antics by travy trav

Socially Damaged?

2011-02-28T22:44:00.000-08:00

For a while now I've been trying to be more aware of my personal brand and working on improving and strengthening it. One thing that keeps coming up in a lot of what I've read on the subject is the use of social media. Social media is something I've loved for years now and I still don't think anyone is truly an expert in it. A lot of the advice I'm reading on how to be social without damaging your personal brand, I actually disagree with and decided to make my own position known.

Have a Plan

I'm a big nerd for having plans, setting goals, and defining things. As part of creating my own personal brand, I felt it was important for me to lay out what exactly I would be using certain social media sites for. Twitter and Facebook are the two main ones I'll be discussing. I decided to make my Twitter account more of a mouthpiece for my work and try to stay on the professional side there. Facebook is strictly social. There's a keyword for how you connect with people there. You friend them.
I try to keep my Tweets relevant to work I'm doing or articles, blog posts, videos, etc related to my work or projects. I think I get some leeway considering I'm trying to build a career in the entertainment field but sometimes I'll stray from strictly career related topics and share links to things involving fashion, interior design, and current events. All things I'm inspired by and often tie back into projects I'm working on. It also gives me an opportunity to frame my influences.
On Facebook, I try not to share so many career related things. I'm usually funnier on Facebook and make status updates about my dog, my musings on celebrity news, song or movie quotes going through my mind, food I've just eaten, etc. I find those updates, as mundane or trite as they may be, more entertaining especially when they come from friends. It's the sort of conversation we rarely have time for these days, especially considering the average person's circle of friends has expanded greatly.
I think it's a terrible mistake for employers to judge prospective employees off of their Facebook account. It's also a terrible mistake for people to restrain themselves and behave completely professionally on Facebook. That defeats the entire purpose of the site.

Monitor Your Accounts

This is actually great advice I've read in multiple places. Be aware of what you're sharing on social media sites. With Facebook, I think it's extremely important to make use of Friend Lists. Everyone you meet in person will more than likely want to be your friend, but not everyone should see everything you post. I have several friend lists with varying amounts of access to my information. There's one group of people I barely know or haven't talked to in years, they can really only see my main profile information. This goes for my Co-Workers as well. I have a list for family members that gives them access to everything I share, but nothing that others share with me, photos I get tagged in, or really anything involving me that I don't have control over. Then there are my actual friends who have access to all my information, posts, etc. These varying levels of control help me stay social and interact with everyone in an appropriate way.
It's still important to make good choices on what you share. Honestly, I see no problem with posting photos from a night out at a bar with your friends. Holding a bottle of beer? Why be ashamed? I'm 26 years old and I live in one of the most happening cities in the country. Let's be real. On the other hand, I definitely would not post photos of my drunken cab ride home from the bars. Make good choices.

Own Your Content

You really shouldn't be afraid to have a personality online. For instance, I share a lot of my personal projects online, some of which would probably make for awkward water cooler chat. One of my recent projects, The 25 Year Old Divorcée probably wouldn't be considered a good example of information to make public. I blogged about my "divorce" and shared stories that were similar to those on Sex and the City. But I honestly have no problem with sharing that content. I would not have gone through the trouble of putting that blog together if I did. In fact, I would argue the work involved in bringing that project to life is a perfect example of my skills. It shows writing samples, videos featuring my speaking and presentation skills, my graphic/web design work, some motion graphics, video editing, and branding skills. All the type of work I do on a daily basis.
Make sure the content you create shows your personality but also speaks to your skills and abilities.

Go Forth and Socialize

I hope this has added some value to the discussion. I would love to hear how you manage social media and what you think about this topic. How do you manage to stay social online without damaging your personal brand?

Script Frenzy!

2010-05-01T19:17:00.000-07:00

For the month of April, I put away the Create365 challenge to work on the Script Frenzy challenge. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's just like Nanowrimo, which challenges you to write a novel in 30 days. In script frenzy, you write a 100 page screenplay in 30 days. That's about 3 pages a day. Fairly simple, right?
There's a feature I've been dying to write and this was a good reason to do it. The feature is titled Plastic Saints and it's a religious satire about a guy who fakes religious apparitions and holds fake church ceremonies to raise money for his mother's cancer treatment.
I had a very basic outline and I just needed to flesh it out some more. I got really busy with God knows what at the end of March and didn't get a chance to complete my outline. That set me off to a bad start. With only the first act outlined, I set into the challenge. I figured I'd finish writing my outline the first weekend. April started off as a busy social month and I fell behind quickly. That first weekend was spent catching up and not completing the outline. My new plan was to outline in chunks as I caught up with writing.
Someone really needed to tell me this was a terrible idea. I'm also very much a structured outliner. I pretty much write treatments as outlines. Since I didn't devote enough time to it, I was working from a step outline, which sent me all sorts of crazy directions.
Aside from social obligations, I have to admit that part of the problem with writing became the state of my personal life. My relationship of almost 5 years began to fall apart, not because of my screenwriting, and the stress often made it difficult to focus on this world I was creating. All that ended the last week of April, where I had finally caught up and only needed to write 4 pages per day to complete the script on time. Unfortunately, I was in no emotional or mental state to continue.
It's terrible and I hate feeling like I'm blaming it on the break up, but it's definitely a factor. I was very sad to not be able to say I finished and "won" Script Frenzy. I'm definitely going to be trying again next year. And just because I didn't finish on time, doesn't mean the script won't get finished. I'm going to take some time and complete the outline. The good thing is, in writing the screenplay I began to notice things that needed to be fleshed out more and rewritten. If you were wondering, I got to page 75 so I'm not far off at all.
I'm really excited about continuing the screenplay and I hope I can set an end of August deadline. Be sure to watch this blog and follow me on Twitter to hear how that goes!

Daily 365 - Second Month

2010-03-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

My first month of daily 15 minute designs was certainly interesting. Unfortunately, the second month was just as difficult to keep up with! The first and second month kind of blended together with Heaven For Betsy posters, which we saw an example of in my last post.

A conversation with my friend Josh about my dog Tripp having his own reality show inspired me to design a poster ad. I think it's extremely cute and I had every intention of taking some daily365 time to shoot a pilot. That failed to materialize but I'm still determined to get it done this month! I'll probably have to devote a full week's daily365 time to it. One day to brainstorm and outline (it's reality! who needs a script?), another couple of days to shoot, and another day or two to edit. I promise it will happen!

Maybe it was the pink in the "That Skinny Dog" poster that put me in the mood to design something for Valentine's Day. I really intended to get more comfortable with Illustrator and create some art but I did this in Photoshop and it's pretty similar to some of my previous Mail Art.

In my first month, I had some intentions of creating pieces for a blog Jake and I are supposed to be writing about the "work" we've put into our first home. All I did was design a logo but this month I created a background and then a header. It's looking pretty good. Hopefully I'll get a couple of more things done for it this month and the Wishing For Wisteria blog will finally look unique and hopefully content will soon come.

An afternoon spent listening to a presentation on accessibility in PowerPoint, inspired me to create some artwork. It looks a little cheesy, which I meant for it to be, but I still can't help but feel like if I were more comfortable with Illustrator I could have made something a little more technically impressive. Anyway, the idea was that using 3-D charts and graphs in PowerPoint confuses people and can be difficult to understand. 3-D is bad!

If you're following my posts on Twitter, you'll notice there were some black out dates between designs. Yes, partly because I've been bad about keeping up, but partly because I wrote a few posts for the Austinist. Yes, I would count the time spent writing as my daily365 time since I only have a few hours a day to create anyway. (You can check out all my Austinist articles here.) After writing one article about a gay hate crime committed here in Austin, I decided to design a poster advertising the march that was organized to show support for the victims. The march was mostly being advertised, it seems, through Facebook and there were no real marketing materials to speak of. In retrospect, I probably should have offered the poster rather than only posting it to my twitterfeed. I had originally thought of creating something more socialist looking, but with only 15 minutes and my weak illustrating skills, I decided to go with something a little more modern and powerful. I also opted to stay away from rainbows and peace symbols but rather show strength in the idea of peace and unity through the color scheme and typography and some dove icons. I really wanted to emphasize the idea of marching against hate (as in the title of the march) rather than it being some sort of gay pride march, which I felt would attract a more limited audience. I'm pleased with the poster but at the same time it may look a little too modern and maybe more club scene oriented rather than social justice.

There may not be many designs but February was actually a busy month! And there was quite a bit of writing involved on the days where designs didn't happen. I'll write a post on this soon but be prepared for some film action happening! I hope at least. I have to admit I've fallen behind on the daily365 in March but if you follow me on Twitter, I'll let you know what I'm up to!

Daily 365 - First Month

2010-02-10T17:40:00.001-08:00

So after trying Smashing Magazine's suggestion of designing something every day in 15 minutes, I have to admit keeping up is hard. Oh, but it's just 15 minutes! Yes, I know. And finding those 15 minutes can be difficult. To refresh your memory if you can't go back one post, I decided to work on this only on week days. I haven't done great. There was quite a bit of traveling that went on this month that interrupted my work and it would take me a while to get back on track.
I intended to start off with doing Illustrator tutorials since that program is definitely one of my weak spots. The first I did came from Verlee's blog and showed how to use the paste and transform tool to create spirograph artwork. I experimented with the techniques for the next 2 designs.

I finished the week by experimenting with a sketch tutorial. These were extremely easy and definitely showed me some things I didn't even know were possible in Illustrator.

I continued with different tutorials that used similar techniques. One tutorial went horribly wrong. I followed as instructed and somehow came up with something horrendous.

I decided to use the 15 minutes to be productive. Jake and I had plans to blog about our first home experience but it has happened much so far. The current template of the blog is something I found online for free but intended to create a personal one. I created this logo with the intention of completing the rest of the design in steps.

And just like that blog, I completely neglected to continue. Instead I was inspired to create some posters for Ryan and Grace's band Heaven for Betsy. I created a full 5 day series of these. They're not all great but I think a couple are quite nice.

My main goal for this next month is to continue designing pieces for the Wishing for Wisteria blog. Hopefully I won't abandon the project. February has already been so busy and I can't believe the month is nearly half way over! Needless to say, I have missed a few designs but usually with good reason. I'll try to be better at keeping up and blog more completely about the designs more often.
And of course, you can keep up with the designs yourself by following me on Twitter.

Hello 2010

2010-01-01T13:29:00.000-08:00

It's New Year's Day and I have to be honest, 2009 went by way too quickly. My life really changed quite a bit. I bought a house and I retired from retail.
2010 is going to be even bigger. That is my resolution if I were to say I'm making one. This year I'm really going to throw myself into various projects. I know I've made that statement before. To finish scripts, to work more, etc. It's happening this year and I believe I've done a good job getting into that trajectory.
Smashing Magazine had a great post about designing something every day in just 15 minutes. This is a great idea and something I plan on doing in 2010. Of course I don't have as much free time as I would like, so I'm going to make some adjustments to my efforts. I'll try to design something only on weekdays and post it to my Twitter account. Ideally, I would like to choose a theme or idea for every week to explore and maybe have a wrap up blog post when that collection is done. I'm extremely excited and I think it'll be great at helping me improve my graphic design skills.
It's also been a long while since I worked on any film projects, which is definitely my true passion, and that's going to change this year. Austin and I have already begun working on a great short film, which I'll share more about as it develops. And as long as I can keep from getting fired, I hope to shoot a couple of music videos for Ryan and Grace's band Heaven for Betsy. There will also be a continuation of my as of yet untitled video blog. Check out the Sea Monkeys video on Facebook. I'll be shooting some more episodes of that soon, which I think I'll premiere first on Facebook and then later dedicate a channel on my YouTube page to.
I'm really pumped about all these projects and I hope I can keep up the momentum. Definitely watch this space.

KINL/KEPS Twitter Account

2009-12-26T19:01:00.000-08:00

My good friend Lela (follow her on Twitter!) works at a radio station in my hometown, Eagle Pass, TX and has been breaking new ground tweeting away. Without her news tweets, I would have no idea what is happening in the old hood. I offered to help her out by designing a new Twitter icon and background.

I started with the icon. It needed to identify both radio stations, KINL (the English language station) and KEPS (the Spanish language AM station). She had been using clip art of an eagle as their icon before. Which fit well with the city being Eagle Pass but many followers kept confusing it as being associated with one of the high schools which has an eagle as its mascot. Staying away from using an eagle as the icon was important. I looked around at other radio stations, which mostly have cheesy and loud looking logos that they also use as their Twitter icons. I didn't know if KINL/KEPS has a logo but I wanted to create something new anyway and I'm much more a fan of minimal typographic logos. I wanted something that would look traditional and classic but could bridge into a modern means of communication. NPR's logo seems pretty classic and modern to me plus it's news based and I thought it was something to aspire to. I sketched some icons and sent Lela some samples. The icon we settled on looks pretty modern and glossy but traditional with Georgia as its font.

