Mars Life

not gone just yet...

2006-12-11T08:42:00.000-06:00

With a busy past couple of weeks I can put up some more stuff now. Hopefully the following pic will be fine even though it is large, hi-res and all. In all reality, I don't feel like rezzing it down right now. But I will if this is problematic (Boo. I had to. Also, it may be looking weird color-wise because it's formatted for print color right now).

In any case, this is the cover I'm using for my portfolio currently. I've got about 5 1/2 pages fully completed, and 14 1/2 to go. You'll see it all eventually. (I can see through my computernets, and I just want to let you know you really shouldn't hold your breath like that.)

You've come a long way, Stew!

2006-11-17T08:09:00.000-06:00

Here's a bunch of emotion studies the teach liked. Stew has been with me a while now, and will comprise the character design portion of my 2d portfolio.

not just for myspace anymore...

2006-11-16T17:41:00.000-06:00

I'm alive. And well?

I made this:

New stuff soon. Promise.

Hmmm.... how bout this?

2005-12-05T14:53:00.000-06:00

Since I'm not really posting much these days, I figured I could at least try to post a sketch or ttwo every couple of days, right? Low expectations, yo... low.

So, with that in mind, here's a character I'm thinking about for a storyboarding project I'm doing right now. It's a music video for Ween's "Don't Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)"

Welcome to the 'oughts, dinosaur.

2005-11-08T13:53:00.000-06:00

Holy jeez it's been a while. I know. However, with my obvious slacking of late, I don't trust myself to be fully back in the saddle, so why waste this effort telling you about not posting? Let's let it suffice to say I'm jobless, a full time degree-seeking student again, and grasping at shreds of money and a schedule as they materialize with a lot less constancy these days. (Constancy... sweet sweet constancy. Thanks, Lovejoy.)

***

So then, why is it I can not train myself to get in the habit of dutifully owning a cell phone? I've had one for almost 5 years now, and I have never been able to keep it nearby for when phone calls arrive, or to call people back in proper turnaround time. Just this morning I (finally) received a voicemail from good friend Mego (check out her incredible text-smithing. Personally, I can only manage to make up words like "text-smithing"... why are you reading, again?) asking if wife and I were going to watch the Sunday night animation extravaganza. It's Tuesday, Mars. How about checking your cell-phone at least daily, if nothing else.

I've been thinking a lot about training ones self lately, as I believe myself to be stuck in ruts regarding organization, scheduling, and cell phone usage. They say if you do something for twenty days it becomes habit. I've got real commitment problems in that arena, but I'd like to think I'm competent enough to slay the stick-to-it-ive-ness dragon. I'll keep on trying, and keep on bitching when I fail, I gather. Regardless, I'll still pay those fees and hopefully answer calls when I receive them, eventually.

More to come, hopefully.

And much better than this pieced together piece of brain dripping.

Why was I testing?

2005-10-05T13:27:00.000-05:00

I haven't put up any media in a while, so I was trying to see how I could actually get animation up on the site. Yes, as it turns out, gif's are the only way to go. So, I've managed to transform one of my projects from school from low-tech to high-tech to low-hi-tech in order to put it up on the blog here.

What you see is the alien tax accountant I've previously shared, in a walk cycle. Basically, you see these all the time in animation as the background scrolls by to create the illusion of movement, without having to draw much. I know it needs a few more in between poses to make it the tiniest bit more fluid, and my final version had less elbow-jerking, and this one might not be registered completely correct, as I had to do some editing in the process (which also possibly degraded the quality in and of itself). Registration refers to how the sequential images are lined up in respect to each other. But still, pretty cool, no?

There'll be more chance to show original works when I finally get my new site up and running.

Which I'm starting, what with the lack of job and all...

And a class in flash right now...

More to come.

Test?

2005-10-05T12:39:00.000-05:00

Dive in, the water's fine!

2005-09-29T11:23:00.000-05:00

So it begins. My last day of full-time, "day job" employment is tomorrow.

Starting Tuesday, I'll be a full time student. Again. Fairly frightening considering I have no idea how I'll be supporting myself financially at this point. The major expenses will be covered by a Creative Education loan, which is a private loan, but has lower interest rates than other private loans. However, because of this special loan, I need to document what all my expenses are and the amount I'll receive will be based off of this budget. Great. All that extra spending I do from day to day will be brought to a startling halt.

In any event, I'm doing this primarily because in order for me to remain at least a half-time student, I would need to take at least one weekday day course. Yup, my education and career were colliding in complete conflict. So, rather than lose my financial aid and further postpone my education and live with an actual income, I opted to give up the income and instead go to school full time. I hope to supplement my income with some freelance work, as this will garner my portfolio for the impending job search, as well as make me a bit of cash in the meantime. However, the current portfolio isn't even assembled, and I'm sure future work will be based off of this theoretical portfolio I'm in the process of putting together.

I've got a pretty full course-load, of a diverse variety of subjects. I'll be taking some advanced life drawing, which I'm very excited for, a flash course, a 3D modeling course, and a storyboarding course. If I keep at it at this pace, I'll have completed by January of 2007. But let's slow down, eh? The joy is in the journey after all. With a lot more time spent in the house, not going anywhere, I hope you'll be hearing from me more often.

Gulp... Wish me luck!

More to come.

Better half

2005-09-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

Just a quick plug. She blogs too... and she's put up a nice little story regarding CTA customer service for those wishing to have the tiniest bit of faith restored in public transit officials.

check it yo, this is directly to part 2... check the prior post for part 1

***

Boy, do I have stories for you. Life status change approaching... Financial Aid department vexing...

More to come...

Coming attractions

2005-09-20T12:32:00.000-05:00

Sooo... let's see if I'm a little more proactive with this one.

In other words, check back in a year.

Coincidental Tuesday morning, moist and nerdy Friday night

2005-09-20T11:11:00.000-05:00

A little publicized fact about me is my complete and utter love of coincidences. I had a coincidental morning today. It started on the el, where I walked to the back of the car with K-San, passing someone reading Chuck Palahniuk's Survivor. Having recently gone through a serious bout of CPA (Chuck Palahniuk Addiction), I commented briefly that it was a good book as I passed.

He wasn't that far from the back of the car, so I could actually even see where he was in the story, and K-San and I talked about it a bit (I am an awful awful awful over-the-shoulder reader, but try to be as inconspicuous as possible). Kerri noted that it was quite easier for her to get her bearings on the story because Chuck books are usually completed in mere days. Now then, somewhere along the blue line, I looked down and noticed that he was using the exact same coffee mug I have that recently lost it's purpose, due to a loss of the top. Boo-frickin'-hoo. So, I thought, "same book as me, same coffee mug as me, weird!" However, it was right then that I noticed the gentleman right next to him was reading a Tom Robbins book, another of my favorite authors. Of course I read a bit of that over his shoulder as well. Aaah, Skinny Legs and All. It's been quite a while.

So yeah, all that, and I saw fellow IO performer Shad Kunkle handing out fragrance samples on the corner of Randolph and Wabash. I grabbed one and said, "Thanks, Shad". He replied, "Hey, how you doing!" or something, but I waved and kept walking, as I'm fairly sure he has no idea who I am. And yes, I'm aware it would have been significantly less rude to stop and say hi and introduce myself, but breaking my morning routine is pretty tough. I'm practically on auto-pilot, and was happy to have even said hi.

***

So Friday, I got my cyst removed, as I mentioned yesterday, but in an example of my trying to squeeze as much in as possible with little respect for my physical or mental well-being, I was at the legendary Double Door club that very evening, to see the Moistboyz play. I had never heard any of their music whatsoever, but it was exciting nonetheless, because as Kerri and I started talking about, we both used to do that shit all the time in college, and now just didn't get out as much. Aaaah, money... it's really doesn't grow on trees!

So we went because ween isn't hitting up Chicago on this tour. Booooooooooooooo. So, this is the closest we could get, because Dean Ween doubles as Micky Moist (i.e. he plays guitar for both bands). Moistboyz are fucking hardCORE, man. White trash speed metal from New Hope Pennsylvania. The lead singer (Dicky Moist) doesn't wear a shirt, is out of his freaking head, has a mullet, and sports one of those big Olde-English font stomach tattoos that reads "OTC", which I could only imagine stands for "Over The Counter". Great performance.

However, before we even got to see Moistboyz, we were treated to a (surprise, to us) performance by the minibosses. These guys consist of two guitars, bass, and drums, and play covers of Nintendo theme music. This Nintendo-music resurgence seems to be a trend, I think, courtesy of cyclical history, retro-hipness, and the like, but I fall for it full on. Let me just say I've been singing Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man 2, and Punch Out for days. Oh, childhood... where have you're 8-bit glories gone?

***

No, spell checker, I would not like to replace "minibosses" with "minibuses", though your suggestions do crack me up as usual.

More to come.

second surgery... not so fun. TV... awesome.

2005-09-19T12:31:00.000-05:00

So I had a cyst removed on Friday. Suck suck suck. In any event, I'm doing fine and dandy, though still sore at the site of removal. Guess your worst, and you're probably right (it's about 50/50 with a hint like that).

However, we've got two weeks of Simpsons under our belt, along with Family Guy and American Dad. Last night''s Family Guy was so extremely random it was crazy. It was almost like an exercise in disbelief-suspension unmatched by previous episodes. Craaaazy. They push the bestiality envelope further with the Lois/Brian tension, Peter starts the episode as a sailor, overall, it was really "bitty" as the improviser world would reference it.

So here we parade in to a big week of premieres, the premiere of Arrested Development is tonight, the premiere of Lost is on Thursday, and I couldn't be happier to have a big ol' Tivo waiting to get them all recorded. One thing I may regret about this season, though, is the new addiction the wife and I have developed to fox's "Prison Break". Oddly enough, we had a similar run-in with Fox and Dominic Purcell's previous team-up, John Doe. See, the show has a cool enough plot (Pettus gives some good background here) that I really want to keep watching to see how the logistics of this whole break-out scenario work, but the writing is just godawful, and some of the acting as well (though of course, it seems as if the acting may be suffering from outside influences like bad writing and/or bad directing). Eh, I assume we'll keep it on the Tivo season pass until it just gets too unbearable. That's how we handled John Doe, too. So give us your worst, Fox, we'll stand by and watch.

More to come. Hopefully, a report on the MoistBoyz from Friday night.

Teeth removal - Recommended!

2005-09-13T13:06:00.000-05:00

So, here I sit, about 4 molars lighter than last wednesday. I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I had my wisdom teeth taken out on Thursday. I feel no less wiser, in case any wisdom teeth extraction virgins out there are wondering/worrying. I was a bit nervous going into it, as I opted against the intravenous anesthesia, and listened to all the crunching glory as nitrous oxide continuously froze my brain. Nevertheless, it turns out I'm a lot less queasy when the medical professional is performing surgery on me, as opposed to when I'm watching it on television, where squeamishness prevails.

So, it turned out the whole procedure wasn't that bad, as long as you don't mind being utterly submissive to a dentist for an hour to an hour and a half. Of course, this is coming from someone whose wisdom teeth weren't impacted, and were merely decaying away due to the inherent difficulty in cleaning them. The crunching sounds were therefore minimal, and the weirdest ones were the small sounds. There are little sounds, like the first yielding of a tree branch, or the first crack in a dam, that are small to the ear, but signify big progress down the line. These sounds I would think were inaudible outside my mouth, but extremely audible inside my head. And weird.

Luckily, Dr Coleman Spector is funny, and enjoys throwing his schtick around. This is why I say it was so entertaining, though I don't know how much of that was the NO2 talking. However, the worst part is when you want to join in the fun, but then realize there's three people and a buttload of novacaine in your mouth. For instance, they wanted to try to guess my middle name as a little game (after I somehow garbled a little clue with the initial F), and the two helpers had a couple of wrong tries before Coleman correctly guessed Francis. I kept wanting to say "but you've seen my charts! You already know!" Not one to let something like that die, after the operation was over, I tried to ask if he'd surmised my name from my charts, and he said no. So, he's an honest dentist too! Honest to the point that he tells you how he's in it for the money. Over and over again. He'd like you to pick the IV anesthesia, by the way. It costs more. Of course it can kill you and you get an anesthesia hangover, too, so there's that.

Anywho, I'd like to tell you all so much more, but alas, BCBS is a callin.

More to come.

Wow. Just... Wow.

2005-09-06T10:45:00.000-05:00

``What our officers are telling people is that there is absolutely no reason to stay here,'' New Orleans Police Deputy Chief Warren Riley said during a televised press conference. ``There are no jobs. There are no homes to go to, no hotels to go to. There is absolutely nothing here. We advise these people that this city has been destroyed.''

Not to be focusing on the bad parts (though it's admittedly hard not to), but the quote above hit me pretty hard. I certainly am very upset that I've never seen the big easy, as the proudest of New Orleans natives I know (OK, the only, but he's pretty damned proud) this weekend told me I never really will see New Orleans. Nothing's permanent, people.

Him and his girlfriend are hosting friends in from the disaster, and taking ANY DONATIONS POSSIBLE. If there's the off chance that there's someone reading this that doesn't know this, and wants to donate to actual humans that have helped friends of mine when they were in need, feel free to email me, post here, whatever (planetfourATgmailDOTcom). I ain't no Kanye West or anything, but we're giving what we can.

That's the one thing I'm glad to see, Louisiana people touching base with each other, mending, and such. It is good to see my friends with LA family taking stock of each other's lives, offering help, and moving on.

---

Thanks to all who said hello when I reached out! Now who the heck is reading out there in Estonia?

Good ol' sitemeter. Faithful sitemeter.

2005-09-01T16:26:00.000-05:00

Yeah, the statistics at the bottom of the page may not be uber-impressive, but I've been compiling them for years. It's cool! This free little feature from sitemeter has allowed me to see how my blog is being viewed over time, where people are coming from geographically, referentially (?... referred from what site, that is), how long they stick around, who their ISP is, etcetera, etcetera. Sitemeter's some cool junk.

So, along with sitemeter's help, I can report what I believe is a never before reached feat for me! Namely, I have gone a whole month where at least one person has visited this site every day. I know it's really a non-honor, but I thought it was pretty neat. Cool! However, who the heck are these people? I know my friends come here occasionally, and I link to my blog on message boards I post at, and all my emails link to it in my signature, but I still think in order for me to achieve this honor, there have to be people out there visiting who I have no idea of.

I'm throwing it out to you, mystery readers... make yourself known in the comments! Tell me where you blog! Email me a little tiny bio at planetfour(at)gmail(dot)com! Tell me what it's like on the west coast*! Whatever, entertain me!

*I know there were 3 visitors from California today even! And whoever works up at Northwestern U, I've got my sitemeter eyes pointed directly at you.

I promise more (and better) to come

Pettus mention again

2005-08-31T13:53:00.000-05:00

Thanks Jason! Ought to see the numbers spike again. Always makes a lonely blogger feel justified.

In any event, I just got a call from Dad saying mom's new liver is in and working fine.

Huzzah!

In other news, I wish the same good fortune on anyone with any personal connection to NOLA (Jen, pass that along to Bird, will ya?)

