Flying solo?

Funny story for you...

Eddie and I were going to meet on Ibiza this weekend. I made a reservation at a hostel, and I bought a ticket to Manumission for 50 Euros.

And I didn't realize you could go straight there, so I booked a flight from Düsseldorf to Barcelona because I didn't know you could book a direct flight (and I got the ticket right cheap). But then Eddie told me he was going direct. And I found out that flights from Barcelona to Ibiza were around $300, and direct flights from Düsseldorf weren't any cheaper. And I really don't feel like dropping my entire travel budget on this one weekend.

But I was weak and decided that I would go ahead and buy a ticket from Orbitz for $300. But I had to move my flight home back to Monday and miss the morning of school. So I did. But then I found out that I needed paper tickets for the flight to Ibiza. So I had paid to have my flight rescheduled, and I still couldn't make it to Ibiza.

So now I'm going to Barcelona tomorrow morning via plane by myself with the hope that I will find something not listed online and make it to Ibiza for a (semi) reasonable amount. And if not, I'll be in Barcelona by myself this weekend.

But there are definitely worse things.



So see you Monday. But here are some videos from last week with remarkably stupid commentary that I found buried in my camera.

Photography project

We had our first day of Cinematography class today, and we were told to take pictures that captured certain ideas. "Soft" is my favorite, and I think "hard" is pretty good (although when I took it, it was supposed to be "cold" which turned out not to be an option), but I think I went a little overboard with iPhoto on "happy," and as Jordan said, it kind of just looks violent now.

HAPPY


HARD


SOFT

After 1 week in the Düsse...

(If you're reading this on Facebook, come over to http://gstringtheory.blogspot.com to get the videos.)

Since last we spoke, life's been very busy here in Deutschland. On Friday, we met at the main Düsseldorf train station at 7:30 and took a train for two hours to a town called Bacharach in the German countryside where we climbed on a boat to sail up and down the Rhine Rive. There were a lot of castles, but in all honesty, if you've seen one castle, you've seen them all. It was fun though. We then proceeded to climb a mountain and tour a castle at which point my camera's battery died, and I lost all my photos and videos for the day except for this part of one...



After the castle tour, with everyone nice and sweaty, we went to a classical concert at a poster in Bruhl. I was exhausted, but I managed to stay awake for part of what our teacher Lars called a "once in a lifetime" concert.

I'm planning on getting some pictures of this stuff from other people, but I thought I would give you folks in TV land a taste of things.

The City Tour and the Welcome Party

(If you are reading this on Facebook, come on over to http://gstringtheory.blogspot.com so you can see the videos.)

After a good half hour of sleep the night before between 1:30 and 2am, yesterday was the first day of school. Anthony, Jordan, David, Kirsten, and I walked to the train stop which we took to Dusseldorf's central train station from which we caught a bus to AIB or the Academy. It was here that we were reintroduced to the other LMU film students with whom we will be sharing the next four months.

Over the course of the morning we talked business, but then in the afternoon, with my will to be awake fading, we went on a walking tour of the harbor area immediately around the Academy and of Old Town.




These pictures are of the unlikely/odd buildings in the harbor:








Old Town is known as "the World's Longest Bar," and with good reason: the place was nothing but bars and restaurants and cafes. Like I said to nearly all my group members, I foresee many sloppy nights in the near future.



Finally, we finished the tour with a trip to the top of Dusseldorf Tower you may remember from the photos of the harbor. I, at this point being utterly exhausted, fell asleep on a table at the top.



The day ended with a dinner with all of the students' host families and the students during which I got nicely buzzed on two (of Germany's big) bottles of beer due to my tiredness. However, two bottles of beer did other things to Anthony (who really doesn't need anything to drink to act the fool)...



And btw, here's my first ever legally purchased beer, a Mike Milestone.

Willkommen

For all you krazy kats and kittens in the 419 and the 310 who want to know what life is going to be like for me here in Deutschland for the next four months, here is what we've established in my first 48 hours or so.






my hostess's house



my hostess's street



my hostess Kirsten, Jordan, my roommate Anthony, my hostess's son Kristoffer, David



my living room



my kitchen



my bedroom



a corner in Kirsten's neighborhood



a Düsseldorf highway

Summer 2006: The Tourgasm Incident

Since my summer is coming to an end this weekend, and the first blog I posted today makes me feel like a total loser on multiple levels, I thought it would be a good time for a retrospective--everything from going to Roswell, New Mexico to having my shady suitemate steal my iPod charger. However, in fairness I will merely retell the best story from my summer: the day I met Dane Cook or as I like to call it, the Tourgasm Incident featuring my Pulitzer-winning cell phone photodocumenting.

