D

five hundred posts.

dang.

many publications feel lucky if they reach their one hundredth mark. and that is a notable achievement. i remember editing our centenary post several years ago, feeling the excitement of having lasted six months. we posted more frequently in those early days, when our head writer was more dedicated to the craft. personally, i think he's gotten better over the years, learning the art of brevity (somewhat), although i wish he would respect deadlines as well. still, that's the publishing business, i suppose. and he's just so darn good.

it's been an honor to work as the editor for sheep go to heaven. i try to read several other blogs myself and am often very impressed at the passion, insight, and w;t exhibited in their writings. and yet i'm always happy to "come home", so to speak, and to look at the work we have produced here. looking over the nearly five years' worth of writing, a lot has happened. growth, changes, struggles, tears, frustrations, elations, and general perplexity is there in abundance. i took some time and went through to choose some of my favorites, and also asked our main writer to look the site over and choose his as well. it's quite a journey:

since i've started this blog, i've been to japan, dated and broken up with a girl or two, met sean astin, done a triathlon, shot my first "feature" film in california in a week, seen "the nightmare before Christmas" in 3-D three or four times, watched an entire season of 24 in one day, watched my bathroom flood, ridden in a tiny, tiny airplane, shot my first real movie, saw my sister and best friend get married on the same weekend, had a garden mysteriously planted in my backyard, firsted a feature on film, that refrigerator incident…., worked on high school musical 2 and 3 and several other disney channel movies, attempted to read the old testament, won tickets to see they might be giants, fell in love with tally hall, shot a feature in hawaii where i was attacked by my sleepwalking camera assistant, mourned the passing of a prophet, worked as a film buyer at the sundance festival, dreamt about britney spears, expounded on the glories of the criterion collection, made what i believe to be the right choice at times when it seemed like a long shot and witnessed blessings come from that, surprisingly enjoyed a boy II men concert, went to texas for a wedding, bought a vacuum, donned a pretty great jack skelington costume, shot a movie in a mine, thought about the sabbath, held several muppets and egg nog parties, had my high school reunion my way, talked about bleach and my mission, taken a cold shower, watched my computer die, held movie night, updated my demo reel, talked about easter, bought a vest, summed up several movies in one line, went back to school, decided maine was my new second favorite state, remembered that time my date threw up at the harry potter, learned life lessons from a carnival game at lagoon, made a scorpion teapot, participated in the world's largest game of capture the flag, got signed up for facebook, was put up for auction, arranged for tally hall to play at an elementary school, taught why we should be like darth vader, found the best white elephant gift ever, celebrated tabernash, saw my brother turn 25, started the harry potter book club, drove around important people at the sundance festival, had a wall-e birthday cake, was rejected then accepted to graduate school, went to belgium, had one last apple beer party, moved to texas, thought about that, and managed to keep myself sane during these past four and a half years.

as for me, here are my picks for some highlights as the editor here:

wouldn't it be nice?

reason #256 why i love my sister

i'm a million different people from one day to the next

philosophy

planet telex at the video store

personal favorites

meow

that's me in the corner….

wannabe

my life in a tiny box

fond of stratagem or a bit of a coward

le collection fabuleuse de jeff

recommended reading

and it came to pass

jaime's tag: six lesser-known things about me

Christmas card rejects

jen's tag: five things

we close our eyes

dating

disturbia

i am the otter

these are all posts that i feel, while not the most popular or creative, sum up the spirit and soul of who we are at sheep go to heaven, or at least tell you a little more about our team.

to all of our readers out there, thank for your support and encouragement over these years. we sincerely appreciate your comments and insights and awesomeness.

here's to the next 500.

lastly, are the latest text results:

shaun: 929

jaime: 647

jess: 345

kristin: 179

joel: 135

it just works

i'm in three classes: an intro to 3-D animation class, in which i am currently drowning; a class i can only describe as an experimental film class (and the one i am actually doing strong in), and a computer programming for dummies class. i have posts planned for the projects from those first two classes, just not the time to actually author them. but i wanted to share a little from the programming class.

i couldn't write a line of code to save my life. i tried to learn a little this winter at uvu but decided to take a genuine F in favor of snowboarding and don't regret it for a moment. (editor's note: if any future employers are reading this as part of building a character dossier on the author, the actual story is that i was offered work on two movies, back to back, during that time, but he prefers the wild romanticism of the snowboarding story) our first assignment in the programming for dummies class was to install linux on our computers.

in the world of computers, there are two armies: macs (the autobots) and windows/pcs (the decepticons). i have a mac at home that i do most of my work and living on and, last Christmas, got a cute little lappy with windows 7 that cost lest that my cell phone. there is a third operating system, that weird hippy grassroots commune called linux (the quintessons, for those of you following the analogy). linux is what the programmer subculture enjoys, because you can futz with it all you like, amongst other reasons. and so we were told to install it on our machines for class, our teacher providing several safe and stable ways in which to do so.

thinking i was a little more awesome, i tried to circumvent these methods and do it in a "simpler" way that would allow me to partition my computer's hard drive and run both windows 7 and ubuntu, the most widely supported incarnation of linux. partitioning a hard drive is akin to doing brain surgery on your machine and my efforts left my little lappy lobotomized, unable to do anything more than turn on and go it's most uber-basic functions, a warning screen telling me it has "issues."