Motivator

2005-08-31T10:22:00.000-05:00

Oh, hi... I didn't see you there. Have you been there long? I really didn't mean to ignore you. Oh, no, there's lots going on, glad you ask. Well, true, it is only when there's big news... yes, you're right, there is a certain value to small talk... OK, OK, you're right, I should really keep the lines of communication more open. I'll try a little harder... I promise. In the meantime, I've got great news!

Saints be praised, a liver has been found for my mother. Yup. I'm sorry to the family out there (if there is one), and thankful to the individual for his (that much I know is true) beliefs on organ donation.

I got the call from my dad last night, and it was very odd... I had called him earlier, and reiterated the same old decree that had been less and less frequent as things were getting more and more comfortable, namely that if it would make my mom happier at any time, I would drop everything and head out to be by her side. Gotta love my parents, though, in their infinite authority, never want me to lift a finger or disrupt my life for their benefit. It's been that way forever. I've always wondered if it has more to do with the situation of me being an only child, or if it has more to do with their particular parenting style. Nevertheless, suffice it to say that they don't ever want to inconvenience me.

That's all well and good, but here we are smack dab in the middle of the situation we've been waiting for, disrupting all that comfort that was organically created through lack of change. So, about 12 hours ago I got the call that there's a liver in NY. Now, my father's in a hospital down there (actually, over there, from where I sit now), taking a nap as he waits for the operation to be completed. The latest word was that she was doing great after prep, and that the procedure could take from 6 to 13 hours. More waiting.

So now the question is, when do I go home? I have to be there for this, and the more I ask my parents, the more they say "don't come now," maybe in a couple days," "she'll be disoriented after the procedure for a few days anyway," and "we'll see". Sigh, I know they don't want to be any trouble, so that's sweet of them. The funniest part of all this is that this is actually the most inconvenient time to be in this situation. I've got two classes going on that I've got significant work to be completed in, that requires my attention consistently, and it's labor day, when airfare and gas prices magically increase, I'll be starting school full time in October, so I need to work as much as I can before then, and I've got two surgeries scheduled for myself over the next two weeks. Regardless, I'm just waiting for my parents to tell me when to show up, and I'll be on my way.

So, yeah, I'll talk to you soon. We should have coffee or something.

More to come.

A Picture Share!

2005-08-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

Allison likes the Picture Shares! Allison's leaving tomorrow for Indiana. Allison, a picture share for you!

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T13:40:00.000-05:00

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T13:36:00.000-05:00

Yeeeehawj

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T12:53:00.000-05:00

Kerri's road supplies.

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T12:40:00.000-05:00

About halfway... Not much to take pics of...but saw this close to Flint MI!!

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T09:30:00.000-05:00

If you can't see that, our first gas of the trip was 2.69/gal. Sigh, and that's cheap.

A Picture Share!

2005-08-19T09:27:00.000-05:00

Our first stop on our way to Toronto. About 50 miles in, kerri is seen here thrilled over Splenda.

Tear into Toronto

2005-08-18T16:46:00.000-05:00

So I'm heading up to Toronto for the Toronto Improv Fest, where my IO team Traffic and Weather will be performing on the mainstage Saturday night. God Damn! My first improv festival! I'm very excited. I hope to blog some pics on the drive up, which should be no problem, and maybe in Toronto if possible... we'll see how that goes. I just wanted to drop a line to let mofos know that, and also to keep up on my promise from a few days ago...

BAM! Stew being "seductive" as he can. He's such a tool.

Summer fiction fiasco 2k5!!!!

2005-08-16T13:21:00.000-05:00

Well, here we are about heading out of the summer, rather than in, and it’s time I finally talk a bit about my reading habits this summer. Summer seems to be the time when everyone goes crashing into borders or clogging up the bandwidth of Amazon.com to grab a title they can read on hot lazy days.

Personally, I got into reading this summer because a class I took earlier this year had a big Chuck Palahniuk fan in it. This kid was a cool kid, an animation major named Bill Cogland or something like that, he switched majors, and it’s a shame, because he had a good sense of humor, and was fun to talk to, but I’m really digressing here. Anyway, I’d heard a lot of people rave about Palahniuk’s work many a time before, so I decided to pick some up. Just to get an intro, I decided to read the actual novel Fight Club, because it had been one of my favorite movies for quite some time. God I love that story.

So we had this animation class once a week, and one Saturday, I go in and tell him I finally ordered a Palahniuk book. The next Saturday I told him I’d finished it. Seriously, I read Fight Club in like two days. In order to see if it was a strike of lightning, I quickly ordered Choke. I loved it, and also finished it in two or three days.

From there, I knew I’d be reading the entire collection of Chuck’s works eventually. I moved on to Lullaby, another quick and thoroughly entertaining read. All this time, though, I felt the need to get back to my fiction roots of Tom Robbins, as the style of Palahniuk always involves some romance of crazy larger than life circumstances which seemed to relate back to the memories I had of his stories, as well as the twists in plot bringing everything full circle. So I picked up Villa Incognito strictly because Borders didn’t have any copies of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates.

An analysis of the two authors, from yours truly, is that they do share similar story structures at times, and divide their works up into easily manageable chapters, but Chuck is a minimalist where Tom is a poet. That’s about the most I could possibly boil it down. They’ve got there own styles, and I love both of them. In the month since I finished Villa Incognito, I’ve finished two more Palahniuk works (Survivor and Diary), reluctantly finished The DaVinci Code, and have made 100 pages of progress into the aforementioned Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates. I obviously am not going to comment on all of these, but I’m happy to be dabbling in fiction again.

---

In other notes, Seward Street posted up a bunch of new photos over on their flickr page. There are great pics of the old masters in their element, and some rough sketches as well as old cels. I love Seward Street.

More to come! Namely… sketches?

Always fed

2005-08-15T12:19:00.000-05:00

Always Fed

Today we speak of accomplishment. Of getting things done that you've always dreamed of. Of this past weekend.

First off, let me say that I and Kerri have now been nicotine free for two weeks. Good for us. With that demon being slowly and continuously slain, it's time to move on to bettering ourselves in other ways. I've started doing pushups, laughable as that paltry attempt at fitness may be, we're beginning to change over our possessions to reflect the bitchin' registry gifts we received, and I'm trying to save money in every way possible as I slowly inch my way back into full-time student-hood.

Packing a lunch has always been known to be a money-saving practice. Hell, it's even healthier for you. I've always tried to do it as much as possible. But aren't there more extensions to this method of planning ahead and not indulging in the convenience of commerce when it's time to consume? Ever since I graduated college, I've had this grand plan in the back of my head that I've always thought would save money and time, but I've never had the chance to test it out. Namely, the "plan" is cooking about a months worth of dinners ahead of time, freezing them all, then having dinner ready for you whenever you need it. No cooking, no ordering, just reheating in one of many ever-present microwave ovens. Swanson's does it, Lean Cuisine does it, Hell, Seattle Suttons does it. Why not do it myself?

So this weekend, the plan was set in action. As I type, my homemade breakfast protein bar has digested in my stomach, my lunch is almost ready to be eaten, and my salmon cakes with broccoli are chilling in the fridge waiting for later. I'm giving the whole program (which in 'project form' in my GTD documentation I'm referring to as 'Always Fed') a two week test run through the end of August and then implementing monthly in September. I sound like a freaking project manager.

It was a great feeling to just make meal after meal yesterday, though there are still some that need to be made. The way I planned it out was to corral seven recipes, then buy ingredients for 4 servings of each. This way, there's a meal for each night of the week for me and for Kerri. Our menu consists of soy ginger chicken, black bean cakes, salmon cakes, Spanish rice with beef, stuffed pork chops, turkey chili, and chicken Parmesan. The soy ginger chicken is marinating to be grilled tomorrow, when I'll probably also make the black bean cakes and Spanish rice. Kerri is making the turkey chili tomorrow as well. At that point, all that will need to be made is the chicken parm, which may be a Thursday night activity, before heading out to Toronto (oh yeah, I'm off to Toronto this weekend!).

So far, the process will have small tweaks organizationally, namely finding recipes ahead of time, and buying ingredients and cooking on different days. As for cooking, I'll know more when I try the dishes in their reheated form. The pork chops were incredible last night, though. I'm excited to eat faster, healthier, and tastier.

I'll speak to Toronto this week, hopefully. Until then, more to come...

Stew-topia?

2005-08-10T09:30:00.000-05:00

So I figured I'd post up a shot of the character I'm currently working on for my acting for animation class. I'm actually thinking about starting up a little sketchbook blog while I'm working on creating my portfolio site. That would definitely dramatically decrease the already-scant posts over here.

Anyway, in the meantime... This is Stew. See Stew stew. Stew, Stew, stew. Poor, poor Stew.

Hopefully soon I'll be able to tell you about the "fiction obsession of summer 2005" and my brief unplanned respite from work. Until then, more to come.

A Picture Share!

2005-08-06T18:26:00.000-05:00

Everyone should try Superdawg at 6363 Milwaukee. Great summer drive in hot dog joint.

Deja vu... have we met before?

2005-08-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

Hey folks. I'm married. There's phone calls to be made to my wonderful friends, there's pictures to email to people as they trickle in, there’s thank you cards to be mailed, there’s another wedding ring to buy (yup. It’s gone. Jamaican beach. Grrr.), the wedding, as I said all throughout, was a living, breathing thing. It was a lot of fun, and I hope the pics I posted here were fun for those who checked them out. For a couple more quick ones, check out www.angeleyesphotography.com, where Kerri and flower girl Anastasia made it onto the front page, and me and my boys made it into the “weddings” portion of our photographer’s site. Big ups to Hilda, too she’s a great photographer, was transparent as far as I could tell (then again, I was quite busy), captured some sweet moments, and is getting more and more popular. Wedding couples, book her for 2006 now!

Now that the wedding is over, there’s really no reason for me not to be venturing down a road I’ve traveled before, namely, the nicotine withdrawal road. As of yesterday morning, (specifically, like 1AM or so, when K-San and myself were sitting in the kitchen drowning leftover cigarettes in water) I haven’t had a single cigarette. 24 hours may not seem like a lot to my non-smoking oral surgeon (who stated “Why not now” at my appointment last week, only for me to answer “have you ever smoked, Dr Spector?”), but it is a miracle to me.

I of course am not counting any eggs these days, relapses of the tobacco addiction are highly commonplace. However, the feeling of accomplishment that comes with another day of being smoke free is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. I look back and miss the cigarettes, and I’m always thinking to myself, “Hmmm, I could have a smoke right now” but then I realize, alas, no I can’t. But when the day is over, and I’m ready to go to bed, I say to myself, “Wow, you really did that. Good job.”

A Picture Share!

2005-07-30T00:50:00.000-05:00

Now we call him Toosh

A Picture Share!

2005-07-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

Looks like we'll be in airports all day. See ya tonight, Jamaica!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

Almost done!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T22:26:00.000-05:00

Recwption!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T19:51:00.000-05:00

We're married!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T16:18:00.000-05:00

Here I am with rob and santosha

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T16:14:00.000-05:00

We're rrady to go!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T14:55:00.000-05:00

I aint no Rob Bass... Rob tells the story of Yankee stadium at lunch.

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T14:17:00.000-05:00

Lunch wit the boys

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T13:51:00.000-05:00

Goin' to meet the groomsmen!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

From the rehearsal... From the left, groomsmen Rob, Santosha, Dan, Dave.

A Picture Share!

2005-07-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

Rehearsal dinner shot from yesterdqy... Love you mom and dad!

A Picture Share!

2005-07-02T17:07:00.000-05:00

Your ever-faithful 'wedding-blogger' is finally on his way home.

A Picture Share!

2005-07-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

In chinatown today, picking up supplies for the wedding! Kerri's at O'Hare, picking up a bridesmaid. It begins...

A Picture Share!

2005-07-01T15:33:00.000-05:00

After license! (Thrilling clarity for a pic, I know.)

A Picture Share!

2005-07-01T15:23:00.000-05:00

Before license...

A Picture Share!

2005-07-01T13:19:00.000-05:00

Getting our marriage license right now!

So happy you moved here.

2005-06-27T13:19:00.000-05:00

You know you're wife-to-be rocks when she's happy that you moved to a large city for your and the world's sake rather than her own.

Chicago has indeed instigated a lot of changes in my life that wouldn't have happenned otherwise. I'm glad I got a girl that will remind me of it in times when I feel like I should be in CT a lot more.

---

Also, I've put a link to my Flickr page in my sidebar. I keep telling you people, I'm slowly recreating Jason Pettus's e-life, akin to e-stalking, or an e-cover band. In any event, I thought it a good idea since I'll be taking more pics with the Treo, hopefully.

More to come.

Current status, unstable.

2005-06-24T15:07:00.000-05:00

OK, so today's the day I should have been flying home, to get married tomorrow. Let's elaborate, shall we?

I got this big ol' wedding thing happening in a couple weeks. I'm marrying my lover of four years, the lovely Miss Kerri Van Auken, on July 8th. Ours is the opinion that a wedding is a chance to share our union and the joy it entails with those who are closest to us. This includes family and friends who we've been in close contact with as we've been progressing through our new joined life together.

With that viewpoint, I'm sure it is obvious to any intimate to my situation that it has been incredibly sad to carry on knowing that my parents will be paying for a large part of this ceremony and will not be able to attend (big mad props to KVA, who has heard the aforementioned sentence countless times). However, they have repeatedly made concessions that we move forward unaffected by their situation, so we have.

We originally had planned, to the point of reserving air fare, to travel to Connecticut this weekend to have a small ceremony for their benefit (big mad props go out to Cathy Callahan, Kerri's mom, for ponying up to send our reverend out).

Since those plans were made, however, my mother has been in and out of the hospital, and as such, we've forgone those plans due to the instability in the situation. We do plan on still having a ceremony in CT, but it will be later in the year, when things have hopefully settled a bit more.

Now, I'm not sure how many of you are aware, but putting together a wedding in one of the biggest cities in the US can be quite a costly affair. For this reason, coupled with the fact that Kerri and I would rather not start our new life together in debt, we decided to limit the guest list as much as possible to save on the costs. That leads to some hard decisions in making the guest list. As such, there are people who we've consider very dear, and were not invited to the wedding, because we haven't had any contact in the last four years. It's hard, and neither of us feels good doing it, but in this hour of stress and burden, both wedding related and not, I really don't think we can be faulted for it.

OK then, enough of that serious stuff. Look at that hottie below! Even at 8:15 in the morning on the el this girl makes me proud to be hers.

More to come.

Simply irresistible!

2005-06-24T12:29:00.000-05:00

She's so fine, there's no tellin' where the money went. Mine forever in 2 weeks.

Regarding my creation of the universe...

2005-06-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

When we last spoke, dear reader, I was psych-ing myself up for my first "all-nighter" in years. What a crazy feeling to once again be up and about as the sun sets then rises, and the birds go to sleep with the rest of the world, and wake up far earlier. This was not some hallucinogenic bender or anything, this was to draw my little knuckles off in an attempt to complete my final project for fundamentals of animation.

