I heart Liz Lemon

Thirty Rock is the best show on television. The American Office is ok too.
The finale (of the Office) was pretty good. It wasn't a cliff hanger in any way. It made me not hate Kevin as much (i hate Kevin by the way).

Highlights from Prince Caspian:

Peter: We're back in Narnia, but everything is different.
Lucy: We've already lived at least one lifetime, but I'm still precocious and no one ever listens to me!
Susan: Look, some grownups in a boat, and one of them's holding a dwarf! Let's murder them!
Dwarf: Thanks for saving me.
Peter: No problem. That's what kings and queens of Narnia do.
Dwarf: You're not kings and queens of Narnia.
Peter: Oh yeah? Well fight my brother, then we'll see who's a king of Narnia.
Edmund: Grrr!

Centaur: Welcome Kings and Queens of Narnia. It is time for you to meet the army we have assembled, but first you must RUN THE CENTAUR GAUNTLET!!!

Aslan: So it turns out all you bad guys are all from Sicily, if you walk through this tree vagina you can go back to Italy.
*no one comes forward*
General: Well I guess I'll go.
Aslan: Cool, since you decided to go first, you'll have a good life back in Sicily. The rest of you poor bastards won't be so lucky.


I didn't like the movie, if you can't tell. It kind of sucked.

My birthday was fun. I got a DVD player, so that's one thing off my list of things to do this summer. I also got the third season of House from Josh, which is pretty awesome (even if David Morse's story arc goes on for WAY too long. It does have Patrick Fugit in it, which is nice)

Also I work 4 days this week, which is pretty cool. It's some hours. I need hours.

Let's see... what else.... Um today I was a really useful person... for about three hours. I stopped being useful about 1. Tomorrow will be better though. I think. Anyway, I'm going to go to sleep and read some Ultimates comics (probably not in that order, but we'll see).

Quick one

I'm about to watch the season finale of the Office. I don't know what's going to happen but about 7 months ago I predicted that Jim was going to be leaving Dunder Mifflin by the end of the season. I still think that's a possibility. Obviously if Jim leaves, Pam is going to leave, and the last episode I watched pretty much said explicitly Pam is going to leave Dunder Mifflin. So yeah. Here I go.

Movies, The Office, Work and Summer Class? (Not necessarily in that order)

I saw Iron Man again today, it's still good. Forgetting Sara Marshall is good, Speed Racer is good. I'm going to go see Prince Caspian tomorrow, I hope it is good. (this paragraph brought to you by "Good": It's not comparative. It's not superlative. It's just good.)

I got a call yesterday morning from the communication department asking me if I still wanted to take a summer section of Comm Law. I said yes, so I'm taking that this summer and by this summer, I mean for the next four weeks. I have my first test tomorrow (technically I could take the test today, but I'm not going to because I'm not prepared, I've read the first of three chapters. It's pretty dense) Anyway this class is going to be crazy. Four weeks is not a lot of time for a class (it's an online class. I think I forgot to mention that).

So last night I worked till 2:30ish, I had today off and tomorrow I have to be at work at 6am for truck. Here's the problem with that. Since I worked so late last night,I slept till 11 this morning.To not be hella tired tomorrow I need to go to sleep by 11 at the latest (this didn't happen. It never happens). Working ad-set and truck completely sucks because it is hard to get a consistent sleeping pattern. Anyway, I work till 1 tomorrow and I have to take that test before midnight tomorrow, which shouldn't be a problem, but I need to make sure I have enough time to get through chapters 2 and 3.

Commence Office Talk:
For whatever reason I got back into the American Office (because I like the American Office and the season is almost over). I hadn't seen any episodes since they've been back from the writers strike
so I decided that I would catch up. So tonight I watched episodes 10 and 11 (9 wouldn't download but I saw part of it when it aired. I lied about not seeing any episodes since the strike). 10 wasn't great, there were a couple of sort of funny moments. It featured Kevin pretty prominently, which is something I don't really like in my episodes of the Office. It introduced some other members of the Scranton Business Park. Andy had some cartoon moments. All in all a pretty mediocre episode all around (except for Dwight, who continues to be the greatest person on television right....now). So on the original Office scale of goodness (which is a system I just now devised) I rate this episode a Big Keith.
This might seem like high praise, considering how funny Keith can be, but remember, the majority of the time, he is just kind of there. Plus when you think about every other member of the original British cast (except Dawn) everyone's awesome, so he's probably somewhere in the middle as far as awesomeness goes.

