Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Loud Crowd

While listening to an Indy Rock station here in LA, I discovered a new social gaming site online that plays wicked tunes and is fun to play. I'm pretty obsessed with it right now. It's called Loud Crowd and it is in it's beta testing phase.

It was created by a new company called Conduit Labs: "Conduit was founded by a combination of web entrepreneurs and social gaming pioneers; leaders in the development of Rock Band, Lord of the Rings Online, Guitar Hero, Asheron’s Call and Ambient Devices."

Basically, you create an avatar and a profile, then go into a chat-room style place and pick someone to dance with (you can dance with yourself, but that's pretty lame).

You start dancing in a DDR for your fingers - style format. The more you get asked to dance, the more points you get. You also get points for dancing. If you get enough points you get cool stuff like a new wardrobe, music requests and other things.Anyway - I can invite people to play, but only every now and then. Let me know if you want an invite and I'll see what I can do.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Yes Man Premiere

That's all I can say about Wednesday night.

I was graciously invited to go to the Yes Man premiere in Westwood. I was also invited to the after party event. It was pretty much nuts. There was free food, free booze, free photo services, free Dance Dance Revolution, free everything.

I'm posting some pics onto Facebook, you can check them out here.
The film was really great. There were things from the original script that I loved that didn't make it to the final cut, but it was still very funny.

At the afterparty I had several chances to meet people. Some of the interns were a bit shy about approaching celebrities, but I kind of went for it with reckless abandon.

Here's a list of celebs that I saw:
Christopher Masterson
Ben Foster
Wilmer Valderrama
Laura Prepon
Alyssa Milano
Gerard Butler
Molly Sims
Terrence Stamp
Bradley Cooper
Peyton Reed (director of Yes Man)
Danny Wallace (writer of the original book)
Edoardo Ponti
Sasha Alexander
Tommy Davidson

I would have introduced myself to Gerard Butler and Ben Foster, but they were talking to some pretty young things, so I decided to not bother them.

Here is a list of celebs that I introduced myself to:
Rhys Darby (way cool - I even got a picture...coming soon)
Jarrad Paul (helped write the film with Andrew Mogel)
Andrew Mogel (he was surprised that I knew Jarrad from Action!)
Danny Masterson (told him I was a fan of his work, also his brother)

Because they didn't show up, I didn't see:
Jim Carrey
Zooey Deschenel
Jenny McCarthy

It was a way awesome night despite that though. Hopefully I will be invited to many more premieres and hopefully I can have a "plus one" on my ticket.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Harold Ramis is the MAN

Tiffany and I went to go see the new film by Harold Ramis tonight.
It's called Year One and it stars Jack Black and Michael Cera. Also involved was Hank Azaria, Paul Rudd, David Cross, McLovin (from Superbad), Bill Hader, Oliver Platt, and even Ramis was in the film playing Adam.
Ramis and his bad self

Although highly inacurate and pretty much blasphemous, I really enjoyed it! I thought they did a great job and I would say that you should all check it out when you can. It still had some things that they needed to fix, but most of the film looked really great. I won't say much else about the film, except - I wish they had more Paul Rudd...

Afterwards I saw Ramis talking with some people. He started walking towards me so I went over and shook his hand and told him that I loved the movie and that I was a big fan. He said "thank you" and smiled, then went into the theater. I would have gotten a picture, but I left my phone in the car because they wouldn't allow it in the theater. Of all the lame times to have rules!

CLOSAT #5

C - A sassy but kind older woman who is the assistant to a CEO
L - The parking lot of a major motion picture studio where they have cleared the cars for a film crew.
O - A bag of fruit snacks in various fruit forms and flavors.
S - When you have to hide something very important from your best friend because it might end your friendship.
A - Answering the wrong phone.
T - "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Edison

Logline #1: The Yes Man

I am starting a logline forum on my blog and I am adding a label so these wonderful loglines can be viewed all at once! Just click "loglines" on the right hand side and enjoy.

Also, I want you to post your own loglines if you have read or seen the film.

The first is for the original screenplay THE YES MAN by Nicholas Stoller (First Draft).

A temp worker at a bank who says no to easily is challenged by a self-help guru to say yes for a complete year no matter what.

I really enjoyed the script, it was like an edgy-er LIAR, LIAR. I really appreciated the small practical comedic elements throughout. I really liked the ending and hope that they stuck faithful to it. I plan on reading the revised versions as well so I can get a feel for how they changed it.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

I Need A Post

I haven't posted in a while and so I really wanted to stretch my typing/writing skills and get some info out to all you people out there (both of you).
This won't really be in any kind of order and it is mostly random, but hopefully you get a few tidbits of info from the tyraid.