It all went wonderfully! My all-nighter helped ready me for the most ambitious project of mine to date, and I'm quite excited with how it turned out. When it comes to my animation, I'm not at the level of drawing yet where one can make beautifully rendered figures and characters move just to see how beautifully they move (Bill Plympton, how I adore and envy you), I'm more of the mindset that story counts for 90% of entertainment's value, and would liken my product to more of a Don Hertzfeldt kind of project. I adore and envy Don Hertzfeldt as well (although "Meaning of Life was so-so, in my humble opinion).

In any event, come about 7:15 or so, I headed down to the campus to be there bright and early to get all my drawings shot. The class started at 10 (or is scheduled to), and we weren't planning on starting presentations until about 12:30 or so, so I made sure I had plenty of time to shoot.

When I got there, Antoin and Alberto from class were already there waiting, and the doors weren't even open yet. We started up a list, as the two Lunchboxes we have in the lab would be occupied by them, and I wouldn't be able to shoot on my reel until Antoin was finished with his shooting (my "reel" is just an allotment of digital space on one of the aforementioned "lunchboxes", and it resides on the one Antoin was using). I eventually got to start shooting at around 10:15 or so.

Wow, what an experience. I was using all these layers and cycles to tell a story. The drawings weren't the most detailed and fancy, but the techniques I used were good enough for me to be able to produce 1:20 of animation that told a story that had the whole class rolling. It was a good presentation to say the least. It was up there with the better in the class, so I'm happy with myself.

Funny, this was the quarter where I thought I'd start getting lower than A's, and I got an A and an A-.

---

If you see some entries appear and disappear in the upcoming weeks, it's because I'm trying to set up moblogging, where I can post both entries and pictures from my Treo. I know for a fact this happenned yesterday, the entry before this one used to be a picture.

---

I'll be married in 15 days!

More to come

A good old "All-Nighter"

2005-06-17T15:58:00.000-05:00

Aaah, the old days of college, where I sat up all night studying for statistics to be ready for the next day's exam.

Now in my enlightened late twenties, where I try to take a grab at the golden ring of creative arts employment, the all-nighter takes on a whole new meaning.

If I can just get through this night, I'll be ready for anything.

I plan on staying up all night tonight, as I have a final presentation to make tomorrow, which I have yet to complete. The presentation consists of the body of my work throughout the last 11 weeks as they pertain to the fundamentals of animation as taught by Mr George Eastman, my prof. Quite the guy and quite the motivator, this guy doesn't settle for crap. Very professional, very type-A, a natural born director.

If I can just get through this critique and his criticisms, I'll be ready for anything.

The first half of the 11 week quarter was comprised of a progression of projects that were designed to help us learn the equation of: "Images + Time = Motion". It was quite invigorating to take a class where I finally get to do the most rudimentary parts of animation, namely, making drawings move.

All of my projects have been completed, except for the "final" project. The final project is to be a one-minute animation that shows you put quite a bit of time into it, namely 50 to 60 hours.

If I can just make it through these 50 to 60 hours, I'll be ready for anything.

I've been working at it quite a bit, and I'm hoping it comes out nice. I really think it will be OK, as it tells a nice witty story, despite it's being so primitive drawn. I think I'll make it to a minute, we'll just have to see.

The big bonus is that I've realized that I can test out the frames I'm drawing to see if they "work" and move well on the screen by importing them into flash to make them into their own little cartoon. The process is a little time consuming because it involves scanning many images, but it helps me work at home without buying a $3000 Lunchbox Sync system.

If I can just make it through this pile of drawings, I'll be ready for anything.

The good thing is, now that I've discovered this process that I should've thought of way earlier, I'll be able to put them up on the web! Yahooooo. People can witness my greatness. OK, witness my mediocrity.

I know most will probably read this after I have already put myself through this sleep-deprived hell, but I just thought I'd let ya know anyway.

If I can just make it through this night, I'll be ready for anything.

By the way... I've been away for a while, I know. Please pray/think/meditate/well-wish for my mom to get a new liver.

Being the one for someone

2005-05-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

I heard a line uttered by my good Kerri Van Auken this weekend that brought tears to my eyes when I looked back on it, and constantly has been echoing in my head as a wonderful reminder of support. In being asked where we'll move when and if we finally do, Kerri said to the asker (whom I don't remember), "Well, wherever Mars gets an animation job."

Wow. Now that's my baby. If she got a job in some other part of the world, or wanted to go out there, and got cast in something, I like to think I'd throw caution to the wind and go out there just as willingly. I don't think it'd be too hard for me to do, as I love moving... conceptually, of course. But to hear Kerri say that, while I'm not even participating in the conversation, just blows me away.

I mean, let's face it. I'm not the most passionate of data analysts, but I do it day in, day out, because I need to pay for my life, and save up for a dive into a deep end I've been staring at for years. That dive will take place this year, and that dive is not marriage. If I may digress for a moment, marrying Kerri is probably the easiest decision I've ever made. I have no inkling of cold feet whatsoever, no desire to be with any other woman, and we're talking springtime here, where women all over town show themselves off. Actually, the only way this is phasing me is by getting me completely excited for July.

However, the plunge I'm talking about is the plunge out of corporate office life and into the deep end of the creative industries, namely animation, as you may have guessed if you read regularly. I've known for quite some time that I want to be in a different career path, and now I've found an area that seems to make me happy, and immensely so, so I'm ready to commit to this being my future. However, maintaining a two-class schedule (which amounts to eight a year, on the quarter system), a job, and a heaping helping of improvising about town consistently with no break all takes its toll on a man.

I would never complain about lack of sleep or how I don't have any free time in my schedule whatsoever, but I don't think I'm giving my all to my portfolio and my classes, so I feel like I should be getting the heck out of this rat race and commit to being a full time student. That's the first of the plunges. It could be quite frightening to a future spouse to hear that she'll be marrying someone who'll be jobless soon, but I think I've thoroughly prepared her, and myself, for any turbulence that arises in our lives as a result of this change.

The great thing about this plunge is that along with it allowing me to allot more time to my schoolwork, it also allots me more time in which to take classes, with the intent of finishing early. So now we come full circle, to the second plunge. OK, I've finished school, now what? There's no good animation jobs in Chicago, and while I'd love to think that I could create my own self sustaining production company and animation house, I'm just not entirely sure if it's realistic. That's not to say I won't try, but I know that there's a lot more animation opportunities in California and British Columbia that I would potentially be a good candidate for. These are the main possibilities for building my earning potential back up after school.

We'll have to see where the future takes us, but think about all that unsureness and fogginess of a person's future, and ask if you'd want to be with them for the rest of your life.

Thanks, Kerri.

More to come.

Why I haven't been updating

2005-05-03T15:56:00.000-05:00

Hmm, the thing about that, see, is that there is no real reason. I guess I've just been slacking a bit. However, here I am, so best to think about something to write about. I'm really at a loss here.

Wedding? Well, we got our engagement portrait taken yesterday. Our photographer is really cool, and a great find, I'd like to think. She's a lot of fun, has a unique pricing scheme, and is very welcoming, agreeable, and easy to get along with. She works in all digital too, so there's more opportunities to get those sweet moments where we look either uber-sexy (always), or cute and endearing (the rest of the time). We got about 300 shots taken of us yesterday, told you we were sexy or endearing quite often. She's going to put some up at her site, there'll be links here when I find out about it, until then, anyone in need of a photographer should
seriously check out www.angeleyesphotography.com.

Animation? Good lordy, quite a busy week. I'd love to go ahead and show some of the projects I'll be showing for midterms here, but there's no digital versions of these things yet. I do gotta say though, for the incredible amount of work that goes into an animation, the brief return is one of the coolest and most reassuring things I've ever experienced. I got some of the greatest thrills from seeing ten seconds that I've worked on for about 10 hours or so. Animators are INSANE.

Improv? Traffic and Weather has decided to take its future in its hands, based on the suggestions of our noble coach Brian Wilson. We're all looking at our involvement as a professional venture that deserves the time we put into it. Though that may sound pretty self explanatory, we've somewhat been cruising for a while on a rare balance of talent and chemistry that's allowed us to stay on the Improvolympic schedule this long. We're
buckling down as we approach our anniversary, and with our goals clearly in sight (a premium time slot), and our team re-dedicated (showing up early to chat and connect before rehearsals, sitting out of performances if we feel the need, and putting as much into supporting each other in whatever way we can), I can honestly say I've never been more thrilled to be a part of this group.

Yeehaw! So that's the cliffnotes. I'd love to ruminate more specifically, but content production is overtaking the priority of content quality these days.

More to come.

PS - Jen... that's alls I got right now.

I'm creating a monster (or a manager?)

2005-04-20T15:35:00.000-05:00

So I've probably mentioned the initiative I've been undertaking regarding organizing myself better. I have to give big ups to KVA, the super-fiancee who is always on top of planning and has been a big motivator for me to take control of my stuff. I am finally just plain fed up with it all, all the unfinished business I have and all the projects I'm unsure of status on, and so forth. I've always sort of looked at the piles of "to-do's" in my head and have just become paralyzed, wishing there was some panacea to make it all go awy. Perhaps even cyanide.

Enter 43Folders.com and the Getting Things Done" philosophy, written by David Allen. It's a pretty cool "philosophy", and very well oriented to my history of searching out self-help. I'm happy to say I've somewhat implemented the "GTD" philosophy to my own boon. I do believe it's helped me, and it can not be blamed for my small lapse in posting. Merely coincidental. Also coincidental is the fact that I've had a to do item of "blogging" in my list that whole time.

So, here I am finally checking off that to-do, as a brief respite from processing the stuff I've been collecting.

* * *

Cartooning? Going well, I love my classes. It's a lot of fun to make up characters, and to learn about the very fundamentals of animation. I've even got a vhs videotape that now has actual animations I've made. Our first assignment was to make three 75 page flip books, and then after we were done with them, we shot them into the lunchbox sync, which I was able to make a vhs copy from. Although they are flipbooks, and very rudimentary as far as animation is concerned, it's still a very fulfilling thing to be able to pop in a tape, see some stuff move around on the screen, and say, "I made that."

Happy 4/20! more to come.

Look out for that panda!

2005-04-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

Hello, true believers, on Friday night (aside from winning 10 dollars at a small game of Texas Hold'em poker) I went out to see a show, and thought I'd talk about it a little here today.
The show I saw was entitled "Performance of Sleep in one long act without intermission". It's a performance art show that's currently running in the Athenaeum as part of the PAC/edge festival, being put up by a group called improvolympic, with the ensemble Traffic and Weather. I was quite thrilled to see that there were already artists out there in my own town who were cross pollinating drawn and stage media. Add to that the fact that they also cross media by incorporating sound and film, which I've also been enamored with before, and I knew I wanted to see what these guys were up to.

So there I was, reaching out to a creative group here in town to see what they were up to, emailing directors@liveactioncartoonists.org to see if they had any upcoming performances. Little did I know, they were in the middle of the run of one as I emailed. What fortuitous timing! I immediately reserved a spot on my calendar for the April 1st performance, and waited with anticipation.

Fast forward to April 1st, and here I am, making my way to the Athenaeum theater on Southport and Wellington, wondering just what it is I'll see. I sat in the front row, just for the mere fact that I'd wanted to sit as close to center and still allow people still coming in to get to the side seats in case the place packed up. As it turned out, I was the only person to sit in the front row. Whoops, way to draw focus, Mars.

So then, onto the show. What I first see is a bit performance artist-y for me, and I'm reminded of the joke my Life Drawing teacher had told me months before, (How many performance artists does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don't know, I left early) and I'm wondering if the coming to the show was a mistake. However, after a bit, I start to see the themes develop, and it really did have a very nice throughline and story to it, and told in a very smart way. The show itself explores the metaphor of sleep for death, and the varying stages thereof. There are several "kids science" bits in the show that I thought were a clever way of introducing the necessary information that still remained entertaining. When it came to story elements, exposition was handled nicely without treating the audience as dumb. The characters engaged me, and were well played for the most part, though most of the time it was a bit easy to figure out who excelled in drawing or performance, mostly just by what they were doing on stage.

Actually, the most incredible part of this all was the timeliness of the subject matter. Before considering how incredible it was, one has to think about the fact that this show involves writing, casting, rehearsing, and producing complicated multimedia aspects, all of which must have easily taken several months to prepare. With a show that explores the metaphorical relationship between sleep and death, a good part focused on persistent vegetative state. Now I saw it on April 1st, the day after Terry Schiavo died. Now THAT's timing. Fortuitous, maybe, but I've never been one to take coincidences lightly.

So in conclusion, if you're open enough to performance art that leans toward the theater side of things but incorporates well put together multimedia and a panda suit, go see it! It's a lot of fun!

Until next time, more to come...

Best day to surf. EVAR.

2005-04-01T10:09:00.000-06:00

Nerds are such tricksters. I'm gonna post as many april fools gag sites as I's can find. Here goes.
Fark

IMAO

The Register

Homestarruner

The Motley Fool

Google Gulp

Thinkgeek (awexome)

CNet reviews a great new device

mars blows

2005-03-31T14:02:00.000-06:00

mars blows
Originally uploaded by planetfour.

This is a picture of me blowing fire, taken on a cameraphone. A friend and I toyed around with some Bacardi 151 Thanksgiving of 2003, and learned this potentially dangerous, life-shortening practice. Cut to a year and a half later, and he was having a hard time doing it, and I was not. I probably blew about 20 of these over the course of the evening, and cursed the raw inside of my mouth and dehydrating brain the next day.

Yay fire.

Spring, comics, and not being a slacker

2005-03-30T10:07:00.000-06:00

Huzzah! After much waffling on Mother Nature's part, it seems as if spring has finally sprung here in Chicago. Monday was an OK day to bring my winter coat in to work, but yesterday it was brought with me solely for "just-in-case" reasons. As it turns out, while wearing it on the ride home on the el, I felt that familiar, unwelcome, and probably better left unmentioned trickle of sweat down my back, and I knew it was finally time to don the yellow reversible Adidas windbreaker. I'm kind of glad, too, because the winter coat is on its last legs, having two broken zippers, I'm somewhat tied to fastening the front via the series of snaps alone. Sigh. At least it doesn't look as bad as it sounds.
---
So I've had another thought about the blog recently, one that better fits in line with where I'm aiming the compass of my life lately. After seeing things like Alien Loves Predator, Robot Comix, and Spamusement, I've been thoroughly entertained up until the point where I actually smacked my forehead and had a moment of clarity. Why am I not increasing my range of drawn characters, producing more work for my portfolio, and providing some real entertaining content by writing my own simple online comic? I mean, I don't want to be a writer per se, though the term writing can be so loosely applied to so many things, such as a comic strip. But I think you probably get what I'm getting at here, namely that I don't want to be an essayist or a novelist, so why not actually update my blog with cartoons?

