Mary Pat (one of the producers of this film and one of my closest friends) just arrived in NYC and I'm stoked.

We're going to go together to Enat's edit bay, and then have a working lunch with Enat and Kimberley (our brand new and fabulous assistant editor) in Williamsburg.

And tomorrow we three - Mary Pat, Enat, and I, head up to Martha's Vineyard to spend the weekend with Laurie David. I'm excited for Laurie to meet Enat, and for us to discuss the film which is already taking such great shape - but is it wrong that mostly what I'm excited for is to go waterskiing?

I'm attaching some shots of my daily existence now - of Enat (shown in a downpour with her umbrella), of her cats Pepper (white) and Caterpillar (not white) - my two favorite cats (easy for me since I love dogs), a bit from my walk to work (including a quirky cake shop and a wasteful fire hydrant (!!)), and the view from Enat's Williamsburg loft that we take five minute breaks to stare out at between the long edit hours (notice 'Police Cars Unlimited'!)...

This is Mary Pat's first time to the Big Apple so I get to see this city through her new eyes. First stop: cupcakes at Teanys. I'm predicting it right here that she's going to love it so much she never leaves. I hope she packed for winter.

I just heard that a new law might come into effect in NY that limits our ability to film and photograph New York City freely. Not only does that limit freedom of expression period - but now that I'm a New Yorker I think I'd go into a deep dark depression if I was restricted from photographing every inch of this wondrous city!

Let's all sign the petition (no matter where you live) so that we can nip this thing in the bud before it's a real issue:

It takes 10 seconds: click here to sign the petition and keep NYC film friendly.

I've discovered that New Yorkers don't like to share pens or information.

When I ride the subway I like to do work, but nine times out of ten I've forgotten my pen at home.  So, my first thought is to ask my subway neighbor for one.  My first few times of asking I was struck by a very strange coincidence - no one had a pen on them.  It was the same thing every time: they'd open up their bag just a crack, peer in it, then look at me and shrug their shoulders apologetically and say, 'Sorry, I don't have one.'

At first I bought it.  Wow, I thought, New Yorkers don't write anything down.  But then it occurred to me that maybe New Yorkers just don't like to a) be bothered by strangers on the subway and/or b) don't like to share their pens.

I noticed this same pattern when asking people for directions.  Each time I go for a long run or bike ride I'll wind up in an area I don't know and ask a local where the hell I am.  Seems simple enough.  Most people know where they are on the earth at any given moment.  I should be the weird one in the conversation who doesn't - not them.  But, on at least seven different occasions (including one on my run this morning!) when I've stopped someone and asked 'Excuse me, what part of town is this?' each time the person has said, 'Sorry, I really don't know.'  Now how do you explain this??

It took me two people this morning before someone told me where I was ('This is Windsor Terrace' a guy eventually told me.  And then even though I didn't ask, he said 'the rent is cheaper here than in Park Slope.') - the first woman I met just shrugged her shoulders as if we were all lost in oblivion.

I don't know whether to be very concerned, or just less gregarious.  Either way, I'm never leaving home without a pen and a map again.

My new favorite thing is to travel across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan without a car.  Each weekend, I somehow always wind up either biking of walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Because it's so damn gorgeous.

When I first walked the Bridge I discovered that A) New York is really tiny (compared to LA), and B) you can get just about everywhere via your own two feet without emitting any CO2 into the atmosphere (except your own breath).

Which gave me an idea about my commute to the editing room:  The way Brooklyn is set up public transport wise, right now I have to take a subway into Manhattan, and then catch another out to Williamsburg.  Total commute is over an hour.  When I realized that New York isn't as big as New Yorkers claim it is, I mapquested Enat's apt and found she lives 4 miles from me.  In LA 4 miles = just around the corner!

So, on Friday instead of taking the subway, I put on my sneakers and ran to Enat's place.  Door to door in 35 min.  And the only thing I emitted was calories!

This week I'll experiment with biking there...

The pics below are from my ride last weekend from Park Slope across the Brooklyn Bridge, to Teanys - the best dessert spot in all the land (and it's vegan!) - in the Lower East Side.  What your drooling over in the pics below are the Oreo Cupcake and the Peanut Butter Bomb Cake...

Someone the other day said NYC is like an iPod on shuffle. Everywhere you go you hear some sort of music, and then a block later, it's something else.

