It seems like New Years last year went by without any notice for me. I made no resolutions and thanks to all the fun I had at the Rich’s, I don’t really remember much of the celebration haha.
To be honest I’ve never really been someone that relied on New Years resolutions in order to make good changes in my life. In my mind it’s really just an opportunity to set yourself up for failure that’s so expected, when it happens there is no consequence. With a failure rate of 92%, it should come as no surprise that I don’t put much credence in them.
That being said, I am making a conscious effort to do a few things different in 2016 that I failed miserably in accomplishing in 2015. Continue reading →
What an awesome night tonight turned out to be. Twitter buddies @Airrun, @JHolman23, @jasetrevino and @Marris_Returns came over for wine, bread, cheese, and fun.
It was my first pseudo tweetup since moving back to San Francisco, the first time I had seen Jimmy since he moved here from Missouri and the first time I had the pleasure of meeting Jason or Aaron. We listened to music, watched some hilarious YouTube videos, talked about everything and nothing at the same time.
It was a pretty awesome night. Even Ryan got to join in on the fun which was such a pleasant surprise. Seems any other time we do something like this, his hectic work schedule gets in the way. Now I just can’t wait for the next time I have friends over for wine and a great time.
The photo of the day, way up there, is yet another one from the roof of our apartment shooting into the neighboring backyard. There is something about this particular apartment and their 6000 watt light that shines light pollution across the common grassy space between the buildings that is so romantic to me. It’s what I imagine a Gregory Crewdson photo would look like if he had a crew of one and a budget of none.
That might be the longest post title I’ve ever used.
There are few things in the world better than cupcakes and wine. I mean think about it. Excluding Life’s essentials, what’s better than delicious gourmet cupcakes and free wine? Nothing right? Not even cats in top hats!
Since Ryan was going to be working much of the time that I would be in California, I asked him to find a few things for me to do while I was out there. Ryan is incredibly good at this sort of stuff. He planned the epic spring break we had a few years that went from Kansas City to Buffalo New York to Niagara Falls Canada to Toronto to New York City to Washington DC and back to Kansas City. Quite possibly the best vacations of our lives.
Never to disappoint, Ryan managed to find three of my favorite things as events in the city. Cupcakes, wine tastings and a half-off coupon, in this case, all together. It’s the San Francisco Cake Moda Cupcake Wars at Crush Barrel Wine Market. I’m in and so were my friends Kevin and Dave.
We made the bus ride to San Francisco’s wharf to the Herbst Pavilion and readied our tickets, thanks Eventbrite and Yelp for the hookup. We were in for the gastronomic time of our lives. Right? There was lots of fun live music, great wines to try out and a coupon for $10 off any wine purchase. Win!
Alas, who knew it would be possible to go to an all-you-can-eat cupcake and wine tasting and not have a single cupcake? Also, who knew that not eating all day coupled with drinking lots of wine could be a bad idea?
Both lessons were learned on this voyage to Cupcake Desert, Wine Oasis. Apparently 1,000 other people had the same idea and the free cupcakes became $1-4 cupcakes and all you can eat became all you can afford and dare to wait in line for. We wandered around for a bit, enjoyed some wine, kevetched on the complete absence of free cupcakes, took some photos and eventually decided this wasn’t our scene.
Instead we opted for a cupcake from Ghiradelli Square and dinner with Ryan and Mark at Home.
The next morning I woke up extra early, picked up my rental car, a sweet Volkswagen Jetta and headed north to Healdsburg where a limousine, Kayla and a great time awaited me.
Is it ironic that the first web series that I was a part of, you might say the web series that took my virginity, was called The Virgin Mattress?
I’m going to go with Yes.
Mal and Grace at the Sleep Shoppe
Last week was one hell of a week. We shot The Virgin Mattress a web series that…
…tells the tales of Sleep Shoppe and sleepers just like you, who will benefit from a new bed. From mattresses passed down through the family tree to those destroyed by man’s best friend, the series will leave you laughing out loud – and dreaming for a virgin mattress of your very own.
I sure do hope it will leave you laughing out loud. The actors got more than a few unexpected laughs out of me. We all had such an awesome time on set shooting the show and catching behind the scenes photos and videos. Between Amy and I we captured as much as 80GB of footage and photos! That’s a lot.
