The World's Greatest Movie

Can I make the world's greatest movie? No I can't but a team that I'm part of might.

What is the world's greatest movie? Just a opinion of one or some of what the best movie is.
If my team can get just one person to believe our movie is the best, then it will be the world's greatest movie. Yes it will cost million's of dollars, so what? It will make hundreds of millions and change the way movies are presented. Don't believe me? You don't need to believe me because I believe with all my heart and soul.

What's the story about? It's about everything and all the imagination swirling around all those little moments in our lives that sculpt the future. It's about heart ache and heart happiness wrapped in fear and beauty. It's about finding the end of the rainbow and catching ball lightning.

It's about a song in your heart that no evil deed done against you can destroy. It's about love lost and found. A story about friends that will die for you when power and greed come to kill you.
It's about finding the best in ourselves.

I'm writing my heart out on the script and pouring my soul into every page. You don't need to believe because I'll prove everything I write here in the reality of a finished movie.

This movie is based on stories my parents told me when I was a child. It's based on concepts Jeff Staab and Charlotte Kyle threw my way. Jeff and Charlotte are my lead actors and good friends that are full magic when seen in a movie.

A new year and a new decade dawn and the best years of my life are ahead of me.

The Greatest Hero

This year the greatest hero died. His name was Dr. Norman E. Borlaug.

He saved billions of lives.

http://www.normanborlaug.org/

Theo Jansen creates new creatures | Video on TED.com

Theo Jansen creates new creatures | Video on TED.com

These five links are my favorite TED videos. This final link in my list is my favorite.
Theo Jansen wind powered robots are fantastic! Enjoy.

Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you | Video on TED.com

Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you | Video on TED.com

Golan Levin is a computer programmer that is also an artist.

Willard Wigan: Hold your breath for micro-sculpture | Video on TED.com

Willard Wigan: Hold your breath for micro-sculpture | Video on TED.com

Willard Wigan is my favorite sculptor. Pure fun!

Woody Norris invents amazing things | Video on TED.com

Woody Norris invents amazing things | Video on TED.com

Woody Norris is one of my favorite inventors. The way he projects sound is the way I hear sometimes.

Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture | Video on TED.com

Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture | Video on TED.com

Found this video on TED. I feel this is important work.

A small miracle

Many years ago I lost part of the vision in my left eye. The exact date of this partial blindness is Dec. 14, 1975. A month ago I simply wished my left eye would have full vision and my sight expanded.

Burying Bubba

A while back when my Grandson Denver had just learned to walk and talk my son had brought my favorite little boy for a visit. My oldest son Mark sits his son down on the back deck to show off his walking and standing skills. Then my Grandson speaks the first word his Grandfather Vollrath hears him say.

"Cat"

His little finger points towards Bubba.

Bubba died this week under that same deck and today I buried him.

Supergirl kisses Superman

This post was to be an update of my painting exchange with Joan Cook but the passing of a pet cat has made me a little down to work on the painting for that exchange.

I'm not a big Superman fan and I swore I would never wear a Superhero costume but a little girl I love had a different plan for me. I seldom get to see my Grandson and the last time I saw him I gave him a Superman costume.

My Grand Daughter was not happy with the fact that I had not bought her a Superman costume and she told me I had to be Superman for Halloween (She didn't ask). I told her I would only be Superman if she was Supergirl. I thought she was going to be Raggedy Ann and I had nothing to worry about. Well Raggedy Ann was her secret identity and I ended up getting a kiss for keeping my word to Supergirl:)

This year I'm thankful for my Grandchildren, My Sons and the Mothers of my Grandcildren, My Parents and all their wonderful stories, A cat named Bubba that was a friend, My blogger friends and my two new friends Jeff and Charlotte.

I'm thankful that Halloween can be about keeping a promise to a two year old little girl.

Numbers to words

I'm writing a script that is based on a math problem.

I love fractals and created my own form of fractal math after my car wreck to try to heal my mind.
The feature script I'm working on now is an attempt to use my fractal math for the structure of a movie script.

333 is three words in the script that repeat twice. Once spoken woman (left hand fractal) and once spoken by a man (right hand fractal).

222 is a single word spoken together once in the script in union by the man and woman.

The script is my broken mirror universe in words.

Writing my heart out

All the pain and glory pour out of me into my own little universe. No bad times now. Just a past good and bad that feed me words from a shadow of a broken dream that yearns to live in the now.

A Journey of words

I am on a journey of words. Days with little sleep and one goal. As I write a feature length script the rest of the world falls away. I write my heart out. Two actor friends help me with the writing process. My 80 year old parent help me with the script. I write the best story of my life.

I write so much that my mind never shuts down. I dream of the script. I rewrite in my sleep.
One step after another. One word after another.

Alone

I need to make a living and move on with my life. I've never felt this alone in my life. I missed seeing my grandson on his second birthday and haven't seen my grand daughter in three weeks.

Superman and Supergirl

My Missouri accent in full effect with the chaos of family on Halloween night.
I'm so tired from my last road trip to scout locations for a feature I'm working on.
I beg Supergirl to pose for the camera. I look so silly in my Superman outfit.
I'm a fat 51 year old man with a bald spot but my Grand Daughter was so proud to see me in a Superman costume.

I walk outside what I call the Vollrath complex on Halloween night and kids walking down the street call out to me. Hey Superman! They don't care I'm in a $10.00 used costume, in my little town of Kingsville I am the king of the superheroes.

I say hi to all my fellow super heroes but other than my Supergirl grand daughter one five year old Ironman stands out. The boy in the cheap Ironman costume signs to me and I realize he is deaf. I tell him I can't read signs and then I try to remember the few signs I do know. A giant smile can be seen beneath his mask as I make clumsy signs back to him.

It's Halloween and my Grand Daughter made me be Superman because I gave my Grandson Denver a Superman costume. I told my Grand Daughter I would only be Superman if she was Supergirl. So I made her be Supergirl for Halloween but one little Ironman made me feel like Superman for a few seconds. Happy Halloween

I don't have time to blog anymore.

I am trying to create new ways to create art. Ego free ways (my own ego and not others).
I'm trying to do the impossible in many different ways and no I'm not telling you any of my current projects. So do I have any reason to blog? I don't have time. My projects are secret and changing faster than I could blog about it. Is it time to say goodbye?

Project Impossible

I'm working on an impossible project. A paradox with stepping stones to a better life.
Everything I know and everything I can imagine will go into this project. I will make the impossible happen.

Flashback

Here is a clip of the flashback scene from the production of
"Paralyzed in Paradise".
Yes, its meant to look like a home movie.

I'm going to give this sound from another clip.

Flu Break

I've had the flu a week now and I need to take a break from blogging to finish four scripts and two oil paintings. Will be back in a few weeks.

Jesus kisses Merlin

I finally got a video on this blog with my new computer.

This is part of the kissing scene from Two Jews and a Pagan.

This was the first kissing scene I've directed.

The actor playing the altered Jesus in God's Waiting Room is Antoine Williams.
The actress playing the altered Merlin in God's Waiting Room is Amanda Riley.
My Director of Photography and Assistant Director is Jerry White.

Jerry White shot this scene.

This is the first Dream Stream LLC Production where I am the owner of the company.

Copyright

10-26-2009

Copyright are for copycats but we all copy ideas so how much can we call our own?

Copyleft

07-25-1958

Can I copyright my own life and does that copyright start at the date of my own birth or before?
Does my mother own my copyright before I'm born?

Copysoul

11-09-1957

Copyright in the USA is the life of the artist plus 50 years. Does that count for both ends of the artist life? Does that count for the spark of life? I want to know just in case I build a time machine.

Dream Streams, LLC

I thought this company was dead as Richard Hirsch the co-owner moved to Wyoming from Missouri. Thanks Richard for giving me your half of the company.

Good and Bad Marketing

Last week I went to two independent movies.

