Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category
Los Angeles Kings
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010
Even after working (volunteering? They fed me…) for the Milwaukee Admirals back in high school I’d still never learned the awesome that is hockey. That is, besides the universal joy of hockey fights. It wasn’t until floor managing college games that I learned rules and penalties of the sport. The game is now just as fun between the fights.
I have watched plenty of good hockey, the Admirals are a feeder team that often dominated the minor leagues and both women and men won national titles while I was at school. But until this weekend I’d never attended an NHL team. So the Kings game it was. It is a very purple team, which I never thought I’d have to again embrace after graduation. Suck is life. My first time at the Staples Center and I 1). found great parking, and 2). Got to walk on the ice and check out the zamboni West Coast Chopper flair.
Besides the sever lack of cheers, songs, standing, and dancing (what sports are all about) it was a good time. I think that is more of an issue of having “old people” at the game; it was nice to sit down for a change.
Living in Los Angeles I should probably have at least one west coast team, and the Kings will easily fit the mold. Rumor has it the Kings don’t suck, making it look like the Kings will be my team.
Go Kings. I’ll take my t-shirt in black.
Tags: Los Angeles, Sports, Work
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
Photoshop
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Photoshop is an interesting program. Just for fun I’ve been playing around with it. Skipping over the graphic design and animation classes in school means I’m behind most people in skill.
Limited hours spent staring at the pixels and my eyes are already going cross. It is becoming clear why all computer geeks sport glasses. Or maybe it’s that they previously had glasses and that is drawing them into computer based majors. Chicken or the egg?
Their bespectacled selves may be way more proficient in making Photoshop do what Photoshop was designed to do. But when I get distracted or screw up an image I make a really good zombie-devil scene with some asteroid action. Michael Bay inspires me.
*A sample of the awesomeness that is failed Photoshop drawings will be provided as soon as the world is ready to see them.
Tags: Blog, Bored
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
Dog v Cat
Saturday, December 19th, 2009
It’s true: it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog. Meaning this 50-pound mutt is useless against the kitten. Maybe that’s better for coexistence since Saba can fit Blondie’s entire head in her mouth.
Saba will start on her dog bed, the cat will then do pretty much whatever she wants. Took a while but Blondie finally stopped trying to nurse the dog, and Saba learned that purring is not growling.
The dog gets fed up first surrendering the comfort. Wimp.
The only time this doesn’t happen is when there’s a sliver of morning sunlight to share. White flags are raised and mortal enemies are friends.
They also are adorable to watch “wrestle” each other. So far there has only been one bloody lip, and that was when the cat clamped down on the dog. (camera-phone)
These pictures were asked for a while ago, apologies for the delay.
Tags: Blog, Blondie, cat, Dog, Pictures, Saba
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »
Sharing About TShirts
Friday, November 13th, 2009
We’ve all secretly designed shirts.. on napkins, in CAD, for the company softball team, for that high school club you refuse to admit to have been a part of.
Working on a film in Chicago we had a crew that for some reason or another spewed out ideas for t-shirts at an alarming rate. Most weren’t good, but any idea is seen as great during hour 16 of a work day. That’s the beauty of it.
The best shirt idea stemmed from the dealings with a producer who refused to call and Production Assistant (read: pee-on) by name. Instead he used PA as a derogatory term for whoever happened to be standing closest. So all Pas, myself included, were going to wear in:
Note that the name on the back was not allowed to be our own. That way, if this producer decided to try and use our names he’d be outing himself as having no clue who we were to the rest of the crew. They wouldn’t have fired all of us at the same time… we hoped.
Another shirt actually got made from an offhanded comment I made to a gaffer working for ESPN with me one day. We were talking about students who were “too emo to be emo” and their t-shirts. Turns out he owned a silkscreen company to occupy his spare time, and a week later some of these showed up in the mail (It’s wrinkly, that’s what happens when you pull a shirt out of a gym bag for a picture)
Another shirt I would totally wear if someone would produce it (after making it look good of course)…
After shopping around for a new road bike I realize the phrase may be a little off base. Maybe something like “Cheaper then a lifetime of therapy” would be a more accurate price point.
