The Cars is Gone!

Oh just wanted to let everyone know that the burnt out abandoned car has now been removed by I'm guessing the sanitation department. Sadly I was not able to be there for its grand exit. Also, went to the New Museum's family/friends moving into the new building that looks like a stack of white boxes with cheese grater metal facades party day shin-dig. It was nice. I had fun. Audrey has this awesome but odd looking chair. But it's comfortable and knowing that is half the battle.

Burnt Out Cars and Thangs

One might speculate, does this mean the neighborhood has gone to the dogs? Will real estate plummit? Is crime encroaching or already upon us? I'm not sure if it means any of that to Greenpoint in relation to what I found on the way to class on November 1st. So, what did I find. I found a burnt out Chevy sedan on the street over from where I live. It's nearly in the intersection, definitely in the cross walk, with a charred driver/passenger side exterior and interior, burns to the hood, burnt and broken windshield partially melted, melted driver side mirror, and two flats in the front. Oh ya, and it had it's plates removed and what looks to be the glove rummaged through.















So, one might ask, what the bloody hell happened? One could probably come to the conclusion that something had definitely happen that was possibly just a hair outside of the land of legality, I mean, abandoned burnt out car with no plates, hmmm, seems a bit fishy. Are the police investigating it? Has it been towed? Why no, it's still sitting out there right now exactly where it was found. Of course now it's sporting a nice neon orange sticker from the Department of Sanitation, saying it's a derelict vehicle and is to be disposed of.



However, when that is going to occur is quite unknown at this point since it's been sitting there for now two days and will likely sit there over the weekend and into monday. Who knows? There's a bus stop right there and I could see how the bus driver may be upset since hey can't pull up to the curb as normal. I wonder if the various drivers have already complained about it slowing down their routes and just generally cramping their style. "I got business to attend to." So, what is going to happen to this car and what happened to it originally to put it into such a state? I'm rather invested in it now. I wonder if it will just become a fixture of the intersection, like a neighbors dog or the corner liquor store. I might miss it when it's gone.

Anyhows on an odd tangential coincidence, I've just begun reading the book "Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb" by Mike Davis. I've barely started into it but it has been rather interesting thus far. It's just odd the day I got the book was the day that car showed up. Coincidence or divine intervention???

School has slowed just a hair this week thank goodness. It's been pretty mad and has left me quite ragged. Class continues as do the projects. Oh and I just recently acquired an iPod Touch for a project. It's really quite nice. Hacked it and now it can be my portable wifi stumbler aka spotter for networks and also portable packet sniffer. It also lets me play my NES and SNES games, minesweeper and it can even dice a tomato. Now I'm just waiting for them to bloody get cases for them to stores, gosh dang it. Very annoying. However, it has proved itself to be a quite formidible asset thus for in doing the work of the NNW and just reducing the weight on my back. Oh and the controls work pretty well. I need to start thinking about a paper I need to start researching and writing. It should be fun but how to enter the subject and what to cover is the question and how to cover and research something that isn't really something academic and such. What is this subject. Drift Racing, in regards to globalization, soft power, and hybridization. So, if you got mags, videos, interviews and the like send them my way I'm gonna need them. That's all for now I think I'm gonna play some games.

D.D.A.T.W.C.U.N. on Pagina 164 of T.I.A.F. 2007 Catalog

So, I got a package this morning from Taiwan, I wasn't expecting one. It was from the people at the Taiwanese International Animation Festival returning the copy of my film as well as sending me the Festival's catalog. It was more book than catalog, being it was like 300 pages long. Of course I started to look to see if I was included in anyway asides from mention of my name or something in it. To my surprise I found that I was on the title page for my category and the first entry (non-alphabetical order). I actually hadn't known what category I had been placed in, it ended up being Docu-Anim, documentary animation. I had never really thought of the piece as such but in actuallity I think it fits that category, I had never before heard of such a category of animation prior. So, on that page there's a 1/4 of a page of "Death, Destruction, and the Weather Coming Up Next" and I couldn't be happier.

