Cycling Trivialities

Some random person created one of the best anti-war videos I have ever seen.

the Pale Blue Dot

This one gets me every time.

BEST STAR WARS TRAILER YET. seriously though.

Created by my old place of work, Blur Studio.

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Video Games | Star Wars: The Old Republic | E3 09: Jedi vs Sith Cinematic

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Daaamn. My friend posted his Reel.

Gabriel Portnof Lead Lighter Reel 2007 from gabriel portnof on Vimeo.

On the distribution of Wealth.

-Posted by my friend at my job.

When I was a kid, my father worked at a college that was on an old estate on the north shore of Long Island. That is Gatsby territory, and the area was filled with former fancy estates most of which had been converted to other uses. I remember reading then about how people used to have incredible fortunes and built amazing huge houses with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of servants, and how even the richest of the rich could no longer afford that sort of thing.

If you look at the history, the closest the US came to actual revolution was in the 1920's and early 1930's, which was that Gatsby period. Many people think that Roosevelt saved capitalism in the US by spreading the wealth and bringing in social programs like social security, WPA, etc.

IMHO, the Republicans consciously were seeking to bring back that era, where being rich meant being REALLY rich. And they succeeded. And, strangely enough, also succeeded in bringing back the event that ended that previous era, the Great Depression.

This is probably why businessmen on the whole supported Obama, for the same reason they supported Roosevelt: sense and fear winning out over greed.

You probably will recognize this song:

They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,
When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell,
Full of that Yankee Doodly Dum,
Half a million boots went slogging through Hell,
And I was the kid with the drum!

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al; it was Al all the time.
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

A friend's Reel

This is a friend's VFX Director Reel. The cool part about it is he did everything on it. From modeling, to Surfacing, Animation, Lighting, FX, and Compositing. He's a real talented mf'er. I wish I was more like him.

Gabriel Portnof's VFX Director Reel from gabriel portnof on Vimeo.

Nothing Compares to This.

Nothing Compares 2 U (cover) live

I was watching Forgetting Sarah Marshall last night, a movie that I wasn't into at first but has grown on me considerably. At one point the main character is at home lamenting his lost love to the tune "Nothing Compares to You", a song that was originally by Prince, but was covered by Sinead O'Connor. I remember blasting her cover, much like the character in the movie, after being broke up with by my first love. I locked myself in my room and wallowed for hours in pure adolescent misery. I opened my ground floor window in Greenwich village so the whole block would now that nothing compared to her. At the end of the film there is a great Hawaiian cover of the song which I fell immediately in love with, both because of it's comedic awkwardness, and also for the fact that the song is great.

Then oddly enough, this morning on KCRW, as I drove east on Venice Blvd, Jason Bentley puts this new cover of the song on. I thought to call my girlfriend so we could have a laugh about the coincidence, but was beaten to the punch by her call to say the same thing. We were both listening to the same song on the same station. It was a good moment.

I threw 3D graphics at Obama.

this is a picture of the president watching the Monsters Versus Aliens Superbowl trailer which had my explosion shots, and I also did the Logo that flies at the viewer at the end. So, i visually threw graphics at the president's face! I am McLovin that somebody found that image on the Huffington Post.

I wonder...If he flinched, does that mean i get to give him a punch in the shoulder like that childhood game we all used to play?

OH SHIT! they're back

When childhood cartoons go AWESOME!

Transformer "Revenge of the Fallen" trailer #3 from Bay Films/Michael Bay Dot Com on Vimeo.

Cornify my blog please.

Network Television kills me.

I am very much a fan of movies and I can spend a whole day sitting and watching them. But frankly, I have seen a lot and the movie channels only play a limited selection per month and just do repeats. Another source is network tv since there are a bunch that will play movies during the day. But between the commercial breaks (especially hard when watching long epics like LOTR that needed editing to begin with), and the editing of scenes to be PG, I am usually left with a bad taste in my mouth. I understand that the movie companies let them tear apart their films simply because they get royalties...but it's really inexcusable. This is the kind of shit that pisses me off:

Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen

TAX TIME!!!

Sensible Deductions, y'all.

REQUIREMENTS...by Tracy Morgan.

Sorry I've been gone for so long. I've been marinating since January. Just got back to work. Stories to follow...

I <3 road trippin'

I LOVE NOT WORKING

Is it bad if during two months of time off, all i want to do is leisure type stuff? Is there some project I should be working on? The work ethic can be nagging sometimes, but i do a good job of womping its ass.

Dick Cheney, seriously, go FUCK YOURSELF.

In the Immortal words of Gandalf the Grey....YOU SHALL NOT PASS!

