174. CH-raffic School

Just completed Traffic School LIKE A BOSS. Suck on THAT LA County Supreme Court!

...and by 'suck on that' I mean 'Here los angeles county supreme court... please accept my $500 and multiple hours of my time and energy as a heartfelt gift to you to do with as you please in return for keeping that speeding ticket off my record thus preventing my insurance rates from going through the roof. Have a lovely day and may God have mercy on your soul.'

173. CH-raffic

As soon as I wake up and hear the sound of water droplets outside, I know traffic is gonna suck. Add that to President Obama being in town and you have pure CH-aos.

Google Maps image of the traffic surrounding my building this morning...

172. Charice Fren?

Don't know who this person/thing/robot sent to destroy my blog is... but they left a comment on one of my recent posts. I can't remember if I deleted the comment on the post or if it just never actually showed up but this is the email I woke up to a few days ago...

Apparently Charice  thinks I should lose a couple lbs.

171. San Fran Marathon Relay

Recently decided (aka peer pressured) to join Jeff and Ally G in the running of the San Fran Endurance Challenge Marathon Relay. Went online to check out the race and found a chart that showed the changes in elevation as we each run through our 6+ mile leg. I added what I predict my thoughts to be at certain points during the run...

The things I do for a good Mustachio Bashio...

170. J Strom

Just a couple 'J Strom' tags I made up...

169. Couldn't CATCH me getting fat

I've been slowly going on a fitness kick as of late. This week was just an abundance of physical activity.

Monday night: Lifting. Free weights at the gym, total body workout. Article about this experience to come shortly.
Tuesday Night: Swimming. 45 minutes in the lap pool at the gym. Not only is it good exercise, but it's a great morale booster when at least 10 borderline obese people get in and out of the pool before I finish my workout. Sidenote: I need to find a nose clip that fits properly (I already purchased one but oh it just doesn't work). My nose is like niagara falls after about 20/25 minutes of swimming.
Wednesday Night: Break
Thursday Night: Running. Hit the treadmill at the gym for 30 minutes. I do and I don't like the treadmill for various reasons. I don't like it cuz it's not really running. The treadmill is moving your feet for you, therefore you're not actually working as hard. Plus the scenery doesn't change. I do like it cuz it allows me to control my speed more accurately and increase it gradually over time. I do a workout where I start out at a low speed and after a certain interval of time I increase. For example, from 0-5min I ran at 5.0, from 5-10min I ran at 5.5, from 10-15min I ran at 6.0, from 15-20min I ran at 6.5, then I started decreasing the time of the intervals. From 20-22:30 I ran at 7, from 22:30-25 I ran at 7.5, from 25-27:30 I ran at 8, and from 27:30-30min I ran at 8.5. I've done this kind of workout before on different treadmills where I've gone all the way up to 9.5 or 10 but these treadmills don't seem to like going higher than 8.5. Needless to say, by the time I was nearing the end of the 30 minutes, I was pretty much sprinting and was sweating like there was no tomo.
Friday Night: Break. Foo Fighters concert. The Shit.
Saturday Afternoon: Golf. There's a driving range near my apt that does 'all you can hit' until 4pm. Went over around 1 and hit for 3 hours. I went through 3 buckets of balls. I'm not sure if they were the large size (120 balls) or the jumbo size (220 balls), but my hands/arms are sore and I have a nice blister on one of my hands, so I'd say it was enough. By the end of the day I was hitting the ball better than I ever have before. I think I finally figured out how to correctly swing the club/hit the ball.
Sunday Afternoon: Biking. Took my bike out for a lil ride. Ended up going about 22 miles. By the end of that ride my legs were absolutely dead. Could barely walk. Probz didn't need to go that far on my first ride (believe me, this was right at the very forefront of my thoughts as I was struggling to make it back home), but I made it and all is well.

I also didn't drink at all this weekend which makes me feel better about all the work I put in this week. Although that was more of a fiscal decision than a health related one.

Update 10/17:
For any who may be concerned that I might be overdoing it and could be headed down an alex glowatz (circa fall 2007) kind of path, know this... I just ate a giant chipotle steak burrito for lunch today loaded with salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. I love food too damn much to be rexic.


Tough Mudder in less than a month. DO WORK.

168. GoogleMaps Spot

Spotted: Construction worker via GoogleMaps

HE'S ASLEEP!!

167. It's spreading...

Flannel Friday... now happening on a campus near you.

166. Dubstep Guns

Been surfing around to different websites watching after effects instructional videos and tutorials. Came across this video which I thought was a really cool use of particle systems (to create the lasers) and ramping techniques (all the '300'-style time warps)..... aaaannnnd they set it dubstep music. Sold.

PS I tried to just post the vid here like I normally do but for some reason the 'pause' button wasn't working and it was automatically restarting the vid once it reached the end. Instead I'll just give you the youtube link:

Dubstep Guns

165. Big Tommy

This past week our receptionist was out on vacation so we had a temp filling in for her. This girl had worked at the company before so I knew her, but I hadn't worked very closely with her i.e. I hadn't really spent much time with her i.e. . Well let me just say that by the end of the week, I wanted to take her outside and lock her in the dumpster with a wild, rabies infected, blood thirsty mongoose. Let me explain...