The other day, I walked to the subway and heard this awesome music coming out of the cellar doors in the sidewalk - some band was reheasring in the basement of some building, and I was walking on top of them!

And at around midnight one night, I was waiting for a subway and heard this incredible music from the other end of the platfom... I went to check it out and found this guy playing his guitar with every ounce of himself, drenched in sweat and belting out the most terrific folky music I'd heard. Everyone tried to pretend like he wasn't there, but one by one, they all started bopping their heads, and I danced until the subway came.

The musician is Cuomo and I bought his new CD, 'Greenburg, PA.' I wish I could upload a song --- but will have to settle for linking to his older album that's on myspace... click here to listen to Cuomo!

I bet it'll make you bob your head whether you want to or not!

This entry has nothing to do with global warming - but it does deal with another pressing issue:

the Park Slope Baby Invasion (PSBI).

I know I mentioned the Park Slope moms and their babies before, but the situation has really spiraled out of hand.

To best explain, I took photos from the subway to my apt - about 10 blocks - of all the babies I saw. I counted fourteen. I think we're being invaded...

I think if I don't start showing soon, I'm gonna get the boot...

The other day I was running late and took a car service to work. I told the driver - who was from Columbia - that I had just moved to NYC.

He said to me, 'If you can't find it here, you can't find it anywhere.'

Here's his pic...

It's 11:53pm on Friday night and I've just returned home from editing over at Enat's.

Being new to the city, I wasn't sure if it was okay to walk around Brooklyn by myself at midnight, but it turns out that not only was I out at midnight - but so was (and is) every pre-teen in all of Park Slope.

The new 'Harry Potter' book goes on sale at midnight tonight (that's now t-minus 7 minutes!!), and there is a line all around my block leading up to the local bookstore that I fear might explode from the influx of braces and bubble gum. I'm now sitting at my computer and through the open windows I can hear squeals and yelps of anticipated bliss outside.

And it made me think -- if JK Rowling just slipped in some sort of mandate that we muggles should make the effort to stop global warming, I bet this problem would end tomorrow.

And, hell, if she got Harry to take care of it (assuming he survives this next book), then all the ice-caps that we've already lost would magically re-appear. Or maybe she should put Hermoine on it? Something tells me that girl knows how to get things done...

I'm going to hop in the shower - it's been a long and terrific week of working with Enat. And by the time I'm out, I predict half of Park Slope will have read the new 'Harry Potter' twice over.

At 4:45pm I took a break from editing to go look at an apartment for rent.

Enat (who's earlier doc, The Boys of Baraka, which she edited, just got nominated for an Emmy yesterday!) came with me and we rode our bikes through Williamsburg until we got to a huge loft building with a facade that looked fit for demolition.

We waited in the rain for a few minutes until a man named Henry - an older Hasidic Jew - pulled up in a mini-van and got out yapping on his cell phone.   We followed him up three flights of creaky stairs and checked out several brand new lofts that overlooked the Williamsburg Bridge (hell, I think it was the Williamsburg Bridge - but what do I know? Maybe it was the Brooklyn Bridge??). The lofts were awesome. New and pretty but inside a building full of old rich, fit-for-demolition, character. Just think of the creative inspiration!

But instead of signing the lease then and there as Henry encouraged me to do, Enat and I biked home and filed back into the editing bay (read: small room just off her front hallway), and hung out with twelve inch versions of Laurie and Sheryl for the rest of the day.

After work today I was supposed to go meet a filmmaker friend of mine, Keith Bearden, for a bite near Union Square, but, as usual, I was verrrrry late, and Keith was verrrrry not there when I finally arrived at Galaxy Global Eatery (and I am verrrry sorry, Keith!)...

So I went by myself down the road to eat some raw tiramisu at Pure Food and Wine, and sat at the bar next to a couple who was very clearly on their first date. They had SO many questions for each other and seemed SO excited to hear the answers. So much so, that I think they might actually work out.

In fact! maybe they'll read this blog somehow and print it out and save it for when he proposes and then paste copies of it on their wedding invitations in the middle of some sort of collage to show everyone how they first met?

At least that's what I would do...

When I got home I found an email from Sheryl that was written to me, Laurie, and Mary Pat saying she misses us and asking when we're all going to go back on the road again - which is funny since I don't feel like I've left the road yet because I live with it everyday in the edit bay.

She also said she loved the sizzle reel we made and, well, PHEW! That makes me happy!

