Weekly Review

Review of my week
At work, I am officially "Publicity and Marketing Assistant" now instead of "Intern." Also, it's snowing. Again.

Review of a book
This week, I review The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia. You can read my review on my writing blog.

Review of a podcast
This week was the final episode of the "Ricky Gervais Guide to" series. The tenth episode is the Guide to the Earth. I'd call this one in the top three funniest episodes of the series. The best part is when Ricky and Steve ask Karl to explain scientifically how the Earth formed and how life came to be on it. Karl's understanding of science is so simplistic that he ended up sounding more like the Bible than a science book. He said that from the nothingness came "greenness" and after the greenness came "otherness." Here's the free sample clip of the episode that they released from iTunes. Poor Suzanne has a lot to put up with.

Our podcast -- part 4 (episode 2) is up!

For anyone who doesn't know, I do a podcast with Lindsey, Nicole, and Luke. And then I animate it. I worked all weekend on part 4 and now it's done! So check it out.

Nicole tries to rescue the show as the rest of the Scooby gang loses their composure partway through a history lesson on clambakes. And then an anecdote about the post office degrades into a discussion on terrorism.



http://werenotjohn.blogspot.com/

News

1. Job news

Unfortunately, I did not get the job that I interviewed for last week, which is disappointing because it was a great position, but it does mean I can enjoy my new responsibilities at my internship longer.


2. Ricky Gervais Show Episode 1

Here's the first HBO episode of the animated podcast by Ricky Gervais. The animation's not bad--purposely retro. They didn't pick the funniest moments, but Ricky says the show gets funnier by the episode. I like the theme song. There's something familiar about it.

Click here for a funny anecdote by Karl that shows that he's not the only strange one of the bunch. (It's only a minute long.)



I worked on my own animated podcast for about five hours yesterday. There are a couple minutes that are absolutely hilarious. People keep telling me that when they watch it, they wake up their family members or dog or whatever. I guess people watch it late at night. Let's have a tally to see how many people I've woken up across the globe via podcast.


3. Zen in the Art of Writing

I read the writers craft book Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. Brilliant book. Very inspiring. Here's some lessons and quotes from the book on my writing blog.

events on the horizon

Beast kast
I just attended my first live cast over on rhettandlink/live. That's a live stream video of Rhett and Link talking and answering questions from people who can talk at them in the chat room. They didn't answer my questions, but it was still a pretty cool hour. You can watch the replay on the link above.

Upcoming events
March 5 -- I might go see Ryanhood if I can figure out where to get tickets
March 26 -- I'm going with a friend to see Lee Camp's big comedy show
April 1 -- I might go see Among the Oak and Ash if I can afford it

Current Projects

Writing
I'm on chapter 20 out of 24 of my interactive fiction project, Burbank with a Baedeker. More on that next month.
A new story is also in it's premier stages.

Podcast
I did about an hour on part 4 of episode 2 of We're Not John Stamos. It's about clambakes.

Reading
Currently reading The Secret History of Moscow

Social media wizard

My favorite thing I heard on the subway this week: "Today is a holiday, so trains are running on a weekend schedule. There will be no B, V, or W trains. That's B as in Boy, V as in Victor, and W as in Water." Who in the world mishears the letter W?

I'm still doing tons of social media at work. Studies show that people are surfing the net via recommendations of their friends on social media a lot more than surfing via search engines. Here's a song from Rhett and Link about social media:



Yeah, since the T-shirt War, I've subscribed to Rhettandlink on YouTube and have been catching up on some videos. Here's some favorites: Drive-thru folk song, Space Junk song, Perfect Bathroom Trip song, follow up vlog about how Jamie from Mythbusters doesn't wash his hands, prank.

media news

Happy Valentine's Day

A bit of Red Dwarf

One of our authors at work is going to be on Craig Charles' radio show .

This week on Robert Llewellyn's Car Pool is RD writer Rob Grant and Llewellyn's new show Gearless is live.

Check out Danny John Jules' new YouTube channel.

Other media news

Splice is getting a wide-ish release in summer!

Saw the new comercial for this show:

I have mixed feelings about this poster. The slogan is cute and "a series of off-color conversations" is appropriate. But I remember how funny Ricky thought the poster for The Invention of Lying was because he was airbrushed to death on it. Looks a bit of that here too--did they fix his teeth on it? Also, the cartoon would be more accurate if he were wearing PJ bottoms than Jeans and a belt. Haha.

New preview clip about dinosaurs.

Live clips below...

This is probably my favorite one because Ricky and Steve absolutely lose it twice because Karl tries to remember the phrase about being a big fish in a small pond and ends up talking about a pond in "someone else's garden."

Karl tries to explain how babies are made via yogurt:

Oh, and I also saw that new tv show SURVIVORS. Tons of recognizable faces: 3 from Dr. Who, 1 from Torchwood, 1 from Demons, and even Phil Rhys who I haven't seen since the Disney Channel's Zenon. There was some potential with the subject of having over 90% of the world killed off in a flu virus, but none of the characters are engaging enough to bring me back. And the big mystery coverup seems like a superficial government conspiracy that's been done before.

Crazy Day

First of all, let's get this out of the way:

Happy Chinese New Year.

We had our "blizzard" this week. I didn't think it was that bad--just a bit of Wisconsin weather, really, but it's a blizzard to New York because they shut down all the schools. One man's snow is another man's storm.

