jayson.rahmlow@gmail.com

I’ve got some cleaning up to do before releasing the next clip from Love Call. So here’s some links to videos that I like:

This video taught me that cancer has a cure. But it can’t be patented so drug companies don’t sell it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ_4YkekV9A

this video reminded me that even if drug companies fund bad science to hide cures for cancer, and central banks are actually institutionalized shell games, it’s still fun to be playful and sing about a girl you like:

http://www.hermandune.com/mov/hd123ipod.mov

when i was depressed and wondering why do we bother, i watched this video and remembered, for a bit:

http://www.lumeneclipse.com/gallery/27/tintori/

whenever I watch these videos with someone, they eventually turn to me and say “i can’t watch. it’s too awkward”:

http://www.clarkandmichael.com/

you know when the guy in a member’s only jacket with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows swaps three cards on top of a cardboard box for tourists in alleys in movies from the 80’s. and he invites one of the tourists watching him to bet on which card has a walnut shell hidden under it. And then that tourist lays down five bucks and picks the wrong card. But then the protagonist, who’s had it up to here with mendacity, lifts up the other two cards to show the tourists there’s no shell under any of the cards. Well imagine the shell game is your local bank and we’re all tourists, this video is the protagonist that’s had it up to here with mendacity:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=money%20masters&hl=en&sitesearch=#

and

here’s this fellow that got to investigating trust foundations, you know all the names you hear at the end of an NPR program. And he found out these bastards start wars for profit, fund bad science, and spawn central banks when they’re not generously donating to Morning Becomes Eclectic:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7373201783240489827

this guy made this video a couple years before he disappeared. He talks about how he used to fly cocaine back and forth for men that later became american presidents:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2818882053570073287&hl=en

I’ve been talking to my friends about getting free. we don’t know exactly what it would mean or how to get it. but the concept is real and right up there on the top shelf of our minds next to love. But since we can’t reach it in life, we talk about it. hoping our words might cast its spell.

But the words don’t cast no damn spell, because we’re still all talking about getting free. And even though we don’t know exactly what being free would mean. We know it won’t be a place where you sit around talking about getting free.

And as we talk, i’m recording, hoping maybe that’s how you get it.

The video below isn’t one of those conversations. Then why mention it maybe you’re asking. Because, I try to do things that don’t make sense hoping to find some new sense and describing which video this is would make sense, so I’m not going to do that.

Like the time I told a girl I had a crush on, at the end of a long romantic walk, “i should probably kiss you now, but that would be cliche so I’m not going to do it.” she said “god forbid we do anything cliche.” I laughed an awkward laugh and led her home. I didn’t kiss her that night. or any other. And she lost interest in me soon after.

Okay that’s a bad example. So maybe I should describe this video. Which would sound something like this, When starting a story with a broken character, you have to show what broke the character. and this is one of those scenes:

awkward

and this feels like it belongs in here too. The email marty sent me after reading the script to that scene. I’d sent it to him because my mom was so upset about it. And she told him he needed to read the script if he wanted to know why. So I sent him a copy of this scene and he read it and wrote this back to me:

i have no problem with this as we have talked before i was an ass hole for a long time,every thing is right,and i am sort of proud ,how you are taking this on,i need ,and do take responseabilty for lots of this,dont go to hard on your mother,she was trying to do the best,matbe not the way you might want things to have happened,but i now she loves you more than anything,if i could go back and change things,i would do it in, a heart beet,  how ever i was fucked up i was does not make my actions right,again i say i am sorry,and hope you can forgive me in time,and writing this movie might help, so in any changes you make, or add to the movie,dont think twice about what you say about me ,i deserve all of it,and i got it coming to,with no hard feelings on my part toward you ever–thanks and i hope this turns out to be the best thing that ever happens to you,i cant wait to be the greatest grandfather in the world to your kids,when you and your gay partner have some-love and respect you

(end of email)

And all that he wrote does make me feel better about getting yelled at and bought diapers all those years ago. And it makes me want to say to folks, hey if you’ve got any lingering horrors from your past. Maybe do what I did. Write that person your memory of the ugly event. maybe you were defenseless then and now you’re all grown up and self possessed and you can meet that old demon now. And get to replace how lowly that memory made you feel with a nice new one.

(now it would be upbeat to end here. so lets say I did. But if you want to get a little depressed keep reading.)

But I think, I’ve met so many folks along the way that had horror show childhoods. Mine wasn’t a horror show. It was just humiliating and hopeless for a few years. But I’ve heard stories.

