James Earl Jones

I went to a presentation at school today given by James Earl Jones. The main theme of his speech was "Culture is everything that happens to a people." It was interesting and he talked rather scholarly about the ups and downs of interacting cultures.

After that there was a Q & A session where audience members asked questions. One of the things he mentioned was the first time he saw a motion picture. He was 3 years old in Mississippi and had never seen a movie or television. I assume that the incident he was talking about was outside, because he kept mentioning the sun going down, but I could very well be wrong. He said the movie was projected on a white bed-sheet. There was violence in the movie and it terrified him to the point that he hid under a bench. He talked about how he saw the changing manifestation of media and the arrival of movie culture to where he grew up in Mississippi.

He said a few funny things. In the course of speaking, he said the phrase, "the circle of life" and everyone laughed a little. He mentioned that he didn't know who did the breathing sounds for Darth Vader. Also, referring to growing up in rural Mississippi, he said they "didn't worry about keeping up with the Joneses next door because they were the Joneses."

He was a bit hard of hearing and occasionally got lost in his own thought, but no more than anyone else might. He mentioned that his favorite work was commercial work (he might have been joking) and he also enjoyed some of his less well known films (Netflix, here I come).

Roman Holiday

I'm almost finished with finalizing the paperwork for graduation (with my non-terminal Master of Arts in Communication Arts). I don't really think of myself as a master of communications. I'm not really sure what non-terminal means. I think I means I can be a student forever, which is just dandy. I'm not to keen on most of academia though. Too much bureaucracy and not enough focus on what's important.

Perks of graduating:

1) I'll never (probably) have to hear about these guys again:

a) Marshall McLuhan
b) Joseph Campbell
c) Harold A. Innis

2) Probably other things as well.

I took a long walk around the campus today because I had time to kill and the weather was very mild. It was very sentimental. I walked around every part of campus (using my car to go to some of the more remote areas and then walking more). My hair got all jacked up from the wind.

Open survey (respond by comments, email, AIM, smoke signal, telegraph or interpretive dance): What should I do after I graduate?

In other news, Ellen and I were this close ---> <---- to booking a week in Rome for new years. I probably wouldn't have time to get a new passport by then, so that put a damper on things (along with mom looking at me like I'm crazy. Crazy like a fox). C'mon, I don't have a job, which you might think is a problem, but its not. Without a job I have free time to do things like impulsive international travel. I would even be willing to take it all out of my own money. How often will I have the time and money to go to Rome for a week? Plus, it seemed extremely affordable to me (between 1K and 2K per person for flights and hotel for a week). What's wrong with that?

{that dog won't hunt, monsignor}

Food Box: Go Or No Go?

Eatery Review: Smokey Bones

On John's recomendation, I went to Smokey Bones with Ellen, Amber, Jeremy and my parents. I ate three different animals. It was exccellent. We had some spicy wings to start with, which were very good. For my main course, I had a combination plate of pulled pork and brisket, with mashed potatoes and cinnamon apples. It was all very good. I also tried some baby back ribs. I don't think I have ever eaten so much in a single sitting. Smokey Bones gets my highest recommendation and is well worth the reasonable travel distance and wait time (which was quoted to us as 1 hour but was much closer to 15 minutes).

I Hope You Like Corn Bread

I was helping Ellen & Co. make thanksgiving dinner last night, reaching for the odd pot or pan, getting this or that ingedient. I usually and mostly feel in the way when I'm in that kitchen. Then Ellen decided I should make corn bread/muffins. Panic. Well, it was okay in the beginning. I just followed the instructions on the package. That is, until I got to the corn bread mix. The instructions said, add the mix, so I went ahead and started pouring the whole bag of mix into the bowl. As more and more of it poured into the bowl, I thought to myeslf, something looks wrong. Somehow, this seems like too much corn mix. And right I was. I measured everything else, but for some reason, the instructions compelled me to pour out the entire bag of mix without measuring. I hope you like corn bread :-) So, we roughly figured out that there was enough mix for two batches (well, people other than me figured that out), so we doubled up the milk and eggs and threw in a lot more melted butter, and made three trays of corn muffins. I ate the first one and I'm still alive, so I guess they're not lethal. In fact, they're nice and buttery.

Today's Shopping List

Beer
Film
Snapple
etc,

Currently Admiring

The photography of Christopher Griffith.

Quicktime bizarreness

{click here} to see Jim Delapine's work in progress for our animation class. He did it in Flash and then output it as a Quicktime. The weird part is that when you pause it, the rotoscoped cats and the 3d(?) butterflies keep moving! I wish I could do that.

Food Box: Go or No Go?

Eatery Review: Boulder Creek Steakhouse

Ellen and I went to Boulder Creek Steakhouse, as we craved steak and were not properly dressed to go to one of those real fancy steak houses. We were served by "Hello My Name is Trainee" (it was literally his first day) but the service was pretty good. His supervisor did most of the serving but he seemed like a nice enough fellow. Someone at another table ordered some sizzling fajitia type of dish and the really loud fire alarm went off. Nobody seemed alarmed (what's that alarming sound?) and our trainee waiter responded to the alarm by just talking louder to us. Dinner and a show! Not only that, but I was sitting on a chair that could have used a few sugar packets under one of its legs: Dinner and a show and a ride! Weeeeeeeeeee. I started off with a Caeser Salad (it came with the meal). Then I had a 7 oz. Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon and melted bleu cheese with garlic mashed potatoes. Holy cholesterol, Batman! The bacon was kind of gross, so I removed it. The steak it self was so-so, about what you could expect from a chain restaurant. The mashed potatoes were pretty good. Ellen had pretty much the same to say about her stip-steak and sweet potato, so-so steak, good potato (po-ta-toes, precious taters). Overall, it was a compromise. It probably wasn't as expensive as a real steak place, nor was it as formal, and we didn't have to drive as far.

