re-run

"Death at a Funeral" Trailer Mashup [1]

2010-02-05T18:43:24Z

My man Alex agreed with me that it’s pretty ridiculous to remake a movie only three years after the original, especially when you’re remaking it in the same language as the original.

Not only is the story exactly the same, but the trailers even have the same structure.

In this video, he mashed up the trailers for both versions of “Death at a Funeral” to highlight the similarities.

Standup Comedy for February 2010

2010-02-04T12:58:40Z

In which I mostly make fun of modern movies, TV and music.

I have got to slow down. And what’s with the hand going in the pocket?

The Meaning of Life

2010-01-30T13:58:51Z

This week’s entry in the 2010 goal of “publish at least one entertaining thing a week”. A sort of joke-y video about what would happen when the universe’s purpose is completed.

I had written the first few pages of a screenplay back in High School with this same premise, but back then it was going to be a talk-y melodramatic bore.

The technical challenges I set for myself this time were to match up some combination of long shot, medium shot and close-up. I think it came out okay. I’m pretty happy with the way the close-up goes back to the medium shot at the end. Also interesting from a production standpoint: the one line of dialogue came from a different shot, and I used a lot of “room tone” that I first practiced with for the Star Wars clip.

Thanks to my awesome friends at work for their support and patience!

The Show Music Show

2010-01-26T18:16:32Z

I’m hoping to start a new podcast for fans of soundtracks (movies, TV and video games). I’m talking about music specifically written for the screen, not collections of pop songs.

In order to keep the show legal, I’ll need to cover some license fees. If you want to help in any way, or get a deeply-discounted rate on the first year of membership, check out the page where I’m accepting a few dollars from considerate people like yourself in order to get the show off the ground.

Supreme Court rules that corporations are entitled to spend unlimited funds in our elections [1]

2010-01-21T17:09:52Z

Star Wars Scene 222 [1]

2010-01-11T13:59:50Z

As part of the “Star Wars Uncut“ project, we re-created 15 seconds of Episode IV: A New Hope. The whole movie was split into 15-second chunks and is being re-created by fans all around the world.

I like to try to re-learn something about filmmaking with each new video, and this clip was the first time in years I got to make use of a boom mic, thanks to my friend Alex (who also played Admiral Motti and was primarily responsible for editing). This is also the first time we planned ahead and used “room tone” to even out the audio (I dare say we did a better job than George in that respect, at least in this scene).

Princess Leia was played awesomely by Whitney Barham. Darth Vader With a Cyberman Head was played by Matt Midboe, with his excellent creepy hand-drag.

Julie Hwang wrangled the whole thing together as the Director and Director of Photography, and I couldn’t be happier with how it came out.

My first open mic standup comedy [1]

2010-01-07T21:07:01Z

If you have the bandwidth, the audio is much better if you view it on YouTube and click the HQ button.

My improv teacher just started hosting an open mic night on a monthly basis. I went to the first one in December and calculated a decision to give it a try, myself.

I’d been collecting some of my favorite Twitter updates (of mine, of course) for the past few months. I grouped some of them by topic and then created some segues, turning it into about 7 minutes of material.

Why I Don't Believe in God [3]

2009-11-20T00:24:15Z

More than enough essays have been written by people explaining why they don’t believe in God. This is mine.

Here’s the short version: I don’t need there to be a God in order to be a good person.

Common Definitions

It’s pointless to say that you do or don’t believe in God without first agreeing about what it is that you do or don’t believe in. For the purposes of this essay, and for the purposes of my life, God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, conscious entity, with awareness and influence over my life from the smallest particle all the way up through the vastness of the cosmos.

Consciousness is key, there. If God is an unconscious, non-aware entity, then that’s something more like the “force” from Star Wars. When people – especially Americans – talk about God, I don’t think they’re talking about that.

Early Years

I grew up doubting. I’ve always been extremely logical and literal, preferring empirical evidence over everything else. So when our first grade teacher told us that God talks to everybody, I raised my hand.

“I don’t think God talks to me,” I said, or something similar.

“Yes he does,” replied the teacher, “He talks to everybody if you’re willing to listen.” She was very firm about it.

That afternoon I walked around the back patio for probably about thirty minutes talking to God. Nobody responded. That’s when I started doubting. And this is also the first reason why I cringe at the thought of religion having a place in schools. Some kids are not ready for this. I am proof of that.