The girl is nice as can be. Wouldn't hurt a fly. But OH MY GOD did she get on my nerves. The week started off with her showing me a video that she made for her parents anniversary. It was a picture montage made up of different photos of her parents set to the song 'Come Sail Away' by Styx. Do you know how long that song is? It's 6 minutes long. Do you know how long 6 minutes feels when you're looking at photos of two people that you don't even know? LIKE AN HOUR. But the video was over once the song ended right? Ummmmm NO!  Once the song ended guess what song started next. Hmmmmmm. How about 'COME SAIL AWAY'!?! That's right... once the first one was over the south park version of the same song started playing. And did I mention that the photos weren't even going anymore. No, it was now just a picture of Cartman floating around the screen. Like, what?!? I honestly wanted to gouge my eyes out with a sharp metal object. Worst video I have ever seen in my life. Did I ever tell you about the film I saw in school that was literally a single shot of a lemon sitting on a table for about 5 minutes? Yeah, this was worse. Great start to the week.

But oh that's not all. She is just a completely awkward individual in general. Pretty much every time she made a comment of any kind I wanted to SMDH (urban dicitonary that if you don't know what it means). And once she started talking the only way to get her to stop was to literally just walk out of the room (and believe me, I used this technique several times).  As she was talking my responses would just get shorter and shorter until I couldn't take it anymore and would finally just turn and leave.

FINALLY she left Friday afternoon cuz there was a screening of the Smurfs film we just did on the Sony lot across town. I had to stick around the studio to cover the phones and whatnot. But I was ecstatic not to have to deal with her anymore. Around 5pm the assistant editor had a package that needed to be FedExed so I had to rush to get it packed up and over to FedEx by 5:30. I get it there on time and on my way back realize that I have a missed call and a voicemail. I was thinking 'Oh no, it's probably the assistant editor telling me that something has changed and that we weren't gonna send it anymore' (this has happened before). I rush to call into my voicemail to find out what the message is. Take a wild guess who the message was from........ yep, you nailed it... the temp receptionist. 'Hi Joel. Just wanted to see how everything was going over there. If anything comes up or goes wrong for sure call me and let me know. K thanks.'  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I can't get rid of this girl. Like, go home.

So that was my hell this week. On the plus side I was able to start learning After Effects (which is a program we use for a lot of our projects. Here is my first ever Comp on After Effects...

Found some green-screen footage of the woman and a picture of mountains online and played with 3d space and the focal range. Oh and added some snow. (Doesn't really look good being compressed through blogger but whatevs) I'll keep you posted as I make more.


This weekend was pretty solid. Yankees had their first playoff game against the Tigers on Friday night. Picked up some pizza and beer and was all set for a night of post season baseball. But OH it started down-pouring in NY and the game got postponed til Saturday. Oh well. I was able to get a weekend night's sleep in my own bed and was able to sleep in (the reason this is unusual is cuz I usually end up staying weekends down at Andrew Kalicki's and his roomate's house cuz it's 15 miles away from my apt. and its kinda annoying to come all the way back up to my place just to go back down there to go out again. So most weekends I spend sleeping on a couch).

So Saturday I slept in nice and late. Once I got up I decided to grab my clubs and head over to the driving range and hit some balls. The driving range near my house has a deal $20 for all-you-can-hit until 4pm. Got there at 1. Left at 4. Hit so many balls that my right thumb was pretty much numb by the time I left. BUT I was hitting the ball really well so I didn't want to stop. It's like I switched a switch and figured out how to hit a golf ball correctly.

Came back home, showered up, did some laundry, and headed down to Kalick's for a Saturday night of debauchery. Pregamed at their house. Kalicki, Rob Bowman, Jordan Edelstein, Matt Baldovsky, Fed, Rob Hochberg and his roomate BJ, Kim Gentile (and a couple of her friends). Solid crew. Got pretty drunk and headed out to a bar called Busby's. I didn't eat too much for dinner so by the time it got to 12/1am I was starving. There's a hole in the wall diner-type establishment down the street from Kalicki's house that's open 24hrs. As soon as we got back I headed over there with one of Kim's friend's that were visiting. It's pretty shitty food but at 2am when you're drunk and hungry any food is amazing. I got a burrito.... couldn't tell you what was in it.

Side Story: The girl's name that I walked over to Big Tommy's with was Debbie. She was the most cynical person I've ever met. The absolute literal definition of a 'Debbie-Downer'. She was from Boston... the ushe. All she was talking about was how much she hated LA and all the people here. I honestly wanted to push her out into oncoming traffic just to shut her up. If she didn't have a boyfriend I probz would tried to shove my wiener in her mouth to shut her up. But oh I kept my mouth shut since I'm a civil individual and just resorted to SMDH. Got my food and got out. Done with her.

Fun Fact. The people who took the second taxi home from the bar had arrived shortly before I got back to the house from Big Tommy's. None of them had eaten. Kalicki was trying to order pizza but gave up pretty quickly when he couldn't find any open. So I said I would walk back over to Big Tommy's if he wanted to go. Needless to say, once I got there I got the urge to eat more and of course got a second meal. Two Big Tommy's trips in one night... unheard of. Some would say I'm a maverick (SF crew).


Today was pretty much a plethora of football watching. I suffered my first loss in fantasy football after going 3-0 for the first 3 weeks. Hell. And so begins another week of work.