Why I Love Movies

I'm not sure where I got the idea (or the motivation) to do this, but over the last couple of weeks I've been putting together a highlight reel of some of my favorite movie clips. Like I said, I'm not sure why I did it, but I do know that it's been a lot of fun to see so many of my favorite moments in close succession. I'm sure you'll recognize a lot of these clips, but if any seem unfamiliar, let me know and I'll tell you where to find them. Even if you don't recognize them, I'm sure that half a dozen of these will make you smile, if not more.

Just so you know, there is a touch of PG/PG-13 level language in a few of the clips.

Paper Wars

Just found this through blastr.com, one of those geeky sites I check out now and then:

Further On Up the Road: 2010 Epic Summer Film

For anyone who wasn't able to make it out to Sugarhouse Park last weekend, here is my submission for the 2010 Epic Summer Film Festival, "Further On Up the Road:"



Unlike my previous Epic Summer submissions, I didn't go for the mockumentary this time. This piece is more an attempt to tie together the different interests I was pursuing over the summer, and pull out some kind of common theme. Near as I can tell, the common theme was Rock and Roll. From the band I played in to the bands I photographed to the road trips I took, music seemed to play a dominant role in the experience, much more so than humor, anyway.

A number of people thought I should have identified all the locations in the photos and video clips in the film. Since I didn't, I'll list some of them below:

• Arches National Park
• Canyonlands National Park
• Seattle, Washington
• The Jimi Hendrix Memorial, Washington
• Sturgis, South Dakota
• Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming
• Mount Rushmore National Monument, South Dakota
• Cody, Wyoming
• Quake Lake, Montana
• Antelope Island, Utah
• The Layton City Amphitheater
• The Bountiful Days of '47 Parade
• Yellowstone National Park

If anyone has a specific question about any of the images or clips, feel free to leave a comment.

Epic Summer: Deleted Sequence

Tomorrow night I will be participating in my fourth Epic Summer Film Festival up in Sugarhouse Park.  It's an annual event where a bunch of laid-back folks hang out and watch amateur films about outdoor adventure and humanitarian efforts.  Very cool vibe.  A buddy of mine turned me on to the event four years ago after we hiked The Subway together, and I've been a participant in the festival ever since.

This year's submission, "Further On Up the Road," is probably the most "epic" of my films so far, in this case attempting to capture the events of an entire season instead of a single hike or road trip.  Even so, at the end of the editing day, some pieces don't quite fit into the final product.  One of my favorite things about the summer season is making fresh salsa, and I put the following sequence together in the hopes of working it into the film.

As much as I love fresh salsa, I couldn't find a good way to work this footage into the final film logically.  But I don't want it to go to waste, and I'm kind of bummed about summer being over, so here you go.  If you love fresh salsa, it is kind of fun to watch.

Double Rainbow at Devils Tower

Yesterday I finished a road trip that covered 1,800 miles through six states in six days.  Along the way I stayed a night at Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming, and just before I arrived, I caught this off the highway.

I dropped the sound for the first several seconds because a Marvin Gaye song was playing on the car stereo in the background, and YouTube sends me these threatening e-mails whenever I post something that has external music on it.  You know, because YouTube is a champion of copyright honesty.

Tornado Delay

I have no idea what this commentator is saying, but it's probably something along the lines of, "this is awesome.  This is way awesome."

Hot Fun in the Summertime

Had the iPod on shuffle play on the way in to work this morning.  As I entered the construction zone on I-15 in North Salt Lake in a mild downpour, this song came up in the playlist.

I thought it was appropriate.

Happy June, everyone.

Resume of a Wanna-be Rock God

My track record with garage bands is beginning to look as bad as my record with real jobs. Sporadic flashes of promise, inconsistent areas of emphasis, and above all, no long-term commitment.



