Tuesday, March 23, 2010

ward aladdin movie

So the stake had this big film festival tonight (whoops, past midnight -- I guess yesterday). We found out about it a month ago and it was the bright idea of Roxy to do an Aladdin silent movie.



The ward gathered to film a week ago and then Roxy and I spent the weekend putting the thing together. Roxy drew ALL the backgrounds and also the rocks, clouds, lightning, cage, the palace, etc. Pretty darn cool. I envy her.

I must say the movie did turn out well, but there's a reason filmy people use a GREEN screen rather than a RED screen. People are a little more red, so sometimes the chroma keyer totally makes film subjects' skin disappear. Freaky looking indeed.

Anyway, as usual all involved were incredibly good sports and consummate professionals while I had a steady series of anxiety attacks.

Roxy put together the great credits sequence because so many people helped, but only five of them got any screen time. So the kudos are deserved. It was also her idea to give the villain a weird lisp -- which if anybody thinks is too un-PC... it was her idea.

Probably the biggest laugh we got during the screening was when Kathleen says her name is "Badroulbadour." As usual the biggest laugh from one of my little videos comes from a non-joke. According to Wikipedia anyway, that's the actual name of the princess in the story.

Anyway, it was waaaaay fun for me to really experiment with some stuff I haven't really gotten my hands dirty with like the chroma keying and also animation and split screen. So fun!

And thanks everyone who helped out! It's amazing how cool people are to do that.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

bachelor party for joe evans! woooooo!

Actually, I'm not usually the kind of guy who yells "woooooo!"

Anyway, the bachelor party is TONIGHT since Joe's getting married... next week? Holy cow.

The festivities include a ROAST of the guy, which should be pretty good. The guy is living comedic material. We're going to broadcast the roast live through this thing called the INTERNET at about 7:00 I think.

Here's the live webcam Ustream link:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/thejonblogcam

Mom, just so you know, your computer may have a hard time with the live video.

I realizing I'm capitalizing my letters a lot this post, but this is a one-time event.

If you're too lazy to click on the above link, I'll try to embed the Ustream live window and the chat box below:

Live TV : Ustream


Wednesday, March 10, 2010

my chemical salad

I'm only now realizing that I've fallen into a sort of "bad crowd." Mom always warned me to stay away from substance abusers. Despite her warnings, MOST of the people I hang around these days are diet soda drinkers.

Despite my protests, they're a determined lot. For years I've asked why they insist on the consumption. Usually the response is -- "Hey, let me be healthy! Not everyone has your metabolism you know!"

My obvious response is something like -- Hey! It's gross. It's not pleasurable. WATER tastes better. Not just that, but there's something in diet drinks that makes me ill. I think I sort of finally understand what Maria always used to tell me about Chinese food (that it gave her a headache and made her feel gross). If I chug a diet drink I get a serious headache. The stuff has a far negativer effect on me than mere sugar. Of course there is an outside chance that since everything I eat is sugar I'm having a weird reaction to NOT eating sugar, but I really don't think that's likely.

Anyway, I'm noticing this weird effect more and more because sometimes at crazy parties I accidentally partake in someone else's stash.

I have to bring all this up because late last night I ate a five-quart fruit bowl prepared by treatmaster Cousin Jen. She goes nuts with the treats and it was my secondary fuel for our mid-week Gears of War gamenight (primary fuel: Charlie Chow noodles). The fruit bowl was absolute ambrosia and shortly before I asked how she made it I began to notice a headache forming in my skull. Then she revealed the ingredients: fruit marinated in lime and sweetened with Splenda (TM).

Splenda? Despite my gratitude of the fruit salad's deliciousness, I couldn't help but whine to her a bit. I mean this is the woman who eats an entire package of Dots AND an entire package of Peanut Butter M&Ms AND an entire package of green sugar rings every single time I see her.

I say all this because we finished playing around 2 AM. Check when this post was posted. I STILL HAVEN'T GOTTEN TO BED. I went home exhausted, hurty and brittle -- but sleep completely escaped me. I only had two Mountain Dews. I blame the chemical salad.

This whole scenario is alarming to me -- not because I ate something containing Splenda and didn't realize it, but for the first time, I ENJOYED something containing Splenda. This may be my gateway, I don't know. Just to be sure, though, I asked Jen to prepare the chemical salad with Mountain Dew rather than Splenda next time around.

Friday, March 05, 2010

jon demand xiv: the 82nd annual oscar picks

Alright, so I had BIG plans to put text up showing all the nominees AND throw in some clips of some of the actors actually acting and stuff, but I somehow ran out of time and resources. I need all you people to see this before you leave work on Friday! I'm on deadline!

I'm watching the Oscars at my house on Sunday. If you'd like to join me you can, but this isn't a party or anything. I just love the Oscars and it's awesome to watch them with people who like watching them. If you do join me for the viewing please bring some munchies. And also make your munchies relatable to somehow to the Academy Award nominees this year. For example: you can bring blue nerds to commemorate Avatar or you can bring a "hurt locker" full of doritos.

Oh, and also bring us some refrigerator magnets.

treading through old age just fine

So my birthday party was a week ago today and I think I mentioned this on Twitter, but not here: I had a wonderful wonderful time!

Seriously, even though I'm probably too old to get gifts now, I can't believe how come through-able my friends totally are. The cards, the treats, the stuff I asked for that I didn't think I was gonna get but did anyway -- wow. Seriously.

The next day (my birthday) I spent time with the fam. That was awesome too. Low-key cooling down. Actually, the BYU game didn't help much -- but the dinner at Tucano's did. Bye bye belt!