Thanksgiving was a blast, lots of food. My only regret was not eating more than I did and the only thing I'm proud of is that I didn't eat more than I did. What I really wish is that there was another day of feasting like we did that night.
We had Thanksgiving dinner with some friends and their various siblings. We ate at Lara Spencer's house because one of our friends is her kids' nanny. They were out of town for the day and so they invited us all over. They have a really nice place and we had a lot of fun with everyone.

This here is my wallpaper on my iPhone, cause Rankin and Bass are some of my role models.

We received an invitation to go see the new Miyazaki film in Glendale the other day. We arrived as soon as we possibly could, which we thought was a bit early, but the line went down the stairs, around the middle, and up the stairs again. We couldn't believe it!
Once the line started to move, we thought we might have a chance of getting in because it was going really quickly. We got to this point right here -when a woman came up to us and told us that the theater was full. She gave us a ticket to any movie we wanted to see that night instead. So we decided to stick around and go see - Plus we got free popcorn and drinks. The popcorn was cold though, which makes us 0 for 2 on cold popcorn at the theaters here.
The movie was pretty decent - very funny.

Coming out of our apartment the other day, we saw this beautiful sky. The weather here is continuously amazing and we love every minute of it. We kind of miss snow though.
At the ward
Christmas party last night, someone had decorated a Charlie Brown Christmas themed table. It was pretty much amazing and I congratulate the decorators on such a great table ensemble.

I read this on the Fail Blog and thought it was one of the funniest/saddest things I've ever heard -

CELEB WATCH:
I saw Angela Basset next to the ER set on Thursday. She looked pretty tired, she was waiting for her ride to take her to wardrobe or something. She still looked really good though.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

"Chuck" and Squirrel

Today I had to walk a few blocks to get a shoe repaired for an exec at Village Roadshow. On the way back I ran into this guy who kept eyeing me like "is that food? I think that's food. No. Wait...is it?"

Sorry buddy. It's just my iPhone taking a picture of you.

When I got back, they were blocking the entrance so they could film NBC's "Chuck" which was cool and all, but it made it difficult to get into the building and I felt stupid getting in their way to go back to work.
As I was taking these shots they were yelling "picture's up!" Oh how I miss that rush! I need to get involved with a production again sometime in the near future.I didn't see Zachary Levi, but in this scene Yvonne Strahovski got into that limo. If anyone watches the episode with this in it let me know what episode it is!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Doritos

My friends made some commercials for a Doritos contest. I think they are pretty hilarious. Check them out:

http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/video/982/
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/video/985/
http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/#/gallery/video/986/

The debate one (last link) is my favorite.

Friday, November 14, 2008

I want to donate your blood!

We all went to donate blood in Burbank the other day. I'm usually not one to donate blood. Not because I am ineligible or anything, and not because I am cold-hearted, but because it really makes me sick.
It totally rocks me. I get really hot and start to shake. I feel like I'm going to throw up and my head spins. It's one of the worst feelings, I feel like I have the flu.

When we went this time, I started to feel very flush so I asked the nurse for some water. She immediately jumped into action and dropped my head and raised my feet. She then got me some apple juice. I was like "woah, I just wanted some water!" but they know what they're doing and they are good at it.

I feel like a bad person if I don't donate, but I'm type O-negative (the "universal donor") and it would be very selfish if I didn't at least try and donate.

All in all it wasn't a horrible experience, just not a favorable one.
Heck! At least I got free ice cream and snacks!
Drew and Sarah donating their precious blood.

I had an idea for a movie while I was there, it is similar to this idea:
which I found here. My idea consisted of a large and industrious vampire organization that would pay people money for donating "plasma" to help save people's lives, but it is a cover-up for their food supply. The drama would come when a donor lies to the organization about having a rare disease and it starts to wipe out the vampire nation. It would be like Blade meets Outbreak.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Craziness

Ever since we've moved here it seems to be a non-stop crazy-fest.
There's usually helicopters swooping around our apartment all the time.

Heading home from church on Sunday we got stopped in traffic because of this:Notice how none of the firemen are around the overturned truck? Yeah, that's because it's full of harmful chemicals.
This is right next to our apartment complex. That bus stop in the background is where I wait to ride the bus to work.

And it's always trafficy because of stuff like this.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Pinkberry

We went to the legendary Pinkberry the other day. It was pretty good!
Pretty expensive though.
It tasted like yogurt that was frozen. And I'm not talking McDonalds bland-gurt, this really tasted like yogurt (seriously, it was like a frozen Yoplait or something).

Pretty delicious, probably not worth the cost.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Michael Crichton

Today I found out on the way to my internship with Village Roadshow that my grandmother has been diagnosed with Leukemia.

The disease has degenerated a lot to in such a short amount of time and she is too weak to receive Chemotherapy. They have given her enough drugs to make her comfortable, but she is slowly on a downward spiral.