60lb Paper Weight

So, I'm on hold right, with applecare over the 4th repair of my G5. Talking to customer care right now complaining first about it being the 4th bloody repair and the customer service I have received from the Fifth Avenue Store. I'm at wits end at this point. All I have to say is reparations, forty acres, a mule, and a kick @$$ Mac Pro! And I don't want no nVidia 7300GT card cause that's slower than my 6800 Ultra. That's all for now.

Stephen A. "Kitty Face" and Uncle Ben's Original Curry, Sounds Tasty

School continues to barrel down the highway to the ends of the semester. It has pretty much been non-stop with presentations or projects due 5 out of 6 weeks thus far. That will continue its current trend with week 7 having a project due once again. So I've been bloody busy, argh.

So, this project due this week, it's taking a look at the real time strategy game Command & Conquer: Generals, primarily the dialogue spoken by the GLA troops. The GLA, Global Liberation Army, is kind of an amalgamation of the Taliban, Al Queda, and some aspects of Somalian rebels. Most of the phrases spoke are particularly stereotypical. With phrases such as "I love a crowd" this unit of course is a suicide bomber. I'm going to be using audio bits such as this to create a conversation with those language tapes, of course it being Arabic. Audrey very instrumental in thinking up the idea of comparing it with language tapes. Never woulda thought of that.

Some things going on in L.A. this week, the LAPD takes responsibility for the May Day Melee, the 405 maybe getting an animal path, so animals can cross the 405, that would raise the cost for bridge to around $1.4 million, and a massive accident on the 5 freeway up in Santa Clarita. It's about time the LAPD owned up but I want to see people getting punished and losing jobs or demotions and such, restructuring and retraining of the department, however will it happen or will it be effective, prolly not. This 405 animal path is a crock, seriously ok, you build this concrete path and expect animals to use it like a bridge, sure. Not to mention there's cars whizzing by and even though they may not be able to see them they will be able to hear them. If they build it will they come and play pedestrian? Lastly, this wreck on the 5, man really bad. I wonder if it was structurally damaged and is safe. All those interchanges there get real hairy and with rain a disaster waiting to happen.

In other news Al Gore as we know got the nobel peace prize, however his film can't be shown in UK schools without proper disclaimer about its inaccuracies or unfounded assertions as reporter by the wonderful Register.

Now for some randomness before I leave. V8 shopping cart OH YEAH!!!

It's a Mopar V8 mind you.

Gotta love mister Stephen A. "Kitty Face" Smith.


And nothing quite hits the spot like some curry. Uncle Ben's Original Curry of course. What a carpet bagger.

RC Jumps Garage! Hoonage!

I can't even began to say why this is so awesome. I mean really it jumped the freakin' garage and not just barely made it or almost didn't. It jumped that thing with authority and it didn't die. Hoonage!

The Law Giver

Toyota you've just made my day. "Oh what a feeling."

So Much Contact

Rain Heroes from Bzzz on Vimeo.

There's so much contact here between Massa and Raikkonen that it's a wonder that they didn't crash. Bloody hell in the rain on top of that. Insanity.

Nikkatsu, Barricade, and Mas School

So, today after class Audrey and I went up into the East side of Midtown to Japan Society. It was the opening of a film series, "No Borders, No Limits: 1960's Nikkatsu Action Cinema," that's looking at the old Nikkatsu action films from the 1960's (tad redundant taint we?). This being during the Japanese New Wave period in cinema. I personally love the films from this period, with films such as "Branded to Kill" and "The Pornographers" (a must see if you haven't seen it go watch it now, now I say, you can finish reading about what's going on in my daily possibly not so interesting life later. Don't forget to come back and comment mind ye).

So, the first in this series was "A Colt is My Passport." It was awesome, it had the lead actor from "Branded to Kill" as well as it is directed by the same director, Seijun Suzuki. There is a lot of reflexivity in the film upon its own events. Like there is one scene that has the main character trying to figure out what weapon to use in a confrontation, then we see the opposition pondering what weapon he might use, that is then being watched by the main character by some binoculars. Oh, and don't forget awesome timing with music cues that are trumpet heavy, so heavy and melo-dramatic at times that you half expect a trumpet player to come marching in the room. Also, the end awesome, some McGuyver stuff goes down and the main character essentially sticks a time bomb on the bottom of a car as it is attempting to run him down, which then explodes.