The original color scheme of their Twitter page was gray and red. Which I decided to continue with, especially after Lela chose the red icon. I didn't want to repeat the use of the icon in the background since it's not their logo but I wanted it to match with the same font and color. I looked at several other news Twitter pages and decided on staying as minimal as possible. I also wanted to incorporate the playfulness of the medium and I thought it would be clever to include an eagle silhouette with a talk bubble as is used on many sites as a Twitter icon. Even though I wanted to stay away from using an eagle as the main icon, I felt it was important to include one since the eagle is heavily identified with Eagle Pass. I also wanted to play with how the background appears on different screen resolutions. The CSS code for Twitter can't be manipulated and the main Twitter feed will always be centered, which can mess up the layout. To address this, I kept the radio station info on the left side of the screen set to be visible on smaller resolutions so everyone knows what they are looking at. Then I added some extras to the right side of the screen for larger resolutions. I wanted to reinforce the nature of this particular Twitter feed and decided to include the phrases "The beat on the block." "The word on the street." "We tweet the deets." It's cute and fun and gives the news a little more personality.

I had a lot of fun working on this project and hopefully I'll find some other opportunities to help shape social marketing for others. Check out KINL/KEPS News on Twitter.

Monster Mash Birthday Bash v3.0

2009-10-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Okay the title is misleading as one won't happen this year. :(
But via Jake on Facebook:

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

I love it!
P.S. I'm 25 today, holy crap!

Almost 25

2009-10-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

So it's Sunday night, I can't sleep at all, and I'm in recovery from the flu. It's been FOREVER since I've blogged. I had decided to blog more about projects I've worked on and there have been a few exciting things but I've just been so out of time that I haven't had a chance! Jake and I are starting a new blog called Wishing For Wisteria about our new house (yes, if you're not up to speed I bought my first house!). But blogging for that hasn't really happened much :S
I've been in complete shock that I'm turning 25. I think somewhere in my last year of college I had come to terms with not being an angsty teenager and sometime within the last month I've come to terms with not being a college student and my mind is just blown. What am I doing?! Where is my life going?! It's all hitting me and it's very heavy. I'm determined to live out my artistic life as I've always wanted, so hopefully I'll be moving in that direction more.
But of course I now have a mortgage so I can't just be a carefree artist. I have to support myself. I've begun the "branding" process of me. I can't always define what I do because I dabble in everything so I feel like I need to start creating a brand of what can be expected from my work. I've got a new hold page up as I start redesigning my website and portfolio and I've personalized my twitter page. Up next will be this blog. I'll definitely blog more! I promise to anyone who cares. And the design will match my other online portals more.
I guess that's all I have to say.

All About "Attack Of The Shooting Star"

2009-02-18T22:13:00.000-08:00

For Meredith and Marc's anniversary, Meredith asked me to shoot a video for a song they cowrote on his album, "Look Both Ways." The song is "Attack of the Shooting Star" and she originally had some ideas about going with a galaxy and shooting star concept.
We talked about the idea over dinner and I had some of my own ideas about using multiple cropped frames. She had been experimenting with glow sticks and breaking them open to use their goo as glowing paint. Taking wads of paper, she doused them in the goo to create shooting stars. The idea seemed a little difficult to shoot but I figured I could make it work some how and as long as we had a few good shots, we could reuse them multiple times. Plus, I wanted to do these paneled frames so it'd work out fine.
I took Jake along as my sole crew member and we began testing Meredith's shooting star idea. Let's just say it went horribly wrong. The glow in the dark goo doesn't glow for very long once it has been activated and it also doesn't photograph very well. We were shooting in some pretty low light which I thought would help enhance the glow, but that didn't work out. Jake had retained some pretty important information I had once imparted on him and suggested we just use white wads of paper as shooting stars and have them blow out so they would have the glowing effect.
But by this point I was all fed up with shooting stars and decided to just start getting some back up footage. I ended up scrapping all of my ideas at the last minute and shooting on the fly. I had a few shots in mind of Meredith dancing around in her bedroom, singing along to the song, and I'd try to make it look sort of home movie-ish. This seemed like it would be pretty personal and of course cute. I still thought the panels idea would work but that was going to be something I'd figure out in post.
The sun was setting and we had some great light coming in through the venetian blinds. I decided I'd try blowing out some of the white and enhancing the light.
When I went into post, I decided to color correct the whole thing to bring out the warm colors and blow out all the whites even more. I started toying with the idea of having different shots in panels, moving around. We took some truncated shots and extreme close ups I had hoped to mix together. Unfortunately, these didn't really seem to fit well with what I had shot and I decided to scrap that idea and just make the video very simple and personal almost like a home movie.
In the end, I feel like the video I ended up with was perfect for what we set out to do. It may not have been the same video we brainstormed but I feel like it creates an emotional connection to the song.

New

2009-01-30T19:48:00.001-08:00

I had been thinking about creating a new layout for this blog for a while. Part of me considered using my ninja web skills, which have been rusting in an outdoor tub somewhere, to come up with a completely new design. Of course CSS kicks my ass every day and then makes me eat my own vomit. So I decided to go the easy route and use a free template and then all I did was tweek the code a bit. That is what this is. And I kind of love it. If you know me well enough, you know my preferred design aesthetic is grunge. The kind that looks like I made it with my own two hands. But in reality I never got my hands dirty and the only tool I touched was a computer mouse. Maybe the keyboard. MAYBE. Actually, no. Throw in the keyboard. I'm more fond of it than the mouse.
Anyway, if you did not know that, then you are in luck. Because I now work a lot. A LOT. Yay for my bank account and yay for my stomach that can now eat organic food. (Which I had last night at ZPizza...the jury's still out on that one.)
So along with this newly minted blog template will be some commentary on some projects I've worked on. Remember that music video with Meredith in it? Well I'm gonna tell you all about it in my next post! So if you're like "How did he...?" You'll know. And I'll be good and label everything. Cos yeah, I do quite a lot of different types of work so if you're only interested in graphic design, you'll get that, only video - hey that's there too. I know January is over now but my own "New Year's Resolution" has really been to work more. Yes. It was.

obamanos

2009-01-20T18:48:00.000-08:00

when can i live like it's 1934?

2008-12-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

it's christmas day and i've eaten nothing but cream cheese spreads and ritz crackers and i'm blogging. obviously it's been a rather uneventful holiday. and instead of spreading christmas cheer throughout, i am busy reading more sad sad news on the recession and politics. why can't i ever get enough?! the election is over! why must politics consume my life?
because i am a mexikennedy. there is your answer. i am a humble public servant who spends days and nights worrying about the poor. it's true. i make myself sick with worry.
there are times when i refuse to worry about the unfortunate, though. when i eat and when i shop. all other times i am free to debate with myself the positives and infrequent downsides to socialist policies and the crazy crazy crazies of conservative limited government trickle down economic hoohas.
i have to come out and admit that this does not mean i'm gonna go under bridges and pass out sandwiches and give hugs to hobos. no. not at all. i said i worry. and worrying takes a lot of energy out of me. and don't dare you invade my space and my me time during the eating or shopping. what better way to make me feel bad about myself and my "luck" and lose the sympathy i hold.
i prefer to help through my talents. like blogging and writing and maybe graphic design...oh and work. i am a humble public servant.
but for the life of me, i cannot seem to grasp this whole recession other than the general depressing feeling. like will there be a tomorrow? what in my house can i barter? should i buy land in china now? there's no urgency to scrape and save. i've been spending money like it's going out of style (and really it is. dollars are the new pennies. drop 'em fast kids.) and now i'm all excited about the dropping real estate prices because it means that yes, maybe i can afford a house within the next year. and screw whoever says you need to have actual savings and a deposit to do that.
with that in mind, i am still filled with worry for those who do not share my talents and luck. what will people with no skills and education do? should they buy land in china now? and when i encounter some of these people i can't help but feel awful for the fact that i want to cover up and disappear. true story - on the way to the mexikennedy estate i stopped at a truck stop in new braunfels for my 3rd bathroom break and it was filled with all the characters of my worrisome dreams: the working class, the uninsured, and the immigrants. yes, it just so happened that a charter bus from mexico was making a lunch stop. at a truck stop? yeah...see?! this is why i worry! what will we do when the mcdonald's dollar menu becomes too costly?!
and as i stood in line trying to pay for my gallon of mountain dew and wheat thins, i was surrounded by poor white people with bad teeth and enormous truckers in flannel. and some of them were there doing their christmas shopping. at a truck stop? yeah...see?! my stomach is in knots by this point! and here i am in a peacoat, banana republic jeans, a gap scarf and polo and puma shoes. the people in front of me made returns to pay for a tray of chocolates, two toy cars, and gas. they made returns. at a truck stop. it didn't help that making a return takes forever and is quite a complicated process at a truck stop and every time the other register would open, one of my favorite people would cut around me. it was the longest i've ever stood in line feeling like a spoiled rich kid.
maybe no one paid attention to me or thought badly of me, but i could feel their disdain. they knew i wanted a bottle of purell to douse my body in but did they know i'm sick with worry? do they know i carry the weight of the world between my shoulders? do they know how much i envy the blue collar characters on tv and in movies? if only i were content with having little and living a simple life. i won't hold my breath. instead, i'll continue my worrying and look into this 7 acre spread outside of Lanzhou.

attack of the shooting star

2008-11-15T19:52:00.000-08:00

here is the video i made with meredith. the song is called "attack of the shooting star" and it is on marc schulz's album "look both ways." enjoy.

24

2008-11-12T16:01:00.000-08:00

as is my style, my 24th birthday had to come in phases that took an entire week. well sort of. on wednesday (my actual birthday) we went to the lovely restaurant, uncorked. i had so much fun and i'm so happy my friends showed up and had some eats and drinks with me. if you're extremely interested, photos will be on facebook soon.

on friday, aka halloween, i dressed up as speed racer and with jake met up with austin and billy & gretchen. they deserve a single name like brangelina. maybe betch? grilly? meh, betch.
anyway, when the night started, jake and i got an awesome parking spot for free somewhere on 13th street.

but travis that means you had to walk all the way to 6th? trust me, it was awesome and definitely beat sitting in traffic trying to get into a parking garage. downtown was way crowded and people didn't wear very many impressive costumes. in fact, that's the void i filled. in my speed racer costume i became a local god. a celebrity if you will. drunk fratties and nerd boys alike yelled "speed racer!" as i walked by. i could have dealt without the fratties knocking on my helmet since it was not a real helmet and so they were pretty much banging on my skull. but that is the price you pay for fame. considering there was a horrendous speed racer movie out this year, i figured more people would have been wearing the costume, but no. i was the lone speed racer.

as the night wore on and the exclamations of "oh my god! it's speed racer!" became the standard, i found myself getting drunk with power and fame. i started out awkwardly reacting to my fame with "....yay!" or "...woooooo!!!!" when approached by fans. i soon began shaking hands, waving, and patting people on the back when they came up to me. i even became barack obama a few times saying, "we did this together!" "no one can take this away from us!" "this is about you!" etc.

we had initially planned on going to the och since i had received an email invite advertising free admission to their costume dance party. when we showed up, the crabby old drag queen at the door informed me it was a $10 cover for those 21 and up. so i said, "fine, we'll go next door." and she said "just so you know, that's the vip line next door." it looked like a long line but obviously it was the place to be and plus, had she not gotten the memo about who i was? how dare she insult me that way! and to top it off, she didn't even offer to let us pay the vip rate of $5 since no one else was going into her club of lame.

as we made our way over to rain, we realized the line went around the block. defeated, we made our way back to normal 6th and headed to the soho lounge. they had a long line too. this time i was not going to be handled like a second rate trick or treater so we hurried to the front of the line.

soho was so packed that the bouncer could only let in a person for every person who exited. after a few minutes, he let betch and austin in leaving jake and i outside. he turned to me and said, "these other two guys have been waiting here longer. i'm just gonna let them in next and then you."

to which i replied, "but i'm speed racer."
he looked me over and said, "yeah...i'm gonna let in these other two guys and then you."
at least i was getting somewhere.

monster mash birthday bash v 2.0

2008-10-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

electric feel

2008-10-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

according to GQ's guide to the 21st century gentleman, not everything is blogable. and they're right. in fact, my life as of late has been pretty low key and uneventful. well some things i can't blog about happened. but if you're my friend and reading this, chances are i'll either tell you or have told you about these things.
in other news, i have a to do list.
a. re-learn the guitar
b. re-write Aside
c. begin writing Near with ryan
d. write a short

that's it. i've decided to start vlogging. so my next installment may be live! somewhat...

update!