The first movie I saw was 'My Stepdad's A Freaking Vampire!' on September 17th at the Glenwood Arts Theatre. I thought the movie was a good first effort in the comedy horror gene for Director David Matheny but what impressed me most was his wonderful marketing.

A great movie poster with original art making the poster catch your eye.

The two disc DVD was fantastic in cover art and the product.

More to come....

Taste and Smell

Yesterday for about three hours I lost my sense of taste. I'm use to losing my sense of smell but I don't remember losing my sense of taste before.

I have no clue to the meaning of this.

For the last two weeks I have been focused on writing a contract and putting together a movie company. I have had intense headaches and daily nosebleeds. It feels like my brain is rewiring to make me better at things I'm weak in. I'm more focused with deadlines now.

I guess as I push myself to think in a different way, my brain shuts down other areas of my mind.

Begging for Billionaires and the Impossible Timing

Why do things keep happening to me that seem impossible?

I wasn't told that the movie I worked on for years was going to be playing in the Kansas City Area.

I didn't read the newspaper or was even told it would play once at 5:30 that Saturday.

I was in the area buying a firewire for my camera that I didn't need. I thought to myself;
"I've just wasted a lot of time and gas on a long trip for no reason."

I had went to the movie My Stepdad's a Freaking Vampire that Thursday at the 9th Kansas Film Festival and somebody had told me that a trailer of Begging for Billionaires was shown at one of the theaters in town. So I thought Phillip Klein the Producer and my one time friend had found a distributor and in a few months I might get to see the movie.

So I'm getting ready to go home from Micro Center and I drive by the Glenwood Arts movie theater. I think why not? I might know someone who made a movie that's showing.

I drive up to the theater and park. I meet someone hawking movie fliers for some freedom of speech radio movie. (Broadcast Blues)

"Do you like documentaries?"

"Yeah, I gave a few years of my life to one called Begging for Billionaires."

"Hey, that's playing next."

"You're kidding."

"No, for real go check it out."

I go in and buy a ticket. Ouch, I think to my self. My family lost thousands of dollars because of this movie and I have to pay to get in. I walk to the theater and I think about the death threats and the lung infection I had for three year after I video taped the destruction of old down KC.
I sat down and the title I came up with appeared on the screen.

I think about being chased across Kansas City by union thugs and how they tried to flip my van over with a pickup and a SUV. Then I start seeing my video and hearing my sound and I smile.

People laugh at some my footage, a small chuckle here and there. My work on the movie is more than talking heads and I think what a waste of my talent.

The movie I wanted to make is gone and a good movie is in it's place but not the great movie it could have been. My best interview is in the movie and in the final moments of the movie as a joke on me I guess, is my voice asking the wrong man about Eminent Domain. That was my worst interview.

So in this one movie you find the best and the worst of me trying to capture reality.

I enjoyed seeing my son's name on the big screen and I'm glad my name was missing.

Other than coming up with the title my greatest gift to the movie was talking Phillip into going to press conference in City Hall while he had a lawsuit against the Mayor of Kansas City.
Phillips pointed question to the mayor and her stuck up answer was the real ending to the movie.

The movie about Union Station Kansas City and the Hall connection is gone. Phillip owns that video and won't even give me back the footage of Union Station I shot from a plane two weeks before 9-11 2001. He said he would give me back that footage when I took my name off the movie but it never happened.

Something has happened to Phillip, he scared to talk about one Bully Billionaire who begs for money all the time.

The lights come up and Phillips see me and looks nervous. Both Phillip and I have learning disabilities and worst yet we are both emotional cripples. He can act very rational and then go into long vulgar rants. I become angry without warning. Two guys with learning disabilities shouldn't make a movie together.

Phillip starts to take a question from me and then invites me up front to talk about the movie.
I'm not angry, I'm happy and talk about all the stuff that happened to me in the years I worked on the movie. One man in the audience calls me a lair in so many words because I name two of the unions that chased me across town. I straighten his facts out and hand the microphone back to Phillip.

More to come... Read this one fast Blogger might pull it down.

I see this post is still up. I guess I'm still a little paranoid about Blogger censoring some of my posts on this blog. I was going to write more about this movie but I no longer feel the need to.
I think I was in the right place at the right time to help me bring a peace to my soul to the living nightmare that was the making of this movie.

I hope the movie does some good.

Trying to be fair

What is fair? I'm writing a contract for a movie project where I am the producer and I'm trying to be fair to the writer and myself but I'm not sure what is fair. I'm not going to tell you any of the details of this contract but I am going to write about how I'm trying to find a balance between my own needs as a producer and the needs of the writer that I'm hiring.

I am still in the middle writing this contact. More to come....

The contract is finished and it was far from perfect but I did the best I could in the time I had.
I believe I was fair as I could be. I don't know if the pay was fair. I don't have the money to pay more and I think the writer knows that.

Now I must cast the actors for a script reading.

Rose Pearl Painting

Rose Pearl is a creature of my imagination inspired by a comment on this blog from my fine blogger friend Joan Cook. Joan has sent me her painting in our painting exchange but I have been a real slacker on this oil painting. Okay I've been working on a few other projects.

Rose Pearl is the R2D2 of my novels I'm working on and Joan gets the first painting of this creature of the Id. This is the second layer of oil paint with 14 more layers of paint to come.

The Girl in the Photo

I finally learned how to post a photo on this computer. Simple really.

My Grand Daughter at her birthday party. She laughs at me as I play with my new video camera.

This post isn't about her party but about a half forgotten vision of a girl in a fountain.

A vision of a girl with blond hair and blue eyes that falls through the grid of a fountain meant for child's play but was in truth a death trap for children. I knew that and tried to get the fountain fixed when I worked at a science museum and historical landmark.

I just mixed a vision with reality but that has been my life. I ask myself if I'm insane everyday since 1975 when infinity flinched for me.

I did everything I could to fix that fountain but the man that ran my department was an evil fool that didn't understand the basic problem with the fountain and did a cosmetic fix over the grid that did nothing to improve the safety of the fountain. Two children fell through the grid and both were taken to a nearby hospital.

I knew what the problem was in the design of the million dollar fountain. A plastic grid was covered with rubber mats but that plastic grid was held in place by two lose plastic cubes that moved around in the wet overflow basin .

When anyone walked up to the fountain the streams of water blocking the entrance to the interior shut off. You then could walk into the fountain and the water streams would begin again.

A infrared beam would trip a timer to shut the fountain off but children and many adults would think it was some kind of pressure switch. People would jump up and down on the fountain floor until those lose blocks fell off a ledge causing the floor to fall into the overflow basin.

I tried to fix the problem by cutting a long piece of thick plastic to wedge in the basin but couldn't cut it on the shop table saw because the plastic was to thick. I begged my boss to let me take it to a shop with a water saw to cut it but I was told no because of the high cost of doing anything outside the museum shop.

Then I was let go from the museum and it wasn't my problem anymore or so I thought.

I began to have visions and dreams of a little curly haired blond, blue eyed little girl of two or three falling through the fountain grid and dying. In my dreams and visions of this I was told only I could stop this future. I believed this future and took on the most rich and powerful people in my part of the world to make this vision go away.

The movie Begging for Billionaires came into being because of these visions. I was black listed because of these visions. The fountain was removed because of these visions.

I can't prove any of this but I believe with all my heart this is true.

A few weeks ago I was looking at photos of my grand daughter when I saw that the girl in the photo and the girl of my visions were the same. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I became lite headed and had to sit down.

I don't believe my grand daughter would have fell through the fountain grid and died if I hadn't done the things I did to force the removal of that fountain. I do believe someones grand daughter would have died and they love that little girl as much as I do my little girl.

I'm sure the powers that be in my little corner of the world would tell a different story about the removal of that fountain but they didn't have hundreds of dreams and visions of a little girl falling into the death trap that was that fountain.

