Category Archives: general

Halloween Eve!!!

BOO!!

Were you scared?

If you were you might want to seek help because that really wasn’t scary.

It bordered on stupid.

I love Halloween! I love the time of year, the movies associated with and all the events like Scary Farm, parties, Trick or Treating… It’s a great time of year!

This year Rene and I are taking it easy. Halloween is fun, but it can also be pricey and this year has not been all that lucrative. So no costumes this year, no major parties, just family, some trick or treating and home spun fun!

By the way, this is the coolest t-shirt image ever!

So this weekend Rene and I will celebrate by watching Trick ‘r Treat and Drag Me to Hell after helping her nieces go trick or treating. I may post some photos later if we do some kind of dressing up.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under general, musings

Inspiration, where are you?

I’m not really feeling all that inspired to write today. I have a really long to do list and knowing that I have to get that done is really stifling any other ideas. I don’t know that I’ll even include a picture with this post.

What do you do to get inspired or motivated? Mention it in the comments, I’m opened to new ideas.

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So Many Movies!!!


I don’t know what it is about this time of year but it feels like there are a whole lot of movies that I REALLY want to see right now – not necessarily the ones in the collage above, but they didn’t have a Fall 2009 collage – and they’re all coming out at once! Rene and I have kept a really full schedule lately and so our movie outings have been limited. Besides Paris and We Live in Public we really haven’t seen much. The last two movies we paid for were Zombieland, which I enjoyed, and then before that was District 9, which I LOVED!

I just heard all the cinephiles who read this gasp.

Yeah, I know, we missed a lot of movies that are all the rage right now.

We are trying to catch up, after all film is our business and so it’s a write off 😉 (yeah, that’s right, I emoticon-ed), but it’s really hard! Tonight we are seeing Paranormal Activity.

I’m so excited!

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under general, making movies, movies

A Really Good Example of Actual Journalism


Read this article! It’s long. It requires actual thought. It is fair and balanced. It is a rare example of actual journalism and it just so happens to be about a subject that is near and dear to both Rene and myself, Pit Bull Breed Specific Legislation.

Like I said, it’s long, seven pages long, but if you push through it is rewarding on many levels. I remember when reporting was actually supposed to sound like this. I read this and then I watch the news or read the paper and I’m reminded of what “spin” has done to journalism are right now and it makes me mad. I demand better. I want everyone to demand better!

And it’s about Breed Specific Legislation which is going to be a very decisive issue in the upcoming California Governor’s race since the Democratic front runner, Gavin Newsom, is pro-gay rights (win) but also wants to ban my dog (BIG FAIL!!). Some of you may feel like this is silly or irrelevant, but both issues are as serious as cancer to me and I’m sure I’ll talk about it here to start some discussions. And here’s Frankie’s old MySpace page.

Looking forward to the debate. Read the article.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under general, rant, social commentary

NINE Days!


It’s been nine days since my last post! Well except for the Paris review I posted yesterday. It feels like a lifetime. It’s amazing to me how fast time passes in “internet time.” Philip DeFranco was actually talking about this on one of his videos last week and it really hit home for me when I realized how far behind I had gotten on my own blogging.

Admittedly I have not been keeping up because I am spending more time on other commitments that are, in actual fact, more important to me. There’s family, friends, movie stuff on the move and the end of a fiscal year coming up. You don’t need my excuses, but what I can say is that I’m finding the balance right now between social networking and how that interacts with my work and the actual work that goes into my work.

Uh, that sounds udderly droll – but I got to use the word “droll” so that gives me hipster cred, right? Totes.

See you tomorrow!

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Four Minutes


I was watching the Discovery Channel, I forget which show, and they were talking about near Earth objects or NEO’s. NEO’s are the objects that are flying through space and have the possibility of hitting the Earth. These objects range in size from a pebble to hundreds on miles wide. The NEO’s that are tracked are the ones that are considered dangerous. There are thousands of these objects being tracked at all times. The scientist who was being interviewed said that even though there are thousands of these objects being tracked there are thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of these objects that we aren’t tracking.

The scary fact of it all is that there could be an object over 600 miles wide that might be headed directly at the Earth right now and if it is, and we aren’t tracking it, we would have four minutes of warning before it struck the Earth and effectively wiped all life off of the planet.

Four minutes.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, not because I’m obsessed with the idea of being killed by a rock falling from space but because of the phenomenon that I’m becoming way too aware off lately – Nanny Laws.

We are currently living in a society where our leaders keep doing things to make us feel more safe when, in actuality, there is nothing that can keep us safe.

Examples:

  • Security checks at the airport are great for seeing what’s in passenger baggage, but no one checks the cargo placed in stowage – THIS IS ON YOUR FLIGHT! If someone REALLY wants to blow up a plane all they have to do is ship it.
  • Dog Bans and Breed Specific Legislation do not accomplish the goal of stopping dog bites, once one breed is gone the other dogs pick up the slack. This has lead to over 70 breeds of dog being banned or restricted in some way in Italy and multiple dog bans across the United States.
  • Gun Laws
  • Tobacco Laws
  • The Drug War

All of these only punish the law abiding, the people who want these things will have them anyway – only the innocent get punished.

And for what? What are we really being kept safe from? When does personal responsibility become a factor? I would actually like to see a return of personal responsibility!

Why does AIG get a bail out for being a failure? I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. And I don’t agree that any company is too large to fail. In fact I would argue that some companies have become too large to succeed!