And although this isn’t a shirt, I’d sport this bumper sticker on my car somewhere.
It’s supposed to be a bit of a slap in the face. People often act stupid towards one another without thinking. Though I think Yield to Life goes for a bit of a different public image then the sticker represents. Still. I’m excited to see how the organization moves forward and in the mean time I’m going to think about what I’d do if I were them.
Last time I got bored on hiatus the web site was made (see the footer of the site for proof). This time, I’m playing with PhotoShop.
Tags: Blog, Bored, creative, cycling
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »
Thought I was Watching Glee
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Sat down to and turned on Glee and found myself watching Ugly Betty: The High School Years
Similarities anyone?
- High key lighting
- Bright colors everywhere
- Sparse sets with a bit of an industrial feel
- Similar camera style with awkward headshots looking dead into the camera
- Soundtracks are both unnatural, obtrusive and poignant (I think. Haven’t seen Ugly Betty for a few years)
- Lead male character in charge, good looking, but “shockingly” insecure and geeky.
- America Ferrera look-alike.
- Over the top female Cruella De Vil evil character
- Overly melodramatic (can that even be a phrase?) soap opera story lines
All that said Ugly Betty is a great show. Glee adds a musical element to the style adding to what has come before it. Unless you hate musicals, then you should probably stick to Ugly Betty. The rest are invited to Wednesday night sing alongs.
Tags: Blog, Review, TV
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »
I Want To Go To There
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Google has mapped a village known as Argleton, located in England. Place looks interesting, not somewhere I would have ever thought about visiting but wouldn’t be bad if I stumbled upon it. My interest grew exponentially when I found out that the place doesn’t actually exist. It is listed on Google Maps with no explanation for it being there.
Google’s response is pretty lackluster, “Google Maps data comes from third party data sources. While the vast majority of this information is correct, there are occasional errors.” It’s fine, don’t blame Google, whatever. Do however explain how a village gets made up, placed somewhere, has pictures, and gets placed in online directories.
A Google search brings up a whole bunch of conspiracy theories, complaints, news stories, economic afflictions, and other (sometimes) entertaining reactions. I started to sift through it all to give a summary, but got blown away. Search at your own risk.
Argleton will soon be the road trip destination of high schoolers looking for a specific group of fields.
Tags: Blog, News, Weird
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
Halloween
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
This year I made up for three years of not participating, by celebrating Halloween three times before Oct 31st rolled around. Work was having the Second Annual Michael Scott Dunder Mifflin Scranton Office Memorial Cast and Crew Fun Halloween Contest for the Duldrums Cure and I was told I had to dress up.
Fight Club. No, not Tyler Durden. Fight Club. The people in the movie that participated in the underground fight club and then had to show up to work in their normal clothes with the crap beaten out of them.
We showed up dressed as usual. Lori was awesome enough to come in just to do our makeup. Then whenever anyone asked what we were we said that we can’t talk about it or that the first rule is that we couldn’t talk about it.
We had three brilliant judges: Vartan (crafty), Brian, and BJ. They gave us a much undeserved third place in the costume contest! We were pretty baffled, but took our candy and prize just the same. Really we should have won the Jim Halpert Award: something witty, but only requiring minimal effort.
Quite a few people thought I crashed out on my bike over the weekend, and one of our security guards offered to beat up whoever did this to me before he figured out it was makeup.
The only thing that could have made it better was if Lori was working that day, because who doesn’t love a pregnant lady in their fight club?
Classy: Drinking Vintage Don Perignon at wrap. Some of the best Champaign I’ve ever had, with my face as is. Looked like I was celebrating an abusive husband divorce settlement.
Tags: Blog, Halloween, Holiday, Los Angeles, Work
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
Hiatus (aka break from filming and work)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Hiatus is a weird thing. It gets looked forward to as much as Christmas, but when it arrives there is no tree with presents. It is a little confusing going from working 60-85 hour weeks to having 60-85 extra hours of free time.
My time is being used catching up on important things: Seeing friends I’ve been neglecting for months, backing up my laptop, cleaning my closet, etc. I’m also unashamedly catching up with unimportant things: Organizing years worth of photos, going to the beach, catching up on TV and movies, etc. 