Yesterday was a little crazy. I had an interview in the morning. I felt that it went pretty well, but time will tell. I've got my fingers crossed on this one because it's an excellent position with an excellent company. Granted, I would be sad to leave my internship at such a critical moment. They're giving me a title now, rather than just "intern" and way more responsibilities and some more hours. I'm social networking it up over there. You can follow us on Facebook and Twitter if you want. We have five imprints, so five facebooks (one, two, three, four, five) and five Twitters (one, two, three, four, five).

An then to make things really interesting, when I got to my internship after the interview, there was a building on fire literally around the corner from my job.

"NEW YORK -- An explosion in a transformer underneath a Manhattan sidewalk sent flames up the front of a landmark building Thursday, shattering windows and blackening the front of several stories. No injuries were reported." --silive.com

Time for a laugh

Comedians
Above is a drawing in my drawing journal of some of my favorite comedians--drawn with pencil, painted in Photoshop.

Page 1: Michael Palascak, Danny Kaye, Josie Long, Lee Camp
Page 2: Ricky Gervais, Dan Ahdoot, Daniel Kinno, Robin Ince, Derek Hughes

Job News
Exciting interview this week!

Animation
If you've seen our podcast, you know I dabble in animation. So, I'm always curious to see what other people are doing with animation. If you're interested in stop-animation or just want to have a good laugh, over on YouTube, Rhett and Link are being adorable and innovative with some amazing stop-animation with 222 t-shirts. I've pasted it below. You can also watch the behind the scenes special and buy your very own t-shirt from the video. This is pretty hilarious stuff.





More stuff to laugh at -- Karl Pilkington
Want a link to all the free downloads from the 4-season XFM radio show starring Karl Pilkington, Ricky Gervais, and Stephen Merchant? Here's the link on therickygervaisshow.com. Just pick the series and episode you want and click the jump drive image (or right click to save). You can also check out Pilkipedia for episode descriptions (more seasons on the orange/brown/gray box at the bottom). Want an example? Here's a clip where R & S try to get K to break the world record for eating hamburgers:

Not the best weekend ever

Well that was a fun weekend of lying on a mat in the living room for 24 hours. The kids picked up a stomach flu from school and almost everyone in the house got it, and as always, I get the worst of it. Thankfully it was only a 24 hour thing, but having not eaten anything in 48 hours, my digestive system can't remember what it's supposed to do with food, so it might be another day before I get my energy back.

When I had the strength to climb back upstairs to my room, I watched the behind the scenes features to Doctor Who The End of Time which just came in the mail and an episode of Life on Mars (the first six episodes are now on YouTube, which is a relief because my region-free DVD player broke and I only own the series in PAL). I've also just started watching Lost with my roommates. I know, I'm so behind the times.

Drawing Journal / Ricky & Steve's first film

I realized that I have quite a few pictures from my drawing journal that I haven't uploaded. It's hard to scan in the crack of the book, so I started taking photos of the pictures which makes them a little blurry and skewed, but not too bad. You can now view my drawing journal on this site.

Note: This is not all my drawings or even my best drawings. Just the ones that are in my journal that I started last year in drawing class. Here's a good one with some Karl Pilkington quotes:

(on the site you can click to enlarge)
That's Karl in the middle and Ricky and Steve looking perplexed.

Speaking of Ricky and Steve, the trailer for their FIRST MOVIE is now out. Check it out below. CEMETERY JUNCTION is about Reading, the little town where Ricky grew up. This is written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, but it is not a comedy like The Office.

My goodness, is there anyone who ISN'T in this movie? I even caught a glimse of Burn Gorman from Torchwood in there. IMDB says that Karl's to appear in the movie too. Don't know if that's true or not.

Week of Awesome Stuff

1. Okay, first off, the good job news is that I'm getting a lot more responsibilities at my internship and probably even more hours a week. With three days a week and clever budgeting, I might be able to break even each month rather than watch my bank account spiral down into nothingness, which is what I have been doing the last six months, especially with that $365 plane ticket. Oi! But now I'm in charge of the new social media strategy, which is pretty awesome, you have to admit.

2. I finished listening to the audio book of UNSEEN ACADEMICALS by Terry Pratchett. You can read my review on my writing blog. Want to win a personalized and signed copy of this book? Go over here and donate to Haiti to enter the raffel. Lots of other stuff available, especially if you like Harry Potter.

I also cartooned the picture above.

3. I finished reading the last two stories of NIGHTWATCH by Sergei Lukyanenko. You can read my review on my writing blog. I've also drawn the above image from the movie DayWatch where Anton gets ridiculed by his boss because he's a Light One drinking dark beer.

3 News and 3 Life

3 Things that Happened to Me

1. Trying to get health insurance. Turning out to be a slow process.

2. I did not get the job that many people were wishing me luck on, but I hold no grudge as I didn't have experience in that particular area of publishing. I hope they will invite me back for one of their new open positions because they are more up my alley.

3. Had to sit on a train with crazy lady. This poor teenage kid comes on the shuttle and sits down quietly, and this lady starts SCREAMING at him about how he's the anti-christ and is going to die today and should have never have been born. The guy ignored her until the next stop whereupon he switched cars.



3 Things that Didn't Happen to Me
Writing and Publishing

1. Amazon versus Macmillan -- childish spat
Click here for amusing coverage

2. Rest in peace JD Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye



3. Maureen Johnson talks about what it is to be a professional novelist




Additionally...

4. iPad sucks, says Hitler