An Open Book

A Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday the perpetual tri-mangle hosted a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving at our home in Van Nuys. There was food, there was wine, there was general revelry and intellectual conversation, all of which was, of course, over shadowed by the divine Cowboys' victorious battle against the hated Redskins. “Tony Romo es Dios!!”

Anyway, it was a wonderful day. If you weren’t there, you should have been. If you were there, then your presence, and moreover, your contribution to the dinner, were greatly appreciated.

I don’t see any of you nearly enough, believe me, that is not by choice.

Cheers,
tlw

It's about time.

2007-11-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

Considering the freshman nature of my position within the entertainment industry, I’m not going to publicly discuss my own personal stance on the current writers’ strike. I will, however, say that my paramount frustration is the fact that the people involved, on both sides, seem more interested in harming the other side than they are in working towards a solution. After two weeks, and significant angst, there is finally a little light. Following Thanksgiving, on November 26th, the WGA and the AMPTP will return to the negotiating table. Here’s to hoping that after 3 months of negotiating, and what will be 3 weeks of striking, we can finally start moving to resolution.

Cheers,
tlw

Deadline Hollywood Daily has a pretty good account of everything that's going on.

Let the Metamorphosis Begin

2007-11-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

The hibernation, though it has been long and perhaps arduous for some, has finally come to its inevitable end. And as day follows hard upon the dawn, it is time for rebirth.

Stay tuned, more to come.

Cheers,
tlw

2006-08-05T18:48:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I'll admit it; this past month the flow of creative juices has been reduced to a slow trickle. However, with the dawning of a new, and final, school year things are quickly changing. I’m currently working on moving into my apartment for the year, and arranging my living space, which is always a challenge to create a unique arrangement of the same furniture that every single other person has. Once I get things set up, I’ll try to snap a few pictures and throw them up for ya’ll, but I’ll be honest, this blog is going to be fairly low on my list of priorities for the upcoming months.

Many of you who would have any motivation whatsoever for checking this blog are probably already aware that, along with some of my good friends, I am endeavoring to produce an independent film this year. We are drawing on people’s expertise from Pepperdine, USC, and the professional realm, and are undertaking a project of immense size on no budget other than our week-by-week paychecks. We’re starting a blog for the film at KillingApril.blogspot.com and it should have some interesting things in the coming months. I encourage you to check it every once in a while starting in September, though we might even get something worth checking out up there sooner than that.

My schedule is pretty hectic ramping up to the beginning of the school year. I’m headed to New York City for my first time to visit Ky at West Point and spend a few days with Gwendolyn in Manhattan, then I have a two day layover in Dallas on my way back to LA. Once I’m back out here in LA, I’ve got a couple days before school starts when we’ll have access to cameras that I’ll be working on some screen tests trying to nail down how we’re going to approach shooting this film.

I hope all of you are well, and I apologize if I’ve been out of touch recently.

Godspeed.

Cars

2006-06-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

In my morning read-through of Blogs, news sources, and satyr, I came across this.

That’s right! The good ole Wall Street Journal has put it’s venerated pencil to paper to add a Pixar-animated, southern, rusted out pickup, voiced by Larry the Cable Guy, to the lexicon of political leaders, CEOs, and other various and sundry influential individuals to be represented by it’s instantly recognizable etch-a-sketch style renderings. I guess it’s a slow news day when the weekend earnings of Disney-Pixar’s Cars makes the 4th line in “What’s News” for the Journal’s weekend edition.

I’ve not seen the movie as of yet, but I very much want to. While Disney has not been up to snuff lately, Pixar has unquestionably set the bar for computer animation. From their debut with Toy Story the company has failed to produce a bad film. As WSJ points out “The six prior Disney-Pixar films all opened at No. 1.” That, ladies and gentlemen, is impressive. It is my sincerest hope (and one that I imagine is pure wishful thinking) that the sellout to Disney will have a positive effect on Disney, rather than a negative effect on the quality coming out of what is now Disney’s Pixar group.

R.I.P. Veronika 1989-2006

2006-06-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

REUTERS, Los Angeles.
Tragedy struck on THE 101 in Thousand Oaks, CA during the lunch hour this Wednesday. The ’89 Honda Prelude SI, known to those dearest to her simply as “Veronika,” met her demise as a rod snapped in her engine causing a fatal cardiac arrest. Though the actual reason the rod snapped remains a mystery, many attribute the failure to the presence of Ms. Gwendolyn Elisabeth Siska, who was also on board during the fatal blow to a Honda Civic Hatchback in Arizona earlier this year. The connection between the two incidents is not understood at this time, but is being looked into by authorities. At her memorial service, former owner Taylor Williams had the following to say about the automobile:

“As we mourn Veronika’s passing today, it is fitting that we should look back on the good times. Sure she was a little bit trashy, with her radio that would cut in and out, and only work when someone pushed on certain corners, her hula girl’s legs on the dash after the sun had melted the glue attaching the rest of her, and her window that would only roll up with a little manual assistance. But it was these characteristics that made her who she was, and it was for that that we loved her. As I think back over my time with Veronika, I tell you, I’m going to miss her. I’m especially going to miss the purr of her exhaust, though certainly Barbara Streisand will not share my sentiment. Veronika, we had a good run, I’m going to miss you. Rest In Peace.”

Summer in SoCal

2006-05-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

Nothin' on earth that'll get me hummin'
Like a heat wave comin' and I'll come runnin'
With her makin' that tan in the broad daylight
And every night is a Saturday night
And everything's right with the summer comin'
I'm the first one standin' in line
For my day in the sun I've been workin'
'Til the sun don't shine.

“Summer’s Comim’” -Clint Black

Well, I certainly started the summer off in high fashion with the Pepperdine Bible Lectures, now nearly a month ago. I mean, be honest with yourself now, who wouldn’t want to start their summer off working a 10 day, 73 hour week? Even at minimum wage, it makes for a nice paycheck though. Surprisingly enough, once the lectures themselves got started, I really did enjoy myself. My job was to run power-point in the fieldhouse.
I’m not sure how many people we packed in there, but it was quite a few. By the way, the pictures I took got erased. This photo is courtesy of Ms. Gwendolyn Siska. I was in the back of that gym from 7.30am till about 10pm (granted, with 3 hour lunch break in the middle) during the days of actual lectures, and if I messed up, there were thousands of people in there who would have seen it. Fortunately, everything went pretty smooth. It was funny to me to look at the different way different preachers prepared their presentations. Some people had slides and didn’t even know what was coming next. Some people had pretty good outlines and some people, had their sermons typed out and presented them almost verbatim. No joke… it was quite impressive.

Anyway, after lectures I moved into my living arrangement for the remainder of the summer. Good ole Rockwell Towers 120.

For the rest of this summer, I and Ryan (Dap) Dapremont are crammed in a not only the living structure with the smallest rooms on campus… but one of the smallest rooms in that living structure. But, we couldn’t just take it laying down. We took that small room and turned it into two rooms; a bedroom and a living room.

We figured that we should probably name our lounge, as one would name any other historic dorm room. In honor of the fact that we live in first floor dungeon of Towers and were both in London together, there was really only one option. The Underground.

As much as I love that recliner and couch, and of course the television, my favorite accessory in that room is this. My Apple Airport Express! Not only does this provide me with wireless internet, and wireless printing, but it also has a function called AirTunes. What this means is that Dap and I are able to play music from our laptops through the 600-watt surround sound system wirelessly. How cool is that?!

Anyway, moving on. It’s a good time for me in the land of the sport. I’m not a huge basketball fan, but I am a huge Dallas Sports fan, and right now the Dallas Mavericks are making franchise history. Game four tonight. For more coverage, check out 1310 The Ticket’s Bob Sturm’s blog. It’s what I primarily use to stay on top of the Dallas Sport’s scene.

Pepperdine University Athletics

In other sports news, the Pepperdine Baseball Waves have won the West Coast Conference for the 17th time, and enter the NCAA Championships as the number one seed and will face No. 4 Missouri. Furthermore, for the first time our Eddy D. Field will play host to the first round of the tournament. Hope UCLA and UC Irvine don’t mess it up too much.

Oh, and we’re also National Champions in another sport this year. Last summer it was Volleyball that won us that title, this year, it’s Tennis. That’s something that’s got a lot of my friends excited, but the only sport that really has the potential get me pumped up at this school is baseball, so here’s hoping that I get to see a few good games in the coming days!

Well, I’ve been working on this post for about a week now, and I know its fairly lacking in any semblance of substance, but hopefully it’s a peak into the happenings here on the Left Coast for my past few weeks. Maybe I’ll get something a little more thought provoking up in the near future, but I sort of doubt it. Keep checking back, you never know what you’re gonna get!

Da Vinci

2006-05-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen… the moment you’ve all been waiting for… Wait, who am I kidding? There might be a discrete handful of people who actually check my little corner of the blogosphere every once and a while to see what inordinate ramblings, musings, or otherwise poor attempts at lyrical composition I have spat out recently, but among those of you here there are few ladies, and there are certainly no gentlemen (yeah, that’s to you Sawyer.)

At some point in the not to distant future I’ll compose the diary-blog that addresses some of the major points of my life over the past couple weeks since I last posted. However, at this moment I’m compelled to cover an eminently more controversial, and interpersonally relevant subject. That of, course, would be the main news item over the weekend; The Da Vinci Code.

Despite the fact that I was warned over and over again by all the reviews that the movie was the cinematic equivalent of McDonalds when you want a real hamburger I thought I already knew exactly what the film was going to be like when I darkened the door of the Mann’s theater in Agora Hills last night. I was wrong. I expected more out of Ron Howard, famed director of “Apollo 13” and “A Beautiful Mind.” In fact, I expected to see a lot of the same effects and art direction that we saw in the latter. But, let’s not put this all on Ron Howard… break it down something like this:

Howard chose to stick with his usual editing duo of Dan Hanley and Mike Hill. For the cinematography, he turned to Salvatore Totino whom he had just worked with on “The Missing” and “Cinderella Man.” The cinematography wasn’t horrible in and of itself, but when it was combined with unmotivated cuts, it was very difficult to get an idea of the space in which the action was taking place. That could have very well been unavoidable in the Louvre due to the expansive floor space, but it continued throughout the movie, and was a constant headache.

Outside of some other technical flub ups, the main drawbacks in the movie are carry-overs from the novel. Tom Hanks, who continues to be one of my favorite actors due to his versatility, was anything but stellar in this film. The lines were over all unmotivated and just generally unbelievable. Unbelieveable? Did I really just say that? That’s a good summation of the film. It’s a pulp fiction novel that’s been turned into an uninspired pulp-laden movie. And while it is certainly not as good as the book, (par for the course with cinematic adaptations,) the movie, with all it’s flaws and lack of development, depth, or worthwhile content, is a wonderful portrayal of a book that’s sensational, unrealistic, and focused wholly on moving from plot point to plot point sacrificing any shred of potential character development.

It was good to see Audrey Tautou, the wonderfully talented French actress from Amelie, in a major Hollywood film, hopefully next time around she can find her way into a film with a little more depth. And Paul Bettany continues to impress. I do wish he had taken his character a little deeper and portrayed a little more of the pain of his past than being content to portray unbelievable monster his character became. Unbelievable; there that word is again, I just can’t get away from it. Oh well.

All in all, I think there is no doubt that the best film that opened last weekend was Over The Hedge

The Eclectic Catch Up Post

2006-04-19T22:05:00.000-07:00

Well, there are a number of blog posts that I’ve been mulling around in my head for the past few weeks but haven’t been able to post, because what little literary prowess I possess has been utterly devoted to term papers, final projects, and various other end of semester endeavors.

So, I give you the eclectic catch up blog. Hopefully this will give you a little to chew on for the next few weeks as I tackle my finals while packing up for two moves, and a 60 hour work week during the Pepperdine Bible Lectures.

First
Nike’s new Futbol Ad Campaign in lieu of the upcoming world cup is amazing. The slogan “Joga Bonito,” Portuguese for “Play Beautiful,” subverts Nike’s long time branding of “Just Do It” substituting skills and teamwork as their lauded qualities rather than the traditional individual glory hounding they usually promote. On top of that though, the ads are just a ton of fun to watch.

I think this link should work for you… if it doesn’t, email me and I’ll figure it out when the internet is working better: http://nikefootball.nike.com/nikefootball/siteshell/index.jsp

What’s really interesting about this campaign though, it along with the commercials, Nike has formed a web community to go along with the message of the ads. Web communities, such as Facebook and MySpace, have become increasingly prominent helping people keep in touch with one another and connecting individuals with similar interests. Joga.com is a collaboration between Google and Nike to form an online community of soccer enthusiasts. If this campaign is deemed successful, I would expect there to be a number of other similarly ad based web communities springing up in the near future… an interesting cultural movement to keep tabs on.

Second

(this will show you how long I’ve been considering a few of these posts) Over Christmas break I saw the film Munich with my brother and father. While there is little room for technical criticism of the film, Spielburg’s kinda good at what he does, the message of the film struck a sour note. I have to say, I loved the film. It was gritty, raw, emotional, well done, and thought provoking, but still there was something that didn’t sit quite right about it. So, I went back and read the book that it was based on. Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team By George Jones. Two things struck me about the book taken in relation to the film. First of all, I was amazed by the overall accuracy that the film kept with the book. Of course, little moments such as our protagonist being almost blown to pieces in the Greek hotel bomb fiasco and the little girl picking up the phone and almost getting herself blown up, were added in keeping with Spielburg’s typical character development. The second, and more important, issue that reading the book raised was that the theme of the movie was not in line with the theme of the book, though, granted, the difference lies in subtle nuance. The movie was crafted to leave you questioning the effectiveness of counter-terrorist action, and ultimately leave you opposed to the ongoing conflict. The book does indeed raise questions of the actual effect of such counter-terrorist measures, but responds with an ultimate acceptance of the fact that such measures have saved hundreds, probably thousands of lives. Without the time to delve into further in-depth analysis as I had originally planned, here are some quotes I had pulled out to illustrate my point.

“Having made the decision to quit, they felt depressed and relieved at the same time. Though Black September seemed not to be active any longer… [lists some terrorist successes]… Reading the papers, Avner and Steve wondered if their mission, for which Carl, Robert, and Hans had given their lives, had made even a dent in international terror. Ephriam’s many-headed monster was not slowing down. And even where it appeared to be slowing, as with Black September, it was probably just as much due to a policy decision by Arafat’s faction of the PLO after the Yom Kippur War. It was possible that some of the mechablim now saw the United Nations and the [298] conference tables in Geneva as better staging areas from which to push the Jews into the sea.
Not that it mattered. What they did had to be done, as far as Avner and Steve were concerned. Israel could not allow her sons and daughters to be murdered with impunity. In the spring of 1975, even in their blackest mood in Geneva, Avner and Steve would have defended the mission unequivocally.” (297-298)

“Avner’s present views on his mission are devoid of second thoughts or regrets. He claims not to have ever had any personal feelings of enmity for the men he killed or helped to kill, but continues to regard their physical elimination as something demanded by necessity and honour. He fully supports the decision that sent him and his partners on their mission, and has absolutely no qualms about anything they did.” (335, Epilogue)

“Saying this could be mistaken for the suggestion that there are no standards of restraint in warfare, but this is not the same thing at all. One can, in terms of moral justification, distinguish between counter-terrorism and terrorism in the same way one distinguished between acts of war and war crimes. There are standards; terrorism is on the wrong side of them; counter-terrorism is not. It is possible to say that the Palestinian cause is as honourable as the Israeli cause; it is not possible to say that terror is as honourable as resisting terror. Ultimately both the morality and the usefulness of resisting terror are contained in the uselessness and imprality of not resisting it.
Toronto, 16 June 1983” (340 Epilogue)

“Of course, this frequently happens to authors at the hands of hostile reviewers, and I mention it solely to illustrate why a contentious book, perceived as “right-wing” – and parts of which may be open to genuine doubt – is not likely to receive an open-minded examination in the left-wing media.” (345) [Notes on a controversy]

Jones, George. Vengeance. 1984.

Third
Well, there’s a third and even a fourth that I wanted to talk about… and they were more interesting… so I guess you can consider this the cliff hanger, perhaps tomorrow…

You know you're in Malibu when...

2006-04-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Left Coast, it’s like cereal, anyone who’s not a fruit or a nut is a flake, and any number of the clichés you wish to throw in there. The simple fact of the matter is they’re deserved. For all its beauty, so cal is home to more weirdoes, creeps, freaks, and yes, beautiful people than anywhere else in the world. Yesterday I ran into a number of situations that made me think “only in Malibu…”

You know you’re in Malibu when…

3) When you put $15 worth of gas in your car and it buys you 4.7 gallons of gas.
2) When you’re stuck in a parking lot because some nimrod can’t get his super-maneuverable Porsche into a parking spot and take 4 tries backing up and trying again.

I was telling Micah this as we were walking through Ralph’s getting groceries, and had to stop at this point as we were checking out. The grocery store was pretty busy, but there was only one person in the express lane. So, I jumped in the lane, and as I was checking out the woman in front of me dropped some of her change, so I picked it up and handed it to her. She tried to tell me not to worry about it, it was just a penny after all, but I had already gotten it. Anyway, I checked out and we headed out the door and I started to continue with my top three moments:

The number one you know you’re in Malibu moment…
Micah says “You mean that back there?”
“What, you mean, going to Ralph’s?”
“No dude, that woman you gave the penny to…”
“What are you talking about?”
“That was Liv Tyler”

Yes, Liv Tyler after going back and looking at pictures, I have to agree, it was indeed. I guess that would explain why people weren’t in that checkout lane. It seems that most people tend to be intimidated by famous people. And I was making sure that she didn’t walk out of the grocery store without the penny she had dropped. …yeah, so indeed we have a new “you know you’re in Malibu when… moment.”

The old number one? As I was walking out of the bank earlier that day, I held the door open for an elderly woman as I was leaving. Her response: the patented evil death glare. Yep, shocks me every time.

Oh, one more thing… I have a Mohawk now. Probably won’t last long. I just needed a haircut and with a week of school, dead week, and then finals ahead of a college student, strange things happen.

Shepherd's Pie

2006-04-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

(Look! It's shake and bake, and I helped!)

I simply thought that I would take a moment and showcase the product of 2 hours’ culinary experimentation in the kitchen of Lovernich apartment A-36 this Sunday afternoon. Granted, not the best food I’ve ever made… but then, it might be the most ambitious as far as the chemistry goes, and certainly involved the most creativity.

