"I'm very pleased to see you again, Lara..."

I've been kind of MIA for the last several days. This is why.


In all seriousness, though, I've just been really busy. Lots and lots of school work to do, but it's all very exciting, and I'll probably detail all of it in another post in the near future. Despite my heavy workload I've really been feeling fantastic lately.

Well, now I had the writing bug, but I think I just lost it. Crap. Well, I think maybe I just wanted to let my faithful readers know that I'm still around.

Speaking of faithful readers, I've picked up a few more in the last month or two. Whoever you guys are, thanks for caring :)

My Fifteen Seconds

(click image to expand)

So I was a featured artist in last week's issue of the school newspaper, which has probably marked the height of my achievements this semester. So far I've ranted in front of an audience about my drama filled life and my conquest of DDR, jumped out of a moving vehicle, ran into a swimming pool while fully clothed, chased seagulls around while screaming , become a malevolent cell phone demon, and shed blood numerous times, all for the sake of "art" - I feel like my mention in the paper is probably earned.

Wordle - November

www.worldle.net - click to expand

Obama FTW

So with all the good things to come with today's news, most people seem to be overlooking the two most important items of all.

1 - With Barack Obama now the president, we can all look forward to seeing an Obama ROBOT at the Hall of Presidents in Walt Disney World sometime this year. A robot. Awesome.

2 - In four years, when Obama is up for reelection, this video will once again be relevant! Hells yes!!!

In semi-related news, prop 8 is going to pass, so that's discouraging. All I can say to that right now is, well, we can't change the world all at once. The abortion thing also irks me, though I'm still confused on the specifics of that proposition. Guess it doesn't matter, as the results are already in.


Last night I went to my friend Katherine's house with a bunch of other performance arts kiddies and some of her work peoples to watch the election results and chase a cat around, which was all a good time in general. After that, we watched Rent until 2:30 in the morning. That was delightfully random.

Halloween Stuff

Took me a while to getting around to doing this ... I figure during class is probably a good time.

Oct 16th, Knott's happened, and it was pretty freaking rad, as usual.



Every new maze this year was impressive, which was quite a feat, as there were a whole six of them (as opposed to the one or two of them they usually add each year.) My favorite was probably Club Blood, which was a vampire nightclub which was both scary and hot at the same time.

Monday the 27th, Vince threw a crazy potluck party at Marlene's house. Punkin carving, spooky food, costume contests and Little Shop of Horrors happened. Amy, Ryan and I dressed as Lock, Shock and Barrel from Nightmare. That inspired Vince and Maritza to go as Jack and Sally, which made for a cool group theme.


(props to Maritza for the following pic)


A pretty good party, I'd say. Mostly box office people, who I don't typically hang out with, but I still had a pretty good time. My favorite costume was probably Kevin Glickman as Dwight from The Office.

Two days after that, we saw Nightmare in 3D at Horton Plaza. It'd been the first time I'd seen a movie at Horton Plaza since they re-released Empire Strikes Back in the 90's, interestingly enough. Also, I seriously freaking hate Horton Plaza. I think it was Vince who said something along the lines of giving a retarded child Sim City and letting him design a mall and parking structure.

But, of course, Nightmare Before Christmas was no less awesome as it's always been. Also, we stopped at a Denny's on the way back, but didn't eat there because there was a brawl between some white trash girl and a drunk zombie from Del Mar Scare Grounds. We instead went to Ihop where I enjoyed punkin pancakes.

Also, our theater in San Marcos is supposed to be getting RealD projectors early next year, so hopefully we'll be getting Nightmare 3d for next Halloween. I will probably watch it every night if that happens.


Halloween was a bit more low key compared to the events surrounding. From everyone I talked to, it seemed most people had relatively uneventful Halloween nights, but I think our group of friends had a good time. Most of us had work earlier in the day - a few good costumes there, but I was kind of disappointed that not many people took advantage of the chance to dress up for work. The best costume was easily the guy who came as Vince for his costume.

After work Vince, Amy, John, Lona, Ted, Jay and Kyle Foot came over to my house to watch these movies:



Before the movies we were able to squeeze in a Frugo's run, where I exposed even more people the the awesomeness that is self-serve frozen yogurt. But the highlight of the party was easily Ryan calling Vince on a restricted number while we watched The Ring, thoroughly freaking him out for most of the movie, and secretly camping out in my backyard for half an hour to scare us half way through the movie.