Being a card-carrying member of (stand-up comedian for all you SuFi muggles) Dane Cook's email list, I won tickets for the L.A. episode of Tourgasm, the HBO series about his DC's tour. Not only that, but I was invited to bring a friend as well, and, being without a girlfriend, my boy Eddie V. who is an even bigger fan than I am was naturally my guest on the Dane Train.

I took the Tuesday afternoon off my internship at LPI to drive to Santa Anita Park & Racetrack in Arcadia which is near Pasadena. We were invited to arrive at 3:30. We arrived at 3 and were at the end of a huge line that stretched out of the racetrack and halfway across the mall next door's parking lot. Not only was it huge, but it didn't move for... I'm gonna say 4 (being the fail-safe point on the Road to Hyperbole) hours.






Here is my first commentary: there are few things as awkward as waiting in a line in the ridiculous heat of that July afternoon for four hours. You meet the annoying girls in front of you, find out where they're from, what they do, and an amusing anecdote or two. You meet the attractive girls behind you, find out where they're from, what they do, and how much they wish their boyfriends were there with them. Then you stand there, and you talk to Eddie for an hour, the conversation rapidly detiorating to the inane as the topic well runs dry. Then you go back to talking to the girls behind you a little bit. Then you talk to Eddie. At some point in the third hour, you just don't talk for half an hour. Then you go back to the girls in front of you for a bit so as not to seem unfriendly. Then you go back to the girls behind you, and you are making up stories about unicorns and pirates just so you can ignore the heat and avoid the awkwardness...

So then, after our four hour dehydration test, we finally got into the race track and they gave us different colored wristbands. They told us that Dane and his entourage were going to land in a helicopter and we were going to stand there and cheer. And everyone was down for it except it turned into another 1-2 hours of standing in the sun waiting.

However finally, DC and the DC posse show up, and we cheer, knowing that we're finally going to hear some jokes.

And we did hear jokes.






For 5 minutes from each of the four comedians.

Then the comedians go inside the building, and the director tells everyone to grab the free posters as we leave.

At least almost everyone was supposed to leave. Two wristbands colors (which I can't remember but neither of which were Eddie and me) were invited to stay. Naturally, this aggression would not stand, and I suggested to Eddie we lose the green bands and become phantoms amongst the stayers. Eddie didn't think it would work but said I was welcome to try while he went out to the car.

It worked. About 45 minutes after climbing over a hill to sneak into a group we were all put in a line to meet and greet Dane and the gang. Feeling like a bit of a BAMF for having stuck it to the system, I was lite-bragging to the girls in front of me a bit. We proceeded to wait a long time (but I was over keeping track of long times at this point) for the Tourgasm crew to come out, sit down, and begin signing autographs.




The girls in front of me both wanted kisses on the cheek from DC, so when it was my turn, he looked at me and said, "I'm not kissing you, buddy."

Nothing would have made the afternoon more worthwhile than to make Dane Cook laugh, so I stopped to think of something clever to say... "Your loss, Dane." "I'm really not that drunk yet anyway, Dane." "After waiting five hours, you better be slipping some tongue, Dane." But in my tired, dehydrated, semi-starstruck state, what ended up coming out was a disappointed, "I'll accept that," that sounded just feeble enough to be believably disappointed.

So... Dane Cook thinks I'm gay.

Which, who cares, but he thinks I want him to kiss me. At least he does in my paranoid, unfunny-when-burnt-out imagination. But he took a picture with me. And he signed my poster and the one for Eddie.



And then I got lost in the dark trying to get out of the race track and had to climb across the track itself through horseshit. But that's falling action so we won't get into it. But let's just say you couldn't pay me to go back in the Santa Anita Racetrack.

As an afterword, the next day, I received this email:

Dear Fans,
I wanted to take a moment thank everyone who came to the TOURGASM event yesterday at Santa Anita. I am so sorry for the way the event went down. In their valient effort to suprise me, my production team and HBO purposely kept meout of the loop about the details for the taping and as aresult neglected the most important people involved in allof this....MY FANS!. I would like to attempt to make thisup to you by setting up a special show at a date to be determined. If you are unable to attend, I hope you will accept a signed copy of my upcoming DVD of the final show to be released in the Fall.
With respect,
Dane Cook

Such was the most memorable day of my summer. Party on Fall 2006.

Dry humor

One of the biggest problems I have with the internets is that I still haven't figured out how, precisely, to convey my sense of humor digitally. Short of me sending a digital elbow to the chest when I make a joke, I am too dry for my ish to merely be read.

