:: Quiche of the Day ::

:: 1.28.2002 ::

There are people in our room discussing the movie Meet Joe Dirt and laughing hysterically while repeating the film's best jokes. ALL of which had to do with poop. No, that's an exageration; one of them was about incest! Ha ha ha. That stuff gets me every time.
"You guys should seriously rent that on DVD and tell me so I can watch it, too!"
"Yeah! Why don't you want to watch it, Aaron? I mean, from the trailer I thought it was going to be stupid, too, but it turned out to be --"
The film snob in me can't take any more. All of a sudden, I seriously can't stop laughing:
"Wait, wait wait! Then you found out it had poop jokes and you decided it wasn't stupid right?"
No one else thinks that's very funny.
:: Aaron Humphrey 11:41 PM reply [+] ::
...

Tomorrow my second semester of college gets its official start. After a whole month of doing basically nothing except working on other people's films and carrying out my dark, bloody vengence against the ants that made the mistake of crossing my path one times too many, returning to a structured life of peace sounds rather refreshing. I'm ready for it as long as the ants are.
Things are getting pretty bad on that front (and by "that front" I mean "the ant invastion of our room front". Last night I dreamed that all the ants divided into teams and had a great big battle in our sink. They had little spears, flags with clan crests on them and little sculpted bettles for good luck. The first thing I thought was, "wow, that A Bugs Life movie was a lot more realistic than I thought at first." Then when I woke up I wasn't sure if it really happened or not. Yeah. Too bad I'm not taking a sanity class next semester. I think I could use it.
Everyone's back in the dorms now, too. Ed and Christina have triumphantly returned, which we all get to hang out and listen to pirated music and throw stuff at each other every night. Observe!

Ed

Me:

Christina:

Grant:

Grant's jar of peanuts:

Saw that wacky Brotherhood of the Wolf flick last night. The guys on the poster looked like ninjas in leather trenchcoats and three-corned hats, plus the whole poster oozed gothic, colonial ninja style, so there was no way I was gonna miss the movie. Unfortunatly, the ninja quotiant was a little low for my taste -- the guys only looked like ninjas for about five minutes, the kung-fu was decent, but was cut together in an obtrusive style that failed as often as it worked (which is a pretty good ratio, actually), and there was one pretty good ninja-esque sneaking around scene. Of course, I like my movies to have more ninja action than most people, so I guess for a non-ninja, non-hong kong movie it was ok. The monster parts of the movie were a lot cooler than the kung-fu parts, but in the end there just weren't enough of them. If I had a monster that was as original, scary and straight up cool as the one in this movie I wouldn't simply forget about it, but I guess the french think it's cool. Instead we got a Desperado-style vengence showdown culminating in an over the top sword fight between two guys with shoulder-length hair that looked like every piece of non-pokemon anime I've ever seen. Overall, it was an enjoyable film, and the cinematography was amazing, but time I would think "ok, now we're settling into a groove," the plot, genre and themes would shift direction again. There were about three really cool films in there, but we didn't get to see any of them and just got a really long, semi-cool movie instead. Still worth my money I guess.
See what I got up at unspeakable hours of the morning for here!
Thrill to the wonders of my guest book!
Eat some cake and call it a night!
:: Aaron Humphrey 8:13 PM reply [+] ::
...

Being a sound recordist for a movie without dialouge is not the most exciting way to spend a day, but it's what I've gotten to wake up for at 4 AM for last week, and what I get to wake up at 6 AM for this week. Wahoo. Working at CBS studios was ok, because once we finished up with sound work, we were able to go home and sleep. However, for the three days that we're shooting at Chapman, there are important professors that everyone hates running around and telling all the student filmmakers how to do stuff. Which means that even if recording sound would actually be detrimental to the whole shooting process, we still have to stand alert and be ready to look like we're doing something in case a prof comes in to check on us. Today I recorded one scene with sound. I still spent ten hours on the set. This is why my web page doesn't get updated that often. I've got a bunch of stuff to upload, honest I do! I've just got to find the time to sit down and do it. I'm still brainstorming ways to make this whole outfit more interesting and useful. Currently it is time for me to go to bed so that I don't fall half-way asleep while I'm busy not doing anything tomorrow. More later!
:: Aaron Humphrey 9:35 PM reply [+] ::
...

