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Social Dance Video Project (coming soon)-- last updated, January 2002
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Home / Projects My Personal Projects If you haven't noticed by now, I like to keep busy. So it's not that often that I have downtime. But occasionally the stars align, my commitments clear, and I can dust off a special project that's been begging me for attention. One of the first projects I can remember was writing the script for a comic book. I can't draw to save my life. And, unforunately, this being the 1980s, Adobe Photoshop, my saving grace today, did not exist to help me. So I could only come up with the potential comic's backstory (see The First Project: Iron Ninja below). I wish I could say that my side projects trace some sort of logical arc. They don't. Plays, poems, visual art, dance, connoisseurship, genealogy, I've tried them all. In this section, I'll try to assemble descriptions, pictures and other artifacts of these side projects.
Writing About My Family History For years I asked my grandmother to write a little something about her past, specifically about Poland and my great-grandparents. (She came to the United States from Poland when she was a little girl.) In 2002, for my birthday, I asked her again. Did she ever take me up on her offer! Within two months, I got the equivalent of a 100-page book, delivered in a series of hand-written letters. We decided to work together to make a small book out of her memories and family photographs. We finished the first edition for Christmas 2002, and she sent it to her children and grandchildren as a gift and remembrance. At her request, I am not publishing any of it online.
The First Project: Iron Ninja As I remember it, the story opens with a scientist, our hero, waking up to aransacked lab and the discovery that he's been poisoned. To make a long story shorter, he chases down his poisoner on foot (I vividly remember the storyboards in my mind calling for a lengthy, rain-filled chase), only to learn that no antidote exists but a metallic substance that can be bonded to his skin can slow the progression of the toxin. His father, a military scientist, is the only one capable of the procedure. He undergoes the procedure but wakes to find his father has disappeared, apparently abducted by the leader of some underworld organization. After dispatching numerous genetically altered henchmen, he tracks this villain, and his father's location, to a remote island. I forget how the back story ended, exactly, except this: he discovers that who he thought was his real father was not his real father, but rather the evil leader whose name I cannot remember. The man he considered to be his father is now dead. And somehow it ends somewhat like the way it begins. The hero wakes up badly injured on the beach of this island. He remembers the father he knew is dead, but doesn't remember what came of the confrontation with the villain. Believe it or not I managed to add space travel to distance planets as well as mythical weapons and the slaying of cosmic beasts to this story in subsequent chapters. It probably ran 50 pages by the end. I called him Iron Ninja (not because he had anything to do with Japanese martial arts but because he struck silently and in the dark). If I ever find it in my parent's house, I'll post it here
Japanese Sake Until five years ago, I drank the following in this order: brandy stingers, small batch bourbon, and armagnac. Then I tasted Japanese sake, and my preference in drink changed forever. I've tried 40 plus brands of sake, choosing by region and comparing their flavor profiles. I developed a handheld-based database to track my notes on the various brands, styles and regions as well as where I tasted then and where in the city I can buy them. Sometime in 2004, I'll publish my sake notes.
Learning Japanese For more than a year I have tried with mixed success to find time to study Japanese. I'd like to become fluent this decade. To help me along, I've been creating a database of flash cards with words and phrases I am trying to learn. I'll try to post them here this year. Soon to come, my Learning Japanese resource page.
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