From the desk of Script

Thursday, March 26th 2009

2009-04-10T04:58:00.000-07:00

Melissa woke me up at 11 a.m. and gave me a “happy b-day” hug/kiss. I checked my phone and I had a few text messages from people wishing me a happy birthday as well. I replied to those, got up and took a shower. Melissa wanted to know where I wanted to go for lunch, and when she suggested Mongolian food at the mall, I was all about it. We got ready, jumped in her car and headed down to Parkway Plaza for some eats.

While I got my Mongolian food, she went over to Panda Express and got some lunch for her. On my way back to the table, I made sure to get her a cup of the hot sauce that she liked and brought it with me. She was really excited by it and gave me a big hug. She said that it was “all about the little things…”, I got what she meant, but it was just hot sauce…

We ate and chit chatted more about the party, I was excited for the weekend, and bummed that I had to work tonight instead of taking the night off. I decided to work on my birthday to secure Saturday night off for the party. It was a worthwhile trade.

After lunch we strolled through Hot Topic so I could say hi to Thasha, and then we hit up Wal-Mart for some rockstars. Then Melissa drove us back to her house, and we hugged goodbye. She was coming by to visit me at work (and bring me dinner), so I knew that I’d be seeing her in a few hours. I got back in the Merc and took off to go pick up Samantha from school.

When we got back home, Sammy gave me the present she had picked out, she handed me THE INCREDIBLE HULK on Blu-Ray and I was stoked. I really enjoyed the movie, and now I could enjoy it on the best possible format…now I just needed IRON MAN to complete the collection I thanked her, and put the movie on the shelf with all the other Blu-Rays.

I went back to my room and checked the internet for any new updates. I was hooked on the little widget that Cynthia put on my blog pages to see how many people were coming to my websites. FYS was getting a lot of hits and I was very excited that it was picking up in traffic. After that, I played some more GTA until it was time to leave for work.

At the theater, Beth and Jacqueline brought me a gift bag with tons of candy and snacks, as well as a gift card to GameStop. I thanked them and snacked away on some Sweet Tarts that they had put in the bag. About 9:30 p.m. Melissa showed up and brought me some Einstein Bro’s for dinner, as well as assorted bagels and pastries. I macked down on some bagels…mmm good!

Melissa hung out for a while, but when it came time for me to tear apart the movies, she decided to take off. She hugged me goodbye, told me that she loved me, and said that she’d see me on Saturday for the party. I walked her to her car and watched her leave. Then I went back upstairs and tore apart BEDTIME STORIES and WATCHMEN, I was really bummed to be tearing apart WATCHMEN, but we were getting in MONSTERS VS ALIENS and I was excited to see that.

After the movies ended, I took the money to the bank, and then drove to Melissa’s. She thought that I was going to sleep at home, but I wanted to surprise her and stay at her place instead.

I got to her house, snuck in her room, and gently woke her up. She was surprised but very happy at my showing up. I got into bed with her, cuddled, thanked her for being the best girlfriend a guy could ask for, kissed her goodnight, and closed my eyes.

As I was laying there, I kept thinking that this was the end of the year long experiment. 365 days had gone by since the start of the blog, and now it was over. All I had to do is just write it all down, upload it to the site and let the world see. I began to think back to where I was a year ago, and all that I’ve done and seen in the time since. I thought back to Comic-Con, Blacks Beach, the Spike Scream Awards, the Spike Video Game awards, the MTV Movie Awards, getting rejected by Ron Perlman, hanging out with Doug Jones, rescuing Aralin from the Hyatt in downtown San Diego, lost my virginity, falling in love for the first time, creating several different projects, working on my first feature film, getting the chance to pitch my ideas to Atom.com, and so many other things that flooded my mind as I reminisced about my 26^th year on this earth.

All I could do was smile as I finally drifted off to sleep at 4 a.m….eagerly waiting what was around the corner…

The End.

PS: "Conquering It" means masturbation.

Wednesday, March 25th 2009

2009-04-10T04:57:00.002-07:00

I woke up around noon and rolled out of bed. I was feeling better but I wasn’t really in the mood to go out and do anything. Melissa and I had talked and decided on me coming by tonight and sleeping over so I could wake up on my birthday with my girlfriend. We also talked about the BBQ on Saturday and how it would be better if we didn’t head to LA for THE ROOM because that way more people could attend the party. I was a little bummed at this, but it was the wiser choice. I’d rather party with more people than a few of us make the trek to LA. After the decision was made, I put the word out online and felt better about the whole thing (not to mention that Jason couldn’t make it down from Sacramento for the movie…that was the real deciding factor).

I checked my email, promoted FYS a little more, and then made myself some lunch. After eating I booted up the xbox and played some more GTA. The gaming took up most of the afternoon, and when it was time, I showered, and got ready for work. At 6:50 p.m., I jumped in the Merc, hit up 7-11 for a rockstar, and headed down to the theater.

We weren’t very busy tonight, and since I had internet access upstairs, I spent the whole night on 4chan and surfing the net. This made my night fly by. At the end of my shift, I locked the place up, took the money to the bank, and drove to Melissa’s.

I went inside and curled up in bed with her. She was sleepy, but she gave me a hello kiss, and we cuddled. I fell asleep by 4 a.m.

Tuesday, March 24th 2009

2009-04-10T04:57:00.001-07:00

I woke up at noon just feeling like shit. Geoff and I were supposed to meet up and shoot a short film to test out the camera, but I just wasn’t feeling it. I told Melissa that I wasn’t feeling well and she said she’d bring me some lunch and a Jamba Juice to help me feel better. I rolled out of bed, checked my email, and then got back into bed to play some GTA.

About 2 hours later Melissa showed up with a sub sandwich and a Cold Buster, we talked for a few minutes and then she had to leave to run some errands. We hugged goodbye, I thanked her for the sustenance and she took off. I went back inside to eat and watch some the season 1 finale of EAST BOUND & DOWN. I wasn’t aware at the time that it was the end of the first season, but I was totally bummed out when I found out. I really liked Danny McBride in that role, and I can’t wait for a season 2. When I was done with my sandwich, I went back and played more xbox for several more hours. In fact, I spent the majority of the day on my ass playing GTA.

I finally got tired enough to sleep and passed out at 2 a.m.

Monday, March 23rd 2009

2009-04-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

I woke up around 11:30 a.m., rolled over, grabbed my phone and called Geoff to see if he had tested the HF10 at all. He said that he had done some work with it and we made plans to meet up in an hour. I got up, took a shower, got dressed, grabbed a cold rockstar out of the fridge, and headed over to his place.

Geoff and I chatted for a few minutes before deciding to go for a walk to help Geoff clear his chest a bit (he felt all stuffed up). As we were walking out the front door, Geoff’s dog Rusty ran out and got through the open gate (that I had accidentally left open) and took off for a neighbor’s house. Geoff and I followed and after a few minutes of coaxing Rusty back, we got him put away and went for our walk.

We started talking, and walking, and talking, and walking some more. Before I knew it, we had walked close to 4 miles and ended up right next to Melissa’s house. I shot her a call and asked if she wanted to go get lunch with us at Subway. She agreed, and since she was out running errands, she said she’d be a few minutes before arriving at the house. About 5 minutes later she rolled up in her Taurus, Geoff and I piled in, and off we went.

The three of us spent 2 hours at Subway, just talking and bullshitting. When that was over with, Melissa drove us back to Geoff’s house and dropped us off. Geoff and I went inside so I could grab the camera, and then I left for home.

Melissa was coming over at 8 p.m. and I wanted to a chance to straighten up my room a bit. When that was done, I played some GTA for a bit and when she called saying that she was outside, I logged off the game, booted up Netflix and went out to greet her. Samantha followed me out to the driveway so she could finally meet my girlfriend.

As Sammy and I walked out into the driveway, Mom and Joe pulled up in Mom’s car, so the 5 of us talked for a few minutes before they went back to what they were doing and Melissa and I went back to my room to hang out and watch movies.

We first decided on watching GROSS POINTE BLANK, which is a movie I really love, but Melissa didn’t care for too much (later on Marky told me to dump her because of this…in a joking way of course). After that we scrolled through the selections on Netflix.com in their Watch Instantly category and we decided on watching the documentary JESUS CAMP.

JESUS CAMP made me rage…in the first 5 minutes. I have some pretty religious family members, but that movie made me want to pull a coup de grace on the entire camp. Just writing about that movie makes me rage harder, so I will stop. Last thing I’m gonna say is that people like that are the reason why we have religious wars in this world. Think about it. (MESSAGE!)

After JESUS CAMP, I showed Melissa a couple of episodes from THE WHITEST KIDS U’KNOW and when those were done, she got tired and wanted to go home. I walked her out to her car, we kissed goodnight and she took off. I went back to my room, turned everything off and passed out about 4 a.m.

Sunday, March 22nd 2009

2009-04-10T04:55:00.002-07:00

Melissa woke me up at noon, we chatted for a bit and decided to go down to Lucky’s Chinese Food, grab lunch, and go see I LOVE YOU, MAN. I hunkered out of bed, took a quick shower, got dressed and waited for Melissa to finish getting ready. A few minutes later, we were in her car and heading to get Chinese food.

Lucky’s was empty, so we got in, ordered and sat down to eat. We talked while indulging in our piles of orange chicken, and when that was done, we put our food in the trash, got back in the car and headed down the street to the mall.

Before going to the movie, we made a quick stop by Wal-Mart to get some snacks and supplies for me to take to work tonight. Once that was done, we high tailed it over to the theater, bought our tickets and went inside to watch the new Paul Rudd/Jason Segal best buddy comedy.

I LOVE YOU, MAN is my new favorite comedy. I just wanted to start off the review by saying that. The movie spoke to me on so many levels and I was cracking up all the way through. The great thing was that Melissa felt the same way, the movie touched on a lot of things about our relationship and how some things are handled a little too well. It got to the point of where I was squeezing her hand from laughing so hard and whispering “FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKK!” the entire time. She didn’t even have to say anything, I knew what she was thinking. The movie is about a guy who has always had girlfriends and no guy friends, so when he meets a guy he connects with, it’s like an instant bro-mance… According to Melissa, it’s how Jason and I were when we met at the wedding last month. When the movie was over, we dubbed it “our” movie and went back to her house.

I didn’t hang out for too long at her place, I had to get home and get ready for work. We kissed goodbye and Melissa said that she’d come down to the theater and join me to watch KNOWING (which was #1 at the box office this weekend). I got in the Merc and headed off for home.

I had some time to kill, so I dicked around online and checked my email. Then I played some GTA 4 for a bit before finally tossing on some new clothes, and running out the door to go down to the drive-in.

We weren’t that busy tonight, I expected more of a crowd for a Sunday, but it was pretty chill. I was debating on what movie to watch at the box office, so I settled on KISS KISS BANG BANG because it’s my favorite RDJ movie aside from TROPIC THUNDER, and it had been a while since I had sat down to watch the dark comedy. Because of the trickle of traffic and my boss wanting to chit-chat for a while, it took me all night long to finish watching the movie. By the time it was over, Melissa had shown up and was ready to kick it in her car to watch the movie.

Marky had called me and told me that Jamie dumped him. I told him to come down to the drive-in and we’d chat about it. He showed up a few minutes later and he and I talked about what happened. Long story short, she was a cunt and dumped him because she couldn’t handle it. What a fucking bitch. Eventually Marky had to bail and get ready for work, so he said “goodbye” and took off.

When the time came, I closed the box office up, drove the money to my boss, and got in Melissa’s car to watch the new Nic Cage Sci-Fi wonder…

KNOWING is a movie that had a really shitty trailer. I see why the trailer was made the way it was, but because of how much stuff the company wanted taken out of the trailer it really helped kill my excitement in watching the movie. The movie is about a guy who’s deaf-but-not-really-deaf son finds a piece of paper that was buried for 50 years in a time capsule with all sorts of random numbers on it. Cage is intrigued by the picture and figures out that the numbers were predictions of dates when a lot of people would die (such as 9/11…this is how he figured it out…also 2916 people died that day…I really thought was more…go figure?), and it leads to…well I don’t want to spoil it for you (aliens). The movie was actually pretty surprising, and the twist wasn’t as gay as I thought it would be. Also, the train wreck scene was fucking brilliant! Suffice to say, I enjoyed KNOWING far greater than I thought I would.

When the movie was over, I clocked out and Melissa and I drove back over to her house. We spent the rest of the night talking and enjoying each other.

We fell asleep about 4 a.m.

Saturday, March 21st 2009

2009-04-10T04:55:00.001-07:00

I got up around noon and strolled around the house. No one was home because they were all at Sammy’s Color Guard competition (to which I wasn’t invited) for the day. I hung out with Belle at my feet, and tooled around online for a bit.

Eventually I got hungry and decided to go and get Subway, I jumped in the Merc and jetted down to the Albertson’s parking lot. As I was walking in to the store to get a couple rockstars, I got another call from Jeff G. He was calling to tell me about the shoot he had just been on for a pilot episode for a new web series. We talked about it for a bit, and then we talked about how he’d be missing my b-day party because he’d be in Washington DC for the week.

After we talked, I got my sub and went home. While eating I watched all the episodes I had of EAST BOUND & DOWN, which is the new Danny McBride (who is one of my favorite actors) series on HBO. I watched all 5 episodes in a row and it was fucking outstanding. I was dying to see the newest episode on tomorrow.

When that was done, I took a shower and got ready for work.

The theater was busier tonight than it was last night, and I spent most of the night at the box office hanging with the guys. I had asked my boss if he could cover me on my birthday, but he couldn’t because he was gonna be out with his wife. And I couldn’t ask Bob because he was going to be in Cabo San Lucas with his girlfriend for the week. I was bummed that I’d be working on my birthday, but I said that I was going to be taking the following Saturday off for my barbeque and trip to LA to see another midnight showing of THE ROOM (something that I’ve been dying to share with other people).

I was hungry, so I left and got some Carl’s Jr. I really hate myself for eating that stuff, but I was looking for something different than my normal. I got the food, came back and watched RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN.

I was hesitant about RACE TO WITH MOUNTAIN when I first heard of it. I was a big fan of the original movies, and I’m usually against remakes. But this was more of a retelling than a remake. At least it had the Rock in it. I do like to admit when I’m wrong, and I was really wrong with this movie. It was fun, funny, exciting, adventurous, awesome, thrilling, and it had mother fucking Gary Marshall in it. What’s not to fucking love? As I was watching it, I knew that I would be buying the movie when it came out on DVD.

After the box office closed, I was getting ready to empty the trash cans when Del and Eddie said they’d do it. They told me to take off and go see my girlfriend, so I obliged. I clocked out and took off for home to get some stuff in order.

I got home, checked my email, packed up the HF10 to take over to Geoff’s house, and took off. I called Geoff on the way and told him that I’d be over in a few, but I didn’t have long to stay.

Geoff met me outside and I showed him the camera, he liked it a lot, and we tested the wide angle lenses, and the telephoto lenses right then and there. After that, I had to bounce to get over to Melissa’s house. So I left the camera with him, and took off out the door. A few minutes later I was parked in front of Melissa’s.

I went inside, cuddled up next to my girlfriend, and fell asleep at 3 a.m.

Friday, March 20th 2009

2009-04-10T04:54:00.001-07:00

I woke up about 12:30 p.m. and moseyed around the house for a while. I had to pick Samantha up at 1:30 p.m., so when that was done, I shot my boss a call to see if I was going to be needed to work tonight (new schedule at work means I don’t work Friday’s anymore). He told me to come down anyways.

About 2 p.m. I checked the UPS tracking code to see where the hell my new camera was. It said that the package was delivered, and as soon as I read that I ran out to the front door to see. There it was, a 2-foot long cardboard box with my name on it. I took it into my room and opened it up. I checked out the camera, unpacked all the cables and accessories, and then I plugged it in to let the battery charge. Melissa was asking me how I was enjoying my new toy, I told her that it was charging, so I couldn’t enjoy it as much as I would like. She laughed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing Halo Wars and at 5:30 p.m. I took a shower, got dressed and headed to the theater.

I was expecting a decent line for a nice Friday evening, but it wasn’t very big. As I was waiting for my boss to open the place up, I got a phone call from Jeff G. and we started to chat. We chatted for an hour and a half about upcoming projects, his bachelor party in August, and just shit we wanted to do.

After we talked, I decided that I didn’t want to stick around to catch the second showing of KNOWING, so I took off and headed back home. Melissa had decided to spend her first Friday night without a job by going out with some new friends she had made. I didn’t have much else going on, so I kicked it at home and played more xbox.

I decided that I would promote my birthday party/bbq in my own way. I went into the garage, recorded a Rodney episode about the Bohemian Club, and then I recorded a comical b-day party invitation for my friends. The problem was that I kept fucking up what I wanted to say, so it took me 14 times to finally get it the way I wanted to. I went back to my room, edited and uploaded both videos.

I ended up going to bed at 4 a.m.

Thursday, March 19th 2009

2009-04-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

I stirred from my slumber when the alarm went off at 1 p.m. I let Belle out to go to the bathroom, and I went back to my computer to watch more documentaries. I spent the whole afternoon doing this, and eventually I ended up watching Alex Jones’ original Bohemian Club documentary DARK SECRETS (which is the prequel to THE ORDER OF DEATH) before going to work…the man makes some pretty out there documentaries, and they are always SO long.

I hit up 7-11 on the way to the drive-in, and as soon as I got the place opened up, I kicked it with Beth and Jacqueline for a while. Jacqueline was asking me about the story idea of the graphic novel, and when I tried to explain it to her, Beth kept interrupting and asking questions. As soon as the first intermission was done, I went upstairs to the work computer and typed up a 3-page timeline of events that is the prologue to the story. I brought the paperwork downstairs and handed it to Jacqueline for her to read. She did tell me that I would need to really be descriptive in the script so she’d know what to draw. I was ok with this and psyched at the same time, because I know that she’ll welcome the challenge of drawing it as much as I welcome the challenge of writing it.

When the snack bar closed, I went upstairs and tore apart the movies that were going bye-bye.

After the money was counted and everything was faxed and tallied, I still had almost 2 hours to kill before the end of my shift. I busted out the laptop with the full intent of updating the blog. What happened was that my laptop picked up a wifi signal from somewhere nearby, and it allowed me access to the internet. Fuck the blog! I was gonna dick around online at work for once.

I spent the next 2 hours doing this. I tried to stream youtube vids, but it didn’t work. I even tried to watch porn, but it was choppy and took forever to load. That didn’t bother me too much because I still conquered it.

After the movies were over, I took the money to the bank, and drove home.

I spent the rest of my night playing GTA and zoning out. I eventually blacked out around 5 a.m.

Wednesday, March 18th 2009

2009-04-10T04:51:00.002-07:00

I got up around noon and called Geoff. I told him that we should discuss the pitch package as well as wait for the proper paperwork to come in from Atom.com (I received an email from Ian telling me to expect paperwork). Geoff said he’d come over and we’d go over the documents together. Melissa was at work, so I got up, took a shower, got dressed and waited for Geoff. When he showed up, no paperwork had come yet, so we decided to head down to Subway to get some lunch.

After macking down on a sub sandwich, we went back to waiting for the email. Nothing all afternoon. The time wasn’t wasted though, we went over possible locations for the scenic San Diego DVD tour. I had picked out 28 possible locations and Geoff and I went over each and every one of them while we were waiting. I was happy with this because it wasn’t like we were wasting the afternoon.

About 5:30 p.m. I kicked Geoff out so I could get ready for Melissa to come home for our date. He took off, and I changed into my nice jeans and a nice t-shirt. The roommate came out and complimented me on my attire. I thanked her.

Melissa got home and changed quickly before we left. She tossed me the keys to her car and I drove us down to Seaport Village. On our way there we noticed that the marine layer was coming in pretty thick. Melissa took some really cool photos of the fog blanketing the downtown sector of San Diego. In the back of my mind, I was hoping that through the fog would come an army of zombies…a guy can dream can’t he?

I parked the car, and we got out to wander around. Melissa was chilly, so we went into a coffee shop/bookstore to get her some chai tea. I took the opportunity to look around for any kind of scenic tour DVD’s that might be for sale, but I couldn’t find any. After that, we wandered up and down the foggy pier for a while. It was really beautiful out, and I was able to get a couple good photos with the iPhone.

We walked all the way down to the edge of the convention center before turning around and coming back. We only had a couple hours of parking time, and we had used up most of it on our walk. We went back to the car and headed back out to East County to get dinner at Denny’s.

After dinner, I was craving some frozen yogurt, so we headed down to the yogurt mill in El Cajon, and they were closed when we got there. Then we cruised to Rite Aid for some ice cream, and they were closed too. We figured that the other Rite Aid in Santee might be open, but it was closed as well. Eventually we settled on getting a large strawberry shake from In-N-Out for me to wet my whistle on.

With the ice cream shake in my hand, I drove us back to Melissa’s house where we hung out for a little bit before I took off for home. I made sure to give my awesome/great/spectacular/loving/incredible girlfriend a long hug and kiss goodbye before I left.

Back at home, I got into my comfy clothes, checked my email, and sent out some more emails about FYS to people. I had gotten some good responses, but I wanted more.

I began thinking about the whole 2012 conspiracy around Planet X, or Planet Nibiru, and how it was supposed to come within thousands of miles of Earth and kill us all. So I did a Rodney’s World episode on it. That prompted a search for more youtube videos, which led me to Alex Jones’ documentary THE ORDER OF DEATH, which is about the illustrious Bohemian Club in Northern California. I watched the whole documentary before going to bed at 5 a.m.

Tuesday, March 17th 2009

2009-04-10T04:51:00.001-07:00

I woke up at noon, and hung around the house for a while. I played with Belle for a bit, and checked my email. About 1 p.m. I got a text from Melissa asking if I’d like to go on a walk with her at 4 p.m. I agreed and made sure to shave and shower next.

While I was waiting for right time to leave and head over to my girlfriend’s house. I got a text from a filmmaking friend David D. (who wanted me to go with him to see Collective Soul on my b-day last year) asking me if I wanted to accompany him to LA tomorrow to attend a meet and greet with the cast and crew of THE OFFICE. I totally wanted to, and I told him that I was interested. I also asked him if he had a spare ticket for Geoff to come, but he didn’t.

As I was walking out to my car to drive to Melissa’s, I got a phone call from an unknown number. I answered it and it was Ian from Atom.com calling me back. He explained that there had been an error with the answering service at his work, and he didn’t get his messages until just now. He asked me if I was still interested in pitching with him, and I said “Yes!” He told me to email him and we’d set up a date, and just like that…my life was taking shape.

As soon as I hung up the phone I started to jump around and dance in my driveway. I called Geoff to tell him the good news, and I said that we had to finalize the pitch package and make sure it looked fantastic. He agreed.

Beaming with excitement, I bombed to Melissa’s house and met her outside. I told her the good news and she was happy for me. Then she told me why she was upset with me, and I agreed with her. I totally fucked up, and I admitted it.

We continued our walk for a long while. We walked around the nearby school, park, and adjacent neighborhood. Then I got thirsty, so we walked down to Walgreens to get some water.

I asked her out on a date tomorrow night and we agreed on going to Seaport Village to wander around there for a bit. When we got back to her house, we hugged/kissed goodbye, and then I took off for home.

My excitement level was through the roof, and I really wanted to get working on the pitch package, but I knew that Geoff was busy, so I kicked it at home. I played some Halo Wars for a while, and then I jumped online and messed around there for a bit. Later on Geoff hit me up and sent me a link to a student filmmakers group on Vimeo.com that had a ton of short films.

I clicked on the link and perused through several dozen short films that had been uploaded to the group. Then I went through and sent emails to every filmmaker that posted a short film to inform them about FYS. I got a couple responses right away from eager filmmakers looking to promote their work.

I also emailed Ian with my contact information so we could set up a pitch date at Atom.com, I knew that it was late, and I wouldn’t receive a response until tomorrow but I was still antsy.

About 1:30 a.m. I talked with Melissa and she was having trouble sleeping, so I asked her if she wanted me to come over and sleep with her. She said “yes”, so I packed up some nice clothes for tomorrows date night, and I headed over there.

I laid down with her and we chatted until falling asleep at 2:30 a.m…completely forgetting that it was St. Patty’s Day.

Monday, March 16th 2009

2009-04-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

I didn’t wake up until about 1 p.m. When I checked my email, I found that I had a letter in there from the guys who I bought the HF10 from. They were telling me that I needed to buy from them directly instead of through paypal. It seemed like a bit of a shady deal, but their feedback was really positive, so I figured it was worth a shot.

I called the number and talked with a sales rep. Our conversation went something like this:

Rep: “So you’re buying the Canon HF10, good camera, really awesome picture.”
Me: “Yeah, I’m really excited to be getting it.”
Rep: “Just so you know, the camera only comes with one battery.”
Me: “I know, I was planning on buying a spare on eBay for like ten bucks.”
Rep: “Those aren’t the best batteries you can buy, but I’ll tell you what, if you buy a four-year warranty for one-hundred-fifty-bucks, I’ll throw in a five-hour battery for free.”
Me: “That’s a good deal, but I just can’t afford it right now.”
Rep: “Well, what can you afford?”
Me: “To put it bluntly, this purchase will make me almost broke for the next two weeks.”
Rep: “What about this? The four-year warranty for seventy-five bucks?”
Me: “I’m sorry, I just cannot afford it at this time.”
Rep: “We’ll ship your camera out to you this week.” – Click.

The fucker hung up on me because I wasn’t buying his warranty. Stupid mother fucking car salesman tactics don’t work on me bitch! (Yes, I know I’m venting in text form, but it’s cool…guy was a douche though).

I called Geoff to let him know that the camera was purchased and he was stoked.

I hung out for the rest of the afternoon and played some GTA as well as hung around online on FaceBook. I ended up talking with Dan M. about an acting event taking place in North Park tonight. He suggested that I go, and when I talked with Geoff about it, he was down. We agreed on a 7 p.m. meet time at my place.

At 7 p.m. Geoff showed up and we drove down to North Park to check out this Acting Professionally event. We arrived a few minutes late, and were quizzed at the door about whether or not we had registered to come. I dropped Dan’s name and since his name was first on the guest list, we got in.

We made our way inside and sat down in the dark auditorium. The event was pretty interesting, it was a bunch of acting students acting out scenes from movies in both recorded and live performances. First we were shown the recorded scene (which was directed – poorly I might add – by the same guy), and then the students would come out on stage and emote. Some performances were better than others, and I only knew a couple of the actors on stage.

As soon as we sat down I got a text message from Melissa. She was feeling better and wanted to know if I was still up for hanging out. I told her where I was, and I had a feeling that it really pissed her off. She had every right to be because I had forgotten about her the day after I said that I wouldn’t. Fuck.

After the acting was over, there was a meet and greet in the lobby. Geoff was able to score us a folder with headshots and demo reels that would help us with casting future projects. I was able to score some free red wine too… We chatted with some people for a while, and then at about 11 p.m. we headed for home.

I still didn’t hear back from Melissa when I tried to text her, I knew she was mad, and I had no other choice but to let her remain that way. I felt like a huge dick though.

Geoff dropped me off, and I kicked it online for the next couple hours. I did some FYS promoting and then I moved over to GTA 4 to spend the rest of the night playing that.

I passed out cold at 4 a.m.

Sunday, March 15th 2009

2009-04-10T04:48:00.002-07:00

Melissa woke me up at noon, and we chatted for about an hour in bed. We were both starving, so we decided on heading down to Lucky’s Chinese and getting a lunch special before it ran out at 2 p.m. We jumped in my car and drove down there.

We got our food and sat down to eat. We had a good conversation while we ate, and then we opted to head down to Best Buy to check out HDTV’s that Melissa may want to get with her tax return.

We wandered around the TV section for a while and found some good deals, Melissa was thinking about going after a Dynex (like I have), but I talked her out of it because it wasn’t what she wanted. I told her to wait until she found the TV she wanted (Sony or Samsung). We cruised around the videogame section after that, as well as the camera department. They had the HF10 on display there as well, and Melissa was trying to talk me into buying it then and there, but I was going to pick up the eBay auction that Geoff had sent me because it had a ton of accessories (wide angle lenses FTW!).

After that we drove back to her place. It was 3:30 p.m. and I decided to get going to get some chill time before work. I hugged her goodbye and took off for home, when I got home I realized that I had left my glasses in her car, so I drove back to pick them up.

When I got back to her house, I called out to her to let her know that I was back and that I had forgotten my glasses. She told me that her keys were on the stand next to the door, but I could hear that there was something wrong with her voice. I went to her room and she was on her bed crying, I asked her what was wrong and she thought that I blew her off because I left an hour before I said I would. We talked for a while and I apologized for forgetting, and then she told me that I had forgotten some other things as well. She was right, I was dumb and had been selfish. We talked for a while longer, made up, and then I really did have to leave to go home and get ready for work. Before I left, I suggested that we get together tomorrow night and go do something.