Episode 11:
This episode got a lot of work done plotwise that I assume would've taken place over several episodes if this season wasn't so short, but then again taking into account the American Office's complete lack of subtlety,probably not. It turns out Ryan is a coke-head and Jim and Pam are falling out of favor with the rest of the Office folk (which will factor in next season when they both leave the show to be on that Office Spin-off we've been hearing so nothing about). Dwight is still awesome. Michael is still really lame.
This episode gets a Roland.Whatever that means.

SLEEP!

End of the semester wrap-up

As of like 7:15 yesterday evening, I'm done with school for the Spring 2008 semester. This semester I made my first narrative shortfilm, my first real documentary, and my first "commercial". I'm pretty pleased with how all the projects turned out. I'm pretty sure I got all A's this semester... well I know I got A's in three of my classes, I don't know about my creative writing class yet, but I'm pretty sure I kicked its ass.

Goals for the summer:
1. Get another job (we've seen this one before)
2. Save money to pay for school in the fall (this one is more a corollary part 1)
3. Get a DVD player
4. Become a better guitar player (we've seen this one too!)
5. Run or Bike everyday or almost everyday
6. Eat better.
7. Sleep more.
8. Read books.
9. Punctuate more consistently


So Brian M called me tonight and he was like, "you want to do the 48 hour film festival?" And I was like, "Why the hell not?"
So Me, Brian, Shank, Nate and Rob D are probably going to do this film festival thing. The only problem I see with this group is that there is no defacto leader. We're all pretty much alpha dogs, lone wolves, tough as shit renegades who don't give a damn about anyone but ourselves. Not really though. I think Shank will probably end up directing. He has the most experience, we'll probably be using his camera and he fronted the money for the entry fee. Brian or I will write the script because we'll be the ones that complain the loudest if we don't get to. And everyone will probably act and be in the crew. It should be pretty exciting.

Also, in the good news category: I got a call from Pete Wiss the other day, and both he Steve have teaching jobs lined up for next fall (although Steven is still entertaining other offers), which is totally awesome. They finished college in 4 years and already have jobs, what a bunch of grown-ups. Speaking of grown-ups, Droib bought a house. It's true, I've seen it. It's pretty spiffy, except for the fact that it's in JACKSON!

Anyway, that's pretty much it for now.

Almost done with school!

Finals week is upon us. I had two finals, they were both one Monday. I got a 92 on one, I'll find out about the other one when I go talk to Jones tomorrow. I got my portfolio turned in today. Now all I have left is the documentary.

Oh, the Auteur film turned out really well. I had to reshoot everything I shot last Sunday, this Sunday because the audio was no good last Sunday. But the reshoot turned out really good, and the edit is pretty good too. It took all of my Monday to do. It was my first marathon Avid session. I'm sure there will be many more to come.

Also this song has been stuck in my head for the better part of a day. The first 20 seconds or so comprises the best intro in all of pop music (the rest is pretty good too). The video is pretty much amazing. With two semesters of film production classes under my belt, I could probably make something as good. It's pretty satisfying to know that even with thirty plus years of advances in video production technology, I'm still only about as good as a music video director circa 1977.

I need new shoes.

Good News and Bad News

Good News: My team won the trivia night at the UC on Thursday (it was about movies... yeah)
Bad News: My team lost the softball championship on Thursday (by the mercy rule in the 5th inning)

Good News: My documentary filming went really well today.
Bad News: My auteur project did not go well on Wednesday.

Skip this part if you don't like whining, or you just don't like my whining.

