Holiday rush

Warner Bros. is pulling off some great viral marketing for The Dark Knight. Check out the following sites, and click around for some creepy surprises:

http://www.whysoserious.com/
http://www.rorysdeathkiss.com/
http://www.thegothamtimes.com/
http://www.thehahahatimes.com/
http://www.gothamcityrail.com/
http://www.rememberinggina.org/
http://www.gothampolice.com/
http://www.gothamnationalbank.com/
http://www.wearetheanswer.org/



Anyways,

didn't have much of a Thanksgiving "break".

I mean, everything was fine-- a nice turkey dinner with the family, hanging out with visiting college buddies, another family get together, work inbetween everything-- it was all good. Just didn't get to find any quiet time for myself during these past few days.

I thought I'd finally rest well tonight, but little did I know that party guests were coming over with children. And like always, the parents tell their kids to go play with Jae hyoung/oppa. Thank God that I'm always able to divert at least 70% of their attention and energy to the television-- it cuts me some slack.


No big plans for tomorrow... no plans.

Untitled short

Been pretty busy with work and some other things. In my spare time, I've been gathering ideas and storyboarding for a short film that I'm currently working on.

I'm hoping to start filming very soon!

It was tough finding a person willing to play the part; the main character in this story holds a mixture of strong emotions, and I needed an actor who could express those emotions clearly through physical expression. Luckily, one of my co-workers, Nick, is an aspiring actor who very much enjoys theatre. After approaching him with this project, he was more than happy to work with me.

One day at work, Nick wanted to perform a monologue from Macbeth that he once performed in an acting class; He wanted to give me an audition. It was during our break in the lunch room, and although I felt kind of odd about Nick performing something Shakespeare at work, I had to accept this strange opportunity because really, who else would voluntarily do this during my lunch break?

Nick nervously started out his first lines, but progressively dove deeper into his character. I was very surprised to see how much enthusiasm he had for the material, and how well he acted out the monologue. Honestly, you would look at Nick and not immediately expect this guy to pull off such a great monologue. He has a great talent and understanding for theatre, and I'm hoping that Nick will share those same qualities for his character in the short film we'll be making.

The short will be a character study about a man who takes a joke too seriously, and how he approaches his following actions.

Lock-In

On Thursday night, the youth group teachers came together to practice their skit for the youth "Lock-In" event. The skit is a 300 parody, which shows what life was like "Before They Were Spartans".


The lock-in event ended this morning-- and man, it sure was one heck of a night.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that we underestimated the number of students coming to the event. Although having the unexpected large attendance was great, I got real worried about the crowd control, especially during the scavenger hunt run around Mountain View. Thankfully, all of that went smoothly.

The night got pretty wild, and things only slowed down to a crawl at around five in the morning. After the painful wake-up call, breakfast, prize give aways, and student departures, I was forced to lay down on the ground and reward myself with three long hours of sleep before going about the rest of my Saturday.


During the early stages of prepping for the lock-in, I initially thought the preparation for the whole thing was going to turn out to be a logistical nightmare. The funny thing is, I had a bad dream about the lock-in during the night before the event. Basically, the lock-in was happening, and everything went haywire; there was a lack of preparation, students looked dreadfully bored, and for some reason I blacked out somewhere during the event, which served more negative consequences.

I woke up that Friday morning, a couple hours prior to the time I planned on waking up, and strangely, I felt very calm about everything. I had a blast during the lock-in. When it was done, I was very relieved to find myself not feeling burdened at all.

But still, there are physical costs of holding a nonstop 20 hour shift. I'm relaxing in front of my computer right now, and I know that this isn't the best way to recuperate. It won't be long before my body will throw itself onto a nearby mattress.

Writers' strike

Executive producer Carlton Cuse of "Lost" writes on his sign: "Do you want to know what the island is?"



I believe the studio is still deciding on whether to air the eight finished episodes written for "Lost's" fourth season, or postpone the premiere until the strike ends.

I'm kind of glad that I'm not caught up to the third season yet. I started watching the first season to "Lost" very recently, so I guess I'm not feeling as much pressure now about completing the other two seasons in time for January. But, when I eventually finish watching all of it, the studio had better start letting Cuse answer that question.

Fox has already made their move on "24". The seventh season will not air its premiere in January. As an avid fan of this show, I don't know whether to be more let down as a fan, or supportive for the writers' cause. I'm thinking, "Yeah, good for them-- it's about time." But, I know in the back of my head that I'm itching to see Tony Almeida (and possibly Michelle, David Palmer... and heck, maybe even Teri Bauer) come back from the dead. I'm waiting to see just how far the creators are willing to go in heightening my suspension of disbelief this time. They pulled off an evil President in season five. I guess a dead character returning can't be that questionable (?).