2008-09-19T18:57:00.000-07:00

i know it's been awhile since i've posted but in my defense, nothing interesting has happened of late. my life's been work and domesticity. but i have been working on a project that is finally ready for review. here's another still.

overstocked

2008-08-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

I'm currently looking into buying a new comforter. I've been on the hunt for a while. So today I shopped online and found an interesting one on Overstock but was unsure of the color. Here's the chat from the online salesperson:

Welcome to Overstock.com Product Information Chat! Your estimated wait time is 0 minutes and 2 seconds.
Welcome to Overstock.com, you are now chatting with 'Carley'
Carley: Thanks for visiting Overstock.com, this is Carley, how can I help you?
you: I have a question about a down comforter
you: the hotel collection 3-piece
Carley: I'll be happy to help you check on that.
Carley: May I have the catalog number or name of the item you are interested in?
you: 11303632
Carley: Thanks.
you: I was wondering what color the accent lines are in the navy color
Carley: Just to confirm, are you referring to the 'Hotel Collection 3-piece Down Comforter Set' priced at $99.99?
you: yes
Carley: Thank you for confirming.
Carley: This item is currently available in black, navy, or taupe color options.
Carley: Let me provide you the link of the larger image.
Carley: Click here to view this item in a larger image.
Carley: Did you get the link?
you: Yes
you: but it doesn't show me the navy version
Carley: Do you want me to place the order or do you prefer to place the order yourself?
you: I'm not ready to order
you: I don't know if I'll like the navy version
Carley: Not a problem.
Carley: I will be glad to help you further. Do you have any further questions for me?
you: Yes
you: What color are the accent lines on the navy version
you: That hasn't been answered
Carley: The color on the lines will depend on the color option you prefer during the order.
Carley: Do you have any further questions for me?
you: So if I pick navy, what color will the lines be?
Carley: The lines will come in the color option you will choose while placing the order.
Carley: Do you have any additional questions that I can help you with?
you: No, we're going in circles.

what's going on

2008-08-21T06:07:00.001-07:00

so i've been rather busy with things. who knew a full time job would be so full time? i actually got to bed early last night and instead of just passing out i tossed and turned. somehow i'm feeling fine this morning and i even got up early which is why i'm making this quick blog! anyway, i've been working on finally making this house i've lived in for a year look like the home of a 20-something professional. because yes, i am a 20-something professional. and i've decided that at 30 i will be the same except i'll have more money and nicer things. i've rearranged my bedroom and i wanted to get a dresser since my things are shoved in a tiny plastic drawer thing in my closet. oh and then there's that dresser i found on the street and attempted to refinish and well that takes hellaforever and i'm sick sick sick of it. so i wanted this dresser. but instead of ordering it last weekend when i found it, i just decided to hold off. now it is out of stock. i am pissed to no end. ah the plight of the yuppie. and now it is time to head off to work.

las cholas

2008-08-13T15:49:00.000-07:00

today at work i looked at pictures of cholas for a slideshow on gangs. i found this one and it is my favorite. of course i can't use it for the project but it made me laugh. enjoy.

the shooting star

2008-08-07T19:03:00.001-07:00

so it's still kinda top secret but i had to share. it's nowhere near done.

my wordle

2008-08-06T13:36:00.001-07:00

thanks to austin for the 411.

intentions to take over the world

2008-08-02T09:11:00.000-07:00

i've been rather busy lately and inattentive to my dear little blog. but there are bigger issues at hand. oh wait, one quick side note. after breakfast today a couple of jehovah's witnesses showed up at the door looking for a spanish speaking family. and one of the guys shops at gap highland. it was awkward. i was covered in dog hair. i'm sure they knew i was lying about not knowing spanish. but really, how am i to understand the bible when it's written in shakespearian?
i digress. while i at work this week - oh! one more side note! we had a budget surplus so i was allowed to order library items! which were supposed to be mostly font packages, stock photos, things like that but i found much better stuff for free. so instead i requested some awesome graphic design books since that's probably my weakest area. and now i wish i would've found some css books too...oh and my dvx camera came in yesterday! except they delivered it to my old boss who is now in another department in another building....but he's sent it my way and maybe someone will deliver it by...the middle of august? i'm too funny...anyway, i'm super excited about all that and i'll finally be working on "film" stuff.
ok, back to my original reason for posting. i googled myself the other day, yes, i do that quite often. we live in an information society and it's important to know what information is out there on yourself. anyway, if you google "travis sandoval" almost nothing involving ME actually shows up! apparently there are far more people that share my random pairing of identifiers than i knew. and some of them aren't up to my standards if you know what i'm saying. this all means i've taken too long a hiatus. this means this travis sandoval has to get to work on making sure he holds a monopoly on the google search of his name. and while i'm at it, i definitely have to say travis sandoval as often as possible to push this post up the list on google searches.
yes, i know, my life is that interesting. all i do is google myself all day and come up with ridiculous ways to rule the world. but you're reading my blog...so...really i think that just speaks volumes about you...

hellboy 2: or boy i'm in hell

2008-07-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

so here's the deal. hellboy 2 is rated pg-13. which does not entitle you to bring your screaming misbehaving 13 month old to see it. and if you're well over the age of 13, you have no excuse for being rude and breaking out into discussion groups in the middle of the movie.
that's my beef with seeing the movie in eagle pass today.

4th of july

2008-07-06T18:19:00.001-07:00

as i sit back with a glass of wine, i can't help but revisit the weekend that was. to celebrate my independence as an american, i mostly shopped, dined, and drank. jacob's mom was in town and so it was a good excuse to do so. thursday night saw me inducing myself into a margaritaville hangover and taking a hell quiz that says i'm in the 5th circle of hell. friday, (the 4th) we shopped at sear's where i found a nice brown button down for $4.99 and then moved to the domain where we had lunch at the steeping room and did some window shopping at banana and the apple store. after fireworks and symphony and a miserable wait getting out of the parking garage, we hit up whataburger for fast food and jake's mom was accosted by country hoodlums. saturday, we shopped at the outlet mall where i should've gotten a very 80s t-shirt from banana but passed because of the long line and the growing irritability. then i got an awesome metal watch from fossil which may need to be re-sized. then we cooked out and drank, which was followed up by more drinking at bar fly's. today we brunched at the east side cafe and then dropped jake's mom off at the airport. that went something like this:
mary: "oh, we're here already..." :(
me: "get out of the car, you old bat."
then jake and i hit up sonic for crazy drinks, watched a million hours of sex and the city, and then had ice cream/pie. good times were had by all.
i also can't help but think that maybe the hell test we took thursday night was right. seeing as to how i shopped and ate and spewed hatred at loved ones, maybe i do belong in the 5th circle of hell swimming in the river styx (like the band!) and eating other sinners. maybe it won't be so bad?

oh, god

2008-06-25T18:29:00.001-07:00

so here's the deal, i woke up partially terrified partially wtf this morning. now call it what you will because i know it sounds funny now, but i had a nightmare. yes, a bona fide nightmare. now i haven't had a nightmare in quite some time. they usually revolve around not turning in homework or not getting to work on time. and now that i recall, i did have a similar one recently that took place in spanish and inspired me to attempt a short film adaptation. that one was a mix of "signs" and schindler's list. this new one was crazy. it reminded me of the twilight zone episode about the aliens and their cook book called "how to prepare man."
anyway, in my dream aliens had landed and said they would be taking all of us back to their homeland with them. i'm sitting in my living room going "wtf? i'm fine here." then tripp starts talking. yes, that's right. he tells me he is actually an alien and then proceeds to chew on something. i smack him on the forehead as i usually do when he misbehaves. but no, this isn't tripp anymore. this is crazy pod person tripp. he looks directly at me, menacingly and says, "don't you dare to that to me again." and i freak out and do whatever tripp commands me to do. and so he commands me to take him to the movies (i think...) where he meets up with other pod people. but these people are people and not dogs. so there goes my dog with strangers. i sit in on their meeting because i'm his chaperon and i drive the car. he tells me they are taking everyone back to their planet to eat them. so i'm like, "fuck." then he proceeds to tell me the leader of their planet is barack obama. and the reason he is running for president is to gain control of the country and mandate that we all go to their planet (so we can be eaten of course). i say that is ridiculous and just hearsay from that god damned conservative media. but then again, my dog told me this.
i meet up with jake and meredith and i tell them what tripp told me. for some reason they believe me and our big plan to go out with a bang is to steal a bottle of wine from the liquor store. we go in and split up. i grab a bottle. minutes later, i see jake leave. mere and i haul ass out. we jump into the car and i see that jake has already stolen a bottle of wine. i freak out and say i need to return mine because we were only supposed to steal one. we turn around and see the liquor store clerk run out of the store and look around. i keep yelling that i need to give my bottle of wine back because it's wrong that we stole two. she runs down the street past us and we decide to drive off.
then i woke up. it's not so scary now. especially not in the dry way you're probably reading it. but seriously, seeing tripp slowly turn and look up at me and say "don't you dare do that to me again," scared me shitless.

my first business trip

2008-06-14T15:49:00.000-07:00

so tuesday through thursday i was in beaumont. yes, beautiful beaumont. i had to tape a training at the al price facility. it went pretty smooth and i was a lot more impressed with beaumont than i thought i would be. i mean...it has everything you need, right? i thought about posting a craigslist casual encounters. i mean it was a business trip. that's what people on business trips do, right?
i got to rock a state mini van. it's comfortable and safe. i understand why adults buy it. maybe that's sad...i also saw a pregnant hooker. at least i think she was a hooker. she was definitely preggers. but why else would a woman wear a short red dress and stand on the median by the freeway in the middle of nowhere? she was also hiking that dress up. did i mention she was preggers? oh, not like "i can't tell if you're preggers or fat" i mean like "are you sure that puddle of water below you isn't from your water breaking?" no one else commented on the sight so i assumed it was either typical of beaumont or in my own imagination...
anyway, it's saturday night. i've had two glasses of wine and jake wanted me to give him a shout out. so shout out.

housewife

2008-06-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

Housewife official video
by jaybrannan

adult life

2008-06-08T15:37:00.000-07:00

i apologize for the lack of true antics these days. this week i hit up the sex and the city movie with the usual peeps. (yes i'm trying to be more viable to the youth audience with my slang). anyway, i can't say i wasn't disappointed with the movie. afterwards we stopped by baby a's and had some margaritas that took too long to reach our table and screamed at each other over some bad karaoke.
the first week of work is down. i'm still waiting for a new computer but the tech guy finally talked to me and said he's going to try to get me a mac anyway. i'm really excited about doing some real work next week in beaumont. not too excited about beaumont.
last night, morgan and meredith came over and jake made some pasta and we had delicious drinks. ryan and lori showed up later and i had way too many piña coladas and woke up feeling like a giant marshmallow this morning.
the adult life is quite boring. in fact i believe we should all stay 16 for the rest of our lives.

week one

2008-06-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

tomorrow will be the end of my first week on at tyc. it's been interesting so far. i'm excited to work. there just isn't much work right now. well there is. but i'm using a lame laptop that is pretty much designed for exclusive use of microsoft office. the IT dept. said no to my mac. which has delayed everything. i haven't been able to get to talk with one of them about getting a dell. oy vey. i'm gonna have to use a pc! holy crap the world is ending!
anyway, until i get my new computer and some adobe software, i'm stuck twiddling my thumbs. because seriously, could office be anymore useless? i mean sure you can type a paper and make a spreadsheet but what else? i can type a paper and make a spreadsheet in indesign and also do a little drawing. i'm like a kid with a broken arm (no pun intended austin) without my photoshop!
anyway, today i cleaned my cubicle and put up some photos. i played with the camcorders i've been given. i organized the giant box of markers i found. i stole a trash can because there wasn't one in my cubicle.
it was a pretty productive day...

stop me

2008-05-27T09:12:00.001-07:00

the sequel

2008-05-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

just to kick things off, i've had a rather tiresome day. i actually had to work at work today. and jake had a 7am flight this morning, meaning i had to be up at 5:30am to take him. yeah, sucks. yesterday was the last day i'll be working with agatha and she bought me some cookies from tiff's treats. they were awesome and it totally made my day.
anyway, today i got a rather surprising call while at work. if you recall from this post my phone never rings. but it rang today and so i went to answer it. the caller id said, "transfered call." and i had no idea what that meant so i answer and i hear a voice say:
"yes, i'm trying to reach travis sandoval."
and so i say, "this is him."
he says: "travis, this is _____. we me the other day at HEB while shopping for avocados."
holy crap! >side note: this time i do remember his name but have censored it to protect his privacy...and plus because i'm not sure i remembered it correctly. all i can say is according to google he is a person working in the perry administration.
me: "oh yeah! how are you?"
him: "good. i was just calling to ask you, now this may be a shot in the dark," holy crap, "but do you have a minute? i realize i'm calling during your working hours."
me: "uhm...yeah i've got a few minutes."
him: "good, well i'm starting this new business venture and i thought about you from the impression you gave me at HEB. you were very personable and conversational. i thought maybe you might be interested in making some extra income on top of what you're already making that is."
me: "uhm...that sounds great. why don't you shoot me an email and let me know what you have in mind."
him: "actually, would you mind if i gave you a call later to discuss it? i'm not much of an email person."
me: "...sure..."
him: "when can i give you a call then?"
me: "uhm...any time later today is fine. maybe after 5."
him: "ok, good. so how can i reach you?"
and here's where i give him my cell phone number. my real cell phone number. i know, i know. but what could i do? he already knew how to get a hold of me at work.
him: "great. well i'll probably give you a call around 7:30."
me: "that sounds great."
he didn't call me tonight. which is kind of a relief. i'm a bit nervous about what's going on here. what am i to think? olivia suggested it's probably prostitution and when i freaked and said i'd never do that, she said, "what?! why not?!" and i was like ".....because!!!" and then she said she would...for a certain amount of money.
maybe the business opportunity is completely legit. which is why i gave him my number. i don't necessarily need any more work right now, but i know lori does (shout out to lolo!) and maybe this something she could do...whatever it is.

