George Carl, Vaudeville Clown

Aug 14, ’12 8:01 PM
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Throwing a Rock

Aug 10, ’12 12:37 AM

Last week I returned to the Italian consulate in San Francisco to get a student visa for my upcoming year at Helikos. I’ve been through the process before but like most people, I get edgy around that level of bureaucracy. It’s the feeling of border crossings, TSA screenings, CTBS testing. Anywhere where you are required to be interviewed by someone whose job it is to say no to you.

Here are some of the requirements of a successful visa application:

  1. completed application form
  2. one recent passport photograph
  3. original passport
  4. photocopy of passport
  5. original driver’s license
  6. photocopy of driver license
  7. original letter in Italian an accredited Italian Academic Institution
  8. proof of funds: a minimum of $900.00 per each month of stay is required.
  9. proof of adequate lodgings available for the entire stay
  10. round-trip flight reservations
It’s certainly not impossible to get it all together, really it’s a simple thing. But I still get completely nervous that they will find something missing or fibbed or wrong and bar me from ever entering Europe again. I imagine the big red stamp, written in block letters: DO NOT LET HIM IN.
All that scrutiny got me thinking of an improvisation class from the first year at the school I’ll be returning to Florence for. The exercise is simple: throw a stone. You turn to the audience and you’re alone on a pebbly beach in front of a vast ocean. You pick up a stone and toss it in the water, watch it splash and that’s all, the end. Dead simple right? It’s certainly not impossible to mime such a simple scene. What is difficult is to tell only the story of the neutral actor, the pebble and the beach. Much harder.
Take this video as an example of how seeing someone perform a seemingly a simple task—in this case throwing a stone with your non-dominate arm—reveals something very funny about human beings.
Submitting my visa application definitely feels like throwing the stone with my non-dominate arm. I performed the simple task but I also did a lot of unnecessary movement, stiff forgetfulness and the gyration of worry, before I lobbed that sheaf of papers over the desk of the consulate and said Grazie mille! when they were accepted.
Even after the application was accepted, the consular website urges me to remember: All visa applications are subject to further review. Applications do NOT guarantee issuance of visas. If an application is rejected, the applicant will be contacted and the passport will be returned along with an explanation for the rejection.
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Calling All Instagram Readers

Jul 23, ’12 11:33 PM

Look over to the right hand column. See the Quick Snaps section? That’s for Instagram photos. It used to be only pictures from my own feed would show up there. Not any more. If you’re an Instagram user and you feel so inclined make a comment on one of your own photos and include hashtag #kvncsy. If you have a public stream it will show up over there. Try it, it’s magic! That is all.

 

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Short Film Helena

Jul 22, ’12 10:43 PM

A few weeks after I got home to Montana my friend Vincent Ma told me about his short film project. He’s an NYU film student I met years ago on another short film project here in Montana. Now he’s living in Helena and has been boxing at the club in Eagle’s Lounge and thought it would make the perfect setting for his thesis project.

He introduced me to local soon-to-be-pro boxer Ariel Beck, who he was considering for the lead. She had never acted for a camera before so the three of us worked on screen tests. She was serious and eager and after a few hours workshop we we’re both agreeing that she would be great.

I was able to meet with her one more time, along with another Helena boxer, Duran Caferro Jr., for another performance coaching workshop before filming began. It was entirely fun, energizing and exciting work.

The shoot is all done now, here is the article from Sunday’s paper about it all. There is even a brief mention of the acting coach. Hey, that’s me!

Check out Vincent’s Vimeo page for great footage from recent fights.

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Surprising to Visitors

Jun 22, ’12 2:01 AM

Some interesting answers to the question “What facts about the United States do foreigners not believe until they come to America?” The economics of food was a popular response:

Fruit and vegetable prices, compared to fast food prices:

A bag of grapes: $6
A box of strawberries: $7
1lb tomatoes: $3

McChicken: $1
Big Mac : $1 ( I think. I don’t go to McDonalds though)

HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?

At the same time, there are things that you wouldn’t associate with first-world countries:

Religious fanaticism
It is hard to believe that a first-world country has non-progressive ideologies, especially that hurt women (the vaginal probes and other abortion related woes). Not only that, the belief in Earth’s age, talking snake etc. Being from India, it is even harder for me to understand this. I expected US to be more progressive. It is not as crazy as back in India but still something that I think is enough to be detrimental to the progress.

Others are pleasantly surprised:

Many Indians are very surprised to find out that there are large numbers of Americans who actually love their parents and siblings and wives and children and have normal, healthy relationships with them. Our media has them convinced that all Americans are very self-centered people who throw their kids out of their homes after high school, don’t care for their parents, and divorce their spouses. And, I swear, it is literally true that many Indians do not believe that this is not true until they have been to the US and seen examples of good healthy family relationships themselves. I have had heated arguments with people who’ve never been to the US, but can give lectures on how screwed up family values in the US are.

But we could also use some improvement:

There actually is an accepted piece of clothing called a ‘wife-beater’.

Direct from Kottke.org

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