A Fine Time at Croxley's

Having been busy with writing papers for school and wasting time on the internet, I hadn't seen my friends since... ...lets just say its been a while. We went to Croxley's Ale House. It wasn't crowded, becuase it wasn't 10¢ wing night like I thought it was. Being budget conscious, I got a beer of the week, which is only $3 after 7 on Tuesdays. I ordered bangers and mash, despite having eaten a turkey and mustard sandwhich before I left the house. I just couldn't resist. Between the usual prank phone calls to people that didn't want to come out with us, Scott (the Republican one, not me or Freiberg) started telling us about the time he watched the movie Gigli staring Jennifer Lopez. John interupted him and reminded him that he had repeatedly told him not to tell anyone that he had watched that particular movie. But he did not listen to John's warning, and as the waitress came over to give Brian his water, Scott (R) belted out a line from the movie: "My Penis Sneezed". The waitress quickly put down the water and walked away. Of course, this was far more entertaining than the actual story he was trying to tell. Now he was faced with the decision of telling the waitress that he watched Gigli or let her believe he was exclaiming that something else had happened to him. Either way, it was hilarious. I guess you had to be there, but thats about the funniest thing I've seen or heard in a while. Like I said, I don't get out much.

Either the gardeners are here or the apocalypse is, I'm not sure which, but its really noisy. I think they are stealing all of our leaves. I guess there is a big black market for leaves. They have there own jargon like "I'll take two reams of maple." The leaf business runs this town. The cops don't interfere, they get their own cut of leaves on the side. In a city gone mad for leaves, only one man has the guts to fight for what is right. His name is Bill Booker. This is Leaf War.

{I don't get out much}

Sony F828 Discontinued

The Sony DSC-F828 is no long available new from B&H and is not to be found on Sony's site either, leading me to believe that my favorite digital camera has been discontinued :-(

I guess I'll have to settling for drooling for a Digital Rebel XT

"Ellen In Ektachrome"

I think I'm not that great at scanning slides.

Website Updates

I have finally started updating my website, sakraft.com.

It now has an about me section. It also has a new vector artwork section.

Hello, Mildred Thompson

I had a very strange and entertaining dream last night that seemed to come from nowhere in terms of source material. It was very vivid and definetly in color (see green wool dress). To start off with, it seemed like the 1960s and my vision or the world of the dream had the look of film stock of that vintage, but that's not the strange part.

I was a Peter-Sellers type of character in an unnamed sea-side town in some unnamed country. The country had just gone to war and a large cruiser docked at the town with the intention of drafting townsfolk into its crew. Much fanfare accompanied the arrival of The Commodore, commander of the ship and a muckety-muck higher up of the naval staff.

To avoid being drafted into the crew, my character dresses up as a woman and pretends to be Mildred Thompson. Much to my surprise, I get drafted anyway and I am issued with a green wool dress and a tan wool shirt. I spend much time running around the the naval base that is being built up around the cruiser. I get in to all kinds of some-like-it-hot trouble and at one point I run head long into a foreign dignitary carrying a gong. In his country they walk on the other side of the road, and I was too busy running up stairs in my uniform to notice he was coming down on the wrong side. Hence my head colliding with the gong. There seems to be a lot of rules about not being allowed to run (kind of like in elementary school when we could get in trouble for running inside). I was outside in almost the entire dream, including the gong incident. The town was on a hillside with the sea and cruiser at the foot of the hill. There was also some kind of petty officer or NCO who yelled at me to stop running.

A lot of the hilly parts seemed like the areas and gardens in and around Fort Mason in San Francisco.

There was accordian or concertina music playing the whole time.

After I hit my head on the gong, I woke up and couldn't fall back asleep, even though I wanted to.

Term of the day

Digital Intermediate

Hail Atlantis

{click here} for Donovan

{messing about}

Copy Goes Here

{click here} to see what has been eating into my working time today, a film by Coudal Partners.

Cell Phone Illustration

Veer

One of my most favoritist companies in the world, and I've never even bought anything from them.

In case you missed it

The Blue Ball Machine

Currently writing

a whole lot of nothing. Seriously, I don't know what this crap means. I understood the book (I think), but how am I supposed to apply it?

Philosophy in a New Key by Susanne K. Langer.

Luckily I only have to write two pages of that-which-I-don't-know-what-I'm-writting. In other news, I voted (after guess where I was supposed to go) and waited on a very long luch line at Taco Bell (which was totally worth it, yum yum).

Don't forget to

VOTE!

The Belafonte is for sale

Click here

When boredom strikes

weird blogs are created

Webcam capture of me in Washington

{click image for larger version}

I have the overwhelming urge to play with construction paper and glue.

{must... finish... paper...}

What think you of this?

{sucks, right?}

A whole day of studying shot to hell

Awesome!

Currently reading

a history lesson of the economics and politics of print journalism in the first half of the nineteenth century, which I shall not give the formal title of for fear that you will seek more information and fall into its pit of facts, summations and thinly drawn (if at all) conclusions.

But I will say this:

"The universities must concern themselves with the living rather than with the dead." Harold A. Innis, b.1894, d.1952

{taken out of context}

My latest triumph of web design

"Jazz Hands Amongst the Pumpkins"

"The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership," said Majority Leader Bill Frist.

...

...

Hooray!!!!!!