I spent many ensuing nights alone in my bedroom, pondering the nature of God. That’s what I was doing a lot of the time when you guys were out learning how to talk to the people you found attractive and generally getting in teenage trouble. (That, or I was playing Nintendo, or making faces in the mirror.)

I eventually concluded that the “force” type of God was the closest I was going to get. Specifically, I thought of God as a universal subconsciousness. This concept isn’t conscious, and isn’t as clean-cut as karma, but it can have an effect on one’s life in unscientific ways. For example, I can’t prove that if 1,000 people pray for their church member to conquer cancer, and she does, that their prayer didn’t help.

Why Do People Believe?

A lot of people believe in God simply because they were raised that way, and didn’t bother doubting. Other people were raised in belief, and did some doubting, and came through it with their faith even stronger. Some people were raised to believe, stopped believing, but attend religious services, anyway. There are probably hundreds of permutations of various stages of belief and implementation of religious ideas into one’s life. I think I’ve only met a dozen or so people that I would call “devout”.

In no particular order, here are the reasons I’ve observed people believe in God:

Maybe they want to live forever

Put another way, they’re scared of dying. I’m scared of dying, too, but thankfully that’s temporary, and I’m not scared of death. Here’s what I think happens when you’re dead: you stop being aware. What’s scary about that? You can’t be scared, because you’re unaware. You spend a third of your life unaware without being scared about it.

Unless…

Maybe they don’t want to go to Hell

I think this is the big one, the reason that most people keep their faith strong and (apparently) act in ways that would otherwise seem unnatural: they don’t want the experience of dying and then being tortured for eternity.

Here’s a somewhat sloppy syllogism:

A leap of faith is a choice that you make to believe in something
God is a leap of faith, which means you’re choosing to believe in God
God created (or at least didn’t remove) a Hell for sinners to exist in after they die, so they can experience torture for eternity
By believing in God, you’re taking a leap of faith that Hell exists
Therefore, the existence of Hell is a choice that you’re making for yourself
You want to believe there’s a Hell

What kind of a choice is that? Unless it’s because you want to believe that other people are going to Hell. In the first case, you’re already torturing yourself, in the second case, you’re being rather vindictive, which I think we can agree is not a Christian principle.

Even if I’m wrong, and I do go to Hell, I have to assume that I’d periodically have to laugh at how absurd it is.

Maybe they’re looking forward to Heaven

Is Heaven just for humans? Do you share it with other people who are also in Heaven? What if I was a really good person, but I was totally into insects, and wouldn’t want to spend an eternity in Heaven without my insect friends? Would you have to experience Heaven with my insects? Would God do that to you if you couldn’t deal with insects?

What if your best friends in life were dolphins? Do dolphins swim around in Heaven? That’d look weird, huh?

But if Heaven is a purely subjective experience without bugs or flying dolphins, that means that perhaps my wife in Heaven is not the same entity as the one experiencing her Heaven. Also weird.

Maybe they want a little magic in their lives

Eh. Just being alive is already amazing.

Maybe they’ve experienced something that proves to them that God exists

Fair enough. I have not had this experience.

Maybe because Jesus was way cool

There are simply too many coincidences with regard to Jesus’s life as told in the New Testament, and other fables from different earlier cultures of virgin births and resurrection, for me to take the New Testament seriously.

I think there was probably a real guy who walked around spreading a message of love and empowerment from one true God. And he was speaking to people who had seemingly always known oppression because of their culture. They’d been expecting a savior for a long time, and felt they needed one in order to be able to lead a life of dignity. I think they wanted him to be the son of God, and so he was.

In order to get his message spread even further, he needed to be born from a virgin mother (people had weird ideas about virginity back then), and so he was.

In order to cement his message in the public dialogue, he needed to come back from the dead, and so he had.

But this essay isn’t really about Jesus. He was this guy, and he was wise, and he inspired oppressed people, so the oppressors had him killed.

They want rules to live by

This is among the better reasons to believe in God: not because you fear punishment, but because you want a role model, someone to impress, guidelines to live by.

This is the only one I need: act around others the way you’d want them to act around you. (“Do unto” makes you sound archaic and irrelevant.) That’s the rule. It exists in just about every religion, which makes it a universal concept. Don’t be a jerk.

