everything's getting old

Like last year, I found a birthday present from the outside that I wasn't expecting -- besides someone new deciding to "follow" my blog (whatever that means).


This time it's in the form of this week's Entertainment Weekly with its date being my birthday and with Jon Osterman gracing one of its collectors' issue covers. Osterman is not only a famous Jon, but is of course going to be gracing us in full visual motion when we watch Watchmen a week from today.


It looks as if even more people are going to be coming than I thought. I've got this friend who does what he calls "The Nerdtacular" every year. He rents out a theater and the first of his podcast listeners/site watchers/friends who reserve seats can do so until the place is filled. I've gone the past two years for Spider Man 3 and The Dark Knight. This Watchmen show next week is kind of like my own Nerdtacular (but I'd probably call it a "Geektacular" because that phrasage would be a lot more fitting).

Anyway, several of my circles are colliding for this. We got reps from The Cinematic Experience, The Homestarmy and even my bizarre book club. The book club actually discussed Watchmen last night, so I, you know, threw it out there.

So the birthday party started today. Rhett used his Tucanos coupon on me. We then head (probably) to Ming's Garden for dinner this evening if you can come. 7:10. That means I'll have the afterparty at Charlie Chow's Dragon Grill tomorrow (I've got a coupon that expires at the end of the month) if you'd like to attend that (limit five people on the coupon, but come anyway). Here's to gaining 10 pounds this weekend. Next week at Watchmen will be the conclusion of the party.

I'm obviously nervous about the movie. I almost don't care about how I feel about it; I mostly care about how others will feel about it. I feel bad that the last three people I got to read the graphic novel really didn't like it at all.

So I'm older now and suddenly technology thinks I'm too square for it. Maybe that's not the right phrase for it. If I had to pick a shape for technology it probably would be a square. The point is, I'm suddenly having tons of ridiculous technical issues with my shiz and it's completely out of nowhere.

First of all, there's weird stuff goin' down with my Cinematic Experience videos. Lemme try to explain. I use this program called Final Cut Express to edit them. Whenever a transition or a logo or text or something gets put into the timeline, the computer needs to take the time to render the information before the sequence can be previewed. If you attempt to look at the footage before the render process goes through, the screen will pop up with an "Unrendered" title card. That's fine -- whatever, 'cuz once the final video is exported the computer renders everything as part of the saving process. The final video has no trace of any unrendered screens and I even watch the final videos after they're saved to make sure nothing has gone wrong.


Lately, however the forbidden unrendered screens are appearing on Cinematic Experience videos on YouTube -- despite the fact that the videos I actually upload onto YouTube are actually completed. It's like YouTube has to wade its way through the good data to get to the bad data and then display it. No. Sense. At. All. Perhaps a Final Cut/YouTube jockey is reading right now and can figure out what's goin' on.

Other problem. My Jon Demand videos aren't syncing to my iPod after they're downloaded. Makes no sense. It took me forever to get them to download to my iTunes, so now that they're in my system they're not working. Either my iTunes or my iPod will not allow my own stuff to transfer over to my iPod.


Do me a favor people. If you have an iPod, subscribe to the video podcast called Jon Demand. It's easy. Just click here. iTunes should open right up for you. Now make sure you can transfer Jon Demand over to your iPod. Let me know if it works. It'll be fun for you too! Remember that charming video of me exercising? Well you can enjoy it on your iPod in the comfort of your bus ride home and not just on your home (work) computer!

This means a lot to me people.

Oh yeah, and happy birthday. Totally is.

Jon Demand 7: What I Want For My Birthday

oscar pics '09!

spork power

Check out me as a superhero I created over at The Hero Factory. I wanted a hotter pink and a dark a bit closer to black, but it's pretty groovy anyway. At least I think this guy's head looks like mine a little.

I didn't have to pick a spork as my weapon, but it was probably the most interesting instrument offered. Ever since I've learned about sporks I've had a fascination with them. Did KFC invent the spork? As I'm typing I'm going to make a quick check on Wikipedia...