At the theater, Bob was managing again, and he hung out with me in the box office. The owner showed up and came to talk to me about Annette. She went to him and said that I was harassing Will and being unfair to him. I told him exactly what happened and that she was overreacting. He gave me the spiel about how I’m the assistant manager and how I have to act accordingly…Both Bob and I looked at him like an idiot. He then said that he had to say something but he didn’t really care. He also said that he was getting ready to finally buy the Drive-In a domain name so we could have a proper website, and that he’d pay me to run it. At least that was good news.

We watched BENDER’S GAME and when that was over with I watched a documentary about LARPING that I had found online. That is how I spent the rest of the time the box office was open. After I closed it up, I went back to my car and watched WATCHMEN again. When that was over, I clocked out and went home.

I dicked around online and then went to bed at 4:30 a.m…but not before purchasing the Canon HF10 and a buttload of accessories from an eBay auction.

Saturday, March 14th 2009

2009-04-10T04:48:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 10:45 a.m. to get ready to meet Geoff, but I was still tired, so I went back to sleep for another hour. I woke up to the sound of my phone ringing and it was Geoff telling me that he was on his way. I quickly got dressed, kissed Melissa goodbye, and ran out the door to meet him.

I jumped in the Scion and off we went to Mira Mesa.

The theater was just as packed as it was last weekend, so we sat down and got comfortable. The movie started, and at first I was like “I should have stayed and gone back to sleep”, but as soon as the movie was on the screen I was like “This movie FUCKING rocks!” and it remained that way for the next three hours.

After the movie, Geoff drove me back to Melissa’s house and I checked in on her. She was feeling better, but still not 100%. She asked me to run to Jack In The Box and get her some food and a vanilla milkshake, so I took her car down to the fast food joint (because her car has cup holders) and I picked up the food. I took it back to her house, and we ate.

I couldn’t stay for very long, so I told Melissa that I would come back over after work and see how she was feeling. She like the idea, and we kissed goodbye. I got back in the Merc and headed to the house.

I dicked around online for about an hour before I had to head to the theater. When I got there a pretty big line had formed, so I was ready to take on the masses and get the shit done. But it was just an early rush, and the night dulled out after that. I spent most of the night in the snackbar talking with Beth and Jacqueline.

Towards the end of the night Annette called Beth to see if Will was working late or not. She looked at me and I said “No”. Then as a joke I said this:

“It is my nefarious plot to keep from Will from working and therefore not allowing him to make any money! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!” – With an over-the-top Bond villain voice.

Annette heard me, and thought that I was serious. She showed up about 20 minutes later and bitched a total fit about it saying that I was a dickhead and how she hopes that Melissa finds that out. I had to refrain from fighting back, but I did so at the request of Beth.

After the box office closed, I quickly emptied the trash cans and then I spent the rest of the time hanging out with the guys next to Bob’s truck. We all watched WATCHMEN and talked a lot of shit to each other just as friends do.

When the movies were over, I locked all my shit up, clocked out and headed to Melissa’s house to see how she was feeling. She was a lot better then how she was when I left her, and I got into bed and snuggled up next to her. We were asleep 30 minutes later a 4 a.m.

Friday, March 13th 2009

2009-04-10T04:47:00.002-07:00

I woke up around 11:30 a.m. to Geoff calling me and giving me a wake up call. He wanted to head to Fry’s, but he wanted me to make sure that they had the camera in stock. I got up, let the dog out, and checked the website to see if they had it in. I had to call the store directly, and they said that they were out of the HV30’s, and they might have the HF10 in stock. I figured it was a worthwhile bet to head down there, so I told Geoff that they had the camera in stock, and he came over to pick me up.

We rolled down to Fry’s, walked to the camera department, and the first camera we found was the HF10 and the HF100. I had brought my 4gb SDHC class 6 with me to record the footage to, while playing with the features on the camera. We were both really impressed with the HF10, and the only difference between that and the HF100 is the 16gb HDD built in to the camera.

We wandered around Fry’s a bit longer and then we took off to head to Subway to get some lunch. While at lunch we agreed on going and seeing WATCHMEN in IMAX tomorrow because Geoff wanted to see it, and I wanted to see it again. After lunch, Geoff dropped me at home and he took off.

Melissa sent me a text message saying that she wasn’t feeling good at all, and that she was going home from work. I told her that I would come by after work tonight and take care of her. She agreed.

About 5:30 p.m. I shaved, showered, got dressed and headed to the theater.

We weren’t that busy, so at the first intermission of WATCHMEN, I clocked out and headed over to Melissa’s house.

She was passed out in bed and just not feeling well at all. I did what I could to help her get comfy, and then I ran down to Jack In The Box to get dinner for myself. When I got back, I quickly ate and tossed in TROPIC THUNDER to watch while she slept. Melissa gave me her laptop to use while she was asleep so I wouldn’t be bored, and I logged on to gmail.

Geoff messaged me through the java chat feature and he started rattling off info about the HF10. He really liked what he had read about it, and he wanted me to know the same info. Then he sent me all sorts of links to ebay auctions for the camera and accessories. I was planning on buying the camera through Amazon.com, but the deals through eBay were just too good to ignore. He also sent me a link to a Vimeo.com group for owners of the HF10 so I could look at the kind of quality the camera can put out. To say the very least, I was really impressed.

While watching those videos, I also checked out San Diego scenic tour DVD’s and found none that would be of any competition for what Geoff and I planned on doing. Geoff suggested that we test the camera before going out to shoot anything, and I agreed completely.

When TROPIC THUNDER was over, I popped in STEPBROTHERS to watch. I continued to research and chat with Geoff. When that movie was done, I tossed in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS to listen to as I continued my research.

Eventually, I got to the point where I think I had done enough researching for the night, and I decided to go to bed. Geoff and I agreed on seeing the 12:45 p.m. showing of WATCHMEN tomorrow, and that he’d pick me up at noon to head up to the theater. I said “goodnight” logged off the laptop, checked on Melissa, turned everything off and went to sleep about 2:30 a.m.

Thursday, March 12th 2009

2009-04-10T04:47:00.001-07:00

I didn’t wake up until right before 1 p.m. Mom had sent me a text asking me to pick up Samantha from school, so I got up, put the dog in the car and headed down to the 7-11 to pick her up.

When I got back home, I promoted the petition around online for a bit, and pimped Rodney some more. People were really liking the videos, so I made the attempt to go through and comment back to everyone who had commented to me. While I was doing this, I was reminded of Naults “how to get popular on youtube” e-book that I was reading a while back. He said that it takes an active effort to maintain popularity online. You have to put in the time to maintain relationships with your viewers. I was a little behind on this part of the job, but I would make an active attempt from here on out.

About 3 p.m. I went down to the theater to get my paycheck and then I ran it to the bank. I took out some money and hit up Albertson’s for a rockstar, and Subway for some lunch before heading back home. I ate my lunch while watching the season finale of BURN NOTICE and then I went back to play GTA 4 for the next couple hours before going to work.

I got to work, dished out the paychecks and got the movies on the screen. I had to tear apart SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (which I finally finished watching, and it was completely deserving of all those awards), and TAKEN. When I got around to breaking the movies down, the machine didn’t want to work at all. I called my boss to come down and fix it, and as soon as he touched it, it started to work again (which is exactly what I figured would happen). He broke down all but one of the reels for SLUMDOG and then he figured the machine was working well enough for me to finish the job, so he took off. As soon as I touched the thing, it stopped working again. I called him back and he fixed it.

I finished tearing apart the movies, and hung out for the rest of the night. Before Jacqueline had left, I proposed the idea of her and I working on a graphic novel together, and she agreed to be the artist. I was really happy with this because I want to tell an awesome story, and I can’t draw to save my life.

With the night finally over with, I locked everything up, took the money to the bank, and went home.

Geoff had sent me some more links to information regarding the HF10 and he was really happy with what the camera was able to do. We agreed to meet up tomorrow and head to Fry’s to play with the camera ourselves.

I played around online for a little longer, and then I fell asleep about 4:30 a.m.

Wednesday, March 11th 2009

2009-04-10T04:46:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 12:30 p.m., let the dog out, and checked my email. I had some responses to the FYS messages I had sent out, and a couple people had sent me their shorts to post. I was starting to feel a lot better about the whole thing. It’s a hard thing when you’re trying to convince someone that you’re not tricking them. Although the comment someone made about how I use blogger.com to host the site means that I’m not wanting to make any money with it. It’s not about the money, I want to really showcase people’s hard work.

After that I played more Halo Wars for the rest of the afternoon. At 5:30 p.m. I conquered it, took a shower, and got dressed. Then I jumped in the Merc, hit up 7-11, and went to the drive-in.

The night went by pretty fast, and I spent most of the night catching up on the blog. The whole diary thing was wearing on me pretty hard. It had been for months, dedicating an entire year to writing about your daily life in detail (well as much detail as you can remember) was a daunting task. There have been times where I was 3 weeks behind, and I had to remember what happened. Now, this isn’t to say that I faked it and made shit up, because I didn’t. I always make sure to place markers for each day and I treat it like I remembering ideas for a screenplay. It helps with the process. Sure, some of the details get lost in the mix, but I’m a long winded dude, so I think that makes up for it.

At 3:20 a.m. the guard finally showed up, and I took the money to the bank. It wasn’t the normal security guard anymore, his route had been changed to bring back one of the older guards that work there. I was bummed at this, but what was I gonna do? I deposited the money, got back in my car, and went home.

I checked the Rodney account, and was happy to see that I was almost up to 125 subscribers (halfway to my first challenge), and when I checked my email, I had a thing in there from Geoff giving me more info about the Canon HF10, which is the new camera we were looking at. I went back to my couch, booted up GTA 4 for some gang war action, and played that for the next hour or so.

Right before I was going to go to sleep, something awesome came to me. I would create an online petition to get a zombie mode in GTA 4 and post it as Rodney. Since the videos were becoming increasingly popular, I might as well use it to my advantage. I quickly created the petition, made the video, uploaded it, and passed out at 5:30 a.m.

Tuesday, March 10th 2009

2009-04-10T04:45:00.002-07:00

I woke up again at 11 a.m. and I was alone. I woke up when I received a text message, I checked my phone and it was from Jason M. He said his cousin had douched out of being in the wedding party, and he asked me if I would do it. I said “of course, what’s the attire?” and he said that it was a suit jacket and pants with a concert t-shirt. I told him that I could wear my Spice Girls world tour t-shirt and he told me to “do it!”

Melissa had to work, so I got up, grabbed my stuff and headed for home. At home, I spent the afternoon searching the MySpace.com filmmakers forums and emailing people about FYS. I was really hoping this would lead to some bites.

When that was done, I jumped in the Merc and headed down to Gamestop to pick up Halo Wars for the xbox. I was really excited about it, and as soon as I got home, I tore open the packaging and sat down to play the game.

Around 5 p.m., Geoff called and said that he was on his way to pick me up for the SDF meeting tonight. We were also picking up Ace, so I was ready to go when Geoff showed up. I made sure to grab all the FYS cards and fliers I had to pass out at the meeting.

Geoff drove us over to La Mesa to pick up Ace, and then we were on our way. Adrian was also attending the SDF meeting, so I wanted to get there in time to show him around and introduce him to some people. But Geoff was hungry, so we took an extra 20 minutes and got in line at In-N-Out to get some double-doubles. Since we were already running behind, we made it to the meeting with minutes to spare before the event started. I met up with Adrian and went to my usual spot on the top railing.

The meeting was centered around a local filmmaker who made a short film called SHORT TERM 12 that went on to win Sundance this year. The same filmmaker is the guy who made DRAKMAR (the documentary I saw last summer which was great), so I was really intrigued to see his short. Without giving too much away, the short was really amazing. I wasn’t sure what to think of it in the first couple minutes, but by the end I was really invested into what was going on. This director (who’s name escapes me right now) will go on to make feature films…and they will rock!

After the presentation, we all hung out inside and bullshitted for a while before leaving.

Geoff dropped Ace off, and then he dropped me off at home. We made plans to hang out next week.

I went inside, kicked off my shoes, got comfy and played Halo Wars until getting tired and falling asleep at 4 a.m.

Monday, March 9th 2009

2009-04-10T04:45:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 11 a.m. to a phone call from Geoff. He was back in town from the movie and he HAD some things to tell me. I told him to pick me up at Melissa’s house, and we’d go and get some lunch. I took a quick shower and got dressed before he got there.

When he arrived, I jumped in his Scion and we took off in search of Mexican food. We settled on the taco shop next to the studio, and went inside to order our burritos. Geoff filled me on the antics of the 12-day film shoot at Lake Havasu, AZ. I would love to go into the details here, but the story is so crazy and out of this world, that Geoff and Ace have to write it down themselves.

After lunch we went back to Melissa’s house and went over the pitch package. We spent all afternoon bullshitting and hanging out. I told Geoff that Melissa had said that she would help me purchase a new camera for my birthday, and that I was eyeing the Canon HV20 or the HV30 to match Adrian’s new camera. Geoff and I pulled out our laptops and scoured the internet for ideas about what would be the best purchase. I ended up on Vimeo.com and I began looking up video clips/shorts that were shot on the HV20 or HV30 to see how the HDV looked. There were some really nice videos put up, but most of them were scenery shots and not very many of them had any sort of action. We found that there were a ton of accessories and additions you could make to the camera to really enhance the image on the screen. Geoff asked Ace what he thought, and Ace suggested that we look into the cameras that shoot to SDHC cards and not HDV tapes – because HDV is on the outs.

During our searching I made the suggestion that we use the camera to make a scenic DVD tour of San Diego and market it to other states. Spring was almost upon us, and the tourists would be coming in droves for the summer (well maybe not so much in this economy), Geoff agreed and we talked about the logistics for a while.

We continued to look around for a while and about 11 p.m. he decided to take off. Melissa was in her bedroom and I went in to join her. We popped in HOT ROD because she hadn’t seen the whole thing, and we watched that. She fell asleep half way through the movie, and when it was over, I turned off all the lights and surfed the net on my iPhone until getting tired and falling asleep about 2 a.m.

Sunday, March 8th 2009

2009-04-10T04:44:00.002-07:00

The alarm woke me up at 7:15 a.m. I rubbed my eyes and shot Jason a call to see if he was up and ready to go. He was ready and waiting. Melissa and I got up, got dressed and made our way towards the door. I tried to wake Evan up to come with us (he had expressed interest in going), but he said he had had a bad nightmare and wanted to go back to sleep. I told him that we’d come back for him later on.

We jumped in Melissa’s car and I drove us to Marcus’s house to meet up with Jason. He got in his car and followed us to the theater in Mira Mesa. After overshooting the freeway exit, I made a u-turn, found the theater, got parked and went inside.

It was about 8:50 a.m. when we got there, and I was worried about missing the beginning of the movie, so while Jason and I found seats, Melissa got snacks. I ran inside the theater thinking that no one would be there this early…I was wrong. The theater was almost sold out. We took up residence in the handicapped seating and waited for Melissa. When the movie started, my world was rocked.

I haven’t finished the graphic novel of the WATCHMEN (and as of this writing, I still haven’t finished it), so I didn’t know what to expect after the first issue. I went into this movie thinking that it would kick utter ass and blow my fucking mind. I was right, it did. I had heard conflicting reports from people that the movie was different than the book, and some liked it while some didn’t. All I know is that for 2 hours and 45 minutes I was transported back to an alternate 1985 (not the BACK TO THE FUTURE 1985) with super heroes who were forced out of the vigilante game. I was plastered to my seat watching Rorschach do what he did best, and I was floored by the visual imagery that stood before me. The movie flew by in my opinion, and was a spectacle to behold. It was a great fucking movie, and one that I WILL watch several hundred more times (thank you drive-in).

After the movie, I took a much needed piss, and we ventured across the mall parking lot to Rubio’s to get lunch. We all chatted about Jason’s upcoming wedding, and how he really wanted us to come. I made the crack about how at this rate, he’ll ask me to be his best man before the wedding. We all laughed at the joke. A few minutes later, we were done with our food and Jason had to get going. I hugged him goodbye, and off he went. Melissa and I got back in her car and headed back to her place.

We scooped Evan up and drove him back to Coronado.

When we got back to Melissa’s place, we spent some time talking and then we took a 2 hour nap before I had to get up and go to work. After the nap, I got up, headed home to change, and bounced out the door to head down to the theater, to take my night as a box office employee.

Work wasn’t very busy, so Bob and I hung out in the box office and watched HOT ROD. Melissa joined us eventually and her and I spent some time together before it got too late and she had to head home to get some sleep for work in the morning.

I closed up the box office and when Bob was done with the money, I took it to the bank, and then I came back to finish out the night. He told me that I could take off, so I clocked out, and headed back over to Melissa’s house to surprise her.

I woke her up, got in bed, snuggled up next to her, and fell asleep at 3 a.m.

Saturday, March 7th 2009

2009-04-10T04:44:00.001-07:00

I woke up around noon, and checked my email. I knew that I had some time to kill before heading to Melissa’s for the party, so I took a shower and played some more GTA until it was time to get ready. She was out and about when I made it over to her place, but Marcus, Christina and my new BFF Jason were already there. I greeted them and let them inside the house to unload their stuff.

About 30 minutes later Melissa came back, and more people started to arrive. Jason and I busted out my laptop and started watching music videos from The Lonely Island on youtube while Evan hung out with us. Richard and Jen showed up, as did Land and Megan. I could only hang out for a little bit because I had to go to work.

I jumped in the Merc and rolled down to the theater. I would have taken tonight off for the party, but Del was the best man at his best friend’s wedding, so he wasn’t there. Since he wasn’t there to bogart the box office, I busted out my laptop and watched some flicks. We weren’t that busy (for some reason), so as soon as the box office closed at 11 p.m., I clocked out and headed over to Melissa’s house to hang with my friends.

David had decided to show up and hang out, so when I got there the party was still in full swing. Jason and I were bullshitting and having a good time, while discussing us going to see WATCHMEN in IMAX in the morning. I quickly looked online and saw that there was an 8:45 a.m. showing that we could go to, he agreed that it would be the better time (because he still had an 8-9 hour drive back to Sacramento), and we set the idea in stone. I asked Melissa to come with and she agreed.

Eventually Land and Megan got so drunk that they couldn’t drive at all. David decided to drive their SUV back, and he asked me to drive his truck. I agreed, and I lead them back to Land’s place. David and Land said “goodbye” and we took off for Melissa’s house. When we got back, he and I said “goodbye” for a long while, and he took off. I went back inside with Melissa, chatted with her and Evan for a little bit, and then we went to bed.

We finally fell asleep at 4:30 a.m…well more like 5:30 a.m….stupid fucking time change.

Friday, March 6th 2009

2009-04-10T04:43:00.002-07:00

We drove for a few hours and since I didn’t know when David wanted me to take over driving, I took a nap for a while. When I woke up we were in southern Oregon and about to cross into California. We talked for a few more hours and then I fell asleep again by the time we hit Redding. When I woke up, we were just south of Tracy, and David was hungry. We made a quick stop by an all-night Mc Donald’s, got some breakfast burritos, and I took over driving.

David passed out, and I kept us going on the road. I was really tired from not getting good enough sleep, so I started a text messaging conversation with Dad to keep my mind working. Dad and I text messaged each other for the next couple hours, and by the time I was hitting the grapevine, he was getting sleepy and wanting to go to bed. I text him “goodnight” and I put my focus back on the road.

About this time, I was starting to nod off while driving, and when I fell asleep on the top of the grapevine for 2 seconds, I knew it was time to wake David up. Thankfully I made it to a gas station and we switched drivers. The sun was coming up, so I put on my sunglasses and before I knew it, I was fast asleep in the car.

I woke up as David was driving down the 52-East towards my house. We chatted for the rest of the drive about how I should just call Atom.com since I had the pitch package done, and about how 9/11 wasn’t an inside job but how parts of it were (another story for another time).

David pulled in my driveway, went inside to take a shit, we hugged goodbye (after he washed his hands of course) and he took off for his sisters. I brought my bag to my room, got in my comfy clothes and text messaged Mom and Melissa to let them know that I was home.

I immediately went into lazy mode and jumped on the computer, after I checked my emails, I found that Carleton had sent me a video to post on FYS. I thanked him, and I posted the vid along with another one that had been sent to me. When that was updated, I jumped on the xbox and played GTA for a while.

About 12:30 p.m. I finally built up the courage to call Ian at Atom.com to inquire about setting up a pitch meeting. I spent some time figuring out exactly what I was going to say, and I even chatted with Aaron K. about it for a few. Even though I wasn’t as prepared as I would have liked, I had no choice, I had to do this, I had to stand up and face destiny. I pulled out my phone, dialed the number, and let it ring…my heart was racing the entire time.

The voice mail picked up…FUCK!

I hung up the phone and texted Aaron back to ask him if it was cool to leave a message (I didn’t know if I should treat this like I was courting a woman or not), and he said yes. So I called back and left a nice voicemail. When my heart rate returned to normal, I text Melissa and Geoff to let them know, and I went back to lazy mode.

I pissed away the rest of the afternoon, and at 4:30 p.m. I got up, shaved, showered, and got ready to go to work.

I made a quick stop by 7-11 to get a rockstar, and I was at the theater by 5:30 p.m. We were opening WATCHMEN tonight, and I was pissed for not finishing the graphic novel before the movie came out. But maybe that would be a good thing? I was also really fucking tired from the 17 hour road trip, and even the owner told me that I should go home and sleep. I only worked for a few hours before clocking out and going home.

Melissa was getting ready for Marcus’s and Christine’s wedding reception they were having at her place tomorrow, so I decided against going over to her place. Instead, I filled up on gas, drove home, and hung out.

I spent the rest of the evening promoting Rodney online, and playing GTA until blacking out cold at 1 a.m.

Thursday, March 5th 2009

2009-04-10T04:43:00.001-07:00

That god damned rooster woke me up at 6 a.m. again, but I was able to sleep through it for a while and get some more rest. A little while later the girls were up and running around like crazy, so I had no hope of getting any extra sleep.

I got up and talked with Cynthia for a while, we watched some shows on the Disney Channel with the girls and I have to say that the IMAGINATION MOVERS and the WIGGLES are some FUCKED UP SHOWS! Plus, the shows have to be geared towards house wives because each show features 5 dudes and 1 hot chick…and the hot chick is only in the show for 30 seconds. Just something I noted.

After the Disney channel, I got the idea to play a hide and go seek game with the girls, so I took their Disney Princess toys and hid them in the living room (mostly in plain sight) and told the girls to go find them. It was great to watch them run off and search for their own toys. It was also a good break for Cynthia to get a breather.

I text messaged David and told him to come pick me up whenever, he responded and said that he’d be there at 3 and that he was perplexed as to why I was in Washington. He didn’t know that I was just across the river and not way up in the state. I didn’t have too much time before he showed up, so I ran upstairs and took a shower in Cynthia’s bathroom.

Right before I took the shower, I saw the scale sitting in front of the counter. I tempted fate and stood on the scale to see if this one was more accurate than the one at Kevin’s house. When I looked down the scale said 221 pounds and not 240. I gave a huge sigh of relief, and I cursed out the faulty scale before turning on the water and cleaning up.

Post shower, I packed my bags and waited for David. While waiting I did a quick Rodney video to show that I was in the Northwest and not San Diego. When that was done, I put everything away and chatted with Cynthia until David showed up. I gave her a hug goodbye and told her thanks for everything. I loaded my bags in the truck, jumped in, and off we went.

We made a quick stop by Kevin’s shop to say goodbye and about 30 minutes later David and I were on the road and heading towards Tigard (my hometown). Since it had been so long since I had been back, my knowledge of the roads were a little off and I got us lost (I chose to not use the GPS), but after a few right turns we were back on track.

We pulled on to Chestnut St. and drove past my aunt’s house, my old house, and Bree’s parent’s house. David asked me if I wanted to stop and say hi, but for some reason I didn’t. I just wanted to drive by and look without interfering. I knew that I’d be back in a few months for Bree’s wedding, so I would just say hi then. After that, we made a stop by Fred Meyers to get drinks, and then we were back on the I-5 south towards California.

Wednesday, March 4th 2009

2009-04-10T04:42:00.000-07:00

I woke up to a rooster crowing at some ungodly early time. I woke up and looked outside to see where the rooster was. When it crowed again I realized that it was in the garage behind me…mother fucker! I laid back down, ignored it, and went back to sleep for a couple more hours. At one point I had woken up when I heard my cousin Nathan’s voice, but sleep was more important at that moment, so I went back to sleep.

I got up about 10 and chatted with Cynthia. Madison (3) and Trinity (2) were up and running around, so I spent some time playing with them while Cynthia did her thing. Eventually I got up and took a shower. When I got back from that, Cynthia’s mom was ready to look after the girls for a few hours while Cynthia and I headed back in to Portland to hang out for the afternoon.

We crossed the Columbia River and drove into downtown Portland. I took a lot of photos with my iPhone as we were driving through the city, and a few minutes later we were parked next to Rocco’s Pizza. We went inside and ordered our slices of pie, I ended up deciding on a “Texas Barnyard Massacre” for my pizza of choice. I paid for my food, filled my drink, and sat down with Cynthia to eat. The pizza was really good and really filling, which made me hope that I would be able to get hungry again before I met up with Dad later on.

After the pizza shop, we wandered into an eclectic bookstore and perused their selection. I was tempted to buy the WATCHMEN graphic novel, but decided against it. Eventually we found our way into the backroom with all the 18+ stuff, and I was shocked to a see a shelf dedicated to “FATHER/SON” and “YOUNG BOYS”. I was so shocked that I took a picture of it so I could post it on 4chan at a later date.

Next we walked up the street to Powell’s Books which is one of the most popular bookstores of its kind. Even though I had grown up in that city, I never made it into that bookstore before. Cynthia and I walked around for a while, and checked out each floor. Eventually we opted to bounce out of there, and on our way out I stumbled across a copy of “Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way” and I purchased it.

On our way back to the house, Cynthia handed me her SLR and I took some photos as we were driving back. She made sure to remind me to snag a photo of the giant Hooters sign as we were driving through Janzen Beach (she later uploaded the photo and said that it was MY idea to take it….ha ha ha). We made a quick pit stop at Cyn’s mom’s house, picked up Maddy and Trinny, and went back to the house.

I was back for about 20 minutes before Dad called me saying that he was out front. I went out and gave him, Ryan and Kevin (my two other brothers if I have never mentioned it before) a hug, and off we went to get some food.

We stopped off at a Hot Rod themed family restaurant, as we were parking I looked up and saw a double-rainbow through the clouds. I quickly popped out the iPhone and snagged a shot of it.

We got seated and started to catch up. I hadn’t seen my family since August 2007, so there was a lot of catch up on. Dad hadn’t seen me with my beard yet, but never really acknowledged it because he can’t grow facial hair to save his life. The boys talked to me about video games (which is about the only thing we ever talk about because we have it in common…), and then I told them about all the stuff I had done…I felt that I was talking a lot and that I might have been boring the boys, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

We ate, and chatted for about another 30 minutes before Dad said he had to get back up north. We drove back to Cynthia’s house and had Nathan take some photos of us together. Dad was shocked to see Nathan because he hadn’t seen him since he was about 5 years old…25 years is a long time. I hugged my family goodbye, and watched them drive off.

I went back in the house so that Nathan and I could catch up ourselves. We watched a bunch of video playthroughs of old games on youtube and we told stories from the good old days. My favorite story was back when Nathan was 19 and I was 15, and he figured out that you didn’t need to be 21 years old to purchase the ingredients to make beer…so he put a still in his bathroom and 3 weeks later, we were drinking some of the worst beer I have ever had…but it was a great time.

Cynthia came back from hanging with her friends and the three of us talked for a bit while watching some SOUTH PARK reruns. Eventually Nathan got tired and had to get to sleep, so he and Cynthia went to bed. I spent some time online, and then I laid down on the couch and passed out around 2:30 a.m.

Tuesday, March 3rd 2009

2009-04-10T04:41:00.001-07:00

I woke up about 9 a.m. to the sound of Kevin and his fiancée Tracy trolling around the house. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but after a half hour I knew it was time to get up. I knew this because Kevin had made fried egg and bacon sandwiches and the smell was overpowering. I got up, macked down on the food and hung out with the guys.

I checked the FYS email to see if any of the professors I emailed had responded. None had.

We all bullshitted for a while and then about 11 a.m. Tracy came back home and we all decided to head to “The Bins” as they called it. The Bins is the Goodwill depot in Sellwood. When they told me this, I couldn’t place the location in my memory, but I figured that something would come to me.

We all piled in the truck and drove to the bins. When we got to the area, I recognized it as being near Oaks Park (which is where I had roller hockey practice a couple times…and where my uncle Rick accidentally walked in to the main roller rink on gay pride night and was eyed up and down like a piece of meat…oh, he was a fire fighter at the time), so I kind of knew where we were.

