Going to New England!

Tomorrow, Shosh and I will be on our way to New England for a wedding, flying into Logan and then driving to Brattleboro, VT. In classic New England "can't get there from here" fashion, we've got to drive SW and then N in order to NW. Classic!

Then, after a weekend of wedding business, it's off to Boston to see Uncle Mike and Uncle Dave for dinner on Monday, then Tuesday it's a trip to the New England version of Mecca, Fenway Park. The difference between the Muslim pilgrimage ant mine is that instead of throwing stones at a pillar, I'll get to throw a $12 beer at the Jonny Gomes, the Devil Rays right fielder (Kidding! The park doesn't need one more drunk, loud, and physically abusive fan in right field. I'll stick to just drunk and loud).

Monster by Mail

I know I haven't posted in a while, but this seems like a good way to show this off. I bumped into a site a couple weeks ago where you send an artist the name of a fictitious monster movie title along with 20 bucks PayPal and he interprets the title and makes a 4x6 piece of artwork for you. And for an extra 10 bucks he'll make a time lapse video of the process, complete w/ a soundtrack. Original artwork for 20 bones? What a deal! I even get to feel good about it because he says "all the proceed go to cover the medical expenses of his new baby that's coming this fall.

My movie title: Bichon Frise Bloodbath: Flufy, White and Hungry for Brains! Sophie, our little pup, feels very flattered.

ALERT: There's some unsavory language in the music playing. Just so you know.




It came out pretty bad ass. Thanks, Len!

Check out www.monsterbymail.com

Kerri's Here!

My sister's in town from Dallas and I couldn't be more excited! Now that she's dumped her boyfriend (b''h!) she's decided to take some much needed time off and visit us on the West Coast. We've had a great time chatting, laughing, and eating (a lot), and finally the weekend is here and we'll be able to spend some time actually doing something. That's really going to be the only trouble with the trip. She's just 20 and I'm and OLD 33. I like doing crossword puzzles,talking politics and walking around the mall. I belong in a retirement community in Boca Raton. So as you can imagine, the pressure to find enough exciting stuff to do with her can be quite stressful.

But I figure she does a pretty good job of keeping herself entertained when she's back in Dallas. She PROBABLY made the trip out here to just spend some time with me and Shosh. So I figure, screw it. Were going to for the early bird special tomorrow night for dinner and have a great time doing it.

You promised me a churro!

Went to Disneyland with Shosh and Aliza yesterday. Man, that place is boring as hell when you don't have kids. Still, the overall experience is kind of fun in that it's like being on another planet. One filled with people who will buy ANYTHING and wear it on their head. "You're sellin' a rainbow colored baseball cap with a propeller on top? Well slap that bad boy on my dome! Here's 35 bucks." I love imagining the closets of people like this. I'm assuming they're literally teaming over with souvenir t-shirts, foam fingers, and all manner of battery powered light-up objects purchased at various fireworks displays throughout their lives.

But I'm not judging. No matter what event I'm going to, I'm convinced I'm missing out on part of the experience if I don't have the ridiculously overpriced program.
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A Room with a View

I like my office. I really do. Pretty big windows. A decent sized couch. The occasional termite flying about is kind of a drag, but all in all it's not really that bad. But the part of my office I'm not really sure about is the view. The building next to mine is a little veteranary clinic, and my window overlooks a little grassy area behind it. Throughout the day, I look out of my edit bay to see the green grass and trees waving in the hot valley breeze... to get a little sense of calm in a usually hectic day.

Also, invariably, there will be a dog taking a dump. A vet tech taking out a cocker spaniel. A Prada sunglassses-wearing girl with her Maltese. Some dude with a Pit Bull on a chain. Dump. Dump. Dump. All freaking day long.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the act of a dog doing his fillthy, filthy business that bugs me. Hell, I start every day taking my little pup out for her morning poo. The thing that get me is that I spend half the day infuriated, seeing people watch their dog take a crap and then just leave it there. This grassy area is not a lawn... it's a little public space on a relatively busy street, and the vets office has bag dispensers everywhere. But time after time, people just watch Rex or Fluffy or Spuds Mckenzie take a poop and then just hop in their Land Rovers or BMWs and drive off.

The reason it bugs me so much is that when one of the vet techs comes out to walk a dog, not only does he clean up after the dog he's with, but he's got to come BACK out and clean up all the dog crap he saw while he was out there (lest the neighbors complain). Unfair, I tells ya!

So I guess ultimately this is an economic issue, huh? With dog shit = the growing divide between the upper and working class? Or else I just have a problem ignoring douchebaggery. One or the other.

Another Campaign Over...

...Another promise to update this blog on a regular basis.

