Sleepover poppin'

Q: When was the last time I went to a sleepover!?
A: Yesterday at Jaydee's house!

NO WAY!

• Loooong drive to Riverside, arrived there with other XC '09ers at around 9PM and ate most of a huge flying saucer pizza - the kind of pizza large enough to fully encase a child under the age of three.
• Played BALDERDASH for many many hours. YEEAAAHHHHH FUN! Answer highlights from the game that I (well, mainly Veronica) can remember:

--SCRAP (anagram) =
Secret Carriers of Rats and Pigeons
Scary Clowns Rapping About Pie
Sick Children Race Across Philadelphia
--The Day the Fish Came Out (movie) =
A fish is eaten by a bear and has adventures in his stomach. One day, the fish comes out.
A boy hits puberty and can't control himself.
A gay fish admits he wants to go to TigerHeat.
--The Mysterious Mr. Wong (movie) = Frankie exposed!
--Soosoo (word) = What you dodo when someone hurts you.
--Fundungi (word) = A recreational game played in Poland where five people gather around and... git crunk.
--MEG acronym apparently has something to do with gorillas.
--NPPA =/= NAPA
--Guch.
--In Illinois, it used to be illegal for women weighing more than 200 pounds to ride a horse in shorts. (That's actually true, albeit hilariously disgusting to imagine.)
--Happy Birthday to the ground.

I KNOW there's more to this list... so if anyone thinks of anymore, just hit me up, then I'll hit this up, and that's how we'll hit it up. That's like a 3x COMBO.

• Played some Rockband 2 and Beatles Rockband. British accent not required to sing, although recommended for added flare. BYTHEWAY, how come when British people sing, their accent sounds like an American one? Ya think they think that of us? If I ever meet up with a fellow from the U.K., that shall me my number one question.
• "Let's play TOD!" "Yeah!.." We never did.
• "Let's play cards!" "Yeah!.." We never did.
• "Let's sleep!" We did.
• Slept from 3am-10:30am... (cue piano transition from night to day)
• Ate a delicious breakfast from Jaydee's dad and sister! Egg/ham, toast, and waffos. BTW Jaydee, his dad, and his sister were such great hosts! (Hosts? Is that the word?) They spent a lot of time to cook all this food for us and I just wanted them to know how much we all appreciate it! (Yes, by talking about it in a blog post online.)
• More Rockband, more pizza, more Balderdash, more food.

Before we got a chance to combine our experience by playing RockbalderBandash, it was already 5pm today! We had spent almost almost 24 hours over there. And so, with reluctance to leave the magical realm that is Jaydee's Riverside house, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the not-as-comparatively-magical realm that is our regular lives in Cerritos. But that was probably the most fun I've had this entire winter break! Thanks for the memories! (Even if they ARE so great..! Get it? Get it? FOB reference cmon.)


Sidenote of unrelatedness:
This post will most likely be my last post. EVER. My very last entry for this Kanga!! So I hope you've enjoyed it! YAY!.. because yeah, I'm moving my blog to somewhere else (assuming you're reading this on the old site), so technically it's not going AWAY, I'm just leaving Blogspot. Within a week your eyes shall gaze upon my brand new website! I just hope it'll meet your... approval... oh ho ho pish posh jolly good then teaser of the sort g'day!


carry on my wayward son.

Is Santa a mutant?

Because that would explain a lot. It would explain how he can make reindeer fly, mind control elves to build toys, squeeze through any chimney, make his cheeks so rosy, and stay the same age and never die with such a rotund figure. It's called the Mutant Santa Theory.

