Some Addendum...

Yeah, in my haste to direct you to my Tumblr, I forgot to mention two important details:

1.) I'm not leaving MySpace or anything. I just check it a lot less and don't really like blogging here. Tumblr is super-easy and fun and has a nice community. Did I mention it's super easy to post songs and pictures and videos?

2.) The Tumblr doesn't default to comments. I have to find the plug-in or whatever to enable comments. Because what the hell is the point of blogging if you can't get phramaceutical spam? Am I right, ladies?

That is all.

From Here I’m Tumbling Forward

Go fuck yourself, 2008. You were, without a doubt, the worst year of my life. I think the way that 2008 wins that title is because so much awesome shit happened in 2008 that it took a staggering amount of BULLSHIT to ruin it all.

Ugh. I hate it.

...deep breath...

I hope everyone had a wonderful New Years! My girl and I were in San Francisco, at the top of Nob fucking Hill, ringing in the New Year at our friends' wedding. It was a delight. Lots of fun, lots of alcohol, lots of dancing.

Now it's full throttle into 2009, rebuilding, finding a good job, and making my life over. it's time for a little break. Because everything seems to be broken.

My digital camera broke, my bed broke, and my bank account is broke.

All that being said, I probably will stop blogging here on MySpace as everyone has deserted for Facebook and because Facebook has no blog utility or app or anything, I have started a Tumblr, which you can find here:

http://www.crockeronline.tumblr.com/

Already I am enjoying the layout and ease of using a Tumblr and I highly recommend all of you to start one up as well because it's a blast.

So there you go! New blog for new year! Cross your fingers that I get a new job for this new year! And there is so much more that needs to change this year and I'm glad that I am fired up to get things done quickly and efficiently.

Rock on!

My Week in Review

Haven't posted anything in a week or so, so I'm going to be somewhat mundane and run down the somewhat packed week that I have had:

Monday: Holy shit. AC/DC, the greatest rock band blows the fucking walls (for real) off the Great Western Forum in one of the greatest concerts I will ever see in my lifetime. I have been waiting for this concert, along with my girlfriend, for YEARS; and I am happy to report that it was every goddamn bit as awesome as I could have expected- MORE SO. UN-BE-LEE-VABLE.

Tuesday: I had stayed up after the concert the night before to power through the last bits of the last animated short for the SuperEgo Live show. I didn't finish, but came very close before I completely crashed. Then it was rehearsal for most of the day, at the end of which I started catching my girlfriend's cold. Blorch. The dress rehearsal, the only one we did, went well and I was feeling sick, but pretty confident in the show. Home for lots and lots of tea and OJ and animating into the early morning to finish the last animation.

Wednesday: Day of the show! The Show! Superego Live! … I realize that I didn't really promote it too much on MySpace, probably because I was feeling overwhelmed with self-promotion these last few weeks. That being said, I spent the morning outputting new compressed versions of all three brand new Superego Supershorts, charging camera batteries and getting the last odds and ends together for the show.

I made three new shorts in about two weeks, two animated, one live action (blue-screen, so nothing but compositing), and I am pretty impressed with myself that they all got completed and I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out.

Why was I re-compressing, you tech geeks ask? Because Mark Bommarito, our crack stage tech expert, plugged us into CueLab, a cue running program on his laptop that he can just plug into our projector and run ALL our sound AND video cues from with the touch of a button. I was in nerd heaven.

We had a quick run through with the whole Shunt McGuppin, Mutt Taylor, and the Journeymen Six Pack (Cubby Lauderborne, Luggs Harvey, Tits "Hammerhand" Hamrahan, and Hal Ratliff).

In no time it was time for the show- and I have to say it was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in a long time. Audio clips, like from the podcast; live action, largely improvised sketches of some classic Superego characters; new Supershorts, as mentioned above; and then the band.

It was a delightful night, with a packed house of good friends.

Thursday: Load out at the theater after a good hard nights sleep. Then I needed to power through some work for a pitch presentation for a puppet show I was helping a friend on. And I needed desperately to clean my apartment. Like, FOR REAL.

Sadly, I didn't finish cleaning my apartment nearly as much I needed, but I made…headway.

Friday: Good morning at Portfolio's, doing some job searching, saying hi to my barber, Al, and I finally started editing my novel I wrote last year. I want to get it ready to ask friends to read and comment on in the new year. It was exciting to get started on that, something I had been meaning to do…allegedly…for a year. At least it started.