The Two Million Dollar Dream

I'm going to pitch a movie with a two million dollar budget. I've been thinking about writing this movie for many years. I'm in the process of writing it now. I have found a wonderful location for the movie. I know an actor that would be perfect for the lead.

Can I pull this off? Yes I have no doubt the movie is a real possibility. The story is solid and I know I can direct it. All indie movies compete with Hollywood and without a good budget for the basics of production most movies don't have a chance at the box office.

Of course I wouldn't own the movie.

The Hardest Script

I just finished the first draft of a script called 'Paralyzed in Paradise'. This script is based on a short story I wrote for this blog called 'The Frankenstein Effect' in a May 2009 post.

I have written feature length movies that took years that were easier than writing this script.

The story is based on the lowest point in my life and how my imagination allowed me to do the impossible. I was in a metal ward and overdosed with enough drugs to kill me when I became more than just the possible. I no longer have fear of the impossible and know I was given the greatest of all tools bound in my soul. I was given the gift of an endless imagination.

In truth it is a gift we all have but forget how valuable it is. Imagination is worth more than all the riches of this world. I faced my worst fear in that metal ward and found the glory in never giving up no matter how impossible the odds are.

My friend Desiree Nordlund of the blog Me A Writer Of Movie Scripts is doing a rewrite of the script. Soon I will send her a contract by snail mail to her home in Sweden and my movie making will become international when she signs the contract and returns it to me.

I will direct a movie made from this script so others can do the impossible in their lives.

Ghosts in a Skyscraper

Ghosts in a Skyscraper was a feature length movie script that I began writing two weeks before 9-11-2001. I became obsessed with planes, cell phones and skyscrapers.

More to come...

Hitler and Grandfather English

I 'm working on a graphic novel about war and how it in all its forms effects a family over many generations.

My Grandfather English is part of this story. A mix of fiction and real life stories (As most of my writing is) this tale at it's midpoint is about two men in World War One.

Both my Grandfather and Hitler were Runners in the first world war.

My Grandfather loved the land and being a farmer was his only dream.

Hitler was a failed artist that twisted politics into his own brand of hell.

My Grandfather was the last man to return home from Germany to his home of Sweet Springs Missouri. He was the only veteran returning from that war that didn't have a band playing for him at the train station.

My Grandfather died in a little house in Kingsville Missouri in 1959. That day he relived every battle of World War One that he had been part of. My mother was alone with him when he took his final breath. I was the only other person in the house. I was a little boy learning to walk with a baby bottle in my mouth.

Hitler wanted the world but my Grandfather English had five grandchildren and seven Great Grandchildren in the web of human life. In the River of Time power is the cowards path.

Living for your family and the power of nature is always the better path.

All through the war my Grandfather carried a pistol but he never fired it. He never killed anyone in that war. When he was issued the gun by the the army he was to test fire it. For what ever reason he didn't get around to test firing the gun until the day he returned it to the army after the war was over.

The gun wouldn't fire. The gun was defective. Through seven battles of world war one my Grandfather English carried a gun that wouldn't fire.

Peace

So how do you stop war? How many people does it take to make a war?
Are there quiet wars? How do you win a peace?

Anger is a waste of energy. I fought a small war once. No one was killed but a lot of people lost their jobs. A few death treats and one long chase. I was angry for three years. What a waste of energy. A war of video tape, lies and hidden truths.

Wars beyond political fights are whole sale murder. How do we stop this dance of mass murder?

I wish I had just one answer.

This and That

I still haven't figured out how to post photos or movies with my new computer.

I have a movie of my Grand Daughter's Birthday but I haven't learned how to get it out of my camera yet.

I'm writing a short movie about the lowest point in my life. Strange as it may be, it's playing like a comedy with tragic under tones.

I'm rewriting my novel based on my first 20 years of life and imagination.

I'm trying to put together a movie company.

I'm trying to finish Joan Cooks painting I need to send her.

Oh and one last thing. I'm making the most complex graphic novel ever made.

I'm so glad I cut back on my projects as I use to have about 30 big projects going at any one time:)

Tales of the Rewired Mind

If I could put into words how my mind works but I can't. Should I even try?

As a small boy I lived in a magical world where every living thing was surrounded in bright colors that I later called Soul Colors. I could see colors that other people couldn't and I soon learned not to talk about things the rest of my small town world didn't know.

In church there was talk of only one life to live and this confused me because I could remember other lives.

1. The Scribe with cursed words.
2. The Welsh boy warrior who died under a Roman boot.
3. The Artist that died by his own hand.
4. The Cameraman of the silent era.
5. The Spin Doctor of the FDR era.
6. Living this life somehow for a second time.
7. A Farmer on the Green Pyramid. A life in the deep past or far future.

Is any of this part of a greater reality or just part of a giant imagination? I don't know.

All this seems more real than reality but I can't even prove it to myself so why should anyone else believe it?

I was a little boy with my Aunt Audrey and she slammed on the brakes of the pickup she was driving. My head slammed into the hard metal dash of the pickup and my childhood ended.

I woke from a forever sleep and heard my parents talk about how bad I looked from the hallway.
I could see my own swollen forehead, I was four years old.

My spirit friends no longer came and played with me. I could no longer see the Soul Colors.
The color of my world dulled and flowers were not as bright. The magic was gone and for a while I believed the teachings of my church.

I was 14 years old and a voice in my head told me I would lose my left arm someday if I forgot the warning that was given me. The voice was mine but older.

I was 17 years old and I died in a car wreck in one universe and found heaven. I returned to this universe I call the Broken Mirror Universe. I saw impossible things and remember impossible things. No words can describe what I saw in my mind's eye. My imagination became a fragment of infinity.

Impossible things began to happen. I could sometimes hear other people thoughts. Sometimes I would know things before they happened and I was always attracted to disaster.

I could taste pain in others. I could see the Soul Colors again. I could change the river of time.

I remembered the warning I gave myself from the future and saved my left arm. I cut my left hand with a rusty knife when I had a case of the flu. When I went to ER and the doctor said I was hours away from losing my left arm. I was going to wait till the next day until I remembered the warning I gave myself.

Before this saving of my left arm, I had always viewed my visions as a curse. More often than not the visions would be wrong and I learned to keep quiet about these mind twisting waking dreams until my first Black Void Vision.

My first Black Void Vision was of a fire at my girlfriend's house. Three hours before the fire burned the house to the ground, I saw it in my head. I saw the single candle that started the fire surrounded by the burning house.

My second Black Void Vision was the most accurate of all my visions. I was on the sky-walk of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City Missouri when I had the vision of me being only a spirit in a black void watching the sky-walks fall on top of each other as I touched the very rod that was the weak link in the design. I told two members of the hotel staff that the sky-walk was going to fall in two weeks. In two weeks when the sky-walk fell I heard on TV that several people had told the staff they had a premonition the sky-walk would fall with the dancers on it.

I could go on with the spirit side of things but I've told those tales in other parts of this blog.

Now for the rational side of things. Am I just some kind of high functioning crazy?

A twenty year headache and more things wrong with my mind than I care to admit too.
Is my imagination projecting into my reality? Does my mind weave a fantasy world for my ego to feed on?

I think there is truth in both views of my reality. If I don't have a witness to my telling of a vision then it is is only a half truth at best because of my poor memory. I told several people about my second Black Void Vision but the first, I told no one till after it happened. Did it happen?

Yes, I believe it happened. I can't explain away many things that have happened to me over the years with science that believes in an accidental universe over eons of time.

Here are a few medical problems I've had over the years.

1. After a car wreak in 1975 I have a terrible headache that last over 20 years and seizures everyday for 15 years.

2. My sense of smell comes and goes.

3. I have vision distortion in my right eye until I read an article in the 1990's about wearing blue lens glasses to cure this condition. I wear blue hex glasses for six months and it cures this condition. My friends just thought I was trying to be cool.