Now a list with bullet points:

• Woke up at 7 and played Metroid Prime. I'm ALMOST done with the first game, I think I just need two more Chozo Artifacts I think.
• Watched It's A Wonderful Life in its entirety for the first time. Boy is it a good movie! The pacing is incredibly well done considering how a lot of them black and white movies tend to be a little slow, but that's just the filmnerd talking here. But man I got choked up at the very end. Hotdog!
• Opened up gifts with the familia at around 11 o'clock! To put the sum on things, I got a few shirts, a couple movies, some Mickey Mouse gloves, some other stuff, and a few art books! THANKS EVERYONE! Much more exciting than a DVD-ROM drive. Who would want THAT for Christmas?
• Ate yumlicious fish samiches that my mom cooked. WHOA, yumlicious, too lame/good of a word to find out someone else had thought of it before me so declining to search for it on Google!
• Animated some Flash with Flash. Sentence also reworded as: animated with Flash, Flash. Also, the following is a grammatically correct sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Crazay!
• Read some of my drawing book. Ironic?
• Went to the 2nd Uncle's house and partied it up there with cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and unknowns.
• Favorite dinner foods: salad (surprising that I really enjoyed the salad?!), corn beef hash (though I like my parent's version better), and sauced chicken thing (what?).
• I think this is my first time karaoking, not counting Singstar or Rockband! It's especially fun to play with some elder Asian people who sing just 1 noticeable second late to the words on screen.
• White Elephant is also especially fun with horrible gifts and an incredibly sarcastic family. I got two wooden duckies, although now that I think about it, I probably should've gotten that picture frame. Hm. Oh well, I shall paint these duckies, and they shall be marvelous mallards.
• Went home sorta earlyish!
• Finished that Flash Flash animation.
• Typed this up.
• Went to sleep.

This Christmas was, for a lack of less-boring words, pretty good. (BUUHHHH "pretty good"?! That phrase should no longer be part of my repertoire of phrases! Someone hit me up with something better to replace it!) I felt really grown-up-ish this year (although not so grown up enough to use real words) because I didn't have that feeling of "I need to wake up so I can open my presents!". One possible reason is that now that I have a job that I work at for more than 3 hours a week (HAHA), I can pretty much buy whatever small luxury I want now. I could easily drive to the store and buy any game, any toy, any program of my desire without having to wait until that one special day of the year. In a way this growth takes away a lot of my innocence and replaces it with independence. No one told me that independence would make Christmas feel... less magical.

But don't get me wrong, Christmas is still awesome. Just a different kind of awesome nowadays.

So merry it, everyone! Merry Christmas!

Spacefood

YEAH! Good video quality version of this video now online! For those of you who don't know what Spacefood is, I animated this video during the summer for the Top Animator contest on Freshbrain (and got 1st!.. so money and a bunch of Skullcandy stuff). The rules were pretty much make an animated film that's 3 minutes or less.

It took me a couple weeks to plan it out and a couple months to animate it. I think? All of July and August? Something like that. Well I don't really have much behinds the scenes like concept art or anything... other than every time I worked on this, I always got the song "Spaceman" by The Killers stuck in my head. Which isn't a bad thing, one of my favorite songs.

My global position systems are vocally addressed
They say the Nile used to run from East to West

BOOM smile

Example sentence from my class presentation when reading from a paper:

"These measures are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process and are proven safe and effective."

Example sentence from my class presentation when improvising:

"And that was kinda like 'whoa'."

Yeah I was never what you'd describe as"debonair" when it came to presentations in front of the class. In fact, fast thinking constantly failed me whenever I was in an uncomfortable situation, so I tend to keep my mouth shut in new situations. This is why my voice in this Kanga sounds different than my voice in real life! I'm TELLIN' ya!

But blah blah introspective silly-nannies. Yknow what that group presentation in my CriticalThinking class indicates??

Winter Break!

It starts now! For me, anyway. It was my last final! My final final, if you will. That means 5 weeks of partying it up with friends, family, and of course, Santa! For me, anyway.

One of the things I'll miss about good ol' Whitney High School is the last school day right before Christmas break. It's like BOOM present there BOOM more presents there BOOM holiday flood of cheer! I talked about this last Christmas, so I'll spare you anymore detailed BOOM descriptions, but that day was always something to look forward to.

