Take a look, it's in a book

This weekend I went to a renaissance fair in Cambridge. My only previous experience with ren fairs was watching one on Reading Rainbow. It turned out to be much cooler than I imagined. I got to practice knife and axe throwing, watch a real joust, check out some melees, give suggestions to the king while he told an improv story, see a trebuchet in action, and eat a blue raspberry slushie and giant turkey leg as big as my forearm (both of course very medieval). All in all, pretty awesome. But don't take my word for it:






More pictures and videos are here.

Strange dreams

So this morning I had a crazy dream. Part of it involved a family vacation to some woodland area south of Chicago, which we drove up to from Hawaii (not sure how that works).

In another part I had become a knight in some fantasy movie and was being attacked by an evil warrior queen. I rolled towards my swords that were sticking out of the ground, but I rolled past them and had to dodge and weave to grab two of them. The queen attacked from one side just as someone else charged in, so I spun around and hit both of them. This killed the queen, but the other person charging in was apparently one of my own knights! As he stood there bleeding, he told me to remember the promise made by the demon. This jogged my memory and I found a demon walking away and told him that we had an agreement that I could have a wish if I defeated the queen. With a wave of his hand he healed the knight. The next thing I said to the knight was "Next time Bennivere, don't f***ing come running in swinging your sword around me! I can't tell who you are with all your armor on!"

Interpret that, psychoanalysts!

Spider-man 3 review

I did a guest post about this on the awesome Ultra-Condensed Movie Review blog. Which you should be reading, along with listening to the Coasting By podcast*.

*The author is not affiliated with these sites in any way, nor is he currently spending his newly found advertising dollars on collapsible top hats.

Birthday Songs

I made some theme songs for people for their birthdays, and I think I will continue this trend for the rest of the year. So if you want one, just let me know (perhaps applies retroactively too). Note to self: get a real mic and pop shield so I don't have to stand far back when recording vocals.

Naomi Theme.mp3

Laurie's Theme.mp3

And while I'm at it, here's a song from a weekly writing (oddly enough, another birthday theme song).

Song for the Eldri...

48 hour learnings

So a couple weekends ago I made a film in 48 hours. It was a lot of fun, but also quite exhausting.

Things I learned:
1. Have a short script so you can spend more time on music and editing.
2. Wear sunscreen. Even if it is April in Wisconsin.
3. Release forms are annoying.
4. I have really talented friends (although this was more of a reconfirmation).

And now I present Route Sixty Six (the 54 hour version with better sound):





Route Sixty Styx on Vimeo

Below titles

So I saw some awesome movies at the film fest this past weekend, including three that were subtitled. Why is it that two of them had only white subtitles, thus making it impossible to read when they are on white backgrounds (which kind of happens a lot). Seriously, how hard is this to do? These are all newer movies, so really it's just laziness. All you have to do is put a black outline around the letters! One simple thing, yet it makes all the difference in the world. So if you are in charge of subtitles for a movie, first what are you doing here, but second put in a damn outline.

Brought to you by the Society of People with Nothing of Substance to Complain About (SPNSCA).

How I spent my Sunday

Finishing a song I did with song mistress Laurie! The instruments still don't sound as full in the mixdown, but this is a pretty faithful rendition.

Ghost of Tiramisu....