A friend of mine got beat up by his dad almost daily till he was 22. It was my friend’s chore to mow the lawn and then fill the gas tank. One day, his dad noticed the lawn mower’s gas tank was nearly empty and his son was leaving the house to go to a party. The two got into an argument over whether or not the gas tank needed to be filled immediately. The dad wasn’t getting the answer he wanted to hear so he flew at his son and started punching him in the face and body, like he’d done so many times before. Only his son wasn’t 12 years old anymore. He was 22. So he punched his dad back. It was a good punch too. It knocked his dad to the ground. The old man was shocked. He looked up at his son from the ground and said “alright, alright, alright, that’s enough now.” And his dad never hit him again. But you see how sick that is. The mean bastard’s been beating his son for 22 years, that’s thousands and thousands of punches and he gets one back and it’s enough. How can there be justice here when these things happen. What good would an apology email be in lieu of twenty years of beatings. I don’t know.

These things happen. I guess were just supposed to make the most of them. The most in that story being, our life can be a seemingly endless horror show but one day we’ll find our strength and defend ourselves. and then out in the world maybe that strength will get us what we’re after. get us free.

too much booty for a skinny dreamer

p.s. if you just watched this and you’re angry. then click on the comments link below. It might help elucidate what I was trying to do here, but didn’t really get done.

I can smell autumn in the air. It’s been giving me flashbacks all day. i keep thinking I got a new trapper keeper in my backpack. Anyway you can go ahead and click on the picture below if you want to see another scene from Love Call.

also here’s some news for nerds, I’m finally using a dedicated ftp client to upload my website files instead of the dreadfully slow and quick to disconnect godaddy web version. Thanks cyberduck.

okay so thats another scene i’ve been sitting on for awhile. I had been using it as the opening scene to Love Call. It shows how I got started pulling away from my friends to use my alone time to learn how to create things, like the script for the scene.

My mom called her friend’s channeler this week. I’m not sure what the difference is between a channeler and a psychic. I like to think channeling is more serious business. Anyway, her channeler had a message for me. It’s the kind of message I always hope to hear when someone tells me they’ve got a message for me. And my mom was as excited to tell me this message as a person would be, were they about to deliver such a message. So, I hit record on my audio recorder and listened to her relay it. Which you can hear here:

my mom’s funny

Hearing that made me feel like I did in high school when a chubby acquaintance called me and said “hey jayson, do you remember Ruby from driver’s ed?” Of course I did, I had a terrific crush on Ruby from drivers ed. But i’m cool so I’m like “yeah, I think I know who you mean.” and the chubby girl’s like “well I was on the phone with her last night… And your name came up… And… she told me… that she thinks you’re cute and charming.” My mind soared to the heavens with the glorious future Ruby from driver’s ed and I were about to consummate. But then I hung up the phone and got shy and nervous because I couldn’t imagine being the person I thought she wanted me to be. And so I never asked her out.

So as not to make the same mistake twice, or am I losing the analogy here. Oh well, i just don’t want to be the one to prove the channeler wrong. So here’s my attempt to firm it up and push it out. Also, my girlfriend gave me a little confidence in the movie because, she told me after watching it “jayson that’s good. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before. It’s creative, and funny and entertaining and kind of sad” So I’m going to release a series of scenes from Love Call. Starting with my gf’s favorite scene:

the tundra dream:

so i’m working on a project description for a grant. which means i been writing more than making videos but here’s some experiments I been making. Plus, want to push the robbery entry down one.

www.oldchildprojects.com/videos/robot_dance.mov

www.oldchildprojects.com/videos/pyramid_test2.mov

Me and my new lady, Ruby! YAY! Manhattan may have lost that grittiness all the old new yorkers long for, but not Bushwick. Granted the teenage kid in his western style green bandana mask pointing the beetle shell black revolver with dirty white electric tape wrapped around the handle at us wasn’t as confident a hold up man as I’d like. See when the stick up guy hesitates and doesn’t annunciate and has to repeat himself seven times saying “give me everything you got or i’m going to shoot him in the leg” without actually shooting my leg or at least the concrete. He makes me think I’ve got options. Like, I know he keeps saying he’s going to shoot me in the leg, and he’s moving the gun closer and closer to my leg, which seems like what a cold blooded robber would do if he were really going to shoot me in the leg. But if he really were a cold blooded robber, then why’s he as nervous as we are. And why’s he circling behind us. But before this question could be answered I got hit from behind in the head.

There was so much adrenaline in my system my reaction to the hit was delayed and by the time i turned around to see who’d hit me the fresh faced young sucker puncher was off on his bicycle. But his head was turned around to look at me. His face reminded me of a scared bunny rabbit. But while anthropomorphizing his face my bicycle rolled backwards into me, tripping me and bringing me, right knee first, down to the pavement.