OK, so that's the first step of defining my purpose has been in place for some time, now I've envisioned a better outcome, so next up is brainstorming. This will involve me coming up with an actual context for the comic. We shall see what I can come up with. Now to step back for a minute. The beginning of this paragraph most likely sticks out like a sore thumb as sounding all management-y and self-help-y. People, if you've seen the past entry about my relationship with self-help philosophies, then you may suspect I've adopted a new one. You'd be right, I'm trying to mend my slackerly/procrastinator ways. Ironically enough I've been meaning to write about it for about a week now, and hopefully I'll get the chance to soon.

Until then, I'll be brainstorming, and you'll know when I've finally got something drawn.

More to come.

Regarding blogosphere late-bloomers and Chicagoist

2005-03-18T12:18:00.000-06:00

So, I read an entry over at Jason Pettus's website, as I am frequently known to do, and he explained in his journal how trackbacks can work for non-Movable Type bloggers, like yours truly. This is just one more reason why I'm glad Jason's signed on with a mainstream blogging service, and even more specifically, the same one I subscribe to. I'd been wondering for a while how to use trackbacking without having to move to MT.

As it all turns out, trackbacking for non MT bloggers is made possible through Haloscan. I guess it turns out that the haloscan service I signed up for so long ago I can actually put to use once again! It's funny how much the blogosphere has changed since I set one up on a whim almost three years ago. When I first set up my blog, I wanted to get all the services that MT blogs offerred without having to learn their software, so I signed up for a Haloscan account strictly for commenting purposes, and a bloglet account for subscriptions. Now 2 and a half years later, I step back on the scene, and blogger finally has built in comments, and RSS has picked up enough for me to not even need to offer subscriptions (my opinion, at least. Bloglet always gave me headaches anyhow.) Now, that Haloscan account comes in handy for a completely different purpose. Yay!

So I can now report that I've sent my very first trackback ping! What a nerdy sort of glee this sets in me, to know that over at Chicagoist, I've got a little link to the entry here where I referenced one of their entries.

Geeky, yes, but hey, I'm learning nonetheless. My only hope is that I didn't trackback too soon. The entry here didn't really add much to what they were saying, but I just wanted to test it out. If anyone over at chicagoist is reading, thanks for being my guinea pig!

As always, more to come.

Sure, I'd love cheese and mayo!

2005-03-17T14:46:00.000-06:00

CNN.com - Report: Obesity will reverse life expectancy gains - Mar 16, 2005

I just don't get it. People, eat way too much. There's no need for the portions we put in our mouths, and unfortunately, so many people dine out that they don't have the luxury of dictating how much they'll receive in a certain sitting.

However, there is one thing you can do. Stop eating, and wrap the rest up for later. If nothing else, spacing out eating speeds metabolism. Technically, we were never really meant to eat just 3 meals a day, it just works out better that way. I've been packing my lunch lately, and I've been eating a small bag of flavored soy nuts in the morning, a sandwich around noon, and carrots and celery around 2-3 ish. I don't mean to sound high and mighty, because my current woes and difficulties of giving up smoking now make me understand how overweight people really feel in trying to lower the amount they consume.

On the upside, I haven't lived half of an average life yet! Huzzah!

Sophie's Choice

2005-03-17T10:41:00.000-06:00

Chicagoist: Chicago Public Radio Will Split Into 24-Hour Talk and 24-Hour Music Stations

So then, it appears as if WBEZ will be dividing itself into an all music and an all talk station.

Cool! I love both. I've got several programs on WBEZ I listen to, and I start off every day with the age old classic "Morning edition."

The biggest way I can think of that this affects me is that now I'll have one more station to tune in to in the car. My fiancee may not like it as much, but we manage to compromise on frequency modulation quite well, I'd like to think.

I can't wait to see what exciting talk programming this change creates. Hopefully it goes as smooth as they say it will over the next 18 months.

More to come.

I am an anarchist (Joiner tales part 1)

2005-03-14T12:02:00.000-06:00

A lot of times in my life, I've gone along with the group contrary to my own desires to not make waves. It's funny that I now find myself performing in improvisational comedy, where this is one of the golden rules. Digressions aside, these experiences sometimes end up being exciting, like this first installment of...

Adventures in being a joiner, part 1
In January, I learned from a close friend that the man Kerri and I had chosen to marry us was lucky enough to have been born on the day that Motley Crue had decided to bring their 2005 reunion tour through the wonderful Allstate Arena/Rosemont Horizon/Clear Channel venue that lies on the outskirts of our fair hell-raising city of Chicago. It wasn't long before I had agreed to go to my first ever Motley Crue, nay, first ever Metal/Glam/Hair rock concert. I'm sure you can already tell I was going along for the ride, as I can't even tell the proper way to classify Motley Crue. I'm sure purists will be happy, as Motley Crue stands in a class all of their own.

50 dollars. Yup, I was pretty damn sure prior to Thursday, March 10th that I had spent the 50 worst dollars of my life. Friends assured me I'd know every song on the list and it would be a good time nonetheless. I wasn't all that worried about having a good time, I'm the type that doesn't really second guess to much once I commit myself, and 50 dollars was enough of a commitment for me to be optimistic of the fun. As much as I liked to bitch about the cost, as I'm apt to do, I began to have a positive outlook.

With a few days to go until the fateful birthday, I ended up singing the chorus to "Unskinny Bop" repeatedly throughout the day, as it was my only means of anticipation. I knew it was most likely not a Motley Crue song, but I didn't have their arsenal ready enough in my head to pull inspiration for excitement from. That evening I was determined to learn enough to get it right, and lessen any disappointment I would face from inevitably not hearing "Unskinny Bop". Thanks to my lovely former butt-rocking fiancee, the next day consisted of quite a bit of "Home Sweet Home" humming.

When we finally made our way to the show, it was quite a great time indeed. The show was introduced by a little person in some sort of costume who served as MC for the event. The set was great, a big red and white striped tent, with a "Motley Crue" backdrop and a bunch of pyrotechnics just like mom used to make. Girls hung from the ceiling defying gravity, and grinded on the stage from time to time. Quite some sights to see.

All of the old classics were played (save for "Smokin in the Boys Room"), and the antics were top notch and gave me a great appreciation for this age-old, classy sub-genre of music. There was a fun little claymation piece to kick off the whole show, whose premise seemed a bit last minute, but it was fun nonetheless. The opener was "Shout at the Devil," and I still don't think I've seen a more grandiose mass-use of the index and pinky fingers. The second set began with "Girls Girls Girls", and eventually, Tommy Lee both flew around above the stage, and demanded girls' tops be raised for the Titty-
Cam. My fiancee came away (safely) learning that if Tommy Lee asks you to show your tits, you do, as every girl in the camera's lens learned via experience. The encore was a fun pair of covers, Helter Skelter, and Anarchy in the UK. Good times, man, good times.

So, being a joiner isn't all that bad. I don't know if I would have ever seen such a show in my life if I wasn't such an easily-influenced person. Viva la group mentality.

Axl Rose said it best

2005-03-09T10:19:00.000-06:00

At long last, I'm getting to write about that virtue that I find myself running to for solace so frequently in this interdependent, interconnected, internet-enabled world, patience. As funny as it is, I considered abandoning the idea of writing about it altogether as it had almost seemed as if the idea had passed. Had I had patience, I would have just put it aside until I was blatantly reminded of how necessary it is this morning.

We all could use a hell of a lot more patience in our day to day lives. That's not to say anything is wrong with motivated, driven, "type A" people, In all honesty, at times I'm quite envious of these kinds of people, and at times I am one of these people. It's just that certain things end up being beyond our control, and to fret over such things will get you absolutely nowhere. When things are out of your hands, you have to rely on a little something called patience.

For instance, I write these blog entries that are sometimes long and a bit drawn out, but I want the writing I contribute to my online journal to actually have some cohesion to it. I could log in, and write "This lady cut me off this morning, funny enough, she ended up downtown at the same time as me" and publish and just be done with it. However, I know that in order for this blog to serve as a place for me to journal as well as a place for me to sit and think about what's been going on, it takes actual patience to sit and write a cohesive piece. Of course, this is not to say more words are better, I could probably sum up my feelings in a lot shorter and more concise an entry, but it would still take the patience of thinking out what I was trying to get at to actually do that. Instead, I opt to verbalize the thought process in these luscious paragraphs you're feasting your eyes on.

However, most may not even have the patience to read all of this entry. What can I say. There are people who can't have the patience to sit and listen to full detailed explanations in meetings, there are those who don't have the patience for someone to get off the train before they get on. There are also people who don't do these things because they just don't care. I hope to never be any of those people. Are you?

That's about all I have the patience to say about patience right now. Got any stories about patience or lack thereof? Write them in below or drop me a line at planetfour at gmail dot com. Until then, I assure you that there's more to come.

Your new Hero Ozzy says Incest is cool!

2005-03-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

Oh god, I was gonna blog something much cooler today. In the meantime, just... God. Click it.

fightingwords: dubya tee eff

Patience is a virtue

2005-03-03T15:54:00.000-06:00

This morning, riding in on the train, I wanted to write a bit about patience. Ironically enough, I'll ask you to wait for that entry, as I finally tell you about the platypus.

First, here's a little backstory for those who haven't read all my archives (how dare you. yes you). About a year ago, I decided that there was no way I was going to be able to motivate myself to work on animation in my off hours more than by having an outside motivation, so I decided to sign up for classes and work towards a bachelor of fine arts degree. My plan was, and still is, to build up enough of a portfolio in the time I have out of the office to be able to transition out of the field of data analysis some day and into a creative field.

I'm not entirely picky when it comes to creativity either. All electronic media and forms of animation fascinate me, and I'd love getting a job creating publications, web sites, online animations, filmed animations, or anything else down that vein. Basically visual communication, but when signing up for school, I didn't want to deny my one true love of cartooning, so I went ahead and entered into the Illinois Institute of Art's media arts and animation degree program. It's great, I'm taking classes learning the artistic fundamentals I need to become an animator, meeting many people younger than me who have the drive and not the focus, and conversely, the select few who are either older, or younger but with the drive and focus.

Flash forward a year (no pun intended, for any who actually got the pun. Pettus, I'm looking at you.) and I'm trucking along in my new routine, going to classes and creating projects I never would have on my own, when one day, in the student lounge (working on one such project for 3D design), I see something intriguing. It's a sign stating "the revolution will be animated" and it has a disney-esque hand holding what appears to be a black bar with some white spots on it. It also had a date, a time, and a room number, and that was all. I decided sure, now's as good of a time to start networking as any.

Well, that first meeting in January had a bit of a low turnout. When I came to the second meeting, we had a better turnout and an instructor from the department sit in who was actually the club's advisor, Patrick Welch. He suggested we watch Anijam, and consider doing a similar collaborative project. Eventually, after a few more meetings, we settled on a group of students who would be participating in the project, and set out to collaborate.

It is quite exhilarating diving into the project, while also being the biggest newbie of the group. Funny enough, I first learned there that the black bar in the logo was a pegbar, which is a tool used in traditional animation. Most of my experience in animation has been through Macromedia's Flash, so I don't have much familiarity of the nuances of traditional drawn animation, though I'm picking them up fast. For instance, I now know what a "lunchbox" is, in industry terms. All of this ignorance is because I've yet to start my animation specific courses, though I will in April. Needless to say, I can't wait, and I'm excited I'll have a leg up when I get there.

So the actual project itself is pretty neat. All of the animators got together last Friday to draw their "last frames". Actually, before I explain that, I'll explain that each of us is producing about five to seven seconds of animation for the short, and all of these segments will be strung together sequentially to be shown at once. Now then, in order for this to actually have some sort of continuous flow, there has to be some collaboration between the animators so that once my 7 seconds end, for example, the main character doesn't jump to a total new location on the screen and style of drawing in the very next frame.

So, the first step we all did was to draw our final frames. We all drew final frames, and then when we were done, we made another copy of them and placed them in a pile. We then picked a frame from the pile that would serve as our starting frame. So now, at this point, we have a beginning of a cigar smoking platypus in some scene, and a final frame that we drew, and anything can happen in the 5 to 7 seconds between. When all is done, we will have one crazy little cartoon.

I can't wait to see it. It should be at least a month and a half or so before that happens, though. You shall be kept up to date.

Until I write about patience, More to come.

That oh so familiar lure of self help

2005-03-02T16:34:00.000-06:00

"I am a self-help addict." I say it quite often. It's almost an ironic statement in and of itself. How much am I really helping myself if I'm addicted to the thing that's supposed to be helping me? Oh how I love paradoxes. Seriously, I do. I'm going to put that one on hold until the end of this entry, though, as I want to talk about it more in depth later.

With my addiction out in the open, I want to mention a book/philosophy that's recently come to my attention that has been around for quite some time. It's called "The Four Agreements," and it sounds good to me, like most self help books do when I first hear of them.

The actual four agreements are simple: be impeccable with your word, don't make assumptions, always do your best, and don't take anything personally. Seems like a simple enough plan, and like something that could actually help you out, right? Upon first glance, it seems like all the problems in my life could be attributed to one of these four things. It seems as if this book would be a great help to my life.

Now let me contradict myself here. I'm not planning on reading this book in the foreseeable future. Currently, I'm quite busy, and I've got another book on the way, (thank you Amazon, and the long overdue impetus that unfortunately turned out to be Hunter S. Thompson's death) so frankly, I don't think I could fit it in. Plus, I'm not entirely sold on self-help's effectiveness. Let me explain that a bit, as I've been dying to for the entirety of this post.

I've read all sorts of self help books, constantly trying to find the one that will make it all click. Most recently, it was Zen and the Art of making a living, prior to that First Things First, and so on. I guess the reason I'm a little leery of the self help methods is due to the fact that I'm always dying to read them. I mean, if self-help books were able to be implemented thoroughly, why would I ever need to read another? I should just be fixed, right?

Sure, one could say that the path to true self help is a never-ending one, but I should at least gain a little out of each book I read, right? What do I think I should gain? I don't know, some process to make my selkf-doubt evaporate, to make me confident that I'm doing everything right. I guess no one can tell me that but me, but I look back at the volumes I've read and I just see a bunch of pages and ideas, and no processes. God, do I love me some processes.

Eh, a bunch of pessimistic babble today, readers. Enjoy?

No worries, more to come.

Oh, and I will tell the story of the platypus I referred to in an earlier post soon, not to hype it up, but to provide other closure-fiends like myself with a glimmer of hope.

Horray for Geeks

2005-03-01T09:37:00.000-06:00

Wil Wheaton kicks ass. I'll just say it. Stand By Me has always been one of my favorite movies. For a long time it was actually my number one favorite, I'm just not sure I can say that anymore with other great classics out there. I haven't made a list in a long time, but it's definitely up there if not at the top. Regardless, that and the fact that I used to be a big Star Trek: The Next Generation fan were the main reasons he's always held a special place in my heart.

That is, until about 2 years ago or so when I found out he's been keeping a fairly popular blog online, which was about when my blog was getting up and running. Needless to say, this just elevated the fine young Mr Wheaton in my eyes. After reading for a bit, I found out he's a bit of a Texas Hold'em nut, and an incredibly self-aware writer, unashamed of geek status, and happily living as a family with his wife and step-children out in California. Huzzah for Wil! Don't let Hollywood's fickle nature of assigning "has-been" status get you down!

