Eats For Endorsement

An ongoing feature in which I recommend the work and websites of people who buy me dinner. Today’s entry: Ken Levis!

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This is a blurry picture of my dear friend Ken Levis (bonus photo: Ken & Bubba). Ken is a documentary producer, and a damn good one. He’s also a writer, editor and director, not to mention a total mensch. Ken has won a ton of awards, and his friends love him so much we even forgive him for working as the official court documentarian of Thomas Friedman. Ken’s most recent film, Struggle for the Soul of Islam: Inside Indonesia, has been widely praised. Yet in spite of all his achievements, Ken still doesn’t have his own web site. Get on it, Ken! And thanks for dinner (look at that swanky restaurant he took me to)!

Would YOU like to be featured in Eats for Endorsement? Then buy me dinner. My email address is at the bottom of the middle column, the one with the pictures linking to my movies and cartoons and stuff.

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Loins of Punjab Presents:

Here’s an excerpt of I video I worked on (I did the animation, duh) for the amazing, wonderful feature film Loins of Punjab Presents. Lucky viewers in India will get to see it in theaters later this month. We sadly deprived Americans will have to wait until after its festival premiere October 3rd. Well, I’m not sadly deprived – I saw it, and it’s awesome!

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Hope and Anger

Pandora

You know what makes me angry? Hope.

Hope is worse than desire. Hope is when you actually believe your desires are real, that what you desire may come to pass. Desire is an illusion, Hope is a delusion.

One of the greatest stories about Hope is Pandora’s Box, about which I made a film several years ago. According to legend, after Pandora released from the box all the plagues of mankind, only one was left: Hope. Consequently, all the other curses of humanity may be recognized as such, but Hope remains a gift-wrapped curse.

Good ol’ Friedrich Nietzsche sez:

So now man has the lucky jar in his house forever and thinks the world of the treasure. It is at his service; he reaches for it when he fancies it. For he does not know that that jar which Pandora brought was the jar of evils, and he takes the remaining evil for the greatest worldly good–it is hope, for Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man’s torment. (link)

I’ve been afflicted by hope recently, so I searched online for some management tips. Of course I had to google “anger management” to find anything, and then substitute “hope” for “anger.” My results, after the fold…
Continue reading “Hope and Anger”

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