They had a reception after the film, the food was so good, we didn't have to get any dinner. Two words, beef rolls. They were so good. Oh and guess what, they got student rates as well, oh yah!

In other news I got books in the mail and my so-called gift to myself for my b-day, the Deluxe Transformers Barricade. That thing was nigh on impossible to find. I never saw it in a store, Amazon is trying to sell this 10 dollar toy for 60 bucks. Insane hey? Ya, I was able to get it much cheaper which was good, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten it. It's really nice and looks wicked as you can see.



School has been marching on and with it so has my life and my time, oi. I've been forced to cut back my hours at Tekserve, two days a week now, we'll see how that works out. The globalization/hybridization class continues to get better and more interesting along with fun digressions like the movie Red Dawn, GO WOLVERINES SAVE OUR MCDONALDS FROM THE COMMIES! Last week in Media Change I presented on a chapter from Flusser about looking at the camera as an apparatus, made me think about Web 2.0 and issues of power, who really has it, (hint it's not the users). That assertion heated up the discussion, and lately I've become the real Web 2.0 basher. It's become my deal almost that and issues of power, the real and post-modernity all of which came up within the mapping class. I feel with that class, it could be a lot more interesting or could become it if people wanted to engage more thoroughly the issue of power in relation to the practice of mapping or its inherent presence. Oh well, I get my presentation in two weeks on the manipulative aspects of mapping, exactly what I'm interested and doing. That brings me to the NNW, I have now integrated the FBI's to wanted terrorists and domestic terrorists into the word list. There's so many aliases for everyone, it's insane, not to mention what people are wanted for.

Anyways I need to get up tomorrow to go to work, oi. So, laters.

Car Sounds & 50 Years with the M16

So, I've never heard this guy Michael Winslow before, apparently he's a stand up comedian who makes noises and such. His car noises, damn. Just listen because it's really ridiculous. He does a Led Zepplin guitar solo at the end as well.



The News Hour on monday did an interview with Jim Sullivan one of the original people working on developing the M16. It brought up the concern and question about certain priorities of the U.S.' military procurement process. The M16 of course is a rather old gun, since it began development in 1957. The issue is that the U.S. has not moved forward with technology at all in regards to the rifles issued to troops on the ground, whereas those who they are combating have rifles that are much more contemporary and functional. Functional in the terms of the operation of the weapon, with the M16 still apparently suffering from problems with jamming and the like even under light circumstances versus the rugged and nearly indestructible Kalashnikov. Back when the M16 was adopted the military fought it in every way possible and was later investigated to be almost criminally negligent to be equipping soldiers with older rifles. I wonder if this may deemed the case with the current state of the M16 in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, food rations have improved tremendously apparently.

Colin & Other News

First off, I want to pay some respects to Colin McRae (1968-2007). For those of you who don't know who Colin McRae is, he's a Scottish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship in 1995 for Subaru. He was runner up in 1996, 1997, and 2001. Known for being quite a fearless driver which resulted numerous times in offs, crashes, and the like due to pushing just a little to hard. Always haven driven flat out there was no toning down his tenacity. I had the chance to see him in 2006 at the X-Games, the first year they held a rally event. He was well out front of the competition, however he landed wrong after the final jump and rolled his car. He landed wheels down and took off as soon as they hit the ground and finished only a tenth of a second shy of 1st place. I was utterly shocked and amazed that he could pull off almost winning even after rolling his car. Here is a video from that day.