(And now I will interrupt the my "good news/bad news formula" for a little bit of rationalization/ranting/explanation {their's probably a better way to describe it but I've only had about 12 hours of sleep in the past two days, which is normal to some people, but I need at least 8 hours per night to function, usually nine though, so anyway, I'm not firing on all cylinders}

The big project for film history class this semester is a short film done in the style of an auteur. I've been looking forward to this project all semester, because my group (heavily influenced by me) picked Edgar Wright. Against my better, but well meaning, judgment I let Robert and Rob have creative control (which basically means, I let them submit ideas to me until they had one I didn't hate, I am such a dick). I let Rob write the script, I let Robert direct (again, here, my language here is demonstrating how much of a dick I am, as if in this group project, where we all have equal parts, I have the power to grant people the privilege {it took me one minute to spell that word correctly} of doing things that they want to do), I just sat back and shot down their ideas until they had one I liked.
My reasoning for letting them have creative control was that I had already the chance to write and direct a short film this semester, I got to write and direct one of the class project films in MC 352. I figured they would want the chance to do it. So anyway, I was just going to be the camera operator for the shoot and help with finding shots and maybe some blocking or something. The script Rob wrote was funny, but it wasn't an Edgar Wright script. I figured that would be ok; if we just focused on Edgar Wright's camera technique, we could still make it in his style. Long story short (and in this case, I'm not just using a cliche', we spent about 3.5 hours of our lives trying to make this movie) we shot the movie on Wednesday, it did not go well, it was by far the worst experience I've had making a movie since I started this major (an incredible 8 months ago).
I said I was going to edit it on Thursday, but I couldn't. I just couldn't make what we filmed into an Edgar Wright movie. I certainly couldn't make it into something I would be proud to show to other people (let along my fellow film majors). So Thursday I wrote a new script, a pretty good script if I do say so myself, and I told my group members that I was going to make a new auteur project movie. They were surprisingly ok with it (we're still on friendly...I think) and I was going to shoot it Friday and Sunday (since I already signed up to have a camera for shooting the documentary this weekend). I didn't get the camera till 5 on Friday (instead of 1, which is a long, obscenity-ridden story), and since my whole movie is shot out side, I had lost a lot of my daylight (also it just started raining when I got my camera).
Fortunately I was able to get some filming done on Friday, but I still have more than have of it to shoot tomorrow. Which leads me to (and you thought I'd forgotten about I)

End of Whining. Just kidding, there's more after this, but it's in small bite-size chunks.

Bad News: It's supposed to rain all afternoon tomorrow
Bad News: Spants (one of the two stars) told me that he was feeling sick tonight, and might be sick tomorrow
Bad News: Most of the people I was counting on as extras can't help tomorrow (which is all my fault, not theirs. For some reason, recently, Sundays have become the worst day for getting people to do stuff. Everyone {but me, apparently} is very busy on Sunday and can't play frisbee, or stickball, or be in my movie)

I can rewrite the scene, and film it so the extras thing isn't as much of a problem. There's nothing I can do about the Spaeth thing. He was going to bed early. A good night sleep always does wonders for me. The rain thing though. That's problematic. I was going to shoot the whole thing outside, at Grandma Essner's. If it's raining, that can't happen. So I need to find somewhere I can shoot inside. There's one place I can think of, but it's a bit of a stretch. First I don't have permission to shoot there, I could get it, but there's no reason to think that I would. Second I would have to do a lot of set dressing. Set dressing that I wouldn't have had to do at all if it didn't rain. Set dressing that I'm not prepared in any way to do. Also there would probably have to be some lighting. I don't have lights. I was supposed to film everything outside, where I don't need lights. I suppose I could get lights... but yeah... permission to film there. That's the thing. This is probably the longest post I've ever written. Even the hardest of the hardcore Matt Essner blog readers (I know you're out there somewhere {It also has the most parantheticals I've ever used too}) will have trouble getting though it all in one sitting, so I guess I should probably end it now befor

Some more Blagging

I have mixed feelings on whether or not today was a good or bad day. Regardless of its goodness or badness here is some shameless self-promotion (is there any other kind?)