After reading though my long lost cousin Kristen's exceedingly well written blog, I decided to get back into this here blog. It's been a busy 5 months or so, so I have to forgive myself... I've been up to my neck in my work for Disney. I finished the trailer for Invincible a couple months ago, and have been working on TV spots ever since. That combined with a trip to Israel... oh, who the hell am I kidding. I'm a lazy, unmotivated slacker, who'd rather play Xbox than write.

But no longer... and this time I mean it.

Ping Pong?!?

On a video game related note (because the goal of this blog is to have exactly one, and only one, post about every possible subject under the sun), Rockstar, the makers of the family-friendly Grand Theft Auto series of video games, is coming out with a next-gen ping pong game for the Xbox 360, my curent gaming system of choice. While I could make a glib remark about whether the developers will include an easter egg that allows you to kill a hooker with your paddle, I won't. But I did think it was funny that in the press release they made a big deal about the game being realeased at a $39.99 price point, as opposed to the $59.99 standard. Is this supposed to be a big deal? Considering ESPNs 2K series was priced at 20 bones, I think $39.99 is kind of a lot... And 2K games weren't for sports played by putting a piece of plywood over your pool table in the basement. If this was China, where people care about ping pong, then go right ahead and charge whatever you want, but over here, it's like charging 40 bucks for "Tournament Lawn Darts".

(UPDATE: Despite my bitchiing, I bought this game. Totally worth the 35 bucks I paid for it.)

Back from Antarctica

It's been months since I've updated the blog, and it's all because of "survival expert Jerry Shepard and his 8 amazing sled dogs." (little bit of copy for you). I've been working on the trailer and TV spots for this movie for the past 7 months, and now it's all coming up to the big finish. Man, I've invested so much of my time into opening this movie... I really hope 8 Below does well. If you're reading this and you love your kids, or you love dogs, or you love freedom, you'll go see Eight Below on February 17th. If you don't, than the terrorists really HAVE won.

No, in all seriousness it's a good movie, and the cinamatography looks pretty impressive on the big screen. I was a sucker for all the wide Antarctic shots in march of the penguins, and this movie has 'em in spades. And who doesn't like dogs!?! Come on!

End of shameless plug.

My teef hurt!

I went in to the periodontist today to have a wonderful procedure performed called a "gingival graft" on my lower two front teeth. In a nutshell, if you have receding gums, they cut back your existing gums, cut out a piece of the roof of your mouth, and graft that piece of tissue where you need more gum tissue. Not only do you have a decent amount of pain and bloody seepage after it's done, you can't brush those teeth for 10 days after the procedure! I'm going to be Death Breath Mike (a reference to last nights O.C., which sucked, and I'm not wasting any more time on that damn show). But I must say, if you're reading this because you're getting it done, it's not that bad if you've got a good doctor doing the procedure. Mine took the tissue from the area behind one of my wisdom teeth, so eating while healing won't be to bad, and he talked to me through the entire procedure, letting me know what was going on. Spent a lot of time afterwards talking to me.

I've stumbled onto the best dental practice in the L.A. area, it seems. I'd never had a dental work done while watching Sportcenter before, but I have now. There's a flat screen on a swing arm at each chair. The place is like "Pimp my office".

"Jesus is Magic"

Sarah Silverman has a new movie coming out, and who doesn't love Sarah Silverman? Check out the trailer. Sure, the movie looks like it has all the production value of a high school A/V project, but it kind of makes it that much funnier. It's kind of a concert film, and the director is one of the guys who did the Sifl & Olly show on MTV (the show with the sock puppets, remember?), so it's not much of a surprise it looks this trashy. It's like comedy porno.

Post 1

As this is the first entry in this here blog, It's wild that today would be the day that I would find this article today about the how Generation X is getting older and *shudder* moving into middle age. While the article generalizes a generation which never felt comfortable belonging to any big group in the first place, it's surprising how similar the situation of Shoshana and I is to some of the people in the article. Shosh left a job as Director of Admissions at a university so she could own her own pottery studio, for cryin' out loud!

I think a lot of us, people who grew up during the age of Mudhoney, Richard Linklater and political correctness (notice the generalization?!), find themselves, well, almost burdened with some of the feelings that we had but were told time and again that we would grow out of once we had to find a real job. Well now I've grown up; I've got a job and a mortgage and a wife... But I feel miles away from being the responsible, sensible person that our parents and grandparents' generations seemed to grow into. I own three video game systems and play them all pretty regularly. I still want to wear t-shirts to any and every occasion. I still spend way too much time being cynical and overanalyzing my cushy life, as this post is making abundantly clear. It worries me sometimes that I feel like I'm not ready to grow up, but It's reassuring hearing stories from people who are in the same boat.