This is really just the beginning of a much bigger conversation and I would like to encourage you to comment so we can continue the discussion.

Four minutes.

Think of all the stuff you would cease to care about if you knew it was your last four minutes and then tell me what’s really important to you.

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Filed under geek, general, musings, politics, rant, REVOLUTION

Why didn’t you make this, Mc G?!?!?!??!?!

Here’s a great little vid I found on /film – How Terminator Should Have Ended. I think I actually would have paid to see this movie.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under general, movie mash-ups, videos

Random Thoughts From 25-35 Year Olds


I was cruising the internet, like you do, and I found this list of things that have been attributed to 25-35 years olds. I believe it because I related to many of them a bit too much and I’m definitely in the range. I hope you like them and I look forward to your comments!

RANDOM THOUGHTS – 25-35 YEAR OLDS…

Is it just me, or are 80% of the faces in the “people you may know” feature on Facebook, people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you’ve made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

I don’t understand the purpose of the line, “I don’t need to drink to have fun.” Great, no one does. But why start a fire with flint and sticks when they’ve invented the lighter?

Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you’re going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you’re crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.

The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase “Regards” again.

Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn’t work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There were no internet or message boards or FAQ’s. We just figured it out. Today’s kids are soft.

There is a great need for sarcasm font.

Sometimes, I’ll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the fuck was going on when I first saw it.

I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I’ll end up wasting 90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone’s definitely watching and laughing at the right parts.

How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

I think part of a best friend’s job should be to immediately clear your computer history if you die.

The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to finish a text.

Was learning cursive really necessary?

LOL has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”.

I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

Whenever someone says “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart”, all I hear is “I’m not real smart, but I’m imaginary smart”.

How many times is it appropriate to say “What?” before you just nod and smile because you still didn’t hear what they said?


While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and instinctively swerved to avoid it… thanks Mario Kart.

Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using ‘as in’ examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss’s last name to an client and said “Yes that’s G as in…(10 second lapse)… ummm… Goonies”.

Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty, and you can wear them forever.

I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a dick from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least kind of tired.

Bad decisions make good stories.

Whenever I’m Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don’t mind if I do!

Is it just me or do high school girls get sluttier and sluttier every year?

Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don’t want to have to restart my collection.

As a driver I hate pedestrians and as a pedestrian I hate drivers, but no matter what the mode of transportation, I always hate cyclists.

There’s no worse feeling than that millisecond you’re sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

I’m always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

“Do not machine wash or tumble dry” means I will never wash this ever.

I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people watching TV. There’s so much pressure. ‘I love this show, but will they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren’t watching this. It’s only a matter of time before they all get up and leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?’

I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Darnit!), but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What’d you do after I didn’t answer? Drop the phone and run away?

I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

When I meet a new girl, I’m terrified of mentioning something she hasn’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it’s on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

Why is a school zone 25 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising speed for pedophiles…

Sometimes I’ll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

I keep some people’s phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car keys in a pocket, finding their cell phone, and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey – but I’d bet my ass everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time…

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Filed under general, musings, social commentary

Missing an office?!?!


So you read that title and you must be thinking, “Curtis has lost his mind! He never liked an office job! He’s been dropped on his head or perhaps been replaced by a pod person! Dear God, the zombie apocalypse is upon us! We must flee! FLEE!!!!”

While a completely reasonable reaction, no this isn’t true.

I don’t miss office jobs, what with their W-2 earnings, regular hours, paychecks and possible medical & dental benefits. No, what I miss is actually having an office to work in. A building separate from the place where I live where I can show up, work, and then go home. It helps to separate work-life from life-life. Right now there is no separation. I wake up and, whether in PJ’s or business suits, I’m working. I end up working until I fall alseep. The breaks that I take are for food and to run errands or when I just need to get out for a while. It gets very difficult to tell just how many hours you are actually clocking when you need to run to target for deodorant or you go see a movie with your lady. There are days, usually Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when I can literally run my day like a regular office day and seeing what gets finished in those 8 – 10 hours gives me a real sense of accomplishment that I don’t feel on other days – even if I’m technically more productive.

I think it’s a weird socialization that goes along with the modern work environment. I would like to postulate, without being able to back it up with any scientific evidence whatsoever, that we get used to out school days, with the structure and timing that goes along with it, and even college where you may pick up a bit more autonomy but are still forced into particular hours for particular things. There’s a world wide acceptance of what “business hours” should be and so we get used to getting things done in that time. I can tell you from experience that the entertainment industry does NOT operate on a schedule, especially when you need to speak to people internationally, but we all still work on a kind of “business” schedule.

It is now 4pm. I started this blog at 10:45am, but have been distracted by work and phone calls. Even though I feel like I could write more I have to stop so I can get ready to teach tonight.

To conclude, I would like to have an office again.

Thank you.

See you tomorrow!

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Filed under business, general, making movies, money

Shameless Plug Post!


What good is a blog if you can’t help your friends? Well, actually I’m sure there’s lots of good a blog can do but this post in particular is nuthin’ but links to my stuff and my friend’s stuff.

If your stuff isn’t on here and you want it to be then post it in the comments.

Yay for shameless self-promotion!!!

Curtis Plugs:

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Filed under 7k, general, Improv Shmimprov, music video, shameless self promotion, video, videos, Wiggy VonSchtick