We had a test in MC 352 today. I pretty much kicked it's ass, at least I think I did. Normally that kind of post-test confidence is a sure sign of failure (in my case anyway, mostly because of the "Rule of Irony", which is the most powerful guiding principle in my life), but there were only two or three questions that I wasn't one hundred percent sure about the answer.

Also I played on Brian's intermural softball team again tonight (I played once before, mediocrely). I played third base, which is fortunately the easiest position in the infield (at least in slow pitch softball, as most of these guys don't pull the ball much; Shortstop on the other hand is the danger zone), the ball was hit to me twice, one time I threw the guy out at second, the second time it just sort of rolled past me into left field. So defensively, not a great night, but not bad. On offense though, I was 6 for 6. Maybe 7 for 7. I don't even remember. Either way, my batting average for tonight was 1.00. I saw 7 (or 8) pitches and I sent 6(or 7) of them right up the gap in center field. Unfortunately every one of those hits was a single, and most of the time it was with no one on.

Actually, I think I only got one RBI, but it was a pretty important one: bottom of the seventh, two men on, tie ballgame, 2 outs. I belt one right over the shortstop into center and score the man on second, we win the game. It was pretty spectacular if I say so myself. I'm supposed to play in the championship game tomorrow night (this was the semi-final game) at 10:15. I have work the next day at 6am. Yikes.

Anyway, sorry for being so self indulgent, I'm sure the next post will be more self deprecating and misanthropic.

The title of this post is a tautology.

It really isn't though.

Walmart Bread is Delicious (not only was that the original title to this post, but it is an entirely true statement).

I'm getting tired of work. I don't like these long gaps between days that I work. For one thing, it means I get paid less because I work fewer days, but the lack of consistency is kind of annoying. Plus I don't really like working so late. I don't like work being the last thing I do on a day.

I read the first Hellboy trade. It's pretty super. Hellboy is a good comicbook.

Sorry this post is so boring, gang. I guess I could talk about sleep...

Here's an interesting fact. Sunday Night I was asleep by 10pm. I woke up on Monday at 8am. That's 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Way to go Matt.

Essner's Blog: Sleeping :: Matthew's Blog: KoL
(although I sleep more than I write about sleeping, I think Matthew writes about KoL more than he plays it. So it's not a perfect analogy)

Ok I'm going to eat some Mac and Cheese and read crappy poetry, then go to class then go to work!

Rudy's funeral

My great great uncle Rudy's funeral was yesterday. As far as funerals go, it was pretty good. I sang in the choir with some of my aunts and uncles and their cousins. Rudy and his wife, Bernice, never had any children, but they had a lot of nieces and nephews, and were very much a part of their lives.

Bernice is my grandma's aunt (although she's only about 7 year older than my grandma), she's the youngest daughter or my great great grandma and grandpa Burger, her brother was my great grandfather.

Bernice was married to Rudy for almost 66 years, which is approximately three times as many
years as I've been born. That's pretty amazing to me.

Anyway, when I was young enough to go trick or treating on Halloween, Bob and I would go trick or treating in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, where Rudy and Bernice live. So when we finished trick or treating, that's where we would end up. Rudy would always give me a lot more candy than I needed, especially since at that point in the evening I already had a pretty full bag of the stuff. While we waited for my mom to pick us up I would talk to Rudy and Bernice, pretty much nonstop (I was much more talkative as a youngster than I am now). I would babble on incessantly, not really saying anything and Rudy and Bernice would just listen and give me more candy. They seemed to genuinely interested in what I was saying (which was odd, because few other adults did, or should've from what I remember). When I got older I stopped trick or treating, but I'd try to go visit Rudy and Bernice on Halloween. Those Halloween nights still stick out in my mind as some of the best times I've ever had, and Rudy and Bernice had a lot to do with that. I think that probably has something to do with why Halloween is my favorite holiday. Halloween pretty much represents the best things about my childhood, maybe childhood in general, which I guess why I always try to make Halloween a big deal now.

Just in case you were wondering, Catholic funerals are about a quadrillion times better than Protestant funerals.

Also, I wasn't joking when I said Carolina Drama by the Raconteurs is the best track I've heard in the past two years.

