HUGE NEWS

Tonight after I clean my room I'm going to clean my face up a bit. That means the Amish beard is going but I'm going to do something risky and daring. 

Leave my moustache.

It's a risky move because I don't have a full moustache but I will never know if I can pull it off if I never try. To be honest, I just want to be handsome like the young Orson Welles.

If you are wondering why I hate my beard all of the sudden it is because I "Trek'd" myself on the internet. Well, if you haven't noticed, I turned out black (which doesen't bother me because I'm all about equality) and my beard is a strange, shit-like mess. 

Editor's Note: I'm totally into this thing yelling at you every time this page is loaded. 

Farting Art

As I have opened nearly 90% of every post with this month: "Since the semester is wrapping up I have a lot of work to do!"

There I said it again. Sorry.

As the semester winds down I only have three big, big, big projects left. The Hives (which, are coming out awesome), the one I started today and a film which I have to write tonight and shoot this weekend.

What I started today is pretty fun. I decided to do my final for my research class about the one thing I have researched pretty thoroughly so half the work is done already. Dreams.

I have over an hour of those dream logs and I listened to them today and wrote down characters that stuck out to me. I'm going to draw them, frame them beautifully and then throw another element into the equation. You know, to take it to the next level. 

Here is the first one. A Cop who I encountered a few weeks ago and he was giving me shit. It was sort of a nightmare but then the wind blew and his hat flew off and he went after it. I ran home.

Also I printed the hives on some nice friggin' paper and framed em'. There are 15 but 12 in this photo. I absolutely love how they are coming out. This week I print that tattoos and then booyah I got me some nice art.

That's it, sugar.

Pirates

Pirates have been having such a good month. They were all over the news last week when they tried to fuck with a couple of Americans (I think they lost because it's the year 2009) and with this whole Pirate Bay verdict coming in, well, Pirates are really hot right now. I would link you to either one of those stories but it's 11:30 and I had a long day. If you don't know what they are I can, however, link you to this site.

Recently I was talking to a dear friend of mine who told me that he bought whatever software you need to use BitTorrent. I won't expose his identity because I know how some people feel about torrenting, P2P servers and file swapping in general. Me? I don't really care that much. Until I started thinking about it...

I was reading Gizmodo and read that the new Square-Enix film Final Fantasy VII Advent Children has been pirated at an incredibly fast rate. What do I think about this? Nothing. I stopped caring about Cloud and Red XIII when I hit puberty three weeks ago. 

Then I read that the new X-Men movie with Wolverine got put online before it hit theatres. This didn't really tickle me either. Even as a filmmaker who can't imagine how horrible that feels, I feel that somehow a film that has a scene where a man jumps off the hood of a car and stabs a helicopter pilot in the throat will still make a decent amount of money. 

I was doing even more Internet reading and I found out that the Playstaion Portable (a handheld I respect greatly though do not own), something I have been contemplating purchasing for a while, was almost completely abandoned by developers because it was so easy to copy UMD media. This started to sort of piss me off.

Then, dear starlets, then it happened. I had to bring something from itunes into Garageband for a piece that was due the next day. What happened? It said "NO WAY, PIRATE" and completely deaded me. I had to open it in Quicktime, then save it as an MOV which I then had to convert to an MP3 though a different app I downloaded online. I could have just burnt it to a CD and then re-import it but I had no CD's. This is when I flipped.

Fucking pirates are beginning to ruin it for all of us. I don't want DRM on all my itunes music. I don't want to pay more money to see Wolverine cut people up. I don't want to be inconvenienced every time I need to purchase or enjoy media because some smarter, more computer savvy people figured out how to do it for free. 

Damn you pirates. 

DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL (except the one earlier mentioned, he's cool)!

Editor's Note: I think this post is an example of how sometimes, as far as funny pictures churned out of photoshop are concerned: less is more.

Adventure across the street

Living on State street is pretty cool but being directly across from the Chicago Theatre is even cooler. It's always there and it has always taunted me with it's banner, announcing shows that I don't have the money or time to see. From Dennis Leary and the entire cast of "Rescue Me" to Ne-Yo, there have been many shows I have wanted to see but instead watched bitterly from across the street as audience members poured out, embraced by happiness and overwhelmed with such satisfaction that they decide to just stand on the street in a large group for a little while. 

Well, yesterday I was with Preston and decided that I should at least try to get tickets for the "This American Life Live!" show, which last time I checked, was all sold out. I went in (keep in mind, the show was in a few hours) and to my shock, a party of two had cancelled and I was able to score a pair of seats on the ground floor, 8 rows back from Ira Glass himself. 

It was a good show but got better when Joss Whedon came out and performed a musical number he had written as a commentary on a DVD about how much he hates commentary. It was amazing.

Prelude To A Sneeze

Here is yet another project I had due that I had to churn out during this amazingly busy, art filled few weeks.

This one turned out pretty decent and I received a very solid and flattering critique on it. 

Original idea was to film a sneeze at an amazingly high frame rate, slow it down a few hundred times and play it out over the course of five minutes. I decided to shoot a test at 24fps and found that the moments before the sneeze were much funnier and interesting than the sneeze in itself. 

Youtube messed with the aspect ratio and normally I would complain about this but I'm sure there's a way around it that I am just too lazy to figure out. Also, Youtube is free. One day, I will upload a beautiful HD file that will look as it does on my computer. One day.

Oh, one last thing. There was no intention on using this footage so I didn't use a mic or even peek at my levels. For full effect, speakers/headphones are suggested.

Achoo.

Victory!

I try not to make pointless blog posts like this one but I just can't help it. It's 3 A.M and I have finished my fucking essay. 

HELL YEAH!

Editor's Note:

So THAT'S why "twitter" exists!

You are witnessing the process of "deading"

Yes. Yes. I should be writing the essay. I'm literally just about to, I swear. First I had to do this sound piece. I couldn't just make it and not upload it to youtube, right? That'd be such a waste! So, I did the right thing and put the essay off a couple of minutes. 

Anyway, this piece is based on a short and sweet article I found published in the Times waaaaaay back in the day. It was about a boy who suffered from Urticaria so much so that you could write on his body with a blunt object. I went from there. It's pretty dark and fun and it's not writing an essay and that's awesome:

Now, I write my essay.

Wish my luck.