Here's a sampling of my band experience thus far:

Zebedee Coltrane, 1998-1999
Style: Alternative/blues, some pop covers, odes to dung beetles.
Highlights: Made our public debut at the University 32nd Ward Talent Show in the spring of 1999. Two weeks later a friend of ours gave us a strawberry pie to play a special gig in a handicapped girl's living room for her birthday.
Reason for leaving: Creative Differences.

Why2K, 1999
Style: Borderline-sacreligious electric covers of LDS church hymns.
Highlights: Formed exclusively to make a short film for a Stake film festival in the summer of 1999. The result won "best soundtrack" at the festival, and has attracted the most venomous comments on my You Tube channel of any video post to date.
Reason for leaving: Fear of excommunication.

The Atomic Thunderlips Traveling Ministry, 2000-2001
Style: Obscure proto-punk covers, original tributes to local fast food chains mixed with classical chord progressions.
Highlights: Tried to make our debut at the 2001 U32 Toga Party, but were thwarted when lightning killed the power at the church. Played modest public performance from guitarist and bass player's garage (they were married) the following November, and I got dumped by my would-be girlfriend immediately following the gig.
Reason for leaving: Graduate school and increasing family obligations (for guitarist and bass player).

Dreamy Phil and the Diamond Dazzlers/Hassenpheffer and the Bomdiggity, 2003
Style: Initially a Neil Diamond cover band, wound up playing a set of acoustic-rock originals through the spring of 2003.
Highlights: Headlined 2003 Utah State University Valentines Dance, 2003 Earth Day performance on Taggart Student Center patio.
Reason for leaving: School obligations...plus I could never get the violinist to go out with me.

Lionel Ritchie, 2003
Style: Classic rock covers, including "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Sister Golden Hair."
Highlights: Headlined sister's variety show fundraiser for her New Zealand study abroad. Also played a set at a ward talent show a couple of weeks later.
Reason for leaving: Lead guitarist left on LDS mission.

The Tony Danza Experience, 2005
Style: Modern(ish) rock covers, including selections from Cake ("Short Skirt/Long Jacket") and The Black Crowes ("Hard to Handle")
Highlights: Formed to play at University Stake FHE outdoor music event, but canceled last minute when bass player couldn't get off work. Played ward talent show two months later.
Reason for leaving: Two members went to law school.

The Last Starfighters, 2007
Style: Original alternative rock numbers, penned by rhythm guitarist.
Highlights: Played U32 Talent Show in November of 2007, where I actually kind of sort of played my first mid-performance drum solo.
Reason for leaving: Lead guitarist moved back to Illinois, I started working graveyards at KJZZ.

In the midst of all this, I've held periodic jam sessions with friends that never quite made it to public performance level, though some did wind up on You Tube. Whatever the reason, a long-term album-cutting rock band has never been in the cards for me, though I always have a great time whenever I play. (Well, except for that time I got dumped afterwards, but that's another story.)

Anyhoo, it's time to add another band to the list, though with a little luck, we might stick together for a while longer. About a month ago my buddy Breto's wife recruited us to play at a charter school assembly in North Salt Lake. The performance was connected to some kind of fundraising competition at the school, and by the time we took the stage last Friday morning, we were penciled in to play two different assemblies, one for each half of the student body.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, and after our two practices, I wasn't even sure if we were going to make it through our three-song set. The plan was to open with a punk version of "This Land is Your Land"--something the kids could sing along to--then follow it up with a couple of pop covers that would embody a spirit of inspiration and patriotism, namely, Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" and Neil Diamond's "America." Since we were going to be playing at a school, I thought it might be appropriate to name the band "Abstinence" or "Intelligent Design," but we settled on "The Guitar Heroes" since it connected to our message about how it was a lot more fun to play real musical instruments than fake plastic ones for video games. We also considered changing "Livin' on a Prayer" to "Livin' on a Non-Denominational Personal Moment of Silence and/or Meditation," but decided that real rock and rollers would take the risk of introducing the concept of prayer in a public educational setting.