My First Untitled Post

Have you heard the new Raconteurs album? It's pretty f*ing amazing. The last track is pretty much the best thing I've heard in the last year or so. They're coming to the Pageant sometime in June. June is also when the 48 hour film festival is. There is some talk of doing that. I would like to participate in both of those activities, but they both require money. I don't have money. I need another job. The Raconteurs tickets are $40. It's a bit more than most concerts I go to, but it's Jack White for Christ sake. The Wilco tickets were thirtyish. They're playing three shows in St. Louis May 15, 16 and 17. They are all sold out. Curse my slow metal body (that's supposed to be a Star Wars quote, but I don't really remember exactly what 3Po says. It's something like that, though, I assure you).

I have to go to bed now, because I need to wake up in 6 hours or so.

Night!

Posting twice in one week? What is this 2006?

Thing 1:
Monk is a terrible, terrible show. I borrowed the third season of it from Jonathon (I know he legally changed his name to Jonathan, but I think he should have kept it the other way) and have watched two episodes. They were both atrocious. The writing was sub Diagnosis Murder. The acting is questionable (other than Tony Shaloub and Ted Levine, although they are beleaguered by terrible plot/dialogue) and Monk is a really inconsistent character. Monk is a man with a crippling mental illness, he has difficulty doing things for himself. He has OCD and a bunch of phobias, but these really only manifest themselves when it's comedically expedient (although occasionally amusing, but frequently not, these bits don't really play with me because of their inconsistency with the rest of the character). Also the fact that Monk has pretty much any phobia the writers care to write about is a bit too convenient. I'm going to continue to watch it because it gives me something to hate and also it apparently gets better after the annoying sidekick girl leaves.

Thing 2:
I don't know why, but I have been reading a crazy amount of webcomics lately. Currently I'm reading one called Questionable Content. It's pretty darn (and by darn I mean damn) good, especially for being updated almost daily. I'm on strip 240 something of 1100 something, so it'll probably be a while before I'm caught up. But just to clue you in to how awesome the strip is, the main character has a poster of the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on his bedroom wall.

Thing 3:
I have done nothing this week. I have a lot of stuff I need to do, but I haven't done any of it. Here are some things I need to do in the three (Three? Really?) weeks before school ends.

1. Read the 10 articles for my literature review, which hopefully won't be as boring as I thought it was going to be, and of course, write said review. (End of April sometime)
2. Film/edit my SE TV student profile (Tomorrow)
3. Figure out what I'm going to do my documentary about, film and edit my documentary (Finals Week)
4. Write, shoot and edit my Edgar Write Auteur project (End of April sometime)
5. Write research paper for Jone's class (Sunday?)
6. Write/shoot/edit/ intro video for film festival that I'm trying to start at SEMO (Two weeks from now?)
7. Script stuff for class project/edit class project (Monday)

I could keep going, but this is a pretty daunting list already.
I was going to write a thing 4, but that list took a lot out of me. Time to read some more QC.

Arkham Horror and other stuff

We played Arkham Horror on Friday. The game lasted over four hours and we ended up losing because we couldn't kill the elder god. It was all kinds of suck (the elder god, not the game. The game was pretty awesome despite the 4 hours of play time). So I've been trying to come up with ways to speed Arkham Horror up. I ran a few past Matthew and the one that he thinks would be the easiest to implement is being able to move if a monster attacks you. Usually if you start your turn with a monster on you, then you can't move for that turn. I think we could do away with that nonsense.

In other more interesting news, I had a dream in which Dennis Hopper was an unstoppable, deadly vampire/zombie and he was trying to kill me.


Brazil is not a fun movie to watch, but Michael Palin is amazing in it. I love Michael Palin. I think it goes without saying that he, and every non-Terry member of Monty Python, are superheroes. Terrys Gilliam and Jones are ok too.


shower.