I forgot to mention, I’d been holding a yard long dowel when the bandit approached. Ruby and I had found it in the trash twenty paces before the porch full of teenagers had marked us and sent the message we faintly heard to each other of “go go.”

We were going to use the dowel to make a puppet sized theater we’d started constructing earlier in the evening while watching showboat and then love in the afternoon. The dowel was leaning against a trash can in front of a broken down brownstone and it’s vinyl skin had been scratched up by a kitty, but was the perfect pillar for one corner of the stage. And carrying the dowel past the porch of teeenager’s I’d thought, well, if these punks try anything I’ve got this nickel wide yard long dowel to beat them with. But we’d walked half a block past their porch and thought we were in the clear when Ruby first sensed one running up behind us. She turned to look at the guy crouch-running towards us. Then I did. It took me until he was standing in front of us with his gun on display to figure out why he was wearing a bandana tied old western bandit style around his face. And even after he showed me the gun all I could ask him was, “why are you doing this.” I looked deep in his eyes, like there was a person underneath the bandit, and asked him like his mother might, “why are you doing this.” I couldn’t tell if I was really getting through to him because he just kept repeating his intentions with the gun and how much he wanted everything we had. And as he was bringing the gun closer to the meat of my leg, Ruby sacrificed her bag to this nervous bandit and in exchange he stopped insisting he was going to shoot me in the leg and started walking behind us. We turned our bodies to keep facing him as he walked behind us, which is when I was whacked in the back of the head.

I was laying on the sidewalk’s curb where I fell, looking under the car for the dowel. It had disappeared. I really needed that dowel if I was going to get Ruby’s bag back. But all I saw was oily, cracked concrete underneath the compact car I’d fallen next to. Later in bed, Ruby said there was a moment between her and the bandit, right after they’d both watched me awkwardly fall with my bike to the ground, when I didn’t spring back up, they both thought, what the hell is he doing down there

After all this happened one of my first thoughts was to hate my old hero biggie smalls. Who’s death made me sincerely cry. But who’s also responsible for catchy rhymes like, “for the bread and butta, i leave nigga’s in the gutta.” I thought screw that fat bandit for making it sound like such a good idea to rob folks. and if you are going to rob folks, GOD DAMN IT! GO UPTOWN! Don’t rob your new ghetto neighbor, who shares a studio apt. with two roommates and who’s bedroom is basically a living room lean-to, who’s bicycle is nearly as vital to him as his thigh meat and who almost never has more than 17 dollars on him. It’s just amateur hour.

It’s just stupid stupid stupid. I kept saying something like that right after I got up from the ground without the dowel but with my bike and bag and the bandit now a safer ten feet behind us and slowly increasing the distance. So I stood there watching him, wondering, where does it go from here? Until, he started pointing his gun at me again and reminding me that he was still ready to shoot me. This didn’t have the desired effect of chasing me off, so he charged a little towards us again waving the revolver in my general direction and reminding me with more conviction now that “mother fucker I’m going to shoot you!” Which caused me to duck invisible bullets, and Ruby grabbed my arm and said come on lets go. At the next corner we stopped and waited cross the street, I told her “I know those punks. I used to hang out with idiots like them. They’re bullshit. I hated them then and they’re just the same lost idiot teenager’s trying to teach themselves how to be criminals.” Oh well, i know where they live now. Should i feel motivated to form a vigilante squad and capture each individual punk in his sleep, hog tie him and hang him from his third story window with a note that says “quit robbing people before it kills you.”

anyway Ruby had four dollars in her bag. A cell phone, make up that cost more than I know, and a copy of J.D. Salinger’s 9 stories I’d put in her bag because I wanted us to read a perfect day for bananafish before bed.

I gleaned something nice from the experience of being robbed by amateurs. It gave me a new appreciation for being robbed constantly by the pros, the ones that pay the cops and congress and the military. The one’s that own the banks and install governments. I have a new appreciation for them. It’s not because their kind of robbery doesn’t threaten immediate harm. Because it could, there’s always the chance of a heart attack when in old age one realizes you’re unable to afford your own home because it’s value’s been so inflated by the banks fiat currency and fractional reserve lending and the gov’ts property taxes reassessed up to the minute to make sure you’re paying well more than your fixed income can afford, and you sure as hell can’t stay with your grand children who are trying to make it in the big city and getting decent jobs but still only being able to affort to live in the slums with two roommate in a studio apartment, and your old age wisdom sort of puts all the pieces together and you finally glimpse the magnitude and omnipresence of the robbery the men behind money creation have just played on you and everyone you know and suddenly a pain hits you like a bullet through your chest, as you shout your last words we’ve been robbed! But those robbers did it smart. It’s a whole nother experience to be robbed by smart crooks. They made us think it was inevitable. They made us think it was our idea to buy 800,000 dollar condo’s and take out 80,000 dollar school loans. It smart, it’s classy robbery with taste. So the one thing good about last night is it gave me a little sympathy for the devil.