this went from a tragedy (my cute little lappy!) to an annoyance, thanks to our t.a. who has been working to help me get linux installed on there. over the past month, i have been doing a ridiculously complicated work flow to try and get different variants of ubuntu running on my lappy (which i call eve, since it looks like wall-e's girlfriend). hours and afternoons have been used up waiting for long downloads, having to ask faculty for access on a computer or borrowing some piece of hardware. this wasn't a problem until our first assignment for my class was due last week. i didn't have a working computer to do the assignment. (i'd note not having a computer to do the practice assignments, either, but i probably wouldn't have had time do to those anyway).

staring at my behemoth schedule last week (the week where i didn't go to sleep one night), feeling extremely frustrated by lappy that was giving me nothing but trouble and feeling kind of bad for being careless and removing windows 7 from it (which i actually really liked) like some lacuna treatment gone haywire, i thought of this old commercial:

and i remembered, mac's are unix-based and i can program on my mac.

i went home, downloaded the software, and started work on my assignment.

(never mind that the software took three hours to download, that it was a far more advanced package than i needed and was kind of confusing, that i spent ten hours on the assignment, or that i only successfully wrote one of the three programs; that ruins the mac image that i am working to perpetuate here).

i am writing this post today because, five weeks after the semester has started, i finally got a working version of linux on my lappy. eve is back up, running kubuntu, and i was thrilled, because something finally went right for me this week... ; )

now if i can just get that customer service guy in india (signing his emails "taylor") to let me get my copy of windows 7 home back, i'll be set.

editor's note: our next post, "D", is already planned out. however, because of the demands of the schoolwork (the consequences of our head writer thinking he can just hop on a plane anytime he wants, despite being fully entrenched in graduate school) and the scope of the post, it may be a while. if you're bored, we suggest going back and rereading some of your favorite posts from all of us here at sheep go to heaven.

sunday is a special day

in high school, i worked at sunmart, the local grocery store. i worked there because all of my friends worked there. every week we would give any time off requests we had to darby, who was in charge of making the schedules. and every week i would ask for sundays off.

once or twice i would forget to submit my request to have sunday off and it seemed that i would inevitably be working that day. i don't know if darby didn't catch on that i didn't like working sundays or if he was just glad to have a someone to schedule that day so someone could have it off, but whatever the reason, i occasionally worked a sunday.

one day i came in after church and was talking with the wife beater. i don't remember his real name, but that's what a couple of girls who hung out with us called him, because, as they superficially judged him, he looked like some guy who would beat his wife: he had shaggy hair and drove an old brown car from the seventies. frankly, i think he looked kind of like ashton kutcher from "that seventies show", but whatever. he was a few grades below me in school and was actually a really nice guy. i liked him.

anyway, i came in and was talking with the wife beater (i think his name may have been jesse). not wanting to sound all churchy but still not happy with having to work on the sabbath, i commented to him that, "i don't know why, but i just feel weird working today."

with matter-of-factness, the wife beater replied, "i think that's because sunday is a sacred day and we're supposed to keep it holy."

"um, yeah, me, too."

well said.

glamour shots

seizing the moment for some good portraits during shooting for a class project. (more on that when it's finished...)

so, which one should i use for my new facebook profile?

the greater good

i'm glad i'm here.

i'll start off with that.

there are times when i imagine what it would be like if i were back in provo, still. and what? assisting on an occasional movie and just hanging around, being awesome, mostly.

been there, done that.

life here isn't as elysian as it was behind the red door. there, i had gotten to the point where everything was in its place for the most part: i was working enough to pay my bills and store a little in the bank, liked my ward and was usually teaching sunday school, played mario kart with my brother on sundays, saw my sister and nephews regularly, and had some seriously dang friends to watch movies, go shoot junk, or hang out at ihop.

in a way, it was kind of like playing a dragon warrior game, where i had gone through every castle and dungeon, collected every treasure chest and completed every side quest. i could wander around some, but there wasn't much left to do but go fight the final boss and finish the game. (not that i'm saying my life in provo was perfect or that i had all the answers, please don't misunderstand)

on the drive down to texas, tim reminded me of something that i said at my birthday party: i have the greatest group of friends in the world and i wouldn't trade [them] for anything. ...except that i am.

at times, that's echoed around in my mind.

i've told myself that i didn't want to be someone who sacrifices family and friends for career pursuits; and that's not my nature. i'm not that kind of a person.

so what was i doing leaving behind a circle of friends whom i valued more than just about anything else in the world?

the answers aren't too difficult, but i've still had to remind myself at moments just the same.

first, the immediacy of friendship can be transitory. in other words, especially in singlehoodnesship, our lives in the midst of change and flux. people get married or move away or whatnot. in the four years of movie night, the roster turned over completely at least three times (with the exception of mark).

in that respect, i'm glad that i was able to leave on such a high note, friendshiply speaking.

second, that circle of friends, though seriously dang, is not my ultimate goal. i want a family, and i want to be able to provide for said imaginary family. as a camera assistant, i wasn't quite seeing that. and i've essentially spent six years looking in to that and did not find what i was looking for.

so, i've given up something really wonderful in the hopes of laying a foundation for something even greater still.

and that means starting over. when you finish dragon warrior 2, you've got all the armor and the spells so that nothing can really stop you. but when you pop in dragon warrior 3, at the start it's just you with a wooden sword and a shirt.

such is my state now.

it takes patience to start anew. i make friends for life, but that takes time. another pearl of wisdom tossed out by tim on our cross-country drive is that you make friends in three stages:

1. location. people who live by you or who are in your classes; i've seen you before, let's do something.