We parked and walked into the bins. The place was full of people searching through dark blue bins for any kind of clothes or whatever else they could find of value. While we were there I stumbled across a 100% camel skin overcoat that I thought would be perfect for Melissa. I sent her a picture message with a photo me in the coat, and she told me to pick it up. I grabbed the coat, paid for it, and when we were all done, we took off.

At one point I had to take a shit, so I got up and headed to the bathroom. After the festivities were done, I washed my hands and I noticed a scale sitting on the bathroom floor. I tempted fate and decided to see how much I weighed. The scale bounced around for a moment and landed on 240 pounds. I was fucking shocked, the last time I checked my weight I was at 219, so how the fuck did I gain 21 pounds and not fucking notice? I was pissed at myself at this moment in time, so I said that as soon as I got back home I would go on a diet and kill this weight as fast as I could.

We were hungry by this point, so we rolled up the street to the Acropolis. I lived in Portland for 17.5 years and I never went to any other strip club other than Jiggles, but I was told that I had to check out this place. We parked and walked inside. For 2 p.m. in the afternoon, it was pretty dead (this is to be expected), but there was a girl on stage and some people at the slot machines in the corner. We all sat down at the rail and ordered a pitcher of MGD, when the waitress brought us the beer, we all ordered lunch. I picked up a 1/2 lb cheeseburger for $4 bucks flat. I fucking love places like this.

We all ate and bullshitted while watching the TV directly in front of us. Sure, there was a naked girl to my right, but my attention was focused on the episode of The Golden Girls that was on the HDTV in the bar.

After lunch we headed back to the duplex. Tracy had to go back to school, so Kevin, David and I grabbed Wii-motes and played Mario Kart for the next few hours.

Eventually Tracy came back and she joined in on the action. We all played the game for a while longer before Kevin jumped back into the kitchen and started to cook us up some steak for dinner. While he was cooking, he filled us in on what he had planned for the night. The marching band March Forth was playing at Bossanation in downtown Portland and he had bought David and I tickets when he heard we were coming up. It was a whole marching band show with guys on stilts and crazy shit going on all around. It sounded like fun, but I was weary of how long it would take because I had been texting Cynthia back and forth all afternoon about her coming and picking me up.

About 7 p.m. we jumped in the car and drove over to Bossanation. There was a line forming, but it was for the people who were buying their tickets at the door. Since Kevin already had our tickets, we got in the fast track line and went inside a few minutes later.

We walked up stairs and got seated at a booth that overlooked the floor. We all talked and drank for about an hour before the opening act started. It was 2 guys and a laptop. They were playing techno…or some variant, and occasionally they would include real instruments like a trumpet or saxophone. After they were on, another guy got on stage with his laptop and did the same thing. It was cool to an extent, but I didn’t really get the scene…there was even a furry in the crowd.

By about 10 p.m. Tracy was getting tired and had to get up early for school the next morning. We left and got back in the car to head back to the house, I shot Cynthia a text letting her know the address and that we were on our way back. She said that she was on her way to pick me up and 20 minutes after we got back to the house she called me to say that she was out front and waiting for me. I grabbed my gear, said goodbye to Kevin, David and Tracy and took off with Cynthia.

We drove across the Columbia river and in to Vancouver, Washington. We arrived at their house about 15 minutes later and when we got inside Cynthia’s daughter greeted us and chatted for a minute before going back to bed.

Cynthia spent the next couple hours just talking, bullshitting and catching up. It had been almost 2 years since I had seen her, so we had a lot to talk about. About 2 a.m. she got tired and had to get to sleep so she could get up to get the kids off to school in the morning. We said goodnight and she left me to my own devices in the living room.

I was sleeping on a couch, but since I sleep on a couch at home, I was used to it. I made my bed, laid down and was fast asleep by 2:45 a.m.

Monday, March 2nd 2009

2009-03-16T15:38:00.003-07:00

The alarm woke me up at 6:30 a.m., and I got up to get dressed. I did a quick double check to make sure all my stuff was in order, and when I knew I had everything I needed, I did one last email check, turned off my computer and moved all my gear out into the living room.

David showed up about 7:15 and as soon as my bags were loaded in the truck we were ready to go. We had to drop David’s cousin Juan off at his place a little north of LA, so that was the only detour we had to deal with. I explained to David my current financial situation, and he said that all I’d need to worry about is buying drinks/snacks for us on the trip. I told him that I could cover that, and with that agreement in place, we filled up on gas and hit the open road.

We all talked for a while, but eventually the initial car ride drowsiness took hold of me, and I passed out for about 2 hours while we made our way through LA and to Juan’s house. After dropping him off, we got back on the road, and made our way to the I-5 north.

We drove all the way to Kettleman before stopping to get lunch at the last In-N-Out we could find. And with our bellies full of potatoes and beef, we got back on the freeway and continued on our journey.

About an hour later, I passed out for a couple more hours and when I woke up we were passing through Sacramento. I shot Jason M. a text to let him know that we were in his city, and he and I kept a text convo going for a little while before it tapered off.

When we hit Redding, David was ready to have me drive, so I bought a couple rockstars, cracked the top on one of them, and took his truck on the road. I had to get used to driving the ’06 Dodge Ram, but once I got the hang of it, I was good to go. David passed out for 4 hours as I drove us through Lake Shasta, and through the Siskiyou pass that bordered Oregon and California.

When I hit the pass it was snowing lightly, and since I was so excited to be back in my home state, I shot off some text messages to Dad and Melissa. This led to me keeping two text message conversations at the same time while driving down a mountain side in the snow. Call me crazy, but I didn’t care, my co-pilot was asleep and I wanted to share my excitement with someone. Dad and I arranged our meeting for Wednesday evening at 5:30 p.m. and Melissa congratulated me for being back home.

I drove all the way to Salem, and that’s when David woke up and wanted to finish off the drive. We filled up on gas (well someone else did all the work), and then we made the final 40 mile journey of our trip up north. I fell asleep for the last 30 minutes of the drive, and when I woke up, we were driving through North East Portland (which isn’t the best part of town) and eventually we came to a stop right in front of a small duplex which housed David’s friend Kevin and his fiancé Tracy.

Kevin greeted us, and brought us inside. He showed us where we could sleep, and then he went to bed. I tried to find an open wifi network for the iPhone, but that was a no go. I laid down on the couch, and realized that it smelled an awful lot like pot. This was my last thought before passing out cold at 3 a.m.

Sunday, March 1st 2009

2009-03-16T15:38:00.001-07:00

I woke up to the sound of Melissa’s alarm ringing at 6:30 a.m. She turned it off and we went back to sleep for a couple more hours. When we woke up, we started a conversation and kept talking for a bit while still in bed. When she mentioned that she was hungry, I suggest that we go have lunch with her Mom because the invite had been extended a couple weeks ago.

Melissa shot her Mom a call while I took a shower, and when I got out she was ready to go, and as soon as I was dressed, we were in the car and on our way to Einstein Bro’s.

We arrived at the bagel shop at about 1:30 p.m. and hung out with Melissa’s Mom for a little bit. She joined us while we ate and then she gave us both some of the caramel frapachino’s that the company was now offering. I knew it wasn’t a good idea to have it, but like always, I tempted fate.

After having lunch we rolled over to Fry’s so I could get a new SD card for my digital camera. As I was looking at SD cards, Melissa was looking at HDTV’s she could buy with her tax refund, and when she found the TV she wanted she couldn’t wait to show it to me. She had a good eye for TV’s, and thankfully she was giving other brands than Sony a chance (mainly because I was badgering her about it). During our visit to Fry’s, fate gave me a bitchslap and I had to run to the bathroom to get the dairy out of my system. With that out of the way, I paid for my SD card and we took off.

We made a stop by Wal-Mart so I could buy a new duffel bag for the trip. My old one was smelly and had tears in it, but I found a new one for a decent price. I bought the bag, and we got back in the car to head back to Melissa’s house.

I hung out with my girlfriend a little longer before bidding her adieu and driving home so I could do laundry and pack my bags for the week. Melissa said that she was heading over to Kinko’s pretty soon to print out the business cards for FYS. I hugged her goodbye and drove home.

I spent the rest of the evening just vegging out and doing laundry. While waiting for the laundry to finish, I popped in a movie and surfed the net for email addresses for video production professors, and media department workers to pimp FYS to. I created a mini-press release, that was more of a mission statement and then I attached the flier I had made and sent them out to all the professor’s emails I could find. When I got back from Oregon, I would have to do a more thorough search.

About 10 p.m. Melissa came by to drop off the business cards she had made for me to use to promote FYS. The cards that Marcus put together looked amazing, and I was very happy with how things turned out. Melissa and I spent some final time together before I left, and eventually I had to hug and kiss her goodbye. I watched as she got in her car and left. I missed her already.

With the laundry done, and my bags packed, I took a shower, and set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. to be ready for David’s 7 a.m. call time.

I laid down, got comfy and fell asleep at 2:30 a.m.

Saturday, February 28th 2009

2009-03-16T15:37:00.002-07:00

Melissa woke me up about noon, and we laid in bed for a while just talking and cuddling. We decided to get up and work on the Flash Your Shorts poster/flier so we could have them printed out for my trip to the northwest on Monday. Before getting up, Melissa tackled me and gave me a huge hickey on my neck…my thoughts on this is that she’s marking her territory before I’m gone for a week. She denied it when I brought it up.

We set up my laptop in the living room and we went over the design for a while, as well was what we want to put on the poster for a press release. This took us a while to go through and figure out. When we got the design down, we needed to get the business card template built. I shot Marcus a call to see if he could work his magic and make me up the cards. He was at work, but he told me to email him what we got and he’d take care of the rest.

Before I knew it, it was late enough in the afternoon that I had to head home and get ready for work. I hugged Melissa goodbye and told her that I’d come over after work. I jumped in the Merc, raced home, changed, drove to 7-11, got a rockstar, and went to work.

Once again I was in the box office, and tonight Bob and I watched QUARANTINE. I had talked with friends who had seen both REC and QUARANTINE and they had told me that the movie was just a shot for shot remake of the original. I believed them based off what I had seen in the trailer. But Bob hadn’t seen either movie, so this was a total new experience for him. It’s hard to review a movie like that because it is SO similar to the original in several ways, but it is different at the same time. Almost every major plot point is shot the same way, but the violence and gore levels are higher than before. The best comparison I can think of is Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO compared to Gus Van Sant’s PSYCHO…anyways, I thought the movie was ok, but I couldn’t feel the intensity that I did with the original. I should watch the movie again with no distractions. Also, Doug Jones was in the movie, so that was cool to see someone I know in a movie (ok, am a friend of a friend…possible acquaintance status?).

We weren’t very busy tonight, so I sent everyone home except for Eddie and I. We cleaned up the lot, and then I did the bathroom and trash cans. When I finished that up I hung out with Bob and watched some of CONFESSIONS OF A SHOPAHOLIC, which wasn’t as horrible as I thought it might be. It has John Goodman, Joan Cusack, and Julie Haggerty in it, so I gotta see it eventually.

After work, I drove over to Melissa’s house, and hung out with her until we both fell asleep at 4 a.m.

Friday, February 27th 2009

2009-03-16T15:37:00.001-07:00

I rolled out of bed about 11 a.m. and shot a call to the mechanic that Mom was using to work on her car. I asked him if they could replace a fuel filter for the Merc and he said that they could. I made an appointment to take the car down there at 1 p.m. so I could take a shower and get ready to go.

At 1 p.m. I drove the Merc down to the shop, parked it and talked with the owner Ray. I asked him to replace the fuel filter and take a look at the back brakes. He said “Ok” and then he said it would be a while. I told him that I’d be across the street getting lunch, and he said to come back when I was done.

I walked across the street to the 7-11 to get a can of iced tea, and then I went next door to the taco shop to get a carneasada burrito. I wolfed down the burrito while texting Dad and letting him know that I would be in Portland next week, and to see if he wanted to meet up. We agreed that we’d get together on Wednesday evening.

After lunch I walked back to the mechanic and talked with Ray, he said that he had ordered the fuel filter and that I needed to have my rear brakes replaced. He told me the amount was going to be a little over $400 bucks and when I told him that I couldn’t do it, he gave me the whole spiel of “My guy already has the brakes off and everything…” (you know what I’m talking about…that fucking guilt trip move that works on naïve people…I’m fucking naïve) I told him that I couldn’t afford it all now because I was going out of town for a week, and he said that he could take $300 now and the rest when I get back. I told him that I had to deposit my paycheck and then we’d talk.

I left the mechanic, and walked through Lakeside to the bank. At the bank I deposited my paycheck and figured the total funds I’d have left after the auto work. It would be enough to get me by if nothing huge happened. I called Ray back and guilt tripped him to lower the price down to $374, which is about $40 bucks cheaper than what he had originally quoted me. I told him to do it.

Since I had no car for the rest of the afternoon, I walked home from the bank. I hadn’t made that walk in a while, but lord knows I need to lose some weight, so it was a good thing. On the walk home, I was texting Melissa back and forth and sending her picture messages of things I found interesting on the walk.

Back at home, I cooled off and tooled around online for a bit. Melissa had been working on a Flash Your Shorts poster, but she didn’t know what to write on it. I took the image that Jacqueline had made and I put it into photoshop and worked up something small and to the point. I sent it off to Melissa and she was blown away by it…a little too much so I think. I thanked her for all her hard work, and she said that she had been doing preliminary research on how much it would cost to hold a screening of the short films that would soon be flourishing on my site.

When Mom got home, I asked her to run me down to pick up my car and pay Ray. She had just gotten her car back from him, and it was acting up again, so she took the opportunity to talk to him about that. We went down there, and I paid for my car. I had to wait a few minutes for the guy to be done putting the tires back on, and when he told me that I had no rear shocks, I looked at him with amazement like I was shocked to find this info out…when in fact, I had known about it since 2005…sue me.

I drove the car home, and the fuel filter wasn’t the key problem. The car still had a rough ride, but it was a bit smoother than before. I figured when I filled up on gas, I would put some fuel treatment in it to help with the problems. I figured I needed knew fuel injectors, but I would try the $20 dollar Wal-Mart approach when I take my car in to get an oil change. At home, I grabbed my gear and hauled to the theater.

Since Del was in Las Vegas for the weekend, I took over Box Office duties for the night and when the movies started I pulled out my laptop, and Bob and I watched TRUE LIES. This was my first time watching the movie in years, but it was so good that I could easily watch it again. I personally think that the movie was both James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s best.

The night went by pretty quickly, and when it was over, I drove down to the doughnut shop and got a half dozen pastries to surprise Melissa with.

I drove over to Melissa’s place, used my key to go in, and surprised her in her bedroom. We talked for a bit, and she chastised me for bringing doughnuts, but she ate a couple anyways. We were awake for a little bit longer, but since I was leaving in a couple days, she wanted some cuddle time, so that’s what we did. We cuddled until falling asleep about 3 a.m.

Thursday, February 26th 2009

2009-03-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

I woke up at noon and shot Melissa a call. She was heading into Santee to get an oil change done on her car, and we agreed to meet up at the Subway next to Wal-Mart and get lunch. I got in my car and drove over, I kept noticing how rough the car was running as well as the squeaky rear brakes (I had been noticing this for a while), so I figured I’d take the car into a shop tomorrow.

I parked at Wal-Mart and walked over to Subway to go meet Melissa. She arrived a few minutes later and we hugged and apologized once again. Then we went inside Subway and ordered. In front of us in line was a girl I know named Jamie, we chatted for a few about Marilyn going into the Air Force and getting a medical discharge within a week, and then she left. I looked at Melissa and we both agreed that the name Jamie only brings about bad things. We laughed at that, got our subs, and sat down to eat them.

After lunch, we walked over to GameStop so I could change my Resident Evil 5 preorder to Halo Wars, and then we hit up Michaels Craft Store so Melissa could look at scrap books. While she was doing that, I was looking at those little figures I had seen when I was there last month getting the goods for USA. I told Melissa about the crazy idea I had for these little guys, and she insisted that I buy them. I took her advice and I bought a set of Knights and Dragons.

Next we walked back to Wal-Mart and did some shopping while her car was finishing up. I picked up a couple rockstars and some shampoo and shaving gel. After buying the stuff, we went back to pay for her oil change.

I walked Melissa to her car and we chatted about my trip next week, as well as other things. We talked for a while, and before I knew it, the time was 5 p.m. and I had to get to work very quickly. I kissed her goodbye, jumped in the Merc and took off for home.

I pulled in the driveway, ran inside to get my laptop bag, jacket, pants and shoes. Then I jumped back in the Merc, and hauled ass to work.

The night went by pretty quickly. I hung out with Beth and Jacqueline again, and told them about the trip. Jacqueline showed me the Flash Your Shorts logo she had put together (which was awesome) and I thanked her profusely.

I had to tear apart GRAN TORINO, and that took up the rest of the night. I also had to deal with the fact that the owner changed the schedule so that everyone was only getting 3 days a week until the theater picks back up. I had been chatting with them about opening a website to help the theater promote itself more, but that was an uphill battle.

After the movie, I took the money to the bank, went home and played GTA 4 until getting tired and going to sleep at 4 a.m.

Before sleeping, I thought to myself, only one more month to go…

Wednesday, February 25th 2009

2009-03-16T15:35:00.002-07:00

Melissa woke me up at 8 a.m. when she was leaving to go to work. She said she’d give me a ride home on her way to work, so I got up, put my sweatshirt on, and got in her car. She drove me home, and dropped me off. We hugged/kissed goodbye and off she went.

I had debated on going back to sleep, but I wasn’t really tired. I got into my comfy clothes and decided to do a Rodney video and upload it. I spent the rest of the morning just hanging out and playing online, and then in the afternoon, I played a lot of GTA 4. That is until having to go pick up Samantha from school at 4 p.m.

When I got home from doing that, I didn’t have much time before going to work, so I took a shower, and got ready to go. After a brief stop at 7-11 for a rockstar, I went to work, opened up, and started the movies.

I decided to not work on the blog tonight, instead I worked on finishing the pitch package for Atom.com I was really close to finishing it, so I sat down, threw on the Incredibad album, and went to town. It took me most of the evening to finish it up, but I finally did. With the remaining time left on my shift, I watched some videos on my laptop, and waited for the night to end.

After work, I headed over to Melissa’s house to surprise her, and she was shocked when I knocked on her window (because my cell had died). I went in her room and kicked it with her on her bed for a bit while she was watching KUNG FU PANDA. We got into a conversation about Marcus and Christina’s wedding video and how I wanted to take some of the photos she had taken and put them in a photo montage at the end of the video for them. This lead into some things being said out of context and me getting angry and threatening to leave. When she didn’t say anything, I got up, put my shoes on, got in my car and drove home.

At home, I plugged my phone in and found a couple texts from her. I called her and we talked, she was really upset at me leaving and we got into a whole conversation about what was said and why I got upset. We both apologized and then she said she was going to bed. I asked her to lunch for tomorrow, and she said ok. I hung up the phone, and played a little GTA before going to sleep at 4 a.m.

Tuesday, February 24th 2009

2009-03-16T15:35:00.001-07:00

I woke up to my alarm going off at 12:30 p.m. I got up, let the dog out, checked my email, and got ready for the day. I had one goal for the evening: I wanted to go to Mardi Gras downtown. I talked with Melissa to see if she wanted to go, and she wasn’t feeling very well, so she didn’t know. Then I shot David a text to see if he wanted to go (drinking + topless girls (well maybe) = good times), but he was busy hanging with his sister DeeDee, and if she wanted to go downtown, then we’d go downtown. I agreed with that.

I played some GTA 4 for a bit, chatted around online, and generally wasted the afternoon away.

About 8 p.m. David showed up at my door with DeeDee and we all got in the truck and headed for Melissa’s house to see if she wanted to come with us. Since David had his NAV system in his truck he insisted that I give him her address instead of just giving him directions myself. I obliged and we followed the GPS’s directions. When we pulled up to the house, her car wasn’t there, and she didn’t answer her phone. David tried doing the whole “uh-oh” thing, but I wouldn’t let it get to me. Melissa is a get up and go kind of girl at times, so I figured she was out doing something important.

DeeDee called her friend Mandy (the WATCHMEN loving girl from Skeeter’s b-day party in August) to see what she was up to, and she was on her way to the Ruby Room in Hillcrest for Karaoke night. We decided to go there, and after a brief stop at a Shell station so I could get a rockstar, we were on our way.

We got to the bar and waited for Mandy and her friends to show up. While waiting we went to the bar and ordered a round of drinks. I decided to have a couple vodka tonics in hopes that I’d be buzzing if we went to Mardi Gras. By 10:30 p.m. Mandy and her friends arrived and we all chatted for a while. I had a few more vodka tonics and ended up getting a little more drunk than I had originally intended. Melissa got back to me and said that she had been out and her phone shut off (which it tends to do), but she wasn’t feeling good still so she was staying in.

David offered to take me back to her house so I could take care of her, and I agreed. The three of us bid adieu to the people in the bar and we drove back out to El Cajon so I could take care of my woman. Melissa greeted me at the door and laughed when she saw that I was drunk.

We went and laid down in bed, and talked for a little bit before I passed out about 1 a.m.

Monday, February 23rd 2009

2009-03-16T15:34:00.002-07:00

We woke up at about 1 p.m. and hung around the house for a little bit just to relax after yesterday’s journey. We were both starving, so we jumped in the Kia and drove down to Subway to get a bite to eat. After the sandwich, I went to the gas station and filled the tank up (we only had to fill up once on the drive back…that car got awesome gas mileage!), and then Melissa followed me down to the drop off center down by the airport.

I pulled the Kia into the parking lot, checked the car to make sure we had gotten all of our goods out of it (as well as any trash), thanked the guy who took the car from me, walked back to meet Melissa, and then she drove me home.

At home, I unloaded my gear, said hello to the siblings, and checked all my emails. Then I indulged in something that I had been wanting to since talking with Jason about it. I played the fuck out of GTA 4 for a while. When I logged on to my xbox, I found that Jason had already sent me a friend request on xbox live. I accepted and sent him a quick message.

I also talked with Marky about the whole fiasco from the wedding. He tried to play it off like he did nothing wrong, and then I completely blasted him with different things that he did that pissed people off. It was the equivalent of me yelling at him on the phone, but it needed to be done. I don’t really care if he pisses me off, but when he does something against my girlfriend – best friend or not, we gotta talk.

About 9 p.m. I got a phone call from David B. He was finally back in town on his 30-day leave before going to Germany, and he wanted to meet up at a local bar. I told him that I’d be by soon, and then I took a shower, tossed some clean clothes on, and headed towards the bar.

After getting a little lost, I found the place, and went inside to meet up with David and his friend Jes S. Apparently I had met Jes on a few occasions, but I couldn’t remember any of them off the top of my head. She tried explaining them to me, but nothing popped. We all chatted for a while, and David and I discussed our upcoming trip to Oregon next week. After all the details had been arranged, I got up to take a piss, when I got back, David and Jes were making out, so I decided to call it a night and head to Melissa’s to say hi.

She was in her room watching WALL-E, so I joined her in finishing the movie. We chatted for a while, and she got tired, so I kissed her goodbye and went home.

I spent the rest of the night playing as a biker in GTA 4, and eventually passed out about 3 a.m.

Sunday, February 22nd 2009

2009-03-16T15:34:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 8 a.m. to Melissa telling me to get up and get all of our things packed. We were heading over to the Aunt’s house for a breakfast and present opening. I got dressed and headed down to the lobby to get some breakfast. I knew that we were going to get food in a little bit, but I was really hungry now.

After macking down on the biscuits and gravy that the hotel offered, I heard a knock on the door and it was Marcus and Jason. Marcus said that he talked to his parents and they were going to comp our room for doing all the photography/videography work, and that they could give us a ride into Oakland to pick up a rental car.

I called Marky and told him that his pillow was still in the room, and he came down a minute later to pick it up. I intentionally left out that the sunglasses were there to see if he would remember them. He showed up, picked up the pillow, talked to Melissa about paying Jamie’s part of the shared hotel room (which was the original agreement), and then left without mentioning the sun glasses. As far as I know, they were invited to the breakfast, but they decided to head to Lake Tahoe instead. Marcus said it best when he described Marky’s behavior as “bratty”.

We checked out and I caught a ride with Jason over to the breakfast while Melissa rode with Marcus’s Mom and Dad. We all got to the house, went inside and got some food before opening the presents.

After the presents were all opened, it was time for Marcus’s Mom and Dad to head back to Oakland and catch their flight to Wyoming. Melissa and I said our goodbyes to everyone, and I accepted Jason’s invite to his wedding in April. I also got his phone number and xbox live gamertag. Melissa referred to him as my new boyfriend, but I figured that I made a great new friend, and I was bummed that he lived so far away.

We got in the car and headed 60 miles west to Oakland. We all chatted the entire way, and Melissa and I really got to know Marcus’s family.

When we got to the airport, it was grey and rainy out. We unloaded our luggage, said our goodbyes, and took a shuttle to the rental car section of the airport. We walked inside and ended up going to the Enterprise rent-a-car kiosk. I asked for a one-way car rental to San Diego, and the guy had to check if they had any available. To our luck, they had one out back, and all we had to do is make our way to their other kiosk and fill out all the paperwork.

We walked over to the kiosk, met with the girl, set up the deal for the one-way rental, and inquired about how to get to see Alcatraz (which was the reason I wanted to go to San Francisco). The lady printed us out directions, and went to get us our car. She pulled up with an ’09 Kia Spectra, we walked outside and she told us about all the features and what we needed to know about returning the car in SD. We thanked them for all their help, got in the Kia and took off towards Frisco.

We were thirsty, so we made a quick stop by Wal-Mart to pick up some drinks, and so I could get an iPod car charger so we could listen to music on the way back. After waiting through the terrible crowds, we finally got our goods paid for, and got back on the road.

It was about 2:30 p.m. at this point, and it was really rainy in the bay area. We followed the directions and made our way across the bay bridge. Melissa had my digital camera recording the entire experience, and it was really fucking cool. Although we were dumb tourists by asking ourselves “Is this the golden gate bridge?” It wasn’t…and I feel like a dope for asking.

We got across the bridge, and found our way to the embarcadero. We drove up the pier and found a metered parking spot right next to pier 39. Even though it’s Sunday, and metered parking is free, metered parking on the embarcadero still costs money before 7 p.m. Thankfully Melissa had some change and we bought ourselves an hour.

Before leaving the Aunt’s house, she had given Melissa two umbrella’s for us to use while exploring the city. We quickly brought those things out and did our best to keep from getting completely and utterly soaked by the rain.

We made our way up and down the pier, and we found the best possible spot to see Alcatraz. I was so excited that I even did a Rodney video with it in the back ground. After that we walked around pier 39 for a while. I took notice of the 30 or so Japanese school kids wandering around the pier. I laughed when I noticed that all the stereotypes I had ever heard of were present in front of me. I quickly whipped out my cell phone and snapped a photo to send to Geoff (who was currently in AZ filming the movie). We went to the arcade on the pier and we each littered the area with WWIF fliers for the kiddies to find.

When our hour was up, we made our way back to the car and tooled around the city for a bit. Since we didn’t have a map, Melissa had taken a photo of a map that was on a sign, so we used that as our way of navigating a place neither of us had ever been to.

We drove around the financial district, and then we went through china town for a bit. I had always heard of the big hills in the city, so when I saw the biggest one, I took the Kia up it because the Merc would never be able to.

On my way up the hill, we came to a level area and I was able to see an awesome view of the city. I told Melissa that I was going to circle around so we could get a picture from inside the car, and when I made my way around and got to the top, Melissa was unsure of whether or not it was an actual street in front of us. The street was brick and winding down a very steep hill. I saw cars driving down it, so it had to be an actual street that I could drive on. I kept my foot on the brake as we inadvertently went down Lombard street. It was fun.

After that little detour, I saw this gigantic monolith in the distance, and I decided that we would go there next. We made our way up the hill to Coit Tower and got to get a great view of the entire area…including the Golden Gate Bridge that we had thought we travelled over earlier. We got some great photos and decided that we would head towards the bridge on our way out of town. We looked at the map that the rental car agency had given us, and using the power of deduction, we deduced that the largest bridge on the map had to be the Golden Gate…but it looked really far south from where we were. Since we didn’t know the area at all, we decided to trust the map and we were on our way.

About 20 miles south on the 101, I came across that giant bridge, and it turns out it was a bridge leading into Hayward. After stopping to take a leak, and slapping myself upside the head for my mistake, we got back on the road and started the 360 mile journey to Los Angeles.

The drive went really well, we spent the entire time talking to each other about things, and just having one great conversation after another. At no point on the trip did the radio or iPod come on. There was just the sound of the engine (a 4 cylinder) and our voices for the 11 hour drive back. We had come to the assumption that we didn’t need a map to get back to San Diego, as it was just a straight shot down the I-5 south and once I got to LA, I knew exactly where to go.