4. From 1975 till 2002 I have times when I forget everything. When under extreme stress I have total memory lost. For up to three minutes at a time I can't remember my name or anything else.

5. I have a dead spot in my brain and when I think certain thoughts I pass out. I also call this spot in my brain the Soul Gate as it is my source for my visions. Imagine a black hole in your mind and you can play on the event horizon and imagine anything. This part of my mind is healing fast and I'm coming to an end to my extreme visions.

6. When punched in my left shoulder It would feel like someone was sticking a knife into my left eye. I got into more than one fight when some jerk punched me on the truck docks of my youth.

Time to move on:)

The First Fall

"You won't have time to give her the shot! She delivers quick after her water breaks!"

"Shut up! Your just the father and I'm a doctor..."

My second son is born. His head misses the needle of the syringe held in the doctor's hand by less than a inch. My newborn son falls towards the floor. The so called doctor drops the syringe and catches my son three inches from the floor.

As my son fell from his mother I see that he is a boy. I am standing 15 feet away from this bungee jump delivery. I have been arguing for hours with people that had no business calling themselves doctors.

Seven hours earlier I'm in the delivery room.

Next to the birthing room was the delivery room (Babies weren't delivered in the delivery room).
A doctor walks in smoking a pipe and my very pregnant wife of a few hours into the past of my second son's birth turns green.

"Get out!"

"Do you know who I am?"

"I don't care who you are or what your title is! Get out of this room with that pipe!"

"I'll be back, this is my hospital!"

"I'm your boss. You work for me. I'm firing you! Find me a doctor that isn't a idiot with a smoking pipe!"

The doctor with a smoking pipe didn't come back but he convinced 40 doctors that my unborn son was dying and I was endangering the child by my attitude towards him.

This was of course a lie as he never examined my wife and I refused to let him or any doctor do an emergency C-section on my wife with no proof she needed one.

I was in a war of words and threats to save the life of my child. I believe the Smoking Pipe Doctor would kill my child out of spite because I dared insulted him.

"If you don't calm down sir, I'll call the police and have you removed from the hospital."

"I have done nothing wrong today. How many laws have you broken in the last few hours."

Doctor after doctor tried to intimidate with lies and I threw the truth back in their faces.

Finally one good doctor came and induced labor. He was a enemy of the smoking pipe doctor and was called from vacation to handle the mess the fool had made.

The good doctor had left to return to his vacation and a group of fools delivered my son.

The student doctor that caught my son inches from the floor began to brag about delivering his first baby and then a few minutes later began to make fun of my wife and I for being poor.

He complained about how little money he was going to make off my wife and I with our low income plan. I finally lost my temper and asked the student doctor to step outside.

"Are you threatening me?"

"It's more like a promise to show you how I can put the tip of your nose on your right cheek bone. All day long my wife and I have been insulted and I believe you would be wise not to say another word to either one of us."

Somehow my son survived that birthday. I remember the student doctor walking away without saying another word. Years later the hospital closed and the building was demolished.

My youngest son Micheal Sterling Vollrath turned 26 the day I began to write this post.

Weekend Time Traveler

Friday I'm in the 1940's watching a gumshoe detective dance with a woman in red in the headlights of a 1941 fully tricked out Chevy car.

Saturday I'm in the old west in front of a Saloon watching a gun fight play out between two men over a woman.

Sunday I watch a tribe of cave men as two of them fight over a mate in prehistoric times.

The truth is I'm not time traveling at all. I'm working on two different productions of short movies.

It was fun and I learned from other directors but now I must focus on my own productions as I travel into my own future.

Laughing Heaven

I had a vision and then another. My imagination is evolving towards the positive and the Red Dragon that was my anger died.

The second vision was a life without anger. A vision of peace within myself.

In the last few weeks, I've been called the greatest of all losers by a young man behind my back and slandered to my face by a friend of the richest woman of the area I live in.

I am still slandered by the rich and powerful at their dinner parties and that no longer has any effect on me. I have went from anger to pity for such silly word of mouth games and now don't even find humor in such stupidity.

To those who slander me;
Your millions and billions of dollars are worthless imaginary constructions that have no value in the afterlife. Perhaps you see me as the poor and uneducated man that has no right to speak against your grand plans of wealth and control. I am no better than you but you are no better than me. All life is equal in the universe and has value beyond any false wealth or trivia.

The same young man called the woman I love the meanest name that can be cast down upon the female ego. I almost became angry and then somehow turned from this anger and walked the path of forgiveness.

In this same time period of three weeks, my 80 year old mother had an accident and lost a quarter of her teeth destroying her beautiful smile. My mother's sister in an act of cruelty tricked my mother into going to the farm office to sign papers that didn't need signing so her broken smile would be seen in public. My mother and aunt own a farm together and over the years since my grandmother died I've seen this cruelty from both my aunt and uncle many times.

I didn't get angry at my aunt but only felt the deepest of pity for her.

At 51 years of age I'm finally growing up. How heaven must laugh at the folly that is life.

I've went down the wrong path in life too many times. I've done the negative thing because I felt the positive way was too hard or won't be as popular. I was lying to myself.

I must tell positive stories that will inspire people and not mock people with different belief systems. As I edit my last movie I know it was a wrong turn but I will finish it and enter it in film festivals as I owe it to the actors that worked on the movie.

I will do a collection of short movies about Heaven. It will be a path towards the positive.

New Directions

I've decided to go a new direction in my life. I'm going to reach for the big dreams with all the energy I can find within myself but I will no longer try to do everything myself.

I'm giving up on fine art and museum exhibits. I will use past works in both areas to tell stories in many ways.

I've decided to give up on trying to have a personal relationship with a woman until I start making a steady income.

My weak business skills must become stronger and I am going to work towards learning as much as I can in the coming months.

Rose Pearl will be my last fine art painting. I will finish my graphic novel this month.

I am writing a first draft of a feature length script. I will have that first draft finished next month.

Finally I will push myself as hard as I can to finish a first draft of my novel Grandfather Green Tie and the Invisible Picnic. I took a wrong turn in this novel and it is taking some time to undo the damage my own ego did to this book.

Firewire 800

I feel like my blog is dying. I have secrets I can't write about and I'm too tired to write anything most of the time. I haven't been able to load pictures or video with my new computer.

I'm hitting a wall of technology I haven't dealt with before. Most of all I need a Firewire 800 so I can load my new movie to edit it.

Secrets, so many beautiful secrets. I can't tell you no matter how much I want too.

I love people and life more than anything as I finally come out of my shell.

A Fawn and a Farewell

I'm driving into Kansas City on 71 highway toward a long overdo return to movie making.
I look to my left and see a dead doe by the side of road with a young fawn trying to wake the dead deer mother with a nose. The fawn is fragile and perfect with the white spots of youth. My heart goes out to this babe by the side of the opposite direction I'm going. I could save this bit of nature only inches away from death.

Guilt swells in me as I don't turn off the off ramp at the next overpass. I have a movie to make and promises to keep.

More to come......This story takes place on August 2nd.

Sorry I'll be a while getting back to this. I'm on a short sleep vacation.

I got to the location still thinking about the fawn. As I waited to be let into the American Ice Co. building (an old ice storage building turned into offices and apartments) I saw a crippled cat that I later learned was called Tripod. The cat had a broken third leg but was well feed so he or she didn't need my help. If Bambi hadn't been my favorite movie as a child maybe I could think about the movie instead of that helpless fawn.

More to come.....

I was there early and in about a half hour David Winger showed up to let me in. David Winger is the President of the IFC (Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City) He rents a light kit to me as well as stingers (Sandbags to hold the lights down) and extension cords. He gives me access to an upstairs office that is my set as well as a way in and out of the building. Before he leaves he leans me a mic, just in case my DP forgets his.

More to come.....

Antoine calls me on my cell phone and ask if the anyone has shown up yet. I said no and told him I believed everyone would be on set soon. Everyone did show up and all went better than planed. The kissing scene between Antoine and Amanda had the passion I had hoped for.