sex and the city

2008-05-21T11:04:00.000-07:00

maybe it has everything to do with the fact that i've been watching a rather extreme load of sex and the city (season one down in less than a week!) in preparation for the movie. or maybe it has nothing to do with that at all. i'd like to think it has nothing to do with that.
what am i talking about? i'm talking about getting hit on at HEB. yes, HEB. in produce. no, I'm not talking about hancock center HEB where you have to wear your hooker heels and make sure your make up is flawless just to pick up a loaf of bread (and sometimes it's quite a loaf if you know what i'm saying). i'm talking about the yuppie HEB on parmer lane. the tech ridge HEB. it's a lame HEB in the sense that they don't have a wine expert who picks his favorite wines (does anyone else notice that Steve's a lush?) and recommends food to go with them. but it is more spacious and clean.
i digress.
while shopping for avocados, i hear a friendly voice ask, "how are the avocados?"
and i respond: "oh, some are too ripe and some are not ripe enough." and i turn around to find a short man of maybe 5'8 and probably in his vibrant late 50s to early 60s.
then he says, "have i seen you somewhere before?" and that's when i knew. he was hitting on me. but travis, you're just being vain, that's a valid question. is it?
think of all those old classic movies where a man and a seductress woman meet in a bar. he offers her a light for her cigarette. she tucks her chin toward her chest, showcasing her bedroom eyes and creating a line down to her cleavage. and what does he say? "don't i know you from somewhere?" and she replies with something witty, i'm sure.
what is my reply? "uhhh....."
he responds with, "are you from austin?"
me: "....yes...."
him: "did you go to UT? where do you work?"
so many questions! "the frank erwin center."
him: "oh that sounds fun! what do you do there?"
me: "i'm the web designer."
him: "oh, so does your work go..."
me: "yeah the website...and i also do some graphic design for ads and those tv screens around the arena."
him: "that sounds like fun! how did you land that job? are you into sports?" and he looks me over with his seductive eyes.
ok, fine. maybe he didn't look me over. maybe i'm ad libbing that part. there are no witnesses anyway!
"uhm..." and i sort of laugh.
"is it a lot of sports work?"
me: "no, not really. well there's some UT sports but it's a lot of rock bands and plays and Disney stuff..." inches away from launching into my sesame street story.
him: "that must be real fun! so how did you land that job?"
how do i say i'm one step above intern? "oh, i just applied."
him: "well i'm sure you're amazing at it." > ok i confess. he did not say that. but he should have. everyone knows there are two ways to get me into your bed. food and flattery. what he really said was "and what school did you say you went to?"
me: "UT...i'm sure that helped."
he laughs and says, "well it was great meeting you. my name is ______" cos i can't remember. it was something like matt...although i could be wayyyy off.
and he shakes my hand and i say "i'm travis."
and he holds onto my hand and says, "travis...."
me: "sandoval."
him: "travis sandoval. ok"
and he gives me my hand back and i push my cart over to where jake is pondering the life changing question of whether to get a bag of baby spinach mix or spring mix.

life in limbo

2008-05-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

oy vey!
ryan said that was cussing in yiddish. i'm sure he has no idea. so nothing too exciting has been going on in my life. i'm in limbo. waiting to start a new job. feeling like life is on hold until then. i'm milling around doing what used to be the usual and now is just the mean time.
some interesting things have happened.
our slum lords are demanding $900 for our pets. and they want it by the end of the week. even though it's technically their fault they did not collect our pet deposit 9 months ago even though in our applications we said we had pets. it's been an ugly battle with them for everything and i highly recommend you run in the opposite direction screaming "rape!" if you ever encounter recar and associates.
i've eaten out quite a bit in the past two weeks and done what i love most: shop. yes, i bought some awesome skinny jeans and while at work yesterday, some woman returned a pair of boot fit jeans that used to be my favorite in 2006 in my size! they are no longer in the system and so they were priced at $9. thought i'd share. i actually do need to buy "work" clothes. so...i mean i have to keep shopping, right?
roosevelt was in town and we had dinner at texas chili parlor and then had a drink at woodrows. it was nice.
sunday night we had a desperate housewives dinner party, the usual sunday thing. the finale blew me away! and jake made awesome squash soup.
jake and i hit up the monster book sale for like 20 minutes on saturday. we loved it so much and regretted not buying enough that we returned sunday. on sunday they had a blowout sale which was $5 for anything you could fit into a cardboard box. oh you bet we filled that sucker up. now we have tons of books we'll probably never read but i will kill before i let someone take them away.
that is pretty much all. life's been blah. hopefully this weekend will be good.

down in fraggle rock!

2008-05-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

i'm sure everyone's heard the big news about the fraggle rock movie. i for one cannot wait! everything that happens in my life between now and the fraggle rock premiere will be mediocre.
but travis, what if your first child is born? - does that child have orange skin and purple hair? then i don't care.
travis, what if you win the lottery? - will my money make the movie come sooner?
travis, what if there is finally peace between palestine and israel? - great, can we watch the fraggle rock movie there? i think you get my point.
i'm hella excited. it was my absolute favorite tv show before i was 5. my parents videotaped several episodes from hbo for me so i was able to watch it over and over again. in preparation for the movie, i'll either be buying the box set dvds or netflixing them because obviously my parents did not record the entire series. there is some ground missing in my fraggle history.

more importantly i remember the fraggle adventures i created myself with the entire collection of toys i had. yes, i had all of the fraggles. i even had the fraggles in cars that came in mcdonald's happy meals.
i tried doing an image search for the fraggle dolls i had, but what mostly came up was:
mine did not look so nice. i remember being at a kid's house who had a mokey doll that looked like this. unfortunately, mine looked more like:

red was my 2nd favorite, even though i somehow damaged her beautiful hair and so instead of two pony tails, she only had one. oh, there was a story line to explain that. and i dropped mokey so one of her eyeballs was broken and i lost her sweater thing. red was protecting her man (gobo of course) by going ninja on that homewreckin' mokey's ass. i was pretty advanced for a pre-schooler.
of course gobo was my 1st favorite. he's handsome and the main star. and uncle traveling matt was an old perv with eyes for mokey. wembley and the other guy were kinda blah. those are still in perfect condition...seeing as to how i rarely played with them...
so if the weinstein brothers need any help coming up with storylines, i have years of play time melodramas they could use.
and to wrap things up, i do recall seeing this once or twice:

go speed racer go

2008-05-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

so last night i spent like what felt forever watching a highly expensive snorefest. yes. i saw speed racer. it was awful. awful. i think the wachowski brothers could benefit from a few screenwriting classes. yes, i said it. they've made one good movie in a series of 3 and apparently had years to set that up. but speed racer felt like they thought they were so awesome and didn't need to send the script through rewrites. in fact the first hour feels like a showcase of their god awful special effects with crap going on to try and keep your attention. it did not. i flipped through my phone and deleted old text messages for a while. but as for those special effects, they look awesome in the racing scenes but when the characters should be walking around an office and the office doesn't exist? wtf? $200 billion and you can't afford a room? what about extras? the replication of people milling around the background was easily one of the worst photoshopping jobs i've ever seen.
the look of the movie would have improved vastly if some money was spent on locations and extras instead of wasted on the horrendous green screening and animating. and if the first 50 or so pages of the screenplay had been tossed out and rewritten, this definitely could have been the amazing movie it seemed like it would have been. so for those of you out there who are still determined to see this movie, don't. i read the reviews, i knew it was going to be a suckfest. but i was still determined. it's speed racer! i never loved the cartoon show but still, i was familiar with it. the cast was awesome and sometimes i like bad summer movies. big mistake. i was ready to suck on a shotgun before the first act was even over.
consider yourself warned.
oh but in other news, i've decided i want to dress up as speed racer for halloween!

oh happy day!

2008-05-07T08:54:00.001-07:00

while working at the erwin center yesterday, my phone rang. no not my cell phone. we don't get service down in the basement. my land line. it never rings. well it does. sometimes. 99% of the time it is a wrong number. last week someone from the university of alaska called. he had no idea he was making a phone call to texas. i digress. my phone rang and agatha and i were all "ooohhh, i wonder who it could be this time!" turns out it was for me. that's right. someone called my work phone and wanted to talk to me. it was monique from texas youth commission. i was all omfg! and i panicked and stuttered i'm sure. she offered me the job as the media specialist and what do i say? "by when do you need an answer?"
that's right. i've spent so long on the job hunt and instead of instantly accepting the job that i've been so excited and anxious about for the past 2 weeks, i say i need to think about it. what was there to think about?!
i thought i was being sensible. i should evaluate an offer, right? discuss salary with my friends and family to make sure i am taking a good job. even though the salary range was plenty and more than i was expecting, i just wanted to make sure that it was actually good and that i wasn't just undervaluing myself by thinking anything less than this pay was acceptable and this pay was actually the minimum anyone else would accept. so i call my mom and discuss it. she says the salary is great, accept and don't try to ask for more. which was fine with me, i just needed a second opinion. she said her starting salary in the 80s was $11K. anyone else think that's ridiculous? it was over 20 years ago. anyway, mom said she was going to talk to my dad and see what his advice is.
my dad calls and tells me i'm an idiot for saying i needed to think about it and that when i call them back they'll say they gave the job to someone else. i tell him that's not right and i'm 100% sure they wouldn't ever do that. dad says they will and they should because i obviously didn't want it that badly that i didn't accept right off the bat. feeling defeated after my talk with dad, i go about my errands for the day (groceries and oil change!) and then go to a celebratory dinner with jake. of course i did not pay, i am not making a nice wage yet and plus i had not accepted the job and according my dad the job would not be there when i called back.
cut to me losing sleep because i fear i have jeopardized a good job that i actually want and was excited for. in my mind i play out the scenarios of being told that the job offer has been rescinded. my father tells me again i am an idiot and hits me on the head with a rolled up newspaper. (it's funnier with that image) to kill the time, i read an article in gq about landfills and groom myself until 2:30am. when my alarm goes off at 8:30 i somehow am not sleepy and feeling extremely eager to get monique on the phone. of course i'm sure she won't answer her work phone that early.
so i kill time by cleaning house and making coffee. i call at 9:30 and no answer. surely that crazy father of mine was right. but what does he know? he calls me at awkward times and asks how i can make the robot he has sing. (there is more to this story but seriously, the conversation went "travis, i have a robot. how do i make it sing?" exactly. my dad is crazy.)
so i vacuum. i remove every trace of cat/dog hair from around the house. our landlord is doing an inspection tomorrow and we're sure the animals don't exist on paper...
10:30 rolls around. i make a second call. monique answers! i hold my excitement and say i'm accepting the job. beat. (WTF!!!! DAD WAS RIGHT! SHE'S PREPARING TO SAY THE OFFER WAS GIVEN TO SOMEONE ELSE!!!!!!!!! CURSES! FOILED AGAIN!!!!!) monique says she's glad to hear that and is excited to have me start. (my brain explodes) i gush about how excited i am and can't wait to start.
i got a yob! i got a yob! (if you live in the chateau, you're probably exhausted by hearing me say that. i know tripp is.)

i'll be back in black

2008-05-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

it feels like a lot of things are coming to a natural end right now. i dunno why. i'm ready to move on to something new. i mean i'm still not done with sweet teeth. that script needs to get done but since i've already mailed it off to sundance, i'm ready to take a breather from it. as if i was working so hard on it lately. my numerology says i should be a musician. maybe i'm going in the wrong direction. i'm not actually taking that seriously but it gives me an excuse to keep working on my supposed rap album. watch this space. i'm hoping to have a track or two nice and polished in the coming weeks.
that is all. nothing too exciting going on...i mowed the lawn yesterday...trimmed the hedges...i'll be substitute teaching at the elementary school around the block on wednesday which is super sweet cos then i get to walk there.

