Are you sick of me yet?

I know I just posted yesterday, but I have more things to say.


1. Short Story

Want to read a draft of "another story about monsters" that I wrote for my fiction seminar? Check out my writing blog. You can also see the feedback I got from my classmates. I'll probably do another draft at some point. I honestly didn't like the story very much and was embaressed to send it to my class, but some people seemed to have really enjoyed it, some even liking it best out of all the stories.

2. The Mix CD Game

Me and Katie have started a new game. She sends me a mix CD of awesome songs and I send her my best guess of song title and bands. I get one point for each song right and one point for each band right. Bands are hard, so I usually just make stuff up. No lyric searching allowed. Only when I've sent the entire mock track list will she send me the actual track list. Then we switch roles.

3. Drawing Book

I don't have any scans yet, but I've been adding things to my little expensive drawing book for class. We're using Carlos Ferguson as an example. His drawing book is awesome. I like his line drawings of settings. I've found myself drawing classrooms in some of my "lesser classes" as BPJ would put it. I'll post some scans when I make some progress.

4. Car Pool

My new favorite show. I can't say it's my favorite TV show because it's not on TV, but you can download it off iTunes or just watch it on Llewtube. They just did an episode with Nigel Planer going on a tour through theatre land and pointing out places that I've been. Amazing! And I adore Nigel Planer. I saw him in Wicked in West End a couple years ago. Plus he's hilarious in Hogfather.

If you don't know what Car Pool is, it's a talk show that takes place in Robert Llewellyn's car (and occasionally a borrowed Tessler). There's lots of amazing people yet to come, too.

5. Coraline

I saw Corlaine in the theatre (La Crosse isn't cool enough to have 3d). Sufficiently creepy. I haven't read the book, so I have nothing to base it on, but the story was certainly Gaimanesque and the stop-motion animation was well done. I like the design of the characters, particularly the father. At first I wondered why it's not rated and then I saw the mostly naked woman dancing and I was like "ahhh!" Children, shield your eyes!

Okay. I'm off to B&N.

March-tastic

How 'bout this weather, eh?


I had hilarious things to say on this blog last night, but it was 2 am by the time I finished working on the current video project I'm doing, so I went to bed instead. Therefore, you are getting the significantly less amusing edition of this post.



Something new for this blog:

This post comes in both categories AND subcategories!










I. ENGLISH CLUB


1. Literacy and Lyrics

English Club is doing another book drive with live music. Here's the flyer I made last night.

2. Speak!

English Club's open mic night wasn't bad. Sitting at the table with the usual bunch tends to be more amusing than a lot of what's going on on stage, but our table's a tough act to beat.

3. George Watsky

English Club and CAB (both of which I am a member) sponsored George Watsky's slam poetry event last night. The turn out wasn't too bad, but I wish professors would have come. We advertized the heck out of this event. But the performance was fantastic.

On a slightly related note, I got accepted to Lesley University and rejected from Amherst. The two schools of choice are the NYU Summer Program (for publishing) and Emerson College. It turns out, George Watsky goes to Emerson College. Weird, huh?

II. CAB

1. Spring Concert: Augustana -- Video

I made this promo piece for our spring concert:

III. English Department

1. Not Fade Away

As you can see in previous posts, I've been working on a video/web project for a band composed primarily of English faculty. I've made some progress on the website and have posted one more video to YouTube. I also did the first draft of the DVD.

IV. UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECT

Check out the writing blog to get dates and locations of when you can come to my presentation of how to revise your novel.

Yesssir

If post titles are supposed to give any indication about the content of the post, then you sirs and sirettes are doomed.



1. Gaelic Storm

What energy. What stage presence. What talent. What amazing Irishness. My favorite song is "The Night I Punched Russell Crowe." (Here are some YouTube vids (NOT MINE) introduction and song). 775 tickets sold. I'd call that successful, wouldn't you?

2. Video: That'll be the Day

10 second preview

Posters

Posting the Sacred Pathways ad made me think of my other posters I made this year. I decided to post them here...

videos

Here's an update on my most recent video projects ...

1. Knowing God through the 5 senses...

I finished my church video, which is about 5.5 minutes long. Here's the ad for I made for the class it's for:

2. Senor Bop

Okay, so I am making a DVD and YouTube videos for the band Senor Bop and their Buddy Holly tribute. However, I'm now also putting together a website as a one-stop place to view photos, video, and text about the event. It's not done yet, but you can view it here.

3. Augustana

Our Spring Concert is Augustana ("Boston"). Like with Nine Days (our Fall Concert), I'm doing a promo video. I haven't decided what style to do it in yet. Nine Days was kind of a horror movie gone rock concert. But the band is sending a hi res version of their music video Sweet and Low, which has some AMAZING imagery in it to work with.

New Video Project

What's better than doing a video project?