Old Music

I'm listening to some "old music" right now. There's a lot of music on my computer that I've only listened to a couple of times, or haven't listened to for a couple of years or so. Music that I liked, but not liked enough to add to the random playlist that is the soundtrack of my life. Here's some examples of this "old music": Cake Bake Betty, The Lucksmiths, The Shins (for the most part), Page France, Boy Least Likely To, Danielson, Elliot Smith and the Pixies.

There are also a lot of songs on my computer by bands I never really got into. And when I say "never really got into" I mean haven't listened to, other than the tracks that I knew I like before acquiring the album. I have those albums on here because, someday, I intend to cultivate an appreciation of them. These albums include:"You Forget it In People", "Z", "Flying Club Cup", anything by the New Pornographers.

So on this lazy Thursday afternoon, before I go to work, I'm listening to "old music" and doing little else. This is going to be one of those days when I get home from work tonight and realize that I have done of use to anyone or myself all day. But in the interest of keeping the world abreast with the excitingness that is my life, here is a list of the things I've done today:

1. Woke up (around 9am, I went to bed about 12am)
2. Caught up on neglected webcomics (XKCD, which is amusing, if not funny most of the time, The Perry Bible Fellowship, which is clever if not amusing most of the time, and Penny Arcade, which is Penny Arcade for God's sake)
3. Read an interview with Simon Pegg on Aint it Cool.
4. Showered
5. FINALLY got to level 15 on FlyFF, which allowed me to pick a new job (Assist, apparently. You don't really get to shop around though, which I might talk about in a future post)
6. Watched Empire Strikes Back (Sort of. I was playing FlyFF and napping for parts of it. Which reminds me)
7. Nap (That happened around 1ish. The act of being awake for four hours straight is enough to wear me out)
8. At approximately 2:45 pm, I woke and decided I was hungry. So I ate the solid milk chocolate bunny I received for Easter. I covered it with peanut butter (because I can't really abide things that are chocolate and nothing else) and enjoyed a glass of milk simultaneously.
9. Now I'm blogging and listening to Guster? How did that happen.

Anyway, I need to find something to do that will justify my continued existence on this planet. Perhaps something outdoors? We'll see.

The Last Man

It's Good Friday. Only two more days of Lent. Actually, I think Lent ended last Sunday, because I think Holy Week is technically a different liturgical season, but 2 more days till I can drink Dr. Pepper again. Giving up soda is too easy. I really only craved it on one occasion. I don't really drink a lot of soda anymore anyway.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about Y the Last Man, the best thing I've read in a long time. Y the Last Man is a comic book series about the last man on earth. His name is Yorrick Brown, and I hope the rumors about Shia LaBoeuf playing him in the movie adaptation are false. The series is great because it never stops being interesting. It has a definite beginning middle and end, and it doesn't waste time with adding needless peril just to extend the story line. Occasionally the book will shift it's focus and spend some time telling the story of a minor character or two, but even then, it's relevant and interesting. It's a great book, and it's a little sad. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when *SPOILER* Ampersand dies (peacefully, of old age mind you). There's just something about pets dying that makes me sad. I don't really mind when human characters get offed, but I just can't handle pets dying (Hedwig is the exception. I felt no sadness Hedwig was killed. Actually I don't think I was affected by any of the poorly written deaths of any of the characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, other then Tonks' death. I felt much joy with her passing).

I've pretty much spent all day reading Y the Last Man and listening to Wilco albums, both activities I highly recommend. I also folded clothes and dyed Easter Eggs, but I feel like I need to be more productive, so I'm going to find something useful to do (probably napping).

Rainy Day

I realized at about 10:30 last night that I had nothing left to do that day, so I went to sleep, and I kept sleeping till about nine this morning. I'm pretty awesome like that.
I was going to fill out my fafsa stuff this morning, but that didn't happen. I got a call from my dad saying that my uncle Keith's basement was flooding do to the massive amounts of rain that we have received (it's been raining pretty steadily since 1 or 2 this morning) so I went over there and helped him a little. He doesn't have a lot of stuff in his basement, but we got what he did have out. Then I went over to help my aunt Jane. She lives a few houses down from Keith, and her basement was quite flooded too, unlike Keith, she has a whole lot of stuff in her basement. So we got out what we could and she and Wayne, her husband, took some stuff over to my grandma's house where they and their two daughters, my cousins Abigail and Hanna, will stay for the next night or two.