Cheers,
tlw

2006-03-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

I’m growing resplendently restless this semester. I feel like I’m wasting my time. I don’t want to take Spanish. I don’t want to take a history class that equates to a less than an adequate review of what I learned in AP US History in High School. I don’t want to take what is essentially an advertising class from a doctoral holding, collegiate professor who is unable to even form a defense for his self serving position on classical sophistry to me, while I am armed solely with my 12th grade, single-semester, public school philosophy class. I am absolutely working myself into the ground, wearing myself out, and the only solace I seem to be able to find is in the hope that once this semester works its way to a grinding end, that it’ll be over. Provided, of course, my gloriously uninspired, unmotivated, however somehow completed, class work carries me through. That end gets closer with every dragging day, with every high school reminiscent “reading quiz” and “worksheet.”

Randumb

2006-03-29T16:05:00.000-08:00

video.google.com

do it.

The Randumb Mocumentary

Wayne Rooney

2006-03-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s raining in Malibu today… not enough rain to enjoy, like a good thunderstorm, just enough rain that I want to sit inside and read a book. Not looking forward to delivering pizzas this evening, especially since the rain will mean more people are ordering them, and I’ve only run into one person who tips. It’s frustrating.

On a different subject… the man working at the bank today asked if I ever follow soccer. Said I reminded him of Wayne Rooney. Believe it or not, I do get the “you look like so and so” fairly often. But it’s usually someone’s cousin’s third dog’s former owner that I remind them of. Anyway, I’ll take Rooney… I should get a jersey.

Patriotics

2006-03-23T19:39:00.000-08:00

So here, I am, sitting in the back of class… blue jeans, pearl snap shirt, sipping on sweet tea… once more in “American History.” Okay, okay, you found me out… I’m a patriot. I can’t really hide it, I kinda like America. So sue me. I happen to believe that I live in the best country to ever exist on God’s green Earth. Do I claim that the United States of America is perfect? Absolutely not! Certainly we’ve made mistakes, we’ve had problems, we’ve had BIG problems, but all in all, over the years I think we’ve established that, given time, the concepts of freedom and democracy tend to turn out to be pretty darn good things. Moreover, I also believe that nationalism is a GOOD THING. It’s important to have pride about where you’re from, where you live… if you weren’t proud of it, you’d let people mess it up. Shouldn’t our nation’s academic institutions be teaching us to have a little pride in our chunk of land? Shouldn’t we assume that we as a people have some degree of inherent value? If we’re not proud of this place… why in the world would anyone continue to fight for her? The simple fact of the matter is that because of all these things that make America so great, I find myself sitting in a class constantly being told how many horrible things this country has done. But you know, you’ve got that right… so, preach on fearless teacher... tell us all of the horrendous actions of the good ole US of A, I’ll continue to get less than stellar grades for writing “triumphantly nationalistic” essays… and I’ll continue to listen as you explain how horrible you think it is that in the South people are still expected to refer to their elders as “Sir” or “Ma’am”… and I’ll continue to call you “ma’am” so here I am, sitting in the back of the class… blue jeans, pearl snap shirt… sipping on sweet tea.

Oscar Nods

2006-03-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

Last night was the first time I can remember I was actually excited to watch the Oscars. Maybe it’s because I’m getting closer to graduation and being thrust into the “real” world where I hope to be working in some of the very areas highlighted by the Academy Awards. Perhaps it’s because in my more fanciful moments I actually foster aspirations of being on stage at the Kodak Theatre thanking my mamma just like everyone else last night. All told though, the simple fact of the matter is that I was just excited to hear what Jon Stewart had to say about Hollywood. Stewart has fostered a reputation as a leftward leaning satirist, which surely helped him get asked to host, but the academy might have thought a little more about his leftward leaning than his satirical nature. Hollywood likes to have its big celebration, pat each other on the back, tell everyone how great they are, and how important the work they are doing is. Stewart did a pretty good job, from where I was sitting, of making fun of them for it. Moreover, just about the closest thing to a political comment that he made over the course of the three and a half hour extravaganza was a congratulatory statement to the members of the academy for “for once voting on a winner.” The unquestionable low point of the evening was the Three 6 Mafia winning Best Original Song for “It’s Hard Out Here For a Pimp.” To which Stewart replied… “for those of you out there who are keeping score, let’s keep this straight; Martin Scorsese 0, Three 6 Mafia 1.” Hmmmm. But it’s all said and done, the stars, winners and losers, are at home nursing their hangovers, and Jon Stewart will undoubtedly be making fun of the Academy for choosing him to host as he gets back into the swing of things tonight on The Daily Show.

Chasing Daylight

2006-02-06T10:39:00.000-08:00

“Today was one of the greatest, most miserable days of my life.”
The classic eloquence of Micah Kafka rings true. This weekend, sleep was scarce, clean clothing a luxury I didn’t have, and, with no clue what my actual purpose as second unit assistant director was supposed to be, I was mostly just making it up as I went along. For all the questions and uncertainties however, this weekend was a great lesson in what it takes to direct on a film set. I was privy to the tensions and stresses that came from people working on the first unit all day, and then saw the inexorable increase in efficiency once Kafka and I moved in and lightened things up a bit. Sunday, Micah directed all day with a splitting migraine as well, hence the miserable part of his greatest day. We had to pull some of our friends in at the last minute to fill roles, but I’m glad because my friends just happen to be some absolutely incredible actresses and actors. Who knows what we would have been left to work with if the originals cast had showed up?

Micah Kafka discusses the scene with Kari and Ramsey

Plus it was just plain old fun seeing my friend underneath a bookcase after simulating an earthquake. Kari is just flat out a great actress. There were even live sparking wires above the bookshelf, but you can’t seem them in this picture.

Kari Miller, under bookshelf

It was an interesting weekend. At some point soon, I’ll have to explain to you why Saturday night was the quintessential guerilla filmmaking experience… but for now I’m going to hold out and see if Micah doesn’t blog about it first.

Kari, Kira, Christyn, Tash, Micah, Brian, and Dap, ya’ll are all awesome. People are beginning to get the impression that Pepperdine turns out pretty damn good film/tv students… that certainly doesn’t hurt.

I couldn’t help but think that this weekend was something of a vision of things to come.

Oscar Nods

2006-01-31T16:56:00.000-08:00

Nominations were released today for the 78th Annual Academy Awards which will be presented on March 5th. One exciting note for the Oscars this year; they will be hosted by The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart. This is sure to encourage the award recipients to even more ill-fated, and ill-informed political statements, but we can rest assured that Stewart will be quick to make fun of them for it afterwards. It’s no huge surprise that “Brokeback Mountain” was nominated for Best Picture, however I was somewhat surprised that it took the lead with 8 nominations. However, I have not seen the film, so I cannot comment on whether the nominations were actually deserved, or it’s just another case of Hollywood being Hollywood. My instinct is toward the latter. Also taking in numerous nominations are “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “Capote,” “Walk the Line,” “Crash,” and “Munich.” So far, the only ones of those that I have seen are Walk the Line, and Munich. Hopefully I’ll be able to see a few more of them prior to the awards, and I might be so bold as to throw out some predictions. One thing’s for sure… Between all the “Brokeback Mountain” and “Transamerica” nominations, and Stewart’s hosting… this will be an interesting show.

Beautiful Friday.

2006-01-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

I go to a school where at four o’clock on Friday afternoon, when there are almost no classes left for the week, I cannot play rock music from my laptop speakers because it’s too loud for the girls in the apartment next door who are trying to study. You might say to me: Taylor, surely you’re exaggerating a little bit here. I would say to you, no, no I am not. Granted, I do not mean the speakers built into the laptop but something I have since acquired called the Phillips Shoqbox. It is a very small set of portable powered speakers that have a battery so I don’t have to have them plugged in all the time. Basically they’re those little desktop speakers that you’ve gotten with your PC since before anyone thought it would be a good idea to actually play music off the computer and might want a little volume and quality out of it. What I really wanted to do was plug my laptop into my soundsystem and make use of all 600 watts that I have at my disposal… but then I don’t need to be pissing people off already. Well, anyone else at least. I might have hurt myself in a class today by challenging the position of my COM 301 professor. While I might not agree with everything that Plato said, I do agree with his ideas that there is an absolute truth (though I’m sure the Greek philosopher and myself would disagree on the foundation of that absolute truth) and that rhetoric should be founded in it or otherwise be seeking to find it, and I do have a problem with rhetoricians that hold that truth is completely relative and that as rhetoricians they are justified in making good choices look like bad choices and vice versa. That is inherently wrong, misleading, unethical, amoral and it should be counted as an evil practice. So to the extend that rhetoricians disregard the truth in the pursuit of their own personal power, well being, or advancement then I agree that rhetoric is indeed evil. Anyway, my professor didn’t like the idea that his students didn’t just sit there and listen to him berate the classical argument against mere rhetoric, but actually had an established opposing point of view and challenged him with it. Oh well, I wasn’t attacking him personally, and I was never disrespectful of him, but he didn’t come off looking like he actually knew what he was teaching. I just hope I didn’t offend him, cause that would make a boring class even worse for me.

Other than that, it’s an absolutely beautiful Friday… wish I could play some loud music.

Movie Review

2005-12-28T13:51:00.000-08:00

Chronicles of Narnia
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
IMDB Link for Narnia

My rating: ****
Movie Ratings explained

Okay, so I saw this movie on opening night, and I’m clearly a little behind on posting a review over it. I start with this film, simply because it’s the easiest one for me to review after discussing it a number of times. First and foremost, I want to say that I enjoyed the movie. It was fun, for the most part well done, and I recommend you go see it.

That said, I wanted it to be better. It took me a little while to be able to put into words just what it was that frustrated me but I finally figured it out. It was too much of a fairy tale and not enough of an epic. It’s tough to explain what I mean by this, but suffice it to say there was a general lack of grand vision for the film. It was too narrow, and way too heavy handed. Andrew Adamson, the director, was the guy who did Shrek, and it shows. C.S. Lewis was a master at imagery and subtleties, and I feel that that was lost on the film. It is my sincerest hope that Disney decides not to make the next in the series such a Disney style film, and goes with a director that has a little more vision.

Movie Reviews

2005-12-28T13:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I’ve decided that since I have a tendency to be fairly opinionated I might start to throw in a movie review on this blog from time to time. I will use a rating system as follows:

* = Seeing this movie once was more than I should have, I in no way, shape, or form recommend this film and honestly wish that it had never been made. What a disgrace.

** = Not a great movie, probably won’t see it again, but if I got stuck watching it, it wouldn’t bother me that much. Don’t recommend it, but your taste might just be different than mine.

*** = Good movie. I enjoyed it. Not particularly incredible, moving, or touching, but, for the most part enjoyable.

**** = Dang good movie. I recommend that you go see it, or at the very least rent it when you get a chance.

***** = Awesome. The kind of movie that makes me want to make films. This will be a rare rating that I reserve for movies that go beyond the realms of merely enjoyable and have some further impact, insight, or do something that hasn’t been done before. The kind of movie that I’m likely to buy and force you to watch if I find out that you haven’t seen it yet.

Spitfire

2005-12-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s no small understatement to say that I’ve been a little on the busy side lately. It’s been a long semester, and I am looking forward to Christmas break whole-heartedly. I still have three more days of final exams before I can look to that though. Ironically enough, finals week has ushered in a much more relaxing schedule for me. I have this week off of work, there are no more TV shows filming, and all of my intensive edit projects are done. I’m actually sitting here, watching the History channel taking a break in studying trying to remember the last time I just sat down in the middle of the day and watched a little TV. So, I thought I would take this chance to deliver some good news for those of you who haven’t already heard.

Next semester I will be interning at Spitfire Media. They are a postproduction house in Santa Monica that has been in operation for a 19 months now. They do some incredible work and I expect to have some good stories to tell next semester.

The Sport...

2005-11-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Okay... so I said the last post was going to be my last for a while, of course that means that I have something more to post... Murphy dominates my life...

I had intended to post this a while ago, but was just reminded of it. My scholastic institution, that of course being Pepperdine University, has been voted the best athletic institution in the nation, for schools with no football program. Yes, the conditional there kills me, but never the less, if volleyball or women’s soccer is your cup of tea, this is the place to be. National Champs for NCAA division I Men’s Volleyball, and currently the number one ranked women’s soccer team in the nation… go waves.

yeah, what he said...

2005-11-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, my post now is a result of a couple of circumstances. It is unlikely that I will be posting between now and thanksgiving, and secondly, I desperately need break from my religion essay. I have a couple more weeks to writ this, but due to the nature of the essay, I am very much in the thick of it already. For those of you to whom I have not already complained about this essay, all you need to know is that I find myself in the only section of Religion 102 that requires a 15 page research paper, which is due prior to thanksgiving, and I, for some reason deemed it a good idea to write it over the doctrine of Predestination, specifically the Calvinist view thereof. As I’m sure you can imagine the research material dealing with predestination and election is not exactly the easiest stuff in the world to read, in fact I’ve had to keep a dictionary with me… not something I’ve had to do in a while. The following is the last few sentences that I have written. They might very well not make it into the final essay, but I have been trying to write something in response to each couple pages I read in order to make sure I understand what I’m reading… I leave you with this:

John Calvin defines predestination under terms that limit its extent to include only a determinate domain on the issue of salvation. He states “All men are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life of to death.” That is to say, Calvin is not talking about God having a foreknowledge of those which, within mankind, will choose Him and those which will choose to deny Him, but rather he claims God set out beforehand those that He would choose to be His and those that He would deny. The universality of God’s knowledge and omnipotence, residing without the constraint of time, is not at question here, I would never endeavor to bring questioning doubt upon such an established and inherently necessary truth. However, I do question whether Christianity, indeed the entire existence of mankind from the very beginning to the end, would be, or necessarily could be, anything other than futile if we do not have the ability, moreover the responsibility, to choose chose God through an act of our own free will, given to us by our creator from the beginning of time. How can the church, operating within its intended function of glorifying God, be an establishment bringing glory to God, proving His manifold wisdom, if our very base act of worship and glorification, that is our salvation through Christ Jesus, is determined beforehand, coerced and not a free choice?

Driven

2005-11-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

This weekend was a new page in the story of my on campus productions. Up till now I have merely been a part of other people’s productions, albeit often an integral part. As of Sunday, I have embarked on an endeavor which puts me in the producer’s seat. Of course, I’m sharing that seat with apartment mate Scott Reynolds, host, and co-producer. We are trying to do something a little different than anything that has been produced in the Pepperdine Studios for Malibu Local Television, and I believe that we’re going to do it. Scott, being an avid car guy –and by avid car guy I mean that he would chose automobile over woman each and every day of the week… give me the girl- wanted to do a car show, and I saw it as an opportunity to be a little more artistic than the current talk show/sketch comedy show line-up currently allows. So, Scott waved his magic car guy wand and a dealership on the Sunset Strip agreed to give us two Land Rover LR3s for four days this weekend to film our pilot. We parked them down by the fountain and filmed student interviews, and then took the cars on a little test drive to find out what they were made of.
I’m currently in production/post-production limbo while I work on editing the packages and wait for studio time to pull the cohesive elements together with an in studio segment or two. Hopefully I’ll be able to get at the very least some of the packages up for streaming in a not too distant future date. For now the plan is to finish post by Thanksgiving, that is in fact quite an ambitious goal…. But I’m an ambitious person.

I'm not a big fan of staging pictures like this, but when someone takes your camera and tries to "help" what are you gonna do?

Posterity

2005-11-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

I would like to take this time to announce the creation of a few new galleries on my photo sharing site. Unlike the vast majority of the galleries toad.smugmug.com features, these photographs represent not the most current split second descriptions of up to the minute accounts of my life, rather, the four new galleries represent times past.

Primarily I would like to highlight the creation of two galleries to host the pictures that I had accumulated on the mission trips to Russia that I was apart of six years ago. These pictures have been broken down into two galleries, color and black and white. Please spread the word to all those who went that a little piece of our collective history has been posted for posterity. Also, shoot me an email, let me know how you’re doing… Haven’t heard from a lot of ya’ll in a long time.

FLM From Russia, With Love

FLM B&W From Russia, With Love

I have also posted a gallery with the 17 photographs which I have from Honduras. Unfortunately, that’s all I have. But I’ll post what I got.

FLM B&W Honduras

Finally, I’m also working on scanning in some of my random old pictures from who knows what. I don’t have many up yet, but be checking back, this gallery will grow quickly.

FLM Retro

If anyone wants to email me some more Russia or Honduras Photos, I would love to post them as well. Hope everyone is doing well.

Dreaming of Timecode

2005-10-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

He films, he edits, he runs audio, he creates bumps… he’s loosing his mind, and he’s even referring to himself in the third person. Yes, this has been a crazy week. Tuesday evening I got roped into being floor director for a show on campus called Crossing the Line. For those of you who don’t know, the floor director is the person that stands back with all the cameras and tells the hosts to speed it up, slow it down, which camera to look at, and is just generally in charge of what goes on inside the studio during taping. Now, I had never, before this point, ever even been out in the studio during taping. I had always been in the control room. So, to all the sudden be put in charge of a show that I’m not familiar with, in an area I’m not familiar with was quite an experience. But, it all worked out fine. And it turned out to be a good thing, because the next night, while taping PTN I ended up being the Camera Operator for Cameras 1, 2, 3, and yes camera 4 as well. Topping that, I was also floor director for the last half of the show when the usual floor director went on air as an interviewee. At that point, it was just me, the equipment and then the hosts in the studio… very interesting. Of course, during the entire week, I was doing a number of random tasks for the Randumb Show. I had to film bits, edit bits, create bumps, even act a little bit, crazy stuff.
Here’s one of the bumps I made:

But it gained me a credit, that you’re not likely to find in many films… “Randumb Angel” I was also credited this week as camera operator(s), floor director, audio director, editor, and actor. Quite a week. I need to sleep now, but I’ll accept caffeine as a viable alternative, since it’s really my only choice… I still believe that freshmen should not be given caffeine. And oh yeah, the last time I did sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, there was definitely a timecode in my dream. The time code is the numbers that let you know exactly what frame you’re on when you are working on editing something, in Final Cut it’s right here:

In After Effects it’s here:

But there was a running timecode in the upper, lefthand corner of my life as I was walking around in the dream. I was also editing my life as I lived it… very trippy dream. I’m trying to write it up into a screenplay now, I think it would be the kind of movie I really enjoy, but it’s very hard to get the continuity to work on it. I’ll let you know when that one hits theatres. Have a good one ya’ll, adios.