2. interests. other nerds who like computer animation or black and white foreign films or the restored gospel. we have something in common; cool, let's hang out.

3. people you actually like. often distilled from groups 1 & 2, though not exclusively nor automatically. if you're reading this, you might be a three.

you can't force it. it takes time. and it's hard to start over. but you have to start somewhere. even in the blessed 223rd, i didn't make friends on sunday so much as during the other activities, most notably f.h.e. group 2. at this point, i haven't had the opportunity to go to many ward activities down here, but this week it's looking like i'll be able to go to f.h.e., institute, and the temple trip on friday (still getting used to having the closest temple be 90 minutes away).

i'm a people person. the usual connotation i carry with that term is the guy at the party who's going around and meeting everyone, so that by the end of the night he can name all of their names and has likely sold them an apex alarm system or two.

that's not me.

rather, people make the difference for me. while our trips to moab, lagoon, or the festival of colors are all awesome, i equally cherish the memories i have of a post-movie night ihop run, of a good rock band song, or a trip to the i.c. nothing particularly extravagant in the description, but being with the friends i really like makes it seriously dang awesome.

i don't know where life will take me, or even what life will be like here.

but here is where i'm supposed to be now. and i'm glad i'm here.

and i will always love and hold my friends in utah.

d&c 130:2

mark, i await your comment.

be still

my prayers are kind of like this these days...

final texts of the utah era

i didn't have time to finish the post about school that i started earlier this evening, so i will put up the numbers. personally, i'm always interested in seeing how they change with the ebb and flow of life.

1. kristin 525
2. jaime 447 (nice to see you back in competition)
3. shaun 429
4. jess 268
5. mark 155

and in 11th place, joel, with 39.

day 1

i'll write more later, but i just want to say that a) i really enjoyed my classes and b) i won't be wearing vests around here until it cools down. but i wanted to look nice for the first day of school.

seriously so blessed

it was pretty cool that i was able to celebrate my birthday (twice) before i left provo (even though i did kind of plan it that way). the 104 was a blast and the modern-era party was packed and rocking with friends and great gifts. but my very last night in town was perhaps the most special.

i've started paying attention in the past few years and noticed that things generally work out even when things look daunting (note to self: go back and read this line when you're finished writing this post), yet i woke up thursday morning feeling overwhelmed. i used wednesday to go to the logan temple and while i did not regret it, that left a lot of work to be crammed in to thursday. a lot. packing, loading, and cleaning.

why, oh why, did i worry? (jeff, go back and read this and take your own advice) not only did we get everything done by 10:00, but it was perhaps more special than my birthday parties. i had sent out a facebook invite inviting anyone who had offered to help me move to come, and while some people did stop by for a bit as they were able, there was a core group who all came and worked until it was finished. until the last spoon was packed (for the record, i still haven't found said box and had to eat my cereal this morning with a giant serving spoon gratefully discovered in a random box), the last box packed onto the truck (after years of helping so many other friends move, it's very surreal to be inside a uhaul and recognize all of the stuff as your own), and the last floorboard scrubbed.

at 9:23 that night i was looking around my house and saw the people i knew would be there; my closest and best friends. to look around and see people on their hands and knees or standing on their tip toes to wash and scrub, laughing and joking, then coming to me and enthusiastically asking what else they could do meant more to me than i can say.

thank you, everyone, who was with me that evening. literally, i could not have done it without you, and conversely, i am so happy that we were able to do it all together. as i'm unpacking the boxes around me, it's tinged with bittersweetness as i'm reminded of you all packing up the very same boxes.

i need to give special thanks to my parents as well. my mom spent the previous week with me helping to pack up the majority of the house, and had she not done so, we would have been at my place until 2:34 a.m. and none of you would be missing me now. then, in tag team style, my dad flew out to help drive me 1,300 miles across four states, providing not only a second driver, but also, along with my brother, moral support during such a monumental change in my life.

my emotions have been very close to the surface all week, and as i was heading down spanish fork canyon on friday afternoon (love the cd's, kristin!), i was on the phone with my sister and describing my feelings as "extremely happy sadness."

one last thing

i've wanted to go to the logan temple for years, but i had to work the day my ward took a temple trip up there and i've always told myself i'd go there someday.

on my last "someday" in utah, i decided to go.

now all i have to do is pack my truck and move out.

the 104 party

it's late and i've got another big day tomorrow, but i want to say a few things here tonight.

around 5:30 today i was looking at the clock and realizing that i hadn't decorated, didn't even know what i was going to do to entertain, and yet had a birthday party starting in thirty minutes.

the party could not have been better. i had an absolute blast. as i was thinking about it, while not a whole lot of my friends read my blog, i think that just about everyone who came tonight (and i was genuinely and delightedly surprised to see everyone who did show up!!) also reads this blog. and that's really cool. really.

the scort, we wish you could have been there.
i invited bret ("muscles") on facebook but he never responded. lame.
there's something to be said in that nearly all of us have not been regularly in each others' lives for 5-7 years, yet we still keep in touch and were all able to get together tonight and have an absolute blast. in fact, that says a dang lot.

marin, your cake would give my last year's wall-e cake a strong competition for best birthday cake ever, but they're in different categories. just the same, it was incredible. thank you.

chuckles, thank you for the apple beer. anyone who really understands the significance of apple beer probably was here tonight. without apple beer, it wouldn't be a 104 party.

there are at least four different stories behind the things written here.

i hope everyone will forgive and understand when i say that this was my favorite part of the night. this toast and all that was said and referenced and remembered completely sealed the night as awesome. for a myriad of reasons, thank you, ruby tuesday.

