Some Stuff & Some Things

Well the summer continues...I guess here's what I've been up to...the sucky and the non-sucky

the sucky

-being away from my girlfriend (majorly sucks)
-working at the popcorn plant outside town (kinda sucks, but hey at least I finally have a job and am getting some decent pay)
-getting a severe farmer's tan while working (sucks or awesome depending on how redneck you are)

the non-sucky

-I finally have been getting consistent with working out and stuff which I think pretty much has never happened with me before. I know I'll be on and off again when the school year rolls around and gets busy. I've been riding this bike machine at the fitness center in town once and a while, it's called an expresso machine (I know weird name for an exercise machine). Anyways, basically it's like any other bike machine except that there's a screen in front of you of you riding a bike on a trail and you have to move the handlebars and stuff to turn. And when you go uphill and stuff the resistance increases. Anyways, it's kinda cool, but the highlight of my experience with it was when seeing a yeti. That's right I was biking this one snowy mountain path and he was waving at me, it would have been sweet if they had a level where the yeti chased you or something.

-me and my friends have thought up a video series idea for the wow4now channel this summer. if we can actually do it, I'll be happy even if we don't make any other videos this summer. basically, it's going to be a choose-your-own adventure series and we hope it will come out awesome. we watched a few other choose-your-own adventures on youtube but I'm hoping we'll be able to top them. basically, the other ones we've seen have really only been cool because they're a chose-your-own adventure, but the story itself wasn't too interesting, random, or funny, or the video was shot pretty poorly. haha, but basically they're will be 3 different main storylines you can go down depending on some choices you make very early on in the story. so basically we're shooting 3 movies with lots of random deaths and easter eggs in between. outlining the whole thing took quite a while, and now I'm writing a shooting script and doing some video tests for effects we're doing. pretty much it's the most pre-production we've ever done, which really isn't saying too much since very little usually goes into it. anyways, now I have really overhyped this and will probably let you down with it...so ignore everything I just said and set your expectations low, haha.

anyways, as you can see I really have nothing too interesting to talk about so I'll let you guys get on with your lives now.

Summer....

So Summer has been interesting so far...

-I didn't end up getting into the clinical trial that I wanted to, so I'm not going to make the big bucks that way...I passed the initial screening and everything, but when I went to the mandatory doctor's appointment he found a lump on my neck. So pretty much I've had to go in and out doing tests for that for the last couple weeks, but thankfully it turned out to be nothing. However, they figured out that my iron levels are a little too high for some reason, so I have to cut back on stuff with iron in it...which sucks, because a lot of awesome food has large quantities of iron in it...such as cereal. This morning I wanted to have a delicious bowl of Cocoa Puffs...but instead I head to eat granola...which I mean hey, granola's not bad...I think it's just that because I know I can't eat good cereals I crave them more...hopefully this low iron thing will just be a quick trend...

-I got my haircut recently...apparently this makes me look younger. I've been mistaken for being under 18 twice in the last two weeks (I'm 20). Really, I have no problem with looking younger than I am now...as long as this continues throughout my whole life.

-I've developed a strange method of showering lately. It began with bringing music into the bathroom. Then it advanced to music and dimming the lights. And now it has advanced to listening to techno music, turning off all the lights, and then turning on my iTunes visualizer and aiming the screen towards my shower curtain. It's sweet it's like my shower curtain just changes colors.

-The other night I watched Hercules in New York, Arnold Schwarzenegger's first film. It's great because every minute or so Arnie says this line and then you will be like "what the heck did he just say?" because his accent is thick. The movie took my to a new level of ridic when Hercules wrestled the mighty bear at the zoo...the man in the incredible bear suit, haha.

Anyways, I have nothing to interesting to write about at the moment, so I will leave you with some words of wisdom which I have just stolen from the world wide web.

"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."