Don’t be a jerk

I don’t want to be a jerk, do you?

I’ve only known one person who considered himself an antagonist, and I’m pretty sure he got over it. Take away Hell, Heaven, God, religion, death, taxes, politics and romance, and there are still plenty of reasons not to be a jerk.

Here’s one of the smartest things I ever read, ironically (maybe) from a book called “Conversations with God”. I’m paraphrasing:

A person in an enlightened society doesn’t hit himself over the head with a hammer, because it hurts. He also doesn’t hit someone else over the head with a hammer, for the same reason.

I don’t need a God, or a representative of God, or a messenger from God, to tell me that hitting someone else is wrong. I feel it instinctively when it happens. Likewise with using a handicapped parking spot, not signaling when changing lanes, leaving a nearly empty carton of milk in the fridge, and making a profit at someone else’s expense. You wouldn’t want anyone to do those things to you, and so you avoid doing them yourself. That’s what being a part of a society means: helping each other out, or at the very least, not blocking someone else’s path.

I read a story last year about a young man who assisted an older resident who was filling out his absentee ballot. The ballot included a measure that would limit marriage only to heterosexual couples. The young man had to fill in the box that helped bring about this discrimination, even though he was gay, himself. He did as he was asked, because in an enlightened society, people help each other out. (Which one of the people in that story seems the most Christ-like to you?)

For me, that’s just being cultured. Religion doesn’t enter into it.

Strong morals, I think, are the best reason to believe in God, but God is not a pre-requisite for morals, or for moral behavior.

So, I don’t believe in God, because I just don’t see the point. I already know I’m not supposed to be a jerk. And I also know that sometimes I fail. I’m not going to Hell because I fail… I’m going to bed, then I’m going to get up and try again.

Afterword: The Weird Things I Do Believe In

I’ve had paranormal and/or supernatural experiences. That just means things have happened to me that we can’t yet explain through scientific methods. I look forward to the days when some of them can be explained, and especially, reproduced.

But none of them will be if we just give up and say, “well, God works in mysterious ways.” It doesn’t have to be mysterious. Let’s keep our brains turned on and figure it out.

"When You Grow Up"

2009-11-13T20:40:47Z

Our new alternate commentary is live and totally free to watch in full:

And, for your birthday, I brought my power cord.

2009-10-30T20:22:36Z

And, for your birthday, I brought my power cord.

Halloween Costume 2009 [2]

2009-10-30T12:38:40Z

My Dr. Horrible costume, in action:

buttery death

2009-10-21T19:27:09Z

I feel like hot buttered death.
Wrapped in velvety, bacony death.
With a side of death. And orange juice.

Ghost Hunters Drinking Game [1]

2009-10-16T13:21:51Z

Take a sip when:

Jason says, “what goes on in here?”
Annoying sound effects get in the way of the actual evidence
Jason says, “Well, you know what we did”
Someone avoids using an adverb (e.g. “We did good.”)
Jason asks “where to, now?”
Bats fly around
Two investigators send another investigator into a room they know something naturally scary (a bat, say) is in
Someone talks about how big a place is

Do a shot when:

Steve gets scared of a spider
Jason or Grant shakes a pipe
Steve offers someone else at least $20 to do something dirty or gross
Someone whispers so quietly they need to use subtitles
Someone explains what an EVP is
Grant talks about limestone
Steve relays some information he heard while on the initial tour, but with errors

Do two shots when:

You see one of the TV crew members
A word or phrase is censored

Do three shots when:

A spirit voice curses, and it’s not censored
A semi-transparent human figure appears on video

Start to take a sip, but just hold the glass to your lips when:

You get distracted by Kris’s enhanced cleavage

Start a meth lab when:

Steve flies on an airplane

Coffee Cups on TV - Stop Being Broken [2]

2009-05-23T17:32:12Z

Continuing to evolve my tiny show. This time we added other people, multiple angles, a memorized script and production stills.

Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenocerous [1]

2009-01-13T14:13:28Z

My friends and I made a music video for a Flight of the Conchords lipdub contest:

Please watch it in high definition.

I’d join you on Christmas... [2]

2008-12-23T14:38:20Z

but I’m afraid I’m all booked up:

New Favorite Submit Button

2008-11-04T16:12:14Z

Instead of “Submit” or “Go” or whatever, they use a little e-mail icon to start a new e-mail newsletter subscription.