Then up to the west side to return one of the cameras used to tape the Superego show. Then back to PV and another coffee shop (excessive), for more editing and job searching.

And finally, I had dinner with my parents and we went to see Seth Cohen's directorial debut at my alma mater, a melodrama called Face on the Barroom Floor.

And now I'm at my girl's place unwinding and catching up internets, my RSS feeds, and just kicking my feet up.

The next few weeks, I'll post up the new Superego stuff, as well as some artwork that I've been working on and other crafty projects I'm trying to get finished before the year end.

Back!

Wow. So much to talk about. Hello again everybody that is still on MySpace, and well, thanks for keeping on MySpace. As you might know from the previous entry, I was taken away from blogging duties by National Novel Writing Month these past 29 days. I hope that everyone had a delightful Thanksgiving feast with family and/or friends.

First off, National Novel Writing Month (I hate referring to it as NaNoWriMo, however truncated it makes the whole thing)- as of 11:11 PM last night, I finished my second novel to the tune of 60,037 words which space out to be 115-ish pages. So that's done. I'll try and post an excerpt one of these days...but...well, we'll get to that.

Then there is Justin- I'm going to bring it down a bit. Last month, my barber died. Justin Lovato cut my hair at Hawleywood's Barbershop for just about two years and he gave me the best haircuts I've had in my life. He was a really good guy and he had lived a tough life, but cutting hair had really brought a new meaning to his life. It was devastating to hear about this, just devastating. But he isn't forgotten- you can read a story about him here, as well as there is a whole pictorial about Hawleywood's Barbershop in Long Beach, down the street from my house, in the newest issue of Inked magazine.(Dec, with Pink on the cover; also you can get a free digital subscription at their website) Pick up a copy and you can see Justin in all his tattooed coolness.

Thirdly, if you can see JCVD in the theaters, I recommend you do so. What is it? You can find the trailer online as well as a synopsis, but the short of it is- Jean Claude Van Damme plays Jean Claude Van Damme and it's fucking powerful. Powerful like Jean Claude Van Damme. It's part action movie, part drama, with a nice dash of experimental and independent flavoring.

Fourthly, Superego Live is shaping up to be a very very exciting show; I think that anyone that is around and gets a chance to see it is going to have a good ol' time in Long Beach with the utter insanity of our live performance. There will be comedy. There will be cartoons. There will be music. There will be a number of absurd comedy sketches that must be seen to be believed. Head over to the Superego website for all the information and to catch up on the hours of podcasts that already exist.

Fifthly, I'd like to talk about how utterly shitty 2008 has been and the only thing that makes it even shittier is that it's becoming so shitty that it's starting to blur all the cool stuff that has happened this year, which makes me feel awful. Townland released an album and went on a tour this year! I worked for Stan Winston Studios! I worked for Adult Swim(again)! I was creative and lived on my own schedule for almost the entire year. But all that has sort of lead me into this spiral of angst and frustration and stress.

Let me put it in perspective- last year, I decided that if I finished my novel for National Novel Writing Month, I would buy myself a new TV. By the end of the year I didn't have enough money to do it and this year, I'm sitting here watching my old shitty TV. Nothing's changed. I'm just more frustrated. Stagnant.

And finally, speaking of stagnant, let's talk about MySpace:

I would try and tell people to NOT give up on MySpace, except it's way too late for that- everyone has jumped ship to Facebook already. There are people on Facebook that were never on MySpace and I don't…really…see the benefit. Facebook has its advantages I suppose and it's got some nice simple features, but there isn't any blog function and the "pages" idea is well-intentioned for the user, but it doesn't really do much for the bands and film and such that want fans and worldwide exposure. It just doesn't make sense. Everyone is dumping one way of communication for an equally awkward one.

So in the interest of keeping up, and seeing as no one is on MySpace except my loyal readers(Thank you), I'll probably be transferring my regular blogging to a Wordpress or Tumblr sometime at the beginning of the new year. I'll keep you posted as to where and how you can continue to follow my exploits.

I'll probably be around here more often before the big move! So have a great weekend and keep gnawing on those leftover turkey legs!

Hiatus

Happy Halloween!

Been mildly busy with job-hunting (NO LUCK!) and a couple small projects, plus I've been ramping up for my November hiatus from blogging, also known as National Novel Writing Month.

I'm pretty excited to have the challenge, but as I've said before to various people- I really would much rather fail this month because it would mean that I had a job that took up all my time.