2005-10-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

When I’m working on film and video projects I tend not to be a big fan of tri-poding everything. It’s just so much more interesting to have sweeping, fluid camera movement rather than just pans and tilts from a fixed point. The problem is that hand held shots have inevitable camera shake and you lose the purpose of fluid shots. Thankfully, a number of filmmakers that have come before me have experienced the same desires and problems and have come up with a solution… the SteadiCam. SteadiCams come in all shapes and sizes, from the humongoid contraptions costing in excess of $100,000, to the small, almost worthless varieties costing as cheap as $800. Ah, now we’ve hit a problem, the cheapest ones out there cost $800, not exactly something I can afford on a college filmmaker’s budget, which consists mainly of lots of begging. So, I decided to make one. I found that you can do that for about $25. Here’s the result:

Just a simple weight, counterweight system… works wonders! You know you love it.

Incarnation of Nerds’ Dreams

2005-10-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I think it’s a pretty safe assumption on my part that all of you who are reading this,know me pretty well and understand that I have a fairly strong passion for technology. Much of this passion gets spent on Apple. Well, as I’m sure each and every one of you is already aware Apple released a new version of their iPod yesterday.

This is the most significant revamping of the iPod since its original conception. A quick run-down of the changes. First of all, as with each and every iPod update, there is expanded storage capacity: 30GB and 60GB. Second of all, again as usual, they’re smaller. And thirdly they now support video.

Video has always been the future of the iPod. Since they were first introduced as an incredibly small brick three years ago… remember those? Looked like this:

…even since then people have been wondering when the iPod would support video.

Before I continue on that topic and establish how I believe Apple recognized iPod’s potential for convergence from the very beginning, I have to take a second here and extend a huge amount of appreciation for my father’s recognition of the iPod back then. When I got my first generation iPod as a gift I was only vaguely aware of their existence, but it was perfect. That 5GB brick was nothing less than an oracle. People thought I was weird for walking around in between classes with white ear bud headphones in… after all, who in the world has white ear buds? Plus, back then the iPods were either dedicated Mac or dedicated PC, and my parents got me a Mac version. While I could have switched to a PC one, I think already possessing a piece of Apple actually helped me decide to get an apple laptop rather than a PC, which helped me make the decision to go Telecom over business or some other major. So, with that said, if I become a successful Hollywood producer some day the gift of that original iPod helped me along that path. (How’s that for a slippery slope fallacy?) Anyway, Dad… Great Gift… thanks again. But I digress…

Like I said before, there have been calls for an iPod video since the original iPod. I think Apple recognized that this would come, and that the iPod would be revolutionary and change in unexpected ways along with the expected ones. That’s why they called it the iPod, not the iMusic Player, or something else. iPod can go anywhere. The only reason, I believe, that the iPod didn’t go video last year when the iPod photos were introduced had much more to do with licensing agreements with the Record Labels than with technology. Right now, you can buy music, music videos, Pixar (owned by apple) Animated Short Films, and some TV shows in the iTunes Music Store. While each of these categories only has a few offerings as of now, it’s only a matter of time till they explode. Now we sit back and wait for Apple to make the required agreements with film distributers.

One of the other potentials that the new technology supports is Video Podcasting. Many of you know that you can subscribe to Podcasts in iTunes. This makes me very happy cause it allows me to keep up with KTCK in Dallas by downloading the Ticket Top Ten each morning after it airs. Now the hope is that people will start making Video Podcasts for people to submit to. Depending on the cost of bandwidth and such limiting factors, I am exploring the possibility of doing something like that to share my video projects here at Pepperdine. More specifically, Scott and I would like to be able to Video Podcast our episodes of DRIVEN once we get them completed next semester.
For now, I'll repost the link to the video I have posted on last time in case ya'll haven't seen it yet.

Sooner than any video podcasts though, you will be able to hear the broadcasts that John Deniston, Brandon Milan, and myself send out every week over the airwaves of 101.5 KWVS LP, Malibu. John’s nearing completion on the reemergence of CultureShockFM.com. I’ll be sure to let you know when that happens!

I have more I would like to say about the issues of convergence, the past, the present, and, most importantly, the future. But I’ll save that for a later post since this one is way too long already and I need to go to class. Take care ya’ll.

Da Boys

2005-10-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

The cowboys looked incredible today! Glad they actually put it on TV out here!!!!

Kevlar Soul

2005-10-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, the last bit of my life has been utterly dedicated to my first TC 270 (Field Production) class. Since I room with a man who has a complete mastery of the mighty internet at his fingertips, I have been extended the opportunity to share the final product of that project with you. The video has been posted under the understanding that John can take it down whenever he needs to for whatever reason, so watch it while you can.

Just click on the still frame to link to the video.

The instructions for the project were to create a short video that tells a story and conveys an emotion without the use of words, and without necessarily making a “music video.” I assumed that a number of my classmates would try to tell stories with more of a slapstick humor flare, so I decided to try a more serious note. Leave some comments and let me know what ya’ll think.

The music used is by a band from Sweden called Kent. If you've never heard of them, check 'em out, they're incredible.

In case the link doesn’t work:
http://www.johndeniston.com/williams/WebKevbtr.mov

Junior Writing Portfolio

2005-10-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

Today I had to turn in a folder containing a new Pepperdine General Education requirement ominously called the “Junior Writing Portfolio.” Those of you who just did the same thing undoubtedly are asking yourselves the same question that everyone else who had to do it is… Why in the world did they think this would be a good idea? A quick rundown for those of you who don’t know what the JWP is; once you’ve achieved the status as Junior at Pepperdine University, you’re required to compile a portfolio of your past essays, write a cover letter explaining your specific choices, and detail each of the assignments. While this might not seem like a monumental task, the fact of the matter is that it’s extremely difficult to find the graded essays that you wrote during freshman year. Discounting whatever difficulty it may take to compile these essays, let’s assume that that was the easiest thing in the world to do. The fact remains, it’s still a completely superfluous assignment. Are we to assume that the school doesn’t have enough faith in their professors that we’ve made it this far passing classes without being able to write adequately? The English 101 requirement is designed for the exact same purpose; to ensure we can write critically, clearly, and decisively. This program is nothing more than busy work at a time when we can’t afford busy work. Furthermore, it is an insult to the professors and the students of Pepperdine University.

Going TC

2005-10-06T15:12:00.000-07:00

I believe that I’ve noted before that I’m working on a number of productions going out on the airwaves from here at Pepperdine University, here’s the rundown:

First of all, this is my second year (not consecutive) producing CultureSchockFM on KWVS 101.5 Malibu, LP. The show is hosted by my good friend and roommate John Deniston and for an hour every week on Wednesday from Noon to 1pm we attempt to drive the California liberals crazy by bringing a little conservatism to the media in LA.

The next production I am a part of this year is a TV 26 show called PTN (Pepperdine Television Network.) The premise here is to take student’s projects from various telecom classes and put them on the air while critiquing them. Last night’s episode featured my first TC 270 project, which isn’t actually due for another three weeks. It also featured an advert I created for Driven, which we’ll come to presently, and a new countdown that I created. Yesterday saw a lot of edit and studio work for me.

Thirdly, I’m working on a show entitled the Randumb Show. At 12 seasons now, it is the longest running show out of the studios at Pepperdine University. Modeled after SNL, you really never know what’s going to pop up on the Randumb Show…

Finally, I’m co-producing a show with my apartment mate Scott Reynolds called Driven. Right now, Driven mainly consists of promises, preconceptions and a lot of Dreams, so I’ll leave that for another post. But, rest assured there are a lot of exciting and groundbreaking things going on to make this show a reality. More on that later…

One last note, Micah Kafka is the one responsible for the KWVS and Randumb logo posted above. Thanks for letting me steal your stuff Micah… call it advertising.

iPod

2005-10-04T13:01:00.003-07:00

Despite my recent horror stories of selling things over the Internet, I'm back at it again. This time I've enlisted the help of the professionals. My roommate John Densiton, self proclaimed internet genius, and Ebay vet, has agreed to list the iPod for me. By the way, Apple messed up and sent me a 6gb rather than a 4gb version, I guess they were out of the 4gigers. In case you’re interested, here’s the listing.

America's Secret War

2005-10-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading America’s Secret War by Dr. George Friedman. Dr. Friedman is the founder of Stratfor. Now, in all honesty, I had never heard of Stratfor in my life before reading this book, but the reviews of the book seem to make a big deal out of the company, which bills itself as a “security consulting intelligence agency” focusing in “strategic forecasting.”

The book endeavors to put the current situation of an American War on Terror in some historical and social context in order to understand what’s going on. The main focus of the book ends up being an explanation of the Iraqi war which has almost nothing to do with WMDs. At the risk of missing the point of the argument in an attempt to summarize it, I’ll see if I can give you the main drift. First of all, Friedman claims the United States has a reputation in the Middle East as a country that’s all talk and mostly tries to get other countries to do our fighting for us (as in the war in Afghanistan which was mostly accomplished with troops of the Northern Alliance through the aid of US Special Operations.) With that in mind, the US has been having a difficult time getting Middle Eastern nations to give us the help in routing out Al Qaeda, since the nations have a greater fear of what Al Qaeda has the ability to do than the power the US is able, or unable, to project in the region. This is particularly important with emphasis on some country’s loose control over their cache of nuclear weapons, and, perhaps even more importantly, Saudi Arabia’s refusal to crack down on Saudi financial support for Al Qaeda. Therefore, the US invasion, and subsequent occupation of Iraq was publicly justified with arguments of WMDs and Iraqi harboring of key Al Qaeda members, the former of which did, indeed have intelligence to suggest their existence, and the latter of which has played out true.

Of course, I cannot in a paragraph here convey the overarching themes of the book, which begins in the earliest days of the Cold War, and continues through present day. There is no doubt however, that it is the most comprehensive justification for the Iraqi war within the context of the larger war on terror. I highly suggest you read it.

U.A.E.?

2005-10-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

I got a hit from the United Arab Emirates this morning. Just thought I would share that with you.

Don't forget to check out my Photolog.

By the way, if you have a blog or a website I highely recommend Stat Counter. Quite a powerful tracking program they're offering for free. Off to test my knowledge of Modular Mathematics now, audios.

I used to sleep.

2005-10-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

Relaxing, calm, slow, peaceful, all synonymous with life in Malibu, California, retirement village to the stars, right? Haha, no. It’s a nice thought though. It’s Sunday afternoon at eleven PM and I’m sitting here under a stack of Math 102 notes wishing I could consider it evening. What was I thinking signing up for over 18 hours of classes, three television shows (one of which I’m co-producing from nothing), a radio show, and 15 hours of work? The answer, of course, is not much, which is exactly what I wish I was thinking at the moment. Alas, I did it to myself, and I imagine that if I am to actually be successful in the industry wherein my aspirations lie it will become something of a normality for the foreseeable future. In all honesty it is much better than the alternative.

For those of you who follow the news, there was a fairly major fire out here last week. Oddly enough, it made things very hot. I highly suggest you check out Micah Kafka’s blog. Micicah’s an alum of Pepperdine University’s Telecommunication Production program trying to break into the film industry. Pray for his success… who knows, some other people currently in the Pepperdine Telecom program might like to be able to beg a job off of him at some point in the future. Someone kind of like myself. Moral of the story is… we want things to go well for Micah.

Finally in this post I’d like to steal an idea which Micah used in his blog. In fact he stole the idea from someone else, so I’m really just propagating a good idea more than stealing it. The idea is to do a google search for your name to find out what kind of people share the same name as you. Whereas Aaron Micah Kafka would bring in some limited results to chose from, Taylor Williams draws something of a large crowd. I am a successful distance runner for the University of Tulsa. I am a Z film actor, who you can look up on imdb.com. And my personal favorite, I am a residence hall at Virginia State University for upper-class honors females.

That’s it for this edition of Taylor Williams’ further procrastination. Tune in next time where we’ll discuss why freshmen should not allowed to come into the Coffee House unless accompanied by an adult.

It's Two AM, I Must Be Crazy

2005-09-29T02:16:00.000-07:00

Hopefully this will be my last post before my new computer arrives later this week, or early next week. As for the old computer, I just don’t want to talk about it right now.

It’s two am, I’m not all that tired for some reason, and I cannot fall asleep. It’s hot here this evening. To all of those of you everywhere else in the world other than Malibu, No, I certainly don’t believe that it’s hotter here than it is there, but you see, ya’ll probably are sleeping like babies, all tucked up in your sheets enjoying a little thing called Air-conditioning as I lay here sweating, trying to convince myself that the wetness I feel from my sweat beading up on my forehead is actually ice or something. That whole mind over mater thing never really worked out well for me. Anyway, with the inability to sleep I find myself with the opportunity to use my roommate’s computer while he dozes soundly, and my mind turns to random musing rather than anything particularly coherent or enlightening for this post. As I held the door open for a friend of mine as we were walking into the Sandbar today at the same time, she remarked how southern I was that I always held the door for her. Now, I always considered that as something that you just do, regardless of where you’re from, but that’s a rant for another day. What it got me thinking about was my tendency to try to be able to work with all groups of people, while still remaining fairly outside their stereotype. Note strongly here that I say their stereotype, as I most certainly always tend to perpetuate some stereotype. For example, in California, I tend to play the role as Southern, Texan, significantly less wealthy individual. People view me as blunt, sometimes abrasive, but just generally honest, and that doesn’t always work out in my favor. What is strange to me though is the fact that when I’m in Texas people tend to view me as quite acclimated to a California life style. I honestly believe that my accent is quite a bit stronger in many situations out here at Pepperdine than it ever was at home. Why do I do this? I have no idea. In all honesty, it’s not even a conscious distinction I make. I guess it’s just the physical manifestation of my desire to go everywhere, but never actually completely fit in. I don’t want to be just another anything. Is that good? Is that bad? I don’t know yet…. Ask me in 20 years.

I’m sure there is an abundance of grammatical errors and erroneous arguments in the above statement. This is my disclaimer for this evening: I don’t care. The entire point of this is merely to get something up here after my absence. I assure you, there will be more to come in the next few weeks which, I hope, will be much more interesting and, perhaps even shocking??? Who knows… I haven’t let out a good political rant in a while and my Poli Sci class combined with producing Cultureshock FM again has given me significant fuel for the fire. Stay tuned, you never know what will happen next.

What's happiness you to David?

2005-09-20T18:34:00.002-07:00

Well boys… here we go: Still no computer, I’m beginning to get worried about that, but am currently trying to remain optimistic since there’s not much I can do about it at this point. I’m actually quite excited today for no reason in particular. There are certain contributing factors of course. I got to talk to Mom today, who just got back from a whirlwind weekend in London. While I was talking to her on the phone she said it was “quite possibly the most fun I’ve had in my entire life.” I can’t express how happy it makes me to hear that. I’ve been bragging to my friends about the fact that my mom up and went to London on less than 12 hours notice, how cool is that? Also, my parents had mailed me a transcript of the speech that Steve Jobs
(the CEO and co-founder of Apple Computer) gave at Stanford’s commencement ceremonies. He rephrases the overused cliché “live like you were dying” in a way that I really love. “If today was the last day of my life, would I want to be doing what I’m about to do today?” It makes the phrase so much more applicable, and honestly I gotta say that I’m exactly where I want to be, and that’s quite reassuring. Anyway, I can’t say too much cause I’m on other people’s computers. Check out www.johndeniston.com/blog if you look through it a little you’ll find a link for a video tour of our apartment. I’ll go back later and repost it on my blog for ya’ll for now, consider it an adventure. Cheers ya’ll.

the title's a movie quote... what movie was it?

What's happiness you to David?

2005-09-20T18:34:00.001-07:00

What's happiness you to David?

2005-09-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

Blood for Television

2005-09-09T12:50:00.000-07:00

First and foremost, I have to tell you that this is only the second time I’ve composed a blog post using a computer that was not my own. The first time was in Ireland. So this is a new phenomenon for me in America. For those of you who I have not had the chance to tell yet, I’ve sold my laptop. Currently, the old machine is winging its way to Nigeria. Yes, that is correct, I said Nigeria. The woman who bought it from me lives in Washington and wanted it shipped directly to her nephew in Nigeria. I should be going to get my new computer at the beginning of next week, where I will be moving on to the 12” Powerbook which will be much easier to use in class, and I’ll get a number of advancements that have been made in the two years I had the old computer.