and tomorrow is the big party....

whatever and ever amen

several years ago, when ruby tuesday moved out of centennial, she sent me some flowers (including lilacs, by mistake, though i still commend her diligence in finding a flower store that delivered lilacs). i dried them and saved them because, not only do people not send me flowers very often, but i really liked her and tend to hang on to things from people i like like that.

the seasons changed and time marched on. i moved from 104 to 907, she served a mission in salt lake and came back again and the flowers were starting to get a little dusty on the bottom shelf of my nightstand. over this time, i had met the great laurie jayne, broken up, had the awkward interim, and, as she was getting over a much harder break up with another guy (one of my previous roommates' brother, incidentally), developed a pretty awesome friendship.

looking at those once-pink dried flowers, i decided it was time to put things to a proper rest and move on. and that if i burned those flowers as a way of doing so it would probably look really cool. i really don't remember the particulars of it all, but laurie joined me, bringing something from her relationship to offer in burnt offering to the stars above.

this was not a malicious or spiteful burning. i don't see the point of being angry. but i do mourn and like to get things out and to move on. mark joined us with his camera.

it went great. my dried roses blazed with such beauty that i used a shot for my blog title (nice work, mark). for me, it was a peaceful and almost nostalgic event, as my feelings had had years to heal. for laurie, the emotions were much closer and fresher.

after it was all over, she played her ukelele for me. that was really cool.

as i mentioned in my previous post, the last few weeks for me haven't been quite as i'd hope; i've been frequently listening to the eels's "electro-shock blues", singing "cyclops rock" with gusto as i'm getting ready in the mornings, and discovering that i have a fair number of black t-shirts. i decided it was time for another burning.

i asked my artistic doppelganger kristin to assist me in photographing this burning and it's taken us a while to find an opportunity for our schedules to line up. but tonight everything did and for the best, it seems. the pictures turned out much darker than last time, but the meaning was still there.

as i finish this, "last stop: this town" is playing. and that makes me smile.

last week, jaime reminded me to keep my head up or i would miss the tender mercies.

i've done my best and i have seen them.

editor's note: i wanted to put the previous "shoes" header back up (because, while the burning roses look really cool, the image needs a lot of clean up) and cannot find the image anywhere. dang it.

standing outside a broken phone booth with money in my hand

my closet is partially empty, boxes are beginning to be filled, and yesterday was my first official final goodbye to a friend. august 20th is coming at a frantic pace.

to be honest, things aren't ending quite as i'd planned. movie night's numbers are very small (blessed be you who are still coming!), despite excitedly deciding to watch the movies after our discussion of the final chapters of the final book, the harry potter book club hasn't met in weeks and i think is pretty much over, and things in general just aren't going as i'd like. (i mean, i don't even teach sunday school anymore!)

for various reasons, i've been reading over a lot of my previous years' posts on sheep go to heaven. i came across one talking about "it came to pass", that good times and bad times come and go in our lives. and in my life. you can't freeze time and hold a moment forever. the ebb and flow of time courses on.

work has been phenomenal this summer. me and some friends explored southern utah, got one last trip to lagoon in, and i'm planning on going to the logan temple next week (probably my last big "to do in utah.") i've gone hiking, spent some great time with my sister and nephews, found an apartment and got my financial aid stuff all taken care of, learned a bit of photoshop and deepened a great friendship, and rock band is still just as good as ever (i'm really enjoying that mic after last night...)

two weeks left. a lot of packing to do. a few more movie nights and my birthday party of awesomeness. still plenty of good times ahead.
and even if the rest of my time here is a complete dud, it's been a good ten years, and one month can't take that away from me. : )

editor's note: we are working on getting a new blog header up. our design department has undergone extensive training and hopes to have next title graphic online within the coming days. in the meantime, we thought we'd toss up the original design for a bit.

inspiration

this is what i was thinking about during elder's quorum today.

text results

1. shantell 824

2. shaun 716

3. mark 553

4. emily 545

5. jess 363

6. joel 361

7. kristin 341

8. tiffany 268

9. jaime 265

it's always interesting for me to see how the numbers come out; some new names, some classics.

[untitled]

realization

i'm listening to tally hall because a) it's been too long since i've listened to them, b) they're deliriously wonderful, and c) because i'm nervous for tomorrow.

it's been a good trip and a good day. our interviews went great and the rest of the crew flies home tomorrow. this trip couldn't have been timed better(well...), because i'm sticking around to check out the apartment scene around college station. it certainly saves me a plane ticket, anyway.

i've got a printed list of several different complexes i've researched, picked out what floor plans i'm interested in, and have their rent and amenities laid out. i'm leaving the hotel at 8 a.m. to take a taxi to the airport to pick up my rental car to drive two hours to the college station-bryan area. i've got my ipod ready to sing along with.

a week ago, i was kind of excited about all of this.
now, i'm realizing how real my leaving is and all that i'm leaving behind.
but i know that it will all work out.
prov. 3:5-6

the beginning of the end is near....

i'm sitting in the driskill hotel in downtown austin, texas. i'm down here on business with the same company i was on business with last year when i stayed at this hotel, although this time i requested to be in the "historic" wing, a.k.a. the more haunted wing (according to wikipedia, this is one of the most haunted hotels in the country). i love this place. i was booked here because the agency people were booked here, then they changed because someone at the office told them "it's where your grandpa would stay." and yes, if your grandpa is classy and wealthy, he probably would stay here. and i guess i'm getting old, because i'm loving the high-ceilinged rooms, the granite-floored lobby with marble pillars, and, well, the whole place pretty much looks like the venetian at vegas but without cutting all the corners. and i love that i'm here until friday.