it's friday, i'm in love

2008-05-02T15:39:00.000-07:00

so first things first. austin told me about some of the features on his blog over on wordpress and i am quite jealous. in fact i'm sure blogger has jewed me out of some nice features like visit statistics and what not. but moving on to more important things, it's the weekend! which of course means doing the things you don't get to do all week and spending your hard earned paycheck like the apocalypse is coming. i'm not sure who else does that but i do. even more so now that the economy has grown stagnant and it's in the news and weighing on me metaphorically like the extra 15lbs of gut fat that have physically grown on me since i was forced out into the workplace one year ago.
today at work i had to post info on the upcoming graduation ceremonies. which of course reminded me that it has been one full year since i myself graduated. and in that year i have failed to find full time employment or steady but lucrative contract work and instead have survived straddling the poverty line on multiple part time jobs and a monthly stipend from my parents. mmm...post school life is amazing...
to cope with my situation i have turned to the healing power of retail and excess spending. hey, someone's gotta kick start the market, right?
what i have done recently is eat out most every meal, buy clothes for myself and others (mom/dad, jake, etc.), hit up bars and drink till i drop, and sit in nice seats at concerts. this may sound like self destructive behavior when you consider my meager earnings but i like to think of it as a way to help my nation through one of its darkest hours. but don't worry, i'm not missing payments on things just yet. and i fully intend on reminding uncle sam about my contribution come tax season. every frivolous expenditure will be carefully marked and explained as a tax write off. i encourage all of you out there to do the same. these are not losses, these are investments in our future. these are loans to businesses and the government.
so go out and buy that plasma screen tv you want. how about that burberry suitcase? yeah sure throw that in the cart. new apple laptop? is that a trick question?!

like a wet dog

2008-05-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

so much to blog about, so little time.
so yesterday was the glow in the dark concert. AMAZING. i would go into detail but i'm sure that suffices. and if you just have to know, then read austin's review. it's detailed and i'm sure i agree.
texas youth commission got in touch with my references and the process has moved on. i was told i was one of two candidates. i'm really excited and i've been anxious waiting for an answer. this job really really suits me and my skills. and aside from that, TYC is in sort of a turnaround and i find that really exciting. i believe in what they're trying to accomplish. plus, with it being my 9th interview another rejection just seems a little too excessive. i mean...come on...there has to be some sort of mathematical probability in my favor, right?
in other news, gap cut my shift today. hooray! or boo. it was a stock shift which is the easiest and most enjoyable of any regular shifts. so, boo to that. and i was only scheduled for 11 hours, which now means i'll only work about 7 this week. that translates into about $28 less in my paycheck and the sad part is that $28 might actually matter. but i get the evening off...yay...

Dance!

2008-04-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

So tomorrow I have to mail off my Sundance stuff. We are in the 11th hour and luckily I have a first draft synopsis! YAY! I've written it by hand, which is my style for first draft anythings. Once I type it up I will be able to better edit out the excess. And boy does this script have excess. It does need to be simplified some but I think it's in much better shape. A lot more is going on now. Not in terms of events but in terms of substance.
I'll get it mailed off early tomorrow and then it's off to the Kanye concert! I'm so excited! I'm sure it'll be amazing.
Anyway, I'm mostly procrastinating from either going to sleep or just jumping forward and typing my synopsis. I know I had a post of substance to make...I thought about it the other day...I don't think it had to do with politics...maybe it was an observation...oh! Now I remember! I wanted to write about my plan for saving the economy. Well my contribution at least. I'll save that for another day. I have a great plan with reasons to make tax write offs. So...stay tuned!

latin anglophilia

2008-04-26T14:23:00.000-07:00

where do i find this?

seriously, it is the highlight of my weekend.

contest me

2008-04-23T11:24:00.001-07:00

so i've been alerted about this super cool contest at the CW. i've created 2 entries, but sadly, only one can make it. the deadline is tomorrow (?) so i've got to make a decision soon. any suggestions?

what creatives do best

2008-04-20T18:18:00.000-07:00

i'm procrastinating as i suppose i should. if i'm not doing anything, you would figure i would catch up on the last episode of 30 rock, hit the gym, or maybe watch one of the many movies i have been wanting to see. unfortunately, i am wasting time. sundance's writer's lab deadline is next week and i'm trying miserably to finish up the needed materials. granted i have had a year to do this since i first set out. not to mention my screenplay is in shambles and probably not up to the sundance bar. it's probably a little too commercial if you ask me. but i did set out to do this and by god i will do this. plus you never know until you try and either way i will be finishing the screenplay. of course getting into sundance lights a fire under your ass. i've come to a point where i can start over and rewrite the outline or continue writing the script on the badly outdated outline and then rewrite. i've been rewriting as i go but it would be extremely helpful to have a much more completed and rewritten outline/treatment.
anyway, i won't bore you with my writing about writing. i have instead browsed through GQ. robert downey jr has such nice teeth. and i read the last page, which always cracks me up. this issue's is about the economy and our impending doom. yeesh. they put right when they say, "The one advantage those Grapes of Wrath people had over us was they could do manual labor if they could find it. We have soft hands. Soft, mouse-clicking hands." this economic situation has got me scared for that reason. what the hell am i going to do if the economy crashes? i can't work. i mean i can work and in fact i enjoy working but not...that kind of work. i can't build fences or houses. no way. i'm a creative thinker. well i can always move back in with mom and dad...
speaking of which, the 'rents spent the weekend here. it was very nice. i enjoyed it. we hit up austin park and pizza which was kind of a bust, then ikea and the outlet mall. yes it was very fast paced and i'm sure my dad was pissed before we even got home. but then we did come home and grill burgers and have margaritas. i miss them so much sometimes. it makes my impending decision to move across the country all that much harder. and lately the idea of teaching english abroad has floated around....

la vida es un ratico

2008-04-09T13:12:00.003-07:00

if you see these posters or fliers around town, take a photo and give me a shout!

dreams, dreams, of when we had just started things

2008-04-09T12:53:00.001-07:00

so i was reading newsweek with tripp (yes, he's a very advanced dog) and then fell asleep. i then had a dream about reading newsweek. (cue the canned laughter) the article was about in flight flatulence. it's a very serious and peculiar development. did you know more americans pass gas while flying than at any other time in their life?

new blog!

2008-03-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

so i launched one of the two new blogs today. the first one is the political one i'll probably be manning alone. it's called "reasons i love republicans." and if you're interested in learning all about it, then check it out.
in other news, i've given myself a new boost in my job hunt. no, it's not a lead. it's not a prospect. i've just got a new outlook. my new thing is following up my resume with a phone call. i've been weary of this especially since most places specify no calling. but i mean what have i got to lose? no one's calling me back anyway. and i'm only a month away from being out of school and out of work for a year. but that's wrong to think. i'm not unemployed. i'm over-employed and not making ends meet. there's no reason why i shouldn't be able to have any job i'm qualified for. i don't know exactly what i'm doing wrong but i'm sure there's something and i'm starting to feel it has to do with my lack of a follow up. i'm on my 2ndish glass of wine so i may start slurring...which is why i'll just end this post. but i'll leave you with:

tripp's been a bit under the weather today. i've been worried but i'm sure he'll be fine tomorrow.

big news!

2008-03-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

the news isn't all that big actually. in some ways it may be. i wish it were employment news but it sort of is. i'm a self employed kind of guy anyway...
after much thinking this weekend, i have decided to make a couple of new blog ventures. one idea i've been sitting on for quite some time. i had intended on making it a recurring feature on this blog but instead i think i may just go ahead and make it a separate blog altogether. it's a political blog, which i know sounds kind of cliché.
the other blog i'm sure is a complete winner. i'm really excited about its possibilities. it's a humorous blog. and although i think the mccoy mcblog is genius, i think it's sad it has yet to really take off.
the reason i've decided to make these two blogs separate from antics is that i feel like antics is more about my own life. to share my work and lack of as well as my own personal and sometimes amusing anecdotes. i use the word amusing liberally.
i'll be "unveiling" these new blogs later this week.

easter eggs

2008-03-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

i went home to ep with tripp this weekend. it turned out to be a really fun trip. a lot of my family on my mom's side came around and we mostly drank. i'm thinking of getting a flickr account to share pix from things like this.
in other news, i may be applying for a job with lifetime because i'm told i may have a networking contact *gasp* who can have my resume pulled.
since my last post i have also filed my taxes, yay!
and now i leave you with a little post easter glee:

aaron and celeste got colored chicks for easter. tripp was obsessed with them. in fact, when i arrived on friday night, aaron showed me his secluded chick (which was blue like the one in the picture) and told me it was sick. apparently he wouldn't put the thing down when they had gotten them earlier in the week and handling the chicks too much makes them sick. his chick ended up dying saturday morning so my dad took him to buy a new one that afternoon. tripp managed to find the body of the dead of the chick and paraded around the house with it. yes, i know, he has murderous instincts.
anyway, the place they got the chicks at also had ducks and my dad went on and on about how he wanted to buy a baby duck but since they have dogs it would not have survived. i'm assuming he means it would have been his pet and he would have made sure it survived, unlike the chicks that i assume the kids will neglect.

allison

2008-03-15T20:58:00.000-07:00

so while working my life away at the gap today, i met some guys from mexico. (side note: sandy sent me a list of free shows and one on saturday was sort of a spanish show case. the only band i wanted to see was allison but i don't know many of their songs and i was also interested in seeing la mala rodriguez. anyway no one wanted to come with and i had to work at gap.) they had sxsw wristbands and one of them kind of looked like a tranny. he was wearing skinny jeans and a backpack and he had a cap on and his long hair was sticking out in a pony tail. and i was like "hot tranny mess." anyway, i picked up a little conversation with one of them but they didn't speak much english. i supposed i could've spoke in spanish but some days i'm lazy. it went sorta like this while i rang him up:
me: "where ya'll from?"
guy: "mexico city."
me: "did ya'll come to watch any bands at SX?"
guy: "huh?"
me: "are you here for sxsw?"
guy: "yeah. we played."
me: "oh cool. what's your band's name?"
guy: "allison."
me: SILENT FREAK OUT. "you're allison? oh...cool...i know you guys. but sorry i didn't recognize you. i've heard your songs but i've never seen your videos."
guy: "yeah...you can watch them on youtube."
me: "yeah..."
guy: "you know allison?"
me: "yeah."
guy: "really? how?"
me: "i'm from the border."
guy: "the border?"
me: "yeah, piedras."
guy: "piedras negras?"
me: "yeah."
guy: "you know allison?"
me: "yeah."
guy: "really?"
me: "i saw you guys on the mtv awards."
guy: "yeah we closed the show."
me: "you guys did a good job. it was cool."
guy: "thanks. it was nice meeting you."
me: "yeah."
WE SHAKE HANDS.
guy: "well..."
me: "have a nice day!"

it was awkward. and i felt stupid because they came in the store twice. and i helped them both times and didn't have this conversation until the second time they came in.
but just so no one else has an awkward encounter like myself:

swing state blues

2008-03-05T10:14:00.000-08:00

so last night we went to joe's for mexican night's half price margaritas and free taco bar. it turned out to be a campaign party for some local candidates and some tv broadcasts were made there. it was pretty cool. we got to stand behind this news anchor from kvue. then we ended up sitting in front of some hillary haters while watching the poll results on the big screen. it was pretty awkward for a while....but there were 3 of us and 2 of them. so of course they left. but today let's put all politics aside. i'm a bit exhausted for now.
i had a job interview this morning. you may remember it from this post. it went ok. just ok. which is why i can't say either way how it will go. i wouldn't be completely disappointed, considering i think i underperformed. so i'd understand. but i can't say some change wouldn't be nice.

coffee tripp

2008-03-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

jake snapped some cell phone photos of tripp "stuck" on the coffee table. and yes i mean "stuck." apparently he jumped onto the table and couldn't think of a way to get down (?)