Regardless of when I move out of my apt in LA, I already feel like I am a New Yorker - and that makes me happy, too!

Okay. After some reflection, it's time to discuss the Live Earth concert.

First of all -- what a way to be welcomed into this city! I moved to NYC on a Friday, and on Saturday I danced my heart out from 3pm until 11pm with all of New York to the coolest line up of bands I could ever hope to see under one sky.

Second of all -- I wonder if that concert helped the cause? And really hope it did.

My 'Live Earth' adventure went something like this (to get the full experience, add in 'it is sweltering hot' before each sentence as you read):

First, I got the times for the concert all wrong and made plans with my friend, Chris, to go see the show at nighttime. It was at Giants' Stadium in New Jersey, so Chris offered to get a car to take us there from the City. When I found out the show actually started at 2:30 in the afternoon, I also found out Chris had other plans for the day and couldn't go.

So, I found myself uptown all alone at 1pm with no car and no idea how to get from NYC to New Jersey for the 2:30 start time. I asked around and someone suggested I go to Port Authority and take a bus. So, I followed her advice blindly and got myself to the massive bus terminal where --

I found a million people just like me who were filing into hundreds of buses heading to Giants' Stadium. Delighted by the eco-friendly carpooling solution, I got the last seat on one of those buses --

-- and found myself next to a cute guy who would moments later refer to himself as 'Justin the Jaded Journalist.' He was going to the concert so he could write about it, and was very disgruntled by the whole idea that this concert itself was emiting an avalanche of CO2 into the atmosphere, and so was a model of hypocrisy.

I offered up the idea that we could maybe look at the CO2 the concert was emitting as a sort of martyr for the overall conservation of CO2 that the concert would hopefully inspire. He seemed to be mollified by this, but remained dubious about the movement in general.

And, being at the show, with everyone drinking bottled water and standing in line for factory farmed beef, I wondered if he might have a point. Were people there to hear their favorite bands and see Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz live, or were they they there to make a solemn pledge to save our planet? Hopefully, they were there for both.

My real concern -- and I admit I wasn't thinking of this when I was dancing my heart out to Bon Jovi -- was that even if people were at the show because they really care for the environment, were those people going to think they had done their part just by going to the show? Were they going to go home patting themselves on the back thinking their work here was done?

Or were they really going to follow Al Gore's SEVEN POINT PLEDGE?

I don't exactly know the answer - but I'm going to list Al's Pledge below so that maybe you, if you were at the show or not, might have a go at following it yourself... and then our world can thrive and -- Justin-the-Jaded-Journalist can get un-jaded?

(To read the article that Justin came up with after the event for 'AM New York' click here).

Here is Al Gore's 7 POINT PLEDGE aimed at putting pressure on political leaders around the world to combat global warming (read more here):

1. Demand that my country join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth.

2. Take personal action to help solve the climate crises by reducing my own C02 pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become “carbon neutral”.

3. Fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the C02.

4. Work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation.

5. Fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal.

6. Plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests.

7. Buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crises and building a sustainable, just and prosperous world for the 21st century.

Since I last wrote about a zillion things have happened. Most importantly:

We found the best editor for our film! She's Enat Sidi and she edited the Oscar nominated doc, Jesus Camp, and the latest doc that she edited on, Billy The Kid, just won the Jury Award at LAFF. She's a filmic genius, is going to add whole new creative dimensions to our film, and.....she lives in Brooklyn.

Which bring me to very important thing #2:

I moved to New York City last week!!!

I've apartment swapped with my friend and fellow lady filmmaker, Leah Meyerhoff, who is a crazy cool artist and her apartment is a rainbow of color with a million naked black and white photographs everywhere. And suddenly I now live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and stick out like an unmarried alien among the sea of mom's and their baby strollers. I've considered stuffing a pillow under my sundress just to fit in. There was even an article written about the moms last week in the New York Times!

The only thing me and the moms have in common is that we are all drenched in sweat at any given moment of the day. It's a million degrees and humid as hell here and I've never been so connected to my own self-cooling system that nature provided for me in the event that I get stranded in a) the Sahara, or b) downtown New York in the summer.

While we're waiting on the footage to get fully digitized (it's due to arrive tomorrow), I've taken the respite to dive head first into the huge bouncy castle of New York City in the hopes of finding an apartment (somewhere in either downtown Manhattan or Brooklyn) and mastering the subway system (right now everyone who expects me to meet them at, say, 1st Ave between 6th and 7th at 7pm should really expect me there at, oh, 7:45).