When we got to LA, I got lost a couple times because it was 2:30 a.m. and I was really fucking sleepy. But I kept pressing forward, and once we got through LA, I thought everything would be fine and dandy. I kept thinking that until the detour in Fullerton. The detour put us on the 91-East and since we didn’t see any other detour signs, we kept going on the freeway until I said “fuck it!” and decided our new course would be the I-15 south back into town.

Essentially we zigzagged through the state to get back to Melissa’s house, but it was worth it. For our first weekend getaway, we had a great time, and we got to enjoy each other’s company. When we finally pulled into her driveway at 4:45 a.m. my hand was glued to the steering wheel so I wouldn’t let go and crash the car.

I wandered into her room, fell on the bed and became dead to the world at 5 a.m…this was until Marky text me saying that they had gotten home safely…I didn’t respond.

Saturday, February 21st 2009

2009-03-16T15:33:00.002-07:00

I woke up to my cell phone ringing at 8 a.m. Marcus was calling me to remind Melissa that her ride was showing up at 8:30. She got up and got dressed while I fell asleep. When I woke up, Melissa had gone down to the lobby to get us some breakfast before she left. We talked for a few minutes and then Christina’s Mom knocked on our door to pick up Melissa. I called Marcus to see how much time I had before I had to meet up with him, and he said that I still had 2 hours before I was needed.

I ate my breakfast, and I was still hungry, so I headed down to the lobby to grab another plate of French toast sticks, and sausage patties to mack down on. I went back to the room, and watched some videos on the iPhone to pass the time. Then I took a shower, and got dressed. While I was getting dressed, Marky called me and asked if I was in the room, I said “yes”, and he said that he had left his and Jamie’s dress clothes in the closet and needed them. He showed up a minute later and picked the clothes up. What a jackass…leaving without saying anything, and still leaving his shit behind. After he left, I took a look around the room and noticed that they had also left a pillow and a pair of sunglasses behind. I say again, what a jackass.

I knocked on Marcus’s door about 10:45 a.m. He was inside hanging out with his friends Jason M. and Aleshia who were in town from Sacramento for the wedding. We all chatted for a bit, and then we got on the subject of people dressing up Marcus’s car during the ceremony. He was against it, and wanted to ditch the car in the nearby mall parking lot. Jason had a friend who lived a mile from the mall, so he called him, got the address and we all headed out to ditch the car in a nearby neighborhood where no one would look to hide it.

After hiding the car, we got into Jason’s car and went back to the hotel. As we were driving, I got to talking with Jason about the xbox, and GTA. I asked him if he had played the Lost and the Damned and he said “It’s what grand theft auto four should have been!” and I responded with “Hell fucking yeah!” we high-fived over it, and an instant friendship was born. We bullshitted about GTA all the way back to the hotel.

When we got back, we all went back to Marcus’s room so he could get ready for the ceremony. While we was getting dressed he got a distress message that they didn’t have a copy of the ceremony script for the wedding party. Marcus put me in charge of getting a copy of it printed out and back in 20 minutes. Jason suggested that we try Staples because they had a printing center, and when I googled it, there was a location 5 minutes away. The three of us ran down to the car and hauled ass to Staples.

We all bullshitted about games, movies, and comic-con on the drive over, the wait for the printing, and the drive back. I really connected with these people that I just met, and it was cool.

We got back, and I cut up the script into the individual pieces for the family. When that was done, Marcus handed me his camera and I started snapping photos of him getting ready. I am not the best photographer, but I was really trying to get some decent shots for my friend’s big day.

A few minutes later, we were called down to the lobby to meet up with Marcus’s brother and sister-in-law. We all chatted and then I jumped in Jason’s car to catch a ride to the ceremony.

At the park, I ran around and took a lot of photos of the groom, while Melissa was taking photos of the bride and maids of honor. 20 minutes later, I was seated and getting ready to film the ceremony taking place. Thankfully, I had a spot reserved for me in the front row so I could get a good view of the bride (as I always say…favor the bride in weddings)

After watching Marcus cry like a little girl during the ceremony, and hearing the reverend announce “Mr. and Mrs. A.” I turned off the video camera, and went back to taking still photography for a little while longer.

Marky came up to me and we chatted for a few minutes. I gave him shit for yesterday, and I told him that he owed Melissa an apology, he said that he’d do it. Then he asked if we needed a ride to the reception, and I said that we’d roll with Jason and his fiancée. I was still pissed at how he acted, so I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of helping us.

When it was time to head over to the reception, Melissa and I rode with Jason and Aleshia over there and we went inside. Melissa had a lot of photos to take, so I hung out next to the pool table with my new friends for the next few hours.

The three of us talked about everything, and I kept cracking jokes and making them laugh. I didn’t include Marky or Jamie at all in the conversation, and even when Marky tried, we kind of ushered him out quickly. I didn’t like the way he had been acting, and every time I looked at Jamie, her body language was telling me (and apparently a lot of other people) that she didn’t want to be there. So we just left them alone.

Around the time of the cake cutting and toasting, Marcus came up to me and said that his brother had to leave and that I’d be giving the best man toast. I was taken back by this because I had never given a toast/speech before, and I wasn’t sure of what to say. Marcus also told me that Marky and Jamie would be leaving after the toast and heading into San Francisco. He wasn’t happy about that.

I made sure to record the other toasts, and then I even made sure to have someone record my toast. I went up there and opened with a joke. I didn’t really know what to say, so I spoke from the heart. I have known Marcus since September 2002, and we’ve been friends ever since. He’s been a great friend, and someone that I’ve been proud to know. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me, and how lucky he was to have found someone like Christina. Later on, Christina told me that she was surprised by my toast. She thought that it would be all jokes, and she was touched by how sentimental it was. She also thought that it would have more swearing.

Once the cake cutting and the dances were out of the way, Marky and Jamie took off. When they left, people were asking me who they were, and someone even referred to Jamie’s body language as “Succubus like.” I laughed at that one.

With my official videographer duties done, someone called out my name and said it was “Shot time!” I ran into the kitchen and proceeded to do several shots of Patron Tequila. In fact, Jason and I started doing several shots together, and these grew in number once Marcus put on the 90’s dance mix he had made for the reception. When I heard the opening notes to “Ice Ice Baby” I ran to the dance floor and started to rap. Thankfully the alcohol masked my suckiness.

Before deciding to give up drinking for the night (well before being forced to), I had taken 8 shots of tequila in just under/over an hour. Either way, I was fucking toasted. We had gone through 2 bottles of Patron, and the girls had to hide the third bottle from us. This is when Jason remembered that he had vodka in the car. As soon as vodka was mentioned, I knew I was done. Melissa asked me to go for a walk and I agreed.

We walked around for a while, and talked. I told her how I really felt about her, and how I saw myself marrying her in the future. I told her how much I loved her and how much she meant to me. We hugged and went back to the reception to let things wind down. When we got back Jason was officially three sheets to the wind and was being dragged to a car to get a ride back to Christina’s Mom’s house where he would be staying the night. We said our goodbyes to everyone, and Aleshia gave us a ride back to the hotel.

Back in our room, I sent off some drunk text messages, crawled into bed, and passed out about 1 a.m.

Friday, February 20th 2009

2009-03-16T15:33:00.001-07:00

We were in the section of the grapevine where there was some traffic, but it was mostly semis who kept to the right lane. I was speeding along at about 95mph for a while, and at one point I was doing over 100 without realizing it. None of that would have mattered if it wasn’t for the cop that I didn’t see behind an overpass. I wasn’t even paying attention to how fast I was really going at the time I looked in the side mirror and saw those nice flashing lights. I woke Marcus up, and pulled over to talk to the cop. He asked me if I knew why he pulled me over, and I said “because I was speeding.” He said that he clocked me at 95, but he wrote it down as 80, so they wouldn’t screw me over too bad. I thanked him, and he told me to have a nice day. I got back on the road and laughed as I got the car up to 75 mph, and kept it there.

Almost 11 years of having a license, and I finally got a speeding ticket…I couldn’t help but laugh.

I drove for about another hour, and then Marcus took over driving for the rest of the trip. We arrived in Tracy, CA at about 9:30 a.m. and we went immediately to Christina’s Mom’s house to meet up with them.

We got out of the car and greeted the family. We all chatted for a bit, and then we were needed at Christina’s Aunt’s house to help prepare for the reception. We all piled back in the Mazda and drove over to the house with the 3-car garage that the reception would be held in.

Melissa and I met the rest of the family and chatted with them for a few minutes before the card tables and chairs arrived. A family friend named Vicky (complete with a total fem-mullet) brought the goods in her truck. She walked right up to me in the garage and looked me up and down for a second. I said “Nice to meet you” and she told me to take off my sunglasses so she could get a good look at me. I hesitated before taking the glasses off, but when I did she leaned in and hugged me. I hugged her back. Later, I was told that she thought that I was Marcus. I laughed.

Marcus and I quickly unloaded the 5 card tables and 50 folding chairs for the reception, and then we had to bail to take the dress to Modesto to get fitted. I hugged Melissa goodbye and we took off.

We got to the bridal shop about 20 minutes later and took the dress in. While Marcus was being helped, I was being completely eye-fucked by the girls in the bridal shop. I thought it was funny, and when I mentioned it to Marcus, he said that it happens when a guy walks into a bridal shop. We bailed as soon as the dress was taken off our hands.

We got back in the car to run some more errands, but the lack of sleep caught up with me. I passed out for the rest of the car ride, and when I woke up we were pulling into a strip mall to meet the girls at a Korean beauty parlor.

I walked in and was taken back by the amount of chemicals in the air. I was sure that if I lit a match inside the shop that we’d all be blown to hell, it was that bad. I walked over and talked with Melissa, who was getting a pedicure and a foot massage. I also entertained Christina’s Aunt and Sister for a while. I also shot Marky a call to see where he was, and he said that he was just past LA and that he was on his way.

After the beauty parlor, we drove across the street to Jack In The Box to get some grub. While we were eating, I got a phone call from my boss telling me not to come into work tonight…it was then that I realized that I never told him that I wasn’t going to be in that weekend. I just told him “No problem! I won’t be in tonight, and I probably won’t be in tomorrow either.” I didn’t mention that I was currently 500 miles away from work. What he doesn’t know, can’t hurt me.

Then we went to the park where the ceremony would be taking place so that Melissa could get an idea of some photos that she could take tomorrow. I got into the spirit of things as well, and I tried helping her plan some cool looking photos. What can I say? Maybe I’m a cinematographer after all?

Next we dropped Christina back off at her Aunt’s house, and then Marcus drove us to the hotel. We all got checked in and when we had our room keys in our hands, Melissa went up to our room to rest up.

We ended up laying down to get a nap and when I woke up it was 4:15 p.m. I checked my phone and saw that there had been no call from Marky yet. I shot him a call to see where he was and he said that he and Jamie were sitting down to eat and they were still 100 miles away. The rehearsal dinner was at 6:30 p.m. and I made sure to remind him of this…as well as a few other things…my biggest problem was that I was yelling at him on the phone. I told him to get his ass to that hotel and then I hung up on him. I was too tired to care if I had offended him or not.

I woke up at 5:40 p.m. to a phone call from Marky telling me that he was there. I got up, ran downstairs to get our luggage and lead him up to our room. When I met up with him, I didn’t even get an “I’m sorry” or anything…this only pissed me off more. We got back to our room, and they hung their clothes up in the closet and I laid back down with Melissa to get a little more shut eye. While we were resting, Jamie got a phone call from a potential employer and she went into the bathroom to take the call…I don’t think she realized that the echos from the bathroom allowed us to hear everything she said. I whispered in Melissa’s ear “When we first met her, we couldn’t get two words out of her…now I just want her to shut the fuck up!” She laughed and we went back to resting.

About 20 minutes after that Marky came back and said that he and Jamie had got their own hotel room, and before I could say anything, they grabbed their bags and exited. I suppose that I should have been pissed about this, but in all honesty, I was just happy to have a hotel room to ourselves. Melissa agreed.

Marcus called me up and said that his parents would give Melissa and I a ride down to the dinner in 20 minutes. We got dressed very quickly, and met up with Marcus’s Dad in the lobby of the Hampton Inn. I had met them once before, but that was 5 years ago, so I had to try and remember their names. It didn’t work.

We all piled into Marcus’s sisters car and drove about a mile away to the Golden Corral for dinner. Both Melissa and I thought it was a rehearsal dinner, but it was just a family gathering. We met everyone else, and went inside to eat.

The Golden Corral was a buffet and I went to town on a few things that looked fantastic. I normally don’t like buffets, but this place wasn’t too bad. I chatted with Marcus’s parents a bit, as well as Christina’s Dad and some of her family. But by the end of dinner, I was exhausted and just wanted to get some sleep. Melissa was tired too, and we agreed that we were going to skip the pre-ceremony party and get some sleep.

I told Marcus that we were going to head back to the hotel and get some sleep. He was bummed, but he understood. This was about the time Christina’s Mom told me that I was going to be the photographer for the groom before the ceremony. I was like “What? I never agreed to that!” and she didn’t seem to care. I looked at Melissa and I was like “I need to start charging for this shit”, she just laughed.

We caught a ride back to the hotel, and walked over to Target to get some stuff we had forgot to bring up with us. We wandered around Target for a while and ran into Christina’s Dad, Grandpa, and Dad’s girlfriend shopping as well. We all chatted for a little bit, and then Melissa took off for the hotel to get some rest. While walking back, we came to the agreement that we’d rent a car and head into San Francisco before heading back.

Back at the hotel, we ran into Marcus who was on his way out the door to go drinking and he wanted to see if we would come with one more time. We told him “No” and then I asked if he talked with Marky, and he said that Marky had passed out and wasn’t waking up. We talked for a few more minutes and then he went on his way.

I went through my gear and organized everything. I made sure that the batteries were charging and that the right cables were separated and tied properly. Then I pulled out my laptop and I did some searches for rental car places near Tracy. There weren’t many that were open on Sunday’s, but there were a few. I made a note of them, and then I turned off my laptop to conserve battery power (because I had left the power cord at home).

Melissa and I got all relaxed and passed out about 12:30 a.m.

Thursday, February 19th 2009

2009-03-16T15:32:00.002-07:00

My goal was to sleep as late as I could, but my body woke me up about noon. I rolled out of bed, checked my email and did a couple loads of laundry to get my clothes in order for the weekend trip.

I was still unsure about how I was getting up to Tracy. I didn’t know if I was going with Marcus, Christina, and Melissa tonight after I got off of work, or if I was rolling with Marky and Jamie in the morning. Marky had said that he wanted to spend some alone time with Jamie and that he would take our luggage up in his rental car so that we could go with Marcus. I agreed to this, and I told Melissa to bring me her luggage at work, and Marky would pick it up from me. She agreed.

The other problem I had was that Marcus had wanted me to be the videographer for the wedding. I was against this because I really hate filming my friends weddings because I feel that I’m on a job and that I miss out on the experience of enjoying the sanctimonious event as a whole. I brought these concerns to Marcus and he said that he only wanted me to film the ceremony and certain parts of the reception. I told him that I could do that, and then he told me that I had to be ready by 2 a.m. (which only gave me a half hour after getting home from work) to leave for northern California.

I hung up the phone with him, and did a flight of the bumblebee on my clothes. I grabbed all that I thought I’d need for a 4 day trip and threw it into my bag. I didn’t worry about getting my camera gear together because I figured I’d just do that when I got home. I tossed the bag in the car, said a goodbye to the family and headed off to work.

I got the place open and the movies on the screen and I hung out with Beth and Jacqueline for a while in the snackbar. I told Jacqueline what I was working on with Flash Your Shorts, and I asked her if she’d make a logo for me to use for business cards and the site. She agreed and asked me what I wanted the logo to look like. I really didn’t have much of a thought, so I told her that I had an idea for a mascot similar to the neighborhood watch signs you see around town. She got the gist and said she’d get to work on it.

Melissa showed up around 9 p.m. and brought me some food from Einstein Bro’s Bagels. She also brought bagels for the trip and she gave a few to Beth and Jacqueline to snack on. The three girls chatted while I did some work, and then a few minutes later Melissa had to get going so she could get a nap in before Marcus came and picked her up at 1:45 a.m.

She left, and about 20 minutes later Marky showed up to pick up the luggage. He showed me the Kia that he rented and we talked about the trip and how we would be planning the usage of the car. He said that he was leaving at 8 a.m. and I told him that I needed him there at 4:30 p.m. so we could change our clothes before the rehearsal dinner. He said that he’d try, and I made it a point to tell him that I expected him there by 4:30 p.m.

Was I a bit dickish about it…yeah…but I had to.

Marky left and I went back to work. I spent the rest of the night getting geared up for the trip and waiting for the night to end. I did some more work on the pitch package for www.atom.com and I didn’t wrap that up until about 1:15 a.m. when the guard showed up. I locked the theater up, went to the bank, and hauled ass home.

At home, I scrambled to put together my gear. I grabbed my camera, 3 spare tapes, my 2 spare batteries, my digital camera, my laptop, my Aiptek HD camcorder (just in case), my lav mic, my uni-directional mic, my mini-jack cables, my mini-jack adapters, and anything else I could think of. When the whole thing was put together I had a backpack weighing about 30 pounds…and this was all equipment for the wedding.

At 2 a.m. Marcus called me and told me he was outside. I grabbed my bag, a rockstar, and my sweatshirt before heading out the door and meeting them. We loaded my gear in the car and got on the road.

We all chatted for the first stretch of the trip, and about 2 hours in we stopped off a Denny’s to get some snacks and to stretch our legs. After that, we got back in the car and headed north. We didn’t stop again until right past the grapevine when Marcus wanted me to take over driving.

I got in the driver’s seat of the Mazda, readjusted the seat, and moved the mirrors to my liking. Melissa joined me in the front seat while Marcus and Christina got comfy in the back. I had to get used to driving his car because unlike the lumbering beast that is the Merc, this car is a zoomer. I got on the freeway and took off up the I-5 North.

Wednesday, February 18th 2009

2009-03-16T15:32:00.001-07:00

I woke up around noon and let the dog out to go to the bathroom. I checked my email, and chatted with Melissa online for a bit. I showed her the website, and she really liked it. After talking with her, I went back to the xbox and spent the afternoon playing the Lost and the Damned until having to get ready for work.

At 5:30 p.m. I rolled into the drive-in, opened up and got the movies on the screen. I spent the night working on updating the blog, and talking with Melissa about our trip up to Tracy for Marcus’s wedding this weekend.

The night finally ended about 1:30 a.m. I locked the theater up, took the money to the bank, went home and spent the rest of the night playing the game. I finally went to sleep about 4 a.m.

Tuesday, February 17th 2009

2009-03-16T15:31:00.002-07:00

I woke up about 11 a.m. and found myself alone in bed. Melissa had gone in to work, and I was on my own for the day. Geoff called me up and asked if I wanted to go with him to the DMV to renew his license. Since this was the last time we’d have the chance to hang out before he left for the Lake Havasu shoot this upcoming weekend, I told him that I’d go with him.

I took a shower, checked my email, got dressed, and met Geoff about 2 p.m. I got in his car and we headed down to the Hillcrest DMV. Geoff had looked online and found the closest DMV with the quickest wait time. When we got there, I got in line while Geoff went and found a parking spot. We bullshitted while waiting the 45 minutes for us to get through the line. When Geoff finally got the chance to renew his license, he reached for his wallet and realized that he left it at home. He looked at me and asked if I would cover the $20 buck renewal fee. I rolled my eyes, and reached for my debit card. The lady handed me the receipt and we got Geoff’s picture taken, and then we made our way for the door.

On the way out, I walked past an anti-drug poster on the wall that said this:

“BEFORE DOING DRUGS, DO THIS…”

Underneath the text was an organ donor application card. Then it said this:

“PLEASE FILL THIS OUT AND THEN NO ONE CAN SAY THAT YOU NEVER DID ANYTHING WITH YOUR LIFE.”

I motioned for Geoff to check it out and we had a hearty laugh at the poster. I can see the reasoning behind it, but the fact that someone signed off on this marketing campaign really goes to show how well we are doing in the war on drugs. I made sure to take a picture with the iPhone before leaving.

We made a quick run to Geoff’s house and picked up his wallet, and then we headed over to Rosaritos for lunch. We got our burritos, talked, and ate. After lunch, Geoff dropped me back at Melissa’s and I wished him luck on the shoot, and said goodbye. He took off, and I went back in the house to pack up my stuff.

Melissa got home a few minutes later and we chatted for a little bit before I took off for home.

At home, I immediately jumped on xbox live and bought more MS Points to purchase the GTA 4 expansion pack “The Lost and the Damned”. I was a little pissed at paying the extra $20 bucks for an expansion (as I’ve always said that MS over charges for shit on xbox live…but this was worth it). The download was 1.76 gigabytes, so I had some time before the download was done.

I jumped online and dicked around for a while waiting for the game to download. I started to think about Flash Your Shorts and what I wanted to do with it. I decided that I would take the opportunity of free time to start working on the site. I purchased the domain name (www.flashyourshorts.com) for that and USA (www.unclesecretagent.com) , and then I created a gmail account, a social networking site on ning.com, and a blogspot.com account for it as well. With all that in place, I wrote the first posting on the page. I made sure that mission statement was clear, as well as how to contact me when you wanted to promote your short film. With all that in place, I posted 4 of my own videos as examples, saved it, and went to check how the download was doing.

To my surprise the game had finished downloading, so I jumped on the xbox, played the Lost and the Damned expansion (which is completely fucking awesome btw) until getting sleepy at 5 a.m.

Monday, February 16th 2009

2009-03-16T15:31:00.001-07:00

I rolled out of bed about 12:30 p.m. and chatted with Melissa for a while. We were hungry so we headed down to Subway to get some lunch. After that we went back to her place and I played on the Wii while she did some work around the house.

Adrian had called me wanting to meet up about our proposed business idea. We agreed on meeting at 6:30 p.m. at a coffee shop next to SDSU. Since I had a few hours before the meeting, Melissa and I sat down and – for the first time in a decade – worked on my resume. She knew how much I wasn’t liking working at the theater, so she was helping me craft a resume good enough to get me a much better job.

When that was done, I took a quick shower, got dressed, and we headed off towards the coffee shop to meet Adrian. He was there before us, and was already looking up the legal aspects of the idea I had. We greeted him and spent the next couple hours talking about how we wanted to tackle the technical aspect of what we were attempting to do. When that was done, we used Melissa’s business knowledge to discuss possible pricing and what we would need to get the business off the ground.

After the meeting, we parted ways with Adrian, and got back in the Merc to head back to Melissa’s house. We were both hungry when we got back, so she made us some dinner.

With my belly full of hamburgers, we retired to the bedroom and while Melissa was finishing up some work on her laptop, I moved the Wii into her room and I played Defend Your Castle for a couple hours until she was done.

She put her laptop away, and I showed her how we could watch YouTube videos on the Wii. So we watched a ton of Jeff Dunham clips before falling asleep about 1 a.m.

Sunday, February 15th 2009

2009-03-16T15:30:00.002-07:00

I woke up to the sound of Melissa rumbling around her room at 12:30 p.m. She had the TV on and we spent a few hours just lounging around and watching TV. At about 3 p.m. we got up and decided to get some grub. I took a quick shower and then we drove down to Subway to get another sandwich.

After lunch, we went back to her house and I got ready to take off. I had to work tonight, and even though Melissa didn’t want me to leave (she made this abundantly clear by hugging me so I wouldn’t leave...it’s really nice to be wanted that much), I had to depart. But I did tell her that I would be coming back over when I got off of work.

I drove home, checked my email, played GTA 4 for about 20 minutes and then got dressed for work.

I half expected the theater to be busy from tomorrow’s holiday, but it wasn’t. There was a slight rush in the beginning of the night, but I didn’t even clock in when I got there. I just helped out in the box office, and when the movie started I got some popcorn and went to my car to watch the remake of one of the greatest horror movies of all time.

FRIDAY THE 13^TH started off with a bang because of the new TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN trailer in front of the movie, and after wiping the drool off my chin I rested back in my seat and got ready to watch the movie…Normally I’m a fan of most movies I see, and while I was looking forward to this remake, I was left feeling unimpressed. My biggest complaint is that there was no fear, or sense of dread in the entire movie. Usually Jason stalks his victims before killing them. The audience was meant to think that the teenager escaped harm and would go on to live a full and healthy life and then BAM! Jason would take their fucking head off. That wasn’t the case this time around. The movie had a substandard plot (Jason as a pot grower? WHAT THE FUCK? I know that wasn’t the “story” but it sure as fuck set it up to be), and while it did have some good deaths, it left me wanting when the movie ended. The best thing about the flick was that it featured the bare breasts of one of the most perfect set of tits I have ever seen in a movie (or real life for that fact). May the actress who played Bree have a long and illustrious career…and more nude scenes.

After the movie, Adrian hit me up asking what I was up to because he and Sara were down at Wild Wooley’s having a drink and wanted Melissa and I to join them. I told him that we could be down in about 45 minutes, but they were leaving in 30 so it was a no go. He wanted to discuss the idea that I had pitched to him last night, so we agreed to meet up at some point tomorrow.

I made a quick pit stop and filled up on gas before heading over to Melissa’s.

I got to her house, and we chatted for a bit. We were both really hungry so we decided to head down to Tyler’s Taste of Texas down the street for some late night grub. We got in her car and drove down to the restaurant.

We got to chatting about an idea I had a while ago for what I wanted to call “Short Film TV”. This idea would be a website where filmmakers could send me the link to their short film, music video, web series, documentary, ect… and I would post it on the site. This way, filmmakers could get exposure while checking out other people’s work. I had wanted to create a whole network around it, and thankfully Melissa completely supported me in the idea. We got to talking about taking it one step further and having a screening night of some of the flicks that had been posted on the site. We talked logistics and what would be needed to hold such an event. This conversation took us all the way through dinner and back to her house. It was here that I was able to come up with the name of the website…Flash Your Shorts.

We talked about it a while more, and eventually ended up falling asleep at 4 a.m.

K(!/86class=MsoNormal>When the movie ended we all applauded and walked out of the theater. We talked amongst ourselves for a few minutes and then we all departed for our domiciles.

Back at Melissa’s house, she made some food while we both talked for a while. Then we decided it was time for bed and we fell asleep about 3:30 a.m.

Saturday, February 14th 2009

2009-03-16T15:30:00.001-07:00

I didn’t budge until about 1:30 p.m. I got up and went out into the house to see what the family was up to. Bill and Joe were out doing yard work, while Mom and Sam were preparing the house for Sammy’s boyfriend Jake to come over for a V-Day dinner. I chatted with them for a bit before heading back to my room to mess around online.

Melissa and I decided to get a V-Day lunch at Denny’s and I met her over there about 3 p.m. We ate and chatted, and before we knew it, the time was almost 5 p.m. and I had to get to work. We hugged goodbye and agreed that I would pick her up to go to the movie when I got off of work. I got in my car and headed home.

I didn’t have much time at home before leaving for work, but I did spy the pudding that Sammy made in the fridge. I also noticed the unopened can of Cool Whip and for some reason I had the urge to suck the nitrous-oxide out of the can and get high. I hadn’t done that shit in years, but for some reason I really wanted to kill some brain cells. But since Sammy needed the whip cream for later, I couldn’t claim dibs.

I jumped back in the Merc and headed to the theater. It wasn’t raining, but it was pretty cold out. Because of the weather and of the certain day that it was, we weren’t as busy as we could have been. I just did the same thing as the night before, I hung out until after the intermissions and then I talked a pair of customers into going and seeing the porno before clocking out and taking off.

Then I drove over to Melissa’s to pick her up for the movie. Melissa wasn’t home when called her to let her know that I was on my way, she was down the street at 7-11 getting supplies and some food for her. I drove down and met her in the 7-11 parking lot. She jumped in the car and we headed off for the Ken Cinema.

We got to the theater a little early (maybe I drove a little too fast….), and decided to hang around the area for a little bit. Melissa was hungry and we were looking around for food as Marky and Jamie showed up (I had called him earlier in the day and told him about the movie). The 4 of us chatted, and when Adrian and Angela showed up, the 6 of us chatted for a while. I pitched an idea I had about a video production company where we provide last wills and testaments in video form for a price. Adrian liked the idea and we agreed to talk about it later.

We got in line and headed in to theater, as we were entering, I saw the two customers from the drive-in that I had talked with earlier. They were there and excited to be, I waved and gave them a thumbs up before going back to my conversation with Adrian.

The 6 of us got situated and seated. We all had our 3D glasses on and were ready for the movie to start. I had brought my flip cam to record parts of the movie for later review (and to show my friends), but when I turned it on I found that the batteries were dead. Melissa pulled out her digital camera, but she didn’t have a memory card, and when I tried to pull the card out of my flip cam…I found that that card was missing too…fuck.