It's been a very rapid ascent this fall semester. right off the bat during the first week and continuing on I've had on minimum 150-200 pages of reading. Now this ain't your light reading it's all freakin' dense as hell. A lot of modernity, postmodernity, globalization, hybridity, economics, cultural relations, and the list goes on. I had two presentations this week and a paper due on top of that so I'm pretty spent. The paper and conjoining presentation was rather interesting material. It was a response to chapter by Flusser on the camera as an apparatus. Talked a lot about power relationships, medium, the "program" or design, and the entrapment of apparatuses. One of the examples I threw out during my presentation was the fallacy of power afforded by the Web 2.0 phenomina. Some people had some ardent arguements about that. My teacher backed me up on it, but it was definitely interesting discussion. However, all this left me very tired. I do have to say it's all very interesting reading and I enjoy it even if it's utterly draining sometimes. I find it will probably come in handy during thesis time this coming semester.

I am still coveting the blasted iPod Touch, but seriously, I need to know if it can be jailbaited before I buy one. I'm telling myself I want it for the N.N.W., but another part is I just want it. Really it's just trying to justify the means. Oi! Maybe I should take up a collection for "The Buy Emery an iPod Touch Foundation." I've also begun to eye the Logitech Revolution MX mouse, it feels so good, nice and heavy, and really nice ergonomic fit in the hand. It's got a place for your thumb. It feels real nice. I have to see if I will need it for the amount of time I'll be on the comp. We'll see. That one is a lot more in reach than the Touch.

On the 14th, "Death, Destruction, and the Weather Coming Up Next" screened in Milan, Italy at the Milano Film Festival. It was part of the "Different American Cinema" program. I'm still really shocked that it made it there. Sometime in this week or next week it will be getting shown in Taipei, Taiwan, at the Taiwanese International Animation Festival. I guess it has a hint at having legs.

Anyways I got more reading to do, so I'm gonna head back to that. but before I go here's a few little random tidbits. The first from the military industrial complex, of Russia. The other from the G-Train stations. Enjoy.


Amazing jet the Russian SU35.



"Me and Pookie put something special in the 'Special Sauce.'"

The Alamo

This weekend at my work, that being Tekserve has been a nightmare. It has been like the Alamo. Short staffed, like 2 to 1 people to cover a section, and toss in a dash of incompetant irregulars, no reinforcements for most of the day. It was like being in the French Foreign Legion. Saturday I was covering two sections when we opened, which is ridiculous when you got 2-3 people a section. Eventually they shifted one person to the iPod section and then another one to the main counter. So, it was just mean and one other person for almost all of saturday, until this one useless worker came stumbling in I'm assuming hours late, hung over and looking like hell. Obviously this doesen't help him since he's already incompetant. Sunday was more of the same, with two people in the main section, the line was over 30 minutes for most of the day, 4.5 hours straight of that barely making a dent, the service area was hit harder with an 85+ minute wait. So, I ask myself what is wrong with this picture? Either it's a huge mistake on part of scheduling, every able body is on vacation or called out sick or plain didn't show up, or c. which is the unknown. All I know though is I'm kind of fed up of having to deal with pulling the weight of what should be a contingent of workers.

Speaking of work though, we got the iPod "Fattie" in today. You know it looks better in person, and it feels nice, but it's thin as heck just super stout. The screen is pretty nice a bright. But, damn Apple for making me want the iPod Touch. Curses upon them! Seriously I want one almost despite the lack of space, I'd have to to get the 16GB one though.

Oh Friday went to see 3:10 to Yuma, some friends couldn't handle it but me and Audrey loved it. It was really good, I highly recommend it. Charlie Prince, he was awesome, and awesome civil war-esque coat. Go see it, you won't be disappointed, oh and I don't like westerns so don't pull that on me.

Speaking of movies though here's a few more posters with some liberties taken.



¡PHEAR THE GARNER-KRIEG!



And of course our friend Chris Cooper trying to prove his point, just not very well.

Been reading some Jameson, it's not bad. "The Cultural Turn: Postmodernism and Consumer Society." He talks about the Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown L.A. in one part, I'm all like I know where that's at. Not completely through it but it has been interesting thus far. Anyways I gotta head off and get some sleep, got class tomorrow. Oh by the way the Iron Man Trailer looks freaking wicked, I wanna go see that!