Hottt.

Saying it better than I could [2]

2008-10-23T01:55:30Z

Three Admirable Reasons to Vote McCain [2]

2008-10-20T12:42:28Z

1) You think his tax policy is sound

This is either because you are incredibly wealthy and want to retain all the money you can, or you’ve been misled by the Republican promises of “trickle-down economics”. But all the evidence of the Reagan and Bush tax plans points to the contrary. Rich people, when given tax breaks, don’t invest in the country’s future, they invest in their own futures.

If it’s because you’re very wealthy and want to conserve your money, well I can’t argue with that, except to suggest that maybe you want to show a little compassion to your fellow citizens. Besides, I’m not worried about this group, since they’re in an extreme minority. What worries me is that in order to make sure this minority achieves a majority vote, Republicans have tied their provably-false tax policies in with more morality-focused promises:

2) You want to stop abortion

I totally sympathize with this. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where abortion could be avoided?* (Maybe abortion doctors, but they can find other jobs.)

But the truth of the matter is that five Republican Presidents have had twenty-five years between them to outlaw abortion, and we’re still deeply divided on the issue. Even John McCain seems not particularly committed (when asked to vote whether he supports Roe v. Wade, he declined to vote either way).

I believe with all my heart that McCain is yet another Republican Presidential contender who is promising change on the abortion issue, and who has no plans at all to deliver on that promise. I can’t predict the future, but I have twenty-five years of evidence. Instead of potentially wasting your vote on this heated issue, you should probably do more to prevent accidental pregnancies, like Obama wants to do.

3) You want to win the war on terror

It would be great if we could clean up every single terrorist, brush off our hands and say, “whoo! That’s done. Everybody loves America, again.” But we’re fighting an enemy whose goal is war itself, and by bin Laden’s own words: destryong America’s economy. How do you fight an enemy whose primary goal is war?

* There are, of course, many more reasons why abortion shouldn’t be made unsafe and illegal, but I wanted to concentrate on the aspects that McCain voters would agree with right away.

Helping Sarah Palin

2008-10-13T14:13:12Z

I’m writing this in a sincere attempt to help Governor Sarah Palin out of a really weird place that she put herself in. Her sister used to be married to an Alaskan State Trooper who by all accounts acted like a jerk and wasn’t a particularly good cop.

Later, we found out:

An Alaska ethics inquiry found that Gov. Sarah Palin, the U.S. Republican vice presidential candidate, abused the power of her office by pressuring subordinates to fire a state trooper involved in a feud with her family, a report released on Friday said.

She knew this was coming, and could have responded one of three ways:

She could have apologized. Americans love this, and reporters almost never argue with it.
She could have said she didn’t agree with the findings of the legislative panel that put out the report (nevermind that the panel was 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats).
She could have pointed out the inconsistencies in the report, which simultaneously condemns her behavior and says that she didn’t do anything illegal or improper.

Instead, she chose option four, and said, “There was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.“

I don’t know, maybe that’s her way of saying, “I disagree with the report,” but to me it sounds like she’s saying, “I didn’t read the report and I don’t intend to.”

It’s not too late to apologize. Seriously. We’ll eat it up, and we can move on and talk about differences in policy instead of who is the most corrupt candidate.

I live in Florida.

2008-09-12T20:12:21Z

But these pieces are written by intellectuals who live in an environment where reasoned argument is prized. I live in Florida.

the zombie apocalypse

2008-09-11T12:45:50Z

I had a dream about the zombie apocalypse last night in which I was busy taking pictures of the dramatic sky.

The Difference Between Cats and Dogs

2008-07-24T20:11:46Z

A dog will be your friend even when it seems like nobody else will.

A cat will be your friend only when it seems like nobody else will.

It takes a bit of concentration/practice

2008-07-18T20:57:08Z

It takes a bit of concentration/practice, but during a meeting last week I used the bottle several times in the space of an hour without any chirping.

oh Dear God.

2008-06-17T15:40:18Z

what do you think about putting a little graphic up and a “sign” that says “Under Construction”? Something that looks like a little cartoon perhaps?

salmonella

2008-06-11T13:43:29Z

salmonella
oops, ha. meant to google that.