the end.

if you want to see what else i wrote but edited out, I let it collect at the bottom of the page here =

I don’t really need anymore reasons to lose all faith in humanity. I mean folks are dumb enough they participate in elections that are predetermined by the wealth mongers. They trust doctors to cure their sicknesses. They put all their wealth in banks, who then inflate that wealth through fraction reserve lending which is the biggest hold up in history. But last night’s mugging gave me a new appreciation for the robber barons, a little sympathy for the devil. The best thing they do is to make the situation absolute, you pay your taxes, you pay your mortgage or else they are absolutely certain of their right to my wealth. and if you’re going to rob me, do it so i think it was my idea to pay 800,000 dollars for a condo. Or thirty percent of my salary for street cleaning. What’s also great in a situation is the illusion of the cops is wonderfully dispelled. The best thing a cop could have done was been on the street corner so I could have hopped on my bicycle on the sidewalk and the cop would have run over to give me a ticket. Everyone in this city is trying to take from you, the cops and the robbers.

But the bandit from all his tv cop drama and nervousness would have thought the cop was coming for him.

Bushwick is like universal studios for scorcese’s new york of the 70’s. The shark’s not real but the rides still scary.

well, i’m just a bit underslept at the moment, cause i like a pretty girl and she likes me.

Life seems to like me more and more these days. I hardly remember why we were mad at each other for the last 30 years but it seems like maybe we’ve made up and are ready to be happy together. It’s crazy what a good girl’s affections can do to a young man’s worldview. I’ve got no income, sleep on a mattress on a floor in a room with only 3 walls and red itchy bumps keep appearing on my limbs that look an awful lot like internet images of bed bug bites. But when I get hugged and kissed and pulled in by someone I want to want me, (in her bed bug free bed) everything seems as it should be. (update: it wasn’t bedbugs. I’m allergic to honey. Life has a way of disproving my absolute statements. Like on 9/10/01 when I emphatically argued with my idealistic friend john that one man can’t change the world.
Well, the morning before I got the ridiculous collection of bed bug like itches, I’d just finished drinking half a bottle of honey and said to myself. ‘honey is amazing. it’s as delicious as any food on the planet and you can eat all you want and nothing bad will ever happen to you.” six hours later 12 lumps appeared on my belly and they itched so bad that I considered using my nail clippers on them. I’ve since switched to agave.”

Anyway, now i’m going to post the 2nd of a three part experiment in learning to entertain. As you’ll see I’ve got a few lessons to learn. But what the hell, I’m trying my best. First lesson I learned is it’s not as easy as it looks. In fact, the second to last scene was just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done.* It nearly broke my spirit for the thing. Because afterwords, it’s like what do I have. I didn’t make us a hospital. Or plant acres of fruit trees. There’s a recent song that has a line that says “we are fated to pretend.” I don’t want that to be true, though it seems I’ve proven it so with my own life. I’d rather think that pretend is how we learn to do it for real. Like if I’m really going to redistribute the world’s wealth I have to start by pretending I already have.

so enjoy.

*next to digging a 6×10x4 foot ditch in less than six hours

and I finally got around to finishing it yesterday. well the video part, still have to add audio. but since I keep delaying the fort knox video here’s a scene from it. I’m all hopped up on raw cacao powder right now so I don’t have the patience in this moment to add a picture but the link below leads to the video.

gold_city_now6

I feel like a bad lover. I really shouldn’t keep you waiting this long. A month’s gone by without an update. It’s like when my ex girlfriend would be all, “go ahead and start the movie I’ll just be a minute, I’ve got to get something from my room.” And then after an hour and half of me drowning in longing for her companionship she walks back into the living room like “oh my god, babe, I’m so sorry, I just got involved in there. You’re probably pissed, huh?” And I’d be like, “no, no, I’m not pissed. but what the hell were you doing in there this whole time?” “don’t even ask. so do you want to put on another movie.” and I’d be like “okay,” and she’d be like “great put on whatever you want i’ll be right back” as she walked towards her room again. She was a little ocd, i think. Uh anyway, I don’t want to be that person to you.