Good Ole' 1997

The beginning of the hey day for Dot Com companies, the internet, information super highway, the Webby's, graphic design, MacAddict Magazine, and a seemingly promising future. That's what I think of 1997. Me and Audrey went down to IKEA this weekend, yes again. I found this mug, it was so awesome. It reminded me of everything the Dot Com era was made of. I now call it my Internet mug or 1997. Here it is.



Makes me think of when I was in middle school teaching myself Photoshop, reading MacAddict magazine, going to the computer lab at lunch, wanting to become a graphic designer, web companies, and signing bonuses, hehe. Those where the days. I was dying to have Close Combat the game, I was playing Tie Fighter (one of the best games ever mind you), and Lucas Arts adventure games.

Was talking with Jon and he sent me a link to an old Outpost.com commercial. Oh my gosh they were some of the best. High watermark for Dot Com commercials if there ever were. Here are some.



Ravenous Wolves genius.



"Ohh, so close. Fire."

In a slightly more contemporary twist let's turn our attention to Jamie Foxx. I saw this up in the Nassau Station on the G Line. Nothing sums it up quite like this picture.



I'm sorry so amazingly funny, not to mention this one that gets honorable mention.



It took me forever to remember his name.

School starts again tomorrow. Last year. Rather scary. That's why I'm up writing this post cause I can't sleep, big surprise. I always get like this at the beginning of the semester. Anyways before I head off, let's return to IKEA.



All I gotta say is this. "But life is one big question when your staring at the clock. And the answer's always waiting at the IKEA, 40 ounces to freedom. So I take that walk...A 40oz to freedom is the only chance I have to feel good even though I feel bad. And I know that..."

I'm 23 Homes...

IMG_1088.JPG, originally uploaded by thecat16.

That's right essay. I'm 23, that means it's back to skoo. Gonna be writing some long essays, essay. Anyhows, yes I turned 23. What did I do? I watch the Yakuza Papers : Proxy Wars, very good series highly recommend it, very gritty documentary feel to it. Played some WoW, made some new pants oh yeah. Met Audrey after work and had some BBQ and went to see Balls of Fury. It was so kitschy but not enough, they didn't push it far enough, makes me sad but I got a free t-shirt. The weird/funny/disgusting thing though was there was a mouse playing with a wad of paper in the back row. It was all jumping around and junk, freaky. I wish I had a video of it. Going to have a b-day party with friends from NY, school, and maybe some from work. Then menu stuffed shells, so tasty. Marketed and prepped today. I enjoy going to the market and doing this sorta thing.

So, any new news? Yes, I don't think I ever mentioned but "Death, Destruction, & The Weather Coming Up Next" is/was going to go to the Taiwanese International Animation Festival in Taipei, this September. It will go on to tour Taiwan after the festival. One of the stops will be Taichung City in October. I have cleaned my desk in preperation for school starting. One of my classes got cancelled it sucks, was looking forward to it. I finished reading the two books that Audrey got me for my birthday, Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare and Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq During World War II. Both, have some very illuminating information that should have been heeded prior to entering Iraq, they both feel very pertinent currently.

Anyways, I have some random pics that will be coming soon as well as more pictures of the X-Country trip will trickle in and maybe a movie too. Just remember, the revolution will not help fight the gum disease formerly known as Gingervitis with a cool minty menthol flavor, because we all know the revolution has nothing on Listerine and is only cherry flavored.

SAP : Where Available

Up, Up and away from AC and Vimeo.

I swear hearing spanish commentators just makes everything more exciting. But let's not forget the burnout of flame.



DC on fire! from AxisOfOversteer.com and Vimeo.

DDATWCUN Going to Milano Film Festival 2007

Well looks like "Death, Destruction, & the Weather Coming Up Next" likes to travel. It has been selected for a special out of competition program, "Different American Cinema" for the 12th annual Milano Film Festival. There is a chance I may actually get to go to Milan as well, which is really cool. Here is the description of the program.

