willhines.net

I’ve become enamored, big-time, with Sunrise Earth. This might be my favorite television show of all time. For the uninitiated, it’s just quiet footage of a selected location in the very early hours of the morning. Sample titles: Stonehenge Dawn. Foothills of Turkey. Scandinavian Waterfall. I first saw it last week, when I stumbled into work early and found it playing on my office’s HD television (yes, we have one). I was mesmerized for a good thirty-five minutes by Asian fishing villagers cleaning their nets. No narrator; no explanation, no dialogue — just crickets, birds chirping, water lapping and the morning sun.

Could I write a spec script for Sunrise Earth? Here it is: Scene I - Icebergs float by. End of show.

Ridiculous mornings: After I graduated college in 1992 I moved home and shared bunk beds with my youngest brother Brian for a few months. It was a nice reality check for both of us — he was learning that even turning 15 would not get him his own room, and I learned that a college degree did not mean you could escape your Empire Strikes Back sheets (I could have changed them, but I was indulging the silliness). We got on all right, though. We were both heavily into the Beatles so we’d program the alarm function of the stereo to play Blackbird or something. Once we set it to play “Good Day Sunshine,” since it sounded like an appropriate song for the morning. We forgot it begins with a very loud ominous drum march into a cymbal crash. Morning arrived, and I yelped and leapt out of bed full of fear. Morning!