Just typed out entry. Computer crashed. Stupid entry didn't get stupid posted. Aaron too sleepy to try to do the whole thing over again tonight. Fresher, juicier entry tomorrow. Until then, please enjoy the moist hospitality of my band-new guestbook! If you don't sign it, you'll only be hurting yourself.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:59 AM reply [+] ::
...

Here's what I'm up to these days:
One week ago was my birthday! woo! Since it was Sunday, the mail did not go through, so none of the birthday packages my family sent would arrive for another day, and I wouldn't be able to pick them up for another two days. However, it was my last day in a while to sleep in, so I happily took advantage of that fact. Grant stuck a birthday candle in my stale piece of cake from the cafeteria and I watched the director's cut of Almost Famous. All in all, it was a very decent birthday.
Monday was the first day of shooting for "The Trouble with Treefrogs," a senior thesis film that my RA Chris roped me into crewing for. It was my first time ever working with actual film instead of video, my first time working with a decent-sized crew, many of whom had more experience than myself, and the first time I had to wake up before seven in a long, long time. Grant decided that he didn't want to get up that early and work on the movie, so he stayed back at the dorms and did the same thing I would have done in his postion: nothing (more or less). I was glad to be occupied and learning stuff.
Everyday of the shoot was about twelve hours of work, and three hours of eatting and relaxing once I got back home, then hopefully about eight hours of sleep before I got to get up and do it all over again. The shoot wrapped on Friday and since then I haven't had too much to do, which was nice yesterday, but is kind of getting old now. Tomorrow I think I will ban myself from using the computer so that I'll have to do something if not productive, then at least different.

What I'm reading:
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons -- the classic 1985 superhero tale that apparently was a major turning point in the industry. I wasn't really paying attention to the industry at that point in time, but the word on the street is that it was quite revolutionary. One thing is certian -- it's really long. There's so much depth in the book, and it's taken me so long to get through all twelve chapters that I'm reluctant to call it a "comic book" simply because it doesn't fit in with the quick and dirty style of storytelling that term conjures up. Watchmen's dark tone and its unique, revisionist approach to "costumed heros" makes it noteworthy, but what really intrigues me is the way Moore and Gibbons use the medium to create revealing and sometimes disturbing juxtapostions. Sometimes the technique feels a little overused and predicatble, but it's unique enough and yeilds enough surprising and rewarding moments to make it worthwhile.

Getting Away With It by Steven Soderbergh -- Soderbergh wrote this book while he was working his way out of a creative and critical slump. I've not made it very far, but it's next on my list after Watchmen. I'm hoping for something as personal and insightful as Robert Rodregiuez's Rebel Without a Crew.

What I'm watching:
Adult Swim -- Wacky, absurdist Space Ghost and stylish noir Cowboy Beebop. The only thing I ever watch on TV, and each time I sit through the commercials, I remember whyh.

Movies I've seen:
Impostor -- There's a reason you haven't heard of this just-released sci-fi based on a story by Philip K. Dick: it sucks. There's enough good stuff in it to fill a 25 minute short film, but the rest of it is just fluffy, repetative chase scenes and jumpy, repetative editing. Fortunatly, after watching this, Grant and I snuck into . . .

The Royal Tennenbaums -- A meticulously crafted comedy that somehow makes funny moments seem sad and sad moments seen funny. The most wholly realized movie I've seen probably since Memento.

What I'm listening to:
Pinkerton by Weezer -- Sure, the poppier, more radio friendly self-titled albums are good, but the true hard-core Weezer fan knows that this melleoncholly, angst-fueled record is their strongest. Anyway, that's what everyone tells me. I like it, so do I get to be hard-core too?

Whatever and Ever Amen by Ben Folds Five and Rockin' The Suburbs by Ben Folds -- Both feature some of the best use of swearing I've heard on an optical disk, or any other kind of disk for that matter.

Barenaked Ladies Greatest Hits -- This is how I like my pop music -- catchy and frequently funny. I've got problems with the very idea of "Greatest Hits" CDs, but this album makes me forget them because I could leave it in my stereo all day and I don't think anyone would mind.