Also, in my short few blissful days here, I have been advised by many friends - including the film exec, David, who I'd skipped to meet just weeks ago (marked below by an asterix) - of the many things I 'simply must' do in NYC, here's what I've done so far:

been to a play on Darfur at the Shakespeare Theater in Central Park

eaten lunch on the grass in Union Square

celebrated my mom's birthday with my parents and their friends at Ilse de Capri

gone to the Italian Cinema at BAM (saw 'The Seduction of Mimi')*

tasted the best wine I have ever sipped (at Stonehome Wine Bar in Fort Greene)*

went on a date with a guy from LA (??) to Counter (mega yum!)

danced to Femi Kuti at SummerStage in the RAIN*

slept naked every night because it's so damn hot (and I refuse to use the air conditioning)

eaten at Candle Café with my friend, Karen, from college

become acquainted with Uncle Louie G's Italian ices (I hear Uncle Louie G has a Hummer. I'll see what I can do about that).*

met a channel reader (??) named Shira

read several screenplays on the subway uptown and back*

met the Kosher Wine Society (??) president named Aaron (who was dating the channel reader, Shira)

ran into two different people I barely knew from college at two different spots in Brooklyn*

discovered where you can get good cheap film equipment (Pal Television)

danced my heart out at Live Earth (that's an entry in itself!)

got all of my boxes from FedEx and took a 'car service' to Enat's apartment to set up our editing bay (which is really just my computer that I shipped from LA)*

and now I am about to go meet my friend Owen at Bergen Street in Brooklyn to check out his neighborhood as part of my reconnaissance plan to discover the perfect neighborhood for me to live in.

I could stay in Park Slope, but I think the rule is you must get pregnant within two months of being here. And, well, I really think I should find another place to live...

But regardless of where I end up - one thing''s for SURE and that's that:

I LOVE NEW YORK!

My Far Side day calendar is still on March 16, and life in post-production sort of seems to be whizzing by at an unruly, but terribly exciting, rate.

Mary Pat and I had lunch with Laurie last week and it was great to see her. We enlarged and framed two photos that I'd shot on the tour of she and Sheryl and gave them to her as a gift, which she seemed to really be touched by. In many ways, I think that tour was a turning point in all our lives, and the photos we have of it are very lovely reminders of a very lovely and monumental time for everyone involved. (Sheryl is going to get the same photos, but she is out of town right now and so I'm going to ship hers to her…)

We gave Laurie the update that we’re deep into our search for the perfect editor to cut this film, and that we’re nearly finished with cutting our 10 minute sizzle reel (that we'll show to potential financiers in order to potentially help us get funding for our post-production process).

The process of finding the right editor sort of feels like I imagine it would if I just broke up with a guy and thirty of my friends set me up with thirty of their most adorable and sexy guy friends on blind dates. Only, instead of my friends setting me up with guys, it’s my favorite filmmakers setting me up with their favorite editors.

Right now we’re in the speed dating phase, where everyday has us meeting one or two potential editors at random coffee shops across Los Angeles. Mary Pat sits patiently as she listens to me explain the film and our vision for it, and then she adds any creative beats I'd forgotten, and asks their schedule, and then we listen and hear what they have to say about all of it.

I really believe that filmmaking is one big love story, and when you connect with someone creatively, you just know it. And when I know I connect with an editor, I’ll let you know it.

Today is Sunday and I’m getting over a pretty nasty cold. Maybe I’ll take a moment to read through me Far Side day calendar and get caught up…

The other day I went to pick up some food from a restaurant down the street and the waitress, Nicole, brought the food out with no bag and no plastic silverware. I must have been staring blankly at the little parcels before me because she said, ‘Uh, sorry, did you want a bag?’ I said that no, I didn’t, but that I was surprised she chose not to give me one. ‘Oh, I hate unnecessary waste,’ she said, and then told me how she writes a Green column on the Oh Audrey website.

Maybe I just notice it more since I’m working on this film, but it’s amazing to me how many people I’ve been meeting lately who are active in the fight to stop global warming. It gives me hope for a better, greener tomorrow!

I am having a love affair with New York City. I am here this weekend to take a bunch of meetings on a few different film projects, and I'm utterly enchanted with this city. In LA you have to seek out the magic, but in NYC it's inescapable.

