Good Stuff For Friday
*Coke With Lime. Much better than lemon or vanilla. Or Pepsi.
*Dane Cook Mocks Tom Cruise. I've got nothing against Tom or Katie since I could care less about celebrities, but Dane Cook is hilarious.
*Thai Shirlington. Eugene almost died here from choking on noodles, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the Chicken Sesame bowl.
*Google Video. It just launched this week but it's a cool idea. Hopefully this means we'll see more people put movies online.
Thursday, June 30 at 2:22 PM
Undefeated In Marco Polo
Great weekend - saw a Washington Nationals game (they're the new DC baseball team), played Atari 7800 Joust on Andrew's ridiculously huge 36" TV, went through two rounds of frisbee golf with Andrew and Jeff at a nearby park, saw and loved Batman Begins (A), went swimming at the pool, barbecued with Jeff, went to our cousins' baptism, saw and semi-liked The Aviator (B), and jumped a lot on the trampoline. School starts back up in a week!
Monday, June 27 at 10:05 PM
Roasted, Toasted and Burnt to a Crisp, Thank You Bobby Budnick.
Since the rest of the samurai are here in the DC area, I've been trying to see them all at some point before the trip back to Atlanta. So after the initial plans were laid out, a chain of emails began that quickly evolved into everyone reminiscing about the high school and college days. I miss these guys terribly...they are my best friends for life. And what is this site if not an archive for the band? So here are a few choice quotes from the 25 or so messages that have been sent in the last week:
"A little frisbee golf at Burke Lake sounds great. I got some discs a few weeks ago and found a little park right near Jeff and I that has a nine hole course. And maybe after we could go see the Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants? Ehh?"
"hmmm, I say it's a toss up between The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants or the Perfect Man starring Heather Locklear and Hilary Duff. I think we all know the answer to this one...BOTH!"
"oh and by the way, everytime I see the trailer for War of the Worlds, I think of that movie Gone Fishin' starring acclaimed actors Joe Pesci and Danny Glover with one critic noting that "You'll laugh your bass off!"
"do you remember the time when we made "smiling eugena" snowman in the werners front yard, which consisted of american cheese eyeballs that i'm pretty sure were pecked away by birds? that too, was quite entertaining."
"andrew, remember that time when you tried to fight me when we were playing basketball at your parents house. then all of a sudden will ferrell was walking down the private driveway and andrew's like "oh dude, its cool its cool" haha. in addition, remember that time sarah was wearing that vest and you told her she looked like marty mcfly and "it doesnt matter buttons"."
"dave, remember when jeff and i came up to baltimore and we went to that TFA party and jeff and i ruled the table at beer pong and you ate an ENTIRE chocolate cake. jeff and i were trying to hide the cake from you, we actually put it on top of the cupboard so you couldnt find it, but alas, it didnt slow you down. in addition, remember that one time in ms. thawley's pre-algebra class when we passed a note around to the entire class when we had a substitute teacher and orchestrated everyone dropping their huge textbooks at the same time. haha, that was awesome. donald sohn, aka frogvoice was in that class too."
"Don, yes I do remember how excited we were about our first day at college and how much fun we had. I also remember your character, The Artist fomerly known as Everlast, who was comprised of vintage headphones with neckties hanging on both ears, a 3.5" floppy disk stuck in between your sunglasses, and all other sorts of crazy crap on your face. I'm laughing out loud as we speak."
"Jeff, remember that concert we went to, it was either oasis or stone temple pilots and I got totally rocked and my glasses broke, but I said they were fine, but when I put them on my face that were all messed up. I think I had to use electric tape to keep them together."
"Dave, remember when you me and andrew went exploring into deep depth woods of what we refer to as "burke." I still remember we were throwing rocks at lead pipes and made sparks and thought that was the coolest thing. And then we tried throwing rocks at another piece of rock that was on the other side of the lake trying to knock it down, but all we did was get more rocks stuck in the mud, and when we came back we were all muddy, and I think your mom made us crab cakes with pepsi. that was good. Also, remember we played tron on that playground of yours and then we all got scared of you cause you were giving us a pep talk about going to war acting like a drill sergeant. That was awesome. And don't forget the richie petibon brian shea game."
"Don, remember when in Baltimore, that night where we ran the beer pong table, taking shots, with side sippers, drinking all beers before shooting, and you declaring, "That's right! He's calculating his shot!" as I hit the last cup right in the dude's face...we were running around in the scary dirt basement of Dave's house, and I fell down, then proceeded to run around tracking dirt all over the house...we were the coolest and meanest guests in B-more that night."
"Don, 2 words (actually one's a number) Pacman, 219,400."
"Speaking of Tower Records, Eugene, do you remember when I ran into some really hot girl from school and you came over with the Indian in the Cupboard soundtrack and handed it to me saying "Hey I found that CD you were looking for". Beautiful. I also remember Eugene playing more Redneck Rampage than bass while recording our CD."