Finally, Nov. 1st marked the end of Halloween this year with Noella's Halloween party. Noella is a phenomenal hostess for these type of things, which was evident not only in extensive preparation and theming, but the huge amount of people who showed up. Even Ryan didn't know most of the people there. Ryan, Amy and I resumed out roles as Lock, Shock and Barrell for the party.



Also, these guys were awesome, even when drunk.



So, another October comes to an end, which makes me sad as it's always my favorite month of the year. Next year I'm hoping we can do a Universal Horror NightS visit, and maybe an overnight Knott's pre-scare trip. We'll see what happens.

On a closing note, today is election day. If you haven't voted yet and are still undecided, let Neil Cicierega show you how to do it.

"Do you have a hypothesis?"

Behold, my new short film, Detour, is now online. When the first video ends, be sure to click on the "pt. 2" pop-up to see the second part.

Outtakes for the movie can be found on my YouTube homepage - www.fravit.net/films is the quick way there.

Cooking by the Book (?)

So it's my mom's birthday, and my little sister, Jessie, was tasked with baking her a cake while my mom was out at the casino for most of today, as Jessie is the one around my house typically does the baking. Well, I guess she decided she had plans of her own today, and left the job to my other sister, Andrea, who has never baked anything in her life. This left Jessie feeling the need to completely idiot proof every step of the process, including labeling "eggs" and "water", you know, in case she didn't know what those were. The above image is what I found when I awoke today and wandered into the kitchen (as always, click for a larger view.)


So last night I ventured out into San Diego with Brett, Sarah, and Christina, who are some of my performing arts buddies. It was Christina's 21st birthday, and we met up with some of her other friends at the Shout House, which is a dueling piano club in the Gaslamp. Music came from all genres, ranging from classic rock to rap, country, contemporary, and everything in between. The strangest moment had to be the transition between them playing Baby Got Back, and then someone paying them $20 to play Nintendo songs, which included every song from Mario Bros 1 through 3, the themes from Zelda, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and a few other obscurities.

After some random wanderings and adventurings, we ended up in some random dance club type place in North Park for about half an hour before they closed up. I'm not even sure where North Park is, to tell the truth, but it was kind of shady and made for a good adventure, I think. Then I somehow ended up in some strangers house for a while before Brett and I decided we were both tired and it was time to head out. On the way out we were told of a burrito stand up the street, which we somehow thought was in proper walking distance, but ended up being a bit farther than we thought, so we ended up on an hour long round-trip burrito adventure through North Park at 2 am. The upshot was that I was treated with easily the largest breakfast burrito I'd ever seen in my life. And now I can't eat for the next 3 days.


You know, getting back to my sister's cake situation, I'm now thinking that, if she really needs that much help trying to figure out how to bake a cake, maybe I should just do it for her. Yeah... I think I'm going to go do that before the kitchen is destroyed.

Here's Something

So, my computer is up and running again. I never got my internet card working, so I went to the store and bought the cheapest network card that said "works with vista" on the box. I cheated, I know, but the $8 card seemed to do the trick, and everything is now running beautifully.

While I was transferring files from my old computer I found a notepad file I compiled while I was reading the Twilight series. I've recently taken habit of noting book page numbers in my cell phone when I'm reading and I find a passage I like. Not sure why. At any rate, since I never gave my full thoughts of the series (and probably never will,) I'll just leave you with these - many of them reflect how I feel or may have felt at some period of time, and some of them I just like how they're written; I'll leave you to decide which are which.

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Twilight

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to greive when it comes to an end." pg 1

"I intuitively knew - and sense he did, too - that tomorrow would be pivotal. Our relationship couldn't continue to balance, as it did, on the point of a knife. We would fall off one edge or the other..." pg 248

"For three and a half hours I stared at the wall, culred in a ball, rocking. My mind went around in circles, trying to come up with some way out of this nightmare. There was no escape, no reprieve. I could see only one possible end looming darkly in the my future. The only question was how many other people would be hurt before I reached it." pg 425

New Moon

"Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me." pg 93

"Jacob was simply a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them. It was natural, a part of who he was. No wonder I was so eager to see him." pg 145

"What was the point of going any farther? Nothing lingered here. Nothing more than the memories that I could have called back whenever I wanted to, if I was ever willing to endure the corresponding pain - the pain that had me now, had me cold. There was nothing special about this place without him. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd hoped to feel here, but the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everywhere else. Just like my nightmares. My head swirled dizzily." pg 234

