Geek Alert: Development of a Doodle

This week while on a freelance job at McCann Erickson, I had some down time while I waited for my client to give me some ideas to illustrate. Lately I've been doing all my jobs completely digital on my new Cintiq monitor, (no paper -I'm a "green" storyboard artist!) which allows me to paint in Photoshop.

As I was listening to the "Return of the Jedi" soundtrack , I began to get my Geek on. I started out wondering if I could doodle a new stormtrooper idea and just kept going with it.

I think it turned out pretty cool:

Dante's Inferno is in Van Nuys.

I went to a Chuck-E-Cheez once in South Florida, I think over 20 years ago. As far as I can recall, it was a violent assault on all the senses which I learned never to return to. Hundreds of little kids on dangerous sugar highs running and screaming at levels that almost drown out the staccato cries of the video games.

My brain cells have stopped regenerating. Like Orpheus looking back to get a glimpse of Hell, I agreed to accompany my friends and their kids to Chuck- E-Cheez last week.

Nothing has changed. Think twice before changing your dollar for video game tokens. If you don't obtain the crazed temerity of a 7-year old on sucrose , then you'll never get close to playing even a round of skee-ball.

Snake Eyes and light starch, please.

Today I went to pick up my dry cleaning (several suits I brought from the east coast which lay balled-up in a pile on my closet floor since July- no weddings or funerals this year.)

The middle-aged, bespectacled Korean proprietor took my order stubs and turned to search for the matching receipts. He murmured something and gestured to the far side of the room.

"Oh dah dies."

"Huh?", I replied

I looked over to other side of the room, to an empty counter and figured he was talking to himself.

He looked back over his shoulder to me, this time making sure that dense white kid heard him as he gestured to the far side of the room.

"Oh dah dies, peas."

Only wishing to placate him, I began to slowly slide down the counter to the far side of the room, but unsure why.
When I got to the end I spotted a small craps table:


"Oooh! Roll the dice" I exclaimed.

I picked up the dice and tossed them, not knowing what was a good roll or a bad roll. I'm not a gambler at all.

Once I went to Atlantic City for my friend Jeff''s bachelor party. It was basically me and a bunch of lawyers. I brought $100 to lose for a weekend of..err, fun. After the first hour at a roulette wheel, I was down $60 , so I walked away and never gambled the rest of the weekend. Meanwhile the high-rolling barristers were losing and winning $500 at a time.

A year later when I was in Cambodia shooting "Apsara", I took some of my crew to the Naga , a floating 24-hour casino on a ship docked off Phnom Penh's harbor. I started at the roulette wheel again and suddenly began winning $10 bets. The chain-smoking Chinese gamblers around me sensed a lucky streak and began to place their bets next to my chips. Unfortunately for them, once I reached $70, I figured in the karmic scheme of things I was ahead $10, so I walked away.
(of course one could argue I was already gambling heavily with the tens of thousands in personal savings which I was sinking into my film).

Back at the dry cleaners, the dice landed

"What you get?", he asked.

"Eleven?" I offered. It felt good but I had no idea.

"Ah, very good discount"

"Discount?" I countered, before discovering this sign on the wall next to the table :
Twenty percent off.
Not bad.
Somebody should let the Chinese chain-smoking gamblers where the real action in town is.

Stuff White People Like

I came across a great blog today: Stuff White People Like . If you're white or just a really assimilated immigrant as many of my friends are you'll first laugh at this list, then it'll die down to a weak chuckle as you realize how deadly accurate it is, then you'll laugh again because the odds are that out of the 85 or so entries, chances are you only share less than half. So it's okay. You're not so easily typecast. Or at least you'll tell yourself that.

So far I'm only admitting to entry numbers 84, 83, 71, 70, 69, 58, 53, 47, 35, 24, 25, 19, 7, 52, 55, and 46. The rest I'm in denial about.