Thankfully Adrian had his digital camera, and when the movie started I had the thing pointed at the screen, and I recorded the first 5 minutes of the movie. The quality of the print was deteriorated to the point where it was orange and there was no color besides that. The 3D barely worked, and the glasses ended up giving more headaches than giving the image of a dildo coming right at your face. But THE DISCO DOLLS IN “HOT SKIN” was a movie to be seen. It was a John Holmes picture and the faces he made while pounding chicks was outrageously hilarious. Not to mention that all the stars of the movie all had more pubic hair than I have hair on my entire body. One girl even had pit hair! The funniest thing about the movie is that the only time there is anal sex in the flick…the girl dies. So I guess the moral of the story is this: ANAL KILLS!

When the movie ended we all applauded and walked out of the theater. We talked amongst ourselves for a few minutes and then we all departed for our domiciles.

Back at Melissa’s house, she made some food while we both talked for a while. Then we decided it was time for bed and we fell asleep about 3:30 a.m.

al>I]uh86idea of going to the porno movie, and she agreed. I smile and thought to myself “I’m going to go see 70’s 3D porn with my girlfriend on Valentine’s Day…fuck yes!” I was stoked!

She stayed until she was too tired to stay anymore. We tried getting comfortable on my couch, but it wasn’t big enough for two people so she couldn’t sleep over. I really wanted her to, but I need to get an actual bed instead of a futon covered in shit, and a couch. I walked her to her car and we hugged goodbye. I went back inside, got underneath my covers and played some GTA until 6 a.m. when I finally got tired enough to fall asleep.

Friday, February 13th 2009

2009-03-16T15:29:00.002-07:00

The alarm woke me up at 12:30 p.m. and I rolled out of bed only to find a very anxious Belle wanting to be let outside. I bowed to the dog’s wishes and went to check my email. Melissa had emailed me asking what time she was coming over to see me this evening. We were going to celebrate our first Valentine’s Day together a day early because I had to work both tonight and tomorrow. I told her that I should be off work no later than 1 a.m. and she could come over when I get home.

I kicked it around the house for a little bit, and then I got dressed and headed down to Fantastic Sam’s to get a haircut. Since I was no longer going on the Havasu job, I thought it would be a good idea to get a trim before going to Marcus’s wedding next weekend…not to mention that my girlfriend had been on my case about getting a haircut for a couple weeks now. I went down to the barber, got seated and got my haircut.

After the haircut, I walked over to the bank to deposit my paycheck. I got there at the optimal time because there was no line. I filled out my deposit slip and went right up to the counter. After a brief conversation about how World of Warcraft was better than GTA 4 with the teller, I made my way across the parking lot and went into Albertson’s in search of rockstars. Next, I stopped by Subway to get myself some lunch. Sandwich in hand, I got back in the Merc and headed for home.

I watched the latest episode of BURN NOTICE while eating my sub (seriously, it is the best show on TV) and when that was over with, I recorded a new Rodney’s World episode, uploaded it and played GTA 4 until taking a shower and getting ready to head to work.

Somewhere during the time from 2:30-5:30 p.m. the weather had gone from nice and sunny to impending rain storms. The clouds were dark and the temperature was dropping. I made sure to wear jeans and my sweatshirt (I didn’t want to get sick again so soon) and I headed off to the theater.

We were opening FRIDAY THE 13^TH and we all expected a decent crowd to come in to see the remake. Like always, the weather prohibited us from having that. As soon as the movies started (as did the rain) I kicked it in the snack bar to stay dry (and warm). I was able to keep this going until a customer came in asking for a jump start during the intermission. She told me that it wasn’t raining out, so I didn’t bother to grab my sweatshirt before running out to jump start the car. Right as I got the hood up, the rain started to pour and I was pretty soaked by the time I got back to the snack bar.

While drying myself off with paper towels, I got a text message from Adrian telling me that there was a 1970’s 3D porno film playing tomorrow night at the Ken Cinema. I shot him a call and got all the details. I then asked him to text Melissa this information so that it would come from a third party and that it wouldn’t look like I was a huge pervert. Adrian agreed and I told him that I’d see him tomorrow.

Ace had also called me asking to get back a DVD of JP and Kennedy’s wedding invitation video that they had made so he could show it to his family who was visiting. He was near the drive-in, so I told him to meet me there.

A few minutes after that my boss told me to clock out and go home. I did just that. I met Ace out by the marquee and handed him the DVD. We chatted for a few minutes and then parted ways. I bee lined for home to change clothes and to get warm.

I texted Melissa and told her that I was home early and that she could come over anytime. She said that she’d be over at 11 p.m. and we’d hang out. I still had about 2 hours to kill so I spent some time promoting Rodney online. I really get a weird vibe when I self promote so shamelessly on places like 4chan, but fuck it. If I want to see my experiment succeed, then I needed to push it to the limit.

Melissa showed up about 11:30 p.m. with some dinner for me. We went inside my room, and she gave me my Valentine’s Day gift. She got me CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, THE HEART BREAK KID and BLACK SNAKE MOAN all on HD-DVD. I was thrilled that she bought me DVD’s from a dead format (my collection is always growing…I love HD-DVD’s), I hugged her and thanked her and then we sat down on my couch to watch a couple movies and relax.

I brought up the idea of going to the porno movie, and she agreed. I smile and thought to myself “I’m going to go see 70’s 3D porn with my girlfriend on Valentine’s Day…fuck yes!” I was stoked!

Thursday, February 12th 2009

2009-03-16T15:29:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 1:30 p.m. and got up to let Belle out. I was pretty much in a vegetative state for the afternoon, but I did end up getting Ace on the phone to ask him how things were going on the Lake Havasu job for next week. He told me that they didn’t have the budget to pay for 2 grips (which would be Geoff and I), but they did have an Assistant Director (AD) job open. I have never had any thought in my brain about wanting to be an AD. They are the most hated person on set (and for good reason), and I’m not the type to enjoy being hated (mostly). So I told Ace that Geoff should get the job.

I shot Geoff a call to tell him about the Havasu job and he was comfortable in the fact that he would be doing that job. We chatted for a bit about his working with Carleton on a short film for a competition, and how he was just finishing the edit of the 90-second teaser trailer for the behind-the-scenes documentary for Carleton’s Route-66 photo documentary that he was working on. Geoff wanted to get my opinion of it, so he uploaded it to his www.vimeo.com account and only allowed me to view it.

At the same time, I wanted his approval of the USA episodes, so I uploaded episode 1 to my Vimeo account to let him see it.

I was able to watch his trailer first, and I have to say that I was really impressed with what I saw. I didn’t know what they had gone through on the trip because Geoff hadn’t really talked about it in great detail, but I didn’t know that they had encountered a fucking tornado while cruising down America’s greatest highway. I congratulated Geoff on a job well done and then he took a look at the USA episode. He was really impressed with the editing I did, and how the thing turned out. It was exactly as he envisioned it when we were discussing the edits weeks ago, and I was very happy to hear that he liked it.

We chatted a little bit longer and then we got off the phone. I booted up GTA 4 and played that for a while before getting ready to go to work.

Like every other Thursday night, I got to work and dished out the paychecks. I spent half my night hanging with Del in the box office watching a movie, and then I went and hung out with Beth and Jacqueline in the snack bar until intermissions.

The rest of the evening flew by, I tore apart MARLEY & ME as fast as I could. Once I was done with that and counting the nightly take, I busted out the laptop and got some work done on the pitch package. I was able to get the characters, synopsis, and a few of the episodes written down in my MMO Spoof idea that I want to take to www.atom.com.

Feeling very proud of myself, I went home with a smile on my face. At home, I checked my email, pimped Rodney’s Challenge on 4chan, and went to bed about 4 a.m.

.The guest speaker was a salesman/spokesperson who was there giving us tips on how to break the ice and talk to possible clients/investors during pitches. He was pretty entertaining and made a good enough impression on me that during his speech, I texted Melissa a few of the things he was saying as a way of passing my knowledge on to her.

After the meeting, Geoff drove me back to Melissa’s and helped me unload the dresser into the garage. Melissa didn’t know what was going on, but I since I was sure that I couldn’t hide the noise that I had just made, I just wanted to show her the gift. I said “goodbye” to Geoff, grabbed Melissa from her room, and took her into the garage to show her the cardboard box sitting on the table. I told her what it was and she flipped out (in a good way), she hugged and thanked me and we chatted for a while longer before I took off for home.

At home, I booted up the editing system and went to town on UNCLE SECRET AGENT for the remainder of the night. I was able to get episodes 1-3 finished before getting sleepy and laying down.

I put on some COLD CASE FILES episodes and after scaring myself while watching them, I finally crashed out about 5 a.m.

Wednesday, February 11th 2009

2009-03-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 12:30 p.m. with the dog asleep at the foot of my couch. Thank god Mom let her in so I didn’t have to wake up and do it.

I crawled out of bed, wrangled up some food and checked my email. I still wanted to do some work on USA, but I didn’t want to over do it. I loaded up Premier Pro and worked on a couple more episodes for the rest of the afternoon. I had figured that I could finish the remaining 4 episodes before going to work, but I could only get through 2. I figured I would finish it up when I got off of work tonight.

At 5 p.m. I took a quick shower, got dressed and headed down to the theater. The weather had been kind of shitty the last couple days, so I wasn’t expecting much of a turn out for HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU…and I was right. I spent the majority of the night working on the blog and texting Melissa. She wanted me to come over, but I had to say “No” because I wanted to finish up USA when I got home.

After closing up shop and taking the money to the bank, I went home to continue my work.

I was able to finish up the final episodes of season 1 by about 5 a.m. I watched through a couple of the episodes again to see if they were still funny to me. And when I barked out a laugh at one of the jokes (with the added text on the screen) I knew I had done my job.

Completely exhausted, I blacked out about 5:45 a.m.

Tuesday, February 10th 2009

2009-03-16T15:27:00.000-07:00

Melissa woke me up at 12:30, but I wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet because I was still pretty drained from the editing the day before, so we just laid in bed until about 2:00 p.m. when we finally moseyed out of bed.

Melissa had wanted to get lunch, so we walked down to Subway. Since today was the SDF meeting, Geoff was coming to pick me up at 3:30 p.m. from her place so that we could run an errand before the networking event.

I wanted to pick up Melissa’s Valentine’s Day gift early, and I thought I needed a vehicle with storage capacity to help me. Geoff’s Scion would do just fine. I had been looking at getting Melissa a dresser for her room, and I wanted to get one from Ikea (because I’m poor and they had good prices…don’t call me a cheap ass because I don’t have a lot of money. I had been looking around at different places and Ikea just had the one I liked for the right price.

Geoff and I bombed down to the Swedish store and tooled around in the maze they call a layout, while looking for the dresser. While we were looking we found a bunch of desks and office chairs that would be nice to have in our office one day (provided we ever get one). When we found the dresser we marked down where in the storage area it was (Row 9 Slot 11…a sign perhaps?) and headed off in that direction.

After finding the dresser, I remembered that at Ikea, you have to build what you buy…oh well, it might be a fun thing for Melissa and I to do one day…so I paid for it, and Geoff and I lugged it over to his Scion and secured it inside.

We were both craving something to mack on, so we walked across the parking lot to CostCo and I got a mocha freeze while Geoff got a churro. We still had time to kill before the meeting started, so we drove to a nearby Verizon store to look at possible upgrades for Geoff’s phone. I love walking in to those stores for 2 reasons: 1.) If it is a cell store from another provider, I just pull out the iPhone and look more important than I am. And 2.) Refer back to point 1.

After the Verizon store, we headed over to Office Depot for a few minutes to dick around. When we found nothing of interest, we finally made our way to the SDF meeting.

We got to the meeting a little after 6 p.m. and hung out in our usual spot waiting to see if anyone we knew showed up. Richard U. made an appearance, and when he walked over he told us that he was moving to Orange County for a new job and this was his goodbye. We chatted for a while, and then Jeff G. joined us. A few minutes later my friend Jason L. showed up to check out the meeting. He stayed until the start of the actual guest speaker and then he took off.

Right before we all went inside to listen to whoever was speaking (I didn’t bother to pay attention to that info before going up there), I ran to the bathroom to take a quick shit. Post-shit, I met up with Geoff and Jeff in the back of the meeting room, and listened to Aaron K.’s terrible jokes that he had written for the event. I began heckling Aaron from the back of the room, but he claimed to not hear me when I brought it up to him later (I think he’s lying).

The guest speaker was a salesman/spokesperson who was there giving us tips on how to break the ice and talk to possible clients/investors during pitches. He was pretty entertaining and made a good enough impression on me that during his speech, I texted Melissa a few of the things he was saying as a way of passing my knowledge on to her.

At home, I booted up the editing system and went to town on UNCLE SECRET AGENT for the remainder of the night. I was able to get episodes 1-3 finished before getting sleepy and laying down.

I put on some COLD CASE FILES episodes and after scaring myself while watching them, I finally crashed out about 5 a.m.

up torsp86 movie was new to me. It was about an old miner who went on a crazy killing spree and slaughtered a fuck ton of people in the process. Within the first few minutes of the movie there was blood everywhere…this was my kind of movie! While the plot around the characters could have been a little better thought out, and Jaime King’s acting could have been a little better, I have to say that I really enjoyed this 3D romp into madness…especially the fully naked chick charging through a motel parking lot holding a gun. Good times.

After the movie, Bob and I bullshitted for a bit while walking to our cars. Marky finally called me back and said that he spent the evening having dinner with his new girlfriend’s parents, which is why he couldn’t make the movie. I forgave him (jokingly of course) and we said we’d chat later. Bob and I said our goodbyes and I drove home.

I had the full intention of doing more editing when I got home, but I was too tired to even want to look at my computer. When I got in my room, I kicked off my clothes, got ready for bed, and watched some DILBERT episodes on Netflix until falling asleep at 4 a.m.

Sunday, February 8th 2009

2009-03-16T15:23:00.002-07:00

I arose to the sound of my alarm clock beeping at 12:30 p.m. I got up, went to my computer and immediately started editing. I don’t know why, but I was on a mission to finish the rough edit on episodes 3-7 today. And that is just what I did, I sat at my computer, not eating or drinking, just editing until about 6 p.m. when I finished the last episode of Season 1.

I kicked back in my chair, rested my eyes for a few moments, and got up to go look for food. I had been chatting with Ace about the hackintosh and he said that he was finally available for me to bring it over for him to take a look at. I told him that I’d be over after I ate and took a shower.

I quickly wolfed down some hot pockets and took a quick shower. Then I unplugged the behemoth tower, and transported it to my car. On my way out of my room, I noticed a book on how to make low budget horror movies that Carleton had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, so I picked it up and took it with me.

At Ace’s we made a makeshift computer stand and plugged the broken machine up to be tested. While Ace was running a diagnostic test, we were talking about the book I had brought over, and the book of the same genre that Ace was reading. I perused through the pages of both books hoping to find some inspiration on how to get more money…sadly, they said the same thing that all books say. Find investors…

Trish had come home with a tooth ache, so after a while of tinkering with the hackintosh, Ace and I headed down the street to Walgreens to pick up some medicine for Trish. And then we made a quick stop by Jack In The Box to get a snack for us.

After our little adventure to the store, we came back and Ace discovered that the problem with the computer was that the hard drive had been corrupted. He said that he’d pick me up a new hard drive and that I’d just have to leave the computer with him. By this time it was almost midnight, and I was getting sleepy, so I agreed to the plan, said “goodnight” and drove home.

I shot Melissa a call on my way home and asked if I could come over and see her. She said “yes” and I made my way over to her house. We chit chatted for a while, and eventually fell asleep in each other’s arms at about 2 a.m.

Saturday, February 7th 2009

2009-03-16T15:23:00.001-07:00

The alarm woke me up at 12:30 p.m. I rolled out of bed and looked out the open window next to my couch that kept me from getting a good night’s sleep. I hadn’t done anything with the window since it broke on Monday night, but today would be different.

I got dressed and headed over to Melissa’s to surprise her and ask her to lunch. She wasn’t home when I pulled in front of her house. I called her, but I got her voicemail, so I assumed she was busy. I then drove the few blocks away to Geoff’s house to give him his b-day present that Melissa had given him (and subsequently gotten on my ass (deservedly so) for not giving it to him yet), and he wasn’t home either. Fuck.

I then drove to Wal-Mart in search of blackout curtains for something that I could put up that would allow me to get some sleep without being blinded by the daytime light (how I yearned for the producer’s lounge at the studio). At first I looked at some replacement blinds that I could put up, but Melissa suggested that I get blackout curtains instead. I decided to purchase one curtain and see how I liked it before investing the money in other sets. I also picked up some water and gum, paid for my goods, and bombed back home.

The first thing I did is unwrap the blackout curtain and try and frame it in the window. It was about 4 inches too short of covering the entire space, but I figured that beggars can’t be choosers, and after some careful work, I was able to get the thing attached to the wall by myself. The first thing I did is turn on the xbox and play some Halo Wars demo to judge how darker that section of my room was. It was nice.

By this time it was time to get ready for work, but since I didn’t have to work tonight, I didn’t really get ready. Although I did go down there. Bob wanted to borrow DR. HORRIBLE from me, and I said that I’d bring it down to him. Also, I wanted to discuss going and seeing MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3D with him and Marky tonight, so I figured I’d do that while hanging out at work.

It was raining when I pulled up to the theater, and I chatted with the guys for a while. My boss and the owner gave me shit for being down at the theater on my night off. I paid them no mind, and talked with Bob about the movie. He said that if he could get out of the theater early enough, he’d give me a call. I told the guys that I’d see them later, and I headed home.

I was determined to get some editing work done tonight, so I plugged in the 750gb external hard drive that stored the USA episodes on it, and I went to work re-editing the first 2 episodes. My goal was to make them a little tighter and funnier, I did this by eliminating the turn between camera 1 and camera 2. Plus, Marky has a tendency of saying “Now” and “Of course” throughout the videos, so I did my best to eliminate those and whatever wasn’t really funny in the process.

Melissa and I started a text conversation during this, and she informed me that one of her friends had died today. I gave her my condolences, and my mind immediately thought that this was the second person I know to have a friend die in 2 days…She wanted to go see HE’S JUST NOT THAT INTO YOU, but I had no desire, so I passed on the movie. I felt like a dick for not being with my girlfriend when she needed it…

I went back to editing and continued working for the next couple hours. About 11:10 p.m. Bob hit me up asking if we were going to go see the movie or not. I was pretty exhausted from all the editing, so I agreed to see the midnight showing of the movie. I shot Marky a call to invite him to come with, but there was no answer, so I left a message. I tossed my sandals on, jumped in the Merc and raced down to Mission Valley to meet Bob.

It was still raining out, so I took cover while waiting for Bob to show up. He got there a minute or so later, we got tickets, went inside, I got a soda, and we got seated. I was surprised at how many people were in line to see the movie. We got inside, took our seat in the center of a middle row, and even with all the empty seats around us, a group of 5 people took up residence right next to me. It was odd.

I put on my 3D glasses right as the previews were starting. I knew that the trailers before the movie wouldn’t be in 3D, but I wanted to get my eyes adjusted to seeing things in the third dimension.

MY BLOODY VALENTINE was a remake of an old horror movie, and since I hadn’t seen the original up to this point, the movie was new to me. It was about an old miner who went on a crazy killing spree and slaughtered a fuck ton of people in the process. Within the first few minutes of the movie there was blood everywhere…this was my kind of movie! While the plot around the characters could have been a little better thought out, and Jaime King’s acting could have been a little better, I have to say that I really enjoyed this 3D romp into madness…especially the fully naked chick charging through a motel parking lot holding a gun. Good times.

Friday, February 6th 2009

2009-03-16T15:22:00.003-07:00

I woke up when my alarm went off at 12:30 p.m. The dog was sleeping with me on the couch, and as soon as I got up, she got the idea that I wanted to play with her and she wouldn’t leave me alone for a while after that. I took her outside and tossed her ball for her a couple times, but that didn’t placate her. I swear to god…I need a doggie sedative.

I washed my hands, and made myself some PB & J sandwiches and went back to my room to watch BURN NOTICE on Hulu.com and then started to think about UNCLE SECRET AGENT and how I hadn’t worked on the episodes in a while. I had 2 rough edits done and uploaded to youtube.com (just hidden) and I was showing them to friends to get feedback. But I really needed to just sit down and edit all 7 episodes to get them a little tighter and have them be funny. I was hoping to get Geoff in on this one with me.

I spent some time searching around for a Valentine’s Day gift for Melissa. She wasn’t expecting anything from me, but I wasn’t going to not give her anything. I had one gift, and one gift only in mind. I wanted to get her something she didn’t have. I wanted to get her a dresser for her room.

I searched around at Wal-Mart, Target, Ikea, and some other sites to get an idea of what kind of prices to expect. Ikea really had the best deal with a 5 drawer dresser on sale. But the thing wouldn’t fit in my car, so I needed to either borrow the truck (since the Daewoo wasn’t working) or get Geoff to run me over to Ikea to get the dresser.

After searching around, I played a little xbox (Halo Wars demo is the SHIT!!!!!), and then I got ready and headed off to work.

The weather was shitty, and I already knew that I wasn’t going to be working tomorrow night because the owner wanted me to take a night off to save on payroll. So I figured I’d milk the clock for all that I could tonight.

We were opening HE’S JUST NOT THAT IN TO YOU, and it’s a movie that I DON’T want to see. We had a really dismal crowd, but I still kicked it in the snack bar most of the time. The only part of the night that didn’t go by at the normal speed was waiting for the end of HE’S JUST NOT THAT IN TO YOU. It was cold, wet, and the movie looked boring to me…so in typical cosmic fashion…the damn thing wouldn’t fucking end.

While waiting for the movie to end, I got a text message from Ace telling me that one of his friends had died in a tragic fork lift accident. I gave him my condolences.

As soon as the movie was done, and we were done with all the cleaning, I bolted out and headed to Jack In The Box for some much needed dinner. After waiting in line for 20 minutes because the 2 carloads of drunk idiots in front of me couldn’t make up their fucking mind, I got my sandwich and headed home to eat it.

I watched 30 ROCK on hulu.com while eating and then I finished off the night by playing more xbox and watching some DILBERT episodes on Netflix. I finally fell asleep at 5 a.m.

Thursday, February 5th 2009

2009-03-16T15:22:00.001-07:00

Melissa woke me up about noon, and we spent some time hanging out before my mom called me to ask me to go pick up the kids at school at 2:30 p.m. I told her that I would, and Melissa and I had to cut our afternoon plans short. We walked down to Subway and got lunch, and then we walked back. We chatted for a few minutes before I had to depart. I kissed her goodbye, got in the Merc and drove over to the school to pick up Samantha.

Back at home, I played xbox until getting ready for work. I made sure to hit up 7-11 for a rockstar (that company should pay me money for how many times I say their name in this blog…seriously) before going down to the theater.

In typical Thursday night fashion, I hung out with Beth and Jacqueline for the night. After they went home, I went upstairs and tore apart HOTEL FOR DOGS (thank god!). After that, I just hung out until the end of the movie. There wasn’t much else to do for the last 30 minutes of my shift, so I just rocked out to some System Of A Down albums while waiting for the security guard. When he finally showed up, I already had the theater locked up and I was ready to go. I took the money to the bank, and headed home.

I spent the rest of the night dicking around online, and playing xbox until getting really tired about 4 a.m.

Wednesday, February 4th 2009

2009-03-16T15:21:00.002-07:00

I woke up at 11:30 a.m. Melissa had gone to work, so I got up, took a shower, got dressed and made my way to the door. Jamie was taking her pit bull Jasmine out to use the bathroom, so her and I chatted for a few minutes before I left.

I drove home and saw the Daewoo parked in the driveway. The front bumper was off as well as both front lights. I went inside and found Samantha on the couch, I asked her what happened to the station wagon, and she told me that she got into an accident last night. 5 days with her driver’s license and she hit someone. Here I am, almost 11 years with my license and the worse I’ve done is get into a fender bender. I couldn’t help but laugh, but I was glad that my sister was ok.

I went back to my room and tooled around online for a bit. I jumped on Wikipedia.org and did some research on lost gold mines and the mountains in Arizona. I found a lot of cool legends and myths about that region and I was able to start formulating some ideas in my head. I figured I’d do some brainstorming at work tonight, so I researched until I had to get ready for work.

There wasn’t much of a crowd at the drive-in tonight. The owner showed up for a while, which hindered my writing time, but I spent the extra time hanging with Del at the box office watching some of the movies he had brought in. When the owner left, I busted out the laptop, got a few blog updates done, and then I transferred all the hand written notes from last week’s Atom.com meeting with Geoff to my computer so they’d be easily accessible.

The rest of the night went by pretty quickly.

When I got off of work, I drove over to Melissa’s house and spent the rest of the night with her. We fell asleep about 2:30 a.m.

Tuesday, February 3rd 2009

2009-03-16T15:21:00.001-07:00

I woke up about 1 p.m. and mulled around the house for a while. Belle wanted to play, so I tossed her bouncy ball for her a little bit while waiting for the Day Quill to kick in. I went back to my room and played Rock Band 2 for a while (something a little different than GTA for a change).

Ace sent me a text reminding me of our meeting tonight at 7 p.m. He wanted to meet up and discuss ideas for a low budget horror movie we could make to get our careers off the ground. At 6 p.m. I took a shower, got dressed, grabbed my laptop and headed over to Ace’s house.

Jeff G. was already there when I got there, and Geoff was a few minutes behind. We played catch up for a few, while Jeff and I quoted THE ROOM to each other and told Ace that he had to go and check the movie out next month. When Geoff showed up, we still quoted the movie for a few minutes longer and then Ace wanted to show us low budget horror movie trailers from a distribution company that buys those kind of movies. Ace told us that he had spoken with one of the guys in the sales department, and that guy had said that the #1 priority of the company’s purchases was production value. The movies we saw the trailers for didn’t have the greatest production values at all. In fact, a lot of them sucked…hard.

There was one movie that stood out in my mind. It was called TREES and it was basically JAWS in a state park. Instead of a great white shark, it was a great white pine tree that was killing people who venture into the forest. The movie was shot almost identical to JAWS and I cracked up while watching the trailer. I want to see this movie now.

We hung out for a while longer and discussed the locations we had to choose from and what kind of budget we were looking for. I got a few ideas in my head while we were talking, but I figured I’d do some research online before opening my mouth. About 1 a.m. we wrapped the meeting and everyone vacated.

I drove the few blocks away to Melissa’s to see if she was still awake. She was fading into sleepiness, but she still wanted me to come over and cuddle. I parked my car, went inside, laid down next to the girl I love, and passed out about 2 a.m.

Monday, February 2nd 2009

2009-03-16T15:20:00.003-07:00

I woke up about noon with a headache, sniffles, sore throat and a cough. I was pissed that I was getting sick again so soon. I text messaged Melissa to let her know, and she gave me shit for not resting up enough when I had strep a few weeks back. I popped some Day Quil, booted up the xbox and played GTA for a while.

About 5 p.m. I borrowed the Daewoo and headed down to Jamba Juice to get a cold buster (my ritual). When I got home from that, I surfed the net for a while, and then I went back to the xbox to take on people on xbox live in GTA 4. While I was playing, I got a party invite from my friend Adam M. in Hawaii, he was chatting with Hedgehog, and then Adrian joined us. It was the old GameDreamZ crew together once again. We all chatted together for a couple hours, just playing catch up and joking about all the old times on the website and the times we went to E3 together.

After the reunion chat, I turned off GTA and brought up Netflix to watch some movies before going to bed. I wanted to see something funny, and I saw that AMERCIAN CAROL was available for streaming. I didn’t think I would like it, but I have always had faith in the Zucker (director of AIRPLANE…and SCARY MOVIE 3…so hit and miss) to make me laugh. The movie wasn’t as good as it could have been. It was like watching FARHENHYPE 9/11 instead of watching FARHENHEIT 9/11. It was just one big political movie with a very skewed agenda set to the backdrop of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I wasn’t satisfied.

I also had the unrated version of POSTAL on my Netflix queue. I had my fingers crossed that Uwe Boll’s latest creation would be better than everything else he had ever done and be at least decent to watch. I clicked “play” and watched one of the most offensive movies (well…not to me, but to other people) that could have been released. I loved every fucking minute of it. I had been suffering through Boll flicks since I first saw HOUSE OF THE DEAD in 2003, but this movie was just fucking funny. I cracked up when Verne Troyer got raped by monkeys. Ultimately, I really enjoyed the movie, and would watch it again.

Feeling much better about the night, I turned everything off and passed out around 4 a.m.

Sunday, February 1st 2009

2009-03-16T15:20:00.001-07:00

Melissa woke me up at 11 and we chatted about the whole experience with THE ROOM from the night before. After that, I took a quick shower and got ready to head to Applebee’s to meet Marky’s new girlfriend Jamie. Melissa was really excited because she’s been wanting us to do a double date with friends for a while, and in our first official one, it’s a triple date.

We got in Melissa’s car and headed over to Applebee’s. We parked and went inside, Marcus and Christine were waiting, and had a table ready for us. We sat down, ordered our drinks and talked for about 20 minutes before Marky and Jamie showed up.