But in spite of my own lowered expectations, the morning assemblies turned out to be a total blast. I've played for hormone-fueled teens, angry neighbors and disinterested peers, but there's something totally different about playing for hundreds of little kids. For one thing, you don't feel as much pressure to avoid screwing up (our lead singer Randy--one of my old Thunderlips bandmates--had a nightmare the prior evening that he was going to forget all the words onstage). But it's also just a lot of fun to see a bunch of nine-year-olds jumping and dancing in the aisles while you play. I think a few of them were even making devil horns at us in our honor.

The whole gig left us thinking we should consider the idea of staying together. There are all kinds of kids up and down the Wasatch Front we could corrupt. I've always figured that playing in bands would just be for fun, a side project to channel my inner rock star every once in a while while pursuing more distinguished professional pursuits, but maybe I was wrong.

Maybe I just needed to find the right audience.



The Guitar Heroes
Style: Kitchy 80's rock anthem covers, punk distortions of folk protest songs that people have turned into patriotic standards.
Highlights: Headlining a set of school assemblies at the Legacy charter school/jamming out a painfully awkward re-hash of "Livin' on a Prayer" with the top fundraising class while they stage-dived off my drum riser and did bunny ears behind my head.
Reason for leaving: N/A...we're keeping our fingers crossed.

How not to sell your movie...

Just caught this clip of my celebrity look-a-like on CNN.com. Unbelievable. Could be the most awkward interview I've seen since Crispin Glover channeled his "Rubin & Ed" character on Letterman. Half the time I'm almost weeping for the interviewer. The other half I'm just thinking, "Bruce Willis is awesome. He totally looks like someone peed in his Cheerios."



So anyone want to go check out "Surrogates" with me? Didn't think so.

Going Coastal: The Movie

Another Epic Summer is in the books. Last weekend, my short film, "Going Coastal: A Manly Guide to Unemployment" debuted at the 7th Annual Epic Summer Film Festival. This was the third time I've participated in the event, and my 2009 entry--a chronicle of July's epic road trip, dedicated to the victims of last year's economic meltdown--seemed to go over pretty well. It's always nice to get a positive reception from a crowd that doesn't already know you or have any legal or familial obligation to like your stuff. Special thanks to Brian and Jen for giving me the bully pulpit.

For those of you who couldn't make it, or for those of you who just couldn't derive total satisfaction from a single viewing, here's the web-friendly version:

Crossing a Fogged-In Golden Gate Bridge

For your random video clip file...

Here's some raw footage I shot while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge on my road trip last month. I'll probably integrate some of it into this year's Epic Summer entry, "Going Coastal: The Lazy Outdoorsman's Guide to Unemployment."

Stay posted...

Summer Lovin'

One of the things that has kept me busy this summer as I try to make the transition from "unemployed and bored" to "self-employed and datable" has been to work up a couple of wedding videos for two of my old roommates. Unlike last year's video for my sister, both of these projects lacked any raw video material (for one I was able to get together with the couple and shoot some pick-up footage), so my challenge was to bring a little life to your otherwise typical stale LDS wedding slideshow.

Here's what I came up with:

The Ballad of Batman: The Dark Mullet

Apartment 204's newest release is now on YouTube, with yours truly playing Boy Wonder to Chidsey's mullet-wearing Dark Knight. My current blog layout doesn't fit the new YouTube widescreen format, so you'll have to click on this link to see it instead of me embedding the clip here. (One of these days I'm going to find one of those customized blog layouts for this thing; if anyone knows of a good source for them-that isn't just filled with lots of frilly stationary-looking styles-let me know).

Of course, if you still haven't seen our first release, "Livin' in the 801", be sure to check that one out, too.

Here are a few behind-the-scenes pictures from the Batman shoot:

The Promo Portfolio

Over the last few months, when I haven't been applying for grad school, writing my memoir, or catching up on all the sleep I missed when I was producing the KJZZ Cafe, I've been able to do some part-time work editing Utah Jazz promos. For most of them, I merely took existing promo films and cut them down to 30-odd seconds, then added my own music. The Clippers promo, however, is all me.