Continuing on with the electronics discourse, I have to take a moment to brag. Our apartment, A36, Lovernich, now is the home to a very large television. For those of you who don’t know what John Deniston (my current roommate) to go pick up the tv. True to her word, the TV was exactly what she said it was, and was in perfect working order, with a gorgeous picture. I quickly found out though that I brought the wrong person to help me get it. I looked up the stats for the tv and found that it weighed 235lbs, and I overestimated John’s strength just a tad. Though John is a flight commander for his AFROTC detachment, he’s built more to be successful in the realm of doing all the pushups, sit-ups, and running that such a position requires than the strength of largeness that carrying large televisions necessitates. We got the TV to the door okay, and then down the two steps off of her small porch when I notice that John’s beginning to shake fairly considerably, so we try to speed it up a little, hoping to make it the last 10 feet to the pickup bed before John kills himself. Big mistake. There was about a 16inch high stone wall sticking out a couple feet from the side of the porch that John failed to notice. Already shaking from the load, he struck his shin fairly decidedly on the tip end of the wall. I’m watching everything in slow motion as John folds in half like a paper doll and just disappears on the other side of the television. The woman we bought it from jumps in just in time to slow the fall of the tv enough that nothing at all was hurt and it landed on it’s base, next to John, rather than on top of him. Still considerably shaken, John and the woman on one side, and I on the other, we picked up the TV and got it the rest of the 7 feet or so into the back of the pickup. Now, before I let you get to far into harassing John for the fact that a woman had to help him on his side of the TV, I have to tell you she was every bit as big as I am and covered in tattoos, exactly the kind of woman you wouldn’t be too ashamed to get a little help carrying something from. I made a few phone calls before we got back to campus, and when we arrived there were four other men waiting to help us get the TV up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. Allowing John to rest and nurse his wounds, the other five of us, with much difficulty, got the set up and into our apartment. But after watching the kick off of NFL football last night on that monster of a television, it was clear that the moral of the story is that good deals on large televisions are worth every drop of blood it takes to get up to your third floor apartment.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Good Day

2005-09-03T23:58:00.000-07:00

“It’s been a good day. It’s been a very good day.” As my roommate, and good friend, John Deniston can attest, those exact words just issued from my mouth. I’m sitting here, listening to Remy Zero, soaking in the moment, reflecting on one of the more enjoyable days that I’ve had in a long time. I woke up naturally around 8am this morning despite staying up late last night, and completely ignoring the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do until about noon decided to go ahead and get up. I used that time to finish my book over the NSA, which I will hopefully be posting a review of soon. Then I ran down to Ralphs and picked up some Bratwursts for lunch. Following lunch, I made my way down to the beach for the annual Campus Ministries sponsored “Fun in the sun day.” This is where throngs of Pepperdine students storm tower 12 at Zuma beach with fervor rivaling that of the allies in Normandy. On the way down to the beach I gave a ride to three girls I hadn’t ever met before, but were looking for a ride. You just gotta love how that works out here. Heading back from the beach I had my former roommate turned RA Ryan Harvey with me when he received a phone call inviting us to join some other friends up at Dresher for some steaks. So, we swung by Ralphs, picked up a healthy sized porterhouse, and as luck would have it Ralphs now carries Stubbs marinade, and had it on sale today. I’ve had a number of very fine steaks in my life, but this one certainly ranks high up on the list. I returned back to my ocean view apartment in Malibu, California (Lovernich A36, just sounds so much more impressive when called an ocean view Malibu apartment) to find that I had an email waiting for me from a woman whom I have been conversing with about buying a TV saying that she has everything ready, and wondered if we would like to pick it up Monday. I’ll save the whole TV story for a post when we actually have it, but it’s been an interesting process. Well, I know that this is one of the less interesting, controversial, or eloquently spoken posts that I’ve ever had, but I’m just feeling good right now and felt like sharing. I will be reformatting my computer tomorrow prior to selling it so I may be out of communication for the next week or so until I get a new one. Have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Semester Outlook

2005-09-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome back for this week’s installment of “Where has Taylor gone to?”
As life would have it, I’ve actually not gone anywhere. I’ve just been very bad about posting. So, here’s the quick and dirty wrap up.

School started this week and I’m pretty busy, here’s the class outlook.

Math 102 – The Nature of Mathematics:
Class looks to be very doable, as long as I keep on top of things. Homework every night, but only a couple pages of problems or so to tackle. Prof is extremely excited about the world of math.

Religion 102- History and Religion of the Early Christians (New Testament)
Will be one of my most demanding classes. Nearly 100 pages of reading prior to each class, random unannounced quizzes, and a 15-page research paper. Professor is an extremely engaging orator, but very strict, doesn’t allow laptops, and I have a hard time keeping up with him on handwritten notes.

Political Science 104- American People and Politics
My only lecture hall class for the semester, PoliSci promises to be a very interesting class indeed. The professor has a Who-Wants-to-be-a-Millionaire-esque audience polling system set up for the class, which provides very interesting feedback. After one class it’s obvious that Pepperdine’s students aren’t quite as politically conservative as the school would suggest. Of course, we are talking about College Students, in Southern California, two of the clearest indicators of liberalness there are.

Communications 300- Communications Research
Class workload would typically intimidate me. However, this prof has a reputation of not actually following that workload very closely. He’s also South Korean, and has a very thick accent that makes him very difficult to understand. I think it would be okay, if we could just get him to speak a little louder than the fan in the projector presenting his powerpoint.

TC 270 (and Lab)- Field Video Production
The professor for this class is a senior editor at ABC/ESPN. On top of that, he’s done just about everything there is to do on the darker side of the camera. Editing, Producing, Directing, Writing, Graphics, etc. Suffice it to say, the guy knows his stuff. The class is at 8am because he has to go into the real world for most of the day. I look forward to learning from him, however the class is starting on a slightly frustrating note as we learn which direction to point a Camera and where the viewfinder is.

I am also enrolled in the Junior Writing Portfolio (JWP301) this semester, which means that I have to submit a portfolio of my various writings to a panel to prove that I’ve sufficiently learned to write effectively. I don’t actually have to write anything new, just organize old papers and send them in. I sincerely hope I can figure out where I put those papers.

And to round it all out I’m enrolled in a class called (I believe) TV261 which simply is a technical recognition for my work in the Television Studio and awards me with a credit hour. Ha! A single hour for the great multitude of time I’m sure to spend working on three separate shows. Oh well, it’s just there to make things look pretty I’m sure.

Yes folks, you got it, that means it’s an 18.5 hour semester when you include that .5 credit for Convo. The most you can have and remain in the flat rate tuition. Oh yeah, did I mention that I’m working in the coffee shops on campus too? It’s a wonderful life! Honestly, I’m very excited about my classes, TV work, and new job. It’s going to be a busy semester, but I like it that way.

My goals for the semester are as follows:
1. No less than another appearance on the Pepperdine Dean’s List. Before first semester last year I never thought this was possible for me, but now that I’ve tasted it, I want more.
2. Be an integral part of a quality Pepperdine TV broadcast. By quality, I mean, my version of quality. I want to be proud of what I’ve done, and the final product of the shows I’m working on. This is something that I did not walk away with after my limited involvement freshman year. I believe that it will be different this year.

Here We Go!

Mr. Reynolds

2005-07-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you who were previously unaware, on this day, July the twenty fifth, year two thousand and five, Mr. Scott T. Reynolds has completed his twenty first year of life on this earth. As such he is now entitled to all the benefits, privileges, and responsibilities such a milestone carries with it.

Happy Birthday Scott.

SAWYER IS EIGHTEEN!

2005-07-24T23:55:00.000-07:00

Attention:

The ever elusive, Sawyer Cade Williams is now 18. That is correct, my bigger little brother, who recently completed his tenure at Coppell High School, is preparing to make his fall debut at Abilene Christian University. Having just returned from Honduras, where he was working with orphans and helping to construct four complete homes, I’m sure he’s got a couple pieces of nice, Honduran, smoke able candy, to properly celebrate this momentous occasion. Enjoy Bro. Congratulations. See you soon.

My afternoon with NASCAR

2005-07-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

“Now I see why NASCAR has fans!”

My friend, apartment mate, coworker, and co-producer Scott Reynolds uttered one of the more poignant lines of the day soon after we arrived at Irwindale Speedway. Both Scott and I accepted an invitation to join Pepperdine alumnus Mike Hurd and the HDNet Production team for the NASCAR event with some degree of trepidation. The thought of driving an hour and a half through LA traffic to watch people make four left turns over and over and over again was, quite frankly, not the most luring prospect in the world. However, the invitation carried with it free pit passes, and a behind the scenes, all access look inside a mobile production unit; an offer we could not possibly pass up.

While waiting for Mike to get back from running a couple errands Scott and I took our first peak at what was to be our entertainment for the following five hours. Though, at the moment, we were merely looking at a few practice warm up laps, the adrenaline rush was instantaneous. This was indeed something very, very cool that we were getting to be a part of.

Throughout the rest of the evening, Scott and I picked Mike’s brain about the television industry and enjoyed the privileges that the HDNet orange wristband bestowed upon us. We were living the high life. After watching a few of the cars go through the screening process to ensure that they were abiding by race regulations, we went for a stroll down the parking lot where all of the race teams were setting up shop. Scott approached the guys sitting around the Goodyear truck and inquired as to what happened to the tires after a race. Though most of them are taken back to Goodyear for post race analysis to ensure that they are wearing in the manor they are expected to, the good ole boys at Goodyear offered Scott as many of the used racing slicks as he wanted. Needless to say, we drove home with as many of the huge worn out tires in the back of Scott’s GTI as we could fit. What really set that experience apart for me was that when we were going to pull the car from the far parking lot, the gentleman at the pit entrance called the shuttle for us rather than having us walk over to our car, something we had not even considered. We were invited to drive Scott’s car in, with and through the racecars, and park it in the pit while we loaded up the tires.

The shuttle then met us at Scott’s parking place once more to bring us back to the pit entrance. This is not the standard operating procedure for your average race-goer who decides to fork up the money to get pit passes. We were being treated as if we were somebody. Quite an intoxicating experience.

As much fun as we had wandering around Irwindale Speedway, in and out of the pits at will, I must say the pinnacle of the evening for me came when we stole a peak inside the Production trailer for forty-five minutes during the race.

There were about fourteen people and a monstrous amount of equipment crammed into a trailer producing a live, high definition, tv broadcast. The level of insanity in the room was astounding. At the moment we chose to step in, there were two cameras currently not working, and a bad data feed from the official NASCAR ranking crew. This meant that the already enormous stress burden on the crew was even more elevated. It took a moment to get my wits together in order to follow what was going on in the control truck, but I soon realized that, though there was constant shouting, it was purposeful, smooth, effective, and the crew managed to throw little one-liners around, proving that they were above the situation, and could handle anything that was thrown at them.

What made the afternoon so incredible was undeniably the quality of the people Scott and I were surrounded with. Mike had gone out of his way to extend the invitation, and made it known to us that his crew was just about as laid back, easy going a crew that a national television network can field at the moment. They were open to any question, however uneducated, I could toss out there, and were enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and love for what they do. Even more than that though was the knowledge that when I was down in the pits, I was back amongst good ole boys. There was no sense of grandeur, warranted or otherwise. Scott and I were even roped into helping one driver push his car out to the track. When the national anthem was sung, there was not a hat that wasn’t removed or a heart that wasn’t crossed. When the prayer was given before the race started, “our boys overseas” were remembered and the amen was followed by cheers. When the day was said and done, the race was ran and won, something that didn’t seem to make sense before the experience was left perfectly clear; now I see why NASCAR has fans.

For more pictures Scott and I took this evening, visit my smugmug gallery.

Photo-blog

2005-07-21T22:54:00.000-07:00

For those of you who actually read this and are tired of so many photograph-laden posts of late, I refuse to apologize. However, I would like to announce that I am starting a photolog (yes, that's right, web log, with photos is a photolog). Have no fear, I still plan on posting my political, social, and otherwise worthless rants when time allows and words remain.

The photolog is available at toadphoto.blogspot.com

I will provide links to the full size pictures posted on my smugmug page so that you may download the photographs for use as desktop backgrounds.

**DISCLAIMER:
Please note that all images are the original, copyrighted work of Taylor Williams, intended for non-commercial use as desktops (wallpapers,) and any other usage is prohibited without expressed written consent.

DPChallenge

2005-07-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

I thought I would endeavor to bring you something a little different in the blog today. I’ve noticed a distinct trend while surfing the Internet recently; it seems that with the advent of digital cameras, or at least scanners, everyone is now an exhibiting photographer. I’m not complaining. Clearly, I also enjoy the ease of photo sharing the digital revolution provides. Therefore I would like to share with you one of my favorite sites on the world wide web.

DPChallenge.com

Digital Photography Challenge dot com is a site that provides weekly challenges for your digital creativity, and allows you to compete against other photographers, amateur and professional, worldwide.

My most recent entry fetched 16th place out of 501 for a challenge entitled Metal… my highest scored/ranked photo so far. Let me know if you join so that I can check out your pics, and I highly encourage you to do so.

Some of my entries for previous competitions:

Challenge: In the beginning…

Challenge: Strength

Challenge: Wheels

Playing with Pictures

2005-07-18T01:04:00.000-07:00

I was playing around with a few black and white photographs from my first month in London and decided to edit a few of them for desktop background resolutions. In case you might be looking to spice up your computer, I have posted them in the Desktop Backgrounds gallery on my smugmug site. The original, unedited versions of the pictures can still be found in the FLM B&W Genesis gallery.

If you decide to use the pictures, please be sure you download the correct picture for either Mac or PC screen resolution. The resolution will be denoted in the photo’s caption.

un-trumpeted return

2005-07-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

I have had more than one person inform me this week that I have been less than diligent in continuing to post on my blog since returning from Europe. I, of course, was completely aware of this shortcoming, however, had not done anything to remedy the situation. This evening I took the chance to catch up on a good friend, future roommate, and, more than probably, your future commander in chief’s blog, and felt compelled to scribble a few words of my own. While my blog to sum up this summer thus far will not contain stories of boot camp or government camp, as this evening’s inspiration does, it will cover a lot of ground, in what I hope is a relatively succinct manor.

First of all, I have been given repetitive leave to acquire a healthy amount of cynicism, perhaps just enough to curb my naturally idealistic outlook, some would say more. That to say I have joined, once more, the ranks of the brokenhearted. It is a complicated story which, in the telling of, even my telling of, I tend to come off as something of an idiot. Therefore, if you don’t know what happened already, chances are good that it’s not worth the explanation.

I have been here at Pepperdine University for the summer working for the Housing Department replacing hundreds of matrices, raising and lowering small countries’ worth of beds, and relocating enough furniture to supply living arrangements for the entirety China’s standing army. The net effect of all this is that I am in better shape physically than I have been in since the end of freshman football two-a-days, and I tend to spend more evenings bored silly than I can handle. So, I got a second job working in the library, and now I get paid to spend my evenings bored silly watching over an empty library.

Finally, I feel compelled to round out my largely un-trumpeted return to the blogosphere with a rant. I love Pepperdine University. I have no doubts that I have made the best choice possible for my so-called higher education. That said, I thought this was supposed to be college! In my mind, college life, especially with respect to living in on campus housing, carries with it certain concessions that must be made. Chief of which is the fact that, as a dorm resident, one must forgo the thought that it is their right to have silence in which to sleep in at night. Because of this, I learned to sleep in a room that was literally rocked, swayed, vibrated, jack hammered by the overly large subwoofer the residents above me insisted on blowing at full blast freshman year. Twice already this week I have been instructed by my RA, whom I live, with, to quiet down. First in regard to my car, which has a worthlessly large exhaust that is louder in idle than most cars are as they approach their engine’s redline. There’s nothing I can do about that, seeing as how I can’t very well turn my engine off and coast uphill and into the parking garage. Secondly with regard to my music, which is played out of a simple bookshelf stereo, not capable of approaching the earthshaking force that left me wondering all freshman year long if I had finally actually felt what 5.0 on the Richter scale feels like. Moreover, I never play my music loud except between the hours of noon and ten pm when every college student in the known, and it’s speculated the unknown as well, universe is wide awake. Ladies and gentlemen, please, oh please realize that you’re in a college dorm… not the Ritz Carrolton, it’s part of the experience, deal with it.

European Travel Guide

2005-04-10T06:53:00.000-07:00

Now that I’ve come to the end of my stay on the other side, I feel obliged to record a few moments thought in reflection. First of all I’ll dispense with the clichés… I had the time of my life. While this statement may hold a fair amount of legitimacy in that this Pepperdine International Programme was one of, if not the, most incredible things I’ve ever done, the cliché falls off when I consider how many times I have stopped to wonder just exactly whose life I’ve been living anyway. So many times I have had to pinch myself and remind me that it is in fact my life, and not just some waking dream. That said, I must admit that after the first couple weeks of the second semester I was ready to be back in America. Even when you’re sleeping on park benches and trying to ignore the nagging in your stomach reminding you that you’ve only been eating one meal a day traveling around Europe is quite expensive. Even more so when you’re living in the island nation which means you have to fly into the continent almost every time you’re going to take a trip. If that wasn’t quite enough, the exchange rate takes another huge bite out of whatever you’ve got. All that to say, if you’re looking at the possibility of spending a semester or a year abroad (Sawyer?) my suggestion would be, plan on staying one semester only and try your hardest to burn yourself out, travel every single weekend, pack it in, it will be much better than spreading it out over a year. You might leave wishing you had stayed longer, but that is much better than staying wishing you had left earlier. I in no way mean to make it sound like I haven’t enjoyed my time here, it has been, as I said before “the time of my life.” What follows is a travel guide as a sort of wrap up and a sort of self-reminder of where all I’ve been.

#1: ITALY
If you get the chance to see one European country, make it Italy.

I say this for a number of reasons, but namely because Italy has everything. The history, the art, the food, the country, the people, it’s all incredible. The number one city you have to go to is Rome. The Coliseum, St. Peters, The Sistine Chapel, the catacombs, The Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and on and on and on, the most awe inspiring city I’ve ever been to. While in Italy, you have to spend some time in Venice. If Rome is the most awe inspiring city in the world, Venice might be the most beautiful. That’s quite a statement, but canal city really is gorgeous. Also, Milan is the second biggest city in the world for shopping and fashion (behind Paris.) Finally, Florence, as the epicenter of the Renaissance, has some absolutely immaculate art, such as Michelangelo’s David. I found the Italian people to be some of the most welcoming and least hostile in my traveling and no end of good things can be said about the food. All of these things taken together lead me to say that Italy has to top the list, unchallenged, for places you have to see.

More Italy Pictures Here

DISCLAIMER: After Italy all of the countries are very close and vary depending on personal preference in traveling. I will attempt to rank them as far as my own personal experiences and perceptions will carry me.

#2: Greece

For my money, if you see two countries, add Greece right in after Italy. Perhaps it is because I am fascinated by ancient culture and Mediterranean climate. For whatever reason, Greece is a great place to see. Greek food is definitely not up to par with the Italian’s but you certainly won’t go hungry. Athens is, of course, the number one stop. The Acropolis certainly did not disappoint, the city is a fun place to be. If you really enjoy seeing the ruins, Delphi is the place to see. Olympia was somewhat anticlimactic, but that had a lot to do with an exhausting day of traveling to get there. Though I did not get a chance to take the ferry out to an island, everyone who did said that it was pristine, and who wants to pass up a chance to swim in the Mediterranean?

More Greece Pictures Here

#3: Paris

My personal experience in Paris left much to be desired, but what do you expect when you get stuck going alone? Though the French certainly were the most hostile I encountered, the grandeur of their capitol city earns them my number three ranking. Notre Dame was, with the exception of St. Peter’s in Rome, probably the most imposing cathedral I’ve experienced. The Louvre rightly deserves it’s place as the most well known museum in the world, and more than one day needs to be spent inside to see any single wing of it. I, sadly, did not get to go into the d’Orsay, which is supposed to be the quintessential collection of impressionist art in the world, because it was closed when I tried to get in. The Museums, along with the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe make Paris a great place to see.

