For some reason, the past few days I've been thinking a lot about my Cub Scout/Boy Scout days. It seems like a lifetime ago. So much so that I can't even recall exactly what age I was or grade I was in for most of it. It's all a blur, which is kind of frightening. I can remember being a Tiger Scout and making a totem poll out of coffee cans and construction paper. While the other kids in my troop (all 2 of them) made standard eagles or bears or whatever else goes on a totem poll - I wanted to make a manitee... Yes, a manitee.

I don't know if I should be proud I wanted to do something as offbeat as putting a manitee on a totem poll, or embarassed that I was stupid enough to want to put a manitee on a totem poll.

In retrospect, I was totally not the kind of kid to be in Cub Scouts/Boy Scouts (I don't even know if I was ever an official Boy Scout). I didn't like camping, I loathed male bonding, and none of my real friends were in scouts. It was me and 2 other kids from my class who had always been close since kindergarten. Matt and Andy. Their parents were friends, and so by default they needed to be too. It was kind of awkward to be with them since we had nothing in common, but they did. Not having a father (my parents are divorced) to be a scout leader like they did just drove the gap between my place and their's even wider. That's not to say that not having a dad to buy me my first pocket knife, or what have you, bothered me - but it just made me different, as it were.

I can remember being at one camping trip, I was probably about 10, and there was some guy we went to see who went on and on about how he killed all these animals like deer and bears. I think the other kids, from other troops as well as my own, were crowding around him looking at his knives or gun or arrows or whatever he had with him while I hung around the back. He said something about me coming closer and I said I was fine, then he gave me a weird look and some other kid about my age (must have been from my group, but hell if I can remember his face or he he was) said, "He doesn't like to kill things." with this strange show-offish condascending tone. I think that's the most vivid moment I have of Cub Scouts. That quote and tone it was said, "He doesn't like to kill things." Kind of pathetic that of all the stuff I know happened during my time in Scouts, that's what I remember the most clearly.

That's my most disturbing and vivid memory. I'm not sure what my happiest would be. One of them would be when I dressed as a knight for our 'medieval times' themed event. It was for a costume contest. I was playing Dragon Warrior for NES at the time and had a guide book from the game that featured all the special equipment and armor. I wanted my costume to look like that and my grandfather made it for me. He made the sword out of wood and the armor was a silver painted cardboard "vest" that had the detail of the armo drawn on with markers. It was a fucking awesome costume. While my opponents, or "fellow scouts", had cardboard swords and paper armor I had a custom made wooden sword that would take them all down in one swoop. Dragon warrior indeed.

I won.

There's also the cake my mom and I made for the cake design contest. If I can find the photo of that I'll post it. Cute stuff.

We won that, too.


Since my enjoyment of camping is limited at best, I think it's odd one of my fondest memories of Scouts was actually one of the camping trips. There had been a muddy obstacle course which was basically just an excuse to get dirty and to any 10 year old boy that was pretty cool. It was summer and the day was hot and dry, and the mud was cool and wet - until it dried on our bodies of course, creating a thin but tough layer of dirt. There was a river nearby, and we bathed there to get rid of the dried mud we had caked on everywhere. It's a strange memory, but I guess I like it because it was the kind of afternoon you see in those coming of age movies set in the 60's or 70's where a group of friends go off together for a week. Scenes from a youth.
- posted by Brendan @ 12:28 AM 0 comments

 

Mood: Nervous
Music: Yellow Generation - Lost Generation

So far my new music video has gotten good reception from friends and peers - even ones who didn't really like earlier attempts. I hope that's a good omen, and they're not just humoring me. I like it a lot anyway... -_-

It was a nice warm day today. I got out of Design class a bit early and decided to have a late picnic lunch and enjoy the day. So I went to get a sandwich and drove to the nearest river I could think of and had a nice lunch in front of the water. Very nice.

I'm extremely fearful about this math test coming back tomorrow morning. I don't want to see it because I know it's going to be bad, and I just hope that I can recover those lost points in the next two tests, because otherwise I'm totally fucked over. God, how I loathe mathematics.

Oh well.

If you're not watching '24' on FOX.. well.. then.. you're doing yourself a great disservice. 24 is simply the best thing on TV right now. The episode tonight was incredible, even better than last week (which was pretty damn good). The only thing that got me was the next episode preview apparently showed a key character get killed during the next show. WTF? And it wasn't like a gun to the head, cut to black and hear gunshot tease death. It was an "oh no!" and cut to dead body on ground moment, so unless this person is only unconcious then.. damn.. FOX you suck. There are only 5 episodes left in the season though, so if you haven't been watching this far, then don't start. Wait for the DVD boxset later this summer and behold the Jack Bauer Power Hour.

Bought the Spirited Away DVD today. Woo for Spirited Away. The bonus disc seems pretty kick ass, it has the Japanese TV promo program on it with lots of Miyazaki standing around and doing stuff. Woo!