Well, his image got yet another upgrade in my eyes when I saw he had a spot on one of VH1's specials, "My Coolest Years: Geeks". I got to thinking this was quite a promising feature for Wil to play, as VH1 seems to be the network for up-and-comers and rebounders to sit and crack wise in front of a video camera for cheap collage-style programming these days. With all that judgement of WW happening, imagine my surprise when I saw this morning that Wil will be in an upcoming episode of CSI. Good for him.

Now if I could only get some decent publicity to my blog and get some recognition off it, so I could quit analyzing data by day, we'd be all set here.

More to come.

RSS like a muhfugg

2005-02-25T14:50:00.000-06:00

So my buddy Jason Pettus (he's also set up a blogger account recently) has been getting into Bloglines and RSS feeds lately. It's funny, because I've been really interested in them lately too. What's even better is that he doesn't have a day job and therefore spends hours scouring relevent documentation and explaining it on his blog, and I reap the benefits by learning how to implement something I've wanted to for a while, namely setting up my own list of feeds to follow on my dusty Bloglines account.

So I've started, and it's pretty awesome. The main goal is to have one place, a virtual home base, if you will, to go to to get new content to read so I don't have to be surfing to a bunch of different sites all the time. So far I've got feeds for design jobs, community blogs, individual blogs, and improviser blogs. Cool cool stuff. I wish there was some way to also get this via my AvantGo subscription, though I'm not sure if it's possible. That would be great because I'd be able to sync up in the morning and read the previous day's content throughout the day.

Eh, I'm slowly getting myself reaccustomed to existence on the intarweb, I sort of wish I had never really stepped away for a bit. Maybe if that was the case I'd have my own personal website with examples of my work set up, which I'm intermittently in the process of doing right now. Sigh.

In any event, short entry for today I guess. Perhaps next week I'll have an update on the animation project I'll be starting that includes a cigar-smoking duckbilled platypus.

More to come.

No time for little things

2005-02-22T15:05:00.000-06:00

Hey all of you out there in intarweb land... a little note regarding spare time from a man with little time to spare. I know nothing's changed since I took on improv and college in my outside life, but I definitely feel like a piece of silly putty that's starting to get little stress-holes in its midsection after being pulled between two little grubby hands. Well, the one change would be the upcoming wedding, but that was put out there at about the same time as school.

I can't help but keep my "eye on the prize," though, as I envision a future where subsistence is solely based on creative services and talents. It's out there, I know it is. In the meantime, I keep plugging along at the chores, doing whatever day to day tasks that less time-committed people commit more time to in the little time I can actually commit. (I know that sentence is somewhat confusing, and I kept in for that reason. Sadistic, I know.)

A perfect example of this is an organization project I'm currently trying to bring to a close in our house. Anyone who knows myself and Kerri well will know that Kerri is easily the more organized of the two of us. I've often kicked myself repeatedly in awe of her ability to keep everything straight. Well, recently, I decided to stop envying her and to start learning from her. The first step was the office in the house since that's where most of the detritus I create ends up. It's winding down now, but there has been a growing amount of bags of consolidated detritus toward the back exit to our stairwell. I just haven't had the chance yet to bring all this crap down to the alley. Soon enough, I hope.

Once I've managed to amass enough stolen bits of time from my schedule to finally get the house into a sort of order that has places for everything and everything in their places, I think the maintenance will be a lot easier. Sure, all this probably sounds quite simplistic and common to most any person, but I've never really had any sense of organization instilled in me. I'm getting much better with time management, and I hope to apply similar organizational techniques into the actual spatial aspects of my environment. One day, all of this will be self nature enough to me so I can take on more projects and not be overwhelmed by them. There may be no correlation between the environment and the work, but it just seems to me like there would be, intuitively.

---

In other news, since I typed that comment about keeping my eye on the prize earlier today, I think I quite possibly may have found a position online today that would actually be a nice transition from my current work to that of the world of design. I was beginning to doubt such a connection even existed. However, I'm still not getting pie-eyed over one simple potential opportunity out there, but I am going to explore it to see where it leads me. Of course, I'll bring you right along.

More to come.

PS. Blogger's "BlogThis" spellchecker sux.

2005-02-16T12:44:00.000-06:00

I'm always an excellent student. This week I've been in class for advanced SQL programming, and I'm doing smashingly, as I should have expected. My only question usually is whether or not I'll be able to apply the learning to the actual practices and procedures. In analytical work like my current paying position, I'm not entirely worried, I'll be able to query the database more powerfully when I leave this class, there's no doubt in my mind about that. It does provide me with a scary analogy to my current "5 to 9" ambitions.

It's something that's been rattling around in my head recently, as I'm trucking along at the Illinois Institute of Arts. It's fairly easy to get caught up in the day to day, quarter to quarter, and now, year to year (yup, I've almost been at school there for a year) activities of school, having found a balance between it and work, and lose sight of the world beyond those walls. I'm grooming myself for a career in animation, but is school a goal in and of itself, or a means to an end?

Well obviously, its a means to an end, namely satisfaction in career placement, but I don't think I ever viewed it like that previously. That's why I'm glad I'm in school now that I've matured. I take it at my own pace, and I treat it very importantly, and I create quality work, comparitively to my peers.

Those are really just means to the end of finishing school. I can't really lose sight of what comes afterwards. I really haven't, though. I've always known that some day down the line, I'll need to take a gigantic pay cut, due to the fact that the profession I'm moving into just doesn't pay as much as the profession I'm in now. In addition to that, I'm sure there'll be some climbing associated with it in the early years, as well. On top of that, there'll probably be an unpaid internship to kick things all off, so I'm basically looking at a point down the road where I'll be making nowhere near as much as I do currently.

That much I've just sort of assumed. What I've tossed around for a while, though, (being in this current situation as many others who work day jobs they are unsatisfied with are in) is whether it would be better to go through that period now, or whether I should wait until I'm actually completed with my education. It's a really hard question to answer.

Basically it amounts to two scenarios (and ironically enough, other work/school people I've spoken with have this same "Sophie's Choice" to deal with). First, I could truck along, finish school, which would probably take me another three years at the pace I have to take if I'm working 40 hours a week, and then make the big downgrade to a creative position. The downfall to this side of the coin is that by that time, I could have a kid, a house, and who knows what other financial obligations. I hate to be negative about such things that are usually considered advancements of one's life, but they could seriously impact me in that way in the future. The other scenario would be to quit my current job, become a full time student, and finish school faster so I could get into the creative position quicker. The downside to this scenario is glaring. Finances who knows what it would be like to live off of student loans/grants, if it would be even possible, how it would work out with internships, part time work, and so forth.

I donm't see this decision being made soon, as the first and foremost focus in my life currently has to be my marriage to Kerri. And regardless of the time I dedicate to each of my obligations, it truly is the next big step, and I don't plan on changing any of the delicate balances in my life until we've finally joined forever.

---
Almost 4 whole days of non smoking. More to come.

I saved four hours

2005-02-14T12:21:00.000-06:00

I've saved about 6.50 and not smoked about 27 cigarettes in the day and a half or so that I''ve been quit. I joined up at a cool site called quitnet.com about a month or so ago when I made the decision to quit. Now that the date is here, I can see how much money, life, and cigarettes I've saved/ avoided as the time ticks by.

I'd hate to jinx it, but it hasn't been as hard as its been in the past for me. I think I could really be ready this time. Don't get me wrong, I still think about grabbing a cigarette about a hundred times a day, but then I just think to myself, "No, I don't smoke now. I may smoke in the future, but I don't smoke right now." Maybe its some Zen state I've hit on, I have no idea, I just wish it came this easily for everyone else in the world. The Quitnet forums are literally filled with tons of people who are stressed out non-stop. So I don't want to spoil anyone elses quit either, so I just want to let them all know I'm here for them. First and foremost, my number one homegirl KVA. Hope she's doin' OK right now.

---

This weekend also saw the office in our place explode, too. My crap is EVERYWHERE. What's worse, is that I'm now organizing it all, and have no idea where my parent's Christmas check went. I'm going to keep looking, in hopes I'll be able to pay for what was an awesome weekend with Kerri.

What a girl.

She's helping me get organized, she's quit smoking with me, and she's sweet AND sexy as all hell. What a lucky guy.

the gift to end all gifts

2005-02-10T15:02:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was my birthday. It started off OK, just the normal work day routine, treasuring the cigarettes I smoked, with the knowledge of impending cessation in the front of my head. I'll be doing that again today, as today will be the last day I smoke at work, ever. I can foresee one hell of an uphill struggle.

Anyhow, after work at BCBS, there was more work at home on freelance projects, then it was finally time for birthday present and dinner. It was quite fun, before dinner, I opened the gift, and let me tell you, it rocked hard core. First off, it was wrapped in an exquisite purple foil wrapping with a very nice purple satin ribbon, and there was a card that Kerri had conveyed to the distributor, which he had in turn hand-written by himself. It was very sweet, made mention of the upcoming nuptials, and almost brought a tear to my eye. I delicately untied the ribbon and opened the exquisite wrapping to reveal the back of a frame with an envelope attached.

As I turned it over, I noticed there was a piece of protective translucent covering over the glass, but I could somewhat make out a dingy background behind it, with a red haired figure standing on the right hand side of the frame. I immediately recognized the figure as Lois Griffin, matriarch of the zany and popular Griffin family from the animated TV show "Family Guy".

Needless to say, I loved this gift. It was awesome, and I consider it one more step towards building my own little animation room I've wanted to create for years. One other great thing about the print selection itself is that it is a scene that has always cracked Kerri and I up on the couch whenever we watch the show at home. Check this bad boy out below.

More to come.

Hey stranger

2005-02-08T10:24:00.000-06:00

5 more days of nicotine, carbon monoxide, and carbon based smoke consumption. I don't know which is scarier... the fact that I've been doing it for just over 10 years, or the fact that I am dreading the day I stop.

So tomorrow's my birthday, and I've decided with Kerri and I getting married this summer, her wanting to quit, and Chinese New Year falling on my birthday, it's enough of an impetus for me to quit this filthy habit. Kerri's wholeheartedly decided to join the fun as well. Brava, girl! We are approaching it realistically, though. We've decided to make the quit date actually Sunday, as I'm sure there'll be a night of drinks with friends to celebrate my 29th year, and Saturday's when that's going to happen. Rather than quitting on Thursday and setting ourselves up for defeat on Saturday, we've opted to quit on Sunday, and not really leave the house for parties/bar trips/social gatherings with smoking friends for a couple of weeks.

Also in preparation of the big day, I'll be taking the day off from work this Friday to clean for a two fold reason. One, I want to start this non-smoking venture as fresh as I possibly can, so I intend to clean, dust, do laundry, maybe even get a hair cut all with the intent of ridding buried-in smoke, and two, Kerri is helping me become a organized, proactive person in my personal spaces, and I'd like to establish a good baseline from which I can start maintaining some new productivity practices I'm putting in place. God, I swear I'm not as dull as that second point makes me sound, it's basically a fancy way of saying "Clean up after yourself, Mars."

So along with all these new changes, I figured I might as well blog a little, too. Sorry to surpass the obligatory, "Wow, it's been so long, here's what's been up" post. I'm sure the information will come out bit by bit in context. There have been a lot of changes, mostly awesome ones, and I'll speak about them as the days go on. For now, I thought it may help me monitor my progress and get things out in words if I started journaling again.

So that's the whole of what I had to say right now, but I'm surely hoping I can keep up a steady schedule and see you again soon.

More to come.

God, I love credit cards

2004-03-03T15:49:00.000-06:00

Hold on one minute. I’m fully aware of exactly how dangerous that sounds. I guess I should have followed up with, “but not in a ‘spend-all-my-credit-with-no-sign-of-ever-making-that-much-money-anyway’ kind of way.” I love credit cards because they cower to threats. Now, that’s more of an “I’m-Donald-Trump-and-will-smite-all-my-competitors” way. Hmmm.

Before digress and analyze my morals, let me say that I’ve been playing the credit card game for years. Several self-deemed and genuine necessities have put me here. Luckily we’re not talking about insane Best Buy or Barney’s shopping sprees. My credit card expenses have generally been limited to medical and automotive insurance deductibles, airfares, computers, and Christmas gifts. I rarely buy much for myself with plastic, unless it’s a big one-time purchase or an emergency.

Now why oh why do I love the companies themselves? Well, let me tell you. If you ever want a lower interest rate, here are some simple instructions.

Step 1. Go out and charge up a storm. Go for it. Consumption makes you happy.
Step 2. Now then. If you’re a person in good standing with the credit card companies (not over your limit or late on your payment. If you fall into either of these categories, step 1 was not for you), call them and tell them that you want to close your account. That should prompt the customer service associate to forward your call to an “Account Specialist.” Get ready, because it’s fun time.
Step 3. When you get connected with the Account Specialist, tell them you wish to cancel your account because you’ve had some better offers.
Step 4. Get buttered up by Account Specialist.
Step 5. Listen to their offer. If you don’t like it, tell them so and you might get something better.
Step 6. If you don’t get a better offer, and you’re really worried about all this interest on this outstanding balance, maybe you actually should close the account anyway.

Yes, it is a beautiful thing. As long as you have access to their money, and they have access to charge you for that, the big ol’ banks are happy.

Using this spectacular method, I’ve shifted around my credit card balance for years. I always charge on the card with the lowest purchase APR, and then when I have a bit of a load on that card, I transfer it to some 0% APR card I find. I’m getting these things in the mail all the time anyway; I may as well use them to save some money.

But for God’s sake people, don’t abuse my example to live beyond your means.

That’s it for now, More to come…

Shades of Grey - A Grey album review

2004-02-26T11:36:00.000-06:00

copied from www.Blogcritics.org

There's been much talk about copyright infringement as of late (here and here, for example) and more specifically, DJ Dangermouse's recent project, The Grey Album (here and here, for example).

Well, as the saying goes, no publicity is bad publicity. I was never a DJ Dangermouse listener prior to this whole controversy, but I've always loved the Beatles' White Album, DJ music in general, and hip-hop. This project was a must-listen for me as soon as I heard about it.

Let me put the hubbub aside for a moment and talk a bit about the album itself, and how it stands up on its own two feet. Briefly, for those who haven't heard of the album yet, what DJ Danger Mouse did is to take an a capella version of Jay Z's The Black Album, and put those lyrics over beats created from samples taken from The Beatles' The White Album. The result works very well, and truly shows DJ Danger Mouse's abilities as a DJ and producer.

The beats created are very well put together, and really nice to hear, since sampling of the Beatles works is such a big no-no. The "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" sample fits perfectly over the lyrics to Jigga's "What More Can I Say". The choruses meld together quite nicely to complement each other. Danger Mouse's dropouts are perfect punctuation for Jigga's lyrics. I honestly got goose bumps. 99 Problems displays a nice fusion of select snippets from "Wild Honey Pie" and "Helter Skelter." The beat on "Dirt Off your Shoulder" is almost like John Lennon meets Bobby McFerrin. Danger Mouse uses a very intelligent use of vocal non-verbal sounds (from "Julia") over a very up-tempo, dirty south reminiscent beat. This track is a wonderful contrast to the very lovely and somber "Julia". On "Allure," "Dear Prudence"'s guitar is looped with predominant kicks and a crash to create a wonderfully melodic beat. Overall, Danger Mouse undoubtedly put a lot of thought into the actual production of the beats and matching them to tracks.