Free rating card artwork [2]

2008-05-22T21:09:08Z

I was annoyed that I couldn’t find any high-quality artwork for this movie / film / trailer / preview / rating card / green screen image anywhere online, so I recreated it (then I cleaned up the spacing and alignment a little).

If I were a screenwriter, I’d make a poster of this and hang it on my wall for inspiration.

Download the full version in glorious 1920 × 1080 PNG format.

Yeah. “Beautiful.” Sure. [1]

2008-05-21T13:14:56Z

The temperature has been in the High ’90s this week. This morning on the elevator ride up, Mr. Friendly Stranger wanted to talk to me, and he said, “It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, just like yesterday.”

So, one of the following has to be true. Either

a) I am at least ten degrees more sensitive to heat than everybody around me, because miserable weather starts at around 82°, or

b) everybody who lives in Dallas willingly is at least a little bit stupid.

Of course, the elevator is no place to have a disagreement with someone, especially someone who is just trying to be friendly, so I smiled and answered, “Let’s hope so.”

(I should say, since I didn’t before, that I am very proud of Texas for having a Spring that lasted through all of April. That was fantastic.)

At $9.95 per domain, failure doesn't cost that much

2008-05-12T18:31:30Z

This might be seen as somewhat embarrassing, but I thought it would be interesting to recap some of the domains I’ve registered over the years:

NJFilm.com

This was my very first domain, registered in 1997. It was supposed to be a community hang-out, idea-sharing site for independent filmmakers in New Jersey. It failed utterly, except for the parts where I got to practicing building Web pages.

ActuallyHappened.com

I think this is before I knew about Fray. I wanted a place for people to contribute true and unbelievable stories. It got zero submissions. Oh, well.

LifeAfterMTV.com

This was a meta-blog that aggregated (manually, of course) the blogs of people who were previously on MTV’s “The Real World” and “Road Rules”. It was extremely snarky, and pretty well received. I think the highlight was getting a link from somewhere in Yahoo!‘s entertainment division. I got bored with the topic after about a year.

AdGrinder.com

AdCritic.com was so great, and I wanted a place to store fan-made parodies of advertisements, which I had a few ideas for. Nobody really had any interest in contributing. I’m still proud of the header graphic.

Webgeek 0lympics

It was supposed to be an annual one-day competition with lots of various events that all related to Web design-y stuff. Besides getting together a great list of celebrity judges, almost nobody participated. I think some of that might be because in order to enter, you were supposed to send a trackback ping to a specific weblog entry. Nobody understood Trackbacks then, just as nobody understands them now. The other reason it didn’t work is probably because it was a dumb idea. But I had to try.

theynow.com

My first – and so far best – experiment with podcasting. Despite the infrequency of updates, I have more than a thousand listeners and the support of the rock band that I’m podcasting about. I’ve gotten to interview people like Jonathan Coulton and Common Rotation, and other high-profile podcasters have contributed to the show. I should really pay more attention to it.

coderwisdom.com

This was a total impulse buy, and did little more than translate inspirational quotes into various programming languages. It’s one of those things that you think is really funny and other people mostly don’t. Oh, well.

LunchCorp.com

Also soon to fade into archive-land, it’s a clearinghouse for ideas I’ve had that I wanted other people to pursue. In retrospect, I probably should have just kept them on re-run.

StopBeingBroken.com

I am having a great time making this (really, really) short show. Looking at it from the outside, I can see why someone might now know what to make of it. It’s not a news show, and it’s not strictly entertainment. Individual episodes get watched (as of this writing) about 300 times each, so I’m considering it a success. And every time I make a new show, I learn (or re-learn) something about lighting, camera placement, editing, etc., which feels really good.

DeepHub.com

Nobody was writing about the new age of entertainment distribution, so we have to. I think it’s fascinating, even if I’m not doing a lot of it myself.

There are a few sites that never got off the ground, like The Frightened Chef (don’t have a studio), Robot News Now (don’t want to do the news), The Songwriters Studio (don’t ask), and The Show Music Show (don’t want to pay licensing fees).

I’ve tried a lot of things over the past ten years. Most of it went badly, but each failure was worth every penny. I think the only regret I have is that I didn’t find someone to take over LifeAfterMTV.com. I must’ve tried, though. That sounds like something I would do.

Cobra Commander `08 [2]

2008-05-12T16:25:42Z

“Attack of the Show” is probably the most creative show that you aren’t watching.