The series launches mid October. Check out our YouTube channel to learn how to win a brand new fancy mattress. I can’t win but you totally (probably) can!
Any who, the week was incredibly busy but also a ton of fun, very much educational and at times, a test of everyone’s patience.
The cast and crew were awesome, and being an extra was hilarious. Oh and playing with RedOne cameras was a [nerdy] dream come true.
After shooting this series, despite the stress and long hours, I really can’t wait to do another. I have always wanted to produce high quality, funny and fun content, especially when in video form. This is my first foray into this avenue. Be sure that once I get my new Nikon DVSLR (Nikon D7000?) I’ll be all over shooting (hopefully) beautiful HD video.
Hope I will be as lucky to have so many talented, flexible and fun actors to work with, not to mention a crew that knows more about what there doing than could fill a 10 volume set.
Yeah, they might look a little… off but they totally know what they are doing. I swear.
I can't help but want to watch the Will Smith movie, Independence Day every Fourth of July. Just say'n.
Some how I managed to miss all the fireworks this Independence Day weekend. No worries, I had a great time with my friends drinking wine, listening to music and chowing down. David, Alex and I headed out to Les Bourgeois for their BBQ, live music, wine and awesome view of the river.
There were a ton of people there, not an open table in sight. Luckily this really nice, really redneck, family gave us some room at their table.
One thing I love about Les Bourgeois is the dramatic shifts in populations there. One moment someone is in heels and a sun dress and the next it's a guy in his rugby outfit. You just never know what you're going to get. All you really do know is there will be a lot of people there enjoying a lot of wine and some of the best food Mid-Missouri has to offer. Seriously good food.
Unfortunately it started raining, and then it stopped and then it started again… Yeah, so we went back to Columbia, before the fireworks show started. I got dinner at Flat Branch and then we headed to Tropical Liqueurs.
There we met up, by accident, with some friends both old and new. I have lived in Columbia for seven years and I still seem to meet new people regularly. That's pretty awesome.
Off to the condo where we watched a horrendous "scary" movie called The Fourth Kind.
Despite the lame movie, the Third of July turned out to be one of the best Fourth of Julys I've had in a long time. Good friends can do that.
On second thought… all the more reason to be sad about so many of my friends moving away!
Phoebe (@fotofobe) invited me out to Cafe Berlin (@CafeBerlin) for brunch with a friend of her’s from out of town. I of course had to accept the invitation, I mean, it’s freaking Cafe Berlin!
Being all photo nerds, we spent probably a good twenty minutes talking about photography and playing with our cameras, in the midsts of sticky syrup and slippery butter.
Phoebe got some pretty funny/embarrassing photos of me over on her blog. I definitely did not get any blackmail worthy shots of her haha.
And wouldn’t you know it? Bumped into a gaggle of my friends having brunch just a bit after we were finishing. Sometimes living in a small-ish town isn’t so bad. Randomly bumping into the people you love isn’t such a bad thing, huh?
Find them on twitter, well most of them, Justin (@joneal65203), Chadd (@Chadd65203) and Akiko (@akikooda). Afterwards I met up with Chase (@clettenberg) for a trip to the bike shop, some lunch and coffee at Starbucks.
All and all, a pretty great weekend, until I had to go to work of course. Then, back to work as usual. At least I got a few hour break before going back to the usual grind! Oh and the weather, awesome. Gotta jet.
Wow, I’m super late posting to the blog, as evidenced by this month and a half late post. Life has just been too busy what with work and school and a gallery show all coming together.
But I digress. January 22, my great friends Corey (@CoreySchmidt), Chase (@Clettenberg) and Sam (@SamuelAveryHunt) hosted a party themed, simply, “America!”
This party was a blast, as with just about all of their parties. USA cupcakes by Alex (@alexandrabrandt), costumes, a live DJ mixing music and more jello shots than were necessary.
I can’t wait for their next party. Perhaps I will finally show up in costume! I’ve only managed to pull that off on one occasion. Oh and maybe next time it won’t take me so long to write up a short blog post with a few pictures. Jeeze!