Where I've done:
This comes out of a page in my illustrated journal. It's me feeling overwhelmed at John Wayne airport on New Year's Eve, trying to figure out how to get back to the dorms. It looks like a rabbit. Grant bought a scanner, but it doesn't work on his computer, so I inherited it. It doesn't fare too much better on my computer, but it gets the job done. I scanned in the picture, then inked and colored it with Photoshop. I think I actually like the black and white version better.

I didn't make this, but it's the only sound effect I brought in from an outside source while cutting together a trailer for "The Untitled Drug Movie," the last film I worked on in Dallas. Tryinging to put a trailer together from the finished movie made me aware of just how differently I would have shot it if I had to do it now. That's good, right? It means I'm learning. Anyway, for some reason I can't seem to upload the trailer to The Internet, so that sound effect is all you kids get for now.

What I hate:
Cars. I want to start and anti-car club. Seriously!
:: Aaron Humphrey 2:11 AM reply [+] ::
...

Tonight Grant and I went to Borders books instead of getting dinner at the cafeteria. As a result, we're having to scavage for food around the dorm room since we are too lazy and cheap to spend money somewhere that would make us pay. My evening meal in composed of Kraft Easy Mac (which is about the most complete meal you can get for 60 cents), which I'm eatting out of a tuperwear container my mom sent me cookies in since we don't have any bowls, a piece of bread slathered in peanut butter, and one tasty glass of water. The macaronni is going cold, but I don't realluy mind; at least this time I got the cheese sauce to boiling water ratio about right, so it doesn't taste like soup for a, change. I think I'll have a Lifesaver for dessert.
I'm not very happy with this website these days. I'll probably get really bored one of these days and revamp the whole thing. Or maybe not. The Internet itself doesn't seem to house all that much to keep me interested. I was reading about the latest MegaMan game that I will never play earlier tonight because at some point I'd bookmarked a MegaMan fansite and it was the only page in my bookmark list that sounded like it could keep my interest. Now that I've been there I don't have any reason to go back for about a month. That's good I guess. I haven't reached the stage of bordom where I just type in urls like www.pirateship.com, www.ninjas.com, www.icecream.com, www.ninja.com, www.funisland.com, or www.ninjas.net, and finally get disapointed enough to quit the whole business all together. Actually, apparently I have since I went and looked at all those sites (the fun island one is highly recommended).
Also, I went back and read some of the reviews I had up in the comix section. Boy, that was a mistake! Not reading them, mind you, but writing them! Please don't go check it out for yourself because a) there's not much there to see, and b) it's crap. Just when you think you've become a decent writer, there's always something like that to laugh in your face. And to think that I was actually proud of that Ghost World review. *shudder* Reviews are hard stuff to write -- I can annylize themes and literary devices in works of art like nobody's business, but I have a really hard time placing a value judgement on something, unless it really, really sucks. And if it really, really sucks, I don't plan on spending the money to read it so that I can write a review of it. I'm gonna have to re-think my strategy for the comix section. It may disapear entierly if I can't come up with something. In the meantime, check out Comics Worth Reading or iComics for excellent examples of good, straight-forward, comics reviews mostly about non-super hero comics. That's what I do anyway.
Tomorrow's my birthday! I can't decide if I'm going to feel depressed about it or not. I don't feel excited about it, so I guess I figure that I ought to feel something. I don't know why it has to be the opposite end of the stectrum, though. That's the logical place to look, I guess. Being depressed is stupid and self-indulgent so I don't think I could let myself be depressed. Still, look at what I've written today . . . everything's kind of a downer except for the part about food, which I thought was funny. I'm not depressed, though. I'm sorry. None of this must be very interesting to read. Next time I'll try to have something cool to talk about.
:: Aaron Humphrey 10:38 PM reply [+] ::
...