That last one is a staple. Hiatus is basically storing up sleep for the second half of our season the way a bear stores up food for hibernation. To start out I figured I’d catch up on some TV I’ve been meaning to watch since it aired. Dexter is up first, followed closely by Weeds. Well I think followed closely by Weeds, if it is still good and didn’t turn south after season one.
Figured I’d try and sit through some movies too. After recently re-watching Idoicracy (2006), seeing all Mike Judge films seemed like an easy enough list. Then I realized all I had left was Extract (2009) which has come and gone in theaters and isn’t yet at Netflix. Looking for another manageable canon to conquer, I landed at watching all Cohen Brothers movies. I have enjoyed the six I’ve seen, eight more to check out. Last night we finished number seven with Miller’s Crossing (1990) and I realized maybe I’ve seen all the good ones. A little nervous for the rest.
However it turns out, hiatus is a time to get a lot of stuff done. Not necessarily a time to be productive. Enjoy.
Tags: Bored, Hiatus, movies, Sleep
Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »
ZOMBOCOM (totally worth your click)
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
TV seldom gets watched on my TV anymore. So I went to type in hulu.com on my handy little laptop. It was late, and while I was blaming CBS for not having uploaded the latest How I Met Your Mother at the time, for my mistake alone I take back any mean thoughts I may have had.
My mental state caused me to mistype huku.com which sent me to a site that seems to be ran by Hulu. No, it didn’t just auto-direct me to hulu.com Instead someone thought it a good idea to auto-directed me to ZOMBOCOM
Curious who was the entertaining person who thought this was a better auto-direction for those who can’t spell. Also curious the number of people who land here and are as amused as I am. Way better then landing on a stupid RoadRunner ad trying to help out when misspelling things.
Tags: Boredom, Fun, Oops, WebSite
Posted in Blog | No Comments »
The Importance of Being Earnest
Saturday, October 17th, 2009
A Trivial Comedy for Serious People
In an effort to become more cultured, Jesse and I got ourselves tickets to go see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. The theatre was close, cheap, and it was a play I read in a college lit class. We probably even studied the play in that class. Come to think of it, we probably studied Wilde as a whole, at least half of a lecture worth on this play. Whatever the case, it’s kind of embarrassing that I had forgotten the end of the storyline and couldn’t think of any other Wilde writings.
After arriving, and loving the intimacy of the theatre I realized that there was no set dec. In fact there were only six or so microphones across the stage. What the heck was going on? Table read? Early rehearsal? The night was going to be a complete bust; no wonder the tickets were so cheap. The bust turned out to be the most perfect way to experience such a well-written comedic masterpiece (I use the word loosely since I think you need to have read way more then I have in order to be qualified to label things as such). Anyways. Earnest. The play-ish thing… I loved it. Every moment.
The microphones were set up because NPR recorded the evening as a part of a series. A foley artist provided the listeners at home some audio and for those of us lucky enough to be there both audio effects and a whole other artistic element to the evening that was fun to watch. He seemed to have more going on at his little table then the rest of the performers up front.
The dialogue was the focus, and no one waited for a laugh cue before continuing. Actors were great, the roles were perfectly filled for this particular evening. Last minute recasting took away some “star power” but also eliminated any potential distractions from the writer’s words. An interesting casting choice, whether it intentional or a necessity, was the casting of Lady Bracknell. An older man, wearing a pretty hat, read her part. Distracting at first, then it kind of worked, then I just heard him as a woman, then it made me think way too much about the character being a man instead of a woman and how it changes perceptions of the situations since the two male leads are struggling with identity issues to start out with… That was on its way to being a thesis which means it is time to run in the other direction…
I have read the play, seen the movie, listened to lectures, and written an essay on Wilde’s play all prior to this evening. But not until seeing it performed in this way did I truly appreciate the writing and comedic gold that Wilde presents.
I thoroughly enjoyed my evening, even on major lack of sleep. Though there isn’t any video, the “P” in NPR means that you can all go search the interwebs and enjoy it yourselves.
Link to the theatre: www.skirball.com
Tags: Culture, Jesse, Los Angeles, Play
Posted in Blog | No Comments »