A God-made shower.

How come no one told me that Magnolia was three hours long? I started that movie at 9 thinking it would be over around 11 pm, but noooooooo! Interesting movie. Not sure if I understood the point of it all, but that's okay. I was thoroughly entertained trying to understand it.

I was going to write a lot more than this, but now I can't remember exactly what I was going to write about. Something profound or interesting I observed today. I can't remember. I'll say that the rain was very welcomed despite the fact that it canceled all the baseball games I was planning to photograph. I stood outside for a while with my face towards the sky. It felt like God was crying about something today, but it was like a joyful cry because I felt very happy to be standing out there. Everyone should enjoy rain outside rather than inside.

As David would title this, "Tidbits."

Brooks demands a lot from us poor students. It's nice that they want to make these classes as close to the "real world" as possible like having assignments with one-hour deadlines and all that jazz. But it sucks when you don't have a laptop and can't transmit your photos while out in the field. I guess it's expected that you have a laptop by the time you enter your final year here. Unfortunately, I haven't quite given into taking out an extra hefty loan just to buy myself a laptop. They make us buy our own digital cameras along with its accessories, it's pretty absurd that I would have to go out and spend an extra $1500 for a decent laptop.

I shouldn't complain. I'm the one who chose to come to this school. What was I thinking???

Anyhow, things have been pretty hectic. Friday and Saturday were especially crazy, and I was completely burned out by Sunday. Being a bum never felt more rewarding than today. Yesterday I had a gig with The American Enterprise Magazine to shoot four family portraits for an article. The growing Catholic community has created its own sub-culture in Santa Paula, and so they needed someone to get portraits of the families and the Father of one of the churches there. The pictures turned out okay. They could have been better, but then again...they can always be better. Because the lights I brought malfunctioned, I was stuck using my one and only flash. Oh, well. Things happen. I'm getting paid for this, so I'm happy. Hopefully the art director of the magazine will be happy too. :P

A couple weeks ago I watched the entire Firefly series and Serenity. I've been meaning to do that for a while now, and it was well worth the three days spent watching it. One of the better sci-fi shows that came out in the last few years. It's a shame that it got canceled after its first season. Fox should have known better. Well, Fox should just know better about a lot of things.

I also saw V for Vendetta last week, and Inside last night. I enjoyed both of them. Natalie Portman never ceases to amaze me with her superb acting skills and her awesomely good hotness. Clive Owen is the bomb. Denzel Washington actually plays a role where he's calm 90% of the movie and isn't screaming at the top of his lungs. It's sort of funny the only role that Hugo Weaving can land is one where he doesn't show his face, but he played V very well. The action is good in "V for V." Inside Man is clever and the story was well-delivered.

Oli and Nem came to visit for Saturday, and that was a lot of fun. We went out to lunch at the Habit. Hung out and watched lots of Family Guy. The Bozarths threw a party to honor Morgan's acheivement in running in the LA Marathon last week. Makes me feel like a bum. Oh wait...I am. Anyway, Oli and Nem didn't mind the party much, but I could tell they didn't have a blast. That's okay because we left early to watch Inside Man. We win.

Oh yeah, I finally compressed a video slideshow of my photographs over the years for the web, so you can view that now here. I threw a link to it on my blog a while back, but I sort of did it in a subtle way; and only the most keen of internet surfers could catch it. Anyway, that was a low-res version of it, this one is a higher-res and much bigger version. It's about 30 mb, so be patient.

Enjoy life!

What the deuce?

I'm up at 3 am blog surfing. I'm so awake, and I don't know why. I'm going to blame Starbucks for their mocha that I had at 8 pm. You would think that coffee couldn't keep you up for seven hours, so it must have been something else. I'm not willing to just blame myself, so I'm going to blame Bush because everyone likes to blame Bush.

Gatorade, Cash, and Barbie-Doll Legs

Gatorade is the bomb. I may like it even more than soda, which is saying a lot, but I get a better feeling like I'm being more healthy drinking Gatorade. Soda is just bad for you overall and makes no attempt to being beneficial, at least Gatorade gives the illusion that it can fuel you for the day (without using caffeine).