My hope is for this strike to be effective, beneficial to the creative community... and quick. Please make it quick.

Outside production

A few excerpts from The New York Times:

He is here in London filming the latest episode of the "Batman" franchise, "The Dark Knight." (Mr. Bale, as it happens, plays Batman; Mr. Ledger plays the Joker.) It is a physically and mentally draining role — his Joker is a “psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy” he said cheerfully — and, as often happens when he throws himself into a part, he is not sleeping much.

“Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night,” he said. “I couldn’t stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.” One night he took an Ambien, which failed to work. He took a second one and fell into a stupor, only to wake up an hour later, his mind still racing.

He carries his interests around with him, and his kitchen table was awash in objects: a chess set, assorted books, various empty glasses, items of clothing. Here too was his Joker diary, which he began compiling four months before filming began. It is filled with images and thoughts helpful to the Joker back story, like a list of things the Joker would find funny. (AIDS is one of them.) Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he had been caught trying to get extra credit in school.

This is blowing my curiosity-- what are the Nolan brothers filming?

Religion

It's a touchy subject ain't it?

I was working one night, closing the store down with a couple of my co-workers. One of them came over and playfully took my phone to check it out. (Let's call her "Jen") Jen searched through my pictures and asked me who this particular person was. "That's one of my youth group boys whom I teach." As if she had the most awful taste in her mouth, Jen's immediate response was "Ew, you're a Christian?"

My other co-worker (Let's call him "Bob") overheard this and assured her that there was nothing wrong with what I believed in. For the next half an hour, Jen decided to strike up a conversation about how she moved away from her faith. Bob too shared about how he eventually moved away from his faith as well.

It's not something you'd normally talk about with your co-workers who aren't close, or when you're hanging out with your friends at a party-- religion. Something always goes sideways, and that night it did. Jen struck up rhetorical questions like "If God existed, than why did He let the holocaust happen? Why did he cause so many wars?" and more peculiar ones like "Can you have sex in heaven?" They were all excellent questions. Jen was on a roll, and began questioning my actions as a believer. "Jae, do you watch porn? Don't you have porn on your computer?"


Ok, whoa.

It's all good to talk about religion with me, but there are more sensible ways in carrying out a mutual conversation. I knew Jen was trying to prove me wrong, or say that I'm no better. And at that moment, I was thinking: what if I told her I was a Buddhist? Or if I believed in Islam? I wonder if she would've given me more or less heat.

There was nothing wrong with what she was telling me. If I was in her position, I think I'd like to get more creative with making up more counter arguments against the Bible. And that can never get tiresome; I mean really, it's a given to ask an infinitive amount of questions about something that you don't clearly see in front of you.

But, it's interesting to see how anyone could easily dump so much unwanted responsibility onto another person. I say that I'm a Christian, and a person against it will bring in a lot of preconceived ideas about who I am. In this case, I'm expected to be a monk.

One of the many methods of holding onto any kind of belief is gained through accountability. It's encouraging to find that the more I come across people like Jen, the more I find them accountable to my own faith.

Vows

There was a wedding today. Weddings are always nice to be at; a celebration for a friend who found love. The mini sermon given by the pastor got a hold of my attention as he explained the significance of "leaving" and "cleaving" during the beginning process of marriage.

Leaving the sinful single lifestyle, and attaching oneself to another person in good faith. Most importantly, intrusting that relationship in Christ.

I don't know about anyone else, but that last part added a whole new dimension to my understanding of taking up those vows. I'll admit that my idea of marriages vaguely centered on Christ being the one holding it together. It was there-- I know being a Christian and all was a good thing in a marriage, but it was hard to understand how not having God focused on the picture could take all that away.

There is so much more to it than just simply giving all your care to another person, and it's one of those things that easily slip out the other ear when your eyes start wandering off again.

Fresh

This is new.

After shutting down my account on Xanga, I've realized that I still needed a place to write down thoughts. It was a bit difficult making the decision to permanently erase everything I had on that account. As a member of it since 2003, I spent a lot of time using that blog site. Aside from being just a place to write down things I did during that day, complaints, or embedded photos and video, it was good a crutch that I needed to use for myself from time to time.

Why then...
It could of been the little things about Xanga that bothered me-- like the lost of community. A part of me probably felt like erasing it because it simply just wasn't me. You don't want to have someone else reading that when you're not around anymore. Maybe I was ashamed of it, too. Heh, I'm either really unsure of my real reason, or I'm not letting the truth out!




Anyways, I'm not sure how consistent I'll be with this blog. Right now, I can say that I won't have a problem with not hiding anything on these pages. I had to be careful and conscious about leaking too much information out on Xanga. Eventually, it didn't feel like a nice crutch to lean on anymore.

Why not just write in a personal journal, and not on a world wide website? To an extent, this counts as an accountability option in my book.