For CSUF, the week before winter break is finals week, so it's more like BOOM take this test BOOM turn in this project BOOM go home bye. No bags full of gifts. No dressing up like Santa. No Christmas parties where you bring food and end up pigging out on hard cookies, Ralphs brownies, and Ruffles chips. It's the magical festivities that I'm missing and the magical festivities that I miss.

Fortunately it hasn't reached that point of sadness. Actually, oppositely, yesterday I was incredibly happy. With everything. Which I believe sounds peesey weesey ham on cheesey, but I'm incredibly satisfied with where I am for these following reasons:

• Fwends - BUH yeah I'm talking about friends again, but I like em! One of the best things about commuting is that if I make new friends at school, we can just go like "hey, wanna hang out during winter break?" "Sure. I live right over there." HAH take that, dormers with friends-from-different-states! One for the commuters.
• Fwends - The Whitney ones, because they're still cool, and they shan't be replaced.
  
• Painting class - Next semester I'm taking a painting class, which I was DREADING more than Dread Pirate Roberts (although I don't think Westley was actually necessarily fearing anything, the title probably came with the position.) But now, it doesn't seem so bad! What if I become a great painter! WHICH IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE. Though I'll never leave graphite - my first love.
• Art in general - I like art. I am glad I am an artist. No need for elaboration here.
• Work - I've said it before and I'll say it again (my name is K-E-V-I-N!), I feel super lucky to have the job that I have. I actually enjoy it very much, and I'm not used to associating pleasure with "work" (sorry, Quest kids, but teaching you guys were like trying to direct a storm).

The weird thing was that these thoughts came about between finishing my art piece final (which turned out kind of bad) and preparing for my marijuana presentation (which turned out okay), which, contrary to popular practice, would not usually occur during a moment of great stress. But it did. Not sure what that was all about.

Since I'm getting distracted with these Barats&Bereta videos after some Googling, I'll just end with this list I thought to make right now.

How to Handle Happiness
1. Identify it. Make sure you know everything that is making you happy and understand why you're feeling that way.
2. Let others know. Put on a good attitude to make others feel better. BUT DO NOT be a douche about it, bragging about great you feel, especially if someone else is not having such a fantastic day. If you act douchey you'll end up being a douche. Speaking of which, I find jokes about douches hilarious. Now you know how to tickle my funny bone.
3. Capture it. The thing about emotions is that they are constantly changing. So the most important step-thing is to value what you go. Milk it out for all its worth because you never know how long it'll last or if you'll even get it back again. Never take happiness for granted.

Kevin used Pencil!

(click.)
Those are my sketches I called "The Valiant", reason being I like the word "valiant". It's just an "over the shoulder peak into Kevin's artistic endeavors" kind of thing, complete with added captions. They're all reference drawings (I didn't just make them up) I drew a few months ago from Flickr.com. Actually, you can find most of the stuff I draw in my green sketchbook from my Flickr account where you can see what I've already drawn and what I will post in the fuuUUuuture.

I was gonna write more in this post, but it's late and I am sleepier than that Pokemon Drowsy, and lemme tell ya, that guy is sleepy all day every day. That must be depressing, don't you think? Living your life, never really being fully awake. I'm pretty sure that's already some kind of disease. It sucks even more because it looks like some unattractive bipedal anteater in poop shorts. I would probably kill myself if I were Drowsy.

So yup, gotta go sleep before I die. Sort of ironic? Maybe. Good night.


P.S. Both Blogspot and Photobucket wouldn't let me upload the pic at its original resolution. Imageshack to save the day!!

Suddenly He Sees!

Final contemp video to showcase is IN DA HOUSE!:

In Blindsight

This is the story of a blind guy who miraculously gains the ability to see! It's based on a real story that we made up in our heads, although it's possible that this actually happened.

Behind the Scenes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Actually this is pretty much commentary.