Here are the fruits of those efforts:

Jazz vs. Lakers

Jazz vs. Nuggets

Jazz vs. Warriors

Jazz vs. Rockets

Jazz vs. Kings

Jazz vs. Blazers

Jazz vs. Clippers

"Looks like we've made it..."

The well-oiled machine of Apartment 204 is picking up speed...

A week ago the posse (minus Dave, who is still at Second City) gathered at Chidsey's place to pay homage to the great green screen in the sky and shoot the follow-up to "Livin' in the 801." Can't give too much away, but the newest offering will have a hint of the "Dark Knight" to it, along with some absolutely fabulous hairpieces. Should be up and running before too long ("too long" meaning anywhere between a week and six months or so, depending on how far the Jazz go in the playoffs and if our raw footage gets abducted by alien videophiles).

In the meantime, "Livin' in the 801" has continued to rack up hits on YouTube, over 22,000 at the last count. Even better, we're getting lots and lots of offensive comments, which is always a good sign for any online offering. You know you've made it when people start going out of their way to tell you how much they hate you.

More importantly, as of last weekend we have also seemed to pick up a rather unexpected following. Apparently Trails, one of the Salt Lake Valley's finer strip-club establishments, has gotten into the habit of running our clip on one of its video boards. I'm not sure if this means the employees are performing to the song or if it is merely background enhancement, but either way, Trails' owner has offered the services of his cast for any of our future video shoots, free of charge.

(Pause to digest last item...)

Yeah, so things are looking up for Apartment 204! If you get a chance, take another look at the clip, and go join the Facebook fan page. Before long we should have bio's on our homepage, along with a special homage clip to all our haters.

Boo-ya.

Tacos Rule!

Kobayashi has his hot dogs. Wimpy and Hamburglar are burger men. But as for me and my house, I am a taco guy. Hard shell, no sour cream, no cheese. It’s all about the beef, the tomatoes, and the salsa, plus some lettuce for color. Some guys can take you to school at the Godfather’s Pizza buffet; but chances are I can take you under the table any day when tacos are on the menu.

I’m not sure when the fascination with tacos began. Could be from back in the 80’s, when there were only a couple of Taco Bell’s in the valley, back before the rat dog ads, when a run to the border was a special occasion for the old familio. Of course, we were still having tacos and Spanish rice at the family table on a regular basis even then, so maybe my mania stretches all the way to the 70’s.

All I know is that the mania probably peaked in 1997, when I started the “10 Taco Challenge” on the South Side of Chicago. Fed up with my lack of female post, I declared to all my roommates that I would personally buy ten tacos for the man who managed to get ten girls to write me. Heaps got the closest, with nine, but I bought him the tacos anyway.

A couple of years later Ryan Patterson, Breto and I shared a memorable evening working our way through a couple dozen of Del Taco’s finest while playing Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and listening to Pink Floyd’s “Atom Heart Mother” album. A couple of years after that, my buddy Brandon tried to name me “Taco” in an attempt to give me a half-decent nickname, but it never quite stuck. When I was living in a townhouse in Bountiful with some friends, I even made a primitive short film about making tacos.

Every once in a while, someone tries to convert me to the soft shell team. My dad is always trying to get me down to this stand in downtown Salt Lake that hands them out on the street like they’re going out of style. But no one has managed to turn me on to modern country music, and no one is going to turn me on to soft shell tacos, either.

There’s just something inherently wrong with the soft shell. I have no beef with tortillas; it’s just that to me, a tortilla with beef and hot sauce is a burrito, not a taco. If I want a burrito, I’ll order a burrito. Even the name “taco” suggests a crunch association.

Not too crazy about the meat variations, either. Chicken I can hack, but not fish. My sister likes the fish tacos at Red Iguana. I love Red Iguana, as it is well documented, but I don’t really like their fish tacos.