how to save the music industry

2008-03-02T12:41:00.001-08:00

i've been reading rolling stone quite a bit lately and it seems that every issue has more depressing news about the music industry. accordingly, i've decided to offer my two cents on how to save the industry. i know, i know, what does a dumb kid in texas know about saving the music industry? probably nothing, but probably everything. what other options do you have?
saving this industry is going to require quite a bit of change. in fact a lot of change. change you can count.
so first off, stop relying on profits from music recordings. music is cheap to produce, we all need to admit that. in comparison to other entertainment such as films and tv shows, music is dirt cheap. but we're ten years into illegal downloading and it's not going anywhere. admit defeat. cd sales are down and now it's time to move on. consumers are not going to go back to the old days of paying for music. what needs to happen is to make free downloading profitable. how? look at network tv. if you miss an episode of desperate housewives, you can watch it at abc.com for FREE. yes for FREE. but the networks still turn a profit, albeit a small one. but it was enough profit to call for a writer's strike. make music listeners come to you for that free download instead of using limewire or whatever else. and get a sponsor. "this free madonna download brought to you by heinz ketchup." make us watch a heinz spot before allowing us to download the song. or zip the song in a file along with a heinz ad and make heinz pay for that download. we're in the middle of an economic crisis and the average american does not have enough expendable income to make the wallets of music executives grow. i'm a college graduate working 3 part time jobs just to make my monthly bills. i don't give a shit that clive davis is taking a pay cut tomorrow. nor do i have the time to care that this year justin timberlake took a salary cut of $10 million but still managed to rake in a few meager millions. i don't feel bad about getting music for free and if i ever get sued, i'm not paying. which brings us to my next point.
stop suing music lovers. what better way to seal your fate than by assuring that listeners will never be able to afford music again than by sending them a bill for $1000 per illegal download? so far it looks like all the lawsuits have been delivered to university students. it's time for a reality check. college tuition costs are sky rocketing. if a college student is going to start out at $40,000 in debt and after making monthly payments for 20 years will have paid back $160,000 adding a few hundred thousand to that in fines will not make the situation better. it will only give them less expendable income for things like MUSIC. just let it go. you've already lost that money. move on.
the focus of profits should be moved to the artist. how can you profit on the artist? i'm sure hannah montana has sold more in merchandise like video games, toys, and crap than actually cd sales. here's a good way to tie an artist's merchandise to their music. a hannah montana video game that incidentally comes with 10 FREE downloads of her music! a box of paramore cereal with a link to download their latest single! push the artist's merch like crack and toss in a free download. it's hokey, but it could work. and again, make other corporations pay for the music. i haven't actually purchased a cd in over year, but every week i buy a fridge pack of diet coke. how about including some free music downloads there? think creatively about this.
and next, admit some of the artists are just not good. i'm sick of the outrageous number of "singers" out there. and i mean "singers" as in, "i showed up to the studio, spoke the lyrics and an audio engineered autotuned the shit out of my voice so that it turned into 'singing'." yes, britney, paris, the jonas brothers, miley cyrus, etc, etc, etc, i'm talking to you. if an artist isn't an artist and you're planning on banking on their image, then save us all some time and cut their albums i dunno 7-8 tracks shorter. yes, move away from the idea of albums and focus on singles. i'd rather have a damn good single than an album full of crap. and that would be more cost effective for you, too. why pay an untalented hack to half ass 12-14 tracks of non-singing mediocrity when you can pay them 1/10th that to put out a decent single or two? once you've amassed a number of one hit wonders, send them all out on a pepsi tour where listeners will actually pay for their music.
which brings me to my next point. TOUR, TOUR, TOUR. america is not the only place with bootlegging woes. every third world country has been dealing with it for years. ask your latin american department. they know. take a page from the los tigres del norte book. they've been around since the 70s and they are still apparently the highest selling latin group. one thing they do: play 200 shows a year. and that's a year without putting out an album. i'm not saying we should get rid of big expensive arena tours. i'm just saying maybe justin timberlake and beyonce should prepare a stripped down acoustic version of their shows and tour all the smaller cities they neglect. it'd be cheaper to produce and think of all that revenue. again, i have not actually paid for a cd in at least a year, but i have paid for quite a few concert tickets. including one spice girls ticket where i expensively flew to los angeles. oh and just yesterday i paid quite a bit for decent kanye tickets. if you come, we will pay. i'm sure justin and beyonce work quite a bit. i've seen her credit card commercial, i know she's a busy woman. but the tabloids tell a different story of weekly holidays and beach side fun. america has become working class. work bitch.
and last but not least, restructure your companies. try not to lay people off. it sucks. and unemployment is on the rise. one important way to cut costs? cut down on manufacturing cds. no one's buying them. stop stocking wal-mart. if you can't sell 50,000 copies of a cd, then don't produce more than that. take a page from the nintendo wii play book.
oh and might i add, make better music. why did no one watch the grammys? the same reason no one paid for music. because it sucks. it blows. it blows hard. it's time to go back to basics. make music. hire musicians. hire artists. it's time to be original again.

ACT FAST OR DIE!!!

2008-03-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

i received this e-mail today from waketrus77@yahoo.com (is he a friend of anybody?)

HELLO FRIEND,
AM SO SORRY THAT THIS IS HOW U ARE GOING TO DIE IF YOU DON'T RESPOND
TO THIS MAIL. SOMEONE YOU CALLED YOUR FRIEND WANTS YOU DEAD AND HAS
PAID US HUGE SUM OF MONEY FOR THIS MISSION. CONTACT ME NOW IF YOU WANT
TO LIVE.
miller1stone@gmail.com

ok aside from the awful grammar, i find this a hilarious ploy and just thought i should share.

reel work

2008-02-27T10:39:00.000-08:00

i'm busy working on the updated outline for my screenplay. which means i type two words and then roam the house for 30 seconds.
so in the spirit of being productive, i decided to post my brand spankin' new reel on the blog.
it's in some weird quicktime format so i'll just post the link to it:
http://www.sandiapictures.com/reel/reel.html

end of february-ish

2008-02-24T21:08:00.001-08:00

just back from eagle pass. i had a lovely weekend celebrating aaron's 8th birthday. i've been trying to go down there more often because i feel like there's so much i miss out on. i've missed out on a lot and i don't want that to happen anymore.
on the drive back i listened to a ton of old songs that made me sad i'm not the person i used to be. or that i haven't become the person i thought i would become. which has given me new goals. and i'm going to try to follow them.
• write regularly (how can i become a writer if i'm not writing? the screenplays won't finish or perfect themselves)
• get fit. i'll never get younger and my metabolism will only get slower. i need to be the way i would like to be.
• finish "forget the awakening." i most likely won't ever be a musician, but i used to love trying and i started this album. it needs to get done. and while i'm at it, why not play guitar more? or learn the keys?
• talk with my family more. it'll help with not missing out on things.
i think if i follow these goals i'll be much happier. even with the whole job situation and whatnot.

bill clinton and stuffed jalapeños

2008-02-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

so i got a million e-mails saying bill clinton would be speaking at the opening of the hillary clinton texas campaign office. so i figured i'd go, check out my favorite former president, and be on the political scene. but before hitting the rally, i thought it'd be nice to have a margarita or two. jake suggested el gallo since it was near by.
now let's give a little framework here. back in november of '06, in preparation for the la serenata shoot, we called around to different mexican restaurants to see if it would be possible to use their location. el gallo responded with "absolutely not" and hung up. no goodbye, no apology. just that and click. since then, i've refused to go there. not vehemently, but it's not a place i suggest.
and now i have reason to. worst waiter ever. worst margaritas ever. the regular margaritas are made with $5 tequila and cost even more than that. i made the suggestion of jalapeño poppers. what the hell was i thinking! i got drunk and decided that finishing the plate of poppers was like a contest.
fast forward to being drunk and sickly in the cold at the hillary clinton rally. i've been to rallies before and they were just gatherings in a parking lot. but being that this was the clintons and a former president at that, i for some reason thought it'd be indoors, high security, etc, etc. so i left my camera in the car. no. turns out it was exactly as i've experienced. outdoor parking lot behind the building, bill standing on the bed of a pick up truck. don't get my wrong, it was extremely exciting. being gathered with my favorite people: hispanics, gays, and other democrats. i only wish they were all as drunk as i was for the first half hour. bill's speech wasn't as long as i had expected. maybe it was a half hour but it felt a lot shorter. plus there was about an hour's wait before he actually got started. it was pretty riveting though. seeing the former president in action, actually knowing that for the first time in my entire lifetime texas actually matters.

first week of fatherhood

2008-02-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

i knew i was crazy when i decided to get the dog. there's already 2 cats in the house and now i add a dog to the mix? it's been one crazy week for sure. his name is tripp. he's a 9 month old italian greyhound and he's adorable. he's supposed to be house trained but we're re-fighting that battle...at least he doesn't bark much and he's well behaved.
on the other hand, he's obviously ADD. not hyperactive just not on task. i took him to the dog park and he went nuts and he was so hard to walk because he wouldn't go in one direction.
then i decided he's probably autistic. he couldn't really socialize on a normal level with other dogs....he kept jumping on them and pawing their faces.
then i decided he's just defective. he doesn't grasp the concept of picking up his leg when he pees. he just stands there and pees. which doesn't really fit his body type. he's got the big chest that shrinks down to the pin thin waist. which puts his pelvis higher up than his chest. which means by not lifting his leg and peeing off to the side, he just pees on himself.
he's the perfect dog for me.

super bowl sunday

2008-02-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

while at the gym, i took a moment to ponder the meaning of super bowl sunday, which brings me to this rant. i don't really understand it at all. what's the big deal? it made me to question the entire business of sports entertainment. as an artist, i've never been very interested in sports. i mean i'm into playing sports. it's not something i do often but it's something i would do and enjoy. it's exercise, it's social, etc. but watching sports? i've never understood the concept. if you're not at a live sporting event, what's the point? at a live event there's something going on and it's definitely a social thing. but sitting at home watching the game?
now americans may claim they like watching sports on tv because they like sports and athleticism but that doesn't make much sense. we're the fattest country. obviously we're not really that interested in sports. because if we were, we'd be out participating in sports and then we'd be fit and healthy. in other words, if we were really all that into sports we wouldn't be sitting on our asses chugging queso and watching tv.
so then what is it? there doesn't seem much point in watching sports on tv. it doesn't stimulate your brain. there's nothing to think about. a play is a play. there's no meaning. there's no purpose. the announcers dissect the game and the play and for what? trying to figure out the purpose makes me feel defensive when thinking about the sporting audience. these hardcore fans tend to be the same people who hate art or demand that art have a justification. art always has to have a meaning. you have to "get" it. if not, then what's the point? what's the point in teaching art to kids without justifying it? if we ask that question, then what's the point in sports without justifying it? we're obviously not playing sports, you know, based on the obesity thing. it's a complete double standard.
in my opinion, art can exist for art's sake. it's something to be enjoyed and it's aesthetically pleasing. but often art does have some sort of underlying meaning or message, but sports? i don't think we should celebrate athleticism in the most nonathletic way possible.

weekend

2008-02-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

i've been pretty busy lately. unfortunately it's not with cool exciting fun stuff it's with boring same old same old shit. which is why i a.) haven't had time to post anything on the blog and b.) haven't had any material to post on the blog. i'm extremely ready for some change. i can't wait to hear back from the dga although i'm sure it won't make a difference. it would just be one less thing i'm sitting around waiting on. if that doesn't work out i'm gonna try this streetlights production assistant training thing.
in other news, i never heard back from the chronicle so i'm 99.999999% certain my story was not chosen. that small less than .01% is delusional hope i somehow am getting published.

yellow pencils

2008-01-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

i couldn't sleep at all on the first day of school in kindergarten. i was extremely anxious. i remember not sleeping. usually when i feel like i haven't slept at some point during the night i fall asleep, even if it means only getting 2 hours of sleep. but that night i remember watching the sun come up and hearing my mom's alarm go off at 6am. i've always been a nerd and i like school and so i was excited to be going back.
unfortunately it turned out my teacher, mrs. rodriguez, was a bitch. not just strict, but mean. and since eagle pass is a small town and everybody knows everybody, i mom and her friends knew her. and they made jokes about the fact that her hair color changed as often as her underwear. and it did. i think she was blonde most of the time though.
anyway, first day of school our first assignment is to color a drawing of a pencil that has our name on it. then cut it out and it would be used to label our cubby. i go apeshit of course cos i like school and by the time i learned to learn, i wanted to be an artist. so coloring counts as art. everyone else goes for the typical pencil colors: yellow and pink. my first reaction is, "i like blue. i want my pencil to be blue."
so i color my pencil blue, with the pink eraser, silver clasp, etc. proud of my expert coloring skills, i show mrs. rodriguez my pencil. she goes apeshit. what don't i understand about coloring a pencil? pencils are yellow! everyone's pencil is supposed to be yellow!
and that was probably the first time that i became a troublemaker who makes no trouble.

self portrait #2

2008-01-11T17:20:00.001-08:00

self portrait #1

2008-01-09T10:26:00.000-08:00

end of year

2007-12-31T15:37:00.000-08:00

here is the last post of 2007.
this is where i should be posting a list. but i've been thinking and i feel like this year was pretty underwhelming...i can't think of anything that i was ecstatic about. as far as music is concerned, some of my favorites turned out underwhelming albums (melanie c - "this time") and others turned out albums i quickly played out or am in the process of (kanye west - "graduation", britney spears - "black out", kylie minogue - "x").
i think movies were more exciting, but really all that come to mind are "no country for old men", "super bad" and "transformers." but in all fairness i didn't have as much time to go to the movies this year. and plus i'm not really putting any thought into remembering the ones i did see.
in my personal life: i graduated (yay!), am struggling to start a career (suck...), had my identity stolen two days before spring break (balls...), and had my car broken into (lame...).
here's to the '08.

post christmas

2007-12-28T08:44:00.000-08:00

i meant to post before christmas, but i got busy with things. anyway, i spent about 5 days at home for christmas and it was great. i really missed being with my family. i got some great presents this year too, i'm sure celeste picked them all out which is good. celeste also got me new bed sheets! and a comforter! and aaron got me this really cool glass wall clock. i got aaron 3 games from gamestop and before i left i noticed that even though i bought batman vengeance they gave me batman begins, so i fixed that but after aaron opened his presents i found out they did the same thing with the spyro game i got him. those idiot nerds...
in other news, i got drunk drunk drunk on christmas eve and started saying nonsense and making my grandma catch up. luckily she's a good sport and had 2 amaretto sours. by the way, disaronno means one of the worst sugar fueled hangovers ever.

pre-christmas blues

2007-12-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

i apologize for the lack of updates. i know it's been debilitating. work has been rather non-stop. in new news, i polished up my short story "How I Lost My Virginity" some and then mailed it off to the Austin Chronicle's short story competition. Hopefully I'll make it into the finals. i'm not one for winning, just making it in to get published is my goal.
in more new news, i finally subbed last week and it was pretty goood.
i ordered a digital slr camera! yay! and hopefully i'll have it by the end of the week and i will be back and taking awesome photos again!
no other new news. i didn't manage to get celeste hannah montana tickets so there's a downer. and the perfect note to end on.

my big gay dream come true!