• My original idea for the film had the same tone as a Will Farrell / Adam Sandler movie, plus an episode of My Name Is Earl. Sorta turned out like that not really? And ironically, I'm not a big fan of Adam Sandler, but I can totally imagine him blind.
  
• The first scene was gonna be in a super market, but shooting in a house is about 6x easier. Also, we could film at night even though it's supposed to be morning (which is what happened).
• That cereal box in Thomas's grocery bag is open. Haha Let's assume his character was munching on his way home.
• Thomas walking home was the second scene we shot.
• The idea of running Thomas's hand against the wall was from the movie Daredevil.
• WHY THE HECK did we choose the house with mirrors all over the walls?? It's like those carnival mirror mazes in there!! (But not really I could easily find my way around.) That explains all the weird angles we had to get. Look closely and you might catch a glimpse of the camera or light in the reflection.
• We were supposed to film a quick scene showing how Thomas and Jonathan met a la flashback, but we didn't have the time.
• Thomas had to change his shirt because that scene was filmed out of order on different days and he wore different shirts. Yeah, in the movie it really makes no sense at all.
• Jonathan is naked because "underwear" was a requirement for the film. Wait, why did we have him take off his shirt too?
• The first person views were filmed by me and Craig. Bonus points to whoever can figure out which one of us filmed which scene.
• Originally we were gonna have scenes of Thomas physically showing Jonathan all the cool stuff in the house, but Jonathan wasn't there at the time, so we shot the scenes with me as the body double. Yup, Thomas was telling me about the stuff as I stood to the side with just my arm in the frame to make it look like Jonathan was really there. Not sure where that footage is now.
• "I can see clearly now, the pain is gone" (song by Johnny Nash) was the required song lyric for the film. However, Thomas messed up and followed with the line "I see all my obstacles!".
• And again, Thomas had to change his shirt to match later footage.
• The VERY FIRST scene we shot that wasn't in the movie was Thomas running into the girl's bathroom because he doesn't recognize signs after he got sight. Yeah it was at an early stage and we weren't really sure where the movie was going...
• The chase scene music used to be the theme from Benny Hill.
  
• If you watch the sky during the chase scene, it gets dark quickly because the scene took so long to film. (We were gonna refilm the end of it but didn't have the time.) Actually almost EVERY scene was annoyingly difficult to shoot because daylight savings always turned the lights off fast and early.
• They watched Saw II before they watched Saw I, not sure how or why that happened. In other words, they saw Saw II, then saw Saw too. (HAHA.)
• Thomas was supposed to break down after an un-shot scene (yes another) of him running to the library and realizing he can't read the books because they don't have braille (which is why he mentioned it as his "favorite activity" in the beginning).
• In the emo montage, the orange and yellow toy Thomas is playing with was in one of the body double scenes that got cut.
• We filmed a scene with Thomas and Jonathan making up and becoming "buddies" again, but Mr. Z hated it, and it WAS admittedly corny. So out it went.
• "Float On" by Modest Mouse was TOTALLY going to play at the happy end scene, but it had to get booted down to just the credits.
• HOLD THE PHONE... I accidentally uploaded some of the audio for the never-used make up scene! It's at 14:45, the very end of the clip. Hehehe that's awkward.

Ahhh I'm gonna miss that class.

Thanks for everyone who helped with the film!!

Credits on the Vimeo page!!

Fallin', Fallin', Fallin', Fallin'...

Do you ever start singing a song and then have that song change into a totally different song? And then your mind is just stuck on that one segment of notes that bridges the two parts? Yknow what I mean??

I was telling Craigo the other day that my Ghostbuster's theme song always turns into "In Too Deep" by Sum 41. He helped me solve the problem.

Right now I sometimes get stuck when "1901" by Phoenix turns into "Kids" by MGMT. I go "girlfriend, no your girlfriend, duh duh duh trippin away... past and present eighty fifty five nineteen oh-one duh nuh nuh must've hurt a lot I guess not... control yourself... take only what you neeeed from it...". I don't even know if those are the right lyrics, and they probably aren't. But that's how I sing it! And it gets stuck like that sometimes!