last week was near-perfect. and since there's a good chance i'm not going to write it in my journal, the quick sketch goes like this:

• monday: the barnes and noble criterion sale starts. i've been saving all year for this. it's literally Christmas in july for me... plus come home from f.h.e. at the nickelcade and sit on the front steps to watch near-perfect summer's evening turn from twilight to starlight.
• tuesday: sushi with kristin where we discuss summer travels (belgium/new york city) and excitement over respective photos. discuss ploxiness afterwards. watch "the battle of algiers" at movie night. it's awesome. most people seem to concur.
• wednesday: go hike squaw peak with jaime and friends. i'm expecting a 45-minute hike a la hiking-the-Y-ish. it is a full-blown trek, reminiscent of the time i tried to hike to the top of the Y mountain and spent the rest of the day on the couch soreness. we make it to the top, i call my sister and take pictures. on the way down my sincere prayer is tenderly and mercifully answered and my knee does not hurt.
• thursday: meeting and camera prep for austin trip. spend the afternoon with my sister and nephews at ikea. caleb is well-behaved and courteous at ikea (and determined to eat my chocolate cake). the trip throws off his nap time. he is a terror for the remainder of the afternoon. i leave him with brady and go off to see "metropolis" at the tower theater for a second time. it's so incredible i can hardly stand it.
• friday: i'm offered to work at 9:00 a.m. the midnight before. we do a half day of product shots; i like doing that. that evening i'm lethargic and watch bunuel's "the exterminating angel." i've tried and tried and i just don't get bunuell.
• saturday: all day at lagoon, riding just about everything until the sun has gone down and the moon has come up. couldn't have been better. crestfallen than makbule the puma was nowhere to be found but glad i invited shaun. got stuck in a ride for a while but had a good view of the park lit up at night from up there.
  
• sunday: up packing until two in the morning, slept for five hours. mrs. utah started a conversation with me in the security line at the airport (she was wearing her sash and on her way to competition in las vegas). flew to austin (no layovers, no international hassles, a two and a half hour flight, lovely), checked all the camera gear and we're good to go. delta lost my lights, the arrived at the hotel later this evening. i've unpacked my bags, puts my clothes in the dresser and hung my shirts in the closet.
  

and that's kind of been the groove for much of my summer. it's been wonderful. we shoot in austin through wednesday. everyone else flies out that day and i'm staying to look at apartments in college station. that's going to mark the beginning of the end, but at least i'm going out on a high note.

last days of belgium

our hotel is in the brazilian/portugese/spanish district of town. and while, as i understand it, brazil tied their game at 0-0, yet that has not stopped the colonies of brazilians from driving through the neighborhoods, head to toe in green and yellow, waving flags, cranking their stereos, honking their horns, blowing their air horns, singing on the subways, and doing whatever else they can to celebrate. it's kind of fun to see them so happy, even if i don't fully understand why.

we leave for the airport tomorrow morning. i'm kind of tired and it's after 11 already. i should be packing and getting some sleep, but i know that, unlike some warm and fuzzy new york interns, i'm not very good at recollecting in detail the adventures of my amazing life days or weeks or semesters after the fact, and that if i don't do it now, these moments of life will be lost to the ether forever.
i can sleep in utah.

yesterday was the last day of the conference. we were collecting peoples' stories about how ".com" has changed your life. asking this question at a convention where internet domain names are the livelihood of most people often brings stories that are more technical than what we're looking for, but we also got some really interesting ones (a guy who's company owned the second .com address ever...). at the end of each day, we would randomly draw a name from the list of those who had given their stories and they would win an ipad. not too shabby.
on our last day we talked with a guy from pakistan (who, oddly enough, was not a terrorist or even an american-hater. further, his friend from afghanistan was also super cool) who talked about how he had a website called noipadforyou.blogspot.com which is all about how the middle east (and other parts of the world) doesn't get apple products for up to a year or more after their release and the lameness that surrounds that. he was one of about three or four people we were hoping would win.
he did (legitimately).

outside the window where we were filming was a small (and rather mucky) waterway with a statue of a naked lady in it. i'm from the u.s. and i've seen plenty of naked lady statues. in an artsy town like brussels, they're about as plentiful as waffles. yet, for reasons none of us can figure, people would continually stop and take a picture of this naked lady statue. it wasn't even that good of a sculpture. just a naked lady statue.

on a similar note, in my swag backpack from the convention was a button that said "yes to .xxx". (the dot there makes all the difference, by the way, as one of the ad guys with us didn't seem to initially notice it) as i understand it, such a "top-level domain name" (heard ALL about those this week) would help keep all the adult sites in one relative area; good for those who are looking for it, and, as i understand it, good for people who want to block it out (if this isn't what it means, well, i wore the button anyway; too late now). this evening i saw a headline on cnn.com that the resolution passed. go me and my button.