So to explain my abscence, i’ve been working on the end of the fort knox video. it’s all i do. that and steam vegetables for consumption, and almost get punked for my bicycle by the homeless guy I gave two bucks to. And get told by cops that I can’t cross the williamsberg bridge till after the fireworks, “when will that be?” I ask. he says back at me, “WHEN THEY END, WHENEVER THAT IS!” Why’s every middle aged white cop gotta be a prick. Cause then I’m down in the subway to get to bushwick via the L train. And the emergency gate’s open, and there’s another cop like the other standing there talking to a metro lady and I’m like “uh is the subway free now.” “No” says the lady and I’m like “well they closed the bridge so I can’t get over,” and cop 2’s like “you can bring your bike on the train, just swipe your card.” no shit! bUt that’s not what I meant and don’t pretend like you don’t know what I was getting at officer, I was obviously implying that ‘hey copper your buddies won’t let me cross the bridge so why not make good on their interference and let me ride the subway for free.’ But I don’t say any of that, I just say “oh really?” like I don’t already know you can take your bike on the subway, cause I’m a nervous wreck, cause when I was walking back from being told I wasn’t free to cross the bridge on idependence day, a homeless guy stopped me to ask for change. and you know, no one knows what to do about homeless guys, and whether or not to give them change, but I figure most people are idiots and most people don’t give the homeless guy change, so i I reach into my pocket to get a single, but I’m fiddling in my back pocket to try and not pull out the two twenty’s i’ve got mingled in with the single, so homeless dude doesn’t think I’m rich and take all my money, and while i’m fiddling my bike freakin’ falls on the sidewalk and homeless guy picks it up and then lifts it up and says “wow, look at this thing, it’s light. you must of paid 500 dollars for this, at least.” and I can’t separate the god damned wad of debt based federal notes in my back pocket so I just bring them all out together, in a hurry hoping now to exchange a dollar with this guy so i can get my bike back. We’re about a foot and a half from each other and he’s talking wiley and we’re both thinking I’m an idiot for letting him hold my bike. But it’s just like who cares, most people cling to all their crap their whole life, they get the one lover, the one house the one job and hobby that’s all great news for awhile but you hold onto something too long and it starts to retard you, so it’s like fine if homeless dude needs to steal my bike so be it, but if he doesn’t have to, please don’t let him. So in response to his question about how much my bike cost, I’m glad to tell him it only cost $75 dollars, which is true. (but i didn’t include the price of the new tires $40 dollars each and the $70 leather seat I’d just lathered in organic coconut oil the day before.) And I hand him a dollar. And he’s like “hey man i’m homeless. I need more than that.” So I give him another dollar and tell him like it’s a good thing, “I was homeless too for awhile.” He goes “yeah where?” I’m like “in california.” which was pretty true, I wasn’t entirely homeless, I slept in my car for four months. which I won’t explain right now. And he’s looking at me in my eyes and he’s like “you ever been homeless in new york.” I say “no” and he chortles like yeah well that’s a whole nother thing. then he asks “well, what do you do now.” And I said “I don’t have a job.” But this whole time remember he’s holding my bicycle and I envision him jumping on it and me grabbing for the back of his dingy faded black jean jacket. And he knows I’m thinking this. Now I’ve got a theory that we make each other. Our expectations of each other make us who we are. even in small moments like this. so had I no expectation of him thieving my bike and I was just tabla rasa answering his questions about being homeless and how much bikes cost, then things wouldn’t have felt so electrifyingly awkward in the moment. So now he summons his demon and repeats his last question with fire in his eyes, “WHAT DO YOU DO NOW!” like Alright punk! i got your shit! make your move! and I’m looking at the dirty sidewalk, putting the money he’s let me keep, in my back pocket and I enter accident time, like the way we tell each other time slows down when we’re in an accident. And i ask myself, “what do I do now?” And life or magic or whatever you call the ether that binds us and protects us here, answered for me, and I said “I wait.” he cracked up and said something jovial like “you crazy!” but I can’t remember exactly because I was just relieved to see him pushing the handlebar of my bike over to my hands. I grabbed it and walked away with my bike like what the hell just almost happened. then he turned to the three teenagers standing at the stairs to the subway entrance five feet behind us and said “look at you young punk asses, what the hell do you think you’re up to.” I walked down the steps to end up swiping my subway card and walking past the cop and the metro lady with my stupid grin, like thanks for helping me pay two more god damned dollars, you dull pricks.

anyway, I’m working on the end of the fort knox video. I hope to have it finished by the end of next week. so you know, that’s what i’ve been doing in my room.