All in all, the clarity is a little less than usually desirable, but one must remember that an album like this can't really be compared to major label recordings. Since the predominant distribution for this album is via unauthorized internet sites, you can't really be sure of the source. I also wonder about the equipment used to produce the source. Aside from that, Jay-Z’s not one of my favorite emcees, but a good beat does a lot to make up for that, and this album is a wonderful example.

All in all, my recommendation would be to definitely listen to this if you’re a fan of one album and at least impartial to the other. The album is currently available at illegal-art.org.

aaah, the intarweb

2004-01-27T11:38:00.000-06:00

What a blast I had on Friday night. As far as my improv performance, I know I denied Ryan at least once, I was a little slow to catch up in the opening, and I made a couple call-out moves/unnecessary exposition. As far as a team, we could've edited a bit quicker. It was all one bitchin fun time, though. I'm excited to have so many great peeps to play with. I've now performed on the IO cabaret stage. The team, Pettus, Kerri, and I all ended up staying out until far too late and had a debaucherous time as well. What fun!

There was a bit of an unexpected move by our competition, though. I guess they found this humble little corner of the intarweb I call my own. I can only assume that they googled Stewtopia. Well, Stewtopia got handed a bunch of printouts of the Underdog pic before the show. Personally, I was excited to see someone actually read my blog.

Needless to say, the psych out technique did not sway the droves of people we had invited out to see our first show. We won the vote on a pretty big margin. I didn't watch the Mike Enriquez Experience set, but heard from a bunch of people that they were funny. Huzzah! Win-win baby!

Competitive improvisation. Hmmm... we'll try it again March 12.

Until then, more to come.

Wow, that was quick

2004-01-21T12:37:00.000-06:00

Told ya so (clicky clicky, ma).

I swear I didn't know about this, I wrote the last entry yesterday and posted it today.

stewtopia!!

2004-01-21T09:28:00.000-06:00

Well, this friday marks my first appearance on the improv scene to an audience. Exciting. Frightening. Inevitable.

Yup, I'm very excited I get to work with a group of such great talents. I think we manage to weave together some really neat stuff and I think an audience is exactly what we need. Should be a great time.

We’ll be up in the Cagematch at IO, going against the Mike Enriquez Experience.

Here’s another team member, and here’s his little ole stewtopia teampage.

Here’s another team member (I helped him to create and optimize the flash opener to his site).

Here’s another team member.

Here’s a picture of The Mike Enriquez Experience. teeheehee...

***

Oh yeah, I wanted to make one prediction for the day, too. I predict that the RIAA will file some more file trading suits in the next 4 weeks. Let’s see what happens.

The sweetest thing

2004-01-08T18:21:00.000-06:00

OK, I know, I'm awful at posting. I've been meaning to post this paltry entry since tuesday... such a slacker... tsk tsk tsk

Monday night, I arrived to Stewtopia practice a bit early. I therefore decided I wanted to have a coffee. Off I went on a search for the life-giving nectar.

Once I got to Dunkin Donuts, I decided I would also benefit from a snack, as I had had a very small dinner. I began to peruse what kind of selection was available at 9:50 on a Monday evening.

One of the trays read simply 'Blueberry'.

"What is that blueberry? Is it a blueberry scone, or something?" I said.
"Blueberry buttermilk," said the cashier.
"I'm sorry, blueberry what?" I asked, having never heard buttermilk used to describe a solid noun.
"Blueberry buttermilk," said the cashier.
"Sounds good enough to me," I excitedly said, not knowing what kind of baked good I was about to purchase.

Ladies and gentlemen, I come to you with good news. The blueberry buttermilk is perfect. It has the shape of a scone, the sweetness of a bowtie, the glaze of two donuts, and yet it is not overly soft.

Try one. I beg of you.

More to come...

That Fresh Concert Feeling

2003-11-11T12:16:00.000-06:00

Sunday night I finally got to see Ween after not seeing them in three years. Good times, good times. Those who don’t know Ween should know that they will fit into one of two categories: those who love Ween, or those who are scared by Ween. Well, to be honest, not everyone who doesn’t like Ween is scared by them, but they really are a “love them or leave them” kind of band, and if you leave them, you usually leave them way back in the dust.

Needless to say (ahhh, the statement that screams “I’m about to tell you something”), it was quite a blast for us “love them” types. The show was the third in a three night stand they pulled at the Vic Theatre over the weekend. Being a Sunday show, I think they were even still selling tickets when my friend Eric and I arrived. They added the date at the last minute due to the first two shows selling so well. Plus, it was taped in addition to Saturday’s show for an upcoming DVD. Hell yeah!

Now let me just say, Ween are the biggest rock stars on the planet. Gene and Dean are just incredible at the ridiculous music they produce. I’ve always been attracted to groups who don’t put so much weight on “meaningful” lyrics. For that reason among others, Ween was always bound to be a favorite of mine. I like They Might Be Giants, Beck, and Phish partly for the same reason. It’s great to hear a band that can play the hell out of a song and put complete emotion into tunes that, when broken down to the actual lyrics, leave you thinking, “What the hell did they just say?”

So now I have that fresh concert feeling, where all you can think about is how great the verses sounded coming through a huge freaking sound system, how the guitarist looks when he’s playing a solo, how all the band members interact in between tunes, and so on. Aaaaah. That’s why I go, friends, I’m a junky for that fresh concert feeling.

Let me tell you, too, Ween does not disappoint in that area.

Seeing Ween live is a pretty damn unique experience, concert-wise. You will not get a break from the rocking. Not to say they don't put together a good mix of themes, the point is, these bastards play upwards of two and a half hours without a set break. You also can't help but feel like your being brainwashed by Gene Ween. Gener has an incredible range, which is on display in just about every tune he sings. The hypnosis effect comes into play when you actually watch his hand motions and eyes (which I swear are set back at least a foot in his head) as he sings the lyrics. He feels the nonsense he's spewing, and sells it very well. You could very easily miss all that watching Dean play lead guitar, though. This man's best solos are played hunched completely over, with his guitar hovering like three effing inches above the stage. I could watch another show right now, can you tell?

So that's the Ween show. Now here's what us Sunday night fans were treated to:

Buckingham Green
HIV Song
Spinal Meningitis
Baby Bitch
Take Me Away
Wavin' My Dick In the Wind
Mr Richard Smoker
Even if You Don't
Voodoo Lady
Springtheme
Roses Are Free
I Don't Want It
Little Daisies
Capt. Fantasy
You Fucked Up
Dr. Rock
Tear For Eddie
The Argus
Can't Put My Finger On It
Puerto Rican Power
Zoloft
Ocean Man
Pandy Fackler
Freedom of '76
Frank
She Fucks Me
Don't Laugh I Love you
Fluffy

Encore
Don't Get Too Close (To My Fantasy)
These Eyes keyboard tease
Mr. Won't You Please Help My Pony
If You Could Save Yourself

So that's my Sunday night. Quite a fun time, long overdue, and not quite enough Ween. Can there ever truly be enough, though?

More to come.

Maddy Billison

2003-11-07T14:02:00.000-06:00

Well, here we go again, back to school. I've recently come to the conclusion that I can no longer ignore the right hemisphere of my brain. Since moving to this wonderful town, I've been so enthralled by my creativity (as egotistical as that sounds) that I've been a spoken word poet, playwright, screenwriter, narrator of a small play, director of a short film, director of photography for another, founding member of a film company, improviser, flash designer, blogger, and flash animator. Whew! You know, that's the first time I've broken it down like that. But I digress. What I'm trying to say is that being in a town of so much artistic stimulus has left me extremely restless and asking myself the all too familiar question of 'what do I want to do with the rest of my life?'

The answer, as much of career suicide as it sounds, is not 'analyze HRIS data'. It would be so easy to live out the rest of my life, career hopping, or working toward a pension, or even crawling my way up to a nice six-figure salary someday if that was the answer.

That's why I say I just can't ignore it anymore. I really do need to follow what I'm passionate about. I've always sort of known that it was something creative. The hard part was pinpointing what that was. At least I had it pinpointed to 50 percent of my brain.

So I've now applied to a small design, fashion, and culinary specialty school here in Chicago. If all goes well, come January, I'll be starting a BFA program at the Illinois Institute of Art in a Media Arts and Animation program.

One good thing is all the general education requirements I'll get to skip due to my existing BS from UConn. Also, it's a school that has a lot of enrollment from people in my 'mid-career, needing a drastic career change' situation, so I won't necessarily feel like I'm eighty in class. The best part, besides working toward something I enjoy, of course, is that I have a little leeway and can change my 'major' a bit into the program because of all the intro courses that the different programs share.

Yes indeed, it's a good time to be me... soon to be busy and happy.

Drop me a comment to let me know what you think. I know some people have been visiting, as I've consistently gotten hits lately. I have been less than diligent about updating, but am very glad to know people have been visiting my home out here on the web.

Know this, though, definitely more to come (god, I always say that)...

Improvving... wait, that is a verb, right?

2003-09-16T14:56:00.001-05:00

So oh yeah, I'm an improviser now.

I keep meaning to write about my new venture into improvisation. Now that I've been at it for a bit over four months, I think it's about time I did.

Ever since I've been a kid, I've loved Saturday Night Live. I even used to stay up and watch it with my mom. As I progressed into college, where I started getting comedy central, I became a big fan of the original 'whose line is it anyway?’ the British comedy show that sparked my interest in improv in general. The offbeat humor always appealed to me, as it seemed to for so many of my friends, as well. All the other sketch shows followed suit along the way, too, I loved In Living Color, Tracey Ullman, Mad TV, and still do.

Had I known Chicago was the improv capital of the world, I would have seen my eventual participation coming a mile away. I never expected to get involved in performance when I was growing up, but it did always appeal to me. I was in a couple bands, performed as a spoken word poet, and even took a part in a play when I first moved to Chicago. I moved here knowing only theater folk, and pretty much transplanted myself into a group of performance-oriented artists. The truest quote I heard in my first few months living here was, 'Don't worry, these actors will drag you in too,' said to me by now-fellow RoxBox company member, Breon Bliss.

Now, here I am, a couple years later, still hanging around all of these artistic people, and throwing my hat in the improvisational ring. I am having a blast. I've been told I have great instincts and support a scene well, and also that I've got some physical crutches and that I could stand to initiate more. All are good criticisms, and I'm hoping I can use them all someday to create a coherent piece on stage out of thin air. Now I just need to figure out, as a newbie to this community, what exactly that entails. I know I’ll eventually have to go out on auditions, commingle with the rest of the improv community, and do some shows with some fellow improvisers, which I’m completely open to explore. It just has to eventually make its way to actually happening if I want to have some real fun in this exciting artform.

Of course, you'll hear about it when that happens, meanwhile, more to come!

2003-09-16T14:56:00.000-05:00

Improvving... is that really a verb?

2003-09-16T14:54:00.000-05:00

2003-08-22T15:37:00.000-05:00

I try to get out, but they keep dragging me back.

Reality shows, that is. I thought I'd talk a bit about the American phenomenon that has become quite the habit, and why I dislike them.

First off, let me say that there's no way I could approach either the pro or con side of this argument objectively or unbiased (hmmm... or, Fair & Balanced for you Franken fans). For one reason, I (as someone who dabbles in filmmaking currently) have quite the use for good, fictional scripts. Second, because I find myself watching more reality TV than I'd care to admit. That's right, I keep trying to get out, but they keep dragging me back in.

Why do I dislike reality shows, then, you may ask? Well, they're really counterproductive to art, frankly. Television is pretty much the biggest commercial outlet for artists, in that it seems to me to be the only art that many Americans even see anymore. Of course this isn't the preferable case, and I do realize how much movies are still a great money-maker, but by and large, I don't really talk to a lot of Americans outside my own circle that support the arts that much. So to see the writers, actors, lighting and set designers (TV artists) stripped away from the one artistic venue most supported by the vast working-middle class makes me feel a little sad for the old art of story-telling. That's not even mentioning the lowest-common-denominator aspect that so many of these shows provide as entertainment.

Now that I've gotten that rant off of my chest, allow me to divulge my most recent guilty pleasures.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

The few episodes I've seen of this show have definitely entertained me. A funny, fast-paced show, I love seeing what the 'Fab 5' does to a person's life, it's literally a complete 180. They are pretty damn funny while they're doing it, too.

What I'd really love to see, though, is a recap. You can teach a man to fish, but is he really going to keep fishing? Luckily, I don't have to worry about a long-term addiction to this show, as I don't have cable, and its appearance on NBC has strictly been summer filler.

The Restaurant

I'm not entirely sure how I got hooked on this one, but it's been fun as well. The restaurant business is inherently dramatic, and it's been great to watch 'Rocco's' develop. It helps, too, when there are a lot of problems for the editors to play with.

The season finale is actually this week, so this could be the last we see of Rocco's. The producers still haven't decided whether to follow Rocco's or start trailing a whole new upstart. I'm on the edge of my seat, aren't you?

Banzai

What can I say, I love bizarre humor, I love spoofs, and I love audience interactivity. This one was bound to be a hit with me.

So yeah, I guess you can all call me a hypocrite now. I'm trying to quit, I swear!!!

More to come.

2003-06-25T11:26:00.000-05:00

The biggest party on Ridge Hill Rd. Bar none.

Well, I thought I’d give a little update on my dear old mom. I talked with her on the phone last night, to get what’s turned into a welcome semi-weekly update on her poarty planning. In her classic way, she’s started to go completely crazy planning this party. She was telling me that all the family is coming, and when I say all, I mean the 8 siblings my father has that I really never saw all too regularly growing up. It’s a Sanford Watson family hoedown! They all can’t wait to see me, and meet Kerri, or so the legend from my mom goes. Quote of the conversation: “I think I may have to get 2 kegs!”

So I can’t wait, of course. It’ll be good to see mass amounts of family, now I hope some of my old hometown friends stop by for a bit, it should be a great shin-dig. Can you say karaoke machine (ok, now can you say it in tune)? The countdown’s at about 1.5 weeks. Whoop-tee-freakin-yay.

---

So here’s a nice little article about how TV and screen writers are getting boned these days. Damn reality shows, damn greedy studio execs, damn the economy, and of course, where would we be without damning dubya.

Well I just wanted to drop a note so peeps knew I was still alive. Expect another review coming up soon, enjoy the summer in the meantime!

More to come. I promise.

2003-06-11T18:18:00.000-05:00

All righty, here's another review for blogcritics.org. Once I actually break into the template for this blog, I'll probably post a permanent link to the site. In the meantime, read on about Nufonia must Fall.

