Learning Maya 7.0 is like learning how to sail a boat, drive a car and fly an airplane at the same time. All those activities are fun, once you figure out what all the controls are for. I find the UI very interesting. Very clean and consistent but they layered on the complexity which allows for power. Ease of use is solved by teachers teaching you how to use it. That's practically the only way to really figure out how to use it well.

Our second baby refuses to come out. We have a C-section scheduled for this Monday avoiding Valentine's Day by one day. I'm guessing it's a girl.

I've been working out at the gym regularly and am finally feeling the difference in the weights and cardio. But I still have a little pain in the throat - considering seeing the doctor once again. It feels like my tonsils but I can't be sure. It hurts when I move my tongue.

Pimp machine for sale...
My Mom sent me a package months ago. Inside it was her mink coat, complete with shawl thingy and a hat. She and my Dad recently retired to Irvine, CA; so she asked me to sell it for her online. My wife tried it on and she looked like a pimp. Our babysitter tried it on and she looked like a pimp. I refuse to put it on. But if there's anyone out there interested in looking like a pimp, let me know. I have a pimp machine for sale.

Bling.
Bling.

I have a long list of shows that I've tivo-ed (technically dvr-ed) but haven't watched. I don't have the nerve to erase them but I dont' watch them either. I will end up erasing a show here and there if I'm running low on hard drive space.

The one show I regularly record and actually watch is PTI: Pardon the Interruption with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon. Basically it's two idiots who argue about sports for a minute and a half before moving onto another sports topic. They berate and they fight and they mock one another's intelligence and manhood when it comes to their opinion on trivial sports trivia.

It's just like hanging out with my friends.

The wife can't stand the show when it's on. Even if she's not watching the show the constant yapping gets on her nerves. "How can they even understand what each other's saying with all the yelling," she asked.

It's exactly like hanging out with my friends

Character actors. They can have the most fun because they are more able to play a variety of roles rather than be pegged as a particular type like many celebrity actors. Though the character actor can be as pigeon-holed as any, the good ones, like Kevin Spacey and Philip Seymour Hoffman have gone on to do a wide variety of roles and even made the leap from supporting actor to main protagonist.

There are some character actors who have done so many television and film roles that they always look a little bit familiar but you just can't quite remember where you saw them last. One of my favorites is Bruce McGill .

I first saw this guy in a Miami Vice episode, the one where Phil Collin's "In the Air Tonight" is playing as a soundtrack as his character takes a sledghammer to a wall, revealing a skeleton hidden inside. Great epsiode, just before the series jumped the shark. He had a memorable scene in the movie "The Insider" as the lawyer who rips the cigarette laywers a new one with the line, "Wipe that smile off your face!!!" And on and on... He's awesome.

There are such things called Food Movies. Obvious examples are:

Eat Drink Man Woman,

Like Water for Chocolate  and

the Oscar Award-winning (Best Foreign Film) Babette's Feast .


These movies aren't necessarily about food, but tend to revolve around food and the cooking of food and all the nice metaphor and ethnic symbolism that spills forth in a cheesy "oh that's so meaningful" way.  They make good date movies.


I kind of like food movies.  The past few years as I've played househusband here in chez Chung I've found that I have a knack for cooking.  Nothing too fancy.  I keep it simple a la Naked Chef . I have a gas grill, it makes things quick and easy.  This is a long way of getting around to recommending my favorite food movie called...


Big Night

Written and directed by Stanley Tucci and starring one of my favorite character actors, Tony Shalhoub , now famous for playing Adrien Monk  on TNT, not a half bad network.

Sometimes I read "spoilers" in media websites where a movie script or tv show plotpoint is leaked out before it airs. There are plenty of warnings for spoilers for those who don't want the fresh experience ruined for themselves. While I don't seek out the spoilers I don't avoid them either. For example I pretty much know what happens in XMen 3 and I'm seriously debating whether to go watch it in the theatres because it sounds pretty crappy. But I don't know any juicy tidbits on the new Superman movie other than the general synopsis and I'll likely keep myself 'fresh' for that film which I'm looking forward to very much.

But every once in a while I like to go into a movie "blind". This is easier to do with DVD rentals, especially with older black and white movies. One such movie that I rented without any idea of what it was about (this was many years ago) was the 1962 original "The Manchurian Candidate". That experienced rocked. If you haven't seen or heard of the Denzel Washington remake then I highly recommend you rent the 1962 original with Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra and plopt it in. Don't read the boxcover or anything. It's a trip. And yes, Frank can act.

I reviewed James Frey's book, A Million Little Pieces, and commented on the brouhaha surrounding the falsifications in his book. I thought it wasn't a big deal since he seemed to be fibbing on areas I thought were fairly minor.

I did jibe that at least he wasn't fibbing on the root canal with no painkillers ...

Uh, well, perhaps he was, as he now is fessing up on a recent appearance on Oprah.

Dude, Oprah is seriously pissed off at you.

Saw Syriana on Tuesday night. There were tons of people at the Metreon theatre in SF and it surprised me. Then we ran into our friends, Seth and Mia, at the same movie and they told us that the New York Times was giving out $5 tix for their subscribers for this theatre only.