Anyway, I'm in sports photography this session. Now I need to go out and actually photograph people and go up and talk to human beings. Not because I want to get to know them, but because I want caption info. Who do you think I am, some kind of people person? Though, I'm looking forward to taking pictures of sports since I like them in general. I'm hoping to cover the track and field event at APU tomorrow, and I'm going down to LA for the marathon on Sunday. Awesome. I'm already hoping to take some pretty dang awesome pictures. I just wish my Nikon D70 was cooler than it is right now, which is not very cool at all. I'll manage.

Tim and I jammed last night from 7-10. That's a pretty long time to mess around on guitars and drums, but it was good. We mostly played worship music, and it was nice to do that for three hours. Not only is it good to sing praise to God for three hours, but it was a good time to practice. We even hooked up a mic, and I got to hear what my voice really does sound like when we play. You get that whole, "Oh my gosh! Is that what my voice sounds like" realization, and I didn't want to sing ever again. Oh, well. It's FUN to sing!

My last blog entry got some pretty negative responses regarding the album cover to Youth. Sorry if it really did offend anyone, but I've been putting album covers to lyrics I quote ever since the beginning. No need to be inconsistent because someone's Barbie-doll legs are on there. I've seen worse, and it isn't that bad anyway. C'mon, people. They're just legs.

...

Nevermind, you're right. I won't put covers like that on my blog again.

Ray Charles just came on my iTunes singing Georgia on My Mind. Now I feel like I miss a place I've never actually been to. Ray just reminded me to say that I finally watched Walk the Line last week. That movie and Ray gave me full confirmation that rock stars should NEVER be idolized. (Warning: Slight spoilers) I didn't like Johnny Cash's music that much, but I pretty much dislike him as a person now. Ray wasn't any better; in fact, he was worse in my mind. All this infidelity is really sickening, and Cash was totally ruthless to his first wife. The first three-fourth's of the movie I was just yelling at him, "Just divorce her already!" What a punk. His infatuation with June Carter felt more like an obsession than true love, as some would see it. But maybe I'm just being too critical of the man. He did change his ways later, and that's cool. Nothing like some redemption in a movie. And overall, it was a great movie about a musician's life. I just don't approve of the way he lived; I'm glad his latter half of his life was a bit better.

Okay, that's it. This blog is a little all over the place. Sorry about that. Maybe I should organize my blog entries like Mac does with titles and sections and stuff.

Better Now

Collective Soul's Youth

Better Now

I'm newly calibrated
All shiny and clean
I'm your recent adaptation
Time to redefine me

In between.

I apologize for the lack of posts on this blog. I just haven't been in the mood for it lately. It's probably because of a mixture of WoW, late-night television, hanging out with friends, and school. But it's probably mostly WoW.

So my session is over. I'm in the middle of break week, and I'm not doing anything special or going anywhere far away. I did debate whether or not to go up to Nor Cal, but I'm really low on money. Oh, well. I really wanted to see the family, but that is what you get for choosing a school 500 miles away. I managed to finish pretty strong in my class, pulling out an A- on my final project (5-10 minute documentary piece). I pretty much procrastinated till the very last week. I filmed for like three days of that week, then edited it all in one very long night. I'm so awesome. The teacher told me in the critique that the video was..."not bad." That's a compliment coming from him.

A friend of mine graduated after this session, and it made me realize that graduation is not far at all. It's a little scary to think that I won't be doing school anymore, and I will have to depend on myself from now on. I won't be able to pull the "Ask Mom and Dad for money" move after then. I'll need to find a good place to stay, pay my own bills, actually eat decent meals...being grown-up is a lot of doing things that aren't very fun. But then again, being a not-grown-up is a lot of that as well. I guess life won't be better or worse; it'll just be different.

Maybe I'll take that job at CityTeam.