I got the e-mail about the Star Wars Fan Film awards this year, which are finally opening the gates for their 2006 submissions. (This was the intended final resting place for Far, Far Away.) Now, I always expected to have to trim out some of the material to make their entry requirements, and had already begun thinking about the softer flesh that might prove opportune as the site for the first incision. But today's newly-released rulebook states that my 21-minute masterpiece is gonna have to come down to a measly ten damn minutes. Which, as challenges go, is nothing short of delicious.

(Yes, I recognize the irony of having to spec-ed my own Star Wars movie.)

Today I put in a solid 11-hour work day in front of the computer, which stretched muscles I haven't used in a very long time and felt surprisingly satisfying when all was said and done. It's always nice to go back into a web site you built a little while ago and say "... uh, why the fuck did I build it like this? Who builds sites like this anyway - the nazis?!" and then retrofit that mo-fo for increased user-friendliness. I also slaved away at various 1MFVF requirements with the deadline looming like a greasy Frenchman with a tire iron, manipulated various pornographic images in Photoshop, lined up a bit more paid work so that I might someday actually be able to buy Batman, and even finaled my application for funding for This Is What We Do, which began its life as my Command-Zed proposal last winter, and is now looking like the first Tederick film of 2006. And to get the guvernment to pay me to make it would be even better.

I think I oughta get this for Chris:

And these, for myself.