Will Hines Dot Net

Channel 102 was last night. The audience rightfully did not renew mine and Matt DeCoster’s show The Block. It’s a pity, except that the show was cursed, so we were lucky it even screened. Because we forgot it was winter, we had to cancel our outdoor shoot and move it indoors where we had only 4 hours to finish. While searching for sound effects, my iMac’s 11-month-old hard drive crashed. I bought a new one from a mohawk-sporting know-it-all ectomorph on Bedford Avenue and then raced to the home of Superhero Terry Jinn, who installed it for me. My editor underestimated how tough our post-production demands were, and asked if he could drop off the movie in [...]

The National Kidney Foundation came to my house and towed away my car yesterday. It’s a donation, theoretically, though that implies I have passed on to them a thing of value. My car is old enough that I had to pay them $30 to take it. A fair deal to someone who doesn’t want to deal with junkyards. I suppose if they scrap it, it’s valuable. I scrambled but could not find my camera in time to snap a photo.

I felt more sad that I expected to see the car towed off. AND I think it was resisting being taken. It allowed its alternator to break, meaning it couldn’t be driven. It got buried under 2 feet of snow. It [...]

This is decent list of things to try in NYC:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/traveler/features/insidersny0505/insidersny.html

As of next week, I will have lived in NYC for ten years. I moved here during President’s Day (and Hines Bro Kevin’s birthday) weekend in 1996, just after a big snowstorm which bothered no one because there had been a REALLY enormous one in January. Anyway, after ten years I’ve settled into eating at the same 3 restaurants (Dumont’s on Union Ave. in my neighborhood, Enid’s in Greenpoint for brunch), going to the same handful places (UCBT, St. Mark’s Comics, Tenth Street Baths, Yankee Stadium) — so I like “secret things to do in NYC” to remind me to get off my sedentary butt and visit my own [...]

Those of you asking for cat pictures: trust me, I LOVE posting updates on the cats. Unfortunately, with my relatively new full-time-working lifestyle, I’m not home nearly as much as I used to be, so I don’t have as many chances to capture their antics on film.

I know it’s a poor substitute, but here instead of photos are brief observations on my cats:

• They are both crazy.
• Well, that was vague. What I mean is they are socially skittish. They are scared of everyone and usually won’t come out if anyone new is over. Even when they like people, they do not like to be touched. They DO like to be NEAR people, just not in contact.
• Maggie is dumber, more slim but [...]

Good review of Jaime Hernandez new comics collection “Ghost of Hoppers.”. Thank you Kevin, for pointing it out to me. Someday I’ll lay down my full pitch of why the Hernandez Brothers make the best comics. They are as cool as the ocean, let’s leave it at that.

Did stand-up for the I Eat Pandas musical improv show last night. America, I know I’m biased because Eliza is in this show, but no foolin: you should go see it. It’s a phenomenon. The tiny Under St. Marks Theatre was packed and everyone in there was laughing and clapping with terrific joy. That show is magic. That it’s just three people in this sparse underground theatre makes it all the [...]

It’s hard to start posting once you’ve stopped. The inertia, it grabs a hold of you. And you have to will yourself back into this self-absorbed world of public navel picking, and here I go:

• I’m doing stand-up this Monday night. Eliza convinced her musical improv group I Eat Pandas (which is Eliza, Glennis and Travis) to let me open for them. Maybe you, YOU, should come check this out. My stand-up is downright fascinating. And I Eat Pandas are a guaranteed good time. I’m convinced they could sell out a theatre once a week on a regular basis. Like it could be a decent living for these folks. That is what I think. Come see. 8pm, Monday night at [...]