The 6 of us ordered our food and bullshitted for the next 2 hours. I took the time to chat with Jamie a bit to get a feel for her, but she was pretty shy. This was understandable for the first time meeting me…not that I’m being too egotistical or anything, I’m just that cool of a guy. LOL! With my ego sitting in a corner, I can say that she was a cool chick and Marky seemed happy. Good for him.

After lunch, Melissa dropped me off at home so I could get ready for work. Today was Superbowl Sunday, and I always work for my boss on this day. I’m not the biggest football fan, so I could care less about the actual game. I wanted to see the trailers for GI JOE, TRANSFORMERS 2, and STAR TREK. I saw all 3 trailers and I needed to change my underwear after the TRANSFORMERS 2 trailer….HOLY FUCKING GOD I CAN’T FUCKING WAIT!

At 5:20, I jumped in the car, stopped by 7-11, and headed to the theater. We didn’t have that large of a crowd, but it was definitely bigger than last year’s turnout on Superbowl Sunday.

Melissa finished her homework and came down to watch TAKEN’s first showing. When I was done with my work, I went down to her car and joined her to watch the rest of the movie that I had missed from Friday night.

TAKEN was a movie that I saw a trailer for a year ago when I was writing a film by the same name. I must say that this movie is WAY better than what I wrote. In fact, the title should be changed to LIAM NEESON KILLS EVERYONE: THE MOVIE it is THAT bad ass. You wouldn’t expect Qui-Gon Jin to be that much of a bad ass motha fucka, but he really is. Some Albanians kidnapped his daughter and he goes and gets her back. It’s a very simple plot, but the action and the story are pretty cool. Plus Neeson just kills anyone who gets in his way…No Regret. No Remorse. Just dead mother fuckers everywhere. This is my kind of movie.

After TAKEN Melissa stayed to watch GRAN TORINO, I joined her with that one too and I got to pick it up where I left off the last time I attempted to watch the thing from the beginning.

GRAN TORINO, much like the movie’s name, is a vintage movie. Eastwood (in his last acting role) plays a racist war hero who hates everyone who doesn’t earn his respect. He ends up inadvertently saving the life of a quiet Asian boy next door and is immediately hailed a hero among the local crew. He starts to connect with the neighbors, all the while still dropping racist comments every chance he can. It’s a laughable experience only because it’s a real guilty pleasure to behold. I loved everything about GRAN TORINO and I’m very glad to see that Eastwood still has as much presence on screen as he did back when he did PAINT YOUR WAGON.

Melissa hung out with me until closing time, and then we hugged goodbye. I took the money to the bank and went home. I spent the rest of the night watching some documentaries through Netflix.

I crashed out about 3 a.m.

eea86THE ROOM is the story of a man who is in love with a sociopath who cheats on him with his best friend…yet somehow it’s a riotous new comedy…Anyways, I digress….

The movie was one of the greatest theatrical experiences I have ever had. The hour and forty minutes I spent (drunk nonetheless) in that theater will remain with me until the day I die. It was a non-stop laugh fest, and an awesome new movie to take my friends to. The only downside is that the movie is playing 141 miles from my house and gas prices are rising…

After the movie, Geoff and I said our farewells to Jeff and Eric and we took off for San Diego.

While on the freeway in south Los Angeles county we came to a complete gridlock on the freeway (this was at 2:30 a.m. by the way). Geoff and I assumed that there was an accident and after watching 50 other cars make a mad dash back to exit the freeway…from an onramp, we decided to stick it out and see what happened. During our wait an Asian girl ran streaking down the freeway in her bra and panties…we didn’t see her again after that…

When we passed by the accident in question, we saw that a car had burst into flames and was nothing more than a shell. We don’t know if anyone lived, but we assumed that they had because no ambulance was in sight…or maybe they had already come and gone. We don’t know.

The rest of the drive went off without incident, I had Geoff drop me off at Melissa’s house because of tomorrow’s triple date, and as soon as I laid down, I passed out next to Melissa at 5 a.m.

Saturday, January 31st 2009

2009-03-16T15:19:00.003-07:00

I woke up around noon and threw a load of laundry in the washer. I shot Geoff a call and confirmed that he would be coming and picking me up at 5 p.m. to head to LA to meet Jeff G. While waiting for the laundry to finish, I played GTA and chatted with the family for a bit. About 4 p.m. I shaved, showered, and got ready to head out for the night.

Geoff rolled up to the house at 5 p.m. We quickly got the directions to Pink’s Hot Dogs in LA and we also got the directions from Pink’s to the Sunset 5 theater just so we’d be prepared for our journey north (usually I fail in this department…stupid non-working printer). With all that ready to go, we got in the Scion and got on the freeway headed to LA.

We bullshitted the entire drive up to the city of angles, and after taking a couple wrong turns, we finally made it to Pink’s on the corner of Melrose and La Brea at 8:30 p.m. Jeff and his friend Eric had a spot waiting for us right next to their truck, so we got in, got parked, and got in line.

The line for the hot dogs was longer than I had expected. I’m not used to these popular LA attractions, especially not on a Saturday night. The 4 of us all bullshitted in line for the duration of the wait. We talked about everything from sex to movies, to Jeff G.’s upcoming bachelor party. I am afraid that we were a little too crass for the family in line behind us, although they never said a word.

When we finally got through the line and made our order, we went out to the back patio and scored a table to eat our wieners. The 4 of us wolfed down the food and then made our plan of attack on the movie. Geoff and I were going to head over to the theater and get in line while Jeff and Eric get some liquor for us to get wasted to. Geoff and I agreed to the plan, got some directions to the theater (that were different than the ones I pulled off of google before we left), and took off.

W e got lost.

Eventually we made our way to the Sunset 5, parked in the underground parking lot, and made our way to the line to meet up with the guys. They had some 1 liter cokes (diet for me – to which I had to defend my liking of diet coke over regular) loaded down with Captain Morgan. We talked amongst ourselves while drinking the spirited drink. Since I’m a light weight, I started to feel the effects of the liquor before the other guys.

About 11:30 p.m. they opened the doors and led us inside to the theater. Since we were at the front of the line (we got there too early I guess) we got some really good seats and got ready to rock out to THE ROOM. I took a quick leak and pounded down more of my drink before the Q & A session with the director.

In 2003, Tommy Wiseau wrote/produced/directed/starred in his drama THE ROOM. The movie cost 6 million bucks to make and didn’t really go anywhere after it was made. Somehow it found its way to a single midnight showing on Sunset Blvd on the last Saturday of each month. These showings have become a cult hit of the likes of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (just less gay). This showing in particular had enough people to warrant the freeing up of 2 more theaters for the screening. The movie is gaining in it’s popularity…and the fact that you can scream out whatever you want during the movie (it’s a great place for comedians to attempt their act….not a good thing when you’ve been drinking).

Tommy came out and answered some questions for about 15 minutes and then at midnight the lights dimmed and the movie began. Immediately the veterans to the flick started off in their routine of comments and sayings that would eventually hook the entire audience. THE ROOM is the story of a man who is in love with a sociopath who cheats on him with his best friend…yet somehow it’s a riotous new comedy…Anyways, I digress….

After the movie, Geoff and I said our farewells to Jeff and Eric and we took off for San Diego.

The rest of the drive went off without incident, I had Geoff drop me off at Melissa’s house because of tomorrow’s triple date, and as soon as I laid down, I passed out next to Melissa at 5 a.m.

Friday, January 30th 2009

2009-03-16T15:19:00.001-07:00

I got up about noon and tooled around the house for a little bit. I was pretty hungry, so I jumped in the car and headed over to Lucky’s Chinese Food for their lunch special. With my orange chicken in hand, I got back in the Merc and drove home.

I took up camp in my room and watched the newest episode of BURN NOTICE on hulu.com while eating. When that was done, I jumped on the xbox to play some GTA while eating away at the afternoon before work.

Samantha text messaged me about 3 p.m. telling me that she got her driver’s license. My response was simply: “Mother of God……..” Even though I was giving her a hard time about getting her license, I was pretty happy for my sister to finally get some freedom. I went back to playing the game until taking a shower and getting ready for work at 4:45 p.m.

I made sure to hit up 7-11 before to the theater. We were opening TAKEN and I wasn’t sure what to expect for a crowd. We had a decent turn out, but nothing to really get excited about. I pretty much kicked it in the snack bar for most of the night until the second showing of TAKEN, I was really stoked to see the movie, and I wanted to check it out before going to LA tomorrow.

Before the end of GRAN TORNIO, Will and I made our way to the store to get dinner. I was all ready to go to 7-11, but he wanted Mexican food, so I drove him to this little taco shop next to Marky’s house. They claimed that they were open until 10 p.m., but at 9:45, they were claiming they were closed. Next to the taco shop was a Korean doughnut store, so I went in there and got some doughnuts as a after dinner snack. We got back in the car and drove to 7-11.

I parked and we went inside, I picked out my sandwich and Will got his things. I paid and went out to the car to wait for will. I had taken notice of this weird looking guy outside of the store, he was looking inside and appearing like he was about to make a drastic action. I called Melissa to see if she wanted to come down and watch TAKEN with me, as we were talking, the crazy guy started to reach for his belt. I told Melissa that I would call her back in a second and I hung up with her and put my phone back in the car. When I looked up I saw the guy taking a piss right on the window! I yelled out “Hey! What the hell man?!!?” He turned and looked at me, and I could see his wang peeing all over the garbage can now. He yelled back “What the fuck?” and then a customer exited the store and the crazy guy zipped up without finishing peeing. He then proceeded to ask the customer for change. Will was in the car by this point, so I got back in, locked the doors and hightailed it out of there.

I got back to the theater, dropped Will off at the box office and went and parked. I ate my dinner while watching the first part of TAKEN. I was getting into the movie when Melissa called me saying that she was outside the drive-in with some WWIF fliers as well as some plastic spoons for tomorrow’s LA trip (more on that in tomorrow’s entry). I decided I’d finish the movie later, and I went out to greet her.

We were talking for a while when a car pulled up at a business directly behind the drive-in’s back gate. Melissa and I watched 3 people get out of the SUV and make their way across the dirt lot between the business and us. When they got to about the halfway point, I yelled out “HEY!” and all three shadows stopped and immediately turned tail and ran. They ran back to the SUV and jumped in, the whole time calling me a “pussy” and other names. While they were yelling this I shouted back “You’re calling me a pussy? I’m right here and you’re the one running away!” I heard a few more derogatory names before they jumped in the SUV and sped off into the night. Melissa and I waited out there to see if they came back until the movie ended.

The lights in the theater came on signaling the end of the movies, Melissa decided to go, she kissed me goodbye and headed off for home. I went back inside, finished up my job, and took off for home.

I spent the rest of the night on the internet and playing GTA. I fell asleep about 4 a.m.

Thurday, January 29th 2009

2009-03-16T15:14:00.002-07:00

I woke up about noon, got up, took a piss, and jumped on the computer to do the morning routine. When that was done, I played some GTA while texting Melissa back and forth. She wanted to go and get lunch, so we decided to meet up at the Arby’s next to her house in 30 minutes. I quickly got dressed, and drove down there.

I got to the restaurant before she did, so I hung around outside and felt the nice Santa Ana breeze that was rolling through the parking lot. Melissa joined me a minute or two later, and we went inside to order our food.

Melissa had some coupons for Arby’s which I thought would get us a pretty good deal. We were wrong. The coupons were misused by the staff of Arby’s and they charged us an ass load for just 2 sandwiches, fries and a drink. The food wasn’t very good either, and I don’t think I’ll be eating at Arby’s for a while.

After lunch we figured we’d go for a little walk before I had to go get back home and get ready for work. We didn’t make it very far before Melissa remembered that there was something she had to do, and we called it a day for our lunch date. We hugged goodbye and I returned home.

I didn’t need have to pick up Samantha until 3:30 p.m. so I played GTA for an hour and then put the dog in the car and headed down to the school. Sammy was taking her driver’s test tomorrow afternoon, and was anxious about doing it. I was hoping she’d pass because I was sick and tired of picking her up from school every day.

We got back home and I tooled around online until getting ready for work. At about 5:20 p.m. I got in the car, hit up 7-11, and went to work.

In typical Thursday fashion the theater was pretty dead, so I chilled with Jacqueline and Beth in the snack bar for the majority of the night. When they went home, I closed out the snack bar and went back upstairs to tear apart YES MAN and wait for the night to end. Luckily Del hung out with me until the security guard showed up.

I locked the theater up, took the money to the bank, and headed home. I checked my email, booted up a movie through Netflix and got comfy in bed. I watched the movie and passed out about 3 a.m.

Wednesday, January 28th 2009

2009-03-16T15:14:00.001-07:00

I woke up at 11:30 a.m. and Melissa was already at work. Because of last night’s awesome work, I was inspired to work on the blog. I went out into the living room, grabbed the laptop, and went back to Melissa’s room to update the blog (that I was seriously behind on). I worked on the blog for the next 3 hours, until it was time to head over and pick up Samantha from school. I packed up my stuff, got in the car and went to pick up the sister.

When I got back home about 3 p.m. I hooked up the xbox back up, and I played GTA until about 4:45 p.m. when I had to start getting ready for work. I took a quick shower, got dressed, jumped back in the Merc and went down to the theater.

There wasn’t much of a crowd, so I took the opportunity to continue working on the blog. I worked on the diary until it was closing time.

After leaving the theater, I took the money to the bank and headed for home. I spent the rest of the night updating the blog’s website, sending off emails, and watching old DILBERT episodes on Netflix.

I passed out around 3 a.m.

Tuesday, January 27th 2009

2009-03-16T15:12:00.001-07:00

I woke up about noon and went into the living room to greet Melissa. We talked for a bit and then realized that we were both pretty hungry, we decided to walk down to Subway to get lunch. I got dressed, put on my sandals, and Melissa and I hit the pavement headed towards the sandwich shop.

We walked down to Subway, ordered our food, ate, and then walked back to her house. It was a really nice (and surprisingly warm) day, so we opted to not go back inside just yet. We continued walking around through her neighborhood for the next couple hours, and when we got back to her house, we just kept walking. We made our way down to 7-11 to get drinks, and then headed back to the house.

It was getting late in the afternoon when we got back and Melissa had a meeting at 7:30 p.m. But I really wanted to show her the awesomeness of Netflix on the xbox and Rock Band 2. I booted up the system and showed her the pilot episode of THE UNITED STATES OF TARA that I had queued up on my list. I’m not the biggest Diablo Cody fan (primarily because I hate the way she writes teenage girls….bleh), but I really liked the concept and characters (minus the teenage daughter), so I enjoyed the show. Melissa, on the other hand, loved it. After that we popped in Rock Band 2 and played that for a while. I rocked out on the guitar and Melissa picked up the drum sticks and played on that. At first she just played the game because I wanted to play it, but then she got into the drums and started to have a lot of fun. We were having so much fun that before we knew it, it was 6:30 p.m. and she had to get ready for her meeting. She quickly changed clothes and took off out the door.

I still wanted to get some work done on the Atom.com pitch package (to make up for what we didn’t accomplish last night), so I shot Geoff a call and asked him to come over and help me out. I didn’t call Marky because I wanted to test a theory that those two are a vacuum of non-productivity when hanging out and having fun. Thankfully Geoff wasn’t doing anything tonight, so he agreed to come over. While waiting for him to get there, I took a quick shower and moved my laptop into the garage as to not disturb Jamie and her boyfriend Alex.

Geoff showed up and we chatted for a few before succumbing to the hunger in our bellies. We jumped in his Scion and headed to the taco shop next to the studio to get some carne asada burritos and rolled tacos. We got to the taco shop, got our food, and came back to Melissa’s house.

We ate in the garage while watching some shows on Atom.com. We watched some of their Atom Originals (which is the category that we are going for), and came to realize that we could do WAY better than some of the ones on there. Some of the shorts really impressed us, while others just fell flat on their faces. I have to say that THE LEGEND OF NEIL and THE SCARIEST SHOW ON THE INTERNET are their two best series by far.

It was starting to get really cold in the garage, so we moved the laptop back to the living room to continue working out there. I busted out some paper and a pen (that I borrowed from Jamie) to start writing things down. Geoff took away the laptop because he said that I get too distracted when having the internet available to me…he has a bit of a point. I took point in writing all the things down, and he did some research online.

We were able to get the information for ALAN STRONGBUM – DINGO STALKER, UNCLE SECRET AGENT, and our Online RPG Spoof written down before calling it quits at 1 a.m. I know that Geoff wanted to play Rock Band 2, but everyone in the house was already asleep and I promised that we’d do it soon. He agreed, said “goodnight” and took off.

I locked the house up, turned off all the lights and laid down with Melissa. I passed out about 2 a.m.

Monday, January 26th 2009

2009-03-16T15:11:00.002-07:00

I woke up when my alarm went off at 12:30 p.m. I got up and tooled around the house until about 3:30 p.m. when I had to go and pick up Samantha from school. I still had a couple hours before going over to Melissa’s for tonight’s get together, so I surfed the net for a bit and played some GTA until about 6 p.m. when I took a quick shower, got dressed, packed up the Xbox and Rock Band accessories, loaded everything in the car and headed over to Melissa’s.

I got to her house right as she was finishing getting ready. We chatted for a few minutes until Jeff G. showed up. Melissa busted out the pizza she had bought and the beer she had cooling and we ate some slices while pounding back a couple beers. Geoff arrived a few minutes after that, so the three of us chit chatted while Melissa went back to her room to do homework.

Eventually Marky arrived with his xbox hard drive and I set up the xbox in the living room while everyone was in the garage chatting. We talked about what we wanted to do with the Atom.com pitch for a bit, but then the conversation went elsewhere and we spent a lot more time bullshitting about other things.

Ace and Trish decided to make an appearance and chat with us for a while. When we decided it was time to play some rock band we realized that neither Marky or I had brought the game. I still had the money from the jug-o-change in my pocket so the three of us (Marky, Geoff and myself) decided to run to Wal-Mart to buy the game. Jeff, Ace and Trish decided to take off because the time was already after 11 p.m. We all agreed on doing another Rock Band night (complete with game) on another time, and we jetted off to Wal-Mart.

Marky parked the car, and we headed inside to get the game. As soon as I had the game in hand, I paid for it, and we rushed back. I made sure that the game was open before we made it back to Melissa’s house. We rushed inside, popped the game in the system, hooked up Marky’s hard drive to my xbox and got ready to rock. This is when we realized that we had to be connected to xbox live for all of the downloaded songs that Marky had to be accessible. This is where my new adapter came into play. We hooked the xbox up to Melissa’s wireless network, unlocked the songs, and played for the next couple hours.

About 3 a.m. we were all pretty tuckered out, so the boys left, and I went and laid down with Melissa. We talked for a bit and then fell asleep about 4 a.m.

Sunday, January 25th 2009

2009-03-16T15:11:00.001-07:00

Melissa woke me about 12:30 p.m. She was doing some homework on her laptop and she was waiting for me to get up. We chatted for a bit and then went and got some lunch at CostCo.

After lunch we talked for a little bit more, and then I had to get going because Marcus and Christine were coming over to my house to fix my computer. Melissa gave me a quick ride home, we kissed goodbye, and I went inside to quickly straighten up my room before my guests showed up.

Marcus and Christine showed up about an hour later and Marcus went right to work reinstalling windows on my computer. The problem that we were having with my PC at this point was a bad hard drive, so we just used the other 120gb hard drive that Del had given me a while ago. With the PC running again, Marcus gave me some tips on installing the new drivers, and then he took off.

While I was reinstalling programs on the computer, I was using the laptop to surf Craigslist to find a cheap copy of Rock Band 2 for tomorrow night’s get together. I was planning on taking my jug-o-change up to Barona Casino and changing it in later on in the evening, but I wanted to try and get a copy of the game for a good price. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did come across an ad for a wireless network adapter for the Xbox for $65 bucks (they normally run for $100 + tax in the store), so I shot the guy an email and he responded a few minutes later. The adapter was still available, so I we agreed to meet in 45 minutes and I quickly jumped in the car to take off to meet him.

I hit some traffic while going through Santee, and when I got halfway through the congestion, I realized that I had left my wallet at home. I quickly shot a call to the guy and told him that I’d be about a half hour late because I was a dumbshit and forgot my wallet. He was accommodating and didn’t mind waiting the extra 30 minutes. I quickly raced home, grabbed the wallet and took the long way around the traffic.

I got to Shell station we were meeting at, greeted the guy, ran inside the store to pull out money, handed him the cash, bought a rockstar, and headed home.

I had really wanted one of these adapters for quite some time. I was using a wireless network extender that I bought for the original xbox back in 2004. The max output of the one I was using was 11 mbps (megabytes per second), and the new one put out a max of 110 mbps. Since I had picked up a new Netflix account to stream movies and TV shows directly to my HDTV, I wanted to make sure that I got the fastest connection I could. Feeling victorious, I returned home to install my new toy.

I hooked up the new adapter, streamed some TV shows through Netflix and continued to work on the PC. About 10 p.m. I decided to head up to Barona to turn in my change. Earlier in the afternoon, Marcus had picked up my jug and calculated my grand total at no more than 30 bucks. I was confident that it was more than that. I was confident that it was at least 60 bucks or more.

I borrowed the Daewoo (because the Merc sucks at taking hills right now) and headed up the hill to the casino. I carried the 20lb jug-o-change with me through the casino floor and took it to the main cashier to turn it in. The attendant took the change to the back and returned a few minutes later with a ticket for…$138.80. I was shocked with that number, but I wasn’t going to question it. I took the cash, played a couple slot games, and got the hell out of there before I spent any more money.

I made a quick stop by Roberto’s for a couple carne asada tacos and headed back home to eat. After eating I played some GTA 4 online for a bit, and finished off the night by finishing season 3 of DEXTER. Feeling satisfied in the fact that I had finished the entire 3 seasons of the show in a little over a week, I fell asleep at 6 a.m.

Saturday, January 24th 2009

2009-03-16T15:09:00.002-07:00

My alarm woke me up at 7:30 a.m. Well, I had thought it was my alarm, but it was actually Geoff calling me to make sure that I was awake. As soon as we hung up the phone, my actual alarm went off. I got up, rubbed my eyes, took a quick shower, and pulled out some clothes from the dryer.

I was just finishing getting ready when the guys pulled into my driveway. I said “goodbye” to the family and jumped in the back of Geoff’s Scion. Geoff backed the car out to the street, put the car into drive, and we were off.

The mission was simple: Get to Phoenix and check out a 20 acre studio that a friend of Ace’s owned. Then we had to drop Ace off at a Winnebago that he was buying and come back. It was only going to be a day trip, but that was cool with me. I was excited to see the studio.

We made a quick stop by a Jack In The Box for breakfast, and we didn’t make another stop until getting gas right past Yuma.

On the way out to Phoenix, Ace started to tell Geoff and I a story about a mob built raceway that was used as a way of laundering money back in the 80’s. The only kicker is that the raceway was never finished. He started to tell us this story right as we were coming up on the structure…and he wasn’t kidding, that fucker was big. It was also abandoned.

We decided to do a quick survey of the area to see if there was a way into the raceway…legally of course. Geoff pulled off the freeway and we took the long way around the uncompleted structure to find a way in, but there was a pesky mobile home park in the way. We eventually found a dirt access road leading up to the raceway with a big “NO TRESSPASSING” sign hanging on the fence. Upon further examination (from the Scion) we could see that the racetrack wasn’t completed…and neither was the parking lot.

After that quick side trip, we got back on the freeway and continued to the studio.

Ace called his buddy to let us in when we got there and we pulled into the parking lot of the compound. We got out and walked around for a while, being sure to investigate and examine all 5 soundstages as well as all the old west town and pueblo town they had built outside.

I was told that I couldn’t go into much detail in the blog about the place, but I can say that the place was pretty fucking bad ass. I got a lot of really cool photos of the entire establishment while we were touring around.

About 2 hours later we got back in Geoff’s Scion and headed out of the compound. Both Geoff and I were pretty giddy with what we saw and couldn’t wait to work there one day (hopefully).

The next stop we made was at Ace’s sister’s house to pick up Ace’s new Mini-Winnie. We got to his sister’s place, picked her up, and headed down the street to get some dinner. We ended up stopping at this Gyro establishment and got some steak gyro’s.

While we were waiting for our food, I got a phone call from Evan N. telling me about a surprise b-day party for Land tonight. I told him that I’d go, but I was currently 360 miles away in Arizona. He understood.

After dinner, we went back to pick up the motor home. Ace said goodbye to his sister, jumped in the motor home and took off for Jiffy Lube to get a quick tune up. Geoff and I followed. We passed by the Jiffy Lube and saw that it was closed, so we continued down the street until we got to a Pep Boys that was open.

Ace went inside to get some fuel injector cleaner as well as other assorted fluids for the vehicle, while Geoff and I hung out in the parking lot. Geoff opened his trunk and put on his rollerblades to putter around the parking lot, while I shot a call to my Grandma (who lives in the area) to let her know that I was nearby, but I would unfortunately not be able to make a stop by.

When Ace got back to the parking lot, he put the stuff in the engine of the motor home and after a quick stop by the gas station to fill up, we were back on the highway headed back to San Diego…there was one problem though. Ace’s newly purchased motor home couldn’t go faster than 30 miles per hour on the freeway. We only knew this because Geoff and I were matching his speeds behind him and giving him reports of how fast he was going. We continued going super slow on the freeway for several miles.

Eventually we decided to leave Ace to his own devices (and luck) and pass him to get back home quicker. Ace thanked us for tagging along, and he said he’d hit us up when he got back to town later on tonight. Geoff passed the motor home, accelerated to 80mph and got us the fuck out of dodge.

On the drive home we talked about some of the things we’d like to take to Atom.com and how we’d get a lot more work done on Monday night when we had a meeting with Marky and Jeff G. at Melissa’s house.

I asked Geoff to drop me at Melissa’s when we got back at 1 a.m. I greeted my girlfriend, talked for a little bit, took a quick shower to wash all the dirt from the studio off (I was an idiot and wore sandals), talked some more and crashed out about 3 a.m.

Friday, January 23rd 2009

2009-03-16T15:09:00.001-07:00

I woke up about 11:30 a.m. and muddled around the house for the afternoon. I made myself some lunch and caught up on some missed TV episodes on www.hulu.com (30 ROCK is always fun to watch). After watching TV, I booted up the xbox and played more GTA until getting ready to go to work at 4:30 p.m.

Ace called me right as I was leaving to head out to remind me that we were heading out to Phoenix at 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. I told him that I’d be ready.

With no new movie, we had a pretty dismal crowd coming in. I spent the whole first movie hanging out at the box office with my boss. When he asked me who was going home early, I told him that I would leave because I had to get up early to go to Arizona in the morning. He didn’t ask any questions, and I was laughing because I never “told” him that I wasn’t going to be at work tomorrow night. I did tell him that I used to really like working at the theater, but now I could give two shits. He agreed with me.

I clocked out and headed home.

I had invited Melissa to come over and watch a movie again. She had plans that were running a little later than she thought, so she couldn’t make it until almost 1 a.m. I told her that I’d wait up for her. To fill the 3 hour void, I tossed in a load of laundry, messed around online and watched some more of the latest season of DEXTER (I’m so close to finishing it).

Melissa showed up about 12:45 a.m. and we walked through my dark house back to my room to chill. We spent some time talking before popping in a movie and vegging out to that for a little bit. About 4 a.m. the movie ended and I had to get some sleep, I walked Melissa to her car, kissed her goodbye and waved goodbye as she drove off.

Before going to sleep, I transferred my clothes to the dryer, set it for a long cycle, crawled into bed and passed out at 4:30 a.m.

Thursday, January 22nd 2009

2009-03-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

We woke up at 11 a.m., but didn’t get out of bed until about 12:30 p.m. Melissa and I have this nasty habit of waking up and having an hour long conversation about anything and everything. When my stomach started to growl, she figured it would be a good time to get up and get something to eat.

We rustled up some food and ate it while continuing our conversation from earlier. After eating we sat on her couch and cuddled while talking. We talked until Samantha text me asking if I was going to come pick her up from school. I had completely lost track of time, so I said goodbye to my girlfriend, jumped in the Merc and hauled ass to the school to pick up the kid sister. I found a short cut from Melissa’s house to the high school, and it actually saved me a few minutes of driving time.

I picked Samantha up, and we drove home. Since I hadn’t been home yet that day, we greeted an anxious Belle at the door and Sammy took her out to go to the bathroom. I ended up back in my room messing around on the laptop and playing GTA until taking a shower before work.

At 5:20 p.m. I jumped in the car, drove down to the theater and got the place ready for business.

The night went by pretty quickly, since we weren’t getting in any new movies I had the whole night to chill and chat with Beth and Jacqueline. When they had gone home for the night I kicked back upstairs in my office and worked on my laptop until it was time to go home.

After taking the money to the bank, I drove home, checked my email, and I watched a few episodes of DEXTER until passing out at 3 a.m.