Weekly Work of Art

My Dad will dig this artist. Although a CPA by trade, my father has been studying paper folding/cutting/sculpting for about 30 years now. Peter Callesen, a Danish artist, is a master at this. His site is www.petercallesen.com

Some designers at The Refinery, a print design house servicing the movie and tv industry where I've been freelancing, brought this guy to my attention. You can usually bet there's something cool on the web when all the designers are gathered around one monitor, procrastinating and remarking in hushed tones.

Oscar goes home with the Former Stripper

I just liked this photo Screenwriter Diablo Cody posted on her blog, the morning after winning Best Original Screenplay for "Juno".

Drinks on the House

I must have been building my karmic bank account lately because I keep getting free drinks that I should have paid for. For the past week I've been given three:

* Tonight at Coffee Bean (the west coast's Starbucks competitor) I pulled up at 9:10 to get an Ice Blended. A guy sweeping up for the night spotted me and yelled out "We closed at nine." But seeing the disappointment in my face, a broken man sitting in his little dented gray VW, he relented and yelled out "What do you want?" I said an Ice Blended and he said he could do that. So I parked and followed him inside. Just as he was about to start though I realized I had left my money at home and cried out "Wait, wait, wait!" He said he was already in motion and not to worry about it. One free Ice Blended.

* Last night I was seeing a friend DJ at a small club and went out back to an outside bar and asked if they take credit card for a vodka tonic. The bartender said only cash but I realized I didn't have enough. He asked how much I had. In my wallet there was two dollars. "That's fine" he said and poured my drink.

* A few days earlier I ordered a meal at a KFC drive-through. When I got to the window to pay, I discovered they didn't take any credit or debit cards. So I said I needed to cancel my order. The guy shrugged and handed over my drink anyway, saying " Just keep the drink."

I have been trying to commit random acts of kindness to people in the past few weeks, so although my bank account may be low, my karmic account seems to be in good shape. Maybe I should step up my random acts of kindness to Pre-Meditated to see what can really happen.

Ling-Ling Sets Me Straight

For the past week I've been house/cat sitting for my friends Chris and Khue in Eagle Rock. Generally I'm allergic to cats, but every once in a while I seem to get along with one like Ling-Ling. Low dander levels or something I'm told.

Anyway, Ling-Ling and I have had a pretty good relationship this week except for one habit she has that drove me absolutely nuts.

Being somewhat nocturnal the Double L has a nightly penchant for leaping up to the top of a wardrobe that stands at the foot of the bed. She'll then stare down at me like some freaky gargoyle before launching herself into the air four feet above the bed.

This is all cute except that she only pulls these feline acrobatics just after I managed to fall into a nice deep sleep. The next thing I know I'm ripped from my slumber, bolting upright with my heart beating fast because it felt like someone just threw a sandbag into bed next to me.
I usually swear at Ling-Ling and push her out of bed, though she never seems to carry an air of remorse.

After a couple nightly performances of this, I had enough. I banned Ling-Ling from the bedroom, physically chasing her out the other night and closing the door. What followed was Ling-Ling crying and pawing at the door for ten minutes. I finally fell asleep to the dubious sounds of Ling-Ling amusing herself in the living room, doing Lord knows what.

When I woke up the next morning I found this as I opened the bedroom door:

I'm not really sure whether to be amused or freaked out at Ling-Ling's offerings. But she seemed to be delivering a message in the form of Khue's padded insoles. "Tread lightly in my house"?
Who knows.

ukulele - I'd Do Anything (from Oliver!)

Music Video of the Year. (thanks to Monika). The jaded, cosmopolitan artist in me smirked at this guy first, but then I got off my high horse and realized he's probably much happier in his modest world of ukulelee-ing (?) that he's most likely laughing at me. Rock on, my man.

(Postdate: Looked up his YouTube profile. He teaches English in Japan and likes Harry Potter and old TV theme songs. Mad props to him for featuring an interview clip of Aung San Suu Kyi on his profile.)

Valentine's Day

V-Day has me sick in bed, not sick in Love. Some friends had invited me tonight to..ahem... a singles event. I'm too under the weather as it happens. But in between wiping my nose I came across this photo of my cousin's boy which made me smile.

An O'Neill and a McGreal at X-mas