed over there. This time, however, we were told that all media requests had to be submitted in writing and would be sent to Salt Lake City, Utah, (Deseret Industries is operated by the...

Read more »

My Favorite Films of 2011

By
My Favorite Films of 2011

The headline might be a little dubious–I’ve only been to the movies a few times this year. I wait for almost everything to come out on DVD or Blu-Ray. Not that I’m not interested in the new movies, but because when I see a movie that I love I immediately want to see all the making-of extras and deleted scenes and load the audio commentary tracks onto my iPod. I don’t have a Top Ten. I don’t think I’ve seen ten movies over the past year that I thought I couldn’t live without or that moved me profoundly or...

Read more »

Christmas Day, 2011 – Unfortunate Events & Personal Reflections On Journalism

By
Christmas Day, 2011 – Unfortunate Events & Personal Reflections On Journalism

Christmas Day, December 25, 2011 I’ve really been looking forward to this Christmas Day. It’s one of those rare Christmas Days where I actually have the day off. News is a 7-day-a-week business and Christmas is just another day. With the exception that you get paid double-time. My schedule is Tuesday-Saturday. Christmas came on a Sunday this year so I’m at home with wife Bonnie and the kids—Alex and Ava, our two greyhounds, and Lucky and Tanner, two greyhounds that we’re fostering. Next year, 2012, is a leap year so in 366 days Christmas will fall on a Tuesday—and...

Read more »

Jimmy Ennett – Australian Naked Filmmaker

By
Jimmy Ennett – Australian Naked Filmmaker

A few months ago I was reviewing my Youtube account and saw a mile of comments left on my videos. A few of them were from a young filmmaker in Australia named Jimmy Ennett who said that he was a one-man filmmaker, too, and that he’d even bought my book Naked Filmmaking. This was very personally uplifting for me to learn that not only was Naked Filmmaking reaching beyond U.S. borders, but that it was also spreading out into new hemispheres. I quickly sent this young compatriot a thank you e-mail and we began corresponding. I wanted to know...

Read more »