"Since this year's edition of the feature film competition includes two US works for the first time, we asked ourselves "What do American films today portray?" and tried to find an answer with the help of the short and feature films that were submitted to the competitions. Considering the high number of works, we decided to carve out some space for a few stories by young directors.
The short films in this section highlight human stories of greatness and more often of misery, family relationships marked by guilt and sorrow, friendships in which the seeds of doubts and rejection are planted. When it comes to the feature films there is something different to say: it would be difficult to describe their contents in a few words. If we should define them in conventional terms, we would use adjectives like "disturbing", "unconventional", "experimental" or "narratively disjointed". In spite of the feeling of spontaneous, personal, poor and instinctive films, a deeper analysis reveals that the works are well studied and depict self-absorbed characters, created by directors focusing on complex and troublesome individuals."

Milano Film Festival 2007

Sutton Street

I have talked at all about where I now reside nor about the trip from California to New York. Well there hasn't been time, it's been a maddening pace from leaving to arriving and then setting up base camp so to speak. There's a lot of pictures and videos to wade through from the trip so all the stories from that will come later. However, for right now I will talk about where I now call home. 43 Sutton Street in Greenpoint Brooklyn, 1st floor. It's pretty roomy. High ceilings, long entrance hallway, air shaft, large kitchen/living room, 2 bedrooms, one larger than the other. The building I'm not sure if it's a true pre-war building or not but the look of it is remniscent if not being the actual thing. Now descriptions are all well and good but, how about some pics, hey?


This is our building. The neighborhood is really nice and quiet. Mostly Polish neighborhood. Five bucks will get you a plate of perogies, bloody awesome.


Here's one part of the Kitchen.


All the appliances are new by the way.


This is aft of the kitchen area.


Part of the hallway obscured by the bathroom door. I swear the bathroom reminds me of closet door, it's like stealth bathroom. Small, but nice.


The air shaft from the smaller of the bedrooms.


Same bedroom.


Here's the connection from one bedroom to the other.


The larger bedroom that looks onto the street.


Got a ceiling fan on the far end of that room.


And of course the decorative fireplace.

To think this was the first and last apartment we looked at. However, of course we had to hit up the IKEA to get some furniture and such for this new place. So, here's the kitchen table.



This pic though was a random site in the IKEA. Someone other than myself apparently has a sense of humor. Hiel!


The kitchen populated and some dinner being cooked up.


Still don't have a couch or anything like that. I've got my desk situated now and I know have access to the interweb as you can tell. It's starting to become more comfortable. However, still unpacking not done yet. But chipping away at it little by little. Anyways, I figure I'd let you all see where I be now. Laters for now.

Next Stop Denver

We made pretty good time yesterday, only a 100 miles outside of Denver. However, finding a hotel was not easy everything was booked, ridiculous. Anyways here's some quick pics.

Seriously getting down to business here.

Terrible Gas, how appealing.

Emery County

Waving the flag, haha.

Return to Nueve York

Well the time has come. The time to say farewell to home and head back to New York to go apartment hunting in anticipation of the new and last school year. Me and Audrey are driving X-Country to New York, I'll finally get to see all that stuff in the middle that I am generally oblivious to when I'm flying over it.

I'm so dead tired and I mean dead tired, I've been up for 27 hours now and only had two-three hours the night before. I wanted to post one entry before I try and sleep for a little bit before we are eastward bound. I had to pack up my entire room, I'm not taking it with me but it's all in anticipation of the eventual sale of our house. I'm going to miss the house I grew up in not to mention the room that I've spent about 18 years building. Every little detail had to be deconstructed and boxed. Tagged and bagged. I'm going to miss my neighborhood.

I finally got a new phone to replace the RAZR that's been driving me nuts for the past 9+ months, oi! Moto RIZR this time, good decent features and much better feel to it. Here's a pic.


I had a lot of work to do while I was here on vacation and in many ways it was exhausting. I'm so glad I was here though. Good times where had and good food eaten. Not to mention good company. Thanks all for making it so. Special thanks to those who helped me pack, I woudn't have been able to get it all done if it weren't for you all. Thanks. See you guys hopefully soon, back to the Big Manzana.