Arena park is pretty much underwater. The creek has taken over all of the baseball fields. It's almost up to the tennis courts, or at least it was when I was leaving Keith's. I wonder how this will effect Pancake day (which is tomorrow).

Speaking of food, since I've been helping people with water problems since about 10:30 this morning, I haven't eaten anything today. I'm pretty hungry, but since I have class at 6 and work immediately after, I have to wait till at least 5ish to eat anything (Because, since I go from class to work, and don't get off work till 1ish, it'll be pretty late before I have a chance to eat anything).

It's still raining.

Anyway, remind me to post about work sometime.

Some Long Overdue Blagging (Blog Bragging)

Three things I've done Scholastically that I'm proud of:

1. Got a 99/100 on my MC 352 test
2. Got a 147/150 on my MC 353 test
3. My script was one of the ones chosen to produce for my 352 class project

Two things domestically I've done lately that I'm proud of:

1. I rearranged my room. It's not entirely clean yet, but it's rearranged.
2. I cleaned up the back porch, rearranged it and got rid of a bunch of stuff.

I've been on Spring break since Wednesday. It's been nice. I'm still looking for another job.
Kohl's is nice, but I really need more hours.

That's all for now, because I'm watching the Godfather.

Writing Machine

I wrote two scripts today! One for the scene that I have to write for 352 and one for the newsreader in my scene that I have to write for 352. My script is 4 pages long. Two more than it's supposed to be, but it's a fast four pages.

Schedule for this week:

Monday: Craziness.Class, film, class, film/study, test, eat, finish short story, sleep
Tuesday: finish filming, edit, class, work
Wednesday: class, edit, class, work
Thursday: find job
Friday: find job, FISH FRY!!!!
Saturday: marrilacs moveables, find job, Work

I love working at the fish fry, by the way. I just like being around all those people. Not because I like being around a lot of people, but because I know so many of them, or know of them, and it's nice to be useful and it's nice to just buckle down and work.

Here's why I like working at the fish fry, but don't want to work at a restaurant, where I would be doing very similar work to what I do at the fish fry:

At the fish fry people appreciate what I do. I work hard, I don't really take breaks, I'm good finding stuff that needs to be done and doing it. People notice that at the fish fry. If I worked at a restaurant, people wouldn't notice and they wouldn't care, and it would make working at the fish fry not fun, because it would be like work.

I won a trivia night on Thursday, I had help. It wasn't just me. It was Brian from class and some of his friends. We kicked ass.

Goodnight.

Mostly about Travelouges

I had a test today in MC 301. All weekend I was like, "I should study for this test. I should do the study guide. I should really devote some time going over the stuff that's going to be on this test." But I didn't do any of that. Saturday I was a disgrace to humanity. I woke up. Did nothing. Ate lunch. Watched 30 Rock. Took a nap. Went to Fazzoli's with the lads. Went to Walmart to kill time before work. Saw Thomas there. Had a nice conversation with him. Went to work. Actually the last four things weren't all that disgraceful, but the rest of the day I was a useless human being. Sunday was slightly better. I went to Mass, did some homework, helped with lunch, watched some long way down, made some cookies and played some Pharaoh, but no studying. So this morning, I woke up early to get some studying down before class. I got to class half and hour early, studied briefly, and got a 96% on the test. Boo-yeah. I guess the moral of the story is, I'm awesome.

Speaking of Long Way Down, which I did briefly last paragraph, I enjoyed Long Way Down, which is the second travel documentary made by Charlie Boorman and Ewan MacGregor. If you recall, last year I watched Long Way Round, their first documentary. It was the story of Ewan and Charlie riding around the world on Motor cycles. In Long Way Down they ride from Scotland to South Africa on motorcycles. Long Way Round is a much better documentary series then Long Way Down, but that's not because Long Way Down is bad, it's because LWR is so incredibly awesome.