More Paris Pictures Here

#4: England

Let’s not forget the place that I have called home for the last year, or at least the place I’ve lived in. England has quite a bit to offer. Besides an interesting history which is inextricably intertwined with our own as Americans, there is quite a bit to be seen here. The museums are definitely world class, and they are free. Though a lot of people found Stonehenge to be a let down, I was quite impressed. I think the trick is to turn around and get a bit of perspective on the fact that these rock are set up in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere. The food in England is not as bad as everyone says it is. Just expect small quantities, no refills, no ice, no spices, and no service. There’s a reason no one tips here. Fish and chips is usually pretty good, though. It doesn’t rain as much as we are led to believe, but it does almost always look like it is about to rain or has just finished raining. Overall, a great place to visit, and it is really nice to be able to speak the native language.

More England Pictures Here *Just one of my England galleries

#5: Belgium

The trick to enjoying Belgium, is to not spend your time in Brussels, which has very little to offer other than any other large city. Ere go, the time we spend in Brugges was incredible. Belgium is know for a few things: Lace, waffles, and chocolate. Yes, they do have stands on the side of the road where you can get a waffle topped with powdered sugar, and yes they are very good. I couldn’t really care less about the lace, but the chocolate, oh the chocolate, now that was amazing. I can’t explain it, but if Hershey’s, Cadbury, or even Godiva is your idea of good chocolate, you don’t know what you’re missing. On top of all of that, Brugges is an incredibly gorgeous city, and an extremely unique one at that.

More Belgium Pictures Here

#6: Ireland

It pains me greatly to place Ireland at the bottom of this ranking. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, however, I couldn’t help feeling we missed the heart of the island. We spent nearly all of our time in and around Dublin, and from the very small bit outside the city we got to see I feel that you have to get out to appreciate the Emerald Isle. There’s a lot of culture in Dublin, but for the most part it falls under the category of just another city. There’s something that I loved about being there, but it was much more of an intangible, inexplicable ambiance that I connected with. I would love the chance to explore the west coast and go see some of the sights of Ireland. Hopefully that will happen someday.

More Ireland Pictures Here

***Of course, there are a lot of places that I did not get a chance to visit, so this is in no way, shape, or form a complete attempt at a European travel guide. Merely a year wrap up for myself. Pretty cool huh?

Words on a Page

2005-03-25T08:30:00.000-08:00

For the past week I have been in deep over my head with stacks of term papers due this up coming Tuesday. Mostly, I have been pouring over Edmund Burke’s explanation of the sublime, moreover, my rebuttal of his arguments, and their manifestations in three of the paintings exhibited by Joseph Mallord William Turner in 1842 at the British Royal Academy of Art. This essay has been giving me trouble. For some reason, though I have a complete grasp on the intricacies of the arguments I am trying to present, I am having much difficulty simply getting the words on the page. “Words on the page” was a mantra that suited me very well last semester as I coached myself, “You know what you’re talking about, you make good arguments, just get the words on the page and don’t worry about anything else right now.” I am partially being held up at the moment because I have, probably unwisely, decided to tackle a subject, which I find interesting, however is squarely within the area over which my professor did her doctoral dissertation at Berkeley before returning to her native Britain. That situation leaves me in a precarious balance. If I do this well and articulate my arguments precisely and completely I will not only be guaranteed an A for the essay, but be in the teacher’s good graces approaching finals (in two weeks). However, if I present my argument fairly well, but miss out on a couple bits of information, whish she is sure to be aware of, I am setting myself up to receive no higher than a B-. There is precious little chance for me to rest among some middle ground here. Though, in a larger sense, that is what I have set myself up for throughout my entire colligate direction. I can, and will be, successful in this. I will be. I just needed to take a second and get some words on a page, even if they are not currently extending the three pages I currently have for my term paper.

GREEN

2005-03-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

I must say that this past weekend was the shortest one I’ve had all year long. That was due to the fact that I had a visitor. This little art student I know flew all the way from LA to come spend three days with me. She also happens to be my girlfriend… I know, Lucky me! We spent almost all of the weekend in museums, which neither of us had any problems with at all. Besides, they’re (say it like Tracy) “FRRRRRRRREEee!” Friday, we went to the Victoria and Albert museum where we saw everything from JMW Turner and John Constable paintings, to plaster casts of Michelangelo’s David and the front of the Baptistery at the Duomo, to two of the dresses from the recent film production of The Phantom of the Opera. Spent most of the afternoon there, then walked around a little while more before diner. Saturday, we went to the Tate Britain. Not only does this museum have a number of great artists in its galleries, but they had on a Turner Whistler Monet exhibit which both of us really wanted to go to, so we did. It was so much fun to sit there, staring at these incredible, world renowned, paintings and see if I could hold my own talking about them with a second generation art student. I really didn’t have a chance, but I put up a valiant effort none the less. If you’re overcome with jealousy and want to drool more, you can check out the actual paintings that were included in the exhibit at www.tate.co.uk. After the Tate Britain, we went over to the Tate Modern. There we looked at more Monet, Picasso, Mondrian, Warhol, Rothko, and so on, and so on. We followed that up with a good old fish and chips diner and headed to Trafalgar Square to go to the National Gallery. Only, we didn’t make it to the National Gallery because there was a huge anti-war rally going on. Interestingly enough, I was dressed more blatantly American that day than I have in a long time. Laci? Well, she was wearing her ‘It’s Better In Texas Shirt’! Awesome. We strolled through the piles of beer cans and stood in the background watching the insanity for a while. The ignorance was amazing. I particularly found the phrase “21 countries is another word war” to be quite humorous. Especially considering the fact that a couple moths ago the problem was supposedly that we didn’t have enough other countries. Anyway, Sunday morning we had to get up early and be on the Tube by nine in order to get Laci to the airport in time to make her noon flight back to LA. It was a great weekend, but it was way too short. But, I’ve only got 22 days left before I make it back to Texas… until then I’ll have to play Pat Green and Jerry Jeff a little louder and study a little harder. Adios

Today (is gonna be the day that they throw it all back to you)

2005-03-17T00:49:00.001-08:00

It's a beautiful day, the SUN is shining, the birds are singing outside my window, the jackhammer doing construction down the street didn't start till 6.30, and I woke up at five am and couldn't fall back asleep. That's okay though, because it inspired me to get up and make the eggs and bacon I purchased yesterday. And what a glorious breakfast it was! I have only another two classes separating me from the weekend and I believe that redheads naturally enjoy Patty's day more than most.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO JAXON!!! My little bro today leaves the ranks of pre-adolescence and joins the few, the proud, the teen-agers. A club which took me seven years to advance from, only just leaving a few months prior, in January of this year. Jaxon, love it, make sure you give mom a big hug today, and let her know that you'll always be her baby. You don't really have a choice, I'm her baby too.

Mom, I love you.

Jaxon in Hawaii, Summer ’03 (sorry this old pic is the only one I have)

Creation

2005-03-12T01:01:00.000-08:00

I’m in one of those moods again, and I find myself here often, where I have an overwhelming, innate desire to create. The desire for creation is one which I believe that God has inset in everyone of us from the moment of our conception, not the physical conception that results in the birth of a human personage, but divine conception (not to be confused with the immaculate conception) whereupon God weaves us together, at some point in His neverending mind, one by one, individually receiving divine influence at our own creation. This desire must stem from being made in His likeness with the understanding that His nature must contain somewhere at its root the same desire for creation. How else could existence have been spoken into existence? Throughout my life this desire to create has manifested itself in innumerable forms. As a child I played with Legos, and numerous other similar toys based on the building block concept. I always use the directions that come in the box to make the space ship or boat or whatever the set is intended to build, but it never lasts long, the desire always surfaces to build something better, cooler, stronger, more powerful, but above all original. I used to even have a sketchbook, though I would never share my complete inability to draw with you. That desire to create, and create something original, has carried me into sound mixing, computer graphics, poetry, video editing, I even try to play guitar. What I can never figure out is, what is the natural resolution of this desire? Can I ever create something that fulfils my desire to create? What would that take? I have to assume that the only logical fulfillment of that desire would have to be the creation of perfection. But does the poet strive for the perfect poem, does the painter strive for the perfect painting, does/did God strive for the perfect creation? Apart from the latter, which I do not begin to approach an understanding of, the answer is clear. Yes, and no. There are times when an artist or a poet strives for something that would be viewed as the technical pinnacle of their vocation, but in many cases they come nearer to achieving they come nearer to achieving that lofty plain when their intent is something much nearer to expression, when their desire is simply to put a piece of themselves into their work and perhaps convey a little meaning, a little insight, a little epiphany, that is otherwise impossible to convey. Is that the true goal then? The impossible? Again, yes and no. What about beauty? So often beauty seems to be the de facto desire when the creations of a person, perhaps deemed to be an artist, are taken in. Once more, yes and no, so often beauty is pushed aside in favor for the grotesque or sublime. I believe that it is painfully clear that this is another question that I will not receive the answer to till I can ask God himself someday in the hereafter, for I believe that the actual answer to that lies in the very meaning for existence’s creation. For now, I’ll simply turn my desire for creation back towards Peperdine and see if I can’t manage to create a humanities term paper, after all, it is Friday night, why wouldn’t I be doing homework?

Taiwan and Tangents

2005-03-08T21:47:00.000-08:00

Feeling extremely out of contact with the current state of affairs of the world at large recently I spent a little time this evening perusing CNN, WSJ, FOXnews, and MSNBC. Once I had riffled through all the headlines bringing me up to date on the Jacko trial and Clinton’s soon to come surgery I found that the biggest commonality amidst all the outlets to be a growing concern over Taiwan/China relations. It seems that the Chinese have introduced a bill authorizing the use of military force in the event that Taiwan takes steps to formally declare their independence. The United States has come down firmly on the Taiwanese side of the matter, defending the Island Nation’s right to succession. I find myself at a crossroads when it comes to the matter and a number of intrinsic questions seem to arise. First of all, is it hypocritical of the US to support Taiwanese succession when this country itself is firmly set against the idea? Before I take this off into tangentville, I would also like to note that some people believe China to be THE military and economic force in the world today, and the US is merely still playing out the role because there hasn’t been a major conflict to re-establish the international pecking order. What would happen if conflict between Taiwan and mainland China broke out? Would the US fulfill its obligations to Taiwan? Could the US fulfill its obligations to Taiwan? I would really like to see what you think, I’ll just say, I don’t know.

As far as the question of secession goes, I’ll go ahead and state very clearly that I am a conservative idealist. I, for one, do support any place’s right to secession in the event that it determines the country is no longer satiating its needs and right to life and liberty. I think that all other internal avenues must first be exhausted, but sometimes it does become necessary to secede. That is, after all, what the American Revolution was, nothing less than secession from the British Empire. The American Civil War, as a counter example, conjures questions about the ability to follow though with internal diplomacy, but one thing to come out of the Civil War that I firmly disagree with is the abolition of the States’ right to secede. I wonder if the US is missing out on its historical grandeur by forsaking the concept of federalism and moving closer and closer to an actualization of a single Nation/State, divided into 50 counties, which simply retain the historical nomenclature of the entities they once were. Now, I by no means mean to appear reactionary, I would simply like some consideration for our current situation. Is America still the United States, or do we need to recognize how drastic of a change has been effected in that dynamic?

God Bless the USA!

2005-03-02T19:39:00.000-08:00

What a crazy past couple weeks it has been. I wake up one day and I’m in London complaining about the fact that it’s still warm here despite all the warnings of how this is supposed to be an extremely harsh winter. The next day I find myself in Florence standing in awe of Michelangelo’s masterpiece David. After a few days in Italy I shoot back to London just in time to spend Valentines Day at parliament and an extra long history class. Pack, go to bed, wake up just in time to hop on a bus to a plane to Ireland for a week. Come back to London just in time to have an afternoon’s rest before the beginning of a snowy midterms week the next day. Then four days later back to the airport for an 11 hour flight back to LA for spring break. What do I have to say about that? Well, I’m sick of course. Not enough sleep, plus tons of stress, on top of LA’s pollution and the transfer from a couple weeks of snowy weather to So Cal sun bridged by an 11 hour plane ride breathing everyone’s germs has broken me. Now you know what it takes to bring me down (and if you feel inclined to provide the international travel to do so, please feel free). Not to worry though, I have a girlfriend who is just loving the opportunity to treat me like a helpless three year old. I would be content to just lay on the couch till it all blows over, but she’s constantly there asking if I need orange juice, cough drops, Tylenol, a cold rag for my head, a popsicle, or warm salt water to gargle with? Well, I’m almost back to 100 percent now and am once again enjoying every minute of peace I can pull out of this glorious reprieve. Yes, I’m back in the good old USA for a week, home of large portions, ice and refills, steak that tastes like it came from a cow rather than a donkey and a phenomenon known as iced tea in most restaurants. It was great to see my friends back on campus at Pepperdine. It was nice to see the sunshine again. It was good to be driving on the right side of the road without fearing for your life, willing the cab driver to get back across the yellow line to the left side of the road. But, save for the thrill of seeing Laci again, and nothing could match that, the best thing I have done here is eat. Homemade scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast (yes, she even cooks for me, how awesome is that?), In n Out for lunch, capped off with Outback for diner. It doesn’t matter what else happens during the day when your meals look like that, it will be a good day. I am having the time of my life traveling around Western Europe, taking in things that most people never get to see, and seeing them with my own eyes rather than in an antiquated art book or history channel special. At some level however, I recognize my innate joy at the prospect of coming home to the US has grown with each departure. It’s an incredible experience to take off and see the world, but it’s made my roots stronger. There is not place else I could ever live than the country that bore me. I say now with more passion and vigor than ever before GOD BLESS THE USA!!!

Break, Brake, Broken

2005-02-21T10:25:00.000-08:00

It snowed today, and I'm cold. I was in class so I didn't get a chance to take any pictures. I have more work to do in the next three days than is possible to do in a week. Please forgive the absence in most things, and brevity in the few, if any, correspondences I am able to get out.

The Warrior Poet

2005-02-19T17:24:00.000-08:00

I had a little free time before diner tonight and decided to stop off at the internet café across the street from our hotel and give everyone a little update from the Emerald Isle. I absolutely love it here. There’s something about it that feels like home. Maybe it has to do with the fact that for the last few months I’ve absorbed the way people look at Ireland within Europe and have begun to equate it to the European version of Texas. Being here has sunk that in even further. I walked into a convenience store in a smaller town on the coast yesterday and the guy working there actually initiated a nice little conversation with me. People here are loud, they are loyal, and they are fiercely faithful. There’s also something about a society built around the mythos of great their great warrior poets as the pinnacle of their aspirations that sustains a great amount of resonance with me. Now, I have also enjoyed the fact that with my red hair, beard, my new favourite hat, wool coat, and the occasional cigar or pipe in my mouth that I fit in extremely well. We’ve spent a lot of time in and around the city of Dublin and have only travelled outside a little. We went out to Howth, which is on the coast, and Malahyde Castle yesterday, and went up in the Wicklow mountains to Glendelough a few days before that. This place is just incredibly beautiful, and I know that there’s no way that you can see that from my pictures. But they’ll be up sometime tomorrow night for you to see what you can. I’ve just been spitting out words as fast as I can for the moment before I have to take off right now. I’ll try to organize some thoughts and make a more comprehensive post later. But for now, I’m gonna go take care of other business. Cheers.

Before or After: David AS Goliath

2005-02-13T01:46:00.000-08:00

So, I’m told there’s this debate among artists, historians, art historians, and other merely interested parties as to whether Michelangelo’s sculpture of David is supposed to be a depiction of him before or after his slaying of Goliath. That is something that I went into the Academia intending to formulate an opinion on for myself. The first thing that struck me about the statue was it’s scale. I had it in my mind for some reason that the statue was life size, and was supposed to be an incredible example of the human form. Imagine my wonder when I walk into the room and see a depiction of David, as Goliath. The detail on the statue is absolutely amazing, there’s no way I can explain the monument for you here. After all, entire volumes have been written by much more gifted writers than myself, for now, I’ll refer you to them. I did form my own opinion on the debate though. I believe that it is before he threw the stone. There are two main reasons for this. First of all are his eyes; they are focused very intently on some object off in the distance, rather than being elated at his victory. Secondly is simply his body’s position. His weight is in his right leg, and his left leg is raised, cocked at the knee looking as if he were preparing to move quickly and powerfully. What it actually reminded me of was a pitcher just leaving his set position on the mound. Hopefully, I’ll have a picture up soon and you can find out for yourself. For now I can't seem to find one that will link correctly for my post. You'll have to find one for yourself... shouldn't be hard. What do you think, before or after?

David and Gol... I mean, The Duomo

2005-02-13T00:15:00.000-08:00

A special thank you to the four people who read this blog. It’s really good to know someone’s out there.

Thanks to the fact that my place of residence for this weekend in Florence is the Villa of the Pepperdine Italy Program, I have unlimited internet access. Normally I wouldn’t take the time away from a weekend in Italy to post, but since I will be headed to Ireland next week I thought that I would go ahead and take advantage of this free time while the girls get ready for diner. It has been a good weekend. There was a day long train strike in the country when we arrived yesterday morning, so we had to take a bus from Pisa out to Florence. Once we arrived at the villa the first order of business was lunch. I was encouraged by one of the students here to get a cappuccino along with my panino for lunch, and was reminded just how incredible the coffee is here. I like coffee, but this is the only country where I’ve had a cappuccino that I truly enjoyed, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to anywhere else now. I’ll just have to stick to my lattes everywhere else. After that, we went to the Academia, which is filled with Renaissance Art and still functions as a small national art school for Italy today. The crowning masterpiece on display at the museum, of course is Michelangelo’s David. The statue is a truly monumental piece of work and deserves a post to itself, so I’ll neglect it for the moment. Next we continued down the street to The Duomo. “Duomo” is nothing more than Italian for dome, but The Cathedral of Florence is typically just referred to as The Duomo. Believe it or not, that’s because it’s prominent feature is an absolutely enormous dome. This is like no cathedral I’ve ever seen. Standing in front of it, the cathedral feels like the largest one I’ve seen yet, but I think that is because the surrounding buildings do not allow you to take in the whole thing. You can only see it relatively close up, which makes the building tower over you, and emphasizes the extremely intricate detail of the structure. When I get my pictures up (hopefully tomorrow night) you can see for yourself. After that we climbed the 414 steps to the top of the bell tower and were rewarded with an incredible view of the city. Those were the top sights of the city, so we followed it up with a shotgun tour of the other major churches. I remember being impressed with the fact that our friend who was taking us around said something about that being one of the “other churches here in Florence.” Here we were looking at a cathedral that is, at the very least, twice as old as the nation I so proudly call home and we’re passing it off as one of the other churches here in Florence. What an incredible year it’s been. I spent most of today wandering around on my own. I went to the leather market, and a number of little shops, though I really didn’t buy much of anything. Just a little gift for my sister’s Valentines day present. I did eat some gelato and drink some coffee though, couldn’t help it… it’s ITALY.

