Well I just booked my hostel to Xi’an and my end-of-this-week trip there is all set. Big kudos to Buddha for having his b-day and giving all us minions a Friday holiday. This will be my 3rd time this year traveling somewhere new for vacation and my 4th time in total (the most recent trip was for work). Since I have yet to post anything from my trip to Taiwan for Chinese New Year and both Beijing and Dubai from last month, here is one photo from each of those awesome destinations. Fun times were had.
Taipei!
Beijing!
Dubai (and Abu Dhabi)
That pizza photo? It was from a ROUND TABLE chain that gloriously exists in Dubai. I could contain my homesick excitement when I first saw in the taxi cab to the hotel.
What is a worst human? A term coined originally by the good folks of Nice Man, they have defined it as this. And today I saw the perfect example of it by the people of Hong Kong and one terrible young sir especially.
As I was walking home with my bag of delicious secret dinner, the cloudy skies above me had begun to drop light rain. But lo and behold, as soon as these tiny, baby drops of harmless liquid began to fall from above, umbrellas immediately popped up everywhere as if it were actual hard pouring rain.
Of course me, being somewhat normal, did not mind that little bit of dampness one bit and in fact appreciated the light sprinkles falling onto my head. Rain is fun as far as I’m concerned. As I waited at a cross signal to cross the street, there right next to me was a guy around my age without an umbrella looking completely mortified in his situation of being caught right below this light mist falling onto him. He was even covering his head with his hands and glaring at the sky in agony as he stood waiting.
Now c’mon dude, if a sensy like me is telling you to man up, you know something is wrong with your life. Stop being such a douche. I even saw an old couple a few minutes later walking around just fine, LOVING the rain. So you, guy at the crosswalk, for not being able to handle baby sky droplets makes you the worst human. As for everyone else with umbrellas… well I guess they’re just bad humans.
It has been much too long since I’ve seen a Joe Swanberg movie, almost three years now since I last saw the director’s films LOL and Hannah Takes The Stairs. And while I did finally rewatch Hannah last week, I also watched a movie by him that I had not yet seen before which is titled Uncle Kent. Similar to his movie LOL, which dealt with the protagonist being obsessed with a girl he met online, Uncle Kent deals with a protagonist also dealing with a girl he met online – though it is a more concrete relationship this time around (especially as the girl is someone he meets on chat roulette). I did enjoy the movie quite a lot and I was instantly reminded on how many awesome flicks came out in 2011.
In keeping in line with the subject of my previous posting, I also want to repost something that is probably my favorite creative nom of the year so far. It is Andrea Dorfman’s poetry music video How To Be Alone . For fellow introverts, solo wanderers and lone travelers this beautiful video is something that is 101% relatable. It speaks of things that some people just do not understand nor could they ever. I watched it again earlier this week and still loved it.
For the most of this year, I’ve been feeling really drained on creativity – a really shitty situation to be in. The reasons vary, from January’s biggest-depression-I’ve-had-in-like-over-6-years-fiasco to just editing productions that I could not find myself getting excited about.
Luckily, it looks like things are starting to turn around. I’m not sure what happened, but lately I’ve been feeling my creative juices returning. I’ve been feeling hungry to learn again and ready to seek out freelance projects more aggressively like I used to. This has already led to some good stuff: I finished a fun, new music video a few weeks ago that I will be posting up soon and I will also be editing another freelance gig this weekend, while simultaneously getting some good Premiere Pro practice. That’s another good thing: I’m finally taking steps to get my ass of working on Final Cut 7. I already can work on Avid, so my plan is to train on FCP X when I have downtime at work while learning the ropes of Premiere Pro during my free time at home.
One thing that has definitely helped was getting involved in editor communities and talking to my fellow cutters. One tough thing about living so far from L.A. is that I am around MUCH LESS film people than I once was. But of course, the awesome connectivity of the internet leaves no excuses. In addition to the always-amazing #PostChat community on Twitter, I’ve recently been finding myself in the r/Editors subreddit on Reddit, where there is an abundance of inside jokes, tips, AMAZING HELP, and general good feelings among editors.
From out of the tons of good information coming out of that subreddit all the time, here is a terrific video that gave a huge chunk of creative noms for me today. It is a 30 minute talk by film editor Eddie Hamilton, who cut X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass. Though the video was posted by Avid, a lot of what he says is completely applicable to any editors, regardless of what system they cut on. It is definitely worth a watch – especially in the latter half, in which he dissects a kind of dull one-shot scene that he edited into some awesome action. This video was definitely my creative nom for the week.
I’m typing this on a Wednesday afternoon sort of wondering what I should do today because I had no damn idea that it was going to be holiday. Best part so far was sleeping in. Since I knew I would be able to do that, I randomly decided to check out Iron Man 3 at 10:45pm last night. I was at the movie theater in this section of Hong Kong called Mong Kok. This area is pretty much known to be one of the most worldwide places in the world to be PACKED AS FUCK. The movie theater itself was just a bunch of escalators going up into the screening rooms. The room that was playing Iron Man 3 in 2D was really high – like on the 9th floor. At that point, the hallways stopped looking like a movie theater and turned into an abandoned building that needed a paint job.
As we all filed through (because remember, its PACKED) to the screening rooms, I felt like we were cattle heading to get slaughtered. And we kind were…. oh boy did Iron Man 3 suck.
My music taste always changes every few years and for anyone who follows this blog, they can easily assess the kind of bands I listen to (usually falling into the alternative/indie genres). But when I was a teen, my ears were attracted to a much different sound: I was a hardcore hip hop head with an affinity to early-to-mid-90s east coast acts. Though acts from that time were already considered old-school by the time I was a teen, groups and rappers such as A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr, Wu Tang Clan, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Digable Planets, The Roots and similarly sounding acts like Common, The Pharcyde and the Hieroglyphics were all my favorites.
I revisit this era of my life with today being the 19th anniversary of Nas’s album Illmatic. As I write this, I am listening to the entire album for the first time in years and I cannot believe how fresh it still is. Modern rap music tends to sound outdated really fast but Illmatic is one of those pieces that stand the test of time. A little early when I was hearing Nas’s intro to N.Y. State of Mind, I smiled to myself as I was reminded of the epicness that awaited me.
This song by Jonah Matranga (aka onelinedrawing) is a song that I first heard after watching it featured in a fantastic driving scene in the 2008 indie film Dakota Skye. It was also the first time I was introduced to any of Jonah’s music and like many other likewise people, I instantly became a fan of his work.
Though later on some of his other songs would become more favorited by me (check out his song N,C&A - it’s my jam!), Crush On Everyone is still wonderful. It brings back a lot of feelings from that time when I was replaying it a lot in my iPod. It was the summer of 2010 and would listen it while mowing over the love I had for someone during the time. It also brings back days of me starting out as a freelance editor and living in my first apartment and the days of taking walks in Mid-City and Koreatown. Those were fond times indeed.
This past week was an epic one as it was my first time visiting Beijing. I saw lots of cool stuff and met some nice people. A proper post on it will be up later (with pics too…. which reminds me, I gotta do that for my Taiwan trip in February too).
Heavy in my iPod rotation while I wandered around the city was from L.A. band Fatty Dearestand their EP Mom Dance. I had first heard these songs a few years ago when I attended their shows and this week it was great to relive the awesomeness of their high energy sounds.
I’ve linked their song Mom below but I pretty much dig their entire EP. Especially Sleepdance and Dog Park.