For example: I just read a lengthy MySpace blog by a model ranting about a man who offered her $2,000 to have coffee with her but turned him down for ethical reasons and the little fact that she is married. I left a comment at the end, summarizing her response as a distaste for coffee which I thought was Witty. However, said comment was immediately deleted.

What's left of me after this traumatic and humiliating event is pondering how I could have made it more obvious that I was joking. Or perhaps it just wasn't funny? I guess it's the sign of a boring job (and probably poor work ethic) when I take the time to blog about my comment being deleted from somebody's MySpace blog. I just wish I could take those kudos back.

Anyways, I'm leaving for a semester in Germany in four days, and things should get much more interesting then, if I'm not mistaken. So do come back.

Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Family Values Pt. II

So... this is embarrassing but the video I posted last night doesn't seem to do anything. Here's the link for anyone who was crushed when it didn't come up. It's basically Penn & Teller, as far as I am concerned the best Libertarian magician/comedians out there today, sending up the titular bullshit surrounding the traditional American family structure. Being a Mormon with four wives, I find this a refreshing take on things. Penn Jilette was also the mastermind behind the Aristocrats last year for anyone who is in the market for a well-made documentary-esque exploration of a durrty joke. The rest of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! can be found on Google Video pretty easily if you want to see more.

After you viddy the video, read the following bulletin my friend Nathalie coincidentally posted on MySpace last night that supplements these ideas:

have you ever wondered what animals mate for life?

gibbon apes, wolves, termites, coyotes, barn owls, beavers, bald eagles, golden eagles, condors, swans, brolga cranes, french angel fish, sandhill cranes, pigeons, prions (a seabird), red-tailed hawks, anglerfish, ospreys, prairie voles (a rodent), and black vultures are a few that mate for life.

of course, it depends on what you mean by "mate for life." these creatures do mate for life in the social sense of living together in pairs but they rarely stay strictly faithful. about 90 percent of the 9,700 bird species pair, mate, and raise chicks together some returning together to the same nest site year after year. males, however, often raise other males offspring unknowingly. dna testing reveals that the social-pair male did not father 10, 20, and sometimes 40 percent of the chicks.

black vultures, though, discourage infidelity. all nearby vultures attack any vulture caught philandering.

only about 3 percent of the 4,000 mammal species are monogamous (and homo sapiens isnt one of them). beavers, otters, bats, wolves, some foxes, a few hoofed animals, and some primates live together in social pairs but dally sexually much as birds do.

wolves, for example, are generally monogamous but also breed polygamously if the male is unrelated to the female and prey is plentiful. moreover, they sometimes have more than one mate in a lifetime, says dan stahler, biologist at the yellowstone gray wolf restoration program run by the national park service. this happens "if one mate dies, gets kicked out of the pack, or is physically unable to breed due to injury, illness, etc."

one species is absolutely monogamous. in the black darkness of the deep sea, the tiny male anglerfish (perhaps one tenth the females size) detects and follows the scent trail of a female of his own species. once found, he bites his chosen one and hangs on. his skin fuses to hers, their bodies grow together (he gets his food through a common blood supply and becomes essentially a sperm producing organ). they mate for life a short life for the male.

source: http://www.wonderquest.com/animal-mate-for-life.htm

Anyways, moving on, if any of this seems stoopid/boring, it's because I don't really know who's going to read this (if anybody), and therefore am merely flowing on stuff that I am thinking about these days. If that is inadequate, perhaps a comment or two at the bottom would be appropriate?

Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Family Values

Watch this video, and be thankful that you have the ability to sit through it unlike my mother. It's terriffic.

Make some noise.

I think, to be completely honest, I love the idea of me having a blog more than actually doing it. It's more of a fashion accesory than anything else I suppose... even though I really don't have many fashion accessories. Weird. Fashion accessory isn't really the correct term. Let's start over. Not a good sign.

I think, to be completely honest, I love the idea of me having a blog more than actually doing it. I kind of see it as a responsibility in these troubled times when our world is falling apart, religion has become a sham, and Hollywood couldn't come up with an original idea even if a daily diet of weed brownies was mandated by the State of California. That sounds ridiculously soap-boxy.

I think, to be completely honest, I love the idea of me having a blog more than actually doing it. Blogs, by their nature, are an enterprise of vanity (not to be confused with a enterprise in vain). An individual who sits down and takes the time to type one out believes that there are other people with computers for whom taking the time to read said individual's thoughts is the best possible use of the fleeting moments of life to which we all cling.

The bottom line is that it's probably a mix of a, b, and c. We'll call it a fashionable responsibility (with some vanity mixed in). And the line below the bottom line is that today is Day 1 of the Rest of My Life as a Blogger. Thank your for your fleeting moments, and please come back.