Schedule (say it: SHED djew al)

2005-02-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

As is the life of a Pepperdine University International student, I have a very hectic schedule over the next couple weeks. I just thought I would take a moment to explain my soon to come extended absence from the blogosphere. In a matter of a few hours I will be hopping in a Taxi with three of the girls here at 56 Prince's Gate to alight for our weekend getaway to Florence. I’ll be back Sunday night, and spend the majority of the Lover’s Holiday at Parliament with my history class. Then early Tuesday morning, we’ll be headed to the Emerald Isle for our Educational Fieldtrip. I’ll be there till late the next Sunday, will come back to London for three grueling days of Midterm Evaluations, and finally, leave on Thursday for the land of perpetual sunshine, and the current home of the most beautiful woman I’ve met in all my travels around the globe. I will stay there for a week soaking up the sun, and enjoying the beach while trying to clear my head of the London dreariness (I’ll have to explain the concept of the London tent later.) In trying to determine whether or not to continue posting here, could I please encourage you to leave a comment or two for me to actually determine if anyone’s still reading?? I would really appreciate it. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to post again before I get back from Spring Break in So Cal, but you never know… I might just jump right up there and surprise you!

Checker

2005-02-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

The Museum of Childhood, located in the far reaches of Zone 2 on the London Underground, is something that I could have gone my entire life without ever knowing existed and I would have probably been better off for it. It’s not that anything bad happened, not at all, it’s just that rather than learning about the developmental and behavioral stages of childhood, the majority of us just reverted to childhood ourselves. Out of all the Lego towers, sandboxes, towers made out of stools, and all the other randomness that ensued I must say that my high, or low, point for the trip had to be a quite intense game of Checker I had with Dap. No, that’s not a typo, we only had one piece, therefore we played checker… I won.

Crepe it one more time

2005-02-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

Just a quick follow up to the last post...
It appears that the creperie I mentioned last week is attempting history today. Well, yesterday and today I should say. They are attempting to set the world record for the most crepes made in a 48 hour period. Now as far as I can tell, there isn’t a record for that as of yet, so I expect their attempt to be fruitful. The more important fact is, that that translated into a free crepe for me at 3am yesterday. Beautiful.

Creperie de Hampstead

2005-01-26T13:10:00.000-08:00

This stuff is so good, I can’t believe that I had never had one until I came to London. The stuff to which I am referring, of course, is the warm chocolate goodness of the crepe. If you’ve never had one, you don’t know what you’re missing. As far as food goes, there are so many things I miss about the good old US of A while I’m here. Ice in drinks that get refilled as many times as you want for one example. However, there are an equal number of items that just aren’t the same in America. When’s the last time you had a good plate of Bangers and Mash? How about really good curry you got from that little place in China town you love so much? Or even mincemeat pies… okay so there are a lot of foods here that are not so good either. But back to the crepe, just down the street from us is a little place called the Creperie de Hampstead, on occasion I’ll join one of the massive groups that goes there after diner to pick up a Belgium Dark Chocolate and Hazelnut Cream Crepe… and I never regret it. I did that tonight, and now you know.
Cheers!
www.hampsteadcreperie.com

That's Mister John David Deniston, thank you very much.

2005-01-22T19:57:00.000-08:00

I apologize for my lack of activity in the realm of the blog recently, it is a crazy world I live in, and one I should be taking time to write a few lines about sooner than later. For the moment though I would like to take a moment to send a shout out for my fellow CultureShockFM host, future President of this the United States of America, blogger-extraordinaire, and good friend John Deniston. Check out the article he links in his blog HERE. John, I’m proud to know you.

The French Connection

2005-01-17T13:22:00.000-08:00

Back from Paris, and I have to admit it was quite an experience. I did get to see almost everything I was wanting to see… I didn’t make it to the d’Orsay, it turns out that that museum is closed on Mondays, so I caught an earlier train and come home late Sunday night. I spent a lot of time walking along the river… that way I always knew where I was, and a lot of the important stuff is right on the river… the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, The Louvre, and a lot of random little buildings are all right on, or very close to the river itself. I put a new photo gallery up already with my digital pictures from the trip, HERE.. I was fighting a dying battery in my digital camera the whole time, so I don’t have as many as I might otherwise, and for some reason my website didn’t upload the pictures in order, so they might appear to be a little oddly placed. I found the French to very much fit into their stereotype: quite rude (especially when I talked with an American accent, I faked a Russian one after that and since they don’t hear many Russians speaking in English I got away with it, I just had to keep my red hair covered); lots of guys with long hair, and everyone was so skinny I wonder if a nationwide epidemic of anorexia hasn’t broken out. Other than bad experiences with the people, the place was incredible, everything was at least four times as big as I expected it to be. The Louvre, being the crowning glory of my trip, let me completely in awe. I’ll never have quite as much admiration for the National Gallery here in London as I used to. All in all, it was a good trip, but it was lonely there by myself, and I think that that is a city that can be much, much more enjoyed with the aide of a bag of gold. One day, when I’m rich, I’ll go back and see if that thought is true.

An American in Paris

2005-01-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Through an interesting situation I was given a free ticket to go to Paris tomorrow. All I had to pay for was a ticket to get back, so for 40 pounds I’m going to spend Saturday afternoon, all day Sunday, and Monday morning in the city of love. My goal is to see the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Musee d’Orsay, the Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. If that wasn’t enough of a challenge, my further goal is to spend no more than 50 Euro the entire weekend through arriving back at the house Monday afternoon. I actually think I can do this because I don’t plan on going in Notre Dame, will just do stairs at the Eiffel Tower, and if I can pass myself off as an art student, or as a 17 year old, entrance to the d’Orsay and the Louvre will be free. In keeping with the spirit of the title of this post (or at least its namesake), I will be videotaping snippets of this journey, and may randomly burst into song at any given moment. Expect there to be many pictures, many stories, and many strange experiences to share Monday night!

Aero

2005-01-12T17:10:00.000-08:00

Top Three Signs that you have done more than your share of flying:

1) You recognize flight attendants and know which airport they operate out of.

2) You know the layout of the seats on different aircraft to the point that you know that being in seat 21E on an American Airlines 777 means you’re in the middle seat of the second row of coach before you get to the airplane.

3) You know where the gate you’re connecting with is, even in an airport that is not the one by your house.

I used to love flying. There’s something magical about soaring above the earth at thirty-nine thousand feet, but the more I do it, the more I begin to loathe it. Maybe it’s just the fact that I can’t sleep on planes, especially since they almost never turn the lights off in coach. Maybe it’s just the fact that the larger you are, the less room you have, and I inevitably end up between two people larger than myself, and on international flights, the people I’m between inevitably don’t believe in bathing. Maybe it’s just that it got old. Perhaps if I was nicer about it, they wouldn’t give me such a hard time, but I want that arm rest and I learned a long time ago that elbows are just about the only way to get it. It’s probably all of the above, and then some, but flying no longer holds any mystique for me. I’m ready for that whole space plane thing to get going, you know, the one that can take you all the way around the world in two hours. Yeah, that would be nice. Or perhaps I just need to make a filthy amount of money and buy my own personal Learjet. I wouldn’t end up in the position I am in that way. In the mean time, anyone got an extra Learjet lying around they feel like letting me borrow?

Look who's back.

2005-01-08T15:37:00.000-08:00

It’s been over a month since m last post, I think it’s safe to say a lot has happened. As is status quo among college students, finals week kicked my butt. I was glad to get it behind me and come home to good ole’ Dallas, Texas, “the friendliest people and the prettiest women you ever seen,” oh so true. I spent most of my time working, and just about every other waking moment with Laci. This morning she left for Otis College of Art and Design (in LA), and I leave Monday to head back to London. Hope all is well with all of you, and look for more frequent posts with school gearing back up next week.

Soap

2004-12-07T20:57:00.000-08:00

My friends, it’s been a long past two weeks. I thought about sitting down and trying to recount all that I have done, but as soon as that thought came into my mind I realized that I just flat out don’t want to think about it. Tomorrow I have my astronomy exam and a party. One of these days in the near future I’ll have to sit down and write out a general reflection of the semester… so consider that your teaser for this post. I guess for the most part I’m just flat out exhausted. I hate the fact that the human body, mine in particular at the moment, can be so totally devoid of all energy and possess no motivation whatsoever to be awake, and still lack the ability to go to sleep. I am Jack’s insomnia. After putting in a long study session after diner tonight I sat down to unwind and watched Good Will Hunting. At the part where Robin Williams is talking to the professor trying to explain why Will (Matt Damon) still hangs out with his “lowlife” friends. He says “You don’t understand. He hangs out with ‘em because any single one of them would gladly take a baseball bat to your head if he asked them to” a lot of the people watching it started commenting on their friends. “My friends wouldn’t do that, they would tell me I was crazy.” “Yeah, mine might take a bat to my head if I said that.” “I don’t think a real friend would do that.” It just got me thinking, and though I only commented on it in passing I know for certain, that I have friends like that. It’s not so much a matter of friends being willing to physically assault someone on my behalf, but it’s a commentary on their willingness to do whatever I need them to do. It is friends like that that I am looking forward to going home to, and it is friends like that that I can trust when everything seems against me. You know who you are, and I thank you. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of this world.

Finals week!

2004-12-02T10:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time again. The time that every student world 'round dreads with the same passion that a clostropic person has for the concept of being stuck in the same elevator with the entire front line of the Dallas Cowboys; Finals. Thankfully I had enough forsight to get started on everything LAST weekend. I say thankfully because it would have not been physically impossible for me to get all this work done this weekend. As it is, I've developed a more than minor case of insomnia in my attempts to get all my essays written, videos edited, and still make time to study for exams. It's been a long week, and next week will only echo it. When it's all over though, I'll be on an American Airlines 777 headed for the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving From the land that we're all celebrating getting away from!

2004-11-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

It’s Thanksgiving and I feel compelled to write something profound, meaningful, stirring, or at least mildly compelling. However, if you happen to be looking for anything that fits any of these criteria, I’m afraid you have stumbled across the wrong blog. I set out to make my mom’s cranberry salad as my contribution to our Thanksgiving feast here in 56 Prince’s Gate, an endeavor that was fraught with opposition. My mom’s main concern ingredient wise was over my ability to find cranberries, however, that proved to be no problem whatsoever. Pecans, however, were nowhere to be found. I decided to substitute them with almonds, since they were the only unroasted, unsalted nuts in the store. The main problem however is that this house has no chopper and I had to do it all by hand. It didn’t strike me how difficult this was going to be, but after three hours of chopping, mincing, and dicing with a dull knife and wobbly cutting board, I came to realize I had grossly underestimated this task. It was a good use of my time though, I had a number of good conversations in our closet of a kitchen and impressed a number of people with my culinary determination. This morning I was greeted with the sweet news that my one class for the day had been canceled and I could sleep in a little, an opportunity which I took wholeheartedly, as I have been getting over a little bout of something I was dealing with yesterday morning, I’m well now though. Sitting at my computer working on Middle East homework, for some reason I started to wonder what we will be drinking with our meal tonight. I rue the thought of another thanksgiving with no sweet tea. Then I remembered that one of the good southern girls in the house had her mom send over some tea bags and I used a few of them to make a good pitcher of sweet tea, which I am thoroughly enjoying even as I type this. That said there are many, many things that I am thankful for today. I will go for the unoriginal listing of them and see how far I get.

I am thankful for:
Sweet Tea
The chance to go places that make my parents jealous
True friends that not only keep in contact with me from one coast to the other, but internationally as well
A computer that works when all the others in the house are deathly ill with viruses
A mom that prays for me, and my family, unceasingly.
The belief that MY COUNTRY has in Freedom.
Good music over good headphones.
Being in school
The ability to make nachos, tacos, and other Tex-Mex staples in a country that thinks Mexican and Spanish are the same thing.
Trust in the knowledge that I don’t have to do it on my own.
So many other things that I don’t have space, or time to express.

I have to go get ready for diner. I love all of you, and I’m looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks at Christmas.
Cheers!

U2 To You Too

2004-11-21T09:11:00.000-08:00

Guys, I gotta tell you, I had an awesome weekend. I got a lot of sleep, a lot of work done, a lot of fun in and it’s not quite over. Friday I headed out to Mac Expo and got to play with all the new High Technology toys, a trip that constantly reminded me of something Dad says a lot, only, in this case very much taken out of context, “All it takes is money.” Haha, right after I get my mom her car, I think I’m just gonna buy Apple, Canon, Sony, and Bose. You can all borrow my toys whenever you want, just please ask first, and not until I actually have them. I spent most of yesterday sitting in different museums in front of different paintings by Joseph Mallord William Turner, writing my art term paper. I did a lot of the same today. I’m not done quite yet, but after another afternoon of writing, and one more of formatting and revising, I’ll be good to go. Now I’m waiting for the sun to go down so I can go take a few more pictures. I’ve been experimenting with light sources at dusk, and am anxious to develop my film when I get home for Christmas. Later tonight, I will be heading out to Piccadilly Circus to wait in line for the U2 album release. U2 is actually advertising it on their website (the London party type thing, not just the release), so who knows, maybe they’ll just drop in and tell me hello. Andy, I won’t tell the Edge about that reoccurring dream you have about being him, on stage with nothing on but your Gibson Les Paul. It’s starting to get cold enough here for me to be uncomfortable outside with just a jacket on. I think I’ve got a group of students talked into going with me… furthermore, since they have new iPods, they’re going to give me the u2 one if any of them win it. Who knows, I can dream right? I often do, don’t wake me.

What do Canon Digital SLRs and iPods have in common?

2004-11-19T10:33:00.000-08:00

I want you to close your eyes. Okay, don’t, because then you couldn’t read this. Just imagine with your eyes open: you’re in a room, an extremely large room; in fact it’s actually a convention center. There’s a strange vibe surrounding you, but it takes you a moment to figure out what it is. You just keep thinking any minute you’re going to be trampled by a stampede of overweight, middle aged men wearing Star Trek t-shirts. It finally hits you what the vibe is, you are in the middle of what is quite possibly the largest gathering of geeks, nerds, and otherwise techno-dweebs this world has ever seen. Now, in your minds eye, look at the faces. Do you see me? I’m the guy in the jeans, diagonal-blue-striped white button down shirt, and black sports coat with the satchel bag slug over his back. Yep, that’s me, back in the corner playing with the new U2 Special Edition iPod. That little out of body experience you just went on took you to MacExpo 2004 at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London. And no, you were not imagining things; it really was me back in the corner. I got up around the crack of noon today and headed off on a 50 minute cross-town train [ride] in the London Underground. After an hour in line and a modest 10 pound fee, I was in. Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t as much a meeting of the dorks that you might think, Apple has been incredibly successful at carving out its niche in pop culture and that was evident today. I had a chance to play with the new operating system that’s due to be released in the “first half of 2005,” Final Cut Pro HD set up on a G5 with dual 23” screens, the new iMac G5, gorgeous, Bose’s sounddock for iPod… amazing, Canon’s new Digital SLRs… wow, up to 16.7 Mega pixels… that’s unbelievable, the new “The Incredibles” game, and finally, got to sit in the Colorworx Ferrari sitting out front. It was a good afternoon. I finished it up by swinging by Lillywhites and getting my second installment of Christmas shopping done, they were having a huge sale today and I found a number of things for 1 pound. I’m almost finished, and glad for it. Anyway, the first European Apple store opens tomorrow morning at 10am, I think I’m going to forgo that in lue of an essay over Joseph M. W. Turner. But, U2’s new album does come out Monday, and I’ll be in line at Virgin Megastore in Piccadilly Circus Sunday at midnight to be one of the first ones to own a copy. I’ll have listened to it a number of times before you can buy it in the states! Haha. Cheers mates.

Amphibious Articles

2004-11-18T10:56:00.000-08:00

The overwhelming majority of my life the past couple weeks has been dedicated to the rapid completion of a number of essays. In fact, that will be the common theme for the remainder of this semester. For some reason, I felt like I should at least put this part of my life on the web for you to criticize at your leisure. As such, I have added a new blog HERE. I don’t expect anyone to read this, but some of you might be very board one day. Cheers!

Spears Chooses Pepperdine?

2004-11-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

I’m simply taking a short break from Political Islam in Egypt post 1967 to bring you this breaking news. Rumor sites have claimed that Britney Spears has enrolled at Pepperdine University for next year. We have been hearing this rumor among students for the past week or so, and a number of rumor sites have today posted articles claiming that the 23 year old pop star will be attending our Malibu hideaway in the coming years in an attempt to achieve some sort of career post stardom. I’m skeptical, the Olsen twins had also claimed Pepperdine at one point, but after the health issues were taken care of, they decided to switch coasts. We’ll see, I just felt it necessary to keep you, the reader, as up to date as possible… back to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Misericordia et Veritas

2004-11-14T15:56:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have just returned from a weekend in the Italian Alps for our Pepperdine International Students Spiritual Retreat. We stayed in a ski resort in Bergamo at the “Hotel Vittoria.” A quick note about this hotel; there are not actually walls for the shower, only a drain on the floor and a large squeegee to mop up after your shower. Though this is strange, it was not a problem as the water got quite hot, and combined with the in-bathroom radiator, a sauna effect was easily obtained. Of course, it is not quite ski season here, so we were able to take over every room in our hotel. When we stepped of our bus, we were met with sunshine, cool weather, and some residue of the last snowfall still sticking to the streets. Snow capped mountains and pine forests made for an incredible surrounding for our weekend.

We arrived Friday noonish, after a night without sleep, since we left London at three that morning. Even though I was exhausted, I could not sleep because of all the squealing resulting from friends seeing each other for the first time this year. After catching up with a few of the people I hadn’t seen, I went for a walk. As I got down to the end of the road I saw one of the most incredible natural sites I’ve ever seen. I was standing on the top of a cliff that overlooked a grassy valley with a single solitary pine tree surrounded by a few mountains composed of entire forests of pine, watching as the sun was just beginning to drop below the towering mountains. Out of nowhere, a cloud of fog began to form in the valley, and as I continued to watch, the wall of fog began to overtake the forests a few yards every few moments. It was absolutely amazing and left the whole area in a quality of light I had never seen before. Later that evening, right before diner I went to a clearing at the base of three ski runs which still retained a good deal of snow fall. Though the sun had disappeared behind the mountains hours ago, the resulting twilight was just now relenting to night. Again I remained there for a while, watching the glowing twilight receded into the west and give way to a sky with more stars than I have seen in a while. Another new quality of light struck me as the snow reflecting the twilight forced my eyes to squint, even though I was mostly surrounded by dark forests of pine trees. God’s majesty seemed to be a theme for me this weekend, and kept revealing itself through these encounters. After diner Friday night we got the retreat started with an hour of worship and a sermon by the visiting religion prof in Heidelberg.

