My "life" is a little more settled now than in recent days. I spent two weeks working on a book proposal for a publisher who made the mistake of showing reserved interest in a concept Mark Deming and I have been knocking around. I don't think they're gonna bite; it's not exactly up their alley and I can only assume that the proposal I sent was not up to industry standard snuff (it was my first attempt at one, after all, I hardly know what I'm doing). The best we can hope for is a speedy rejection, so we can retool the thing and send it off to someone who might be more inclined to actually publish it.

Anyhow, that consumed me but good for two weeks, and last weekend was spent trying to catch up on other projects. I finished writing my celebration of the great John Carradine, who will turn 99 years old this Saturday (don't bother sending a card, he's dead), so check for that on filmthreat.com this weekend. I also spent time on an article I'm writing about ephemeral film (by which I mean gory old drivers' ed films, military propaganda, industrial training films and the like) for the next issue of Resonance and I've interviewed Rick Prelinger of the Prelinger Archives and two fellas who run something called the Found Film Festival. Tonight I begin transcribing and hoping my 45 minutes worth of taped conversations start turning into a story.

It's my mother's birthday today. Like every year, I celebrate this day by respecting her privacy and not calling her or cluttering up her mailbox with gifts.