Wow. I was way off. Apparently the spork's been around since 1874.

I always thought it was very efficient to combine the spoon and the fork into one instrument. But even if it didn't come around until 1874, it's a combination that wasn't thought of for hundreds of years.

I use the spork as an example of something obvious that was completely out of our grasp for an embarrassingly long amount of time. Why didn't we use it sooner? We could have cut our silverware budget by 30% over several centuries. I wonder if on other planets the civilizations there thought of the spork within just a few years of thinking of the spoon and fork.

Then again, it goes both ways. Maybe there are a lot of obvious things we've always had that they've never had. I think one example is the dual-open car wash. We pull into carwashes on one side and then pull out the opposite side. I bet on some other planets they pull in, but there's a wall there like a garage. Then, if someone pulls up behind them they have to do this annoying sequence of backing up awkwardly while the cars second and third in line have to try to give them room to come out.

Yeah, they're idiots, but they thought of the spork forever ago!

v.d. '09

In honor of the V.D. this year I've painted my phone. This is a pretty big deal since a few years ago I decided I'd repaint my phone every month to correspond with some event from that month. So I started with black and orange for Halloween of '05 and my phone stayed that way until a few days ago.


We went to see Push last week. It's hardly a V.D. movie and actually not too good for a Sundance picture. Maybe it just went over my head. I had heard that it was about an overweight black girl in New York who was trying to get out of an incestuous relationship. I wasn't even aware of which actor was playing that part. Perhaps Dakota Fanning's power of seeing into the future (but not very well) was a metaphor for striving to escape from a bad home life.

Anyhow, a girl at the movie had some conversation hearts that she graciously let me have -- probably because nobody likes conversation hearts. I do if they're SweetTart ones. She was like, yeah, they totally are! So I ate a bunch and they were chalky, just like they traditionally are. The package actually says they're Sweetheart hearts. They really shouldn't have basically the same name on these. Then someone else donated another box to the heart bowl. How do people have all these boxes that they don't want?


I managed to decorate the place for the first time in a good while. Black hearts is pretty standard, but black hearts with horns? That's probably the icon I'm most proud of coming up with.


In case you couldn't tell, I painted my phone with nail polish. Since I borrowed the pink stuff and figured if this stuff works on phones, it might just work on toes! I made use of the situation. The toes of my right foot were acting all weird and sedimentary, so I threw a coat on there. My middle nail was recently ripped off, so I didn't touch that one. My pinky toe and the one next to it grow funny for the same reason. My toenails have been getting destroyed slowly and perfectly from right to left over the past few years. My theory is that by the time my pinky toe on my left foot gets ripped off, my life will end. There are only three down, so I should have a long life ahead of me.


I meant to make another VDCD, but it escaped me. I even took notes on what songs I should put in, besides being intercut with How I Met Your Mother quotes. All I could think of so far though was "You're My Best Friend" by Queen and "Father Figure" by George Michael. In the meantime, check out J.R.'s VDCD.

Every V.D. I look more and more like a hungover Eddie Munster.


Today's festivities may only consist of a date with Joe to see Confessions of a Shopaholic. Kind of reminds me of when I first moved to Salt Lake and saw 50 First Dates with Rhett for V.D. that year. I guess I'm not much of a monogamist.

the world is getting better

Fortunately I had my camera with me and I was able to snap a shot of this vanity license plate at a stop light.


It gives me great comfort to know that there are at least 994 other Neil Patrick Harris fans in this state alone. These are my people. You go NPH!

Jon Demand 5: Exercising

I've been sitting on the footage for this one for a while, but it's a story that must be told.

minor accomplishments, major grievances

I sort of left everyone hangin' on the whole Jeopardy! thing, huh? Well, I guess I haven't spoken a follow-up because they left me hanging. I did it. I answered all 50 questions, but they didn't give me (or anybody else) a score. Apparently they'll contact me at an undisclosed future date if I made the grade and the random selection process. So even if I aced every single question (which I know I didn't) I'm still dependent on a certain amount of chance (the probability of which scares me to think about).

