"Belle" of the ball?

just finished a new painting.  Like my hands are still covered in paint.  Check it out.

When I paint, I mentally compartmentalize the entire picture, so that I only ever worry about the stroke I'm making at the moment.  The problem with this lack of "big picture" approach is that I really have no preconception as to what the end product will actually look like.  This painting is the perfect example: the way the colors turned out, I took a step back to look at the completed project, and realized that she is Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Regardless, I'm pretty happy with it, except for the fact that my signature looks like it was done by an 8-year-old.  I've gotta work on that...

the end.

-R.

Uuuupdate?

Okay, okay okay I know I updated like a day ago but great things have happened. Great things indeed. First off, some randomness.

I look at a lot of files at work - it's what I do. And on these files are the names of various clients. Most of the time it's something like "John Perkins" or something else equally normal. But every once in a while I'll come across names that entertain me more than a big scary monster willow spontaneously humping ferrets on tree-huggers appreciation day. Names like Mercole Stufflebean, Warren Pece, Guy P Greene, and Billy Button to name a few. I love my job.

Speaking of my job, I have more updates. Working with my hands and building things is therapudic for me, and I've been in need of some therapudicness the past couple days. Soooo even though my bonsai tree just evolved into an AWESOME Optimus clone, it underwent yet another metamorphosis, but this time it's more like a growth spurt. Check it out.

Sha-pow! He's like 18 inches tall and completely made out of mail clips. And a cut out piece of post-it note that I colored on. Check out his face. Again.

Oh, and my staple stack wouldn't stand up straight so after fighting it for like 5 minutes I threw it away and started over. But I'm playing it smart this time. I've got a mold that I'm pouring the staples into, and when it's full I'll slide up to reveal my perfect staple stack. And by 'mold' I mean toilet paper tube. It's kind of like a game...which is why I also gave it a back board. Observate.

I know, you wish your workspace was as awesome as mine. It can be, tiny grasshopper, with a little post-its, markers, and imagination...and mail clips and staples and toiler paper tubes and highlighters and a sharpie and some tape and some paper clips and a notepad and a loooooot of free time.

Okay so I got so caught up in talking about my crazy work stuff that I forgot what this post was going to be about. I guess I'll post again later. Like sooner later, not later later.

-R.

Another Update. Hey, that's what blogs are for, right?

My staple stack has grown a bit...

And my mail clip bonsai tree has evolved into a...transformer.

Say hello to my own personal mini Optimus Prime.  Kind of.  Check out his face.

Hah.  I know, it's pretty frikkin' awesome.

Well, work is good but school is kicking my butt.  I guess it's a good thing though, because I've been needing to get my butt kicked recently.  Imagine you're put in an empty room and told "There is a problem in this room.  Solve it."  Well that was me last night.  The room was my life, and the problem was there.  The only thing is, you can't fix it if you don't know what it is.  I can solve problems, but figuring out what the problem is?  That's like giving me a blank canvas and saying "Paint a picture of it" without telling me what it is.

But, after several hours of self-reflection and talking to the mirror, I figured out what the problem is.  All it will take to fix it is time, sacrifice, a constant battle between my flesh and the Holy Spirit inside me, and more time.  But at least I know what the problem is.  And it's good to know my wife is on my team fighting with me and for me.

This is all for now.  I just wanted to chronicle this transitional stage because it may very well play an enormous part in shaping the next few chapters of my life.

-R.

oh, what peace we often forefit

oh what needless pain we bear

all because we do not carry

everything to God in prayer

New Game! Play it.

AHHHH update update update. okay. mmmmmm. ok, I've got it.

My wife and I went to California on our honeymoon, which means Disneyland, the beach, and stupid high gas prices. Whilst at the beach, I invented a sport called wave-punching, where you...well, run up to a wave and punch it. It didn't quite pick up.

Well, I have a new...thing. I'm not calling it a sport, as it requires zero athleticism. To keep with the trend of giving my games ridiculously obvious names, this new one's called staple-stacking.

Yeah. I wasn't kidding. The rules are: 1) they must be used staples - no pumpin' out the staples just to put them in the stack. It's kind of like the unspoken rubber band ball rule where you can't just buy a bag and ball 'em up. 2) no magnets. Nothing can be keeping the staples together but more staples. And gravity. It kind of has a barrel-o-monkeys effect. 3) an awesomely decorated post-it as a base is not a must, but it does add super awesome bonus points. And it could be the difference between your stack looking like a piece of art, and it looking like an upright metallic turd. Here's a better shot with the base:

I have too much free time at work. Well, actually I have two 15-minute breaks every day where I spend 5 minutes breaking and 10 minutes leaving my mark on my desk. How so? Oh, little things, like drawing comic book characters on sticky notes and putting them on my monitor...

...or making bonsai trees out of mail clips...

...or my personal favorite, doodling pictures of dogs barking in japanese at various objects.

Or maybe he's guarding my files that are labeled bilingually...?

Yes. I got snap happy. At work. But I guess it's just because there are so many interesting things to look at on my desk. What's that you say? Super Mario Galaxy is calling out to me and begging me to play it? Well in that case, I must oblige. Farewell my friends, until next time: may your hands never fall prey to idleness, and may your labor produce good fruit.