today was pretty much a free day for us. the other two production people with me really wanted to go to see bruges, a city in northern belgium that is cool because a cool movie called "in bruges" was shot there a few years ago. i haven't seen the movie (have to see if it's on clearplay when i get back to the western hemisphere) and was feeling tired at the end of a busy week (we haven't had to work especially hard, but we've played hard), so i wasn't all gung-ho for it but went along all the same.
it turned out to be closer than we thought (just under an hour on the train) and really pretty dang. like most old european cities, it's seriously old, coming in at over a millennium, and kind of looks like it graduated high school during the middle ages and decided that look was good enough for it. we saw a few really old cathedrals (note: there go the brazilians outside of my window again; it's 11:31 p.m. now and i fully expect this to go on all night), which combined with the cathedral in brussels that i saw yesterday (my first even), i think constitutes for a third of all the pictures on my camera. we went to a church that claimed to have a relic containing the blood of Christ, walked everywhere on cobblestones (which gets painful after six hours; asphalt, i miss you!), paid 30 cents euro (is there a way to get a euro sign here? they just look cool and i don't get many opportunities to write them) to use a public restroom, and, of course, bought some chocolate.

i bought more chocolate back in brussels, as i've done almost every day here. the mini fridge in my hotel room is full of chocolate. : )

i also finished my souvenir shopping for my family (i'm looking at you, dad) and we missed our bus stop because of a stupid lady who decided to stand right in front of the door (we're looking at you, stupid lady.) on the train back from bruges, i listened to (german techno band) kraftwerk's "trans europe express." it wasn't as transcendent as i'd anticipated, but now i know. and i was still there.

there's probably a dozen other notably memories from today, but you get the idea.
it's been a seriously dang awesome trip with no regrets (well, i wish i would have put forth a little for effort to pick up a few french phrases), but i'm also looking forward to getting home with my friends (and where people speak a language i know. i'd even be ok with japan.)
i'm also looking forward to being able to search google in english, instead of... is that flemmish?

the internet illuminatti in the land of chcolate

yesterday morning we walked about 1.8 km in light rain through the streets, pulling equipment and trying to find our way. sitting in the convention center where we're doing our interviews, i realized that in the last two days, all that i had eaten was a waffle with ice cream (granted, the best waffle i had ever had in my entire life, but still just one waffle) and a croissant i grabbed at the hotel that morning. belgium was great, but not without it's hassles. on top of it all, my pockets were jammed with my passport, ipod, and big fat wallet (mostly from discount/point cards from america, not euros).

since then, we have been able to store our equipment at the hotel where the ad agency team is staying, i've found a way to streamline and carry only what i need (much more comfortable), and we've had some good food. for example, yesterday i ate a pig knuckle.

when i'm traveling, i really don't want to eat food that i can get where i live (this maxim stands whether i'm in another state as well as another country; it can backfire, though. there was that place in thailand where i ordered something that didn't even have an english name and unfortunately ended up with barbecued chicken, to the envy of several girls around me....). we went to an solidly belgian-looking restaurant (next to the "boston cafe") and looked over the menus. french cuisine seems more enigmatic than japanese does to me and i was thoroughly confused. still, with several mispellings in the menu (notably "beaf" and "kooked"), this place seemed pretty legit. i gave the waiter my order and he nodded while saying something that sounded like "soup." i wanted something heartier than that, and so fumbled in bad french and hand gestures to change my order, pointing the next thing on the menu: "a knuckle of ham."
really, you image of it is as good as mine was. basically, it was a chunk of ham with several different-sized bones sticking from it. and, past the occasional tough pieces, was pretty darn good, along with the mustard sauce.

this year is the 25th anniversary of ".com", and so we're interviewing people at this internet conference about their experiences with ".com". hoping to get fun stories. one of our favorites so far is the guy who booked a hotel online for his honeymoon and arrived in spain one night, only to find a giant hole in the ground and that the hotel was still very much under construction (six months later, he received an invitation from the hotel, inviting their "valued customer" to join them for a grand opening). the trouble is, these guys are mostly internet domain name registrars, meaning they're the ones who sell internet addresses, and so they think of ".com" differently than we do and we end up getting a lot of dry stories.
essentially, these guys control the internet. i mean, if you were a g.i. joe-like super-villian and wanted to, say, blow-up the internet, this is the time and place to bomb. in years to come, the next dan brown conspiracy author will be writing about these guys and the power they have as they control the world.

we were waiting to hail a cab when a woman came up next to me and said something in french. startled and knowing only the smallest bit of french, i mistakenly responded with "please. no do you speak french?" fail.
realizing the nationality of the idiot in front of her, she spoke again in broken english. i'm not sure if she was asking if this was a bus stop or was telling us that we were not at a bus stop, since it did look like that was what we were waiting for.
to top it off, the first cab we stopped listened to our inability to speak french, saw that there were five of us plus several pieces of equipment, and drove off, leaving us confused and cabless.

belgium, like pretty much all of europe, runs on 220v electricity, twice as much as we do in the u.s. i'm learning that nearly everything that has a little block that plugs in between the item and the wall (e.g. my computer, my phone, my camera battery, our lights) can handle the 220v, provided you have a nifty little plug adapter; no power inverter needed. there are some things we still learn the hard way, as we somehow blew the circuit at the fancy hotel we were shooting at the first night. in america, it's a simple fuse box switch fix. it seems much more complicated here, as they had to call a utility guy and we still never did get the outlet back on that night. i still kind of feel bad about that one.

i assumed that most of europe was on roughly the same latitude as the states, but began to wonder when it was 10:30 last night and still notably bright outside, even for the summer solstice. checking a map, it looks like i'm roughly level with 300 miles north of canadian border. can't complain, though; the weather is absolutely perfect.

david sedaris is right: in europe, people do smoke everywhere. at an outdoor cafe today, the tables on either side of us were lit up.