I totally should have videoed myself taking that dumb test. You would have gotten a tremendous laugh. Five minutes before it started I went into major "Jon Fidget Mode" as I just sat there watching the countdown screen let me know when the test would start. I try really hard to be cool and laid back all the time, but a select few have seen me in my natural, anxious state. It's ugly (and funny). I really started getting nervous 30 seconds before the test began and it started playing the show's theme music.

It would have been easy to video too. I could have set up a Camtwist setting that would show my face as well as the question being asked (they actually ask questions instead of answers so that we wouldn't have to type "what is" every time).

The first 25 questions or so were easy, at least for me. I don't want to say that in a braggy way, but more in a "they asked questions from 80s movies and Greek mythology sorts of questions" type of way. I know I missed a couple of middle questions. I think nine of the last ten gave me problems. None of the questions were multiple choice. It was all "know-it-or-not" fill-in-the-blank.

A couple of my other friends from around the country tried out too. Edvalson said he didn't think he did too well and Ammon confided in me that he missed at least one -- one that I'm pretty sure I got. That's pretty cool because I always get a huge Jeopardy! surge of confidence when I can get a question that other contestants on the show don't get.

I guess we're allowed to take the test every year. Now it looks like I'll be taking it every year until I'm smart and lucky enough. Next year I'm gonna get video of the ordeal. Totally.

... So my car hit 200,000 miles last week. Much rejoicing. Here's the video of it. Joe was in the car with me. If you want to see the point of the whole thing, just skip to 1:54.



Last week I also discovered that life is simply unfair in so many ways. How fair is it that it's a hundred times easier to ruin somebody's day than it is to make the day slightly better?


I'm still sorry Alex. We'll be getting way awesomer eatingware.

My neck hurts. On the right side. It's buggin' me.

I hate the Fort Union area. It's like the forbidden zone of Salt Lake Valley. I'm so proud of SLV for being awesome enough to maintain a grid system where everything is easy to find. Not so in Fort Union. It's so diagonally that I make every attempt not to go there. Plus its main hub is the intersection of two streets -- Fort Union and Union Park. That's confusion waiting to happen, right?

One time Stephanie and Mark and I were hungry so we went to the Chili's downtown. When they said it was a 20 minute wait, Mark was like, "No way. We're not waiting that long. Let's try Five Guys." So we got in Mark's car and he drove as if he were driving Miss Daisy all the way to the Fort Union area. It took 30 minutes to get there. We couldn't find Five Guys at first, but found it after another five minutes of searching in the forbidden zone (right next to another Chili's). The burgers were okay. Sound gross now.

Anyway, the point is, there's only one Five Guys around and it's at Fort Union. A more likely story is that I'll want to go to the Belgian Waffle House. I went there a few weeks ago late at night, had some laughs and most importantly stuffed myself silly. They served me this stuff called garbage hash. It's a combination of hash browns, bacon, cheese and peppers -- and they gave me a couple of pounds of it. It very well could have just been the sweepings from the kitchen, but it was breakfast-awesome. An even more likely occurance for the Fort Union trip is World Market where I pick up my Tim Tams. Tim Tams are these Australian chocolate cookies you can suck hot chocolate through and then slide down your throat. The practice is called Tim Tam slamming. This Friday is a big Tim Tam slam contest so I had to pick some up (you're going, right?).

THE POINT IS if I ever crave the burgers, the garbage hash or the chocolatey gooey goodness I'll have to descend into what I call "The Salt Lake Axis of Evil." Observe:


I've discovered that I don't just get lost in Fort Union because it's diagonally. Notice that the union of Union Park and Fort Union combine to form an evil swastika. Surely this isn't a coincidence.

If you need to hit this evil part of town, though -- take this map with you.