Saturday was filled with retreat-centric events. The high point of this was a photo scavenger hunt in which we were sent into the town in groups and told to take a certain series of pictures. Hopefully I will be able to get a hold of my group’s photos and post them on Smugmug for you next weekend. Sad story; I actually got to Italy this time with a dead digital camera and didn’t take my SLR because I’m out of film, so I don’t have any pictures of my own. Saturday went well into the night with events, in this time frame some very clear definitions of the different International Programs immerged. I must say that I came away from this weekend with a clearly defined gratefulness for being in the “London Programme.” Our group has been able to encourage a sense of individualism, though also forged a strong group ties, where the other groups have become completely dependent on each other and seem to oftentimes retreat from the culture they are in for the year. (not always, but in general this seems to be the case) Our group has been able to identify a sense of God’s roll in our lives without relying on the traditional C of C setting. Added to that, I can easily say we have the best RAs, in our case, leaders who lead through earning respect.

Sunday we got up early to catch a bus to the airport and head back to our house in South Kensington, London, UK. As I write this, I am also pondering the possibilities of an Astronomy term paper and a more eminent history paper “accounting for the rise in Political Islam in Egypt following 1967.” The later is due Thursday and I just want to get the former done with before my other term papers start to stack up. This is going to be a long week, I would appreciate, as always, any prayers you would like to shout out on my behalf.

MISERICORDIA ET VERITAS

(Two points on whoever can tell me where this phrase comes from. Current point tally, John Deniston: 1; everyone else: none. John got his one point from prop. 4136, even though he got it wrong, he was the only one who took a guess.)

How Cool is This?

2004-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

Since I have been here, every few days I come across a moment of extremely introspective bliss when I think to myself “How cool is this!” Often I get the feeling when I realize that in the course of three weeks I was in three different countries and none of them were America. Today that moment came as I abandoned a group setting to forge my own path to the museum for class. Flying down the tube with Snow Patrol softly tickling my earbuds through the greatness that is my first generation brick of an iPod, I was asked by an obviously confused American girl what stop she needed to get off at. She was shocked, and relieved, to hear an American accent when I opened my mouth, and thankful for my help, something that the Brits aren’t good at. Getting off the tube I stopped by Starbucks to get a triple, grande, gingerbread, blended, no whip, latté before heading out into the cold drizzle for the 15 min walk to the National Gallery. The good thing about Starbucks here is that even though I know that my discount from the states doesn’t work, I ask every time if they’ll just try for me, and then talk them into giving me their own discount instead. Tonight it resulted in a free drink (which, in turn, results in a better tip for them.) Strolling through Trafalgar Square to the museum I had to put my hood up as the rain started coming down better. As I watched the tourists taking pictures, I kept looking at my breath, as it got thicker with the added warmth from my coffee it hit me that I am living a dream. How cool is this! It is with this attitude that I went into the National Gallery for class to see paintings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. I know that at least a few of you have read “The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. One of the paintings he references, which resides in the Louvre, is “Madonna on the Rocks.” I saw the sister painting to that today, “The Virgin on the Rocks.” It’s an incredible painting, showing Da Vinci’s mastery over anatomy and the contrast of light and dark. What really stood out though was Da Vinci’s use of the shape of a pyramid for the focus in his images. My teacher even referenced this in class as a staple of his work. The feeling is a welcome advent, but also always short lived, as I walked back into an overly hot room as one of my roommates had shut my window and the radiator had turned on. As I sit here writing this I am trying to use The Postal Service in my headphones to drown out his blasting the new Eminem CD, and trying to put myself back in the mind frame of earlier that came as such a welcome relief. You win some, you lose some.

(This picture is from the National Gallery homepage. The lighting they used to take it belittles the incredible use of light and dark Da Vinci employs but it is the best I could find.)

How much school can you take in a day?

2004-11-08T17:55:00.000-08:00

The past few days have seen the advent of a whole lot of nothing. Ryan Harvey, my roommate from last year, who is currently studying with the Pepperdine Heidelberg program, came to visit London this weekend. We did the obligatory run around seeing Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, etc. Other than that though, we didn’t do a whole lot. Late Sunday night/early Monday morning ended with me watching “Gidget Goes Hawaiian,” a 1961 romantic comedy, with four of the girls in the house. Since relations with Carolyn have been a little tense as of late, watching a movie about a manipulative little redhead was an interesting experience for me, but old movies are always fun. Today turned into an excruciatingly long day. Typically my schedule for Mondays and Wednesdays look like this: 8.45-10.45, Shakespeare; 11.00-12.30, Art and Architecture; 1.15-3.15, Astronomy; and 3.30-5.30, Humanities. As if that day isn’t long enough already, we had a pop quiz in Humanities and then the Astronomy lab from Hades. Normally, if we’re having astronomy lab for the week, we will cancel class on Monday and have the lab at 9pm on Tuesday. Today, however, we had class as usual and then were to meet at 6.00pm for lab. I had still not eaten any more than an apple for the day at this point, and when at 7.30 we had still not arrived at this place we were going, I was extremely hungry. We finally got to the observatory around 7.45 and since it was cloudy we got to learn all about the different types of telescopes they had there, plus a 30 min video with horrid animations about the simplest elements of the class, which have been mulled over way too much already. We finally got out of there a little after 9.30 and headed back to the house, which took another hour and a half. 8.30a, to 11.00pm is just too much learning for one day. One high spot from the trip though, walking back to the train Dap and myself stumbled upon the only restaurant still open in the town, which just happened to be a Chinese take away place. I got chicken curry and sweet and sour king prawn balls for under 8 pounds and it was extremely decent. I’m learning to appreciate things that can be qualified as decent and satisfactory, especially when it comes to food over here. That was one topic of the conversation I had tonight with a few of my best girl friends in London. One of the girls is having a hard time and the original attempt was just to cheer her up, but the conversation (over homemade milkshakes for them, and pop corn for me) quickly turned into funny stories and interesting reminiscence. I got to tell stories about getting Papa John’s pickup stuck in a ditch and having the county precinct chain gang van stop and pick it up, various dates that I was proud to have orchestrated, and an instance where a lasting friendship developed from a single summertime conversation, thank you Mindy. It was one of the best conversations I have had in a long time. I attribute it to my falling back on two questions, which have started many a good conversation, and I’ll pose them for you now:
1) What is something that you have never told anyone else?
2) What can you tell me that will change my life?
Cheers ya’ll!
(I liken that phrase to listening to Randy Travis and Jerry Jeff Walker on an iPod, there’s something wrong with it, but it’s a perfect microcosm of my life.)

Edwards: “This fight has just begun.”

2004-11-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

Lead Edwards quote; an excerpt from the democratic concession speech.

It has been a long day. Once I had committed to stay up till I saw John Kerry’s concession speech, things slowed down. Thankfully, last week we got CNN in the house. Unfortunately, it’s all we have. So many strait hours of CNN’s version of “non-partisan” commentary is about to kill me. I just finished classes for the day and heard that Kerry was about to give his concession speech, so I came down once more, thankful that I’m getting close to bed. Of course, it was pushed back another hour and I got stuck watching CNN commentary again. And what do you do first after a winner is declared in a US election? Why, ask the French what they think of course! [as I roll my eyes] I know this is going to shock you, but 75 percent of the French supported Kerry, the other 25 percent wanted to know why we couldn’t just elect Chirac. I called it about 14 hours ago. Kerry called it three hours ago. CNN still refuses to call it. Bush wins, and I’m proud to have voted in this monumental election. Praise God. I’ll leave you with this… “It’s been a long night, and a long morning, and even though it won’t change the outcome, we will continue to fight for every vote.” -John Edwards

Patriotics.

2004-11-01T06:42:00.000-08:00

November 1, 2004, All Saints Day. Or, for those of you who do not hail from the echelons of Catholicism, Election’s Eve will suffice. I am excited about the election tomorrow. More than anything I am looking forward to having a chance to rest from defending Bush against everyone here, and I believe after he wins tomorrow I will get at least a little reprieve. I feel confident that Bush will pull it out, though the most recent polls have Kerry back within two pints of Bush, well within the margin of error. Moreover, the polls claim that their inability to contact cell phone users has skewed the results for the red right because the liberal cell phone toting youth could not be polled and have registered in record numbers to vote in this election. I believe that there are just as many, if not more, conservative businessmen that operate in a cellular world. I also have faith in my fellow first time voters, that at least some of us have enough sense to think for ourselves and not listen to what the Times or CNN is shoving down our throats. I am concerned though. Bin Laden’s speech this weekend has many people spooked into reconsidering. I’m surprised to see people responding to it in that fashion, but nonetheless they are. Also, there are lawyers upon lawyers waiting for the slightest hint of trouble tomorrow to file suit over the election process. A simple scantron is good enough to rate us for a test to determine our mental capacity on college entrance exams, or middle school math tests for that matter. The letter A on the test corresponds with the letter A on the answer sheet, is it THAT difficult? Is it ironic that this country has issues because it lets people vote that can’t handle that concept? I hope that writing to you tomorrow we can celebrate victory, and I’m confident in that regard. God Bless America.

B-E-A-utiful!

2004-10-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

We now have CNN. Yay. I can actually watch the election results in real time on a television unlike the debates I had to watch after the fact on poor quality internet streaming on an intermediate at best wireless network. Also, I just wanted to take the time to make sure all of you knew about the following development…

Apple has released their new lines of iPods… iPod Photo, and the new Special Edition U2 ipod. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. They are also releasing something called “The Complete U2” It’s a digital box set that includes every album U2 ever released, plus never before released track. In all, over 400 songs. It comes out the same day as their new album “How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb” on November 23, 2004. If you are a U2 fan, I totally suggest you download “Vertigo” from the iTunes music store. It gives a great preview into the new album which they have been claiming as a “guitar based” album that the Edge had the creative direction of. After listening to Vertigo every day a few times a day for the past two weeks, I believe it, and I will be in line to buy the album when it comes out.

Also, the first Apple store opens in London, November 20th. I will be in that line too if I get the chance!

www.apple.com for more details.

Where's the Love?

2004-10-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

I am currently reading a book Stephen Ambrose book called “Wild Blue” that follows the flight crew of the “Dakota Queen” (a B-24) through their campaign in WWII. At this point in the story, the Americans are moving into Southern Italy and setting up their airbases there. When we moved in the Italians were immensely grateful to have the American air boys there, for the food that the Americans gave them, the wages the Americans paid them (small by American standards, even out of the Depression), and even flat out overlooked the problems the Americans brought with them. What a different world we live in today. Now aide from the US is not considered as something to be grateful for, but people look on it with expectation, and at the same time, scorn. We are no longer seen as the guardian of Democracy providing hope and life for those who have no reason to believe they are even going to live through the week. The humanitarian support flowing out of America is larger now than it has ever been in history, we are liberating people of some of the most oppressive governments this world has ever seen, but only after all reasonable attempts at diplomacy have been exhausted. For all this we receive a reputation as a bully, a modern conqueror attempting the establishment of an Empire. How can we change this? We can’t remove aid because then we would be seen as even larger bully. Though, the idea of a parent taking a cookie from a child who doesn’t say thank you would be very novel here. We can’t just pack up and leave the Middle East, or Europe, or Asia, or Africa for that matter, as that would leave the entire global community in uproar and chaos. We cannot afford a policy of isolationism; the world doesn’t work that way anymore. Yet, at the same token, as an expat American, and a patriotic one at that, I catch a lot of flak for the way people look at us. I have been barraged by the British for our actions in the Middle East when it was the British that started this whole mess in the first place by creating nations out of an Empire after WWII with no respect whatsoever to the inhabitants. I have been greeted by a Greek soldier who was calling the US a “stupid” imperialist nation for trying to “conquer” Iraq.

The last time anyone ever heard of the Greek army it was because they were attempting to take over a small, uninhabited Aegean Island from Turkey in 1996. (cnn.com) Now their largest task is guarding the Olympic village from terrorist attacks, after the games are already over, and this guy is sitting here telling me that Americans are greedy, stupid, and crazy!? I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t know what we can do to restore our image internationally and have people recognize us for who and what we are, and not what their local media is presenting as the popular image. What sickens me even more is the idea that my fellow Americans now holding this image. When I’m defending our president, our country, and her actions from the most recent belligerent Brit and someone from our group is taking their side in attacking his own country for her helping people in distress, and preempting nuclear war it frustrates me to no end. Rant, done.

Prop. 4136

2004-10-24T02:09:00.000-07:00

By being away in Greece for a week, I have been out of contact with much of the various news agencies of the world. When I got back last night/this morning and sat down to look at what I had missed, I was confronted with a deluge of pending election lawsuits. It seems that, in anticipation of another close election, everyone (not just the people running or their parties, but private individuals as well) is groping for a slip-up he or she can sue over. Moreover, Colorado has gone so far as to introduce a proposal that would split the state’s electoral votes in the event of close results. I hear more and more people calling for an abolition of the electoral college in favor of a popular vote. When I look at a map, that just doesn’t seem like a good idea. Too many people are packed into the little areas that have become a culture pad for liberalism. No, I think if we’re going to change the system, we need to do it based on something that really matters, land. Now, I’m not saying we should return to the time when only land-owning males could vote. Not at all, that wouldn’t be PC. (And you all know how I strive to stay PC) I’m saying that whichever candidate wins over the most land in the good old USofA should be the winner. The easiest way to divide the race down would be to make the counties responsible for declaring a winner in their county. Since the race is already broken down into county districts, it would be much easier to facilitate this type of change then one to a nation wide popular vote, which would have an enormous margin for error. Here’s a link to county-by-county election results from last year, tell me that you don’t agree.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm

By the way, major props to whoever can tell me where I got the number 4136

Nike, Victory, and a Bunch of Olives

2004-10-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

Dad, in every case I was exhausted when I wrote these, and I am even more exhausted now as I post them. Just let me know about all the grammar and spelling mistakes and I will correct them. Enjoy.

The view from our hotel roof garden.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Traveling with Pepperdine most certainly has its perks. At this very moment, while writing this, I am sitting on the roof of our four star hotel overlooking the sun setting behind the Parthenon. We arrived in Athens early this morning, had a private coach to the Hotel, checked in as soon as we got here, and then got to sleep until 1pm. We then had a three-course lunch at a local restaurant, and had a private bus tour of the city of Athens. During that tour, we stopped off at the archaeological museum and had out own private tour of the museum. As a side note, the woman showing us around on these tours was quite attractive. It seems the women in Greece are one extreme or the other, beautiful, or butch. (though none really compare to Texas women) Since we are staying in a hotel that affords us the opportunity to lock up valuables in a safe, I decided to bring my laptop along. This way, I can upload my pictures to the computer and will not be limited to a 16 meg card. Over the past few moments, the sun has finished setting and I am left looking at the entire Acropolis lit up against a beautifully clear twilight. I tried to take a good picture of it, but there is no way that it can capture the absolute majesty of what I am looking at. I keep trying to imagine what this would have looked like while Paul was here doing his ministry. I can’t wait till we get a chance to go up to the acropolis tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 20, 2004
This morning we got up and went strait to the acropolis. The majority of the Parthenon was covered with scaffolding, which seems to be par for the course as far as antiquities are concerned in Europe. After we left the Parthenon, we were given the rest of the day off to do whatever we wanted, as long as we saw something from a long list of sites. I was with a large group of people that went to see the Agora. It was quite large and not much of it was left. There were a lot of bases and foundations and no clearly marked path through them. The guards at the archeological grounds were constantly berating our group because we didn’t know where we were allowed to walk and where we were not. For lunch we had some Souvlaki at a café and walked around for a while. In the late afternoon a small group of us, though we were told it wasn’t worth it, took the Metro to the Olympic village. I can understand how less enterprising individuals would have not enjoyed it, because you really couldn’t get closer then a hundred meters to the actual buildings. Myself, Dap, and Elliot had a lot of fun however, the girls and other guys who went with us just found themselves constantly rolling their eyes. We got back late enough to have diner and call it a night.

Thursday, October 21, 2004
Left Athens early (8am) and took almost a four hour bus ride to Delphi. Delphi is probably the place that I enjoyed more than any other. The Temple to Apollo there was completely gone, but the theatre behind it was still in pretty good condition. When the Romans captured Greece, they added a stadium to the site, which is still in very good shape. The view from the site was absolutely incredible, it is built up in the mountains that completely reminded me of Colorado in the summer. It was cool to be able to look at the theatre and see the exact same rocks composing a cliff directly behind it. All around the site there were bases for statures that the Roman Emperors had stolen, I can only imagine what it would have looked like when the marble on the temple was gleaming white and all the gold was polished, and still there. From Delphi we got back on the bus and took another three hour ride to Olympia. In Olympia we were informed that there wasn’t a whole lot to do in the town. Our tour guide called up a club that she knew of and asked them if they would open early for us. They agreed. Of course, it wasn’t a “school-sponsored” event.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Today, we went to the site of the ancient Olympics were held. I raced the length of the stadium, which is still there, barefoot as the ancient Greeks would have. I was encouraged, however, that it would be a bad idea to do it naked, as they also would have. Next, we visited Corinth, and saw the place that Paul would have been brought to the proconsul of Rome. It was cool to sit on the bench that he would have had to sit on before going to trial. Then back to the bus for the ride back to Athens. Once back I went out for diner and then went to bed fairly early. (1am or so)

Saturday, October 23, 2004

As I write this final entry I am sitting on the airplane bound for London. Today saw a little walking around the markets of the Plaka and the Monestraki and preparations for heading back to London. All in all, it’s been a good trip. I still have trouble believing the face that I just spent a week looking at ancient ruins in Greece, it’s a very awe inspiring experience. I have to tell you though, I am looking forward to getting back to London. Greece is incredible, and I would definitely recommend a visit, but I am a little tired of traveling in a group of 40 people. I’m looking forward to taking a book and walking over to Hyde Park for a couple hours by myself. Well ladies and gentlemen (and Sawyer too,) that’s all I got. Thank you for joining me on our tour through the cities of Athens, Delphi, Olympia, and Corinth. Until next time, cheers!