The Fall of Nufonia, the Rise of the Independent Robot

To say Kid Koala is diverse would be as obvious as saying he likes using turntables. HeÂ’s been quite busy lately as well (kidkoala.com). He's one of many DJ acts that will be featured at this weekend's Bonnaroo festival (related post by Eric Olsen), and his work is worth checking for anyone who may be into hip hop DJ and breakbeats.

His list of credits includes Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Deltron 3030, and solo cuts on several ninja tune mix cds. No, you're not mistaken, this is indeed a book review, read on.

Kid Koala's most recent creation exhibits his rough, raw drawing style while also showing his appreciation for a good, ironic love story. "Nufonia must Fall" is a 300 page graphic novel chronicling an incredibly sweet love story between a defeated, almost-obsolete robot, and an overworked, lonely office worker. The two are star-crossed lovers of sorts, and their happenchance meetings and what develops is a delight to watch play out.

Watch truly is the operative word in this piece, as Kid Koala uses virtually no dialogue in his piece, relying on signs, scenery, and emotions of his characters to move his plot forward. The only verbal communication even documented in the book is in email form. His drawings are delightful. Very scratchy, gritty, rough, grayscale images are enough to tell well over a thousand words apiece.

Another notable feature of this project is the accompanying cd Kid Koala includes as a soundtrack. Tracks titled with page numbers help the reader understand that Koala's focus is the story that unfolds in the book, and that the music is just a stimulus to aid the reader in finding the emotions of the characters involved. Sitting back and digesting both simultaneously, one begins to appreciate the artist even more.

Having made note of the dominance of the story, Kid Koala fans should not purchase Nufonia must Fall strictly for the music alone. The cuts Koala creates are not exactly entertaining on their own two feet. However, graphic novel fans and hip hop fans of the nerdy comic book variety will most likely find several readings worth of enjoyment from this beatiful piece of work, only to be enhanced by the musical accompaniment.

2003-06-05T16:24:00.000-05:00

I figured I'd post a review I posted today over at Blogcritics.org. It's a pretty nice blog that keeps reviews of all things in popular culture. You can reaqd it here, or you can read it there. Over there, it's at this link.
Enjoy!

Prince Paul gets Political

Well, Paul’s at it again. The artist formerly known as Chest Rockwell put out an album featuring many big name hip-hop artists entitled “Politics of the Business,” which has been receiving mixed reviews since it first started being downloaded off of leaked copies put up on the internet several months ago.

Prince Paul, a long time veteran in the hip-hop scene, has previously handled production for such classics as De La Soul, 3rd Bass, and Gravediggas in the past. On top of his collaborations with established artists, he has also produced a few concept albums of his own, most notably Prince Among Thieves, and Handsome Boy Modeling School (co–produced by Dan the Automator). Paul is most notable for his tendencies to stay off the beaten path. If Kool Kieth can say, “He just thrives to be different” that’s usually a good indication of some innovative sounds.

It’s that innovation, as a matter of fact, that’s been causing most of the divergent opinions of his most recent contribution. On strictly listening to the album, it appears that Paul has given up his musical rebellion and surrendered to the flow. The beats are a bit “jiggy” for Paul, R & B singers abound on the hooks, and verses tend to be more based on image. However, the “joke” behind this change, as hinted to in skits “The Drive By”, “A Life In The Day”, and “Politics of the Business”, is one that Paul hopes is not lost on his fans.

All in all, the change in style is actually well executed. Though he’s obviously practicing outside his expertise with these beats, they still come out sounding good. The guitar on “So What” (featuring Masta Ace and Kokane), the xylophone on “Chryme Pays” (featuring Tash, the Beatunuts, and Tony Touch), and the piano on “Controversial Headlines Pt1” (featuring Horror City) all are well executed and complementary, even in their jestful use as cliché mainstream devices. Similarly, the juxtaposition of the hackneyed lyrics being spitted by emcees that are obviously out of their realm as well can’t help but make some conscious fans crack a smile.

Fans of Prince Paul may generally feel out of place on first listen of this album, but as usual, the long-standing producer manages to deliver some quality material with a sense of humor on this long awaited album.

2003-06-03T14:34:00.000-05:00

SARS-a-palooza 2003!!!

Yup, I know how thrilling it must have been to read about how much the new PDA has been organizing my life lately (if not, check it out 5/6/2003!!), so why not write up another entry on planning?!?!

I'm getting very excited for an upcoming road trip Kerri and I will be going on in about a month. We're going on a weeklong road trip through the northeast. We've been planning on doing it since about a year ago, so now that it's only a month away, it's that much more exciting since we've hyped it up for so long. Kind of like the way a Pixar children’s film debuts at number one. Yup, just that much hype.

Now I realize some of you may be concerned with the title of the road trip (mom, I'm looking in your direction), but we feel pretty ok with the whole thing, and as self-involved as Kerri and I are, isn't that all that matters? (in a preventative manner, I'll clarify the jest in that last statement just in case... damn you text!) Now our road trip obviously goes through Toronto, but let me outline the rest for you to follow along!!

Fri 7/4/03 – Kerri attends a wedding in Indiana; Mars attends a wedding in Connecticut
Sat 7/5/03 – Kerri arrives in CT, and mama Sanford (aka parental unit 1) throws an enormous bash for us… aren’t we special??
Sun 7/6/03 – we say hi to some Connecticut heads Kerri hasn’t met yet, or I haven’t seen in a while.
Mon 7/7/03 – we take a windy trip through Massachusetts, stop off to see the Appalachian Trail in Eastern VT, then end up in Burlington for the evening
Tues 7/8/03 – See as much of Burlington as possible, lake Champlain, Ben and Jerry’s, the Magic Hat Brewery (you Midwesterners don’t know what you’re missing beer-wise)
Wed 7/9/03 – leave VT to head to Niagara Falls, NY in the morning, get to campsite and Camp at night
Thurs 7/10/03 – see the falls, go to some local attractions, camp again
Fri 7/11/03 – arrive in the Western SARS capital of Toronto, ON!!!
Sat 7/12/03 – Increase our likelihood of contracting SARS by staying in Toronto another day
Sun 7/13/03 – finally leave SARonto, barely making it out alive, and head back to Chi-town

So that’s the trip. Kerri and I went to the library this past weekend to look at travel guides and start getting routes and destinations planned out. We pulled out the Mobil and Fodor travel guides to Canada, New York, and New England, sat around a table, and whispered about our trip for an hour or so. It did wonders for building up the anticipation, that’s for sure!!

OK, now this may shock those who know me, but I LOVE TO PLAN! It’s a newfound obsession of mine. I’ve never really been that anal of a person, so planning never really did anything for me. However, recently I’ve loved planning things. I guess this trip is a perfect case in point in how I’m learning to adjust to it. I guess I like the façade of organization (I use façade because I still haven’t conquered tidiness… that’s also a current project), the anticipation I mentioned earlier, and hey, less scheduling conflicts is always a good thing. Do you need something to drink? This monologue may be getting a bit dry.

The thing about planning is that I just have to actually remember to do it. It’s not a problem if I do, but it’s when I don’t tackle it right away that it begins to kill me. I think I’ve mentioned before that I can get easily overwhelmed sometimes. Lately though, it seems like my tolerance for more and more tasks is going up. I know this may contrast with my recent post about being bogged down, but I do believe that was an exceptionally stressful time with extra tasks looming. A lot of those have evaporated, and I’m feeling better, but I’m definitely juggling more than I used to. Viva la PDA!

I’ll keep you posted on all of these plans, and of course I’ll let you know if I get buried again. When have I not?

Until then, more to come!!

---

Also, some people may have either a) noticed the different subscription box at the top of the screen, or b) received what looked like a spam from topica.com. Reason for that is that I’ve given up on trying to get an answer from bloglet.com, and I’ve moved to topica.com for subscriptions. If you want one, enter your name up in the box and press the button. You’re that close to me invading your privacy continuously. Don’t you love this age we live in?

2003-06-02T13:28:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah, she's the one all right.

So I thought I'd take a moment to talk to you about the girl I'm going to be with for the rest of my life (whoever you are... I'm still not convinced you're reading).

When I moved here to Chicago it was for a change of scenery. I chose this particular locale because I had met a small group of theater involved people through a friend, Dan DeVito (no, not from Taxi, he's a friend originally from Connecticut). So when I got here, I immediately seeked out this small group of friends who liked to party and be creative and needed attention as much as I did. It's a little thing I do. Enter one friend of particular interest at this time, Kerri Van Auken (here's a picture of her from the RoxBoxFilms.com site sorry no Bio yet (ugh... see last entry)).

So it only took a month until we realized that we were really attracted to each other, had similar interests such as TV, hippy music, independence, that little song from the old saturday morning cartoons about drowning your food, you name it, we really are pretty damn similar. So we also figured out that we were both single, and that we owed it to ourselves to investigate this thing between us. We did. It was just about two years ago now, too.

We fell for each other hard. We're both pretty emotional people, which made it that much easier to fall so fast. It also makes the lows a little lower, and the anger a little more intense (ahem... foreshadowing... ahem), but the highs are dizzyingly worth it. Let me tell you, never have I ever been more sure of anything, I will be with this woman forever.

Now let me give you a small example of how great she is, which may not seem like it at first. This morning was awful, for several reasons. First off it's a monday in the SanfAuken (Sanford/Van Auken) household, so neither of us are really happy about having to wake up and haul our asses off to the day jobs that we aren't that fond of in the first place. Secondly, it was a busy weekend that only promises to lead into a busy day/week and we are feeling a little ragged. Third, one of the reasons it's been so busy is because of a shoot RoxBox is helping out with, however communication and organization hasn't been the best, so Kerri was left completely off some important scheduling emails, and it's made her feel justifiably insignificant as of late (film-wise). Lastly, I wanted some affection from my girl (as I wasn't aware she had given me said affection the night before whilst I was sleeping (calm down pervs, I'm not talking sex here... that's strictly off-line conversation)) to cap off the weekend. So, I tried to get her to give me a kiss while I was laying with her in bed. OK, got all that?

Well, here's a little Van Auken history that's pretty much common knowledge to all those in her close circle of family and friends. Kerri likes her sleep. If you wake her up on a good day, she'll growl at you and spit venom in your face. This is somewhere the boyfriend of KVA should know to tread lightly. However, I felt a little entitled, so I flat out requested she roll over and give me a kiss.

OK, now I may have exaggerated a bit in my earlier description, but given the circumstances, she definitely showed her frustration. Still feeling entitled, I wasn't having any bit of that. It escalated quickly and eventually words were being thrown around about insignificance, reactions were getting extremely heated, we started arguing about arguing, not just plain stopping, you know, all the textbook ways not to end an argument.

Eventually, we managed to settle down and reach a good stopping point so that we could walk away not mad at the other. This is key, and we have gotten a pretty good hold on it.

OK, so, yeah, about making my girlfriend look good. Here’s what makes me so sure she’s mine for good, if I have anything to say about it. As I mentioned, the lack of communication in this recent short film has made her feel a bit insignificant. Now, being her partner, there are no holds barred in what she tells me about how she feels. So I’ve been listening to these complaints like a good boyfriend does, but have been feeling helpless, as a normal boyfriend doesn’t like. Now what does a boyfriend do when he can’t help? Tries to lead the girlfriend to the place that could help her. So, one of my mantras throughout these complaints has been, “I wish I wasn’t the only one who would hear this,” implying that if she was as candid about these feelings of insignificance with the rest of the people involved, it may actually lead to a better process in the future. I say it repeatedly, but knowing how nice she is (not saying I’m not guilty of over-accommodating. We are after all, very similar), I never actually expected her to tell anyone, and would have harbored no resentment if she never said a word. I did make the same remark again, though at the end of the nice period we had at the end of our argument.

This is Kerri’s time to shine. I get to work, and what is in my email? An email to the film company explaining exactly what she’s had a problem with lately, including this tear-invoking quote:

I know none of you is responsible for this, I just really need to share with all of you what I'm feeling. (I know I sound a little gay.) Plus, it's not fair for one man to take the brunt of my Irish lassie temper.

See? She listens. She tries to change. I listen. I try to change. We have what it takes, and there’s no doubt that we’ll be together forever. I’ve finally found her.

Love you baby! Now comment!

More to come!

2003-05-27T13:30:00.000-05:00

Lower expectations

So I wrote a big long entry last week about not having a free moment to spare, and look where it got me. I didn't even post last week, and that entry still sits in my palm, unused, unfinished, unread. That's why you are currently reading 'lower expectations.'

So what the hell's been keeping me so busy? Well, here's a list of the multitude of tasks I've been somewhat neglecting or spottily trying to finish, with minimal detail describing each.

Finish my pieces of the RoxBox website (namely the bio page. Good progress on this one, though!)
Organize a commercial shoot for Jambalaya's (need to do this fast for an upcoming deadline!!!)
create my own website (this is waiting until I finish my part of the RB site)
transcribe and complete 'Cause and Affection,' my screenplay (ummm… yeah… need to pick that up again)
buy a gym bag and start working out (enough procrastinating on this one. Especially since I weighed myself this weekend.)
begin animating 'Bob and Patrick, the cartoon Kerri and I have an idea for (this’ll be a time consumer just like the personal site)
diversify my 401k (must…stop…losing…money!)

(insert infomercial voice) And many more!!

So yeah, being the easily-overwhelmed type, I’ve taken on quite a bit as of late, and hopefully I’ll be able to keep updating, as well as living my life day-to-day while fitting this stuff in. I guess we’ll just have to see. I apologize for not expounding a little more, or telling those who actually read this little corner of the intraweb any more about things, but I’m just venting here folks.

Until next time, more to come (eventually)

2003-05-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

The Yammer vortex

As you may or may not know, when I first moved to Chicago, I was dying for a creative outlet. Enter spoken word performance poetry. I went out by myself, saw my first feature (by Jason Pettus, actually, read his journal here), saw a couple open mics, then saw a slam. I loved it! Everyone seemed like such a tight-knit commnity, all speaking their minds, all performing to entertain an audience.

"Shit! I could do this," I thought. "Shit! I've done this," I then thought. I used to write poetry very similar to what I was hearing back when I was in high school. I even performed at a couple coffee houses in college. Also, I'd been the frontman/rapper in two different roots-like bands before moving to Chicago (check out the most recent of the two at www.mp3.com/4pb), so I really felt at home at these kinds of events. Aaah, the comfortable feeling of familiarity.

So I started to frequent some open mics in town, most regularly, the Mental Graffiti open mic which was at The Note at the time (since then it's moved to the Funky Buddha Lounge. If you need something fun to do on a monday night in Chicago, I highly recommend it.) I wrote what I like to think were some nice pieces, and they were fairly well received.

It's an easy transition going from being a rapper with absolutely no street cred to being a spoken word poet. You've got the notion of rhythm and inflection already (if you didn't I hate to tell ya, you weren't a good rapper), the biggest adjustment I felt was freeing myself up to write about anything and everything I was feeling. Of course, in that sense, that’s where the no street cred came in handy. I didn’t really have anything in my life that the usual rapper would write about, like spending time with other fans of hip-hop, the run-around life of a hustler, promiscuous sex, but I had the skills. Spoken word poetry was perfect.

