I got up at 5:30 today and directed the video for the services at Port City Community Church. The songs were a bit slower than usual, for the most part, so I tended to have a lot of slower shot transitions and I didn’t change shots as often. The camera crew (Joey, Parrish, Kirsten and Nicki) was very good, but I wasn’t too sure about my own work. Mike Paschal, who oversees all of that, said it was good and made a comment that it was nice that I was using slower transitions today. In that he said that I never really changed the speed of my dissolves, which made me second guess myself. I’ve always tried to match the speed of my dissolves with the tempo of the music, but now I wonder if I was as successful with that as I thought I’d been.

We didn’t have to break all the equipment down since school’s out for the summer (we hold the church services at Roland-Grise Middle School) so I got out earlier than usual. Oh, lunch was tortilla chips and taco ingredients, plus grapes, brownies and lemon squares. It was excellent. Also, I met a new sound guy named Nick and his wife, whose name I can’t recall, but I do remember that she’s a nanny and aspiring actress. And I got Joey to start using hivvy, even though I explained its ultimate origin.

Everyone at church was talking about the Transformers movie. Since I wanted to go see it with Adam and Renee yesterday I bugged Amanda about it enough that she agreed to go to the 3:15 show at Mayfaire. Here’s the thing about this movie: I’ve heard a number of bad reviews, and my friend Jason Revill, who reviews movies, absolutely loathed it. He said that Joel Freeman fell asleep during the big climactic battle. However, Adam liked it, Parrish and Joey liked it (and they;re some talented filmmakers, although my movie tastes have been both in and out of alignment with some of Parrish’s tastes) and it’s pretty evenly split on www.rottentomatoes.com, a site that compiles a number of film reviews. Either way, it’s a live action Transformers movie, and I’ve got to see it in the theater.

So, as I said, I got Amanda to agree to go despite her headache. (I did tell her I’d go see it myself.) We got there though, and it was sold out. How often do movies sell out on Sunday afternoons, for real? So we went back home.

We made plans with Kyle and Lorin Van Zandt yesterday to go to their house for dinner tonight. I took a short nap while Amanda watched some TV then we headed over there a little after 6:00. They made Mexican and we sat, ate dinner, talked, had a good time. I like those kids. Kyle and I even talked about starting a men’s small group, which I’ve thought about before.

When we were talking about our Kentucky trip, the subject of playing Asshole came up. Neither one of them had heard of the game, so of course we had to introduce them to it. Amanda was president the whole time while the rest of us each got a turn in the Asshole seat. They enjoyed it, and we talked about maybe doing a poker night sometime. What good Christian values, huh?

We left there around 9:45. Amanda still had a bit of a headache so she went on to bed.

Zach Dotsey