at the same aforementioned cafe, everything around us was so amazing i could barely take it in. we were eating some sort of town square or plaza that was actually the royal courtyard or something. all four buildings in the quad were enormous museums, churches, or palaces. probably all over one hundred feet tall, they were covered completely in ornate stone scroll work, statues, and gothic-looking decoration. the streets were cobblestones. it's exactly what you think you mistakenly imagine "europe" to look like but presume that just fantasy stereotype. it's not.
brussels was already 1,000 years old when i was born and seems to have no shortage of truly-amazing architecture. it's awesomely baffling.

we opted to pass on dessert at the cafe, instead doing a "chocolate crawl", popping in and out of just a few of the many chocolatiers lining the narrow european streets. some look like old-world chocolate shoppes, others are sleek and modern. they all seem to have the best chocolate in the world.

i'm in freaking brussels

yes, i am.

deciding to get out of the utah film industry was the best thing i've ever done for my job there. i have been busier this year than ever before. most recently, i was in north carolina a week ago. and now i'm in belgium on a different trip.

i haven't slept over 30 hours, i think, and my creative faculties are not as sharp as they should be. i will forgo any extensive explanation of the wonders of the city or of europe in general, but will leave a few brief notes:

the first: i've never had a pronounced need to visit europe. as i've said before, if you look like me or talk like me, i'm less interested in traveling there. but as we were standing down town today in what was such perfect classic european style, with cobblestone streets and small but ornate stone architecture all around me, i fell in love with europe, and faster than i'd anticipated.

our first (and really, only) meal here so far has been, of course, a belgian waffle. served by a way cool guy with coolio-like hair/dreds in a shop so quintessentially "european waffle shop" that it could have been crafted with precision by disneyland engineers, this was the best waffle i have ever had. or that i will likely ever have, even if i live to be 111. with ice cream on top.

i don't speak more than about three words of french. thankfully, our sound guy, ben, does. i like being in japan, where i can converse with the locals.

i didn't think to bring my camera cable, so there will be no pictures accompanying these postings. but i did bring my camera, and intend to fill up the entire flash card.

i loved looking down the streets as we drove through down, unbelieving that brussels looked pretty much how i wanted it to look. it was luscious. but the down town plaza, a quad of four grand and opulent buildings that looked like my art history book come to life, was so tremendous my brain about short circuited. plenty of pictures will be taken.

there's probably plenty more, but i really need to get to sleep.

for those wondering, brussels is 8 hours ahead of the current utah time. i wonder if this post will be time stamped according to brussels time?

post script: nope, utah time. interesting.

my brilliant morning

my morning has been like this:

me: "it's been a good morning. i got up early, had breakfast, worked on my sunday school lesson, and now i'm getting ready for a shower. i think i'll watch a movie after this."

The Spirit: "you should go to the temple."

me: "what?"

The Spirit: "go to the temple."

me: "but i was going to watch a movie..."

The Spirit: "go to the temple."

me: "i wanted to watch a movie."

The Spirit: "go to the temple."

me: "yeah, but..."

The Spirit: "go to the temple."

me: "i should go to the temple today."

wearing a towel and with shaving cream still on my face, i check the temple schedule on-line because i remember hearing something at church about the provo temple being closed for a while. it closes on june 21. i'm good.

smelling like irish spring and getting dressed, i get a text message from a friend, asking if i want to do anything and i can't find my amazing red bow tie, but nothing is going to get in my way. as i pick up my wallet i decide to check my recommend.

it expired in april.

i am crestfallen.

dream rendering

i just woke up from the first full night's rest i've had this week. that's nothing dramatic: i did a three-day commercial and got 5-6 hours of a sleep a night during those three days. but i had a dream last night. like most dreams, it morphed from one scene to another. i was in minneapolis with my my best friend from high school (nothing weird there; that's where he lives) and we were shopping at a sort of costco-type store, where we could by four-foot tall boxes of frosted flakes for $2.59. not a bad deal.

i think president sam was also in there somewhere, but dreams are so fleeting it's no surprise i don't remember it all. the final scene was with the crew i've been working with for the past few days (love those guys) and we were driving on a sunday and had stopped at a town/outlet mall/rest stop that had a pretty good comic book store in it. i was pretty big into comics in junior high and still like to peruse them on occasion. and so i did, despite the guilt that it was sunday. i looked around the store at the different shelves, full of trade paperback editions, graphic novels, and various action figures in addition to the boxes and boxes of comic books, grouped by publisher then sorted alphabetically. i wasn't planning on buying anything and didn't even know what i was looking for, but it was fun just look through everything.

i pulled out a white cardboard box and began thumbing through the comics. as i did, it was as if my vision started to go bad. i could barely see more than a blurred image on the cover. i one out and held it closer to see better. this had the opposite effect: it became harder to see, as if my eyes had been sealed shut. i could see nothing.

there wasn't much more of the dream. i remember continuing to look around the store while my friends played catch with a football, ready to leave and waiting for me. as i searched around, the store seemed larger than i had first noticed, with dozens of shelves to look through. yet the same phenomenon persisted: like playing the original doom computer game, as i would walk closer to a shelf, it would become fuzzier, more out of focus, until i could hardly make out anything on it.

i woke up soon after that and, as i picked up my phone from my night stand to check the time, my text messages, e-mail, and facebook updates, i thought about this.