Wednesday, January 21st 2009

2009-01-29T02:39:00.000-08:00

I overslept my alarm and woke up at noon. Because Mom doesn’t want to leave the dog in the bathroom while everyone is gone in the morning, I woke up to Belle sleeping at the foot of my couch. I got up and let her out to pee. While the dog was urinating, I scavenged the house for food and settled on taquitos.

While I ate, I started the third season of DEXTER. The show is just too addictive to not watch in huge blocks. I was only able to get through an episode before having to go and pick up Samantha from school. I grabbed the dog, put her in the car, and drove down to the 7-11 to pick up the sister.
When we got home, I watched another episode of the show and surfed the net for a while before getting a good shower in before going to work. I hit up 7-11 on the way and grabbed a rockstar.

As I was pulling into the theater, the owner was just ahead of me. I had forgotten that we were having a dog night for a small group of dog owners that wanted to see HOTEL FOR DOGS and MARLEY & ME. The owner came in to make sure that the whole thing went off without a hitch.

The rest of the night went by pretty quickly, Bob had showed up to work with Del at the box in case there were any problems with the dogs, but the two of them just played golf games on Del’s PS2. As soon as the owner was gone, I pulled out the laptop and went to work on attempting to catch up in the blog. I was so behind it wasn’t even funny (21 days and counting), so I had my work cut out for me.

Because I had put so much energy in playing catch up, I had forgotten to eat, and I made the mistake of telling Melissa this. She gave me a hard time for attempting to use popcorn and beef jerky as sustenance. She told me that she would have dinner waiting for me at her place when I came over after work.

I didn’t think much about food for the rest of the night, I just concentrated on my work and eventually 1 a.m. rolled around and as soon as I deposited the money at the bank, I was a free man. I quickly rolled by home for a change of clothes and then I headed over to Melissa’s.

When I pulled up she was waiting up for me, and she had a warm plate of chicken, biscuits and potato salad ready for me. I wolfed the food down while we talked and then we went to her room to watch a movie. She popped in a flick and we watched about 30 minutes of it before falling asleep at 3 a.m.

Tuesday, January 20th 2009

2009-01-29T02:37:00.000-08:00

The alarm woke me up at 11:30 a.m. I got up and let the dog outside so she could go to the bathroom. While waiting for her to come back inside, I made myself a bowl of cereal, and ate it while watching another episode of DEXTER.

About 1 p.m. Marky called me asking if Geoff was going to be home today or not. He wanted to take Geoff out to get dinner and beers in honor of his birthday last Friday. I told Marky that I’d call Geoff and find out. Seeing as how Geoff doesn’t answer his phone when on jobs or out of town, I shot Ace a call to see if they were done with the gig. He said that they were and then I asked if Geoff was nearby, Ace handed Geoff the phone and I told Geoff of Marky’s suggestion. He liked it, and then I told him to be at my house by 7 p.m. to meet up with us. He agreed and we got off the phone. I shot Marky a text letting him know about the new plan and then I went back to watching DEXTER.

In fact, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the show. I finished up the season 2 finale at 6:15 p.m. which gave me just enough time to shave, shower, and get dressed by the time the guys got to my house.

Geoff showed up first and he and spent a little bit talking about THE ONE NIGHTER and working on a low budget feature. He told me all the new stories of what happened, and I filled him in on some of the older stories that I might have overlooked the first time. A few minutes later we were wondering why Marky wasn’t at the house yet. I shot him a call and he answered the phone…all groggy. He was still asleep. We both gave him a ton of shit and he said he’d be over soon. I hung up the phone and I showed Geoff some of the awesomeness that was GTA 4 until Marky showed up 40 minutes later.

We got in Marky’s car and headed out in search of food. Geoff didn’t want to know where we were going, so he covered his ears while Marky and I decided on Santana’s in Pacific Beach. We all bullshitted while Marky drove us to the taco shop.

We parked the car, went inside and ordered our food. While waiting for the food to order up, Marky went and put some money in the jukebox so we could eat and rock out at the same time. First song was Green Day, the second song was No Doubt, and the third song was “Believe” by Cher. The other patrons in the restaurant all had confused looks on their faces when the song came on, but the three of us were rocking out and singing along…if anyone in that place thought we were straight before, that was just a fleeting thought at this point. But fuck it! It was fun.

After dinner we drove down to the beach and wandered up and down the coast line for a while. I had a pain in my side from sleeping wrong so I wasn’t really feeling up to drinking. While we walked, we talked about our current relationships, and we listened to Marky gush about his new girl. Neither of us could complain though, Geoff did it when he hooked up with Aprinda, and I do it about Melissa.

When we hit a point where we decided to go no further, we walked back to the car and Marky drove us back to my house to drop me off. We all chatted in my driveway for a bit about pitching our web series ideas to www.atom.com and decided that we’d have a meeting and a rock band night at Melissa’s place next Monday. The meeting adjourned and we all parted ways.

I went back to my room and played GTA until about 4 a.m. when I passed out cold.

Monday, January 19th 2009

2009-01-29T02:36:00.000-08:00

My alarm woke me up at 11:30 a.m. I got up, took a leak, and meandered out into the house in search of food.

Even though today is a holiday, Mom and Bill were both at work, Joey was at his girlfriend’s, and Sammy was hanging around the house with her boyfriend Jake. I struck up a conversation with them, and we got on the subject of how the two of them hadn’t seen SPEED RACER yet. We all decided to watch the Blu-Ray version because I had until 9 p.m. to return the movie to the store.

I forgot how much fun SPEED RACER was until I finished watching it. Then I also cursed the film going community for not seeing it when it was in theaters, and I also cursed Warner Bro’s for releasing it in between IRON MAN and INDIANA JONES 4. The movie is too good to be ignored, but it was.

After the movie, I took a shower, and changed my clothes. Then I went back to my room and hopped online for a bit. While working my way through the several different websites I frequent, I popped in season 2 of DEXTER and watched a few episodes of the show. I was pleasantly surprised when I recognized my friend Ron Rogge (he worked at the Pasadena Haunt I went to with Ace and JP in October) in the season premiere episode. It was funny to see him get decked in the face by Jennifer Carpenter.

Before I knew it, the time was 8:30 p.m. and I still needed to return SPEED RACER to the red box down at Albertson’s. As soon as the episode of DEXTER was over, I jumped up, grabbed the movie, got in the Merc and raced down the hill to the store to return the movie by 8:59 p.m. 1 minute more and they would have charged me another dollar to rent the movie…good thing I made it (end sarcasm).

I drove back home and watched another episode of DEXTER, the show is just too addicting to stop watching in a row. While I was watching the show, I started a text conversation with Melissa and she made a comment about how she wanted to get together and watch a movie. I made the offhand suggestion that we could hang out in my room and watch a movie on my HDTV, she agreed…and my room is a disaster area…fuck.

She said she’d be at my house by midnight and that gave me a little bit of time to clean up a little bit. I didn’t have the time or the energy to do a flight of the bumblebee and make the room look nice, but I did reorganize a few things and plug in my green ceiling light that would mask a lot of the mess.

About midnight Melissa called my phone letting me know that she was outside. I greeted her outside and walked her around the side of the house to my bathroom entrance. If I would have taken her through the house Belle would have barked up a storm and woken the whole house up. I wanted to avoid that at all costs.

We got back to my room and got comfy on the couch. We talked for a little bit before watching the movie.

After the movie, we talked a little bit more, and then I walked her out to her car where we talked some more about our relationship and how much we like each other. About 3:45 a.m. she decided to leave, so I hugged her goodnight and watched her drive away.

I went back inside and watched one more episode of DEXTER (making it 6 episodes in one day) before crashing out at 5 a.m.

Sunday, January 18th 2009

2009-01-29T02:34:00.000-08:00

Melissa woke me about noon and we spent some time talking before realizing that we were both hungry as hell. I made the suggestion for Subway and a mocha freeze from CostCo. Melissa seconded the idea, and we jumped in her car to make our way over to the Santee Town Center.

When I got up, I noticed that my Achilles tendon hurt every time I took a step, so I had to limp everywhere I went…that sucked.

We parked, went into Subway and ordered our subs. I made the mistake of having my sub toasted. Usually I like the toasted sub, but for some reason it hasn’t tasted as good as eating it cold. We chatted while we ate, and after lunch, we walked to the AT&T store next door so I could look at cell phones to upgrade to. I saw some good phones that would be nice to have, but I kept thinking about how I’d just like to make some extra money and upgrade to using the iPhone exclusively. Because of that nagging thought, I decided against buying anything and we walked across the parking lot to CostCo.

We got in line at the outdoor deli, got our mocha freezes and walked back to Melissa’s car. The time was already 2 p.m. and Melissa had some homework to do, so we went back to her place, kissed goodbye and parted ways.

I drove home and booted up the xbox. I played GTA for a couple hours and at 4:45 p.m. I took a quick shower and got ready for work. I normally don’t work Sunday’s, but tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and we are always busier on holiday weekends. I tossed some fresh clothes on and headed down to the theater.

The owner was there with his wife and they were working on the new 16” pizza they were adding to the inventory. Thankfully they stayed in the snack bar all night and left me alone out on the lot.

Once the movie started, we still had a big line in the snack bar, so I went inside, washed my hands, and helped get the crowd served and out the door. Afterwards, I continued to work in the snack bar and help the guys get things situated.

I was only working through the first intermission, so about 7:30 p.m. I got the idea to go and see a movie. I text messaged Sammy and Joe and asked if they wanted to go see PAUL BLART: MALL COP with me tonight. Sammy said “No”, but Joey agreed to go see it with me. He even found out show times for us.

Once I clocked out, I drove over to his girlfriend’s house to pick him up. He met me outside and got in the Merc. We drove over to the mall, parked and headed into Wal-Mart to by snacks.

I always get freaked out when sneaking snacks into a movie theater, which is odd considering that I manage a theater and bring in outside food all the time. I think it has something to do with when I used to work at a walk-in theater when I was 16 and how we always busted people who tried to smuggle in the goods. But when we went to Wal-Mart, Joey picked out a huge bag of Skittles and I got a box of Nerds and a couple drinks. I paid for the snacks, and we loaded them into a bag. Luckily, the mall has a policy that they can’t deny entry into a movie theater with bags from Wal-Mart, because it is attached to the mall.

We got to the theater, bought our tickets and got seated. A few minutes later the lights dimmed and the previews started.

I had been wanting to see PAUL BLART: MALL COP since I saw the first trailer for it back in September when I saw NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (one of my favs from last year). The movie is like DIE HARD with a fat guy in a mall. Seeing as I am a larger guy, this is a concept I can get behind. Not to mention that the movie is produced by Adam Sandler and it features some of his usual gang of misfits (Alex Covert FTW). The movie itself was very funny, and I was happy to see the beautiful Jayma Hayes getting a featured role in something other than the atrocious EPIC MOVIE. Plus, I’m a big Kevin James fan, so that only added to the awesomeness.

After the movie, Joe and I walked back to the car (well I limped), and drove home. As soon as we got home, I went to my room, checked my email, played some GTA for a bit, and then I spent the rest of the night finishing up season 1 of DEXTER.

About 4:30 a.m. I crashed.

Saturday, January 17th 2009

2009-01-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

I woke up about 11 a.m., checked my email and a few key sites, and then I went out into the house to see what was going on with everyone. Joe and Bill were on the couch watching TV and I asked Joey if he wanted to come with me to deposit my paycheck, he agreed, threw some clothes on and came with me. Bill asked me to return MIRRORS to the red box station at Albertson’s and I said “Ok.”

Joe and I got in the Merc and headed down to the bank. After depositing my paycheck, we walked over to Albertson’s so I could pick up some rockstars and return the movie. I decided to take a look at how the whole red box thing works, and it was pretty easy. I took a look through their selection of Blu-Ray titles and they had SPEED RACER in stock. I had been wanting to see it in Blu-Ray for a while, so I picked that one up.

Joe and I headed back home and popped in the movie to check it out. I got a call from Melissa about a hang out down at Wild Wooleys with Adrian and Sara and she asked if I wanted to go. I told her that I was planning on going to work tonight, so I had to be back by 5:30 and she said that wasn’t a problem. She said she’d come pick me up in a little bit, and we hung up.

About a half hour later she called me saying that she was in front of my house. I told her that I’d be out in a minute, and that is when a little light went off in my head. I went and asked Mom if she wanted to meet Melissa and she said “Yes”, so I told her that Melissa was picking me up and that she was outside right now. Mom followed me outside and when I walked over to the car, I saw that Melissa was reading a book and not paying attention. I used this to walk up and say “Hey Melissa…meet my Mom!” She looked shocked, but she played it off nicely. They chatted for a minute and then I realized that it was awkward for both of them, so I laughed, said “goodbye” to Mom and got in the car with my girl. As we were driving away Melissa jokingly called me an “asshole” for doing that to her. I laughed very hard at the whole situation. I was glad that I was starting to feel better.

We drove down to the bar and met up with Sara. Adrian was cleaning his guns from going to the range earlier, so he wasn’t there yet. The three of us hung out for a while, and when Adrian showed up the party really began. At 4:30 we had to leave so Melissa could drive me back home, I said goodbye to the guys and we took off.

Melissa wanted to get some food, so we made a quick stop by Jack In The Box for dinner, and then she dropped me off at home. I told her that I’d see her later, and then I got out of the car and went inside to change.

Before going to work, I quickly scarfed down the food, and then jetted down to the theater.

The crowd wasn’t much bigger than last night, and I had no intention of staying for longer than a couple hours. I was still pretty lethargic from the whole week, and I just wanted to get some rest. After the intermissions I clocked out and took off.

I had gotten a call from Melissa asking me if I was going to come back down to Wild Wooleys to hang out with the guys, and said “Ok.” I made a quick stop by the gas station, put some oil and fuel injector cleaner in my car, and headed out.

When I got to the bar, I found that Melissa had gone to Oceanside to see her friend’s band, and Adrian had taken off for home already, but Sara and Jason were still there. We all hung out for a while, and then about 11 p.m. Jason had to leave to go meet another friend for drinks, and I walked Sara to her car. We chatted for a bit, and when she was sober enough to drive home, I left and headed off for home.

I got home and put on an episode of DEXTER to chill to, and I started texting Melissa. She asked me if I was back at home yet and I said “yes” and then I asked her if she wanted me to come over and she said “yes”. I got up and headed out to my car, and that is where I found a bouquet of flowers and number of little notes on my car…all of which were from Melissa telling me how much she likes me. It was very lovely.

I got in the car and headed over to her place. I thanked her for the surprise gift, and we spent the rest of the night talking and cuddling.

About 3 a.m. we fell asleep.

Friday, January 16th 2009

2009-01-29T02:30:00.000-08:00

I woke up about 11:30 a.m. and hung around the house for a while. Since I didn’t have to pick up the kids from school, I played a lot of GTA and surfed the net with the laptop.

About 4:30 p.m. I decided to get ready to head down to the drive-in. I had no intention of working but I wanted to get my paycheck as well as visit with Barb and Kevin who were coming down for the first time in months. I shaved, showered, and tossed on some freshly cleaned clothes.

I made a quick stop by 7-11 to get a rockstar on the way to the theater, and when I showed up there wasn’t much of a line for the guys to work through. I chatted with the snack bar crew for a bit, and when Barb called me to tell me that they were here, I went out and chatted with them until the movie started. Barb gave me a late Christmas present, and I thanked her for it.

After that I hung out in the snack bar until the intermission and then I took off. I was having trouble sleeping on my couch, so I decided it was time to pick up a new foam pad and pillow from Wal-Mart.

I drove down there, walked inside and found a nice foam pad with a layer of memory foam on top of it. I picked that up as well as a nice goose down pillow and a Batman pillow case. I paid for the goods, got back in the car and headed to get food.

I was starving, so I made a quick run to Sombreros for some carneasada tacos as a quick meal.

When I got home, Bill was on the couch about ready to pop in MIRRORS on Blu-Ray. He asked if I wanted to see it, and I agreed.

MIRRORS was a horror movie we had at the theater over the summer, but one I never watched. I was under the impression that it was a remake of a Japanese film, but I don’t know for certain. The story was actually much better than I thought, and it’s always good to see Keifer Sutherland kicking ass and yelling out obscenities. Overall I enjoyed the film more than a lot of the other shitty horror movies out there…plus, seeing Amy Smart naked is always a good thing.

After the movie, I sparked up a convo with Melissa and since I hadn’t seen her since yesterday, I was needing my fix. I was still hungry (that whole 3 day thing of small amounts of food was catching up with me) so I went and picked her up in the Daewoo (because it has a working heater) and we drove down to Santana’s to get some food. We drove back to her place to eat and chat for a bit.

About 2 a.m. I was getting sleepy and I needed to return the car for Mom to use in the morning, so I kissed my girlfriend goodbye and headed for home.

At home I watched an episode of DEXTER and fell asleep about 3:30 a.m.

Thursday, January 15th 2009

2009-01-29T02:28:00.000-08:00

I woke up covered in a cold sweat again, and my throat was still killing me. About 8 a.m. I called the doctor’s office and inquired about getting an appointment. The nurse told me that I could come in at 9:15 a.m. I got up, took a quick shower, got dressed and headed down to the doctor’s office.

After a brief stint in the waiting room, the nurse came out and called my name. We went back to a room and she went through the usual routine. She checked my weight, temp, blood pressure, ect… and then asked me why I was there. I told her, and she jotted it all down in that file…I always want to know what’s in that file…I also wanted to ask about how much I weighed, but I figured I didn’t want any bad news at the moment.

The doctor finally came in and gave me a once over. Then he wanted me to go pee in a cup so he could perform a UA on it to see what I had. I went to the bathroom and filled the cup. He ran the test, came back and told me that I might have strep throat or mono, but he didn’t know which. I gave him that look of “what?” and he said that there was nothing to worry about and he prescribed me some antibiotics.

I went out to the receptionist and paid her for the doctor visit and UA. The price wasn’t too bad for not having any health insurance (thank you drive-in owner…and health care industry for not providing cheap health care). On my way out the door, I called Melissa and told her that I was heading up to Wal-Mart to get the prescription filled and I invited her to join me. She had some shopping to do anyways, so she said she’d meet me there.

I got in the car and headed up the hill to Wal-Mart. I went inside and went to the pharmacy to get that taken care of. I had just given the girl my prescription when Melissa showed up. We walked around the store for a bit and when the time came, I went back and got my drugs.

I was pretty hungry, so we walked across the parking lot to VONS and I got some food at the Panda Express there. While I was eating, I took my first pill (4 times a day for 10 days), and chatted with Melissa about how the doctor told me not to work and to rest up. The biggest problem with this, is that I had a job in LA with JP and Ace to finish shooting THE ONE NIGHTER over the weekend. I was going to have to call Ace and tell him that I couldn’t go. But first, I needed to call Geoff and offer him the job.

After lunch, Melissa walked me back to my car and we parted ways. I drove home and called Geoff. He accepted the job, and then I text messaged Ace with the news from the doctor and how Geoff would be my replacement. He told me to get better and I said I’d see him when he got back. Then I called Bob to see if he’d cover me again, and he agreed. I thanked him and we chatted about the strep throat thing for a few.

With all that taken care of, I laid back down on my couch, watched another episode of DEXTER and played some GTA 4 for a few hours.

I tried to work on my PC but the new hard drive that Marcus installed failed and I couldn’t work on it at all (I really wanted to work on UNCLE SECRET AGENT some more). But instead I watched some more DEXTER and about 10 p.m. I popped in LEATHAL WEAPON and watched it. When that was over I threw in LEATHAL WEAPON 2 and watched that before falling asleep about 2 a.m.

Wednesday, January 14th 2009

2009-01-29T02:27:00.000-08:00

When I woke up at 10:30 a.m. Melissa had already left for work. I got up and jumped on her laptop to send her a message letting her know that I was up. I checked my email and tooled around the internet for a while. I was feeling better, but not good enough to be as mobile as I would like. This is when I would make the choice to do something I had never done before…

…I was going to call out sick from work.

In the 7.5 years I had been working at the drive-in (yes I hate to admit it, but its true), I had never called out sick from work. I had always gone in and then gone home early. I guess there’s a first time for everything…

I called Bob and asked him to cover me, he agreed and I said I’d bring him my keys about 5:30 p.m.

I spent the rest of the afternoon attempting to rest up at Melissa’s. Although I did spend a good majority of the time on Hulu.com watching SNL Digital Shorts and the like.

About 5:15, I packed all my stuff up (which wasn’t much), got in the car and drove down to the theater. When I got there, Bob wasn’t there yet, so I opened the back gate and let myself in. He showed up a minute later, and I handed him the keys, thanked him again for covering me and I drove home.

Seeing as this was my first time home in 3 days, Mom was surprised to see me. I told her how bad off I was and how I had taken the night off of work. We talked for a few and then I went back to my room to lay down.

I had recently picked up seasons 1 and 2 of DEXTER so I started watching that. I made it a few episodes before getting sleepy and going night-night about 11 p.m.

Tuesday, January 13th 2009

2009-01-29T02:26:00.000-08:00

About 4 a.m. I woke up completely drenched in sweat. I thought the fever had broke, so I quickly took my temp. It came back to be 98.8. I thought that the worst of it was over and I tried to go back to sleep in the soggy mess that were my sheets and blanket. I felt bad for sweating all over Melissa’s things, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I managed to pass out for a while longer and about 10 a.m. I finally got up to get some food.

I was excited because today was the day that Aaron K. was taking GOMS! to atom.com for the pitch meeting. Since my cell phone was dead I used the iPhone to email Aaron and ask what happened. I also tossed him Melissa’s cell phone number so he could call me directly. He did and we talked for a while.

It turned out that he didn’t get the chance to pitch GOMS! while he was in the meeting, but he wanted to take the show to www.crackle.com instead (crackle is owned by Sony) because they have bigger budgets for shows and that way we could use our original format. We talked for a bit more, and I told him that I wouldn’t be attending the SDF meeting tonight because I was sick.

Melissa had to do homework, so she was in the living room on her laptop. I came out and laid down on the couch next to her so we could talk. I eventually fell asleep on the couch and when I woke up I was really hot again. Melissa took my temp and it had gone back up to 101.9. I took some ibuprofen and tried to go back to sleep.

After a while I moved back to the room and ate the chicken noodle soup that Melissa had made me. I was starting to feel better and my stomach was craving something more than just soup. For some reason I was craving a turkey wrap from CostCo. When I told Melissa this, she immediately said “Let’s go”, so we got in the car and headed out.

We made a quick stop by my bank so I could pull out the money and then we drove down the street to the CostCo. I ordered the turkey wrap and two churros. Since this was my first time eating a turkey wrap I wasn’t too sure of what to expect…and I wasn’t too thrilled about it. The turkey was dry and the wheat wrap wasn’t very good…but it might have been the sickness telling me that. Also, it might have been that every bite was extremely painful to swallow.

After CostCo, we went back to Melissa’s house and curled up in bed. She popped in MEET THE ROBINSONS and we watched that, when that was over we threw in SURF’S UP and laughed at that movie. By the time both of those movies were done, I was too tired to think and I rolled over and went to sleep about midnight.

Monday, January 12th 2009

2009-01-29T02:24:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 11 a.m. with my head in a complete daze. I couldn’t comprehend anything and it took me a few minutes to even be able to get out of bed. When I did get up the room was spinning and my head was a mess. I tried to lay back down and go back to sleep, but I couldn’t get comfortable enough to get any rest.

I spent the rest of the day like this.

Melissa finally got home from work at about 6:30 p.m. She had gone to the store for me and picked up a bunch of vitamins and soup and other things to help get me better. I ate the soup and took the vitamins and tried to get comfy again. Melissa wanted to run out and pick up some new pillows for her bed as well as a few other things, so she popped in a movie for me to veg out to and she took off.

She got back right as the movie was ending and she brought me a jamba juice as a treat. She also picked up a thermometer just to see what my temp was. I put it in and held still for 60 seconds. When the alarm beeped, I pulled the thermometer out and read what my temperature was… 103.6. Fuck.

Melissa was worried and ordered me (in a good way) to take a cold shower to help the fever break. I got out of bed, stumbled around and got in the shower. I made sure to not take a cold shower (it is January after all), but I did take a luke warm shower to help. After 10 minutes in there, I figured it was enough, and I got out.

Post shower, I laid back down and attempted to get comfortable. Melissa popped in another movie and cuddled next to me to keep me company.

I finally blacked out around 11 p.m.

Sunday, January 11th 2009

2009-01-29T02:22:00.000-08:00

I woke up around 11:30 a.m. when my cell phone rang. It was Marcus asking if I wanted to go and get lunch with Christine and him. I asked Melissa if she wanted to go, and she said “yes”. We agreed to meet at 12:30 p.m. at the food court in the mall. Melissa and I got ready and headed out.

We were a few minutes late getting to the mall, and we found Marcus and Christine already waiting for us. Melissa wasn’t very hungry and Christine was having morning sickness, so neither of them were eating, but Marcus and I decided to hit up Subway and get some grub. We walked over to the eatery, ordered our subs, came back and ate them.

We all didn’t talk for too long after that because Marcus wanted to get back to see the Chargers playoff game and it was starting very soon. We all said our goodbyes and took off. Melissa and I decided to wander around the mall and hit up Wal-Mart to kill time.

After the mall, we went back to her place and hung out for a bit. She had some homework to do, and I had some stuff to take care of at home, so we hugged goodbye and I left. I jumped in the Merc and drove home.

When I got home my Mom and Bill were watching the Chargers lose the game and they were getting pretty angry. I figured that Marcus was feeling the same way, and since he said he’d come by to work on my computer after the game, I shot him a text to confirm it. When the game was a wash, he text me back and said he was on his way.

Marcus showed up and went to work on my PC. I’m pretty good at navigating computers, but I don’t know dick about installing new hardware. Marcus is really good at that, so he is my usual repair tech…and I’m very thankful for that.

When he got there, he installed my new 120gb hard drive and reformatted windows. During the process I started to get really tired and I wasn’t feeling very well. As soon as he was done, I laid down to take a nap.

I woke up about 8:30 p.m. when Melissa called me to see what was up. I told her I wasn’t feeling very well, and that I was just gonna be hanging around the house. We talked for a bit more and then we hung up.

I killed the rest of the evening by surfing the net from my laptop and playing GTA 4.

About 12:30 a.m. Melissa called me and said that she had a bad dream about someone being in the house. She was startled and couldn’t sleep, so I told her that I would grab a good comedy and bring it over to keep her company. I got up, tossed some clothes on, grabbed BLAZING SADDLES, got in the car and headed over to her place.

She greeted me at the door, and we went back to her room to lay down and watch the movie. She hadn’t seen BLAZING SADDLES before and I was excited to show it to her. We were able to make it through an hour of the movie before she got tired and wanted to go to sleep. Since she had work in the morning, I cuddled up next to her and we fell asleep at about 2 a.m.

Saturday, January 10th 2009

2009-01-29T02:21:00.000-08:00

My girlfriend woke me about noon and told me that she had to leave to photograph the engagement photos for Marcus and Christine. I decided to leave as well. I still needed to run by Ace’s to feed the dogs one more time, and I also wanted to get a haircut. We kissed goodbye and parted ways.

I cruised down to Ace’s and fed the dogs. After feeding them, I decided to do a Rodney video where I looked like shit (I hadn’t shaved since new years eve) and when that was done, I got back in my car and headed to the Fantastic Sam’s next to my house.

I walked in and got seated for the haircut. I ended up chatting with the ladies next to me about all the things I’m working on, and that helped the time pass with the haircut. When that was over, I walked down to Albertson’s to get some rockstars and gum. Then I got back in the Merc and headed home.

When I got home, I shaved, trimmed the beard, took a shower, and got dressed. I was excited for Jeff G.’s b-day party tonight, so I wanted the afternoon to go by as fast as possible. I accomplished this task by uploading the new Rodney vid, and playing GTA.

At 5:15 p.m., I got dressed and headed down to the theater. I worked for a couple hours and after the first intermission, I clocked out and took off for Melissa’s.

Geoff was waiting for me when I got there, and Melissa was taking a nap. I woke her up and since she had gotten ready for the bar before she took a nap, she was ready to roll in a couple minutes. We all piled into Geoff’s Scion and headed down to Hamilton’s Tavern to meet Jeff.

After getting slightly lost in the North Park/South Park area of San Diego, we finally found the bar we were looking for. We talked in and almost right away a lesbian hit on Melissa. I couldn’t help but laugh at this because I had seen enough guys eye my girlfriend as she walked past. It was awesome to see a chick do the same thing. Granted this particular lesbian was of the “manly” variety, and unless you noticed her boobs, you wouldn’t know she was a chick….Faux Hawks are the new Mullets.

We met up with Jeff and his fiancée Anna Z. Some of Jeff’s film school friends were there, and I had met most of them before. When I went to go order a couple beers for us, and a long island iced tea for Melissa, I was informed by the bar tender that it was a beer and wine bar only. Melissa was bummed by this, but she decided to drink beer with the rest of us. While were bullshitting with Jeff I took a look on the wall behind him and saw that they had Blackthorn Cider on tap. I had been aching for a good hard cider since getting bombed on it at an English pub in Studio City at the end of ’07. I got up and bought myself a couple rounds of it.