"I shook my head sadly. Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made." pg 340

"How many ways can one heart be mangled and still be expected to keep beating? I'd lived through a lot that should have finished me in the last few days, but it didn't make me feel strong. Instead, I felt horribly fragile, like one word could shatter me." pg 495

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a motionless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason.
...and then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was billiancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything." pg 514

Eclipse

"It's so hard to describe. It's not like love at first sight, really. It's more like ... gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it's not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for he, be anything for her... You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that's a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother." pg 176

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More Tidbits:

- I just watched Saw V and High School Musical 3 both in the same evening, which was really disorienting for some reason. I still feel perplexed, dizzy, and somewhat queasy, and I'm not sure which movie is responsible for what entirely.

- My next project pic is "Hotel for Dogs" - not a bad choice, I guess. Also, I'm sad to report that I got no lovin' for Narnia, but just means I need to get crazier next time around. My resolve remains unbroken!

- I'm going to be featured in the school newspaper at CSUSM for my artwork and my DDR poetry performance from last month. So that's pretty cool.

- Big news in the So-Cal theme park industry this week. New rides for California Adventure, Universal Studios, and Magic Mountain have been announced. I also hear rumors that Knott's is getting another big ride next year, also. I'm going to dedicate a post to all this later, I think.

- I'm about to get real busy real quickly, as I have a TON of school work to catch up on. Somehow it all crept up on me. The timing on this can't be worse, because...

- HOLY CRAP, CALL OF DUTY 4 IS AWESOME !!!

Sandwich

Balloon Shop wishes everyone a happy sandwich.

Some tidbits:
- Knott's Scary Farm was amazing this year, probably the best so far (except for the Hanging - I am never going to watch that show again.)
- My student film,'Detour', is finished now. Should be online soon.
- Still trying to get internet to work on my PC, and I'm tearing my hair out over it. But at least I can play Call of Duty 4...
- There's a chance I might be going out dancing (?) with some CSU friends this Saturday night. That should be interesting.
- High School Musical 3 comes out this Thursday at midnight - BE THERE.

I'll leave you with these words of wisdom from the great Kyle Foot:

"...that's like flying the Wright brothers' plane into the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier!"

My Never Ending Battle

Updates have been scarce because I just recently purchased an Nvidia GTX 260 card and Windows Vista for my home PC, and I'm having trouble getting everything in my system to work. As of right now, it seems the only thing I still haven't been able to get up and running is the internet, so I've had my laptop set up on my desk next to my PC to download drivers and transfer them over to my PC using a thumb drive.

So far I'm actually really liking Windows Vista, but I can see why people complain about compatibility issues - it should not take this long to get simple things like sound and networking to work. All in all, it's been a real pain in the ass, but it'll be worth it as long as I can play Tomb Raider Underworld when it comes out next month.

Aside from working on my PC this last week, I filmed a short movie with some CSU peeps, entitled "Detour", which I've been hard at work editing. Earlier this week I briefly posted an early cut of the movie on this blog, but removed it shortly after since the finished version (complete with outtakes) should been ready sometime next week. Shooting happened almost entirely in one day, with our group driving all around San Marcos scouting different locations and what not. Highlights from this project included:
- Jumping out of a moving car.
- Cameos from Ryan and Jay, with Jay playing a schizophrenic hitchhiker named Pancho Villa.
- "Borrowing" the theater's entire supply of rubber bands and inexplicably spreading them all over the back seats of my car.
- Getting yelled at and almost gotten the cops called on us by a crazy lady in some neighborhood because she thought we were child rapists.


On Monday we celebrated Amy's birthday at Disneyland, which proved to be a pleasant day despite the fireworks being canceled due to winds. Note of interest - Monday was the first time in at least a decade where I rode the carousel. Six adults riding a carousel belting the lyrics to "Once Upon a Dream" must have been a sight, I'm sure.

I'm starting to feel the crunch of school right now, but my head's still above water at the moment. I have our annual Knott's Haunt trip on Thursday to look forward to (which literally my entire year builds up to,) and lets not forgot tonight's finale of Project Runway! So much excitement awaits for me, dear readers.

If I don't write again for a while, it will be because I'm too stubborn to take a break from trying to get internet to work on my PC.