dreams are essentially like a computer-generated movie. everything in the scene has to be created. and my brain has seen enough comic book stores to have plenty of archives to research and make one pretty easily. and in a cg movie, if a character is going to walk over to a box and start rifling through it's contents, that box is going to have to have each of those comics have a different cover, designed and rendered.

for whatever reason, my brain didn't have that in place. whoever it was programming the dream (i guess that's me) didn't plan on me looking through there. or my brain just couldn't create or find in an archive a handful of comic coves to slap on there in real-time. dag; i'm 30 and my brain is already losing processing power. perhaps it had something to do with the fact that i was soon waking up. sam noted that sometimes we will try to run in a dream but not move, which i've noticed happened when i'm at the start of waking up and so my brain isn't sure if we're suppose to run in the dream or in life, leaving me motionless (to be eaten by a dinosaur or something). maybe this was similar.

whatever the case, it was an interesting insight into how dreams work (or how my brain doesn't). kind of like finding a flaw in the matrix. ....oohh.... what if....

"can i get you anything else?"

jaime said this would make a good blog post. i suppose she's right.

my car was up in salt lake yesterday being repaired, leaving me at the mercy of others or the uta bus schedule, which required a trip to macey's for a bus pass, again leaving me dependent upon extraneous kindness. adding to my car not starting, my washing machine chose to stop performing the spin cycle, my clearplay dvd player stopped recognizing the usb filter drive, and my timer for the lights behind my tv no longer turns the lights on or off.

sam was in and out yesterday and before leaving for a job interview, he asked if i wanted to go to macey's when he got back. being that i hadn't had much need to provide my own food for the last month and a bit, there was little for me to eat other than sugar cereal and the dark chocolate brownies i had made the day before. by the time sam came back i was running only on the remainders of a sugar crash as everything i owned was going on strike.

sam asked what i needed to get a macey's and i said pretty much everything, although i tried to make it quick as we headed to the deli counter. "do you always come here?" he asked. "yeah," i told him. "the meats and cheeses are just better." i ordered some turkey and swiss, because that was what was on sale (although i usually get swiss cheese no matter what). i wanted to get some of the black forest ham, too, but they seemed to be in a hurry and there was a line queuing behind me, so i let it go.

at the end of the bread aisle sam asked me what i thought of the girl who served me. i noticed that she was kind of cute but didn't think twice about it.
"no, no, no, i saw the way that she was smiling at you."
"of course she was smiling at me," i said as i tried to find a good red bell pepper. "it's her job to sell things."
"jeff, you knew what you wanted to buy before you even got to the counter. she didn't have to sell you anything. that smile was for real."
being that just a few days ago i was offered to get setup with someone's daughter because "she likes nerdy guys like [me]", i had a hard time believing sam that some cute deli girl liked me after ordering a pound of oven roasted turkey.

by the time we were in the cereal aisle, sam had said that he was going to go back and get the black forest ham and get her number for me. i was so incredulous to it all that i told him if he came back with her number, i would buy him half a pound of the ham, too.
he walked off and i felt a little self-conscious, wondering how this had all just happened. not sure what to do until he came back, i casually continued my shopping while leaving a message with the the movie i'm working on to see if we're shooting on friday or saturday evening this weekend. just in case.

sam came back with a vanilla ice cream cone, but no sign of a phone number or even my ham. "she said she wants you to ask her yourself," he announced. "and you can do that when we go back to pick up our ham."

there was anxiety in the background as we finished our shopping and we somehow managed to come out at the end of the shampoo aisle, meaning we had a long, direct walk toward the deli counter. i was nervous, but kept it contained.
when we got to the counter, the deli girl had her back to us, working on something else, so the other girl asked us if we were here to pick up our roast beef. sam said that we had the ham, and, thankfully, the deli girl turned around. i smiled. i had no idea what to say. but i was calm. i was nice. i was funny. i got her phone number.

i've never done that before. but i have to admit, i liked the rush and the feeling of success.
now i just need to figure out a date.

text results. may 2, 2010

work continues. we just got back from a week in moab, with plenty of amazing landscapes, overtime, and dust in everything. i'm looking forward to it being over (the number of remaining movie nights is frighteningly few!) but i'm continuing to relish the opportunity of working with some of the biggest people in the industry in the process.

i've decided now is a good time to clear out my phone's text messages. i'm rather surprised with how the numbers came out this time:

1. shantell: 1,129
2. jaime: 835
3. mark: 566
4. joel: 376
5. emily: 322

yes, for the first time in years, there is a new champion. shantell is my favorite wardrobe girl in the industry and the only film person i'm really friends with off set (which really only started on.... oh, march 2, it looks like). the bulk of those texts are get-to-know-you questions and discussions, and it wasn't long before she closed in on first place. then, one day, it happened; the crown was transferred.

it's nice having a friend who has a similar schedule: either you're working like crazy or you've got plenty of free time. so we've done things like go to the zoo or visit the museum of art.

jaime and mark you already know.

joel determined that, after last time, he would make the list. it's been mostly legitimate conversation and not numbers padding. we generally talk about movies (because really, what else is there?) and complain about clearplay's imperfect system of editing and how we'd do it so much better.

emily is a former hometeachee (once a hometeachee, always a hometeachee), member of the hpbc, and, as i've come to learn, is very cultured in not just great movies, but also theatre, ballet, and opera (those last two i need some help on).

again, the top five texters make up 67% of my total messages (6% higher than last time for you stats people).

while i do agree that texting can be very antisocial and isolating in differing ways, it is also nice to have this record of conversations between myself and my friends.

i'm really kind of curious to see how the next round's numbers will look.