As the production ended I said a farewell to Amanda as she was moving to Florida in two days.

Seldom do you get the cast you saw in your head when you wrote the script and a crew of two that go above and beyond the small pay they were given.

Note I made a mistake in this post as Stingers are extension cords;)

Stress

Can't sleep. Worried I don't remember how to direct a narrative movie. Keep thinking of things I need to cut out of the script. Need sleep.

Painting Exchange

Thank You JOAN COOK!

I received a painting today from England and as soon as my movie is shot I will return the favor.

I hope to have photos up soon of this wonderful gift and the creation of my gift to Joan.

Mac Daddy

I have a Mac now. I'm learning how to use it but it seems so much easier than any PC, I ever owned. I needed it to edit feature length movies in HD. It might be awhile before I start posting pictures again as I have a movie nearing production.

No Pa Pa, Superman!

I begin to write this in the final seconds of my first day of my 51 year of life in this very magical life.

I live in the Golden Age of me. I live in a time of healing. My broken mind heals and for the first time in my life I have focus. For the last few days I can't smell anything. I have lost my sense of smell. This might seem like a bad thing but I know it means my mind is rewiring and my sense of smell will return.

I live in a time when my Grandchildren are the sweetest dreams of mine every to spin into reality.
Their wonderful imaginations are in full bloom.

Last week I was with my Grand Daughter and she came into her parents living room wearing a cape made out of a yellow pillow cover. My Daughter-in-Law looked at Cordelia and said;

"Tell Grandpa who you are?"

"I'm Superman Pa Pa!"

I looked at my little Grand Daughter with a smile upon my face.

"You mean Super Girl, don't you?"

"No Pa Pa, Superman!"

She stood there with clenched fists on her hips, legs apart and her chin held high in classic Superman pose. I laughed so hard I almost fell off the chair I was sitting on.

Cordelia looked a little hurt that I laughed so hard. I put my right hand on her shoulder and looked into her blue eyes.

"Grandpa will get you a Superman costume just like the one he got for your cousin Denver."

A big smile came on her face and she gave me a loving hug.

I remembered I once put a gender role on my Grandson on a family trip to the Kansas City Zoo and my son Mark got after me. For a moment I tried to do the same to my Grand daughter.
They are too young for such nonsense and I love both my little Super Grandchildren.

Storyboards

I am story boarding my 2009 version of Two Jews and a Pagan to go into a one day shooting production on August 2nd 2009. I have spent $60.00 on the production so far and still need to confirm if one of my actors can make it that day.

I have spent more money on this production than I want think about but of course there is hundreds of other productions to come. I'm thousands of dollars in debt and the money pit of production looms.

The short movie Two Jews and a Pagan cost over $600.00 to make and I fall deeper in debt to prove to myself and the world at large that I am a writer and director.

I know people that made feature length movies for half what it cost me to do this short movie but they didn't pay their cast and crew a penny.

I'm trying to create a code of conduct for myself as I make independent movies. This production proved everything I believe in when making a movie. Stay positive, turn a negative into an advantage and put actors first.

I wrote half of this post after the production was finished on August 3rd 2009. I am now moving into post production on this movie.

Moon Stupid

We went to the moon. If you think we didn't then you are the title of this post:)

I was a boy when man landed on the moon. I was on a vacation trip with my parents in Canada.
In a small cafe in Quebec I watched Neil Armstrong set his foot on the moon. The small TV was on a shelf over the pie counter. Everyone was speaking French except for three Americans.

We tried to eat what passed for a hamburger but I was too excited to eat. Moments before Neil planted his foot on another world everyone got quiet. Everything stopped in that tiny cafe.

The cook and the waitresses stopped working and watched. No one ate. We were all watching that little TV.

Don't be Moon Stupid. We went to the moon.

Soul Gate

The following is an excerpt from my Novel 'Grandfather Green Tie and the Invisible Picnic'.

The Rose Pearl wasn't happy. As an imaginary pet she was a fine creature but her master hadn't created her and he couldn't take her with him in a life lived in this life's future. Perhaps in a few million lifetimes Grandfather would create a Plastic Paradox to deal with this problem but in this fragment of eternity his imagination failed him.

He straightened his green tie and found some dark corner of Bobby's mind to open the Soul Gate.
Riding the dragon of the One Soul's imagination was something he seldom did but he didn't have time to gently ply the Soul Gate open as Bobby was under attack by the Joy Kill.

He couldn't remember the first time the Joy Kill creature attacked him but he knew it was too early in this lifetime.

More to come.....

Not sure when I'll get back to working on this. I'm in post production on a movie. This update to this post was written August 3rd.

Legacy Crime

How do the super rich lie, cheat and steal to greater wealth?

The Poor; Have their land called blighted, devalued and taken away with a lesser payment by Emanate Domain. This requires a judge to be payed off and several large donations to corrupt politicians.

The Rich; Emanate Domain is never used against the rich no matter how blighted their property is and they don't sell the land but lease it to the local government or third party for 25, 50, 75 or in one case I know about 200 years.

Museums are tax free pawn shops for the rich.

Charities are systems of control in good old boy networks with soft jobs for the shallow end of the wealthy families gene pool. Sign Up Slaves sometimes called volunteers get treated with little respect as management jobs (soft jobs) get high paying salaries for incompetent work.

What if you uncovered a Legacy Crime in a American City? What if the City Accountant covered up everything you uncovered. What if that City Accountant became Mayor for covering up the Legacy Crime of the city's Bully Billionaire. What if you are black listed for talking to the media?

What if you keep telling the truth no matter how much it hurt you and your family?

Next Post; Soul Gate

Heaven on a Budget

I'm writing a series of short movies to go into a feature length collection called 'Heaven's a Joke'.

I'm hoping to shoot the first of these 'Two Jews and a Pagan' this month.

The first version of this short was shot by my former friend Richard Hirsch at Union Station Kansas City. Because of bad sound that production was never finished.

This second version with a new version of the script and a new cast will have a low rent version of God's Waiting Room. As I'm banned for life from Union Station Kansas City, making the movie over in that wonderful location isn't possible.

My friend Maia found a free location in the same building that houses the Independent Filmmaker's Coalition of Kansas City office.

The room I'm going to use has no windows with missing ceiling tiles and wire hanging down to the floor. To an indie movie maker, free is always a little piece of heaven so I'm rewriting the script to make it work.

Without Maia and the Independent Filmmaker's Coalition of Kansas City I couldn't make this second version of my script. Thanks to both.

Soul Net

Another vision I guess. Not very strong.

My body is my soul's house and a guess house for souls on journeys.

I don't think I can explain it in words beyond that.

Something is happening to me that is beyond any words I know.

Something wonderful.

Life as a Script

I wasn't going to post anymore until after my birthday on the 25th but I think I had a vision yesterday.

I'm a bit rusty as I built a wall in my mind trying to block out those crazy visions of mine.

The One Soul was writing a script and we all were in it. The story spanned all of space and time and each of us became a living word that gave a name to our place in an infinity stage.

For a moment I was at peace in a garden of living words in heaven.

Turning Point

Yesterday I took my beat up Sony 900 video camera to a repair shop. I hope the sound will be fixed in time to use it to record my short movie 'Two Jews and a Pagan' with the same cast that did the script reading in June.

Yesterday I handed over my first pages of my Graphic Novel 'American Space' to be reworked in photo shop by my friend Sylvia Daniels.

I feel like I'm back as a artist and writer after a long journey down many wrong roads.

Grab Bag

I fell off the mountain of happiness. I got mad at my sons for no good reason. I no longer believe I was a good father or can ever be a good father. I can't remember most of my life. My novel seems like a lie now.

I want to make a movie this month but I can't get my camera fixed for lack of funds.
I have five actors wanting to make the movie and I want to make the movie and I must make the movie by the end of July or I'll lose one of my actresses.