"Speaking of replacement killers, Don, I seem to remember whooping you in the front lawn of my parents' house. I also remember playing that Indiana Jones game for hours making sure to save snoopies and poopies every so often (savee votre) and never forgetting our good friend ronjomp. I also remember Don's room in 891G that I stayed in the summer before it burned down and how it had a blacklight poster with a butterfly that would totally creep me out when I was trying to sleep."
"Speaking of turtles, I remember betting a kid in third grade that Dave could draw a better picture of Leonardo from TMNT than his brother. I took a drawing of Dave's and let's just say that a jury of my peers agreed that the kid had to give me his tater tots for lunch. I remember vowing to name my first child megaweapon and if the apocolypse ever came, deciding I would walk around naked with a Terminator 2 Big Gulp cup and put bricks on cars' accelerators and watch them fly down the highway. I remember watching in awe as Dave beat Super Bases Loaded 4 by playing a perfect game as the Los Angeles Lizards. I'm still convinced he's the only person who has ever done that."
"Remember when I thought a really great band name would be "Good Times Had by Paul?" Obviously substituting "Paul" for "All"... the only problem was that we didn't have anyone named Paul in our band..."
Thursday, June 23 at 10:12 PM
City Flythrough
For a quick 30-second distraction, there's a new masthead in the random rotation at the top of the page; if you're a frequent visitor you might have to clear your browser cache to see it. Click on the city names to fly through them (these are some favorite places that I've traveled to or lived in). These interactive things are fun so there might be a few more experiments in the near future. Thanks to Jared Tarbell for the open source and Colin for the inspiration.
Wednesday, June 22 at 10:41 PM
The End of Science
"The End of Science" was a 45-minute movie I made for Mrs. Janus's 8th grade science class, and Andrew followed up the year after with "The End of Science: Part Deux." We were given complete creative freedom as long as we included 100 science facts somewhere. So while little Billy's diorama and Sally's baking soda experiment made the grade, they paled in comparison to our exotic locales (our backyard and a nearby forest) and special effects (animated Mario Paint title sequences).
While going through some old VHS tapes this afternoon, I ended up watching both, laughing the entire way through. Whichever brother is not the hero ends up playing about 12 bad guys in the course of the film, usually differentiating themselves with only a different hat or tee shirt. Most of the humor is unintentional and improvised, like Andrew saying "Ben Kenobi has taught you well" while getting in a swordfight with sticks.
We must have made a record amount of cartoons and school projects on video. Now it's easy to see where the inspiration for the NYC movies started from. Eventually, it would be great to convert some of these to digital and put the highlights online. Some of the best include Eugene as a Japanese pirate from Shogun, the band rocking out a song in French, and the infamous time Andrew and I were on a Comedy Central commercial...
Tuesday, June 21 at 2:54 PM
Yeah, It's About Birds
Work on Cadence of Seasons is underway. I don't think I've explained much of the plot yet, but you might have guessed that it has something to do with birds. You'll take control of Linden, a cardinal who learns to fly in the first sequence of the story and continues to grow up over the course of the three-chapter adventure. There will be an enormous treehouse village to explore, a massive war with lots of fight sequences, and plenty of secrets to uncover. The focus here is on reading...is it possible to create an online novel that people actually want to sit down and take the time to read?
Sunday, June 19 at 6:51 PM
Origins of Skullrider
Yesterday I read through some old stories I wrote while growing up, all stashed deep in our bedroom bookshelf. I wanted to be an author for the longest time, filling up spiral notebooks as a kid and taking every possible creative writing class in high school and college. Here are some of the highlights:
Skullrider: My third grade teacher set up a "Writer's Center" in the corner of the classroom. After you finished a story, a parent volunteer would type the pages up on a newfangled machine called a computer and spiral-bind them together. I thought this was the coolest thing ever and ended up writing about 15 books...but Skullrider was the best. It was about a skateboarding kid whose skin melts off when a bat bites him. So he goes to school normally as a skateboarding skeleton ("the girls thought he was gross but the boys thought he was totally cool"), but soon realizes that he misses his normal self. So he enters a warp zone and kills some monster (with his skateboard) to return to normal (but gets to keep a purple demon dog he finds in the warp zone).
Mac And Cam: Volumes 1-3: Mac and Cam (short for Macintosh and Camcorder) were our answer to the Hardy boys, and in elementary school I ended up writing three 30-page spiral notebook stories about their adventures. In Never A Doubt, the brothers are looking for a thief in the Mayan ruins. The sequel, Caribbean Catastrophe, involves a kidnapping on a cruise ship, and Secret of the Jewel was about treasure hunting in Egypt. Andrew and I still call each other Mac and Cam every once in a while.
The World of Exnax: Exnax was a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story about a fantasy world heavily influenced by Zelda 3 on the Super Nintendo and a series of books called Lone Wolf. There were 27 different endings (26 of them bad), and the story was divided into a light world and dark world.