Syriana was very good. Stephen Gaghan the writer and director also wrote the script for Traffic which Stephen Soderbergh directed and I really liked that film, so I had high expectations.

I had heard that you really have to pay attention to what is going on because it's difficult to discern relationships and backgrounds. This was true but I liked it that way because it kept me very focused and tuned to what was happening. For what was mostly a talking heads movie it was shot quite beautifully.

Syriana - ***1/2 out of possible *****

(Giving it the stars reminds me that the Netflix stars system sucks. You cannot grade a movie by the half-star. There are SO many films I'd give a 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 stars.)

Disney buys Pixar for a buttload of money and Steve Jobs is sitting pretty.

While I’m definitely not a fan of Disney over the years, one has to remember that the Eisner era is over and the Iger one has begun and so far Iger has made some bold moves with ABC content on Itunes and now buying Pixar. Buena Vista is a powerfully dominant distributor. I have to say it makes sense for both companies here.

What will be interesting to see is how the Pixar culture remains intact. The fact that Catmull and Lasseter have top jobs at Disney creative now bodes well that things will not only stay the same in Emeryville but also progress in socal as well…?

The Story I Made Up For Milo...

Poopoo the Choochoo and the Broken Down Train

One day, Poopoo the Choochoo was chugging down the track when he saw a broken down train on the next track. He stopped and asked, "Hello, is there anything wrong?"

The broken down train said, "Yes, my wheels won't turn and I have to be mended at the works."

"No problem," Poopoo said, "I can hitch you to my train and take you to the works."

"But what about my passengers?" said the broken down train, "they have to be taken to the next station."

"I can call my friend, Boogaga the Car," replied Poopoo, "and he can take your passengers to the next station."

"That would be great, thanks," said the broken down train.

"My name is Poopoo the Choochoo," said Poopoo the Choochoo, "what's your name?"

The broken down train replied, "My name is Bop. Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you."

Poopoo the Choochoo then called his friend Boogaga the Car on his radio and Boogaga came and picked up Bop's passengers and took them to the next station. Then Bop was hitched to Poopoo the Choochoo's train and Poopoo took him to the works to be mended.

And they lived happily ever after.

The End

Fall Semester Summary
My first semester in the MFA for 3D Animation program at the Academy of Art program was OK

Pros:
- I found it more fulfilling than I thought I would
- I'm pretty good at it
- I'm enjoying it

Cons
- the curriculum politics of grad school is to be expected but still sucks
- classmates on the whole are oddly not very serious about the work
- quality of the faculty is decidedly mixed

Classes I took:
Aesthetics in the Renaissance
It's both an Art History and Philosophy class. The first hour the philosophy professor teaches you about the thinking of the time. The second hour the art history professor teaches you the art of the time. You can see the relationships and influences back and forth. I was pretty resistant to taking this class since it wouldn't do anything for my portfolio but it was definitely worthwhile.

Principles and Pipelines
This was basically Animation 101 and we were working in 2D for the whole semester to get the basics down which was fine with me. The teacher had a lot of good experience (used to work for Pixar for a while) and gave excellent feedback on whatever you brought to show. But he was terrible at managing the class and for lectures he just showed us DVD extras which I found kind of lame. The final project was a 15 second rough pencil test animation. We started by pitching an idea, presenting it in storyboards then doing the animation scene by scene, all the while getting feedback. I was pretty happy with my final project which turned out to be 63 seconds and far too big to post on a website.

Figure Studio
Your basic figure drawing class in charcoal pencil. I have had a lot of experience in figure drawing but I really got a lot out of this class. The professor was excellent and pushed everyone very hard. During class I progressed a lot and did well. But I really floundered on the homework assignments which he expected us to spend a lot of time on.

Spring Semester Courses (starting Jan 30):
- Maya 1
- Preproduction
- History and Techniques of Animation

A Million Little Smoking Guns

I actually finished a book. Read it from start to finish. All by myself. It was A Million Little Pieces by James Frey and it had a sticker on it. The sticker read "Oprah's Book Club". This means the author made bank.

It was a good book. I recommend it to anyone who has ever gotten drunk, smoked pot, smoked crack, heroin or crystal meth. Interestingly just as I finished this book there was an expose on the author from The Smoking Gun about how he may have fabricated some parts of this autobiographically inspired book. I flipped through the article briefly and wasn't very disturbed with the allegations. Even if the parts of the book that The Smoking Gun has said are untrue really are untrue, it doesn't change my overall impression of the book or of the author. The sections in question are relatively minor to the story as a whole. Now, if the author really DIDN'T have a double cavity/cap and root canal with absolutely no anesthesia (because he's in rehab) and if the author never attended a rehab clinic at all then yeah, I could see the big deal.

Movies I want to see:
Syriana
Munich
Match Point

Books I've Started but never finished (not b/c they sucked but b/c i suck):
From Beirut to Jerusalem
A Brief History of Time
Middlesex
The Known World

New book I'm about to start:
A Million Little Pieces

Latest Fiasco:
dealing with my fucked up epson scanner not working goddamn hightechnology

Upcoming Schedule Convergence:
spring semester begins january 30
2nd child due february 8

A man in a hot air balloon realized that he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted

"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The woman below replied, "You're in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 50 and 51 degrees north latitude and between 114 and 115 degrees west longitude.