Ugh... sorry I have nothing interesting to report. Today was very uneventful and that stupid math class is on my mind. I was going to talk about my cub scout experiences that have been on my mind lately but I'm not in the mood to write it as I should. *sigh*

---

I just heard this tonight and I can't pass up the opportunity to post it here. As explained by fillowsofikal on the Rotten Tomatoes Forums:


They just showed a 5 minute preview of BETTER LUCK TOMORROW on E! (Entertainment TV) and they had interviews with the director and writer about the film and how its kind of controversial.

Then the E! anchor was like and to prove its controversial nature here's a clip from 2002 Sundance after either a screener or a showing of the full film, they never said.

So they show all these critics in the theatre after the lights come on and this one guy jumps up and is like, "How could you make a movie that was so denigrating to your race! That is a racist film." So then Ebert jumps up in the middle of the theatre a row away from the guy and just goes ballistic on him. Saying stuff like, "You wouldn't say that if it was a white filmmaker." And the whole crowd was clapping. He then went on to say that "Asian-Americans should be free to take on any types of roles they choose without fear of misrepresenting the entire community."

The other guy practically jumped the seats and was in Ebert's face and Ebert told him to sit down.


In case you didn't know - Ebert is a bad motherfucker.
- posted by Brendan @ 1:44 AM 0 comments

 
I spent very little time online this weekend. Why? Because I had a sudden inspiration to do a new music video, right as the deadline to submit to ACen quickly approaches. I can't tell what exactly the video is, but I will say that it bumped off my other new video for ACen sumbission and I am, bluntly, thrilled with it. Now I'm sending my Grave of the Fireflies video from last year, and this new one. In case you're curious, the video that I'm bumping was a Boogiepop Phantom video set to Vitamin C's "Graduation Song". I guess that sounds weird, but if you've seen the final episode you'll understand why I picked that music. Actually, if you were reading this blog when it was with LiveJourney, you know I've always been a little uncomfortable with that video. Hmm.. I do like it. But, I don't know.. it "feels" wrong in spots. Still, I'll make it available for download soon, since I'm guessing that video will go in the pile of "made, but never shown at a convention" videos.

Speaking of the "made, but never shown at a convention" pile, my other Evangelion video that never screened was to Sweetbox - Everything's Gonna Be Alright. If you want to take a peek (Real Player required). I dunno, I still like that video a lot... There's an awkward part at the end with the Yui clip but I still think it works well. Meh..

In other news.. I saw Pat and the others on Friday. We were going to see "House of 1000 Corpses" - but it was sold out (no tears shead on my end). So instead we decided to watch a movie at someone's house. Problem was, no one knew where to go. To cut a very long and VERY tedious story short, in the end I snuck back into my house and stole the VCR out of my living room (would have been funny, or not, if someone had woken up ^_^:) then took that back to Sam's (a different Sam) basement and watched Versus. Or at least Versus was on while we talked. When Versus was over I showed them the glory of Ricky-Oh, and they fell to its might. Hehe.

It was at this time Pat violated my new used video camera (or maybe it was the other way around). Needless to say, that video clip will not be posted. *shudder*


Heh.. it seems I've grossly overestimated the market for those OnR CDs. Not to say I expected to sell a lot, but not this few either ^_^;;; Is it the eBay/PayPal thing that's scaring people away? Or is it just something that no one really wanted? Hmmmm...

Speaking of OnR, Stray Radio is set to debut this coming weekend. Still ironing out details, but next monday (?) should have the premiere episode. Pat and myself will host.


I wasn't planning on moderating on any more Eva panels because I really am not sure how much of an audience Eva can draw anymore. So I didn't offer my services at ACen this year. Well, lo and behold, Friday morning I was perusing the ACen Forums when a private message notifaction popped up. It was from Ryan Gavigan, the chairman of Anime Central. And what was it? Asking me if I'd want to host another Eva panel this year. Heh, well, sure - I guess I do. As long as it's not opposite the MegaTokyo panel again! I cannot miss that again like I did last year >_<

So, yeah.. if you're going to Anime Central 2003, stop by the Evangelion panel on Friday from 2-3pm. I'll be there as well as (as I understand it) Carl Horn - the editor of the US release of the manga and one of the best anime columnists around. It would be well worth your time to hang out with us :)

And I'm also doing an Eva panel at Kazecon as well as co-MCing their dating game. Woo.. busy times. :-\

Hmm.. a lot of plugging going on right there ^_-

In other news I saw Phonebooth on Friday. Great movie, the prime example of what a good popcorn flick should be. Just because the story is simple doesn't mean it should be dumb. The film is brilliantly executed and confirms my admiration of Colin Farrel as very deserving of his recent attention. This guy is *good*. Phonebooth is really about the best "new movie" playing out there. Go see it.



On a more serious note, when I saw Pat this weekend he told me that Alex had basically confessed all his earlier wrongdoing, to him. And confirmed that I was right about, well, *everything*. Which gave me a very.. vindicated.. feeling. Apparently my final email to Alex struck a chord - even if he denied it. I warned Alex that his habitual lies would cost him more friends than me if he didn't change -- and sure enough, 2 weeks later he's bearing his soul to Pat because he doesn't want to lose someone else to "this shit" again. Good for you Alex. Good for you.

Though I find it ironic that you chose to tell all this to Pat, not me.
- posted by Brendan @ 4:14 AM 0 comments