Deal or No Deal

About a week ago, me, my girlfriend, and some friends all went to Fastlane, which is pretty much Chuck E. Cheese for grown-ups. While we were there I spotted a Deal or No Deal game. I've always thought the show was really lame to watch, but it might actually be a fun game to play, so we gave it a shot. At the beginning of the game they have all the suitcases laid out and they show you the one that has the most tickets (200) and then they mix all the suitcases up super fast and you try to follow it with your eyes. Anyways, after all the mixing I thought it was in suitcase 14. What you're supposed to do at this point, is select the suitcase you think it's in, so it will be your suitcase to hang on to til the end for your final choice. We didn't know this at the time though, so Beth just randomly hits suitcase 4. Anyways, so we play the game and Beth is just eliminating suitcases left and right and it's awesome because we're all the way down to 2 suitcases and the 200 tickets are in one of them. The remaining suitcases are suitcase 14 which I thought the 200 was in from the beginning, and the random one Beth put aside at the beginning. So now we have to decide whether to take 100 tickets from the man upstairs or risk it all and go for the 200. I said screw it, let's go for the 200, so we did. I told Beth "alright let's pick my suitcase 14", so she hits the button for suitcase 14. What we didn't realize was that we were eliminating suitcase 14 and opening suitcase 4, I was like "No! Crap!" as soon as we hit the button. So they open up suitcase 14 to show us what would have been inside and it was.....10 tickets....which means...the 200 tickets were in suitcase 4! We won! Ahh, it was such a glorious moment the greatest waste of $2.oo ever.


When we were in the store later, using up our tickets, I was doing some math and thinking that if we always played as good as we were playing during Deal or No Deal, then of course each ticket would be equivalent to a penny...so then I started realizing how big of a scam the whole thing is haha. Like I knew I was getting ripped off when I was at Chuck E. Cheese when I was kid (that's why I just said screw the tickets, and used all my tokens on the Ninja Turtles game), but this was just ridiculous. This crappy TV/Radio thing that seriously worth $50 tops, cost over 41,000 tickets. That's over $410! Whoever came up with this idea, is making a crapload of money.

Good Reads

So since I tripped out on LOST in my previous post and don't expect much feedback, I will make another quick post:
Does anyone have any good reading suggestions?
I've got a whole summer ahead of me and possibly lots of time to kill, so I'd like to hear if you guys have read anything good lately...

The last thing I really read was The Road by Cormac McCarthy (same guy who wrote No Country For Old Men) at christmas time. It's really intense, haunting, and powerful. The film adaption of it is supposed to be released sometime this year, and Viggo Mortensen is the lead man. It's one of those books that I'm really unsure how it will translate into a film, but I guess we'll just see.



Anyways, I'd love some feedback on good stuff you've guys have read lately.

The Variable

LOST is getting so good. Don't get my wrong, it's always been good. But there was a definite lag of sorts through seasons 2&3. But holy crap, things are getting so intense now. And while all the time-travel stuff may be really confusing, it's also incredibly well thought out, and is handled so much better here than anything else I've ever seen. Most shows I've seen, it's just like "okay, here's how time travel works, piece of cake" and either they go back and change something right away, figure out they can't change it, or they just keep digging themselves further and further into this hole of changing the past and things just keep looping and looping as they try to change stuff. I also like the fact that they don't really control the time travel, so it's not like they can just do it whenever they want...and that the majority of it is pretty much over and happened the first half of the season...

And no offense here, (I really have no room to talk either because I haven't watched every single episode of the show I'm about to talk about...in LOST watching every single episode is VITAL, which might be the case here too) but I think that's one thing that really turned me off with Heroes. Don't get me wrong I thought the first season was pretty well done, but after that I lost interest. It didn't seem like there was really any reason to keep going, because there wasn't any huge mysteries set up or anything, other than Hiro getting thrown back in time in the finale in Season One. I watched some episodes from the second season and they were just okay for me. And then I saw the first couple episodes of Season 3 and I was just kind of like...okay so pretty much they can keep going back and try to change whatever they want, whenever they want...but that's probably not fair of me to say since I haven't really kept up...sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes there.

Anyways, With LOST, it's like a complete philosophy of time travel and even the island's quantum physicist is still trying to figure out how the heck it works and what the rules are. It's nice because there's at least some rules to it here, and they can't just go and say..."oh yeah all those flashbacks of all the characters that we've let you get to know...yeah those never happened now." I also really like how Jack's character has evolved this season. He has more faith than almost all his fellow LOSTies now, he's done with all the whole coincidence and luck crap and believes he has a destiny, and is willing to let go and let others take charge instead of trying to control everything. So I guess that's my LOST scpheel. After me & my friend watched the episode last night together (when I watched it with him, it was my second time seeing it that night) we sat and philosophied about the show for seriously 2 hours...and then my mind was super tired...but it was awesome...anyways if you don't watch LOST then this is probably extremely uninteresting to you, so I'll stop now. But I will say this. It's not too late to start watching...but don't think that you can start from Season 5...you've got to all the way back to square one, but trust me it's worth it.

