World Premier: My Movie!

This is kinda a big deal. I'm about to unleash, what could possibly be the most embarrassing thing I have of me. It's been a well kept secret for years. The type of thing that normal people would want to keep under lock and key, burn under the slight chance that a girl I take home hears my Mom say something like, "Say Justin, whatever happened to that movie you made a long time ago with your cousins?"

The normal Justin would wince in horror.

To say I play a large rabbit in costume with a black cape and I kill people for the better half of the movie doesn't do it justice, but it does explain why I might be a tad embarrassed to show the world what me, my siblings and my cousins made one summer in the 80's. Yeah normal people wouldn't dream of broadcasting something like this, but I'm not normal, I'm embracing my checkered past as an overgrown killer bunny rabbit.

Heh, to put it in context though, basically this costume I'm wearing in the movie hails from a character I created when I was obessed with Garfield comics. I wanted to have my own character so... Gabbit the Rabbit was born. That following October after I began drawing Gabbit, my Mom pulled out the Mom of the Year award for actually making my own creation for Halloween. She rocked that year. A year or so later, all my cousins were around for the summer and we got to talking and somehow we all decided, spur of the moment to make a movie. Keep in mind we were all roughly around 6-13 or so, but our idea was simple, we decided to make a movie about a killer bunny rabbit, essentially because we actually had a big bunny rabbit consume.

It can get much can-do-anything-kid-attitude than that. The following 23 minutes basically encapsulates my childhood, for good and ill, because well, the movie is laughably bad, but arguably MORE entertaining than say Dana Carvey's Master of Disguise especially if you grew up in the 80's. Because therein, you'll see many things that'll bring a smile to your face, things you know YOU actually wore, yes, tight fitting levi shorts, rolled up in the knee, NEON clothing, Levi jackets, SPANDEX shorts, and oversized trucker boy scout hats, are all majestically represented. You'll even see a leopard skinned tennis cap! Clothing aside, you'll catch a glance at a commodore 64 (that's 64 bits of RAM, we usually have a gig now) in all it's glory (best selling PC of all time). You'll see a yellow linoleum in our kitchen floor, strait from the 70's, with a yellowish fridge to match, phones with twirly cords, those scooters everyone had back then, and a--I kid you not, a Stairmaster.

We made this masterpiece with a dinosaur camcorder three times the size of our heads, all the while having to lug around an attached 15 lb VCR, so keep that in mind when absolutely nothing is in focus for minutes at a time. But take heart knowing when the focus comes in you'll be taking a trip back in time, back to the good ole days, when Summer was eternal. Sheesh I look at those immensely green lawns of the street I grew up on and can't help but wax nostalgic. But the film is nearly completely unscripted, it took us all day, and we enjoyed every minute of making it.

So long story short, me and my siblings got together and took the original footage and you could say remastered it. We cut and sliced, added music, credits, the works. The finished product is what might be terms the "director's cut", but to me, it pays homage to the distant time when we all were just being kids. A bunch of us are all grown up now, one of us is out there in Iraq (the scooter kid that goes AHHH!), some of us have kids, and some are just big kids still, but this is for all of us to remember, even for you to remember those times, hopefully this somehow in some strange inexplicable way takes ya back. But one day, all of us are going to get together again and make the sequel. Just don't say I didn't warn you when you can't sleep at night, worrying about a killer bunny rabbit.

So without any further blah blah, I present the best/worst kid made movie of all time.

Grab some friends/family members/co-workers, and prepare to experience something unlike anything you've ever seen...

GABBIT: The Killer Rabbit


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Link to bigger version, seriously go here to watch

Self Discovery through Images

I'm sorta fascinated by what I discovered about myself just by picking one image out of a group of others. A picture can speak a thousand words, and so Imagini's service at once becomes complexly engaging. You have to do this yourself.

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Link

Jukebox in the Sky

So, I have this dream of having a networked system in my future home, where I can go anywhere in the house, access my music from my PC and play anything I want where ever I am. Part of that dream is having a DAP like Zune. But my Zune is mostly for portable music away from home. I just want to listen to music all the freakin' time, in the most user friendly, efficient way possible, whether I'm home or abroad.

I've heard of digital audio receivers (DARs) that connect to both a computer and a stereo and translate between the two. There's articles out there that detail what you can do. For instance from Microsoft: Link

But I haven't found something that fits the bill with making the music integration jive really well with a multi-room set up, all the while making music access a cinch.

Well, I finally found something the other day that I thought I'd share with all my fellow zuners out there, or anything really who loves music who might be interested in the same full on music dream.

http://www.sonos.com

While I've heard of sonos before, I've seen ads in mags, caught blurbs via articles, I've never really looked and delved into what sonos brings to the table. Basically with a sonos setup, the level of user friendliness and ease of music access is possible. I've recently poured over their website, looking for how I might set everything up. Essentially how it works is you buy a Zone player, either on with an amp built in, or one (that's cheaper) that can connect to an amp you've already got, like say one with your home theater, and then connect that first one with a router that is connected to your PC network. From there you can add (as in purchase) Zoneplayers where ever you want/need throughout your house, effectively giving that huge music collection on your PC some serious wings. You can even play different songs in different rooms, so say a family could listen to their own stuff in each of their rooms, accessing from a family computer. Cool stuff. And it's all controlled via a wireless remote with a three inch screen. It's all very nice. Check sonos' site for the demo of how the whole thing works.

And even more interesting is what something like this, when paired with say, a Zune pass, would mean. (I noticed they just added Zune MP support in Jan) You could, on a whim, listen to anything you wanted, across the whole of the ZMP - whether it be an individual song or an album. It could just stream through the Internet via your wireless setup with something like sonos. In fact, this could literally be the future, especially with Zune and it's future incarnations, the wifi we have now is just a step in that direction. Screw hard drives, I would pay some sort of monthly fee to listen to anything and everything where ever I am. Jukebox in the sky. It's an interesting prospect and it makes the Zune pass pretty tempting if I were to get something like this in my home.

So anyway, the sonos system is pricey. To get a bundled set up, it'll run ya either $999 for two Zoneplayers (sans the built in amp) + a wireless remote, or $1199 for two Zoneplayers that have built in amps, so you just plug in speakers, plus the wireless remote to control the whole rig.

I figure I can get the $999 version, buy a couple of Sonic's T-amps (You need to read about this) for $25 bucks or so, and nab some decent speakers for each room and I'll be sitting pretty.

One of these days I'll save up and drop my hard earned cash on this. I'll be in music heaven.

/just sharing

100 year old man beats up gang

Now this, is news.