Getting paid to do a video project.

The English Dept. is having me do a video for the Senor Bop band that I mentioned in a previous post. The footage has already been shot by someone else. I hope it's good footage to work with! I have a couple clips of my own, but they're from my still-camera, so they're pretty terrible quality. I will post a link when I'm done with this project.

The possible challenge will be getting it off a USB camera, as I know Vegas only does firewire. I'll see if I can connect it to my digital camera. If that doesn't work, there's always the DVD recorder.

Buy our magazine

Okay, so FINALLY, you can get THE BUZZ (insight into La Crosse's entertainment options) off of the print on demand site called MagCloud.

Visit our website: http://lacrossebuzz.blogspot.com/

where you can view the magazine for free, buy a copy for 6.40, and watch video interviews with musicians in the La Crosse area.

Sorry this took so long. They had a backup of proofs at the printers over the holidays, so the proof didn't get to La Crosse until we'd all left for break. So we had to wait until we got back to see if it was okay to publish. So go buy a copy of our magazine! We're not making a profit on it, but at least take a look at the on-line version.

Out of the habit

Remember how I planned to just do one item per post? Yeah, that's not working so well.

1. VIDEO

a small clip of my current video project...




2. WRITING

Brief summary of what's been happening over on the writing blog:

I'm working with an editor on my novel, Riff.

I'm taking a fiction seminar, so I'm trying to get started on my first short story of the semester.


3. DRAWING

I'm taking a drawing class this semester, so I'm excited to learn a lot of new techniques. We follow a blog here. I have lots of new toys now including charcoal, a hard-cover drawing book, a two-foot drawing book, and more. I will show off some drawings once I actually...draw something.


4. EVENT PLANNING

I recently finished up my first event of the semester: Junebug. This event was unique for me because usually artists will breeze in and out of town without me getting a chance to get to know them. Mr. O'Neal, the writer/actor of a series of one-man theatrical performances, was here all week doing workshops on campus, so I got to talk with him numerous times, have dinner with him and his wife, take them to and from the airport, usher them around campus. That was fun. I wish I could do this will all my events.

Gaelic Storm is the event I'm working on right now. Other events which I merely attended include Sailesh, Ross Copperman, and Chester Bay. Outside of CAB, I also saw our English professors jam out some Buddy Holly tunes.

For more photos, please click here and here.


5. ENGLISH CLUB

The first Speak! (open mic night) of the semester was amazing. It was the same night as Junebug, but thankfully in the same building, so I had to run up and down the stairs all night, juggling the two events. This is the first time we went all the way to 10:00. It was purely guitarists/singers, which is fine. Maybe we'll mix it up for next time.

We're also considering doing another Literacy and Lyrics, which is something we did freshman year: a book drive with live bands. I'm looking forward to that. I've been asking around for bands that will play for free.


6. MUSIC

Things I've been listening to:
Looking for Alaska performed by Hank Green
Absence of Christmas by Charlie McDonnell
All She Wrote by Ross Copperman
Boston by Augustana (did I mention they're our spring concert?)


7. Rant about textbooks

So, our textbooks are rentals, which makes us unique. However, budget cuts are making us cut our # of books in half, maybe getting rid of the system altogether. But what they've proposed is to just order one book per class. The article I read said that they've "heard stories" of people having more than one book per class, as though it's some kind of ghost story. I ALWAYS have more than one book: I'm an English major. We read novels. They suggest that some books will be ordered but others "really should be for sale in the bookstore." Now, you know they mean novels. You know as well as I do they'd keep renting the science and math textbooks and make us buy novels. Why should English majors have to buy 12 novels when the science majors get their books for free? Way to spit on the English majors, guys. Thanks a lot.

Now, really I can't care that much because I'm graduating in May, but I still feel English majors have the same rights to the rest of the school even if all this school is known for is science majors and recreational management.


8. Rant about Life on Mars

I know, I talk about this too much, but the two episodes that came after the hiatus on ABC are doing something very weird to the show. Suddenly, Gene has a daughter? Okay, maybe I can handle that, but what's with the conspiracy? In the original show, the scary voice on the other end of the phone was Frank Morgan, but we still didn't know if he was real or if he was part of his mind or the voice of the doctors or what. In this American version, there's a point of view shift where we see things Sam doesn't. We see that the person on the phone is someone within their 1973 world and not someone from 2008. Are they going to change the truth about what really happened to Sam? This is getting kind of contrived. Sam Tyler should always be in every scene because if we see something outside of his perspective, then we KNOW that this is not taking place inside his head. The whole point of the show is to make you wonder whether it's real or imagined. That's why there's that scene where Annie says that as soon as she walks out that door and Sam can no longer see her, poof, she's gone.

9. My favorite recent YouTube videos...

Cooking video

Check out this 4 minute cooking video I made...