OH dude I should make up a word for that.

Songzitions.

BOOM done. Twas a combo of "song" and "transition".

songzition - occurs when often misinterpreted notes of a song trigger a person's mind to change songs in mid-singing.
Example: (see paragraph of "1901" and "Kids")

When I started writing this entry, I never intended to make up a new word... oh well. I just did it. THAT. JUST. HAPPENED. (Was that a Will Farrell movie quote? Anyone know which one? Talladega I'm thinkin'?) No I was actually gonna talk about college. HUZZARS!


Lemme first declare that yesterday was all kinds of boring. Here's what happened:

• Go to art! I don't feel like drawing.
• We get let out an hour and a half early. Almost 2 hours till work.
• Walkin' around... lookin' for friends... search ends zero results...
• Library is interesting??
• It isn't.
• I try to draw... end up drawing man out of proportion. For me, that's quite demoralizing - drawing a person that doesn't look like a person. That's like eating a cake that tastes like broccoli YES THAT ANALOGY APPLIES. (assuming you don't like broccoli? I'm actually impartial to it.)
• I fall asleep on the desk (first nap at college!!)
  
• Wake up, go to the end of an art club meeting.
• Blah blah go to work, more boring stuff ensues, and so on.

Yup, my day was about as interesting as riding in a car blindfolded. I mean, you can twirl your thumbs a little, but other than that, you just gotta sit there YES THAT ANALOGY APPLIES AS WELL.

But today was all kinds of FUN! At least more than usual.

• Got to school, drew a picture of an epic old guy in my sketchbook from the computer. Life needs more epic old people. I'd love to see a few dozen Gandalfs running around the street... but at the same time I'd be terrified.
  
• In math we learned how to find the area of a shape! Yeah actually that might be a downside of the day. OH but upside, I finished my homework for Tuesday! So peanut butter kudos.
  
• Hung out with some people from my 2D Design class. I consider them my friends now, AND YKNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!? I have at least one friend in all of my classes! Awesome-sauce! Most of them are Asian though. Not sure why I'm pointing that out...
• It was "Snow Day" at CSUF and they had a snow slide and a snow pit thing with a snowman. I was hanging out with Jackson (a guy I hang out with) and he said "I kind of want to go on that slide." "Yeah, me too." "Let's do it!" So we did. Twice. And it was fun.
• While waiting for my food at Green Burrito, a guy said to me "hey, you dropped your money". I look down at the ground and there's a wad of cash on the floor. "Holy smokes! How foolish of me!" I says in my head. I pick up the bills, it equaled at least $50.00! I then realized "wait a minute... I only had three dollars in my wallet..". Turns out some other guy behind me dropped it. I happily handed it back to him and he said thank you with that "OH WHA..." look on his face, probably thinking "Holy smokes! How foolish of me!". As he walked away I mumbled a "Merry Christmas..!".
  
• I hung out with Jackson a lil more, then went to my freehand drawing art class...
• ...which really wasn't painful at all! So that's new. It was just a general relaxing work day and I got to awkwardly draw one of my classmates upon the professor's request.

So to sum up the excitement of those bullet points, yesterday was boring and today was fun. Odd how the quality of the days can vary so much for no real reason, dontcha think? Unlike similar sounding songs, life often has no transitions.

SO DEAL.

Unrelatedly...

HAHA while I was watching The Office just now, I switched to Supernatural during the commercial. Here's what I saw:

-Guy A reading a book... in the dark.-

-Guy A turns around and Guy B is in the room with him-

A: Where've you been?

B: Jerusalem.

A: How was it?

B: Arid.

...Nope.



Finally in Kevin's Mundane Life News, my Christmas tree is up, now complete with big pockets of darkness from the unevenly placed Christmas lights! Holiday spirit deliciousness!!