I don’t hit Taco Bell too often, and I try to avoid getting caught up in the Del Taco rut as much as I can manage. Usually, for me, homemade tacos are the way to go. All I need is some fresh ground beef, some salsa, and a dozen shells to keep me happy. There’s nothing that can match a homemade taco in late August when the tomatoes are right off the vine and the shells are fresh.

I used to get the 24-packs of mini-shells so I could pound tacos like I was drinking shots, but I don’t always see the mini-shells for sale anymore. I’ve also had to limit the quantity of my personal taco-fests, both in quantity and frequency. I used to throw down a full pound of ground beef in a single Fest, but these days I’m down to a half-pound at best. My buddy Sam used to throw down a full pound of bacon at a time; I wonder if he’s down to a half-pound yet. I’m pretty sure he isn’t dead.

A few years ago, during the protests in Salt Lake over illegal immigration policy, I remember seeing this sign that said, “No Illegals, No Burritos”. I can sympathize with both sides of this issue, but when it comes to Reconquista, my tummy says "surrender." Because I’m about as close as you’re going to get to a walking Aztlan.

The Apartment Has Landed

This weekend marked the launch of a new project I'm involved in called "Apartment 204". We're a humor group that will be writing sketch comedy and posting clips and music videos online, hopefully every month or so.

We've officially posted our first clip, a music video called "Livin' in the 801." Be sure to leave comments, and let us know what you think.

The Liberation of Losing

As Barack Obama and the other winners from Campaign 08 look ahead to their new responsibilities, the world looks away from the defeated hopefuls they left in their wake. But as the nation gets ready to head back to work, it's the ones who lost who might have the greatest opportunity.

There is little in life I hate more than losing. Tuna fish and country music, maybe. But I really hate losing, and sometimes life serves up a lot of it. Still, if I spend all my time moping about the jobs I didn't get, the games I didn't win, or the girls who took door #2, my life is going to stink. Right now a lot of people who ran for office on Tuesday are trying to pick up the pieces. If they're lucky, they'll realize that a clean slate can be a blessing. Losing can be liberating, and rejection can be rewarding.

Here are my suggestions for a few of Tuesday's losers:

Super Dell: Utah may have said no-no to Super Dell, but Utah still needs Super Dell. You can never have enough totally awesome gun-toting para-gliders hovering over our highways. But maybe it's time to soften the image a bit…volunteer at a soup kitchen, start a scholarship fund, or maybe just follow in the tradition of former third-party candidate Bo Gritz and move to Idaho and start a survivalist colony.

Sarah Palin: I have only two words for the Governor of Alaska: Product Endorsement. If there was one personality to emerge from the campaign better suited for some good old fashioned American merchandising, I don't know who it is. It's time to cash in on the Sarah Palin Barbie Doll, deep fryer and fully-automatic assault rifle. Then when your window passes, you return to the great white north on a freighter full of cash where the best salmon in the world is waiting for you. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. Not a bad deal at all.

Al Franken: Minnesota may have turned you down, but the TV show that launched you is seeing more success than it has in fifteen years. But as funny as these political bits have been, the election's over, and they still need you. My friend, the Beatles were right: it's time to get back to where you once belonged, Al.

John McCain: Sometimes after a big loss, your best move is to take off on a voyage of personal discovery. I say wander the Far East for six months in a caravan of camels and Tibetan Monks. Grow a killer beard, achieve nirvana, and get a sweet book deal when you get back.

President Bush: Now that Michelle Obama is measuring the drapes, your window of opportunity may be bigger than them all. If you really want to help me out, bring a Giordano's Pizzeria to Utah. But if you truly want to break new ground, you can become the first US President to start a reggae band in office.

Life is always going to grant it's fair share of losing. But that doesn't mean it has to define you. Just ask Michael Jordan:

"I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occassions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot . . . and missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why . . . I succeed."