-R

In the Now: Semi-Interesting and Slightly Amusing

I haven't written in forever, so I feel like I should. The problem is, nothing's coming to my mind to write about.

I picked my brain just now, but the only thing that came up was how annoying I think it is that the E-surance chick is so frikking hot. She's a cartoon. It's just not right. But I guess it's not too abnormal to find a cartoon attractive, since every male over 20 years of age knows he's lusted after Jessica Rabbit at least once.

Speaking of Jessica Rabbit, I found a blog where this dude takes animated notables and uses Adobe Photoshop to manipulate and combine elements from celebrity and model photographs to recreate the toons in such a way as to portray "what they would look like if they were real."

Yeah. It's pretty freaky.

There is a graphic novel series called Flight. There are 5 isses and I want them all. Basically they are compilations of animated short stories that speak through their art more than anything. It's an amazing series to be sought out by casual readers and collectors alike. You should check it out. And then buy the books.

Ok, we're kind of on a roll now...the gears are turning, the fingers are typing...we might actually get somewhere with this post after all.

WARNING:
The rest of this blog post contains material of substance and you might have to put some of your brain cells to work, should you choose to continue. You have been warned.

I got a promotion. Instead of processing the work that the researchers send me, I'm now among the researchers that send work for the processors to do. I'm no longer on the bottom rung of the research/processing food chain. I don't think I've been this happy with my job since I coached gymnastics under Greg Schram. Those were the days.

We've moved from a throw-all-our-bills-in-a-stack-on-the-desk system to a file-them-away-in-a-3-ring-binder system. I've been making some changes in the way we budget, and am in the middle of writing a program that will import bank statements from .html, .xml, or .rtf files into an interactive spreadsheet which will log all of our previous deposits and expendatures, calculate our balances and project future spending based on our previous spending patterns, alerting us of changes we will need to make in order to achieve the most efficient debt/income ratio and build maximum savings. On the side, it will have a calculator in which you input your hours from a printed time sheet and, based on your hourly wage and income tax, it will give you the exact amount you can expect to receive in your next paycheck - to the cent. Suffice to say, we are turning over a new leaf in the financial planning slice of the priority pie chart of our lives.

I've realized that I am not a teacher. I just don't have the gift. What I teach on guitar, you can't really just pick up a book and learn in a week. In fact I haven't yet found a guitar book anywhere that uses my approach about how to learn guitar. But, it's really something that, if I walk you through it for a month or two and you practice the whole time, you'll be amazing and I will have nothing left to teach you and you won't need me anymore. So instead of teaching private lessons, I think I'm going to finally finish a project I start and write my own "how to learn how to play guitar" curriculum. Then, I can pitch it as a course to music stores and high schools and do a two-month structured weekly summer class every year and feel like I'm actually getting somewhere in teaching guitar, rather than wasting other peoples' time and money showing them how to do things they can look up on the internet for free.

If you're still reading this and you're not me, then you're either entirely too interested in my life or just ridiculously bored. Either way, I would advise you turn on your TV and watch the rest of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" because it's probably playing right now on one of the 9 channels you receive on the hand-me-down "bunny-ears" TV antenna you got from your dad when he upgraded to HD. Yeah. I'm reading your blog too.

"My Walk Home"

On my walk home...

...I fell into a lake.
...I ran a marathon.
...I got eaten by a giant tree.
...I lived in a huge house with an extravagant garden.
...I sat on an old rusty chair in my garden and drank homemade lemonade.
...I splashed in a fountain.
...I got hit by a car.
...I fed a homeless man the rest of my lunch that I didn't eat today.
...I carved a rose out of a tree stump.
...I heard silence.
...I had a conversation with a weeping willow.
...I adopted a puppy as a surprise for my wife.
...I stopped by an old beat up baptist church and had a two-hour theological conversation with a portly minister wearing an expensive tie and cheap cologne.
...I sang.
...I rescued a shopping cart from a flooded creek.
...I learned how to fly.
...I rode on the back of a giant armadillidiidae.
...I died.
...I lived.
...I ate gushers.

Oh the thinks you can think.

How true it is, Mr. Seuss, how true indeed.

.

.

.

.

...wait. I actually did eat gushers.

My Mix Can Beat Up Your Mix

.....Do You Remember....-....The Summer Obsession
Soundtrack to Your Life....-....Ashley Parker Angel...... .
Written at a Rest Stop....-....Ronnie Day.................
Beat Mamma....-....Cast...............
In The Summertime....-....Thirsty Merc............
........Thunder....-....Boys Like Girls
......Fall Behind....-....Moses Mayfield

Slipping Under....-....William Tell.... .
...............Why Cry....-....The Panic Channel

You know what to do...It will make your day more better.

For those of you who find yourselves laughing out loud at the thoughts in your head.

I've met people named John-Paul, but why not Lennon-McCartney?

Or what about Frehley Simmons? Or Walsh Henley?

OH oh I've got it: Tyler Perry. Wait...that one's taken.


[ r i m s h o t ]

Copycat, or Common Ancestor?