This morning I woke up at about four o'clock in the morning thinking that I must have slept in forever. I looked at the clock, realized that I hadn't. Then I went back to sleep and got up again some time between ten and eleven. I had some cheap (four for a dollar, it sounds cheap at least) bananas left over from my big shopping trip yesterday, so I had banana and Kool-Aide for breakfast. I checked my e-mail, my voice-mail and the Internet in general. As I suspected, nothing had happened. I've got a meeting for the Location Filmmaking project I'm doing for our winter interterm at nine tomorrow, but no one seems to know where it is. That's college anyway. Oh well. Brandon, one of the guys I share a bathroom with showed up around noon to streak his hair blue about the same time I was planning on taking a shower. We traded hellos, he finished his hair, then I got my shower.
Afterwards, I decided that I could either a) sit around the dorm room for the rest of the day waiting for something cool knock on my not-so-proverbial door, or b) go out and have a wacky adventure that I'd probably end up regretting. In cases like these, b is always the right choice.
My last wacky adventure consisted mostly of trying to get my boatload or bags and skateboards from the airport to my dorm room . . . made especially difficult since I didn't have a boat. I left for Dallas with one back pack, one duffle bag and one laptop bag. Christmas-time was good for me in terms of getting all sorts of sweet stuff, but bad for me in terms of being able to truck all that stuff back to school unencumbered . . . especially without an actual truck. Not only did I get a bunch of sweaters and a deluxe Scrabble game to cart back (without a . . . nevermind.), I also received a longboard, which is a kind of skateboard that is used only for transportation, not for doing tricks, and is oh-so-hip with the college set. Long story short? I didn't have enough hands to easily carry everything from the baggage claim part of the airport to the transportation part of it. Nor did I have a clue as to what kind of transportation I should take. I waited for, well a really long time for a bus to come, only to find out that it wasn't going the same way I wanted to go. This meant that I had to go somewhere else and pay a good sum of money for transportation. But actually moving me and all of my stuff was not something I wanted to do again, at least not in the grueling, sweat-inducing try-and-hold-on-to-everything-and-stumble-around way I'd done it before. Fortunately I was smart and rigged up a way to pull most of my baggage around on my skate board. It probably wasn't the best way to travel, since I had to manually turn the skateboard if I wanted to adjust its trajectory, but it was pretty easy going and made me feel very resourceful. I half-expected some random person to comment on my inventiveness. No one did. When I made it to the taxi-and-shuttle area my plan to scope out all the options and pick out the most practical one was shot down by the fast-talking, all-too-eager shuttle employees who hustled me into their van, then made me wait twenty minutes to see if anyone else would either decide to not take a taxi or look, as I did, like they needed to have the decision made for them. Meanwhile, I listened to some radio station play old Michael Jackson songs over and over again. In a way, I figured it was a good thing I was taking the shuttle, because otherwise the guys who had been so anxious for my business would be unable to feed their families. Or something. There's not too much more to that story.
There's not too much to the story of my wacky adventure today, either. I decided to take the bus and make a trip to the comic book store in Garden Grove, which I normally would have to beg for people to take me to. Aside from walking in the wrong direction hoping I'd find a bus that was going in the same direction I was walking, before realizing a few blocks later that it was a really, really dumb idea, I didn't have too many problems. I had to do some walking and some waiting, sure, but I figure those are both good skills to have. Plus I managed to pull the whole trip off all by myself without getting hideously lost, so I felt pretty good about that. Plus it was the first time I really felt like I enjoyed going to that comic book store. They had everything I was looking for for the first time in months, plus some other books I wanted to check out. There were lots of old 90s pop-rock songs on the radio and I didn't have anyone with me who wasn't hip to the scene, so I got to do more browsing than usual. I almost left without getting my debit card back, though. Actually, I made it all the way to the bus station before I decided that it might have been a good idea to go back for it.
I got back to the dorm at about five and all was still quiet on the western front. I was just about ready to fix me a Cup O' Noodles (chicken flavor!), when Brandon showed up again and asked me if I wanted to go to In and Out with him and his friend. I said sure; I certainly didn't have anything better to do! Brandon couldn't remember where the closest branch of CA's favorite burger joint was, so we drove for a really, really long time before we found one. Apparently at In and Out you can order x by y burgers where x is the number of meat patties you want and y is the number of slices of cheese you want. I just got a 1 by 1. Brandon ordered a 6 by 6. Brandon’s friend kept getting calls of his cell phone from his girlfriend who NEEDED to know how to get through ChronoTrigger. They had their prom at the Nixon library. twice! All in all, it was a very entertaining evening.
:: Aaron Humphrey 8:29 PM reply [+] ::
...