Venice breakwater and getting towed in LA

So, yesterday I went surfing in the rain. It's not something I ever really pictured myself doing, since I always associated the beach with sunny days. But for the last week it had been perfect sunny weather and unfortunately, flat wave-less conditions. I had gone several times though since I have months off from work and plenty of time to kill. Also, the fact that I had just bought a cool long board from Bask, my homeslice and neighbor, had also made in imperative that I go in a lot. But the lack of ride-able waves created a hunger for bigger waves that I have never felt. I tend to be overwhelmed quickly by big surf because i have bad ears. My eardrums get hurt easily by the pressure of waves taller then myself and swimming under them doesn't help much.

Yesterday a storm rolled in and the waves and wind picked up dramatically in the afternoon. I rode my bike to the beach and was surprised to see that the spot was crowded, even in the grey stormy chop. I guess other surfers were wave starved as well. Not to mention that the recession has probably opened up more then a few schedules to weekday riding. Nothing really remarkable happened, there wasn't the appearance of dolphins or whales as there has been lately, and really, the rides weren't spectacular. i guess it was more or less the fact that we were all there, crowded into a 200 foot stretch of beach behind a stone jetty, weathering a storm in rough seas that made the moment memorable. The spirit of riding and the love of huge masses of water dumping over as they hit the end of their domain in a last ditch effort to show off their power.

It was also the feeling of the rain pelting my head and the waves coming in almost on top of each other. You never knew where the next one was coming from, how big it would be or if there was one right behind it. Essentially bobbing up and down constantly and never being still or catching your breath. On top of that, any wave I caught had two or three guys catching it at the same time so it was like bumper cars unless I let the wave pass (which i am learning to do via my homeboys, since its usually them I end up bumping into).

The rides were surprisingly fun though, since these waves were often large, but would have smaller waves right in front of them, so you might catch the upper part of the wave, and end up dropping down into another wave below it, and then catching two or three more breaks on the same ride since they were so broken up and random. It reminded me of the way Japanese painters represented waves in ancient times, like it had no order and was so crazy the waves had waves kind of like a perm hairdo.

Another thing that I loved about the experience was the way people looked at me, on the beach, and in the neighborhood. There are a lot of tourists in Venice and they tend to stare in admiration at surfers, but add a storm and rain and you get the look of absolute respect. You can see it in the face, they think you are crazy, but they also admire the courage and skill it must take to head down to the beach on a bike in a wetsuit and a board under my arm. On top of that, I was riding back on abbot kinney boulevard and ran into a friend of mine who lives in San Francisco. So at the moment where i was telling him how the fin on my board broke, i realized that at the same time last year i was huddling inside my NY apartment avoiding the cold and staring longingly at my barren snow covered backyard remembering what it was like in the summer for BBQs. We make our own lives, and I chose this one. I can't say that I have any regrets right now. Of course I miss home, but I will be there in March and I know it's not going anywhere and that the winter SUCKS. But i do miss taking a day to walk across the park and go to a museum.

I tried giving LA a chance as a city with culture by visiting LACMA for the first time. That was actually a successful day, the museum's collection and layout was very impressive....but I had to drive really far in traffic and I ended up getting towed, then being saved by my girlfriend who works nearby. Had she not been around i could have spent a ton of money on cabs and probably wouldn't have been able to get my car out of the pound that evening anyways since i made it with like 10 seconds to spare before they closed for the night...gotta love that. A city that has no workable transportation system towing cars from meter spots and then shutting down the pound at 7pm.

Yeah, you heard correctly, I parked at a meter spot, you know, where you pay to park and assume that since the machine took your money that you would be okay. I even looked at the sign and saw that it was 4 hour parking and it was 2pm, no mention on that sign about a Tow zone...that was on another sign on another pole about 50 feet down from the sign i checked. I put in enough money to last until 6pm and marched off joyfully to enjoy some art. Low and behold, LA is a magical city that has meter parking that suddenly becomes a tow away zone at 4pm. Something like that in NY is unheard of, and the signage would be crazy if it were because New Yorkers fight about that kind of shit all day long. But LA doesn't think it's necessary to put that info in like HUGE RED LETTERS. Instead, they let tourists fall into the 400 dollar trap (and it must be mostly tourists considering the fact that it was in front of the museums and la brea tar pits) I imagine they make a LOT of money from that and leave a bad taste in most peoples mouths, people who were just trying to see some culture in a vast barren desert of cultural waste.

I truly understand why so many people hate LA, I used to with a passion. Now I spend a lot of time defending it in conversations with people I know who don't live here. It's a city that doesn't behave well. From the police, to the drivers, to even the awkward and disdainful way Angelenos walk in crowds. It seems more like a town for people who don't actually want to live around other people. Thankfully, I don't care about that aspect anymore. I'm here for the work, the weather, and the waves. That's it brah.

Leisure Blogging

Does anybody besides me see the irony in the fact that Kellogs dropped Phelps as a sponser because he was photographed taking a bong hit? Doesn't Kellogs owe marijuana at least a nod?!

If stoners decided to pay Kellogs back with a boycott, they'd go out of business STAT.

Ehhh, whateves. the Last Dragon is on cable right now.

OMG

This kid's brain on drugs.