I've noticed a trend....Observate.

.............Disney............Dreamworks SKG

.

A Bug's Life (1998)............Antz (1998)..............

Finding Nemo (2003)............Shark Tale (2004).........

..The Wild (2006)............Madagascar (2005)

.

In addition, Dreamworks Animation SKG has a movie in the works called Monsters Vs. Aliens which is centered around, you guessed it, a california girl who comes in contact with several monsters including a large, ape-like Missing Link and a short, one-eyed B.O.B. Sound like any animated Disney movies you've seen?

People I've talked to about this say that one company is copying the other, much like Leigh Scott copies every movie that makes money and ruins it and would probably be upside-down on net returns if he didn't have such a low budget to begin with. Stupidface. Wait, what was I talking about again?

.

But seriously, people are so quick to point the finger and I was too at first, but while partaking in a casual debate among friends about Darwinian evolution versus intelligent design, it struck me that these movies might not be the result of idea theft, but rather a common creator.

I've done some research and here's what I've found:

• The musical director for Dreamworks Animation SKG (Karey Kirkpatrick) got his start professionally writing musical scores as an intern at Disney Animation Studios in 1987.
  .
• Bonnie Arnold, producer of Dreamworks' Over the Hedge, was originally recruited by Disney back in '91 to do live action. The job that moved him up from associate producer to producer producer was none other than Disney and Pixar's Toy Story in 1995.
  .
• Cecil Kramer, visual effects producer for Dreamworks' Flushed Away, did the exact same job at Disney Imagineering and Buena Vista Films prior to moving to Dreamworks.
  .
• The story artist for Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt, animation college drop-out David Bowers, worked on Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which happens to be a collaborative project between Disney Studios and Amblin Entertainment) back in 1988, then moved to Speilberg's Amblimation. After hopping back and forth between a few more projects, he landed at Dreamworks to storyboard Dreamworks' first animated feature film, The Prince of Egypt.

Other findings:

• A little less than a month ago, Dreamworks Animation turned the title "Head of Development" over to one Alex Schwartz. I'm currently investigating the backstory on Mr. Schwartz, but it might take some time since I left my FBI starter kit at home.
  .
• The SKG found on the bottom of Dreamworks' logo stands for Speilberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, the founding fathers of the company.
  
  - Steven Speilberg worked with Disney Studios on the infamous Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  
  - Jeffrey Katzenberg worked for Disney up until 1994, when he left due to a spat with Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney.
  .
• The broadcast rights to many of Dreamworks' films belong to ABC. Interestingly enough, ABC has been owned by Disney since 1995.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't truly prove anything. It does, however, show the undeniable link between Disney and Dreamworks. The findings above are but a fraction of a myriad of similar discoveries linking Dreamworks employees to previous Disney projects. It is true that Dreamworks only exists because of Disney, but as per the original question, it's hard to say.

There is definitely some communication between the two, but the question is, at what level?

My hypothesis: During the next 10 years, Disney will slowly begin to creep into Dreamworks' territory - starting by sitting down over a cup of tea and settling the dispute over the shared rights to the Roger Rabbit franchise - and will eventually eat the company alive for upwards of ten million dollars. Let's sit back and see what happens.

Interesting...veeeeery interesting.

The Infamous Time-Killing Countdown

10 Most Interesting Things I've Learned from Working at the Blockbuster Distribution Center:

TEN
There are two genres of black people movies: gun-slingin' gangsta movies, and Tyler Perry comedies.

NINE
Each decade that passes is an automatic excuse to re-release an old movie in a special "10th Anniversary Edition" cover for twice what it's worth.

EIGHT
Someone out there actually thinks Paris Hilton is hot, because she keeps showing up on the covers of movies that shouldn't even exist. And she's always wearing a miniskirt even though she looks like a blonde skeleton with a camel face. People, really?

SEVEN
The chicks in the poster for Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Move Film for Theaters actually are hot. Too bad they're probably nowhere in the actual movie. And they're just paintings.

SIX
Lord of the Rings and Halo both take themselves way too seriously. What the heck am I supposed to do with an 8-inch replica of Gollum sitting on a rock with a fish or a "life-sized" Master Cheif helmet?

FIVE
Anything put out by production company The Asylum is a 90-something minute stupidfest full of knock-off plot lines and crappy acting, with titles and cover art intentionally designed to make you confuse it for a popular best-selling box office hit. Examples include Transmorphers (Transformers), Monster (Cloverfield), and my personal favorite, AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (duh).

FOUR
It really is possible to trace any actor to Kevin Bacon through six degrees or less.

TREE
50-Cent's real name is Curtis Jackson. Apparently it's also impossible for him to say the word "the."

TWO
The cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road depicts Paul - not John - walking barefoot. Interestingly enough, Paul is also the only one with his right foot forward, and he's the only one smoking. And the only one named Paul.

ONE
...And the #1 most interesting DC finding: Contrary to popular belief, Steamboat Willie is not an earlier form of Mickey Mouse, but rather a character he played in one of his first cartoons. It was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, and consequently the cartoon that single-handedly sky-rocketed the little guy's filmmaking career to super-stardom.

flippin' sweet.