Category Archives: Blog

Six days ago I turned twenty-five.

Six days ago marked the end of my first month in Los Angeles.

And the beginning of my second.

Funny Youtube video below!

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Saturday, Tony and I finally got ourselves down to Long Beach to see Star Trek: The Tour at the Queen Mary Dome, after driving up to Van Nuys to get his car window replaced after being smashed when somebody broke into it. And, though I didn’t know it at the time, in the course of our drive up to Van Nuys and back, we passed the Budweiser plant where they’re filming the new Star Trek movie.

Once at Long Beach, after going through some pretty stereotypical LA traffic, we parked after doing a loop or two around the docks area and bought our tickets. The thing was pretty cool; ship models abounded, as well as wall displays and videos of different behind the scenes aspects. There were also display cases set up with various props and latex masks, including one in which a prop had fallen over and was resting on the hot light in the middle of case, which had started to burn the plastic of the prop. Tony and I found a crewmember and let them know, saving a random piece of Star Trek history and getting the really nice program book and a crew shirt for free because of it.

Of course, the real fun aspect of the whole thing were the recreations of the Original Series and Next Generation bridges, as well as a TNG hallway and transporter room and partial Main Engineering room. Sadly, I have no pictures from either of the bridge sets or the transporter room, since it was a staged photo op setup, any personal photography was prohibited, and buying one of their photos was like eighteen bucks in the gift shop. Eff that.

But you didn’t have to pay extra to just sit in the captains’ chairs, and by god, that alone was worth the price of admission. If you’re into that sort of thing, of course. The tour is in Long Beach until March 2nd, after which it will set sail for various stops around the country. You can check out the website and the official tour schedule here.

In other news, Anthony called me with an interesting bit of information last night. You might’ve heard of Michel Gondry’s new film, Be Kind Rewind, in which Jack Black and Mos Def work at a video store and accidentally erase the entire contents of their store. In order to avoid getting fired and ending the movie prematurely, they set out to recreate all of their favorite movies themselves and pass them off for the real things, hoping they won’t notice.

Well, it seems that the Monsieur Gondry or someone associated with the film is a fan of The Injured Stormtrooper, as it is posted in the favorites section of Be Kind Rewind’s Youtube page. So that’s neat.

Finally, if you haven’t been keeping up with Great Recent Internet Battles lately, you might not have heard that a group calling itself Anonymous has “declared war” on the Church of Scientology. Over the past couple of months they’ve been conducting Denial of Service attacks against Scientology websites and spreading not-meant-for-public-eyes information about the religion (or cult, depending on your point of view) as fast and as wide as they could, preventing the CoS from taking legal action to stop it, as they’ve done in the past. Yesterday was the next step in Anonymous’ actions: a series of protests orchestrated all across the globe from Boston to Australia to California, at every major Scientology center they could.

Living in Los Angeles, you could pretty much count on something interesting going on in our neck of the woods. So Fig, Chloe, and I decided to head downtown with cameras in hand and check it out. I’ve written a recap here, and you can see the photos in that in my Flickr stream here.

We also got some video, which Fig edited into this last night.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience. I’ve written before (elsewhere, I think) about the electrifying nature of rallies, protests, and marches. Of course, there’s a fine line between march and mob, but still, to see hundreds and hundreds of people coming together to make their presence known and their voices heard – to fight against or for something – is a really remarkable experience.

It’s almost like we’re living in the 60′s or something.

Don’t take the lack of blogging for want of happenings. The events have been more wanton than want, but mostly of the menial, the slow and relatively gradual process of settling into a new place and making it into home, which in a lazy sort of chronological order:

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Welcome to Hollywood, where even your handyman has produced a feature film.

I’m not kidding.

Proper update coming soon.

Well…someday.

Virgin Galactic has just released photos of Spaceship Two, the follow up to the first commercial, manned spaccraft that also won the X-Prize. You can see the photos and read the press release and Richard Branson’s speech here.

And, Admiral…it is the Enterprise.

Isn’t it fun to live in the future?

I’m here. In Hollywood. In North Hollywood, specifically, but here nonetheless.

With little time and spare energy, I didn’t write in Phoenix and since I’ve arrived, I’ve been all over the place, either with stuff, or people, or just my head trying to wrap itself around it.

BUT! Let’s start from where we left off, shall we?

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Here in New Mexico, as I gather my things and get ready to head out on the road again, I flip on CNN, to get what I can of my news fix before I head out the door. And what is CNN doing a story on? A local man (that is, to South Jersey) who made sizable donations to a local community college and local high school (accompanied by the briefest of B-roll shots of the school itself) after a life of modest earnings and living.

That high school? St. Augustine Prep – my high school.

I had read briefly about it in the local paper and the alumni newsletter while home. And now here I am in the hills of New Mexico.

Small world.

I write from a Hampton Inn in Gallup, New Mexico, near the border to Arizona towards the north of the state.

Today began early; I had wanted to compensate for the relative lack of miles made yesterday, so I was out the door and on the road by 6:30 AM and well before the sun had begun lightening the sky. In fact, I was several miles down I-10 before the sun started to make its presence known, and I stopped to watch for a little bit, and watched the sun actually climb above the horizon a few miles further down the road. How often does one get the chance to watch a sun rise over Texas hill country?

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(Note: I’m cheating with the timestamp on this, backdating it to when I actually finished writing it, last night)

At the moment, I am writing from a Days Inn outside of San Antonio. I left New Orleans yesterday morning, after spending the previous day there, and took the scenic route through southern Louisiana to Houston, meeting up with Anthony at Johnson Space Center around four in the afternoon.

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How does a cross-country trek to a new chapter on one’s life start? Why, in rush hour traffic of course. The first twenty-minutes or so were completely indistinguishable from any random school day from the past year. But soon enough, I was past Full Sail and past my commute for the last time. And as I sped down the 408 and past Goldenrod, I put that time behind me (Get it? Behind me? Deal with it, I’m tired). And further down the road, I sped past other places and other times, some years old and others only months.

Further down on the 408, going to Fig and Chris’ for Geekza. Then merging onto I-4, passing International Drive, seeing that one improv group at that shitty pizza place and then playing that same place with Random Acts a couple months later, past where Jungle Jim’s used to be with all those trips out just for burgers, past Universal and Rocky Horror and meeting George Takei and Billy West, past the Convention Center with all the sci-fi conventions that come with it, past Seaworld with Ryan, Gladys, and Leslie, past Disney with Rob and Jane and visiting the family on Sammy’s first trip there, and off towards Lakeland to see Brick with Travis and Christa and further on, toward Tampa to see Aaron and Jamie.
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