---

(To see this piece performed live on the KJZZ Cafe, click here.)

Simple Pleasures

We live in a crazy world, and it's gotten a lot crazier in the last few weeks. But if you spend all your time focusing on your problems, you're going to miss a lot of simple pleasures.

As I look back on the past week or two, I've got plenty of reasons to feel discouraged about life:

--Every day the boys and girls on Wall Street toy with my life savings like they're playing pinball on speed.

--We're three weeks away from the most important presidential election of my generation, and the only guy who's speaking his mind is a bald plumber in Ohio.

--Lower fuel prices make me happy…until I realize I'm getting excited to pay $3 a gallon for gas.

--On top of all that, last weekend I got laid off from my student ward cause I'm too old.

Sometimes it feels like the world is circling the drain of the cosmic porcelain throne. But I know these problems are going to pass. As I take a good look at the world of Terreality, I realize there are still plenty of things to be grateful for:

--Every Tuesday after 3pm, you can get three hard shell tacos at Del Taco for a buck-nine.

--We're only two weeks from the new Jazz season.

--I can go up in the mountains and shoot stuff whenever I want.

--The last hour they're open, Top Hat video puts all their movie rentals at 60 cents. Even the new releases.

--There's no rush hour traffic when you start work at 1am.

--Best of all, six days before Christmas, I'm going to be sitting in the upper bowl at Energy Solutions Arena while Neil Diamond rings in a little Hebrew Yule.

Patience is a virtue, but waiting for your problems to go away is stupid. Mick Jagger was right:

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need…"

------

The above post was written for one of my KJZZ Cafe editorials, which you can see here.

The End of Evolution

The world markets are failing, the country is buried in partisan hatred, and if that wasn't bad enough...a scientist in England says human evolution has ceased.

But that might just be a mutation of common sense.

Professor Steven Jones* is an geneticist with University College London, and in a lecture earlier this week, he** claimed that we are at the tail end of the evolutionary donkey. He says that evolutionary forces like natural selection and genetic mutation are no longer operating in our modern society.

"If you are worried about what Utopia is going to be like," he says, "don't. At least in the developed world, and at least for the time being, you are living in it now."

So drink it in ladies, you're looking at the zenith of human progress.



In memoriam, I've listed the five mutant-powers I will never have:

1. X-Ray Vision
2. Supersonic Capeless Flight
3. Kung-Fu Action Forearms
4. Super-Telepathic Traffic Manipulation
5. Spontaneous Hair Regeneration

I don't mean to come across as someone who rejects science because I hold a religious belief. I have a deep respect and appreciation for science, though the theory of evolution does have a strange way of debasing and exalting the human race at the same time. On the one hand, hard-core evolutionists believe we evolved from apes, and reject a divine hand. Yet according to these same people, any theory or belief that can't be explained or comprehended by the empirical study of these advanced simians is automatically rejected, even though that study and evidence evolves on a daily basis. Thus man becomes God...and a fluke at the same time.

I think it's sad that when it comes to science and religion, people feel like they have to make a choice between the two. They forsake deeply held religious belief because it doesn’t line up with the latest study. Or they toss aside scientific learning to feel loyal to their religion. From what I understand, even Darwin didn't feel that was necessary.

Either way, it's pretty arrogant to assume that anything which falls outside our own personal realm of understanding is untrue. As Hamlet told his friend Horatio,

"There are more things in heaven and earth, ...than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5).

We still have a lot to learn about science and about religion. It is extremely shortsighted to think you have to cast off one in order to retain the other. Neither side is really asking us to. When we get to the bottom of it, we might find the two sides are a lot more in harmony than we supposed.

But in the meantime, I'm still hoping for those Kung-Fu forearms...

-----

*NOT the Steve Jones who grew up across the street from me in Bountiful

**Also not the Professor Jones who used to teach at BYU and thinks 9/11 was a conspiracy. Totally different guy. British guy, in fact.