"You must be an engineer," said the balloonist.

"I am," replied the woman. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "Everything you told me is technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your information. The fact is, I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip."

The woman below responded, "You must be in management."

"I am," replied the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," said the woman, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You have risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is, you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, you've managed to make it my fault."

Earlier I wrote about how the video ipod is the harbinger of media consumption to come. Particulary for television content where screen size isn't as crucial as most people think it is, especially when measured against the portability factor.

Itunes Music Store has been steadily adding more and more television shows to their video category and they just recently listed the new Battlestar Galactica series. I mentioned in another blog entry about how much of a geekfanboy I am of this show.

The season 2 dvd set for BG is available on Dec 20 for $34.99 on Amazon.
It's available on Itunes for $19.90 right now.

The dvd set comes with the extras.
The commentaries is available for free as a podcast already.

The disks are nice to own, add to my collection.
I'll probably only watch the shows once so why not buy the download.

Another interesting bit to this is I don't own a video upod but can watch the stuff on Itunes via Quicktime. Itunes is a trojan horse. Apple markets the heck out of the variety of ipods but it's the iTunes app that they want on as many machines as possible, it's the gateway for all their media consumption, enabling non-ipodders to also consume content. The iTunes app is key; it's no secret if you think about it for more than a second but it's worth mentioning.

Fred: "I just farted and burped at the same time."

Merritt: "Great, honey, that's just great. You should put that in your blog. Everybody should know about it."

Fred [long pause]: "That's a great idea! 'Fred - I just farted and burped at the same time. Merritt - great honey that's just great you should put that in your blog, everybody should know about it.' "

Merritt [sighs]: "You're such an asshole."

Last week I was very sick. Had a bad case of diarrhea that lasted several days. Did not urinate for a long while. When you're not urinating, it means you're dehydrated, when you're dehydrated things can deteriorate rapidly. Went to the doctor's office just as things started to get slightly better (slowed down on the hourly diarrhea, actually urinated once) but just to be safe the doctor had me take home a stool sample kit to be dropped off at a lab at my earliest convenience. Giving a man with diarrhea a stool sample kit - hmmm. (How many times can i mention diarrhead in one blog?)

I'm better now. Not completely out of the woods yet, but much much improved. I won't bore you with any more details on my bowel movement but let's just say this - impressive. How about another word, just one more - purged.

During my whole hiatus from the land of the living I ended up weaning myself off of coffee. I was never much of a coffee drinker even when I worked at fancy schmancy high tech companies that offered latte's for free. But since my wife got pregnant with our first son, for some reason I got into that morning cup o' coffee and the occassional vanilla latte. Now that I'm on the caffeine-free wagon, I plan on staying on until I get my butt back in the gym on a regular basis.

Why I think Hollywood should continue to worry about slumping box office numbers and why the video ipod is the harbinger of consumption to come:

1. Going to see a movie in the movie theatre is a very sucky experience. You have to deal with driving, parking, long lines, people talking, cell phones ringing. It's hella expensive and time-consuming. The only movies I will go to the theatre to watch are those which MUST be experienced in the theatre like the upcoming King Kong.

2. DVR/Tivo and Podcast's popularity have signaled a new way of watching media. Tape it then watch it at my own leisure, or tape it and take it to go with me.

3. Small images like thumbnails and icons read better than you think - small screensize and resolution isn't necessarily a big barrier to entry.

4. An audience is more interested in what happened, what were the sequence of events, than how well they were able to see it on a high res screen. If they can watch the sports highlights with audio, or the latest episode of Desperate Housewives with audio, and experience where the story went - that is the core of what they're buying and worth the download time and price.

5. If you could take your DVR/Tivo list of shows and watch them on the road, would you pay for that? If you could take all the dvd's you haven't watched yet on the road, in your hand, would you pay for that?

I would.

Tomorrow I get to spend an entire day in traffic school for a speeding ticket I got in Orange County, CA this past summer.

Oh. Joy.

On a far more interesting note, when I image-googled "Traffic School" the first image came from a florida traffic school website, the masthead of which is above.

I love florida traffic school websites.

One of my brothers is a doctor. After 4 years of medical school, 3 years of residency, a year for a Masters in Public Health and now doing AIDS research for his specialty in Infectious Diseases - I ask him what's the most important thing you've learned?

He thought for a second and replied, "Wash your hands."

I thought this was a little too simple of an answer. But whenever I meet another doctor in a social setting and I tell this story they all nod their hands and repeat, "Yeah, wash your hands."

--

I also had this writing teacher in undergrad who was a bit of a prick who once started the class with this statement,

"Do you want to know what the secret to a long and happy life is? Flossing."

The guy sitting next to me nodded his head solemnly. Apparently they both had had dental issues.
Sunday, Oct 23, 2005 - 05:05pm (PDT) Edit | Delete | 0 Comments | Permanent Link