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Showing posts from February, 2009

An Enlightening Presentation by Pixarā€™s Creative-Technical Leaders

Iā€™ve worked in the video game and television production fields which continue to be male dominated although more women are slowly climbing (not jumping) on the bandwagon. So I didnā€™t know what to expect when I attended ā€œPixarā€™s Leading Womenā€ on Monday. Pixar is the famed Disney animation studio that gave birth to Toy Story, the industryā€™s first full length CG movie. Pixar and Bay Area Women in Film and Media (BAWIFM) sponsored the event at Pixarā€™s Emeryville location. The faces of Art Directors, Editors and Photographers in the media have and continue to be predominately men with women usually delegated in an assistant or associate role. But the roles were reversed in every direction and turned upside down as eight successful women with solid and impressive backgrounds, averaging 13 years of Pixar tenure, shared the challenges and rewards of getting to where they are now. They joined Pixar when it was just starting out in the 1990ā€™s, an unknown production house before the D...

Bad Boat Mystery Solved

Thanks to my friend for sending me this news article about the boat's status. Don't even recognize it with all the graffiti. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/01/26/BACS15G4VE.DTL The National Park Service hauled the boat away about two weeks ago but the article didn't explain in detail of how and why the boat was stranded there except that it was used in a Coast Guard operation. What's more outrageous is that the Los Altos owner refused to pay for for the $4,000 haulting and storage bill! Ocean Beach is not a free parking lot. Expired parking meters in San Francisco will cost you $50 and the meter maids are hawks. The park will bring the owner to court but if he stands his ground, I hope the court revokes his license, impose additional fines or some sort of penality to make him accountable for his actions. I was shocked to see the grafitti on the boat as my video was taken a few days before it was hauled off. Come to think of it, why don't t...

Where did you go Bad Boat?

I took these cell phone videos about two weeks ago. My favorite boat more vandalized than the last time I laid my sympathetic eyes on it: beaten and stripped by elements of humans and weather. I returned yesterday, thinking it would welcome me as usual. But yesterday was different. I turned left on Noriega, crossed Great Highway and expected to see the 3655 foot boat in the horizon once my eyes reached past the top of the staircase column but to my surpriseā€¦nothing, nada, zip! The familiar white and bare boat that I had grown accustomed to as an Ocean Beach fixture was gone. I panned a 180 several times looking like a tennis fan standing on the bleachers watching a Wimbledon match. My eyes narrowed, my face tightened and my heart raced. Question marks raced out of my head. My eyes zig zagged and darted up and down the beach for any signs or remnants of the boat: rudder, wood planks, or an anchor. Zero. I jogged north towards Lincoln, a and made a U turn to Sloat Blvd but came up ...