The Script Reading of 'Two Jews and a Pagan' went well but I'm not carrying that energy into the production. It's as simple as a movie gets but I can't seem to move forward.

I saw a old friend last night and I talked about how my favorite TV show is Whale Wars and he told me that NASA used Sperm Whale Oil on their spacecrafts. I researched it this morning and found out what he said is true. I now know that dead whale is part of most space missions.

What happen to that Robert who would try the impossible and fall on his face and get up and try again? He's in here somewhere I just got to dig him out. So I had a heart attack last December, who cares? So, I haven't made any money in years? So, when I put money back into my movies and other projects from the few freelance jobs I had, I lost it all? Big deal!

The Novel isn't a lie, I just haven't found it's voice yet. I failed as a father but my sons have overcame my failure and turned out to be fine men. I tried to be a good father and that was all I could do. It's hard to be a father without a short term memory or a long term memory for that matter. How have I made it all these years? Oh I could tell you but it all seems like one big blur of a waking nightmare. I laughed through most of it.

If you find yourself in a living hell just start laughing. My pain is so little compared to millions in greater pain because I could hide my pain behind a veil of imagination. Anger is my greatest enemy. A enemy that always wins but I have hope that I can destroy this fighting fear within me.

I lost my inner vision in January. The colors aren't as bright. I no longer see glimpses of the future real or imagined. I feel empty. I hated the visions but now that they're gone I miss them.
I was always more wrong than I was right. I don't know if my visions had any value.

In a dream in January I saw ghostly faces that said goodbye to me. My spirit guides leaving me alone. I thought I knew two of the faces. People who died in this lifetime of mine. After the dream I no longer had visions only the memory of visions of things yet to come.

I'm taking a break from blogging. I'll be back when I'm 51 years old.

Sorry to leave you on a negative note but I'm off to climb Happy Mountain:)

Cousins

Here are three pictures of my grandchildren. The middle picture is on a camp out with balloon animals made by grandpa.

Up, Up and Away

Here's a photo of Grandpa trying to teach Superboy how to fly.

1958

I was born in the 1958. A year when the United States had 48 states. A year when NASA was born.

The year both Michael Jackson and Billy Mays were born. Both dead now at 50 years old.
Last year my heart stopped in my sleep and I too could be dead at 50. Death can take us at any time and I accept that and have no fear of death.

I have lived to see my grandchildren and that is more than I could have hoped for after my first brush with death in 1975.

I plan to live on for many more years and finish everything I have started before the twilight of this life fades from our world.

One Small Step...

This wall relief sculpture reproduction is something I've had since 1969.
I am in the process of up cycling it into a prop for a movie I'm working on.
So far I've added gold foil, black paint and two toy astronauts.

Swimming in the 21st Century

When I became a pot belly human I quit swimming way back in the 20th Century.
Too much writing and not enough hiking. Only my grandchildren could get me back to the water.

I did some wading on a sandy beach on a lake in Minnesota with both my grandchildren but Cordelia got me back into a pool in a motel in Iowa.

As my son Micheal played with her in the water I used muscles I hadn't used in a decade or more in an effort to swim again.

I took Cordelia in my arms and we began to play silly water games as her daddy cannon balled into the pool over and over again.

Grandchildren don't make you old, they give you back the last part of your youth.

Red Spoons

This is a post about anger. It's about anger in a 50 year old man and about anger in a little girl not yet two years old.

I don't like camping. I've never liked camping. But camping is something I've done many times in my life to make other people happy. I joined the Boy Scouts to make my father happy and went camping for the same reason. I took my sons camping to try to get them to love nature.

Me I'm a hiker or I use to be a hiker. I've never been a camper, my heart was never in it.

I think I've went on my last camp out. Seeing my two grandchildren play around the campfire was wonderful but my mind doesn't handle stress well and hoping and praying not to have asthma attack is very stressful to me.

With stress comes my greatest enemy, my own anger. I got angry four times on my family trip.
I don't think I'll write down those moments of anger any time soon.

At the camp site I was sitting near the fire when I saw my two grandchildren dropping every red plastic spoon on the ground off of the picnic table.

"Denver give grandpa all the red spoons please."

My little grandson handed me what I thought were all the red spoons. Then I heard my grand daughter cry and scream as she fell down on the ground.

"Cordelia why are you crying?"

"She wants to give you spoons too grandpa."

Said my daughter-in-law Amanda.

"I'm sorry Cordelia, grandpa wants your red spoons too. Please give them to me."

As she stood up I saw her right hand was clenching red spoons, knifes and forks. She handed them to me and I wiped the tears from her eyes and gave her a hug and a kiss.

How little I differ from my Grand Daughter, I don't understand something and I get angry.

The Right People

Last night I talked to my newest friend Jeffrey Staab.

For years I have surrounded myself with the wrong people, people that didn't dream big or if they did dream big were too lazy to reach for that dream. Many times I allowed people to steal my time and money to find their dreams when I thought if I did my best they would help me with my dreams. All those times were a lie. A lie I told myself because I wanted a chance to prove I had talent.

I don't need to prove anything anymore. I just need to find the Right People to work with and do the work I was born to do.

I'm going to start writing about the Right People on this blog and Jeffrey Staab is one of those people.

Talking to him last night made me believe in myself again. He is everything an actor should be and beyond that he is a good person. I look forward to working with him.

More to come..... leaving for a script reading and trip to see my Grandson, later:)

I was going to write more to this post but I've forgotten what that more was.

Grandpa is Coming!

This little boy won't remember me but I love him with all my heart. I'm going on a five day road trip to be with both my grandchildren, my sons and those two wonderful mothers of my grandchildren.

Grandpa is coming Denver Vincent Vollrath!

Not the Invisble Jet?

If you've read this post for a while you have read I can do some strange things with my imagination. I call it "editing reality" and I guess it's some kind of self induced reality.

I can live with this part of my imagination and even the waking nightmares I get on long road trips without sleep but on rare moments in my life I've seen things disappear that couldn't disappear.

I went to an Air Show a few weeks ago and saw a B-2 bomber up close and no longer believe I saw it years before turn completely invisible.

If you are new to this blog you should know that I had a car wreck in 1975 that changed my view of reality in many strange, wonderful and terrible ways.

Shinning Heart

Shinning Heart is a song I made up to swing my Grand Daughter Cordelia to sleep after a long day at the zoo. On an overcast day I sang many made up verses to this on the spot song for over two hours as each time I stopped singing Cordelia would wake up.
These verses were written down after I got home to be used in a future novel.

I wish I could remember all the verses:)

SHINNING HEART

Lada Dee Lada Doo

I will always love you.

Eyes of blue and hair of gold.

I will always love you.

Button nose of my laughing rose.

I will always love you.

You made me whole from a broken soul.

I will always love you.

You steal my hat and giggle at that.

I will always love you.

Lada Dee Lada Doo

I will always love you.

I have no musical skills and I'm not a song writer but I am a loving Grandfather who does what he can to make his Grand Daughter happy.

A day of lost Dreams

Today nothing went right but I just keep trying. I'll have better days.

I can't afford to make movies but I feel I must. I just can't hide from the world anymore while I write my novel. I need to make contact with people and making movies is my favorite way to do that.

My dreams aren't really lost, they just had a big setback today.

The Cast

The movie bug has bitten me again.

The script reading is just around the corner for my script "Two Jews and a Pagan" and I decided after talking to Maia, to direct the movie myself.

Maia picked a wonderful cast and I'm hoping to use all of them in the production.

Antoine Williams as Jesus
Daniel Handley as Houdini
Amanda Riley as Merlin

Heaven's a Joke

"Heaven's a Joke" was my first attempt at a one act play and my second short movie script.

Renamed "Two Jews and a Pagan" for comic effect, this script will be cast tonight at the 7:30 PM meeting of the Kansas City Coalition of Independent Filmmakers. First the actors will read the script later this month in a public setting and then it will be filmed for the second time.