I try to make each day a chapter so there are easy breaks between days. I couldn't continue a thought after letting an unfinished chapter sit overnight. This year, I've got a brief chapter by chapter (title only) outline for a dramatic science-fiction novel. I found out last year at the NaNoWriMo(abbreviattion!) "wrap party," which was another story all together, that apparently they've changed the genre of the kind of science-fiction I like from science-fiction to Speculative Fiction.

I love sci-fi that takes place in the near future with robots and laser guns and space ships, but has to do with human problems and the like. Like Blade Runner. I guess that is now speculative fiction, rather than straigh up science fiction.

So is science fiction like Star Wars? or Star Trek? because if we're really dividing sci-fi up, I would place Star Trek into SCIENCE fiction, which means Star Wars is placed in the category of Totally Sweet Laser-sword Fiction.

Right, literature? Am I doing this right? Is that where we're going you snobby, Nathaniel Hawthorne loving, tricorder-festishizing, dildo?

I should save my razor sharp wit for the NOVEL I am about to write. See all you hiney-touchers in a month! Have a safe and happy halloween and a dangerous and sorrowful Dia de Los Muertos!

Another Year Another Novel

Last year, I signed up for and successfully completed Nation Novel Writing Month. It was lots of fun and definitely exciting. Very tense trying to tap out 2000 words a day to meet the deadline of 50,000 words in a month. That's about a hundred single spaced pages for anyone keeping track; no Jodi Piccoult or Johnny Grisham, but a solid effort none-the-less.

I can't remember if I ever posted an excerpt from my novel last year, but…I probably should- if I remember it seemed to have some good passages. To be honest, I never fully finished the thing beyond the first slam-bang super-rough draft. I have it printed out and literally sitting on my desk with a red pen clipped on it, its just hard to get motivated to sit down and EDIT A NOVEL. The catch22 is that I want friends to help with the critique, but only after I've made the first pass, but I haven't made the first pass so I can give it to friends. Lame.

Also, this year I think I wouldn't mind failing, quitting, and coming up short if it meant I had a job and was working and making money, because that is NOT HAPPENING right now and it needs to start happening. I want writing a novel to be the thing that gets sacrificed, even though I hate stopping work on anything, I'm going to make an exception this November.

But the possibility exists that I might complete the novel AND find adequate employment, however, if its got to be one or the other- the words will still be available when I'm dead fucking broke.

At least let me pass the mantle on to all of you! I highly recommend you head over to http://www.nanowrimo.com and sign up for something that will be a huge accomplishment in your life. If you do it and complete the task(2000 words a day isn't as hard as you may think if you are regular typist), then before the end of the year you will have written a novel; which is something that not everyone can say they've done. Go for it!

The Big Pancake

When I was young and going to school every day of my life, my mother woke up at the crack of dawn, before me, and made pancakes for breakfast. She did this almost every single day. She would often mix it up during the week and the different pancakes ranged from buttermilk and whole wheat, to matzo meal and corn meal pancakes. I think this may have been what caused my undying love of pancakes as well as my desire for having constant variety in my life.

As I grow older, whenever I can, I mix up some batter, fire up the skillet and fry up some pancakes. They aren't my mom's pancakes, but it's a comfort food I can always enjoy.

But in the process of making pancakes I can always see an important aspect of what it means to be an artist, and there aren't too many foods that you can create where you get to enjoy the concept of "The Big Pancake."

"The Big Pancake" is exactly that; it's the biggest pancake in the batch made from the batter at the bottom of the bowl that you pour onto the griddle at the very end of the morning(or beginning, if you've been up late). "The Big Pancake" represents the final salvo of pancake making; the big finale of your griddlecake show; the home run knock-it-out-of-the-park pancake that- you get the idea.

You can't do that with steak.
You can't do that with a salad.
You can't do that with macaroni and cheese.

When you're making pancakes, when you get to the end, you pour the rest of the batter onto the sizzling griddle, scrape all the last buttery, milky, eggy, drips onto the pan and you grip your spatula with anticipation for the flip; and when that last pancake is done, golden brown on both sides, and you are already full of the other 15-some-odd pancakes you've wolfed down, you look at that Big Pancake and you know- it may be from the bottom of the bowl, it may not fit in your stomach easily, but that pancake has got to be the best one of the whole batch.

It's the credits rolling.
It's a standing ovation
It's happily ever after. With butter and syrup.

And what could possibly be better than that.