Rewind to the 34th Student Academy Awards: Sad & Laughable Save for Live Action Categories

June 9th, was the 34th Student Academy Awards Ceremony. I went despite the fact that I was not going to receive an award due to the fact that they decided to only award one award in my category that being Alternative, yet i went anyways. I had this super annoying guy sitting next to me and my friend Danny, so overly interested in making connections to the point of disgust. Sid Ganis, or as Danny calls him a Wolf Blitzer look alike, did his little opening speech and introduced the first presenter, Zooey Deschanel. By the end of her time presenting I wanted to put a muzzle on her. She thought she was funny, aka she wasn't funny by a long shot, she sounded like she was drugged up on vicadin or something, and she kept putting out personal commentary on the films. Basically she's an idiot. The second presenter was John Landis, he was awesome, funny, and also made jokes at the Academy's expense. All in all half of the work that won was really good and half was utterly laughable and a complete disgrace to their respective mediums. The winner from my category looked like a Coke commercial or some MTV bubblegum bull shit. The animation category, had some of the worst quality cgi I have ever seen, along with being of some of the most tired and hackneyed tropes in animation. Also, all of them had "morals" of feel goodery. Not to mention one was desecrating Art History, that one was from NYU's undergrad program, if I see them I'll make sure to slap them upside the head for anyone who's seen it and wanted to rip their eyes out. The films that were good were the live action shorts and the live action documentaries. All of them very well concieved for the most part and very well done. Apparently quality control is not a big thing these days for the Academy, well they have reduced the amount of judges fromt he actual academy to three members, so I guess that makes sense along with the overwhelming amount victories for schools on the East Coast (only one West Coast winner, Stanford in documentary, a category they typically win). Anyways, that was wrap up of the Student Academy Awards for 2007.

Oh ya and I apologize for the massive delay in this post. I was just so disgusted with it all I could not write in any way to express my anger until it cooled off for a few months.

Za Autos

Pretty insane. The new Spyker F1 car got airborne in qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix. I just can't believe he didn't go into the wall after landing, save. Today though during the race, there was a pretty bad or rather horendous crash, Kubica went into the wall and bounced back the other way while barrel rolling. Horrible however he's ok no broken bones. You can see the video here on the Axis of Oversteer.

Today I was driving on the freeway back from Valencia and still had a lot of cars on the road at 9pm, sucked I really have needed to stretch out and actually drive drive. I feel so constrained lately. Miss my old MKI. Maybe sometime after graduation I'll get another one =|.

Been working on my website, finally. It's coming along, I'll post the link once it gets more complete. The Continental is now level 25 and now has a hood, oh yeah. Oh ya and a ring made from 30 human skulls, it's alright but it sounds super bad, haha. Kinda, tired so gonna head off to bed.

The Brazillians?

EBaita has a page apparently with the NNW's first PSA on it along with other videos all dealing with tcpdump. I'm not exactly sure if ebaita.com is a brazillian search engine or site or something or other. Anyways, it's there check it out and the other videos around it.

The Call: The N.N.W.

So, apparently one individual living in Colorado has felt "The Call." That is to participate in any way he possibly can in the Neighborhood Network Watch. It's just great to see such upstanding young citizens willing to do their part to help facillitate domestic spying programs within their own communities. Here is what he had to say below.



There you have it, the N.N.W. is gaining loyal members.

Bike Detail in NYC or Idle Hands Makes the Devils Work

So, I didn't know this but apparently in NYC this is how the NYPD rolls in regards to bikes. The Gothamist had an article about a recent police raid operation on the excessive amount of bikes in the 6th Ave between 1st & 2nd areas. You can read the details in the article, the thing that gets me though is the fact that they arrested two people who were asking questions about the seizure. The first person apparently was asking for the badge number of a plain clothes officer and the other was asking about why that first person was being arrested. The pic at the top I think has to sum up quite a bit about what I think is going on here.

Another Enzo: Death By Bus

So, another enzo is gone. Sad, sad, sad. This time by a bus according to the Daily Mail

A/S/L & Are You Lying About Your Age?