This was pretty intense and shocking news because it was completely unexpected. I regret not being able to say goodbye to her. I have been a bit estranged from her. I have never really had a great relationship with her (which is my fault), but it has never been a bad relationship.

She will be missed.

Grandma with my Nephew Seth

(I titled this post "Michael Crichton" because I found out today that he also has lost the battle with cancer. He was 66 years old and an incredible talent.)

Monday, November 3, 2008

November Fun

Hey all!

If you are done voting, or are not voting, or are sick of all the political hubbub...
Please, enjoy yourself on Adventure Time Theatre for a while. The new episode is up!

Also, who knows...there might be something fun posted tomorrow about the election soon!

Thanks for all your support, we really want to get things rolling with the show. Thanks to all who have been watching, your suppressed desires will be fulfilled soon!

Friday, October 31, 2008

15 mellow tracks to listen to when you're down

Hey gang,
Life has been a bit low lately and it has caused an unneeded amount of melancholy in the air.
It is still exciting to be here in LA and doing what I am doing, but it is getting increasingly hard to adjust to our financial dearth.
Tiffany quit her job (after my suggestion) because it was causing torment in both her and me. It is best for her not to have to suffer just for a measly paycheck. She has a good job prospect on Monday, it sounds very positive. Until then we shall continue to live on our savings.

But it's not just the money issues, there seems to be something going on lately that is putting me into a funk. So I have resorted to my cheering-up methods of listening to depressing music with a good mellow beat.

So here it is: I have created a list of fifteen tracks that have been quite comforting at this time. They are non-stop on my iPod and iTunes.

What are your favorite mellow songs? Share with the world, because I am certain there are great ones that I have left out.

Monday, October 27, 2008

ATT

Hey Everyone...

As some of you might know (and some of you might not know), I and a friend from school own and operate an online sketch comedy website in which we perform all types of crazy/wacky sort of things.

The website is called Adventure Time Theatre and we have been trying to get the show on the road for a while now.

Well - I am pleased to announce that we have just launched our second episode and it is playing right now on our website http://adventuretimetheatre.com!!

Please go on and enjoy our second episode. Also, you may watch our first episode and some other stuff that we have done on our "Videos" page.

Thanks in advance for your watchability!!

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Internship Love

I've said it before...but I love my internship.

We watched a few scenes from Sherlock Holmes and Guy Ritchie is doing an outstanding job.

Also, I am having fun reading scripts. Just read the script for Johnny Quest!

Monday, October 20, 2008

McDonalds + Monopoly Game = Rigged

Went to the McD's the other day because we are enduringly poor.
Happened to get a bunch of Monopoly pieces, so I peeled each one with care (as to make it more lucky).

I won a free breakfast sandwich and a free medium fry. This is pretty ingenious because you can't get any game pieces on either of those menu items.
They also have these fake pictures of people who are enjoying their success when playing the game. These are obviously actors. Plus they only have the same three people plastered all over their food packaging.

Also, when they say that they've doled out 2,457,183 prizes...they mean they've parted with about 2 million measly prizes like 25 Coke Rewards points (which cost them nothing and are also worth nothing...no, seriously, they are worth nothing. You need about 300 for a mug - hooray!)

On a seperate food note: We went to Ralphs for some food shopping and I found this in the Latin spices section. Can someone please tell me what this is used for?!?

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Entourage

Last night I was trying to watch the first episode of Entourage and the video took forever to load. I'm too poor to buy the first season on DVD and I don't think Netflix can get it to me fast enough for me to watch it during the weekend.
What's a Hollywood guy to do?

Friday, October 17, 2008

St. Nick's Pub

One more celeb sighting:Today we went to a Village Roadshow Intern get-together at a pub (no I did not drink anything).

Coming out of the bathroom I saw Hal Sparks at a booth. I told Tiffany and another intern that I totally recognized and wanted to talk to him, but couldn't remember his name. I desperately tried to IMDb him to figure out his name (I knew he was on the show Queer as Folk and the film Dude, Where's My Car?) but the friggin' Edge network wasn't working. I would have talked to him and told him I am a fan, but I didn't want to be lame and not know his name.

I swear that the next celeb I see that I remember their name and they're not busy or getting into their car or juggling a bunch of groceries or something...I will talk to them. Guaranteed.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

RocknRolla

I also work as an intern at Village Roadshow Pictures which is super fun.

Here is a picture of the building I work in:


Here is the view from the office that I work in (yes, that is the Warner Brothers Lot):
That's the WB lot yo!

The perks: I get to read scripts and the trades all day. Sometimes I get to see dailies of upcoming movies.

