One Year!!!

The Mrs and I celebrated our first anniversary this weekend and it was, as she would say, Super Awesome!  We took Friday off of work spent the weekend in Idyllwild and it was a great time of relaxing and being with my favorite person in the world.  The highlights included:

-Our very own creekside cabin, complete with resident grey squirrel we named Smudge.

-Looking out the window and being about a foot away from two young raccoons who were fighting over crumbs on the porch table (and my poor wife of one year nearly having a heart attack when she realized that they were not way over in the creek where she was looking, but directly in front of her face.)

-A 3.4 earthquake that scared my wife half to death once again, as she lay in bed wondering if raccoons could open screen doors.

-Walking with hand in hand with my wife, surrounded by the smell of rain and redwoods, and the sound of thunder and woodpeckers.

-The best scrambled eggs I've ever had from a little restaurant called Cafe Aroma. 

-Finding a rootbeer that I haven't had yet (Filbert's; not that great) and perfect thrift shop shoes for Jenette to wear at an upcoming costume party.

-Stopping on the way home at the giant dinosaur statues from Pee Wee's Big Adventure.  How did I make it to 29 years old and not know that they were so close?

-Spending an uninterrupted 74 hours with the love of my life!  I love you Jenette!  Thank you for an unbelievably great first year of husbandhood.  

Feel Good Film Festival

The Furtissimo premier at Tosti Studios was a big success if you ask me. It was great to see so many friends there and be able to share this project with them. We also made way too many peanutbutter and marshmallow sandwiches. Apparently we should have labeled them because most people thought the marshmallow cream was mayo. Those brave enough to try them were pleasantly surprised.

So what's next, you ask? Well apparently the next step is to show it to a theater full of complete strangers. *gulp*

I'm happy to announce that Furtissimo was not only accepted into the Feel Good Film Festival in Hollywood, but will actually be featured during the opening night ceremony. This means that everyone that comes to the red carpet hooplah to celebrate the opening of the weekend and take pictures of pretty people will all see Furtissimo in an actual theater in actual Hollywood.

I'm officially terrified. This also means the 250 promotional post cards that I had printed out to advertize during the festival are completely obsolete now. Go figure.

Click here for more on the Feel Good Film Festival.

Just so you know...

For whatever reason, Blogger didn't like the attachment on the last post and since I'm a paranoid artist and don't want that to be the only reference people have of my film, I'm reposting the image only, which seems to be less of a problem.

Orange County, meet my film.

After many years of working and waiting, I'm proud to announce the official Orange County premier of my student film, Furtissimo. Click on the image for details and come say hi!

(For some reason Blogger makes the image quality less than satisfactory. The actual film looks a little better than this. At least I like to think it does...)

I did some stuff presents: Stuff.

This is in no way the kind of material I hoped to be sharing with the world via this blog, but it's been over a year since I started the thing and I still haven't done any real art. Sad. Anyway, I drew these at work and figured I'd share them. Like I said, they're not necessarily portfolio material, but I like them for some reason. Enjoy.

Music +Technology = Great Big Smile

I've recently come across a couple of websites that affected me in two ways: they were both absolutely inspiring and also gave me a medium sized amount of reassurance that the internet is not completely full of rot.

The first is Thru-YOU
This is a project by a guy named Kutiman who decided to remix YouTube videos. The idea is simple enough. People have been remixing music for decades, using bits and pieces of other songs, riffs, even live recorded "noise" to create new songs. Kutiman took the next step (which I find simultaneously brilliant and obvious) and looked to the internet for musical ingredients. The outcome is mind blowing in two ways- the first is that the end result of his cutting and pasting is so good. The level of quality that Kutiman achieved through endless assemblage of home videos is unbelievable, in sound quality and listenability. This isn't just a gimmick or some sort of cute, "look what I did with the internet" kind of thing, these are songs that I would actually listen to.
And that leads me to the second way that Thru-YOU blows my mind- even though I would listen to the music in my car or while making dinner, I can't because this is music that must be watched. Each song stands alone as a piece of music, but the beauty of the project is that the music is only half of the fun. The real Thru-YOU experience is seeing exactly where every element that you hear is coming from, and the resulting shock after you realize that the bass is just some guy in his garage, the horn blast is coming from a jr. high band recital and vocals are coming from a young mom on her webcam... with her baby on her lap. Gives me goosebumps every time.

The second discovery is Playing For Change
This project is similar to Thru-YOU in that it unites musicians around the world by involving them all in the same song. The difference is that the musicians know what they're getting themselves into. Playing For Change creators Mark Johnson and Whitney Burditt and their team traveled around the globe to record street musicians performing a set of songs. They then edited the performances together to create a group of songs being sung simultaneously in Israel, Africa, Ireland and many other countries around the world. The resulting sounds and images are as beautiful as the idea behind Playing For Change, that music is the best way to unite the human race. It sounds cheesy, I know. But check it out. Cheese done this well is worth looking into.

Can I ask you an honest question?

Why do children stare at me? Seriously.

My wife says it's because I'm so handsome.
I think it's because of the man boobs.