Contractions

I'm not talking about having a baby.

So today I randomly started thinking about how sentences sound funny when you end them with contractions.

e.g.

"You're not a boy."
"Yes, I'm."

"I'm going to look sooo sexy sporting this manly jean jacket."
"Yeah, you'll."

It sounds like you're about to say something more, but that's it. And yet, when you add something like a "not" after the contraction it sounds okay.

e.g.

"You're an idiot"
"No, I'm not."

Anyways, I encourage you all to be different and start ending sentences with contractions, and see what strange reactions you can evoke from people.

That is all.

WOW

-World of Warcraft.
It has never been a temptation for me to play. I've seen it suck in a few of my close friends for periods of time, but it's never been able to affect me.
UNTIL NOW.
Don't worry, I'm not playing it.
However, my dorm room just so happens to be on the other side of the wall of the computer lab and about 10-15 WOW gamers are in there and they're giving me a very play by play of their experiences.. I love when some of them yell at the other person who's sitting right next to them that they just cheated. This WOW virus is starting to turn into a real problem. Sometimes, I walk in there in the middle of the afternoon to print a paper and all the computers are taken by WOW addicts.

Parents talk to your kids about WOW.

-Moving on, I've decided to make myself a little list of things to do this summer:
1. Make money
2. If enough money is made, buy a digital SLR camera (probably a nikon d40)
3. Make some videos, even if it is just more of the ridiculous stuff I always make
4. Write some scripts
5. Watch a lot of films, especially the classics I've never seen.

-I made my roommate get a blogspot tonight: http://andineedmoregracethanithought.blogspot.com/

-Well no one commented on my blog about the color/bw although my mom said something about on facebook. But according to Guitar Hero, your mom does not count as a fan. But what the heck. I like the photo in bw and color, but prefer it in bw. The boy's face is pretty exposed and the shadows cast from the fence stand out on his face. There's just a lot of contrast in bw. Also, it reminds a little of the cover for the film the 400 blows, except from more of a side angle...and with a younger boy...who doesn't live in Germany...or in the 50's...and who's life doesn't completely suck...but besides that I'd say they're practically identical. It's a good film, watch it.

-I'm going to start a movie section on this blog, for reviews and reccommendations and whatnot.
It'll be called:

WATCH AND DON'T WATCH
And even though it's called Watch and Don't Watch, I'll always start with Don't Watch because I always like getting the bad news first.
DON'T WATCH: Fighting
Well to be honest with you, I can't give a full review here because I only saw an hour of it while I was on my break (I work at a theater). However, to me it seemed like this year's version of Never Back Down (which admittely I didn't see either...nor did I want to see). Pretty much Fighting seemed like a formula movie to me. There was a fight every 20-30 minutes, and they weren't even very good. In between the fights it felt almost like a chick flick set in a different atmosphere than normal chick flicks. Just felt kinda girly. And of course most of the girls watching were just there for Channing Tatum anyways.

Watch: Paris, I Love You
The format of the movie is pretty cool. It's 18 short stories, each about 5 minutes long, all put into one movie. Originally, I thought every story would be a love story about how this couple first met in Paris and quite a few of them are, but not all of them. There's a huge range as far as style and subject in the stories, since every story had a different director (the Coen brothers even direct a story). Some of them are very realistic, some are extremely ridiculous, some have got elements of fantasy to them. There's a lot of French and English mixed together into the movie and several American actors such as Natalie Portman, William Dafoe, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Elijah Wood star in some of the stories. I can almost guarantee you're not going to like every story, I know I didn't. One of them was about a dude hitting on another dude and another was just so absurd it didn't make any sense. It was about this old dude selling Asian hair products to these salon people, it was so ridiculous...but intentionally so. Anyways, those were some of the low points. But for the most part I really enjoyed most of them. A couple that stood out to me was the one with the Mime, Natalie Portman's story, and Elijah Wood's vampire story, just to name a few. Another reason I really liked the movie was just because they were all short stories. As a student filmmaker, that's all I can really realistically do right now. I don't have the kind of funding or experience (or even script for that matter) to make a feature length film yet. But these 5 minutes shorts are just perfect for me, it's great to watch how these professional filmmakers can develop these stories in such a short amount of time. I have a problem with always making my stories too long, and so these are great to study. Anyways, I'd reccommend the movie to anyone who's into film.

-Okay I'm going to go now, no more ranting tonight. I'll go to bed now...and hopefully avoid any next door WOW gamer induced nightmares...