So flash-forward to now, where I’ve already written some poetry, performed it for several months at the open mics in town, and stopped going because I wasn’t really finding a place in the community. I haven’t really lost any interest in the art, I just haven’t made many friends in the scene, really. So when Jason and Kate (another poet who frequented the Mental Graffiti event) asked if I wanted to go see some open-mic poetry on Wednesday night, it didn’t take long for me to get sucked into the energy of the Yammer open mic at Carol’s Pub.

What a fun time. I got to pick both Kate and Jason’s poems, they both sounded wonderful, I got to meet Lisa Hemminger, who runs the open mic, and we all had tequila shots! What could be better! I even got up and did one of my old poems, yes, I was fully pulled into the Yammer vortex. It did end up in me finally recording one of my poems on my handheld, something I’ve always been meaning to do. I took a cue from Jason, and influenced by the creativity that was flowing in the room despite the low turnout, I frantically transcribed my poem “Squeak, Rattle, and Pose” into my Sony Clie.

God, stepping back up there really affected me. It always does. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that it’s less than five minutes in front an audience of ten, and won’t really result in me jumping headfirst back into spoken word. Nevertheless, it did affect me. Next time I’m free on an evening, maybe I’ll actually consider going to one of the open mics in this city that likes to pride itself as the birthplace of spoken word. Stranger things have happened!

So for now, I wish you all a safe weekend. Next week there’ll be more to come!

2003-05-09T15:06:00.000-05:00

Happy Sandwich Week!

I'll explain the title in a bit, I just have unfinished hip-hop business from yesterday, so onto that.

My history with hip-hop (like any of my stories on my personal life) could go back very far. Let’s go back to high school for the sake of this story. My friends got me into rap music back when I was in high school. As I only had about four close high school friends, I pretty much listened to whaqt they listened to. I really did like rap, and gained my own appreciation for it, and even started to seek out new artists I liked (I can still recall the first time I ever saw Del on Yo! MTV Raps, and telling my friends about it). This was from about 90 – 93 or so, when a lot of people thought (and some still think) the artform was at its prime.

When I went off to college, I still listened to rap music, but it was a bit harder to find like-minded fans, so I started to once again take in the influence of those around me. Enter Phish. It was in 94 that I really started listening to a lot of Phish, hanging out with the hippies in school, and buying copious amounts of tickets for the tours they were on (also the hey-day for Phish, some think). Rap music started to adopt a lot of thuggish imagery, gang associations, and less-than-enlightened themes around this time (forgive the pompous sound of that last remark, circumlocution’s a bitch) and though some of it was good, I didn’t really feel it in me to be ‘in the game’.

Nowadays, there are all sorts of incredible independent-label emcees, and artists who are of the same opinion as me, and prefer not to pander to the gangsta rap of the mid-to-late 90’s. They’ve actually been around in some form since I dropped out of the scene, but they’ve been gaining momentum and are quite a bit more prominent now. So, what do you know, my eyes have been opened, and I’m back into hip-hop. The prodigal son has returned (“anyone stepping to me ya get burned…” yeah, I know)

So now let’s revisit last Friday night. Whenever I go to a hip-hop show nowadays, I get this incredible connection to it. I know I have a background in it, I feel confident in that, I just don’t run with a crew that lives and breathes hip-hop. I love the energy, I love the artists, the battles, the circles, the call-and-response, and it’s all good times, really. After every hip-hop show, open mic, or event I go to, I always have a buzz from the energy and swear I’m going to try more to be an active part of the scene. The thing is, how the hell do I actually do it?

I’ve gone to the open mic in my neighborhood a few times before, but I don’t know anyone, so I stand there and just watch. It’s entertaining, but I can’t exactly go with anyone I know, because the thing doesn’t usually get hoppin until about 10:30, which is much too late for all of my day-job having, wanting to get paid for their art friends. Ah well, what can I do? I can just stand on the sidelines, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to start writing verses again (I used to be in a couple bands where I rapped. Everyone always told me I was good, and, ironically enough, that I sound just like Del).

So my connection to the hip-hop scene is limited, at best. Shit, I don’t even have cable anymore, so it’s not like I can even see what passes for a rap video these days. However, that didn’t stop me from stepping to Pugslee Atoms of the Nacrobats after last Friday’s show and offering to do a video for them with RoxBox. Pugs was selling CD’s after the show, (which they sincerely rocked, by the way. Anyone interested in Chicago hip-ho should check out Nacro) Jamie gave him a business card, and I reached out to build. They’re going on tour, but how fun would it be to have a RoxBox/Nacro collabo? I’d love to work with them to see what ideas they’d have to put into a video.

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OK, the Sandwich Week explanation, as promised. Tuesday, I got lunch at a nice little salad restaurant in my building. I usually, for the last year or so, have been getting one of their salads (If you ever find yourself in a Salad Spinners restaurant, I suggest the mexicali), but I used to be a big fan of their sandwiches. Well, on Tuesday, for no real reason I can tell, I decided to go back to the sandwich.

Coincidentally, Kerri had a sandwich for lunch that day as well, from Mr. Submarine. She sat down with me after work to eat the remainder of her sandwich, and I reveled in the coincidence, and proclaimed it Sandwich Week.

Since Tuesday, I've had sandwiches at Mr. Submarine, Potbelly's, and right now I just finished a chicken bacon club at a small place named Earl's. From my experiences this week, I'm going to have to give my judgment to Potbelly's. Stop by if you want a great hot sandwich at a very reasonable price. I suggest the 'Wreck'.
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Lastly, an update on mom’s project. I think I’ll be able to do it. I made a little progress yesterday, and now I just need to put in some time on Saturday. If all comes together as I plan, I’ll give an update on Monday and tell all about it.

Until then, even if it’s not until Monday, there’s sure to be more to come!

2003-05-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

Go 'ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!'

Oh, god, do I love hip-hop. Oh, god, do I love De La Soul. I finally got to see them again, after the last time being able to see them was about three years ago in CT. Let me just tell any De La fans out there, you should have been there. Maseo was on, he got to step in for Common's part, switched up the beat on potholes, and was just all-around-on-point for all the changes. The best part of all had to be when Plug 3 cut to the beat from 'The Choice is Yours,' Plug 1 and 2 faced the back, and bowed their heads, and Dres came out to rock it with them. The crowd was bananas from the moment Maseo dropped the beat.

Here's a setlist (of what I knew, at least.)
?
?
Buddy>
Plug Tunin'>
Potholes> Potholes remix>
freestyle
Ring Ring Ring
Stakes is High
common joint from stakes is high*
Thru Ya City
A Rollerskating Jam Named Saturday
Me, Myself, & I
Flavor of the Month**
The Choice is Yours**
Ooh, Ooh

*w / Maseo for Common
**w / Dres

Wish I had time to go on to talk about my relationship with hip-hop, and what these shows do to me. Guess that’ll just have to be a teaser of more to come!

2003-05-07T13:57:00.000-05:00

Mother of all holidays

Well, here we are once again approaching the busiest mail day of the year, Mother's Day. When April hits every year, I start to quickly become aware of the string of holidays that are fast approaching. For me, I have Dad's birthday in April, Mother's day in May, Mom's birthday in June, and Father's day, which I always forget the date for until about a week before.

I always go through the same bout with guilt every year, because I honestly never know what to get for my parents. They always say all I need to do is get them a card, and I do, but I know they'd love to be the proud parents of a son who can buy them a new car, or a luxurious trip to the Caribbean, but I've never really been the guy who can do that. Couple that with them paying for my entire college education, add in the fact that I moved halfway across the country after not leaving the state for 25 years, and you've got one guilty feeling son.

I've always considered myself an extremely lucky person to have parents who could provide for me so well. I've always hoped that when I finally do have a child of my own, I'd provide just as well for it as they have for me. I think it's one of the main reasons I turned out as well adjusted as I did. Here's to hoping.

So I'm currently in the middle of the parental holiday block, having moved past Dad's birthday, and I'm still toiling over how to celebrate the upcoming holiday for Mom. I sort of feel like I failed miserably for Dad, I sent a card, called him on the big day, but never got him a gift. He's never wanted a gift in all the times I've asked, but I still can't help but feel as if I should be getting him something.

I do have somewhat of an idea of how to celebrate Mom's day. I told Kerri last night, and she loved it. I mean, she didn't jump up and go through the choreography of her upcoming fight scene, but she thought it was a sweet idea. That said, I think I'm going to go ahead and try and do it. If all goes well, it will be completed by the big day. I'll keep you posted, but since mom reads the old blog, I can't be very specific.

---

Well, that’s about all I’ve got time for today, but I’ve been dying to write a review of the De La show I went to on Friday. Hopefully I’ll be able to get into that tomorrow. Oh, man I can’t wait to break it down.

So until then, stay tuned, there’s more to come.

2003-05-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

I'm hella mobile, yo.

So mobile, in fact, that I'm writing this entry on the toilet. You didn't need to know that, but I did feel the need to tell you.

I first got a palm pilot for Christmas in 2000. Before Christmas that year, I had told my mom not to get one for me because I'd never use it. Yes, my mother's stubborn, and she thinks she knows what's best for me. In her defense, she usually ends up being right, after I stubbornly kick and scream for a little while. You know, usual mother/son stuff.

Anyway, I was sort of right about the whole palm pilot claim I made. I kept it around all the time, and from time to time I'd put an appointment or a phone number in it, but I was never really consistent with it. I was even more inconsistent at syncing it to my pc. It got to be a normal occurrence that my batteries would run down, I wouldn't sync it quick enough, and then when I finally got around to changing them, I'd have lost all my personal data. Ugh.

Recently, however, my coworker Karen got a new palm tungsten. Finally I got to see these new, fancy, hi-resolution color handhelds in action. I immediately knew what to do with my bonus. Ebay probably heard me coming a mile away.

I ended up settling on the Sony Clie SJ33. I was ecstatic with the deal I got on ebay mostly because of the 64MB memory stick that came with it. It perfectly fit my criteria due to the Documents To Go software that came with it. Now I can work on MS Word (this journal entry) and Excel files on the go.

I'm not sure if it's a placebo or an actual solution to my slacker tendencies, but I sure feel a lot more productive and organized. Hell, it's the main reason I've been updating! Oh, and by the way, no, I wasn't on the can the whole time, mainly just for that sentence.

Until next time, I'm completely confident in promising more to come!

2003-05-02T18:53:00.000-05:00

Adventures on the inter-web

As promised, a little more RoxBox news. Recently, as I've mentioned in previous entries, I've been putzing around with the popular web animation tool, flash. Ask my girlfriend Kerri, it has consumed many hours that used to be spent in front of the television with her. Don't get me wrong, though, she's always happy to see me passionate about something.

So like I said, I've talked about this in previous entries, and linked to the animations I've made. Since then, though, I've learned quite a bit. I've made a navigation menu that looks quite a bit sleeker, I think, and you can see it at the RoxBox site (ahem...FAVORITES/BOOKMARKS!). The site isn't finished yet, but at least it's well on its way.

I love working with flash if I have a couple hours to devote to it. Mostly because it's a tool that makes animation possible for one person to create independently. I always wanted to be a cartoonist when I was growing up. I'm not there yet by any means, but understanding this software makes me believe I actually could be one day.

Here's to hoping!

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Lastly, I made a fuss yeserday about subscriptions, and I came to find out today that the web application that makes it possible has a server error right now.

Thanks to those who left comments though!!!

Until next time, more to come!!

2003-05-01T13:44:00.000-05:00

May Day, May Day!!!

Well, long time no speak, good friends (all three or four of you*).
Welcome once again to the self-important chronicling of my life. Sit
back and enjoy the dose of journalistic exhibitionism I provide here at
'Mars Life'.

---

So then, where have all the updates gone? Well, I've definitely been
slacking on my writing, and my most recent assumption is that these
updates will hopefully refuel those creative energies.

Today, I thought a little RoxBox news would be in order. About two
weeks ago RoxBox fnished shooting our most recent short film, 'Tim's
Day'. It will be about ten to fifteen minutes long, and chronicles a
day in the life with Tim (go figure), a young man who perpetually has
angry visions flowing through his head.

This one was especially exciting for several reasons. First off, we
were dealing with a first time director, Ben Montague. Ben also did the
writing on this piece, so it was easy to match the vision to the script.
Another interesting part of this project was our first eperience with
special effects. Comments on that? Well, let me just say scrubbing
blood spatter off of an office wall can be quite tedious.

The main reason behind shooting this one is that Ben's also hoping to
direct our first feature, and wanted to gear up to the process of
directing. We hope to begin production on the feature in the fall.
It's entitled 'Thud', and Ben wrote that piece as well. In short, Ben has
been quite the asset to the company.

Well, I think tomorrow may be a little more RoxBox news... don't want to
blow the proverbial load all at once, you know.

Until then (fingers crossed), more to come!

(*Oh yeah, one more thing. If you are reading, feel free to leave a
comment below. I do love to read them, and the email address field is
strictly informational, I do believe. Heck, try putting in a fake one!
No pressure though, I've ben a lurker on more than one blog/board myself.
Lastly, feel free to subscribe at the top of the page, all the
subcription does is send an email each time I update linking to the
update. Nothing happens with your address. Ask my co-worker Karen or
my mom! Currently my two loyal subcribers. God have you ever seen a
wordier needy person?)

2003-02-24T12:16:00.000-06:00

Hello all, I'm slowly re-adjusting to the work-a-day world after being contaminated by the dirty hippies on Phish tour. Aaaah, back to analyzing data while listening to thuggish hip-hop.

Phish tour was a hell of a fun time. After NYE in New York, I knew I'd be hitting up the three shows I just came back from (1 here in Illinois, 2 in Cincinatti OH), but I had no idea what to expect from them. Unfortunately, and as thanklessly critical as it may sound, I wasn't really left as floored as I expected from the 12/31 show. Well, this time, they definitely wowed me for 3 days straight. I'm happy to say the boys are back in town, they're pulling some of their old antics, now all they need to do is have a word with the crowd again. If anyone's a phish fan and wants to see the setlists, check 'em out HERE.

Phish, why do I love you so? I haven't even really kept an ear open to improvisational music (or "jam bands," as they're called) lately, as I've been catching up on all the hip-hop I missed in the years I kept up on such jam bands. Aaah, the irony, soon I'll have to catch up on them. Following more than one music scene is pretty damn tough when they don't really cross culture lines all too often. But they do make damn good music. I'm sure others do as well, I've just decided to take a break from actively seeking out and listening to them. When one crosses my path, however, I do give credit where credit is due. Case in point, I heard this amazing "one man band" type act from my friend Jen on the trip, and I've seeked him out to add to my launch player ratings. Keller Williams is his name, check him out. He's kinda cool. And, NO, it's not just because he beatboxes.

So I'm back to seeing the band I love, Phish, live whenever they tour. And they're back to playing the music that makes me dance. Life is good.

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Oh yeah, Rico put up my flash animation on the RoxBox site. It's under the beta section, since I'm still not done working the bugs out. Let me know what you think of it by dropping a comment here or an email whenever you get the chance.

Until next time, you must of course know that there's "More to come..."