2007-12-07T17:48:00.001-08:00

the spice girls concert was uh-maze-ing! completely worth every penny! and it was a lot of pennies lemme tell you what. unfortunately i don't have any photos of the concert :( my camera needed new batteries and we never stopped to get any. plus my last experience at the staples center involved a trash can labeled "cameras." so i assumed i wouldn't be allowed to take one in. my mistake. everyone had cameras. everyone. it actually got quite annoying to see the constant flashes. anyway, our seats turned out to be uh-maze-ing! we were shocked when the usher pointed down the stairs when we asked for help finding out seats. we 5 rows away from the floor! at most we were 25-30 feet away from the stage. it was uh-maze-ing! i enjoyed every second! it was by far the biggest and best concert of my life. and probably just to please my last post, emma sang "maybe"! melanie c sang "i turn to you" which was fantastic and geri sang "it's raining men." victoria walked the cat walk to "like a virgin" and that ru paul song "vogue" i think and melanie b sort of danced and sang "are you gonna go my way?" by lenny kravitz. during "mama" i'm convinced emma waved at me. it was a ballad and everyone was all "blahhh...." and emma wasn't singing a verse so she was just swaying, staring off into space and i was waving frantically screaming "wave at me! wave at me!" and then she snapped to, shook her head and waved, and then smiled and then everyone started screaming as if she was waving at them. but we all know the truth.
it was definitely the place to be seen. perez hilton was in the 3rd row in the section next to us. paula abdul was in front of him. he says on his website that terri hatcher sat next to her but i didn't see her. i did see tom and katie along wit david beckham in their suite. can i just say, tom cruise is more than a little crazy. people went nuts taking pictures of them and he climbs out on the ledge of his suite and waves then goes back. when the pictures won't stop, katie picks up suri and walks off. tom stands up, waves frantically to the crowd and then follows her. and to prove that crazy is contagious, the cotton candy man is in the section below their suite and david beckham climbs over and buys 3 bundles of cotton candy from him. i mean i guess when you're a celebrity people don't do things for you or come up to your suite. you've actually got to literally go out on a limb yourself.
other celebs in attendance: chi chi larue along with another large drag queen. and right next to us a pink haired drag queen that we didn't recognize but she was getting far more attention and requests for photos than perez hilton. ouch.

say you'll be there

2007-12-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

so the second part of my spice mania posts. yesterday you saw the bad and today you see all the reason why i'm traveling across the country for the reunion concert of the decade. although in retrospect i think spending the weekend in vegas might have been a better idea. then at least other friends could come...for vegas...you know.

5. "this groove" - supposed to have been off victoria beckham's second solo album but that never materialized. i'm sure they won't do solo songs but if they did...

4. "feels so good" - i was being unfair about melanie b putting out an offensively bad album. her first wasn't too bad....not amazing...

3. "ride it" - probably geri's best album, yet went completely unnoticed.

2. "maybe" - awesome dancing and i love the vibe.

1. "better alone" - melanie c is by far my favorite spice. and this is one of her shining moments.

"say you'll be there" but of course, the whole reason for going all the way across the country is to see them all together again!

what i don't want to see at the spice girls concert

2007-12-03T15:58:00.000-08:00

i've realized today how crazy i am. i can barely afford to pay rent yet i'm traveling across the country for an expensive 24 hour trip to los angeles to see the spice girls in concert. i've been a fanatic so of course i'm dying to go but it's ridiculous nonetheless. anyway, to help my argument for going, i decided to make 2 posts. one focusing on the low points of the spice history and one focusing on the good. the only problem is that i couldn't think of low points. it took quite a bit of brainstorming and some real nitpicking but here i have them. the things i don't want to see at the spice girls reunion concert.

1. "woman" - intended to be released on the album "forever" but was scrapped, thankfully. i forced myself to like it but it was quite bad. in fact almost as bad as:

2. "voodoo" - off the new greatest hits album. what the hell? you had ten years and you come back with this? another song i will be forcing myself to like.

3. "today" - off of melanie b's awful second solo album. how cheesetastic is this video?

4. "on top of the world" - the england united theme song. again, cheesetastic and none of this on wednesday!

5. "take my breath away" - from emma's first solo album. not awful, just generic. (i did say i was nitpicking)

sunday blues

2007-12-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

i worked a pretty decent sized shift at gap and ran into people i could only dream of being. first one of the comedians from the mr. sinus stuff over at the drafthouse came in. he's not really a regular but he's shopped at gap highland before. then scott rice came in with a girl which was weird. they had a whole lot of pda going on. then some writer came in who lives in france. yes i'm jealous of these people. they've managed to do the things they want and get paid for it. although i'm working now, i'm hardly doing or making strides toward doing the things i want and as of yet, i'm barely getting paid for it. it blows. california here i come.

republican debate

2007-12-01T10:09:00.001-08:00

first off, today i was supposed to go to an information session to become a delegate for the democratic convention. unfortunately, i can't go anywhere alone and the one person who expressed interest in sharing my dreams of a political future backed out on me. damn you jeni williams! you are NOT going to the white house with me!
in other news, i dvred the republican youtube debate and i've been watching it in bits and pieces. i will soon have a full review just as i did for the democratic debate. although this one could possibly take many many posts. if you have not seen it, you need to. it is one enormous train wreck almost comparable to this year's vmas. well you know, minus the britney. on an episode of 30 rock, alec baldwin said no one is more bitchy than conservative white men. so true. it seems none of the candidates have any inclination that they don't stand a chance or that the republican party as a whole is a reincarnation of the titanic.
has anyone noticed gov. huck's lazy eye? in fact, i just googled and i found several articles referencing the lazy eye. what the hell? get that fixed! learn to focus! i dunno but stop not looking at me when you're talking to me! i'm FREAKED out! what the hell kind of person runs for president with a lazy eye?! in fact, just look at this picture:

i don't even need to bother with a cheap shot of circling the lazy eye (and that's not just because i'm using jake's computer and he doesn't have photoshop or any form of a paint program) it's just THAT obvious.

Shakira on Lying

2007-11-30T20:22:00.000-08:00

I just had to do it.

jetsetting

2007-11-29T20:08:00.000-08:00

i am a baller.

that is what the room we will stay in will look like. hollywood renaissance baby.

tree farm

2007-11-28T21:38:00.000-08:00

i haven't posted in a while. i've been rather busy. thanksgiving came and went. i had a lot of fun. on sunday we had a potluck with morgan's left overs and it was fantastic.
i've worked all week and i don't anticipate a day off until i go to los angeles next week. working two jobs blows. and it blows even more that neither is earning me the money a college grad should be earning.
i mailed off my dga trainee application last night. i was sooooo effing nervous and i hope to god something comes of it. i have so much riding on that.
today me and the roomies went to elgin to get a xmas tree at a tree farm. jake insisted we get this huge sonofabitch. it's literally taking up an entire block of the living room. but whatever, christmas is for good times.
i need to spend more time writing. it's taking too long to get a completed first draft of sweet teeth and that makes me so upset. working is taking up too much time. i definitely need to cut back hours at the gap and start substitute teaching. in fact i got a notice today saying that if i don't substitute before dec. 20th i'm out of the system. yikes!
tonight's episode of project runway was awesome. i'm so glad they finally did mens wear! i've been praying for that since season one. in fact i'm still waiting for a full season of mens wear. it was such a challenge tonight.

love in the time of cholera

2007-11-19T20:38:00.000-08:00

i can't get enough of shakira's songs for love in the time of cholera. they're amazing. i find it pretty presumptuous that shakiramedia.com has the oscar nomination announcement listed on their calendar. but hey, if eminem and three six mafia have oscars then why not shakira? i checked out the movie's scores on rotten tomatoes and they are awful! which makes me sad because i did want to see the movie. i'm still trying to get through 100 years of solitude...but i love marquez's writing so i'm going to finish even if it takes me 100 years...
in other movie news, no country for old men is quite spectacular. and i'm also impressed that although they didn't shoot in eagle pass, wherever they shot looks pretty damn close. which is nice considering whenever a movie (and this is rare) has a scene in eagle pass it looks nothing like it. (e.g. man of the house).
today was pretty cool at the erwin center. it was my first day without supervision. i got to do quite a bit, which was exciting.
in other news, at gap tonight some weird guy came in looking for khakis. i suggested the straight fit casual cos they're my favorite. but when he went into the fitting room, i figured he wouldn't like them cos they might be too slim fitting so i tossed a pair of relaxed casual over the door and he said something like "oh you're a badass." and i was like "...yeah yeah..." and when he came out i asked if either worked out and he said yes and handed me back the straight fit. and then he said "how often do you do shit like that?" and i was kinda taken aback and i was like "huh?" and he said "how often do you do shit like that?" and i couldn't tell if he was upset that suggested a second pair while he was in the fitting room so i said "uhm...maybe once a shift?...we're supposed to do that..." then he reached in his pocket and pulled out some ones and was like "well thanks" and i was like "uh...we don't take tips" and he kept insisting and i was laughing and said "no, i'm not taking your money" and then he said "well i tried. good service" and left. it was kind of weird and maybe i should've taken his tip but oh well...

sunday sunday sunday

2007-11-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

i was cleaning up today and i was about to throw away this receipt when i noticed something strange.

for $13.88 i have become the proud owner of one shakira.

no day off day

2007-11-17T16:14:00.000-08:00

i had a lame 3 hour shift at gap today. i was not in the mood to be there. i got so tired so quickly and i've just enjoyed working there less and less these days. i do same thing day in and day out. nothing changes. i feel like i've done everything there is to do as a sales associate and i've learned everything there is to learn. i need a change really bad. plus i have a college degree. i should be making twice as much as i am and there should be some mobility and some importance to my job. a reason for me to show up and work. jc invited me to lakeline. again, i need a change. i'd take him up on the "offer" but lakeline is so far out there. i'd rather just work at arbor or the domain. if i can't get a job i'd at least like a different one. once the holidays are over i need to get back on my job hunt. but i could be leaving the gap highland much sooner than then. especially considering i probably won't be getting holidays off anyway, might as well semi enjoy them being somewhere new.

Shakira on the History of The World

2007-11-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

I bought the Oral Fixation Tour dvd the other day and Lori and I watched it and sang along and had snacks. It was nice. I'm kind of upset that How Do You Do was cut out. Even more upset that I didn't notice.

wii party

2007-11-11T17:27:00.000-08:00

i'm in shock right now. jake and i went to target and joked about buying a wii because we can never find one. then it turned out target had like 50. and we didn't know what they were because we've never seen their box before. and holy crap they were wii's. it was a rather expensive impulse buy but...we have a wii now!