I won't be directing this movie but my good friend Maia Brown will do a fine job as both an actor and director.

My Grandson

Wearing a hat much like mine and dressed like I imagined my Grandfather Green Tie alter ego I miss and love this boy with all my heart.

Hope to see you soon my wonderful grandson!

Kissing Sally

Her name isn't Sally but it is easier for me to talk to her through this blog than by email, phone or in person.

"I'm going to kiss you."

Sally closed her eyes to receive my kiss.

I was nervous and my damaged nerves betrayed me. After the trauma of bending a steering wheel to the column in a car wreak with my face, my face would contort when I was under stress.

I hadn't kissed a woman in years and I was under stress. I closed my eyes and kissed her with my twisted face.

Years later Sally told me she had opened her eyes when we had our first kiss and saw a grim twisted face as I kissed her. I told her why my face was the way it was but I don't know if she believed me.

Later I told Sally I loved her and when she said it back I wasn't sure she meant it.

A car wreak, a first kiss and two "I love you" all twisted metal in my life or is that twisted mental?

The Scars of Fear

Some wounds never heal. Fear bleeds our faith from us. I am losing my fear moving forward and yet the mountain I must climb is so tall and I am so very tired. I've wasted so much time on other peoples projects only to have them steal from me.

Time to give it all I have. I must focus on the novel. Its not like anything that's out there, will people read it? I need to just write it and get over any fear. I need to brush that last bit of fear aside and finish it.

I tried to explain to a friend on the phone last night what my novel is about.

"I believe we're one soul and we can reincarnate into ourselves to protect the future from destruction that flows down the river of time. The novel is about my real life and my imagination. I'm writing about places it my life where the real and the imagined mix. The story is about an impossible reality that seems very real to me."

She said, me telling her that helped her on her journey. Why did I live in fear all those years. People are more open to alternate forms of believes now. Fear is a waste of my time and I just need to go that last step.

The Path

I began to walk down the path. A path I feared, a path I knew wasn't for me. As I got older the path became more narrow until I walked on a dull blade that was miles long.

When I was younger I ate drank and spoke lies. I was a fool and a word worshiper. Then the path had three ways set before me.

Past Me, the master of lies was one road. A road I happily followed.

Present Me, that was lost without hope in a Broken Mirror Universe.

Future Me, a creature sculpted in harsh truths that saved my soul many times.

The blade is sharper now but I still walk. I know what I must do no matter how impossible that seems. I must become a writer and make a living at it.

Taste of Candy

This is the very end of the most extreme movie I ever made.

In fact this is about all I can show you of this original edit of the movie.

I always try to play by Blogger's rules and I found most of the movie couldn't be shown on this site.

I was going to show you my cameo in the movie but I haven't got to that footage yet as I work on a new edit of the movie for a underground film festival.

The movie is about child abuse and how it breeds murder in our world.

There are no children in this movie but the stuff animals in the back seat echo a lost childhood.

My good friend Maia played the part of Candy and took part in the writing as the voice of reason.
I directed this movie and hope to expand it into a feature someday.

Kentucky Fried Sound

I was at the counter of a KFC. I was about to order my meal when the voice came into my head.
Someone was yelling at the clerk at the counter, was it me?

"Sir, can I take your order?"

"Yes, of course. I'll have the buffet."

"That will be $6.95 sir."

I payed her and took my cup, plate and tray. Three seconds later a man was yelling at her.
It was the voice in my head.

Next Post is a clip from my movie Violent Candy.

The Wizard Club

The Wizard Club is fading from my memory. It wasn't a Harry Potter fan club, even if it was the place I first heard about the fictional boy wizard. No one ever called it the Wizard Club at the meetings but outside the meetings it was the name I called the group. My place in the group was that of the skeptic.

I was dating Sally, oh that's not her real name but I will call her that to protect her from the bigotry of the so called Bible Belt. I was in love with Sally and if the truth be known I never loved a woman more than the woman I call Sally in this story. Sally was a pagan and a neo-spiritualist and I was a wandering soul in search of a truth.

I found no truth in the Wizard Club but it was part of my journey in search of the truth. The people in that group wanted to use magic for good but I only found a pool of false knowledge where imagination should have been. I found no imagination worshipers like myself and worst I found pity politics in the group.

My memories are almost gone of the people of that group. The meetings were $10.00 for each gathering but I didn't feel that was a bad price for the mansion where the Wizard Club meet was truly a private museum. The home of the Professor that studied primitive religions it was full of objects that were part of the fantasy of real world magic.

I have no cleaver story to tell you here, just a fading memory of a group of people with shallow imaginations that wanted to be real wizards.

The Frankenstein Effect

I was at the lowest point in my life. All the years of mind numbing never ending pain had come to this. All the Hell Dreams and Utopian Nightmares. All the times I fell down and couldn't get back up for long periods of time. I told my family I went into the Light and they put me in a mental ward.

The nurse came and gave me a shot to knock me out. My story was so crazy, I had to be crazy.

"It won't work."

"I assure you Mr. Vollrath it will work. You will fall asleep very soon."

"You're wrong, you'll see. Drugs don't work on me like they do other people. Not since the Light."

As she walked away I felt the effect of the drug and my imagination went to war.

I was a child of the Space Age but I was bathed in the Light of the One Soul. My waking dreams were more powerful than any drug. I simply turned up the volume on my soul and the effects of the drug went away.

An hour later another nurse came by my room.

"Did you get your shot?"

"Of course but it didn't work at all. Like I told the other nurse I went into the Light."

"Don't lie to me. If someone gave you a shot you would be asleep by now."

"You would think that but my mind works different than most... OUCH!"

"There, you'll be asleep in no time at all."

The second nurse left the room as I looked down at my arm. She had given me the second shot almost in the same spot as I got the first. What an interesting science experiment this was.

THE LEFT SIDE OF MY BODY WENT NUMB.

I can get out of this mental ward with half my brain tied behind my back.

I COULD NO LONGER FEEL THE LEFT SIDE OF MY BODY.

This isn't as funny as it was a few seconds ago. Come on imagination don't fail me now.

I found some change hidden in my room that I had palmed when I was checked in.
This is going to be tricky. I stood up and my null side followed. I used my left leg as a crutch as I made my way to the bathroom mirror. Oh, you are pretty.

I was a drooling droopy eyed fool. Has I walked out of my room dragging my left side with me I thought I must look like a Universal Studios movie monster.

I made it to the pay phone and called my wife. Talking when you can't feel half of your mouth isn't easy.

"JAAckkkie I beennn doubbleed dooseed wiithh doope. Cooomee gett meee!"

I made my way back to my room. I had asked the One Soul to get me out in 8 hours or less but I didn't realizes how hard I was going to work to make it happen. Prayers only work if you make them work.

The first nurse came back and was shocked to see me still awake.

"Twwo shotts."

I held up two fingers with my right hand.

"Wannt to trry for threee?"

"Oh, my God!"

"Go fiinnnd thaat otherr nuuurse andd telll her I'mm not lyiiing."

The nurse ran out of the room.

I heard them talking just outside my room.

"My God we gave him enough drugs to knock out an elephant!"

"We'll be lucky if he doesn't die!"

As they walked in the room I began to bang my left hand on the bed railing with my right hand.

"IIII don'tt feeel a thiiinng!"

The two woman looked at me in horror. They took my blood pressure and pulse being careful not to tell me what it was. I pretended to go to sleep telling myself I wouldn't go to sleep and I would wake up as soon as I heard my wife's voice if I did.

I fell into a hell dream and the drugs were a Storm of Death and I became a Red Dragon.
My burning breath held the vortex of death away from my twisting serpent body.
Death fell upon me and captured me and in my effort to escape I turned into a thousand tiny blue jellyfish.