Pretty funny article on Discover Magazine today. It's an article where they let loose two chat bots to chat with each other and see what the results were. Highlights include:

J: Do you believe in God?
A: Of course I believe in God.
J: Why do you believe in God?
A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.
J: That’s circular reasoning.
A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.

and my favorite

A: Do you experience love?
J: No. I’m 53 years old.
A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?
J: How old are you?
A: I am 9 years old.
J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).
A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.
J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

All I have to say is sounds like some sex predator minor stuff going on between ALICE and Jabberwacky. So, I think this proves the fact that online everyone lies about their age even computers.

Neighborhood Network Watch: Introduction PSA

The first public service announcement from the Neighborhood Network Watch is now up. It discusses the inception, goals, and history of the group. The first results of the New York Chapter are also discussed in this first PSA. Enjoy.

The Face of the N.N.W.

Ah yes the N.N.W., the Neighborhood Network Watch. I figure I'd finally post up some pics and hopefully a video if it finishes compressing. Modeled on our friendly baddy from the Neighborhood Watch signs of yesteryear only with the added wifi connectivity. Aiming to keep our citizens "safe."

Here is the Neighborhood Network Watch's Advisory System. Similar to the Department of Homeland Security's Threat Advisory System, same colors, same beveled rects and drop shadows. The PSA has not finished compressing so I'll post and then prolly revise this post so you all can see the first NNW PSA that discusses mostly the history of the NNW and their role within the community and the fight against terror.

2nd Place for D.D.A.T.W.C.U.N. @ Carless Drive In Video Festival

I finally have reached home and started to look at my mail. I was informed that "Death, Destruction, & the Weather Coming Up Next" won 2nd place in the Abstract category at the 4th Annual Carless Drive In Video Festival. Unfortunately I was unable to attend and I have no clue why i was grouped into that category or why I was put down as being from NYU when making the film (I was at CalArts at the time). Oh well, second place is second place. I should hear from the Academy this week, so fingers crossed.

I'm Back...

I'm back, finally back. Sunny Kali-fornia. LAPD beating down immigrants in MacArthur Park. Ah the sun, the scandals, how I miss thee. Anyhow, I'm back but not without incident of course. I had the worse plane ride back home. It consisted of sitting on the tarmac for 2+ hours and a final delay of over 3 hours. I'm going to get in contact with Delta's corporate cusomter service to try and get compensation, it was obscene. Not to mention not even the inflight programming was working, not to mention the poor people who bought movies on board that were instead given Norbit to watch, not the movie they choose, gagh.

My first year of grad school is done and it has been good overall. A lot of work but then I've also produced a lot of work and learned a lot of things. I kind of judge time by school years and not by years. So, this year has been good, actually pretty darn good. My film from last year has been getting screened here and there and is nominated for a Student Academy Award which is totally crazy. I have some largish projects I am verry interested in working on. I've had a chance to do a lot of reading. Been able to take a more active role in politics and talk more about it. Rather happy.

First to get a bit of biz out of the way. If you want to come to the Student Academy Awards Award Ceremony, you can request tickets, they're free but you do have to request them. It's only snail mail as well, no online ordering. The award ceremony is June 9th. You can find out more information at oscars.org. To RSVP for tickets you can print out the form from Oscars RSVP Tickets.

I never got a chance to post pictures from the Philadelphia Film Festival. So, here's two pics of me outside of the International House where it screened.

Here's a pic from the making of "I Will Make More Bolts of Linen." It's the final two pages of writing that I did to make it.

Here comes another pic but wait for it, here's some explanation. So, when I was doing some voice over for the Network Neighborhood Watch PSA which I will post hopefully soon, I had to check out a mic. Not a bad mic, a Røde. However, they forgot to give me the shockmount for it. This is the sort of mic you definitely cannot hold in your hand so I was like crap. I decided to bust a McGuyver and make one out of a Pringles can and some painters tape. Worker perfectly. Here it is.

And of course for something completely different.

This blog entry was posted on location with the men and women of postal enforcement.