![c-water[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/c-water1.jpg "c-water[1]")
“Filler” is a term often used by music fans to describe songs that sound like they were quickly put together to take up space on an album in order to “fill out” the running time. Though filler can often be quite good, snobbier music fans sometimes use it as an excuse to turn their noses up at others. Ironically, this attitude can be just as annoying as the people the snobs want to put down.
I make my living as a Photoshop retoucher. Much of the work I do is celebrity related, and often involves those showy magazine spreads where a B-list celebrity shows off his or her home. It’s MTV Cribs for older generations (in other words, those who still read). What I often find in the photos are startling similarities in artistic taste.
Seemingly every one of these celebrities has the same coffee-table book collection, including books on Picasso, jazz, and Man Ray. It’s as if the photographer carries a satchel of the same books to each celebrity’s house simply for the automatic class boost they provide.
It seems impossible to me that so many people actually have those books because they enjoy the artists’ work. A friend of mine brought up the cynical idea that this is what you get when you allow the masses access to art — great works often become, in effect, filler. The coffee-table book industry is, in many ways, a seller of white noise, used by individuals who hope to give their home an aesthetic boost.
Actors can be an easy bunch to spot around Los Angeles. Often, they can be seen exiting a Kinko’s with a box of 500 headshots. The male can usually be seen hopping into his Jeep with his Von Dutch hat and designer T-shirt. Like many species, the male actor is the more flamboyant of the sexes.![mm_twitter[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/mm_twitter1.jpg "mm_twitter[1]")
We live in a self-absorbed culture. Everything we do is shared through blogs, status updates, and tweets. Now that people have the Internet on their phones, nobody is more than a second away from an update. Yet, in this age of instantaneous content, cinema is still going strong.
Whilst reading Jack Feerick’s “How Bad Can It Be” column on Marilyn Manson’s new album, I was struck with an interesting thought. Parents have long feared Manson’s effect on their children, or at least they did when I was in school. Why do we choose to fear that which we have been told to fear?
I’ve often written in this column about the state of film criticism and the Internet. It might seem strange that I, an online film columnist, feel I have the authority to judge something I take part in. It’s sort of like those internal government memos that we all question the validity of. Nevertheless, I usurp that power like the demagogue of Popdose.
When our esteemed editor and 
I’ve spent the last week trying to get a trailer ready for my film, Red Gold. That doesn’t even include the time I spent editing the footage or recording the music. The week has mostly been spent finalizing the sound, converting the trailer into a decent Quicktime movie, and attempting to get it online.
I was shaving this evening. I like to shave at night, because the last thing I want to do when my eyes are still half-closed is rake a piece of sharp metal near my jugular.
Someone asked me recently whether I had considered attending a film program. As he described it, you “go to school and when you graduate you are a director.” If only it worked that way.
Is there a key to creativity? Could there be some way of unlocking what is within the mind at any given time? The answer to this question has often eluded me. I cannot conclude that every other creative person in the world has the same experience as I, but there must be similarities.