I just went for a run through the Lower East Side and my iPod Shuffle play list went something like this:

Pink Floyd, Earl Greyhound, Robert Randolph, The Beatles, The Fine Young Cannibals (??), Sheryl Crow, U2, Something for Rockets, Pink Floyd, and my final sprint down Houston Street was scored by Tina Turner.

I haven’t quite figured out the whole iPod Shuffle thing, but somehow it always plays the songs I’m most into at any given moment - have you noticed that? Sheryl, Robert Randolph, and U2 are all featured in our movie and I’ve been listening to them on repeat in the editing room for the past month – and now all of a sudden they’re in my ears as I run and sweat through the humidity of Lower Manhattan.

The song of Sheryl’s that played on my run was Soak Up The Sun which is the one song of hers I’ve heard the most recently – it seems to be the song I love setting images to as I go through my footage. The song is wildly fun, full of heart, and totally inspirational. In many ways, it sets the tone for what I hope the film we’re making will be like.

Today is Sunday, and I’m about to go have lunch with an exec from at Focus Features somewhere in the West Village. Even though we’ll probably talk mostly about different narrative film projects we could work on together in the future, I’m sure I’m going to spend a large chunk of time talking about my global warming doc – because, as of late, this film and this cause has become a large chunk of who I am…

I suppose I could take a taxi to the meeting, but instead I think I'll skip.

I'm writing from Istanbul, Turkey, and global warming's an issue here, too. 

I went in to meet with my agent, Jason, this afternoon, and gave both he and his assistant, Alex, a Compact Fluorescent light bulb (one for each) to replace their regular ones because - did ya know? - if every American housebold replaced just five regular lightbulbs with Compact Fluorescents, it would be equivalent to taking 8 MILLION cars off the road for a year (!!!). Jason took it, but said he’d already switched his light bulbs at home and asked me if the kind I’d given him could be dimmed the way his could, and also why mine wasn’t in the shape of a coil – which were supposedly more energy efficient. I didn’t know. Turns out my agent is already way more eco-friendly than I am! Maybe *he* should be directing this movie?

Even though they aren’t coiled, I did replace almost all my home light bulbs with new CFL’s and I feel so much better about seeing this keyboard as I type right now – knowing that I’m doing my small part to help the big picture.

Last night I went with Laurie to a huge gala dinner where she was one of four women activist honorees. Before she walked on stage (to a standing ovation) they talked about her work in the fight against global warming – that most recently took the form a bus-tour across the country speaking to college students. I felt very proud to have been a fly on the wall of that trip – and even though I felt like screaming ‘I filmed it! I filmed it!’ I held back and applauded politely like the rest of the cooing crowd…

Our next plan of action is to cut our sizzle reel down to about eight minutes (!? – remember, there are 200 hours of footage!), so I predict a whole lot more sleepless nights to come… But at least now they will be lit by Compact Fluorescent light bulbs!

ps - I draw a comic strip once in a while called 'Silly Chase Productions' - it's about a little girl who's got her own imaginary audience and is always up to trouble... here's a pen and crayon (that's right, crayon) sketch I drew this weekend of Silly Chase making her home eco-friendly and 'green' in the best way she knows how...

We finished editing together our 30 min sizzle reel at 4:00 a.m. this morning, and that was also when we realized that we didn’t have any blank dvd’s to burn it to.

Mary Pat – being the saint that she is – took off to scour Los Angeles at nighttime for anything that fit into the Venn diagram of a) being open and b) having dvd’s for sale. I know it’s incredible, but at 4:00 a.m. there wasn’t a lot of overlap. I passed out on my editor’s couch and by the time I woke up at 6:00a.m. the dvd’s had appeared and Jon had finished burning a copy.

I snatched it up and drove it to Laurie’s house and left it in her mailbox – and then drove back to Jon’s to pick up another dvd to have as a back-up. And then finally I drove across town, and plopped on my bed at 7:25 a.m. – and left my house at 8:45 a.m. to head over to meet Laurie and Mary Pat for our first meeting of the day.

Needless to say, I’m finishing this blog and passing out.

It was a neat experience to watch the reel (through my delirium) play before totally fresh eyes. Our first meeting had three executives in it, and everyone reacted to something different at each moment. Everyone seemed to really like it and I actually feel it’ll be a matter of moments before the right home for it emerges. Decisions in Hollywood always take buckets of time – so I’m going to enjoy that this weekend and take a break from everything.

And for now: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……….