making it all count

Should all the work of our lives have social importance?

Should everything we do be in service to something bigger than ourselves? 

Is it senseless to do meaningless work or work for money? But, it's necessary sometimes, right?

So is it possible to live a life of principle or is compromise necessary?

So if you bend your principles and make a little money, it was worth it, right? 

So if you don't make any money but never compromise your principles you are better off?

When your passion, your hobby is your job, what do you do for fun?

When do you have fun?

How much fun should you have?

If you have fun doing your work, doesn't that count as fun? 

How do you not just establish balance, but keep it without having to work at it?

How do you lead a life of principle and commit yourself to work that you love while feeling like you are contributing to an overall good and without feeling like you are being selfish?

The Unborn

Don't see it. Unless you are in need of a good laugh.

Actually, see it and take it as seriously as possible and see how long you can't make it before laughing. The most enjoyable COMEDY of the year.

Do see "Street Fight." Available on Netflix instant play. It's a doc about the Newark 2002 mayoral race. Enthralling. 

...and if you need something to do on January 19 before celebrating the inauguration of President Obama the next day, check out www.usaservice.org

All the smart, filmically talented, good looking, NYC residing, Towson grad people are doing it.

ABC: Lunch on Mickey's dime

So it's been a long time since I've written but something worth remembering happened today so I'm back!

I'm making a documentary for school about Protest Easy Guns and its founder Abby Spangler. Protest Easy Guns is an organization located in Northern Virginia that was created after the shooting at Virginia Tech and works to get the gunshot loophole closed, which allows private vendors to sell weapons to people they don't know at gunshows without a background check. I came across the organization a while back while doing some research online and bookmarked the website knowing I would want to do a project about it one day. When I started working on my documentary for school I contacted Abby and she agreed to participate in the project.

I filmed for three days in the PEG office in Old Town Alexandria last week. Abby is wonderful and I had a chance to meet a couple survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting and a few of the family members who either lost children or their children were injured at Virginia Tech. It was an amazing experience to work on the project and to be around all of those people. But here is how all this ties into today: about 5 minutes after meeting Abby the first day she gets a phone call and writes down on a piece of paper that it is Abc. She answers a bunch of questions and then asks me if I would be willing to share some of my footage from my project with Abc because they are working on a related news piece. Abby said it would be helpful for her organization and the cause so I agreed. I thought "well, that's cool" but didn't think much more about it.

Abby connected me with the lady from Abc, her name is Naria, through facebook and she contacted me on Monday about getting lunch this week. I was surprised, because I thought I would be just dropping off some tapes and that was it. So I went to the upper West Side today and met her at the Abc building. There was a large "Grey's Anatomy" poster in the lobby and everyone walking in and out had Abc badges. Naria came down and we went to a nearby sushi place where she told me all about the piece she is working on. She was very nice and easy to talk to and peppered in curse words--she was great. This is where it got cool: she told me she could pay me for the footage I would be shooting for her (basically I'm shooting for my doc and then she might use some of it, so I'm not even doing any extra work) and that she would give me tape stock. She went on to say that if me or my fellow students have any ideas for a nonfiction piece about an interesting person that we could pitch them to her. She said she rejects the ideas 99% of the time, which is just the nature of the business, but she would love to hear our ideas. That's really cool, even though it's for a news station, it's a direct in. Then she paid for lunch with her The Walt Disney Company commercial credit card. That's right, I had lunch on Mickey's dime.

So after lunch she took me back to the Abc building and I got to go up to her office with her. The floor was pretty barren and she talked a lot about how you would never think a major news organization worked out of the building because there was a lot of outdated equipment and few people (the building she works in does the news magazine shows like 20/20 and Primetime). She took me down to the floor with the editing suites were to get some tape stock and I saw Patrick Swayze's face on a TV monitor in one of the suites. She said Barbara Walters has a one hour interview airing with him tonight. We walked through ESPN. It wasn't the production part, but I think just the marketing part and then she showed me the studio where they film World News Tonight with Charles Gibson. One of the walls of the hallway we were in was all glass so you could look down on the studio. A tech guy was sitting in the main chair doing something. It was pretty cool.

So, after I shoot next week I'll be contacting her again to let her know how it went. I'll probably be getting paid, which is great, and I now I have a direct contact. I got to see the World News Tonight studio and was on Peter Jennings Way and had lunch on Mickey. And I wasn't even really nervous, I just accepted it as the next step of what's to come. 

It was a pretty cool day.