Independent Foreigner

2007-11-10T13:36:00.001-08:00

at the gym today i discovered a fabulous new thing. cmt has this show called trick my trucker and it's amazing! two overweight hairy truck drivers sweating off ounces of fat = hot. and vh1 has a salt 'n pepa show? where the hell have i been for the past 6 months?

friday

2007-11-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

so it's been a rather lame week.
today i made a michael bublé vip dinner flyer. that was pretty cool. but then that was pretty much it. it was rather slow for me at the erwin center. so i read up on apple computers via wikipedia. and then i found the first computer my family ever owned. in fact let's take time out to map my computer ownership history.
my first computer was the Apple IIGS which i always called the "apple uglis" for some reason. it was extremely slow. my parents bought it from a friend, back in like 1991, who was buying a newer computer. i'm not sure how much my mom paid her for it but according to wikipedia it was $999. which is rather cheap especially considering that most computers were mega expensive in the 80s. but i'm sure $999 did not include a monitor or accessories. and i remember the computer needed a floppy disk to boot. otherwise you had a blank dos screen. but i also learned today that the GS stands for graphic and sound because of it's stunning graphics and state of the art sound technology. which is shocking considering how lame they both were.
then in 1994 my mother bought me my first computer, the Apple Performa 6200. it was an amazing machine at the time. believe me. i picked it out because it had this feature where you could switch into dos mode and run windows 3.1 which was popular at the time. and aside from that it was very multimedia intensive and came with a lot of film editing software. i think it came with a very early version of avid. when we got the internet i spent a lot of time downloading random videos and making nonsense edits of anything i could get my hands on. plus the computer had a coaxial plug in so i also spent a lot of time watching tv on it, taking screen shots, and recording video clips i later cut apart. of course it was early in computer history so video files were mega huge and the computer's memory was only a fraction of what's available now. i learned on wikipedia that the computer had a lot of faults that apple extended warranty on. too bad i had no idea. one problem was the monitor. first everything had a blue tint and eventually everything was only green and black. that sucked balls. apparently lots of people got their monitors replaced for free. wish i would've known.

fast forward to 1998, my mom bought me a blueberry imac. i dunno why i chose that color after they had come out in a million different "flavors." i liked blue. but blueberry as shown in the ads was not any different from the original nasty bondi blue. but whatever, it was cute for 2 seconds. i named this computer HAL and i even made him a name tag that i covered the imac logo with. yes HAL. this was quite possibly the worst investment ever made. if ever there was a more useless computer...not only did it crash frequently, it couldn't do anything. no multimedia software, no coaxial plug ins, no cd burner, nothing. it was the lame computer that only did well at fast internet browsing...while it was still new. and when people said it was stupid lame computer, i defended it for being...cool looking...innovative...and more user friendly?

my next purchase i made myself with my student loans. it is my current computer. we had an intense love affair. she was good with almost everything. yes, she was a beauty. now she is old and lame and beginning to show her hate for me. she crashes constantly and has slowed immensely.

i think considering how much of an avid mac user i've been my entire life, apple owes me a new computer. no i shouldn't have to buy one. they owe me one. for the mishaps with my beautiful apple performa, they owe me a new monitor. for the disaster that was the blueberry imac, they owe me a brand new computer. i should start a petition...
i know this has been a lame post but it's been a lame week and this is my blog.
it's beck-mmmm

Shakira on God (part II)

2007-11-09T20:19:00.000-08:00

sunday

2007-11-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

i've been rather nostalgic this weekend. austin and i went downtown and i danced and i had fun and i hadn't really done that in a while. a long while. but i felt old. i saw some pictures of me from about 4 years ago and i feel so different. i was so young and carefree and i want that again. but it can't be like that.
i've been so busy the past 2-3 weeks ferrying myself from job to job and not really getting the most out of either place and feeling like i'm moving farther and farther away from what i really want and what i've always wanted. i need to get back on track. i haven't done much job hunting at all in the past month. which in ways makes sense, i need to focus on the erwin center and getting the most out of that and settling in there. i shouldn't be looking at leaving just yet. but the more i think about it, what's next? how long do i stay there? and what am i doing after that? why should i get comfortable anywhere? where am i going? am i moving to LA? am i going to continue trying to make a life in austin? it hasn't been working out so great so far.
i need to finish what i start. i have to put together a reel so there's some sense that i have worked and i can work. i need to finish my screenplay(s). there's no reason why "sweet teeth" is sitting around not being revised and finished up. if i don't put more effort into what i want then i'll just keep drifting away and doing whatever job will get me by. i don't want to just get by. i want to know that i'm doing something that matters to me and that i can support myself with. there's no reason why i can't make it happen.
i cleaned out my truck today and i suddenly started reminiscing when i first got it. i dunno why but i suddenly remembered what it looked like and how i felt. how i wanted to drive it everywhere. i wish i could feel that way again.
i'm ranting but it's my blog.

is it fall yet?

2007-11-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

i've had a rather frustrating and exhausting week. hopefully the paycheck will be worth it...whenever they come in...i can't wait for some vacation time, even though it'll hardly be a vacation. thanksgiving looks real good right about now. i'm super excited about going to la for the spice girls concert! hopefully everything will work out and i won't have to miss it, or worse, scalp my tickets for crack. cos you know i'll be needing it by then.

is it wrong that i like this but i don't get it? why are geri and victoria wearing lingerie? why is there so much focus on geri leaning against a wall showing off her abs? i don't get it. it's not a song about sex. it's a song about friendship...right? or maybe that's just how girls are. with their rules and what not. probably more like frienemies, showing off to outdo each other. meh, as long as they put on a good show.

Shakira on God and War (part I)

2007-11-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

my welfare birthday

2007-10-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

well my birthday has come and gone. i am officially 23 years old. which i guess confirms that i'm an adult. it's sad that this day has come and i am in the shape i'm in. both physically and mentally. i still feel like i'm 16.
anyway, this was my welfare birthday because not having financial aid and student loans to pay for everything sucks. i usually enjoy excess for my birthday. nice restaurants, nice shopping, lots of drinking. this year it was food stamps. not really but close enough. on sunday night, we skipped the 80s dancing at elysium which sucks but instead i had a nice afternoon of lame shopping where i didn't find anything i wanted or could afford but afterward we lit the fireplace and watched desperate housewives and pushing daisies with some good food provided by meredith, some smooth red wine, and then italian creme cake with candles. i had my free drink at trudy's last night and i got way drunker than i thought i was, judging by my hangover this morning. kristina was in town and i hadn't seen her in ages! i was so happy to hang out with her.
i got some nice cards from grandma, morgan and celeste. and thankfully everyone knows my sense of humor and so they're all funny. especially celeste's. her card is addressed to a girl and she asks to borrow $60.
i'm buying myself a nice present. a digital slr and i can't wait to get it! it kind of sucks that even though i wanted a digital slr, it's sort of like i'm just replacing what stolen from me in the summer. and that's not what a birthday gift should be, right?
anyway, 23 years down. here's to hoping i'm actually an adult this year!

Birthday Weekend

2007-10-28T11:38:00.001-07:00

i've had a busy week bouncing from workplace to workplace, which gets rather exhausting. it sucks that work is consuming so much time and i'm still not even working a full 40 hours a week. but i think this week i did hit 40 and unfortunately i'll be working tomorrow on my birthday even though i requested off. anyway, the monster mash birthday bash seems to have gone a little...not as planned. last night was fun but felt a little lackluster. my mummy costume began to unravel before we even left the house and by the time we got downtown we only had about an hour for fun and drinks. i'm pissed off that it's not fall back time. we would've had an extra hour but no, george bush says we need 2 weeks less of that nonsense.
hopefully this week will be a little less stressful and maybe there will be some dancing involved.

Shakira on Intuition

2007-10-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

fall out boy

2007-10-23T21:00:00.000-07:00

today fall out boy played the erwin center. they made racket all day long and i couldn't concentrate. plus, teenage fans were already lined up when i got to work, which made me feel lame and old.
in other news, i think i saw fall out boy on my way out of the building but i can't be sure. pete wentz wasn't there, that's for sure. so it's not like i really saw them.
i had something much more interesting to say and now i can't recall...so i've been babbling on hoping it'll come to me.
ciest la vie.

***
just as i posted this i remembered.
i registered with the fine folks at career builder after i looked through some student loan papers and realized that even with my new job i still won't be able to survive and pay for loans. so i figured it was time to restart the job hunt. i uploaded my resume and what not and they gave me recommendations based on my past jobs. when i looked at the recommendations list, i was in shock. they were all accountant positions. no, not account management like in advertising or marketing, but accounting as in money and numbers.
all hope is grim.

weekend update

2007-10-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

i worked a very long day on friday and thus was unable to blog. i was very busy actually working at the erwin center then i had to high tail it over to the gap for some friday night retail action. afterwards i hauled ass to san antonio and spent the night at my sister's apartment. we went to eagle pass for what indeed did turn out to be the social event of the season. the bride wore white (yeah i dunno who she's kidding...) and the groom look flustered, but you know how these things work.
there was an interesting slide show of family photos. thankfully none of my pictures were embarrassing. but i do have to admit that in the old photos is does appear that my family lives up to being nicknamed the mexican kennedys. i can't say for sure where the style has gone but my dad and his brothers and sisters looked very preppy in all of the photos. it really made me feel like my current prepster incarnation had something to live up to.
all in all the party was a lot of fun and i had quite a bit to drink which was nice.
in other news, i worked hard karate chopping 207 boxes of shipment today at the gap. well not quite 207, we probably only got through maybe a little over 100 in the 8 hours ben and i were working. afterwards i went to see "lars and the real girl" with jeni williams. i feel obligated to say it. go see this film. it is beautiful and stunning and i loved it. ryan gosling is an incredible actor and i think he deserves every bit of success that i know he will one day achieve. again, it's an amazing film and i loved every minute of it.

muahahaha

2007-10-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

if you're reading this blog, then you've probably already been invited to the ghoulish event of the season. if not, then take this flyer as your invitation. refer to the facebook invite for more info or hit me up.
in other news, while at the gym i noticed a few things.
a. justin timberlake is like on every song ever.
b. tnt cut out the part in gladiator when joaquin phoenix pulls a bitch move and stabs russell crow in the side. so it goes from the two guys riding the elevator up to the stadium and then russell crow hobbling out with blood dripping down his side. it's very disturbing if you haven't seen this version. almost more disturbing than watching this very crucial plot point. i'm sure my kids are already traumatized.

work day

2007-10-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

so today i had something really interesting to blog about but i can't remember. i think i came up with while i was doing hand and wrist exercises with the wrist pad thing that's supposed to prevent carpal tunnel. it was quite enjoyable. things were slow at the erwin center which was ok. i'm definitely getting used to it and that's good because i've been nervous.
here's the best quote of the day:
"i wear all kinds of colored bandanas but they all blue." -- a homeless man at the bus stop.

X

2007-10-15T09:19:00.000-07:00

so i'm a little late on things considering this video went on youtube 5 days ago. but it's new to me and i'm not sure how i feel. i heard the songwriter's demo and i liked it but now that it's actually kylie i'm like.....i'm still a little upset that Excuse My French wasn't included on the album. anyway, it's one part david bowie and one part christina aguilera.

una papa sin catsup

2007-10-13T13:38:00.001-07:00

i'm having a gloria trevi moment today. i've been watching some videos and they're pretty scandalous...

Shakira on Football, Parcheesy, and Bathing on Sundays

2007-10-12T14:52:00.000-07:00

i did some actual work today at the erwin center and that felt good. like i'm not wasting my time or anyone else's. i also got to make my badge. when i got home i also received my aisd substitute teacher badge. so today was quite the day for badges.
so here are the many faces of travis:

i've been so exhausted lately and i'm glad i have a day off tomorrow. unfortunately i'm working sunday afternoon but then i have a few days off next week and i'll be going home for a rather large socialite event. yes, as one of the reigning socialites of eagle pass i must make an appearance. i wonder if my buddy tom ford can make me an outfit...

thursday

2007-10-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

so i worked at gap from 9-2 today. it was slow but i had time to catch up with morgan. i felt like falling asleep all day. i bought a cardigan i've been wanting for a while and i can't wait to wear it!
at 2:30 i started work at the erwin center. it was really really intense. i wasn't bombarded with work or anything but the erwin center is such a massive place and i got introduced to everything so fast. i'm still kinda taking it all in. i'm feeling a little insecure about whether or not i can handle this job. i really don't want to fail at it and i feel like this is a really good way for me to get some real experience and improve my graphic/web design. here's a map i made of the erwin center.

i'm sure i'll figure my way around soon.

sunday night

2007-10-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

so this weekend was rather boring but relaxing. i went out on friday night and had some fun.
saturday, austin came over so we could watch the OU game, which i half ignored and instead spent my time over at the McCoy McBlog which is hilarious and i think the creators are complete geniuses who need to be recognized and praised silly.
afterward we went to the 'Bout Time and had a grand ol' time watching the saturday night drag show.
sunday saw the return of the ever elusive jeni williams. hopefully she'll come around more often because i miss her.

a yeti in the city

2007-10-06T10:54:00.001-07:00

i'm really intrigued by this movie. i read an article on it in the chronicle and it seems very cool. from the preview it looks a little cheesy but it seems so weird that i'm still very interested. if anyone else is interested let me know...we should check out a screening at austin film festival.

Shakira on Women's Rights

2007-10-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

Well it's not so much women's rights...but whatever.

i have some good news. i'm more semi-employed! i'm now going to be working as an assistant to the art director at the frank erwin center. i went to fill out some paper work today and i start next thursday. hopefully it'll all turn out well and i'll a lot of new things. i'm pretty excited.

stop!

2007-10-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

just stop it!
yes you crazy world you!
so after the disappointment from missing the raffle for spice girls tickets, luck threw me a bone. yes a bone because i'm a dog. jake got an e-mail this afternoon saying he was chosen in the raffle and a couple hundred dollars charged to my AMEX later, we've got tickets to see the spice girls in los angeles! yay! not happening on the friday show, which still had decent seats, but we instead bought tickets for the wednesday show which had better seats for the same price. hopefully everything will work out and 10 years post spice mania i will finally be seeing the spice girls in concert!
to add fuel to my fire, i got a call about a job i applied for earlier this afternoon. i didn't recognize the number so i got scared and didn't answer. (just in my defense, the bitch woman from recar called me earlier which i reacted similarly too and she left a not so happy tone in her voice message for me so really i just thought maybe it was someone else from recar wanting my left testicle along with a check for miscellaneous things they aren't sure about). i'm going to call him back tomorrow morning and see what's what. hopefully it won't be another "oh too bad you took too long." if it is then i'll truly shoot myself in the head. of course after the spice girls concert.