Gemstorm: Filling up 180 handwritten pages in a composition book, it's the longest story I ever wrote (so far...). Taking heavy influence from Zelda again, the plot is about a boy named Wes, destined to fulfill some prophecy by destroying an enormous gem. He's got a dragon, hangs out with a princess, and fights a bad guy who raises up dead soldiers. The end battle is cool: when Wes shatters the gem, a floating skull with bloody tentacles bursts out, and the epic final duel begins.
Gemfire: Unfortunately I never finished this one, the sequel to Gemstorm. At 80 typed pages on our Smith Corona word processor, it was set hundreds of years after the original story and involved a new kid and new gem-shattering prophecy. The bad guy here had black eyes with white pupils that could shoot out fire, and Wes often appears to the main character as a ghost (a la Star Wars). Things were blowing up and it was just starting to get good too...
Crimson Isle: Written for my 11th grade creative writing class, this pirate story took up 150 looseleaf pages. A good pirate is killed while hiding and protecting his treasure on Crimson Isle, and his rising spirit hits a red parrot, causing him to possess its body. So this parrot flies around carrying his old human skull, continuing to guard the island and set traps. Eventually a new pirate named Captain Daniels sails into the picture and tries to steal the gold for himself, but two stowaway boys help the parrot protect the treasure (which is hidden in the middle of a lava lake inside a volcano, of course). This ending is cool too: one of the boys kills Daniels on a ship and his body falls into the ocean, where his spirit ends up possessing an enormous black shark. The boys try to shoot it with cannonballs to no avail, but finally skewer him with the ship's anchor.
It was entertaining to read back through these stories and see somewhat of a natural progression (but all of them had overdone fight scenes with highly elaborate deaths). Maybe one day I'll transcribe some and archive them up here since the paper and pencil are starting to deteriorate.
Thanks to the recent mentions and links from friends 3jorn, Carbonfour and Caleb Wills. All three of these guys are insanely talented and have inspired me in some way or another.
Wednesday, June 15 at 11:54 AM
Here's the last movie, clocking in at just under five minutes. All killer no filler. Mad props, holla-backs, and tremendous thanks to everyone for their help and support during this experience, especially Hank, Lisa, Jiae, Michael, Leslie and Jack; and of course Mom, Dad, Andrew, Goosie, Claire, Tania, Holger, Tim, Katie, Sonia, Emma, Daniel, Alex, Joe, Tammer, Suzanne, Kurt, theroot42, Rupert G and the doughnut vendor on 23rd and Broadway. Pentagram, you were the best job since the epic freeze tag summer of '99 at Kiddie Country Day Care Center. I'll miss you.
Saturday, June 11 at 10:40 PM
Three Month Nostalgia
Three months already? Unfortunately, like Steve Guttenberg's career, all good things must come to an end, and the final days in New York are fast approaching (made the reservations tonight for the Chinatown bus ride back to DC on Sunday...$35 round trip, baby). Now it's but a scant three weeks until a seventh quarter starts back in Atlanta. This experience and the events leading up to it have been such a far cry away from the year in Baltimore. There was not a single day where I didn't actually want to come to work, which believe me, I know is a pretty insane thing to say. Days here were filled with cool projects and great people, all in the middle of one of the most inspirational and influential cities in the world. Will New York be a permanent home in the future? We'll see. It's only fair to keep an open mind after graduation, but this is going to be extremely difficult to top.
Wednesday, June 8 at 7:48 PM
20 Questions With Darth Vader
You've got to check this out.
Saturday, June 4 at 3:17 PM
Glory Days
This is probably only interesting to the samurai and long-time friends, but I was just updating the archive section (which you can now search again, finally) and remembered all the really old news updates the band made before we had Blogger to keep track of everything. So those 54 entries are now stashed deep into the archives. Some things that caught my eye were the band name change, the launch of the comic archives, the first recording of Mosquito, and accounts of some of the best concerts like the barn for KA Melrose, headlining Mainstreet Bar and Grill, and the Theta Chi Survivor party where Andrew was drumming so hard that his hands were bleeding.
Thursday, June 2 at 11:03 PM
NYC Gallery Online
Check out the 22 photos in the new gallery section of the New York movies.
Wednesday, June 1 at 9:02 PM
Bonzer Hour With Me Mates
On Friday night I'll be attending "bonzer hour" at a downtown Outback Steakhouse with Daniel and Sonia, two Pentagram interns and bonafide Australians. Like any good bloke or sheila, we will be riding kangaroos over, throwing boomerangs at our waiter and remembering how simple and carefree life was before, during, and beyond thunderdome. This is going to be great.
My Atlanta roommate Zack wrote me an email about rent the other day with the subject line "Hold Me Like You Did At The Lake On Naboo." I fell out of my chair laughing.
at 3:34 PM
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