It's Greek to Me

2004-10-17T11:52:00.000-07:00

Most of you who read this regularly will already be aware that I am leaving tomorrow afternoon for Greece. My school does an “educational fieldtrip” once a semester; this semester to Greece, and next to Ireland. Below I am posting an abbreviated version of our planed schedule (The one I have is five pages long). I will also post some information about where we are staying and stuff like that. I think you will immediately see some differences between this trip and the one I just got back from in Italy, no park benches here. It’s good to travel with Pepperdine.

Monday, October 18
6:00pm – Leave for Heathrow Airport after the full day of classes.
(BA 634 from London Heathrow to Athens International departs 10.30pm)

Tuesday, October 19
4:00am – Arrive in Athens, go to the hotel, check in and have breakfast. Rest time after breakfast.
1:00pm – Lunch
2:00pm – Afternoon Athens Panoramic city tour by coach. [Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Parliament House, Presidential Palace, Panathenian Stadium, Temple of Olympian Zeus, the Academy, the University, and the National Library.] Then we visit the National Archaeological Museum.
9:00pm – Walk to the Plaka for traditional Greek diner with folk dances, music, and floor show.
11:30pm – Return to the Hotel. [free time]

Wednesday, October 20
Breakfast when you wake up.
10:00am – Walk up to Acropolis. Visit Parthenon, Erechtheion, Mars’ Hill (Areopagus), etc.
1:00pm – Lunch on your own
2:00pm – Self-guided museum visits.
5:00pm – Free time
7:00pm – Diner/Entertainment on your own (verbatim from the school schedule)

Thursday, October 21
Breakfast
8:00am – Depart for Delphi
Visit Sanctuary of Apollo, the Treasure of th Athenians, and the Archaeological Museum.
1:30pm – Lunch in Delphi
2:30pm – Drive to Olympia, check in, spend the night

Friday, October 22
Breakfast at hotel
9:00am – Visit various museums, temples, and other sites around Olympia.
1:30pm – Lunch
2:30pm – Drive to Corinth, visit sites related to Paul’s ministry: The Agora, Temple of Apollo, Roman Odeon, the Bema and Gallio’s Seat. Also, visit the ruins of 5th Centurary Basilica in Cenchreae. Return to Athens
7:00pm – Arrive back in Athens and visit museums till close.
Diner/Entertainment on your own.

Saturday, October 23
2:30pm – Lunch at hotel
4:30pm – Leave for airport
7:00pm – Depart on BA 633
9:00pm – Arrive in London

Athens Hotel: Herodion Hotel http://www.herodion.gr/amhsetm.htm
Olympia Hotel: Hotel Europa http://book.bestwestern.com/bestwestern/productInfo.do?propertyCode=77504

I apologize for the length of the links, but I couldn’t find a more direct one. If you check them out though, you will see I’m traveling with people who know how to travel. I’ll take lots of pictures, I promise. Love all of you, and I will post another journal type entry when I get back.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living

2004-10-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Poland 3, Wales 2; with all the scoring coming in the last 20 min of the game, just in case anyone’s wondering. The first good, solid chunk of Sport I’ve been able to watch since I got here, and I must say, it feels good. In understated honor of my little brother Jaxon, whenever someone asks me which team I root for, I have to say Man U. All that to say, I really didn’t have any stake in the game whatsoever, but it was nice to watch nonetheless. Earlier today, we went to the Saatchi Collection for art class. For those of you who don’t know what that is, and I assume that would be the majority of you as I would not have known before taking this class, it is the premier gallery for contemporary art. If your artwork is picked up by Mr. Saatchi, it means you have reached the highest level of recognition in a world that isn’t kind to modern art. Please do not think that I am criticizing the modern world for it’s lack of interest in its own art, rather after today, I would join the masses in disdain for the trends and lines being taken by today’s premier artists. One artist, Damien Hirst, has reached the pinnacle of his profession by putting a shark in a tank of formaldehyde and calling it “The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.” The single most expensive piece of modern art is one that Saatchi commissioned Damien Hirst to create. It is a 20-foot reproduction of an anatomical model of a body that Hirst had a friend of his create out of bronze using one of his son’s educational toys as a model. On top of the bronze is paint commonly called “theme park paint” for its plastic-like finish. The piece is called “Hymn,” and if you’re interested I strongly suggest you look it up online and see what I’m talking about. When asked by our teacher today if this was “art,” I had to say no. My teacher countered with the fact that, especially in modern art, the emphasis should be placed on the idea more than the physical product in front of you which is really only a by-product of the actual art that lies in the concept. To that I countered with the question, “What in this was Hirst’s idea? It was commissioned by Saatchi, designed by some company who makes anatomical models, and carried out by Hirst’s friend who made the physical ‘by-product.’” The answer I got to that really just skirted the question, and didn’t address it in any way shape or form. The entire gallery begged you to consider the question “what is art?” That is a much more difficult question than it appears to be on the surface. I don’t know. I just thought I would throw that question out there for you to discuss. I know that John Deniston will chime in at some point with his cute witticisms, and I welcome them. It’s before 11 and I’m trying to go to bed a little early to get some sleep before I wake up at 2 am to see the final debate. God Bless America!

The Italian Job

2004-10-11T09:11:00.000-07:00

I cut out a lot to try to keep these on the shorter side. I apologize for the length, but it was an eventful trip.
Cheers.

October 5, 2004 – Milan

Our trip started off interestingly enough, the professor thought we were leaving an hour after we actually were and was not very happy with us leaving, but he understood. Traveling to Milan was not a problem, well not too much of one. Once we got to the Bergamo Airport we realized that Susan didn’t bring the paper with our hotel information on it. That minor issue was soon solved because the young women at the bus ticket counter not only spoke English (an apparent rarity in Italy), but also let us use her computer to look it all up. The bus got us into Milan at about 1 am and a 30 min walk put us at the hotel. “Us” by the way was myself, Amanda, Susan, Carolyn, Dap, and Elliot. The hotel is where our flexibility was first tested. It turns out that our reservation was canceled through a miscommunication in the hotel staff. So the manager gave us a little free food and we left. But at 1 am in Milan, where do you go? We decided to get the earliest train out in the morning (5am) and found a park bench we could sleep on. Dap and myself stayed awake during the four hour interlude to make sure nothing happened, and nothing did, with the exception of a drunk guy looking for a lighter.

October 6, 2004 – Rome

The train got us in about 11am and we went strait to the hostel. The room that we had for the 6 of us to stay in was very small and included an in-room shower. (Check out my photo site at www.toad.smugmug.com for a better idea. Look for the Italy gallery) After stopping at a small street side café, we walked to the Coliseum. I hate to say it, but I was mildly disappointed. It appears that they have decided to rebuild it, which was sad to me. The structure itself is HUGE, and very impressive, but after some 36 hours of no sleep, I was tired. We all sat down and rambled on for a while before we decided to go back to the hostel, take a nap, then go find food. Diner, sadly, wasn’t all that great. We went to a place suggested by the hostel and it was small portions, and didn’t taste right. Afterwards we roamed around for a while and had a little Gelato, the first of many Gelato stops over the next few days. After a shower in the room, using my bed sheet to dry off, I went to bed, and slept hard.

October 7, 2004 – Rome

Today was much better than yesterday. That whole sleep thing makes the day a whole lot more bearable. Got up at 9, checked out of the Hostel, and jumped on a bus for Vatican City. St. Peter’s Square is absolutely enormous. I felt so small and it was effective in humbling someone before they entered into God’s church. When we went into the Basilica, Dap and I were wearing shorts. After sending the other 4 of our group in without us, we met an American tour group. They had some pull over pants and offered to let us wear them if we joined their free tour. Good deal, so we joined them, but upon realization of the loquaciousness of our guide, we offered him †10 a piece for them and went off on our own. The Cathedral is incredibly massive and utterly beautiful. I simply cannot accurately describe it further, so I will let the pictures (which are not good enough) do the talking. We did meet up with out group and moved on to the Sistine Chapel. You have to wind trough the Vatican Museums to get there, but they were impressive in their own right. The Chapel is incredible in the same way as St. Peter’s and words, well at least my words, cannot do it justice. We went to lunch after that, and that was interesting. The place we went to was a few blocks away from all the touristy things and was quite authentic, for lack of a better term. We all got pizzas, which were fairly large. I got an Italian beer with mine, the Italians do a lot of foods well, beer is not one of them. But when the bill came we overpaid by like †3. In a country that doesn’t ever tip, that is apparently a big deal. Our waitress went inside saying something to “Pappa” and came back with a bottle of some lemon liquor and 6 shot glasses, explaining that it was for us, for free. We all had a shot, or two, or three, and left. After that we went to the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, and the Spanish Steps. All in all, it was a good day. We’re sleeping on a bus headed for Venice.

Octover 7, 2004 – Venice

Busy day today. We got into Venice about 5.30 and it took us three hours to find our hotel. Unsurprisingly, we were told that we couldn’t check in until noon, but that he would hold our bags for us. The first order of business was food. We walked around for a while but none of the girls could make up their minds. I gave up on them and went back to a little bakery we had seen and got a cheap loaf of fresh bread. After breakfast we decided to just sit on a bench in the plaza outside of the hotel and sleep until noon when we could check in. At about 11, we sent Susan in to see if we could check in a little early and were frustrated to hear that in fact we could not check in until 2. So, we walked around Venice for a while and went back to the hotel. There were more frustrations with the staff, but it all got worked out. Where we were staying was actually someone’s apartment that they were renting out, it was really nice. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a full kitchen. Just walking around is one of the coolest things to do in Venice, it was a good day.

October 8, 2004 Venice, Milan

Today we went to San Marco’s. That is a palace/cathedral in Venice, and the home of the opening scene in the Italian Job. The Square in front of the cathedral had more pigeons then I have ever seen in one place in my entire life. There are people out there selling bags of feed for them and you can see more then one small child getting carried away by the dirty birds. I ran into Jennifer Hollingsworth while we were there. It was so good to see her. Once we left there, Dap and I ate lunch while the others took a Gondola ride. Then we took a train back to Milan. Once we got there, pretty much everything had closed except for a few restaurants. So we had diner and went back to our hotel. At the hotel, I met three girls who were staying there, doing a 10 day tour of Italy, on break from their American University, which has a program in London, a few blocks from our house. We were in basically the same position. I slept on the floor, and we had to get up at 5 am to catch our bus to the airport and get on our plane back to London.

Italy

2004-10-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

Wow, awesome trip. I got back today and am too tired to tell you what all happened, but I did keep a journal while I was gone and I will type it all up for ya'll sometime soon. Keep an eye out. Caio

Gone Fishin

2004-10-05T02:44:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen:
For those of you who like to try to keep up with the revelry that I have been partaking in, I leave you a note, as I will not be posting the next few days. I am leaving for a long weekend in Italy. We will fly into Milan, spend a day in Venice, a few days in Rome, half a day in Pisa, then another afternoon in Milan before we fly back Sunday morning. Please pray for us specifically in regards to transportation. Many of the groups traveling last weekend ran into transportation issues on the carriers we are planning on taking. Thanks!

Contexts and Constructs

2004-10-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

We have been asked to address points of vocational reflection in our journal. That is not meant to be a conscious musing on the subject of a potential future career so much as a general push to bring to the surface things one might begin to understand better about themselves or even epiphanies that one might typically downplay to lower realms of thought. For myself, I have been trying to be increasingly aware of the different contexts and constructs within which I try to define myself. These contexts vary greatly, from situational contexts such as Texas, California, and London, to personally definitive constructs such as actor, Christian, brother, and student. I have always taken pride in my ability to transfer myself from one set of contexts and constructs to another with relative ease. I have always been a person who would move from the classroom to the theatre, and then from the theatre to church; or from Starbucks’ ritzy, smug atmosphere to El Chico’s (let’s just say neither ritzy nor smug) atmosphere; not to mention from Texas to So Cal, and then London. I’ve always considered myself to feel at home and among friends, be it a group of athletes, bands, geeks, youth interns, actors, or even the occasional surfers. With the opportunity to come to London for the year, I have been exposed to many constructs that I had never considered before. More over, I have been put into very convoluted mixtures of contexts, being a So Cal student, from Texas, studying in London, on the “posh” side of town no less, surrounded by the rich and super rich, trying to “fit in” while not compromising my individuality is a very interesting place to be. To take it further, I’m a republican in a republican/American-hating-malinformed-superliberal-misunderstanding union of countries. I can take it even further then that, but I’ll spare you the headache. In the past couple of days I have been dwelling specifically on the idea of myself as an artist, which is not something that I traditionally would have characterized myself as. However, through my classes here I have been spending an ever-increasing amount of time in museums and admiring the hoards of monuments around this city. This has brought to the surface, in no uncertain terms, how much I freaking love this stuff! So, where do I fit in with this? I know that I love to explore these masterpieces and that some of them strike me very strongly, but at the same time I also know that I have no desire what so ever to be a painter, or even a “pure artist” for that matter. My art comes so often in the form of pictures, or images that I can manipulate to create a feeling, or a succession of events played out before the eyes to leave an impression you don’t really understand. For what is art worth if it doesn’t convey something greater then the image presented? How do I mix my love, and growing appreciation for the arts with this idea of vocation? There are a number of things that I also know about myself; I know I like working with good, creative people, I like working with technology, I like working with audio and video, I like changing environments, I like money. To be completely candid, I have a strong desire to make a fair amount of money when I grow up… I want my wife to have the decision of whether or not she wants to work, I want my kids to go to whatever school they want to (like I did), I want to be able to by my mom her firebird. So all I really need to do is find a technologically based, artistically inclined, creatively derived, group oriented, profitable AV position somewhere. Perfect. Haha. I really love you if you actually read this far!

Arrogant and Ignorant

2004-10-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the tradition of the blog, I would like to address something that I’ve been remiss not to include before now. That, of course, would be the world of the politic. Before I get to that though, I had the best breakfast this morning. I made myself some bacon, scrambled eggs, and toast. I’m putting a picture of it on my photo site at www.toad.smugmug.com under the Pepperdine Underground gallery if any one’s really interested. Okay, on to the point for this post… politics. In the past few days, especially in response to the presidential debates, there have been many political discussions around 56 Prince’s Gate here in London. In these discussions I find myself getting increasingly frustrated. What’s more, it’s not arrogant, ignorant democrats that are frustrating me. They can be made look like idiots and in that course encourage more undecideds to the righteous right. No, those who have been chapping me are arrogant, ignorant republicans! How infuriating is it to be standing there having a calm, informed discussion with someone who doesn’t know what he/she is going to do in November yet when another republican walks up and starts repeating rhetoric and propaganda that he doesn’t even understand. All I hear when this happens are the catch phrases that even the uber-liberal media have adopted such as “war on terror” and “flip-flops.” I understand that these points are valid, but they MUST be expressed in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn’t agree, and not just an angry repetition of what’s been fed to you. This has happened in a number of instances with a couple of the same people recently and I’ve had to spend so much more time doing damage control after I got them to leave. The conservative position is not the popular or cool position to hold these days, we can’t afford idiots who make it look even worse.

This is increasingly important as more people turn to the media to get their information for the upcoming election. If you believe what Newsweek is telling you then, you don’t even have to vote, Kerry’s gonna win, and Bush looked like an idiot at the debate. Even democrats who watched the debate with me said that they thought Bush came off a little better. But if you take what the media’s feeding you… we’re all screwed. For heavens sake people. THINK FOR YOURSELVES!! Pay attention to what’s going on, and don’t just follow with the fate of our great nation on the line.This is increasingly important as more people turn to the media to get their information for the upcoming election. If you believe what Newsweek is telling you then, you don’t even have to vote, Kerry’s gonna win, and Bush looked like an idiot at the debate. Even democrats who watched the debate with me said that they thought Bush came off a little better. But if you take what the media’s feeding you… we’re all screwed. For heavens sake people. THINK FOR YOURSELVES!! Pay attention to what’s going on, and don’t just follow with the fate of our great nation on the line.

Ground Beef and Eggs

2004-10-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

Today’s been fairly uneventful. I finished my laundry, cleaned my room, added some pictures to my website, and did a lot of reading. Then when I went downstairs earlier someone was making an egg sandwich and the idea of eggs just sounded so good. So I decided to go to the little local grocery store and to my dismay they didn’t sell eggs! I had to walk about 45 min in the other direction to get to the main store to get them. By the time I got there I was so hungry I got some ground beef, eggs, bacon, bread, cheese, nacho cheese tortilla chips and some orange drink and some vanilla, chocolate chip ice cream. I got back and made myself the most beef intensive nachos I’ve ever seen, had a little bit of scrambled eggs to go on the side of that, and then ice cream for desert. I haven’t been full since I’ve been in London, and now I am. Not to mention the fact that I impressed some girls by being able to cook my own ground beef and eggs. It was a good meal, now we’re going to some club/bar, Good day.

Now Playing: I Shoulda Been a Cowboy – Toby Keith

Let's get it started (in here)

2004-10-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

Here we go!
The ever so beautiful Verla LeBaron sent me a link to her Blog, and it got me thinking. I have to keep something of a regular journal here for one of my classes anyway so I thought, why not publish it to the web? I've also always admired the artfull way that John Deniston keeps us informed with his blog and liked his layout. So, here you go. I don’t expect many, if any, to read it, but it’s there for you anyway. Much love to you all.

For starters, I'll go ahead and post my entry from last night:

Yesterday was a fairly lazy day, and yet it saw a few interesting developments. First of all, I broke down and bought a stereo. I’ve been missing listening to music with decent quality. It might turn out to be the best L40 I spend while I’m here. Yesterday night was really what was so interesting though. A group of our girls came into South Side (the local pub for Imperial College) and told us that they were going out clubbing. I’ve been to a few parties, and enjoy the company of people who make a habit of going clubbing, but I had never really been. So I decided to go. When the group finally assembled, there were six girl to two guys. At first I didn’t even think about it, but when we got to “Yates” I realized that this difference in numbers was going to make it difficult to keep all the guys at the club off of our girls. I keep referring to the Pepperdine girls as “our” girls. That’s because in certain environments I get extremely protective, last night was one of them. Between myself and the other guy who was with us though, I think we did a pretty decent job of keeping the losers at the club off of our girls and we all had a lot of fun.