Now I'm going to talk about how I came to love travel documentaries:

Two words; Michael Palin. My mom got my dad the book "Pole to Pole: With Michael Palin" for fathers day or something one year, sometime after I graduated high school. I don't really know why; dad had never seen the series, nor expressed a great love for travel documentaries, nor Michael Palin for that matter (although, I think everyone's love for Michael Palin is the kind of love that needn't be spoken). Anyway he got this book, and it just so happened that they had that series at the library. So we rented and watched the series and it was very interesting. It was the story of Michael Palin traveling with a camera crew from the North Pole to the South Pole. He goes through a big chunk of Russia and through a lot of Africa. One of the most interesting things about that series is that he travels through Russia, and gets out like 2 weeks before communism falls. It's pretty neat to see the last weeks of communism through the eyes of a traveler.
They had another of Michael's travel series called "Hemingway Adventures" at the library. I watched that one too and loved it. Then I discovered that both of these series were sequels to Palin's wildly popular first series, around the world in 80 days, in which he follows Philieus Fogg's path around the globe using mostly the same sort of methods employed by Fogg. He does use cars at some point though I think. Anyway, I downloaded that one and watched it and was amazed. So yeah. I love travel documentaries.

Here is a list of my favorite travel documentaries:

1. Long Way Round
2. Around the World in 80 Days
3. Pole to Pole
4. Long Way Down

Anyway... I'm done being boring for the night... well at least writing boring things. I'm going to bed.
5. Sahara

More Icy Goodness

Hey, it's sleeting again and they closed SEMO again! It doesn't bother me so much this time, because I'm not actually missing class. I actually like class this semester.

Speaking of class: Yesterday in Intermediate Film Production we played with lighting. I hate lighting. I hate trying to set up lights in a shot. It's a crapshoot, it takes a long time, and the effect of multiple lights, although noticeable, becomes less so the more you add, and we had to set up a shot with four lights yesterday (which is about two more than were necessary for the shot, and one more than what's necessary for something called "three point lighting", which is a pretty basic lighting technique). Anyway lighting... yeah.... don't like it.

Job!
I have a job. I've worked one night so far (my second night is tonight). It wasn't too bad. The work isn't hard. It was fun to work with Matthew, although that's not going happen every night. I was just working with him while I was training. But he'll still be there, so that's cool. I really need to find a second job. That is something that needs to happen next week or sooner. I might apply at Food Giant if they are still hiring.

Is Semi-Pro rated R? I think it is, which is exciting. Everyone else in that group has been doing R rated comedies, I'm interested to see how Will Ferrell does without the restrictions of PG-13. It doesn't come out till next week though, so I have one more week to wait.

It's been a couple of months since I heard from Jimmy. I've e-mailed him a couple of times but have gotten no response. I think I might call him this weekend to see what he's up to.

Ok off to bathe.

Valentine's Day Math-acre?

What's up internet? Oh really? I'm sorry to hear that. (I'm pretty sure I've used this joke before)


Anyway. It's Valentine's day, which means absolutely nothing to me, nor should it to any sensible human being.

Were you aware that there was an apocalypse of Ice and Frozen Death earlier this week in Missouri? Because there was. There was a lot of Ice (proper noun) on the ground. It got here on Monday and some of it's still here. It made traveling pretty ridiculous. It made me not have class all week (which will make this an 11 day weekend by the time I have school again, Monday). So Matt, you ask, what have you done with these 11 days off you've had. Nothing. Well... that's not entirely true. I did some baking. I started writing Trivia Night questions for next year. I edited (badly) my B-roll project. I got a job. WHAT!? What's that you say? You have a job?

Yes. I have a job. I start at Kohl's tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I told you this, but I probably didn't know for certain at that point, well now I know for certain that I will be employed at Kohl's doing Ad Set with Matthew, and perhaps working on unloading trucks. Yippee!

What didn't I do over this extended break from school is homework. None of it. I really need to be writing a whole lot more than I am. Especially journal entries. I'm like 3 weeks behind in that department.

Anyhoo... I'm probably going to do a ridiculous amount of sleeping pretty soon, so I have to get ready for that.