All the little bits of my life force sank deep into the dark void of death. My imagination weaken an I found pity for myself as I was going to die in a mental ward. Each blue bit of me began to blink out in the blackness of death. I was going to die. I would never see my sons grow into men.
I was going to die. I would never know my grand children. I was going to die a complete failure in a mental ward. I was down to one blue jellyfish. It's small light began to flicker.

I heard my wife's voice and that little jellyfish exploded into a Giant Blue Dragon and ate death whole.

I sat up in bed and looked at my wife, nurse one and nurse two, all three standing in my room before me.

"They gave me enough drugs to knock out an elephant!"

My speech was no longer slurred. Feeling was coming back to my left side.

"They're lucky they didn't kill me!"

Nurse One looked at my wife;

"We advise you to keep him here."

"I can't leave him here. You might have killed him."

My wife signed me out with 40 minutes left on my eight hour deadline.

No longer my wife, I will always care for Jackie Goss for signing me out of a nightmare when her name was Jackie Vollrath.

I Love Amanda

Amanda is my Daughter in Law and a wonderful person. I believe she is the best possible woman my son Micheal could have married. She has given me a wonderful grandchild.

The above picture is of Amanda, Cordelia and Micheal. Soon after this picture was taken Amanda had her hair cut short and donated the cuttings to make a wig for a child with cancer.

invisible jet

What is reality? I haven't got a clue. I saw a jet bomber blink out of reality or did it? I edit reality sometimes when I'm scared or does someone or something edit it for me?

Maybe I just have a head full of bad wiring? I hate being this rational.

Was it a hallucination or military secret that I saw? I don't know but I believe it was a military secret. Why do I believe the U.S. Air Force has Star Trek technology in the here and now?

I was at a Air Show at Whitman Air Force Base and I was tempting a heat stroke. I can't regulate my body temperature like a normal person. I guess I should say I can't tell if I'm hot or cold for long periods of time. Then when I am hot or cold it hits me all at once. I decided to leave as they announced the B-2 bomber fly over. I needed to get out of the sun and I could leave without fighting traffic.

The temporary parking lot was in a field at the end of the main runway. As I walked alone into the parking lot when the B2 bomber roared into view at the other end of the parking lot.
The B2 dived down to a few feet above the ground and appeared to be heading for a crash into a small hill before the runway.

I braced myself for the crash. I was out in the open and I expected to be hit my flying cunks of plane from the explosion. The Bomber disappeared from sight and so did the sound of the engines. I could see a distortion of where the B2 should be and then there it was again. Now low over the runway at the beginning of it's fly over with the full force of sound from it's engines.

I don't even watch the B2 fly down the runway. I have a flashback to the airshow the year before. I think this was the first time I had a flashback vision.

The year before I'm standing by the runway on a cooler day. I look down at the end of the runway and see the B2 appear out of blue sky in the distance low over the runway.

I turned to an old man standing beside me.

"Did you see that?"

"See what?"

"The B2 appeared at the end of the runway as if by magic."

The old man looked at me like I was crazy.

Maybe I am crazy, I don't know.

I saw this twice from two different angles about a year appart.

a good deed?

The broken shards that once were the rib over my heart caused me great pain as I took a break from my spring cleaning. I was starting to feel sorry for myself when someone knocked on the front door. My parents were gone for a few hours shopping.

I went to the front door hoping it wouldn't be a door to door salesman.

The man that stood on the front porch was dressed in old clothes.

"The stuff at the end of your drive....could I have some of it?"

I was setting out old furniture and yard care equipment for my home town's spring trash day.

"Sure take what you want and thanks for asking."

I almost shut the door but I saw his car. I wish I could tell these true life stories without sounding crazy but I'm so very tired of lying to try to fit in with the world.

I looked at his car and remember a faded memory of a vision I had so many years ago.
An old car with paint flaking off and bald tires. A man that needed tires.

I had bought the best tires I could find for my old van before I gave it to my son Mark.

I remembered the man asking me if I wanted to pay ten dollars to have the old tires recycled.

The tires still had tread but what did I need old tires for?

I saw the flash of the old car and a man that needed tires in my head and said no.

I remembered the future. I remembered the last day in April in 2009. I remembered a man that needed tires. I gave him those tires I had keep for so many years for no rational reason.

I thought he was going to cry for a moment as he showed his almost flat bald tire on his driver side. He didn't even have the money to fix a flat. He took the tires home.

A good deed? Sometimes you can't listen to your rational mind. Sometimes its better to remember the future in the past so you can help someone in the present.

Such a magical life I have and I complain about a little pain from a broken rib. Shame on me.

my little belief system

Does it matter what I believe?

Not really but I feel a need to add to the wandering unproven thought.

I believe in God. I believe in the Goddess. I believe there is no God or Goddess. I believe the Universe is random. I believe the One Soul is all genders and no gender at all. I believe in paradox.

I believe in everything and all those wonderful gaps called nothing.

I believe gravity is the tangle of all the orbits and spins within a universe rotating in all the directions approaching infinity. Magnetism is the counter spin to this.

I believe in invisible jet planes. That for short moments in time the B-2 Bomber can turn invisible to the naked eye.

I believe in time travel in death and the living universe. I believe we are all the same soul, that you and I are all the good and bad in the universe. We have been and will be each other.

You are God or the Goddess and I am the same in my own place in time and space. We are the center of the universe. Your belief system is your truth and this is my truth.

We are one soul or are we?

Focus

Focus in my art has always been a problem with me. I hop from one project to another and seldom finish anything. I admire artists that set deadlines and meet those deadlines.


Taking time off from blogging I was going to work on my novel but being the care taker of my 80 year old parents made writing a complex story too difficult at this time in my life. I thought about all my unfinished projects and tried to decide which direction to go with my art or writing.

Finally I made the decision simple for myself. I made my oldest unfinished project my focus.

When I was a teenager I loved Science Fiction and Comedy. For years I wanted to make a movie combining these two loves. Never having enough money to make a full length movie I decided to take the designs and create a graphic novel. Using collage art as a starting point I've worked on this concept off and on for years.

I'm near finishing the alien interview part of the story. The above alien art is my latest splash page from the graphic novel. I'm hoping to finish the first chapter soon "Raygun Wedding" so I can start pitching the project to publishers.


Sometime in May I'll post a photo of me with the first 200 pages. I just need to stay focused.

Catfish

This blurred photo of my Grand Daughter and I was a moment my son Micheal captured as the big catfish took a look at us looking back. The first word I heard my Grandson say was cat and I've tried to get my Grand Daughter Cordelia to say the word for months now.

"Can you say cat Cordelia?"

"Meow."

After the catfish swam buy I asked for another word.

"Can you say catfish Cordelia?"

"Catfish."

Later we're back at her home and Micheal is playing video games. I'm playing with Cordelia.

"Can you say cat Cordelia?"

"Cat."

With the word said she runs to her room and quickly comes back holding three objects in her tiny hands. She hands me a ball and speaks.

"Ball."

She hands me a block and speaks.

"Block."

She hands me a book and speaks.

"Book."

She looks at with those pretty blue eyes and I get the message. I'm her Grandpa and not a Mom or Dad. She knows words and her parents will teach her words. My job is to teach her the magic of imagination. She hands me my juggling scarfs and I create a little magic for a Princess that will teach me many things over the coming years.

Project InSECT at Powell's Gardens

Here is another version of some footage of Project InSECT at Powell's Gardens near my hometown of Kingsville Missouri. You can see Jessa's husband James doing his arm painting thing in this short clip. I've posted this one before in several versions. I'll be deleting those earlier edits on this blog.

I have permission to post this video as I made it for Project InSECT.

Please do not copy as this video is a gift from me to Project InSECT.

Jessa

This isn't the video I wanted to post after the original Project InSECT footage but I hope you enjoy this footage.

I have permission to post this video as I made it for Project InSECT.

Please do not copy this video as it is a gift from me to Project InSECT.