Movie perks: I get to walk around the WB lot a lot and I see them filming awesome stuff. Every now and then I get to meet people that work on the shows and films. Today I walked by some stars of the CBS hit BIG BANG THEORY. I walked by them and was going to talk to them, but unfortunately they were getting in their cars and I didn't want to bug them. These are the guys I saw:

Simon Helberg

Jim Parsons

So now the other awesome/sweet part...

I get to go to screeners of new films coming out. Tonight's showing:

I whole-heartedly endorse this film. I was wary after Guy Ritchies last two attempts which were, in my opinion, sub-par. But this...this film...was amazing!
It took me right back to high school. Sneaking a DVD of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels into my room and then subsequently going to see Snatch in the theaters with my friends. The scene were Gerard Butler and his cronies are being chased by two very large Russians was genious. I was so freakin' happy to be seeing this film, I hope you all are too.

Here's a picture of the theater that we saw it in, I took the pic from my iPhone. It's pretty dark, but you can tell it's swanky just by what you can see (notice the posh WB symbol above).

Here is a little map of how awesome my day was...

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Image

I work as an intern for Image Entertainment and they are located in Chatsworth.
Yesterday and today there was a fire about six miles away in Porter Ranch.

It was so smokey, that most everyone was coughing and a woman with asthma had to go home. It reeked all day.

Here's some pictures as proof:


These photos were taken on the roof of our building. Crazy no!?!

Anyways -

My Job: I get to read scripts and watch trailers, etc for the VP's of acquisitions. If I like what I see I can forward it on to them and have them take a look. I also do office-type stuff like answer phones.

The perks: I get to see tons of movies and I also get to see tons of what looks like movies, but really are not anything close to what a movie should be.

Movie perks: I get free screeners of movies that I've been wanting to see (e.g. I got a screener for PING PONG PLAYA today!)

I love my life! (Now if I can figure out how to get paid...)

Friday, October 10, 2008

10.10.2008

MOVIE

Thanks to Jacob's indirect chastisement of rating movies, I have decided for myself that I will not rate films on a scale. But, that doesn't mean I can't talk about films:

NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST

This film had all the makings of Juno-esque gold. It had the punchy dialogue and the dry humor, it had the young teens looking to find themselves in a complicated world, it had the great soundtrack, and hey, it even had Michael Cera. Unfortunately this film lacked something very key that Juno had - a strong undercurrent for the storyline. Juno was able to tell a strong story in a punchy way, but Nick and Norah tells a weak story in an attempt to be as punchy. Don't get me wrong, I liked the film and I found it very enjoyable - especially the awkward teen character played by Michael Cera. The film just lacked something that I wish it had and I came away from it feeling less fulfilled. All things aside, it was a fun film and a fun journey through the streets of New York. Two extreme smirks to the performances of Kat Dennings as Norah and Ari Graynor as the lovable drunk friend Caroline.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

10.9.2008

SAN DIEGO ZOO

Went to the zoo last weekend. Just barely got time to upload some fun pics of the trip!

Toitle

Oh snap! Meerkat Manor!

This peacock was just sitting on the sidewalk.
No fence, no nothin'. Wierd!

This is the weirdest crocodile I've ever seen.

If I was able to do this, I would never get out of the water.

Monkey!

I am fascinated by Giraffes. They are just very odd.

You can't see them, but this is the pen where some very tiny antelopes were. We were gawking at how tiny they were (like the size of a cat) and this bird flew down right next to my camera and got in the way.

Koalas are cool.

The camera doesn't do this justice, because he was seriously like three feet away from me.

No comment. None.

This dog is all but extinct. The zookeeper was taking her for a morning walk. I don't remember what it is called, but it had Australian in the name.

This male warthog was chasing down this female for forever. About three tour buses passed by us while we were watching them and each one of the guides said "Oh look! There's Poombah!" You think they got licensing for that?
So anyway, one of the guides was talking about how the male will follow the female until she takes a whiz, and he will stick his upper lip in it and smell it. That way he can tell if the female is...um...you know. Anyway, we didn't get to see these warthogs do that, but one of the giraffes did - except he didn't just stick his upper lip under the stream, he licked it! Then wiped it on his lip!

I was challenged to send Drew a picture of the ugliest animal in the park. What'd you think I was going to do?!?

This baby panda bear is asleep in the tree. Cute!

I wish I could do that.

So, there was a bit of a dispute about where the flamingos get their pink color. I am not sure myself, and I'm too tired to Wiki it. So whatevs. If you reply and explain it the prize is everyone will think you are smart.

Another couple of birds on the trail. No fence. Just hangin' out. Free.

This so looks like the Koi Pond app on the iPhone. You iPhoners know what I'm talkin' bout.

We walked up a friggin huge hill just to see these polar bears sitting around eating carrots. One of them got up to get a drink and everyone in the viewing area was getting all excited. Then it just sat back down and started eating another carrot.
Not
exciting. I wasted walking for that!