By this point I was pretty drunk, and I was having a great time talking with Geoff, Jeff and Melissa. Melissa pulled out her digital camera and recorded a couple vids of me talking…one of which is me telling off the owner of the drive-in…part of me wishes he never sees it…part of me…

After the bar we stumbled back to Geoff’s car and drove Jeff home. Then the three of us decided that were hungry and Melissa offered to buy us dinner, so Geoff took us to this taco shop that I hadn’t been to in years.

We ordered our food and while waiting for the order I decided to do the first episode of Rodney’s Moral Dilemma while drunk. It turned out ok, but the editing would have be concise because Geoff was there and mocking me the entire time.

We ate, talked some more, and then Geoff drove Melissa and I back to her place. He dropped us off and took off for home. Melissa and I went inside, talked for a while, and then I passed out a few minutes after that.

I was dead to the world by 3 a.m.

Friday, January 9th 2009

2009-01-29T02:18:00.000-08:00

I woke up and Melissa had already left for work. I got dressed and got ready to take off. Melissa’s roommate was home so her and I chatted for a bit before I took off. I jumped in the Merc and headed towards my house.

I didn’t have to pick Samantha up from school, so I spent the afternoon chilling and enjoying time with myself…the only problem was that I was starting to feel lethargic and I had a lack of energy to do much else. I spent most of the afternoon not doing much, and when it 4:30 p.m. I went through the normal ritual of getting ready for work.

We were opening GRAN TORINO at work tonight, and while we had a decent turnout for Clint Eastwood’s last movie, we could have done better. I hung out in the snack bar most of the night because I wasn’t feeling very good, and I just wanted to chill out.

When the second showing of GRAN TORINO started, I jumped in my car and started to watch. About 30 minutes into the movie, I started to get text messages from Melissa asking me to come over as soon as I got off of work because she really wanted me to come over. I shot her a call and asked her what was up, and she said that one of her friend’s friends was left at her house and he was all touchy feely and she was uncomfortable.

I wasn’t going to let anyone get grabby with my girlfriend, so I told Bob to clock me out and I headed directly over to Melissa’s house to intercept the friend of a friend.

Melissa greeted me at the door and took me inside to meet Martin. Martin was her friend Doug’s friend and he was obviously intoxicated. He kept making references to me being the man of the house and how he didn’t want to fuck with my shit. He also said that he had seen my Rodney vids and he had “mad respect” for me. Then he proceeded to tell me that he was a poker champion on www.ultimatebet.com and how he made tens of thousands of dollars playing online and at Ocean’s Eleven Casino in Dana Point.

This kid wasn’t just drunk.

He kept trying to follow Melissa around, but I made sure to keep asking him questions and keep his attention focused on me. The more I talked with him, the more I came to the conclusion that he was high on something. Eventually Doug came back and confirmed that Martin was coked out of his gourd. Doug also brought a few friends with him who wanted to play beer pong. Melissa told me that I could take off if I wanted to, but Martin kept getting grabby with her, so I stayed behind and kept an eye on him…and I made sure that he knew I was watching him too.

After a while Doug got everyone out of there and Melissa and I had the house to ourselves. We jumped in my car and headed over to Ace’s to feed the dogs, and then we hit up 7-11 for drinks on the way back to her place.

Melissa and I spent the rest of the night talking and cuddling, we fell asleep about 4 a.m.

Thursday, January 8th 2009

2009-01-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

I didn’t wake up until noon. Melissa was already up and working on things around the house. I had to pick up Samantha up at 3:30 p.m. and since Melissa had some errands to run, I kissed her goodbye and headed home.

I spent a couple hours online and playing xbox. About 3:10 p.m. I headed down to the school to wait for Samantha. She was running behind, so I shot Geoff a call to talk with him about putting together a pitch package to take to www.atom.com ourselves. He liked the idea and suggest we all sit down and figure it out. I said that we should do it at the next SDF meeting next week, and he liked the idea. I hung up with him as Samantha got in the car. We drove home.

On the drive home, Melissa text me and said that she was at CostCo and wanted to know if I wanted to join her for lunch. I agreed, and after I dropped Sammy off, I headed over to CostCo to have lunch with my girlfriend.

I met up with Melissa outside and we wandered inside to walk around first. As we were walking around, I ran into my 3rd cousin Karen and her daughter Kaitlin. The 4 of us talked for a while and did some catching up, Karen pulled me to the side at one point and said that Melissa was a great girl and that I was lucky. I told her that I agreed. We wrapped up our convo a few minutes later and Melissa went out to the deli to get some food.

We ate and talked, and before I knew it, the time was 5:25 p.m. and I had to be at work in 5 minutes. Melissa and I said our goodbyes and I took off like a bat out of hell for the drive-in.

The theater was a bit on the slow side, I spent most of the night hanging with Beth and Jacqueline and took part of our weekly catch up. About 9:30 p.m. Melissa stopped by the theater because she wanted to spend time with me. She spent the rest of the evening with me, and she worked on the speech she was writing as I tore apart BOLT and FOUR CHRISTMASES.

After taking the money to the bank, I went back to Ace’s to feed the dogs, and when that was done, I went back to Melissa’s house to spend the night with her.

We fell asleep about 3 a.m.

Wednesday, January 7th 2009

2009-01-29T02:16:00.000-08:00

I woke up around 11 a.m., muddled around the house for a bit, and surfed the net. I went back and looked at UNCLE SECRET AGENT’s rough cuts, and I caught some mistakes that I had missed in my editing last night. I made a note to go back and fix them, but my computer was acting up and I didn’t want to get heavily into editing and have the thing break on me.

I shot a call to Marcus to see if he would be available to come by and look at my computer sometime, he said he would be available this weekend and we settled on a late afternoon Sunday meet time.

About 3:30 p.m. I went and picked up Samantha from school, and then I came home. I spent the rest of the afternoon playing GTA on the xbox and resting up before going to work. At 4:30 p.m. I took a shower, got dressed and headed down to the theater.

Work went by pretty quick, I was able to get some writing done on the blog. I wasn’t able to get as much done as I would have liked, but at least I made a sizeable dent in the daily diary. I kept thinking about how sidetracked I kept getting and how I just wanted this experiment to end so I could put it behind me. I put the kibosh to those thoughts when I reminded myself that I was almost 10 months in and almost in the homestretch of the year long task.

After work, I headed over to Trish and Ace’s house to feed the dogs, and when that was done, I went over to Melissa’s to spend time with her. I was pretty tired, so we curled up in bed, popped in DR. HORRIBLE again and fell asleep watching that.

Darkness swept over my body about 2:30 a.m.

Tuesday, January 6th 2009

2009-01-29T02:14:00.000-08:00

Melissa woke me up at 10 a.m. I rubbed my eyes and took a quick shower. I still needed to head to Fry’s to pick up a 1/8th inch extension cable for the lav mic as well as a couple adapters that might come in handy.

We jumped in Melissa’s car and raced down to Fry’s. I ran inside and found what I was looking for. I took a quick look at the cheap HD-DVD’s and cheap Blu-Ray titles, but decided not to spend any more money than I had to. I picked us up a couple of energy drinks, paid, and we headed back to her house.

We got back a little after noon, and thankfully both guys were running late so it seemed like we were ready to roll on time and they weren’t. Geoff showed up a few minutes later and he and I started to talk about how we wanted to shoot the show. Marky called and said that he was running late because he was a thrift shop picking up a shirt he could use as a costume. He showed up about 20 minutes later.

The shirt Marky bought was all sorts of wrinkled, so we used Melissa’s standing steamer to get all those wrinkles out before shooting. While Marky was using the steamer Geoff wanted to know how it felt on his back…so Marky tried it on him. Geoff was wearing a sweatshirt, a polo shirt and an undershirt so he didn’t feel anything. He then suggested that they try it on me, and since at that exact moment I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on, I agreed to let them do this…and I was only wearing a thin t-shirt.
FUCK! That shit hurt!

I yelped and Marky immediately pulled the steamer away. We checked my back and saw that there was a small burn there. Melissa said that she did that to herself once and that it was nothing to worry about. I put the pain out of my mind and went back to getting the audio and cameras set up.

About 2 p.m. we were ready to shoot and Marky was ready to roll. He knew his cues and what he was doing. I had tested the audio and it came back clean, so we were good on that end…since audio equals 51% of a production, it’s good to have good sounding stuff. It helps keep the illusion that we were trying to create.

I pressed record on the cameras, and Geoff called “Action!” and we let Marky do what he does best. We were able to get through 7 episodes before Marky ran out of useable material. He said that he would need to do more research on the remaining topics before doing more episodes. Both Geoff and I agreed.

We got the place packed up, but we left the weapons on the peg board just in case we needed to come back and do reshoots. I said a “goodbye and thank you” to Melissa, and Marky drove me home….truth be told, she was angry at me for something that I said (that was really stupid, mean and hurtful…), so I didn’t want to press my luck in pissing her off any more. I had apologized before I left, and I was hoping that was enough.

When Marky dropped me off at home, I got some dinner and went to my room to start capturing the footage from the Handycam. I took a couple hours and captured the 2 tapes of footage to my hard drive, and then I moved everything over to my 750gb external hard drive that I had been sitting on since Black Friday. While waiting for the footage to capture, I watched the season finale of TRUE BLOOD. It was really good, and I can’t wait for season 2.

I was able to get a rough cut of 2 episodes put together before it got to be too late. The show is pretty funny and with some polish, I think we have a sure fire winner on our hands. UNCLE SECRET AGENT is going to be a hilarious show that should draw a lot of viewers…at least I hope.

About 3 a.m. I got really tired and decided to pass out cold.

Monday, January 5th 2009

2009-01-29T02:12:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 11:15 a.m. when Land called me to let me know that he was on his way over. I got up, tossed some clothes on and headed outside to meet him a few minutes later.

Since I was really fucking hungry, I asked him if he wanted to get food first instead of later. He said that now was cool, and we got in his car and went down to this little taco shop next to where I pick the kids up from school.

We went inside, ordered our burritos and ate. The burritos were the biggest I’ve ever gotten from a taco shop before. It was so big that I couldn’t finish it…and I always finish my Mexican food. When that was done, we rolled past AutoZone to get the new brake pads for my car.

After that, we went back to my house to work on the Merc. Land got into some trouble when he couldn’t get the lug nuts off the tires. We decided that going up to Richie’s house would be the best bet for loosening the bolts. I drove us up there and we chatted with Richie for a few while he used his air compressor to help us out. We thanked him for his help and headed back down the hill to my place.

While Land worked on the car, I contacted Geoff and Marky to remind them of the meet time at Melissa’s house for the prep night for tomorrows shoot.

Land got the new brake pads on the car and we took it for a test drive. The front brakes sounded better, but the rear brakes were still making all the noise. I called Geoff to ask him to come and pick me up instead of us meeting at Melissa’s and he agreed. A little while later he showed up in my driveway and picked me up. Land wanted to help us out in building our set and offered up some prop knives/swords/axes we could use for our torture room set. I thanked him and told him I’d call him in a bit.

Geoff and I headed over to Melissa’s house and waited there for Marky to show up. While we were waiting we watched some SNL digital shorts on www.hulu.com . Melissa called me and said that she was bringing us pizzas for dinner and that she would be a little bit longer than we thought. Geoff and I didn’t mind watching funny vids online.

Eventually both Marky and Melissa showed up and we all sat down to eat. When that was done, the three of us went to the garage to start looking at how we could build the set for UNCLE SECRET AGENT (USA) season 1. I let Geoff and Marky call the shots on how to design the set, and I started to think of the technical logistics.

Since Ace was in Phoenix with the HVX-200, I didn’t have access to the HD camera that I thought I was going to have access to. I had 3 cameras myself: my Sony Handycam, my Aiptek HD flip cam, and my digital camera. I figured that I could do a two camera shoot with the Handycam and the flip cam, so I went about figuring out how to do that. Geoff and I talked about it, and we decided that we would use my lav mic and clip it on to Marky’s shirt, and run that directly into my laptop to capture audio. This way at least the audio would be salvaged against the shitty video quality from the flip cam.

With the set design finalized, we needed to buy the materials to build it. We needed peg board, and some assorted goods. We figured that Wal-Mart would be a good place to start, we headed to the one in Santee and searched it. They didn’t have any peg board. Next we drove across the strip mall to Michaels, and found nothing.

We chose to stop by Home Depot before they closed to see what they had in stock. We found two pieces of peg board that suited our needs, and we also picked up the clips for the peg board that would allow the weapons to hold up on the board. After I paid for the stuff, we headed back to my house to pick up the bag of weapons Land had left for me, as well as my lights and tripod.

While we were loading up the needed gear, Land called me and said that he left something in that bag and he came back over to pick up his 2 million candlepower spotlight that was also in the bag (I still question why it was even in the bag in the first place). We all chatted for a bit, and then the three of us returned to Melissa’s house to set up.

The guys started to build the set, I was looking into using my lav mic with my laptop to see how it would work out. I ran a few tests and calibrated the sensitivity of the microphone on the sound board in the laptop. When the guys had the knives, swords, hammers, and axes placed neatly on the peg board, we started to light the set.

I only had 2 incandescent lights, and we needed more light than that for the flip cam. We all piled back in Geoff’s car and headed up the hill to another Wal-Mart to pick up some more lights. Thankfully, they are cheap there.

After that, we went back to Melissa’s house and started to research the CIA’s history for the project. Since Marky would be adlibbing just about everything we were talking about, we needed to have some knowledge of the CIA’s creation and activities since its birth. Also, we looked up other “blunders” by the government to make fun of.

We sat down and wrote down 14 show ideas that we could record tomorrow and have a big library of material to choose from. Geoff suggested we shoot as many as we can, and Marky and I agreed. I called for a noon call time, and called it a night. The guys took off, and I stayed behind with Melissa.

With the house to ourselves, we cuddled up and watched some TV before passing out at 3 a.m.

Sunday, January 4th 2009

2009-01-29T02:10:00.000-08:00

I woke up about 11 a.m. and spent a few hours hanging with Melissa at her house.

About 3 p.m. I took off for home and got my stuff ready to go to my meeting with Jeff G. at 6 p.m.

The Merc was acting up, so I shot Land a call to ask him to come by and help me fix my brakes tomorrow. When I said I’d buy him lunch, he agreed to help. We agreed on a noon meet time, and I hung up the phone.

I asked Mom to borrow the Daewoo to drive to my meeting. She agreed and tossed me the keys. I put my laptop in the station wagon and drove down to SDSU area to find this coffee shop called The Living Room. I had a little trouble finding it, but I finally got there.

Jeff wasn’t there yet, so I went inside, found a place to sit down, and I ordered some dinner to eat while I waited. Jeff showed up right when I got my food, so he had to watch me eat. After that, we got to work talking about the CYOA’s that we still want to do, as well as some other online film projects that have been brought to our attention. We chatted for a few hours, and we came up with a concept for the CYOA that was simple and funny. I wrote it down and we parted ways for the night.

I went back to the station wagon to leave and that it when I noticed the severely fucked up parking lot of The Living Room. The parking lot was like a cone, and I was parked in the back. It took me about 10 minutes to finally get the car out of the parking lot. Eventually I just had to back the car out to the street and go from there. Next time, I’m parking on the street.

I drove home, and shot Melissa a call. We talked for a while, and then she had to run, so we hung up.

I spent the rest of the night playing xbox and surfing the net. I finally crashed out about 2 a.m.

Saturday, January 3rd 2009

2009-01-29T02:09:00.000-08:00

I woke up at 7 a.m. when Melissa was leaving to head to Anaheim for a conference. She asked me to hang out and watch her mom’s dog Molly until her mom can come and pick her up. I agreed and fell back asleep.

I woke up at noon and let the dog out and then went to the laptop to surf the net for a while. Melissa’s Mom didn’t come by until about 2 p.m. to pick up Molly. Her and I talked for a bit about her trip to Vegas and then she took off. I shot Melissa a text to let her know that the dog was taken care of, and then I packed up my stuff and took off for home.

I got home, set up the xbox and played GTA for a bit until having to get ready to go to work.

I made a quick stop by 7-11 before going to the theater, and just like last night, the crowd wasn’t as good as it could be. I ended up shooting Jeff G. a call and talking with him for an hour and a half until it was time for the first intermission. When that was over, I clocked out, and took off for Melissa’s house.

She was napping when I got there, and I ended up waking her up. We talked for a while, and just enjoyed each other’s company.

We popped in DR. HORRIBLE, and watched it until we fell asleep.

Friday, January 2nd 2009

2009-01-29T02:07:00.000-08:00

I woke up at noon and found a reminder text message from Adrian about the lunch meeting we were having in point loma. I called Marky to see if he wanted to come with me and he agreed. Melissa was home from work, and we hung out for a bit before Marky showed up.

When Marky got there, I jumped in his car and we bounced down to Point Loma to meet Adrian and Jason at a greek restaurant. After some bumps in locating the place, we found it, got parked and went inside.

The 5 of us (Adrian, Jason, Adrian’s son, Marky and myself) sat around a small table and talked about our NYE parties as well as what projects we are working on and what projects we want to be working on. Jason had written up some ideas in a notebook and we took a look at them and then discussed the logistics of shooting it. We ordered lunch and ate while talking.

As we were leaving I made a run to the bathroom to take a piss. As I was peeing I had that urge to poo, so I sat down on the toilet. Something didn’t agree with me too well, so I made a mess of the toilet. Thank god for flushing toilets…oh wait…this one didn’t work. I tried to plunge the toilet and get it all to go down, but it didn’t want to work. Thankfully the toilet didn’t overflow, but I hate being that guy who tells people that their bathroom is fucked up because of me…and even though it wasn’t because of me, it sure as shit felt like it. I washed my hands, closed the toilet up, turned off the bathroom light, shut the door tight, and hightailed it out of there. The guys were wanting to bullshit outside for a bit, but I wrapped it up and told Adrian and Jason that I’d call them later. Marky and I rushed to the car and bailed.

Marky drove me back to Melissa’s and dropped me off. On the drive back we talked about the shoot on Tuesday about WWIF and USA (our new show).We got to Melissa’s house and I went inside to chat with Melissa for a few. I was there for a few minutes when Ace called me asking me to come by the studio and meet the new tenants. I said I’d head down in a few minutes, and he said that he’d see me there. I kissed Melissa goodbye and took off for the studio.

I got to the studio and met the new crew that is working there. They are a group of people who are creating a show for the UPN with an actor named Willy G (who was on THE LIZZIE MCGUIRE SHOW and EVEN STEVENS). I met up with Ace who was upstairs working on some stuff. He introduced me to everyone and I met Willy G. That is when Ace told me that he was going out of town for 2 weeks for a feature film job in Phoenix and that I’d be the “go to” guy in case any questions needed to be answered from Willy G. and his crew. I hung out there for a few more minutes, and then I had to leave to get ready to go to work.

I jumped back in the Merc, raced by home to get my shoes, and headed to the theater.

The crowd wasn’t too big, and with the fog that was lingering on the outside of the valley, it hindered a lot of our business. I only hung around until after the first intermission, and then I took off for the night and headed over to Melissa’s.

The rest of the night Melissa and I just hung out and chilled. We made a quick run to Jack In The Box for a smoothie and then we spent the rest of the night cuddling and talking. We fell asleep about 1 a.m.

Thursday, January 1st 2009

2009-01-29T02:05:00.000-08:00

Melissa woke me up at 9 a.m., but I had such a sore throat and headache that she told me to go back to sleep. Marky, Evan and Melissa cleaned the house and then went and got coffee while I still slept. After Melissa took Evan home, she came back and woke me up. We chatted for a bit and decided to go get some food at Denny’s. We got in the Merc and I drove us down to our usual eatery.

We went inside, sat down, ordered our drinks and food and just talked about the night before. Sitting at the table next to us were some of Marky’s ex-girlfriend’s friends. Thankfully they didn’t recognize me because one of them had a huge crush on me at one point, and I just didn’t want to deal with it.

After we ate, I dropped Melissa off at home, and took off to head home and rest before work.

At home, I quickly uploaded the Rodney video I had filmed last night, surfed the net, took a shower and got ready for work. When the time came, I tossed my clothes on, and headed off to the theater.

Since it was a holiday, I figured that we would have a pretty decent crowd. I was right. I helped Del get the cars in as fast as we could, and as soon as the movies were on the screen, I busted out the laptop and wanted to get work done on the blog. I was able to get a couple entries written before getting a phone call from Melissa about coming down to visit me. I walked outside to be able to hear her better and that is when I noticed the fog rolling in from the west.

The fog looked a little thick, but it appeared like it would take a couple hours before fogging us out. I got off the phone with Melissa and called my boss to tell him about the fog. Since it was all clear at his house (a few miles away) he figured that it shouldn’t be a problem. He then told me that if we do fog out, then I should make that decision at the end of the first movie. I told him I would.

Right after getting off the phone with my boss, the fog started to roll in faster and by 8:20 p.m. I couldn’t see the screen on side 1…and side 2 wasn’t any better.

I called Del and told him to stop selling tickets and that I’d have Will bring out the readmit tickets. As soon as the movies were over, Will was taking the big roll of readmission tickets to Del, and I was making the announcement that the movies wouldn’t be showing again.

I watched as the line of a 100+ cars were lined up to get out of the theater, and I chucked to the thought of Del handling all those angry customers by himself. When I made my way out to the box office, and helped Del get the cars out quicker. Thankfully, Del had collected all the receipts from the customers and given out the readmission tickets accordingly. This saved me a ton of guess work on how many tickets we had given out. The greatest victory was that no refunds were given out. This saved my ass from the owner bitching at me the next time I see him.

With all the cars out of there, I had the snack bar closed up and I called the security guard for the escort. About 10:30 p.m. the guard showed up and we went to the bank. After the bank, I headed over to Melissa’s house to see her.

I got to my girlfriend’s house and hung out with her for the rest of the night. About 3 a.m. we decided to crawl into bed and fall asleep.

Wednesday, December 31st 2008

2009-01-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

I woke up around 11 a.m. Melissa had left for work, but the plumber was coming anywhere between 2 and 5. I hung around the house and worked on the laptop for the afternoon. About 2:45 p.m. the plumber showed up and took a look at the toilets. Since they weren’t backing up at that time, there was nothing he could and he left. I shot Melissa a text letting her know, and she said that she’d be back at the house in 20 minutes. I figured I’d wait around for her to show up before going home to get ready for the party.

When Melissa got home, she was excited to show me the Christmas gifts that she had made for me. She handed me a bag and inside it was 2 Rodney’s World t-shirts that she had made. One of the shirts had a small alien man with “Rodney’s World” written in the Halo font. And the other shirt had a metal planet and “Rodney’s World” written around it. The shirts were amazing, and I was so thankful that she had them made. I gave her a huge hug and a big kiss as thanks.

It was almost 4 p.m. at this point, and I still had to run with Marky to Fry’s to get some supplies for the party. I drove home, and Marky met me a few minutes later. We rolled down to Frys’ so Marky could pick up an adapter for his iPod to plug into Melissa’s stereo. While we were there, I picked up a USB wall charger, a new set of noise reducing headphones, and a 4 gig jump drive. We paid, and took off for home.

When I got home, I shaved, showered, and got dressed. I still had time to kill before the party, so I played some GTA. When the time hit 8:30 I shot a call over to Giant Pizza King and ordered 6 pizzas. While waiting for the pizzas to be ready, I packed up the xbox and rock band, loaded everything in the car, and took off.

I quickly picked up the pizzas, paid for them, jumped back in the Merc and headed over to Melissa’s house. I was a little late getting there, and by the time I showed up, the party was in full swing. As soon as I walked through the door, Geoff beelined for the pizzas and started macking down.

The party was a lot of fun, I got the xbox set up and rock band ready to go. When it was set up Marky, Geoff and Aprinda took over and started to play. As they were playing, the majority of people attending were watching them play. I spent some time mingling, and meeting Marcus’s new girlfriend/fiancée/baby mama Christine, and chatting with other people.

Right before midnight the circuit in the wall behind the tv blew out and we lost the xbox. We tried to fix the circuit by resetting them outside, but it didn’t work. Marky suggested that we all go inside the garage/dance floor and spend more time there. We all agreed. We went in the garage, cranked the dance music and had fun.

At midnight we all gathered outside and watched as Marky lit off some fireworks his brother had given him from Wyoming, and we cheered as we watched the explosions light up the night sky.

The next few hours were spent drinking and partying. Good times.
About 3:30 a.m. I got a little tired and went into Melissa’s room to lay down. She followed me in there and we chatted for a bit, and then I fell asleep…not saying goodnight to all my friends who had shown up…yes, I felt like a dick.

Tuesday, December 30th 2008

2009-01-29T02:01:00.000-08:00

I woke up in the bed alone. Melissa was already up and cleaning the house for the party and dealing with a plumbing problem that had come up while she was doing a load of laundry. We talked for a little bit, and then she got back on the horn with the insurance company about getting a plumber to come out and fix it.

I decided that now would be a good time to get to work on the GOMS! package, so I moved a small desk into the spare bedroom, set up my laptop, shut the door and went to work…although I didn’t get any work done at first. I spent a few hours surfing the net and chatting with friends online.

Melissa had to run some errands so she left me to my own devices for a while. While she was out I sparked up a conversation with Jamie about her new boyfriend Alex and life in general. While we were chatting there was knock on the door and it was the plumber coming to check things out. Since neither of us knew what to tell him, we suggested that he come back tomorrow. He agreed and left. I shot Melissa a text and she was confused as we were because she was under the impression that the plumber would be there tomorrow between noon and 4.

I went back to work and got some progress made on GOMS! I was able to work with Ace and collaborate with him on the character and episode changes. I still wasn’t done when Melissa got home, but I was looking for distraction.

Since she had to get supplies for tomorrow’s party we headed over to the Party City next to her place. We found a fog machine and fog juice as well as some floor chalk and other supplies. Melissa picked up the goods and we headed over to VONS to get alcohol and food. We decided on a several different types of liquor and a rotisserie chicken for dinner. After buying the poultry and booze, we headed next door to Wal-Mart for party supplies.
Wal-Mart didn’t have what we were looking for, so we left there and went back to her place.

Back at the house, Melissa made us up the chicken dinner while I called Marky about his offer to come over and help Melissa decorate for the party tomorrow night. He said he’d be over in a little bit, and almost as soon as we were done with dinner, he was at the door. We all chatted for a while and then I retired back to my makeshift office to finish my work while Marky and Melissa gave the house a good dose of flair.

A few hours later I was done with my project, so I emailed it off to Aaron K. and went out to join Marky and Melissa in the living room while they were putting the finishing touches on the room. When they were done, Marky bid us adieu and he took off. Melissa and I were pretty tired, so we went to bed to go lay down.

We talked for a while, and then we fell asleep about 1 a.m.

Monday, December 29th 2008

2009-01-29T02:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up about 11 a.m. and found that Melissa had already gone off to work. I took a quick shower, and stopped by Jack In The Box for lunch before heading home.

I spent the afternoon hanging out online and playing xbox. I didn’t really want to do anything, and even though I should have been working on getting the GOMS! package ready to go, I was just in a lazy fucking mood, and I didn’t fucking care.

I watched a couple episodes of TRUE BLOOD and then got ready to head over to Marky’s house for the Rock Band party that we were having over there. I packed up my laptop and tossed it in the car, and then I cruised over to CostCo to pick up beer.

The CostCo was pretty packed for 6 p.m. on a Monday night, but I was able to get in there with Mom’s card and buy a 24-pack of Pacificos. I paid for the beer and discovered that you don’t need to have a CostCo membership to purchase alcohol or prescription drugs. I made a mental note of this, put the beer in the trunk of the Merc and headed to Marky’s.

Geoff had brought over 3 pizzas so we macked down once I got there. I put some beer in the fridge and hooked up the laptop so I could get to work on the blog.

While we were playing, I kept promoting Rodney online. I realized that I becoming obsessed with getting Rodney to his mark of youtube popularity, but I didn’t really care. I could tell I was ignoring the guys, but Marky didn’t have all the necessary equipment so that all of us could play Rock Band at the same time. 2 of us could play guitar and one of us could sing. Thankfully Geoff got wasted off a 5th of brandy, and when he couldn’t keep up with playing on the guitar, he took over vocals while Marky and I rocked out.
We played until about 2:30 a.m. and then I packed my stuff up and went home. On the drive back I shot Melissa a call to see if she was awake, but I got her voicemail. I left her a message and continued home.

At home I tossed off my pants, booted up GTA and started to kill people. About 3:30 a.m. I got a text from Melissa saying that she just got my message. She invited me back over, and even though it was almost 4 a.m. at this point, I didn’t care. I put some clothes on, grabbed my laptop, and headed over to her house.

We cuddled for a while, and then fell asleep about 5 a.m.