Rachel Getting Married is the best movie of 2008, yes?

A few weeks ago Tyler sent me a message on Twitter telling me about Blip.fm. I signed up, thinking it would be a great way to listen to music where ever I might be. I enjoyed it for a few days, but got quickly tired of having to search and make playlists–I just wanted to hear music (pandora has spoiled me).

One day I strung a few songs together that were loosely connected. I hollered over at Jon and asked him if he could see the connections between the songs. He was able to see the first two, but the third was too complicated for anyone but me to understand–too many hidden steps. He got excited though, wondering how he could play the connection game with me. So he became one of my listeners and we blipped songs back and forth at each other trying to keep some sort of through-line in each song. Our connections ranged from titles to this song was in this movie with this actor who was in this movie with this song. It got a little complicated. We were having a blast, so I emailed Brian, Ted, and Tyler inviting them to join us in our connections game.

Brian, Jon and I have been going for a week+ now. Ted chimes in occasionally, but he doesn’t have a sit at your desk and kill time by blipping sort of job (i think) so it’s usually the three of us. It’s silly and fun and entertaining. Some highlights of our blipping have been Ryan Adams to Mandy Moore. What you ask? how? They’re married. I know. Weird. We did the days of the week. Then we stumbled onto the months of the year, backwards. We had a Ryan Adams block today. We had a covers session yesterday. That was especially fun. I love covers. I did a whole string of songs that had copyright issues today–I stole them from a blog post, but I attributed it.

I’m really enjoying it. Jon and I have a little competition going to see who can get the most listeners and props. Oh, yeah. Props are what you give out to people whose songs choices you like. Since all blips go on the main blip stream, anyone can give you props. Fleet Foxes got me four props immediately. A lot of my classic rock today got me props. Jon is beating me in listeners, but I pulled ahead in props.

If you want to join in, join blip and let me know your djname, I’ll start listening to you, and then you can add Jon and Brian if you like. Ted and I were trying to come up with a catchy name. He came up with a bunch. My favorite was Tune Tag.

I did a whole string myself tonight because I can’t sleep. The last five:

Broken Social Scene – Lover’s Spit

Snow Patrol – Spitting Games

Bob Dylan – Only a Pawn in Their Game

Traveling Wilburys – Handle with Care

Tom Petty – Free Fallin’

Lynryd Skynyrd – Free Bird

My profile has just my blips, so it doesn’t fill in all the gaps, but you can get an idea of what it’s like…

(the annoying things are that sometimes they songs are just previews–30 seconds, arg! and sometimes the songs are streaming off a slow website so they are a little choppy.)

-ted

Paper Trail has begun!

Paper Trail is a digital adaptation of a party game that I call paper telephone. I’ve also heard it called party pictionary. The concept is simple, you write something and another person draws what you wrote, someone else then writes a phrase or sentence about your drawing. You continue drawing and writing until everyone has had a turn. The hitch is that you don’t know what the others have written or drawn. When it’s all done you look back and laugh at where you’ve been. In the digital version we pass the paper via email and the results are to the left. There is a little digital honesty surrounding whether you look at the website before you submit your drawings or writings, but I have faith that people will do their best.

There are twelve people in this round of Paper Trail. Enjoy!

Shortly after he moved to the city by the bright green river, Ranger began to feel very strange…

-jon

-will

Inspired by a blog post by the Google Reader Team.

The concept of the water cooler and the discussions that happen around it, is ingrained into popular culture. The water cooler at my work doesn’t really serve in the typical discussion area. Mostly, people use it to get water. I believe that the internets are replacing the water cooler. If you have an interesting tidbit or factoid you share it on facebook or twitter. Your friends lol or comment back. A conversation develops, maybe it moves to personal messages or to email, friendships are maintained, trust is earned–albiet internet trust.

The water cooler serves us only with utilty now, providing hot or cold water as our mood strikes. We only trust it to give us water, when it’s full.

This past Sunday Terry suggested that we should put in more hours than we need to at work. He urged that we become people that our workplaces cannot live without. If they ask for 8 hours, work 10. More than hours, though, it’s an attitude thing. If you’re willing to go beyond the call, you’ll become someone that people depend on. Being depended on opens doors, it opens doors for communication as well as for opportunities.

I have some problems with feeling entitled when it comes to work. I forget that I’m doing what I love, and I usually enjoy my work. I’ve got into this rut, obsessing over how much I’m getting paid, and what I deserve. When I get out of the I deserve more… mentality I start to do better work. I start to just do my job, my job that I like better. It becomes less about how this task is below me, but how can I make this task mine.

After Thought Bar on Thursday I ran into Craig Detweiler. Craig and I have interacted enough times that he remembers my name and we have a little rapport. I just helped a friend of mine on his film for Craig’s class at Fuller. So when I saw Craig I wanted to ask him about the film, but I didn’t even have to ask, he just came out with it, Chris publicly thanked me in his class for helping him make it sing. Craig asked me what I thought of Scott’s Thought Bar. Did he put the cookies on the bottom shelf? Craig’s a funny guy. I’m from the south, nothings original there. Sort of out of the blue he asked me when I’d be doing a Thought Bar. But then he stopped and just said, You need to do something that rises above.

I feel blessed to have such words spoken to me. I was especially affected by rise above after that specific Thought Bar. Scott’s story is pretty remarkable. He got noticed because he made an amazing short film. He was able to make that film because he went around town and just asked people to do stuff for free.

I’ve been disenchanted with how to make it in Hollywood. I feel like I’m doing okay, but not making it per se. The thing is, I won’t make it until I start to put in the effort to rise above. I won’t be rising above if I just work 7.5 hours in each day–no more, no less. As I start to put more in, becoming a vital asset to the work I do, I will rise above, I will do amazing things, but it’ll take some effort.

A while back Ryan, Justin, and Tim got together with Rebecca for drinks. They talked about a lot of things. One of the things they talked about was how LAFSC can reach out to its alumni. They got this idea to have discussions with Christians in the film business in a semi-public forum. Alumni would be invited and they’d call it Thought Bar.

Thought Bar has been going on for more than a year. I rarely missed a meeting until my church events started to conflict with Thought Bar. I’d never remembered Thought Bar dates while we were scheduling the events, so I missed about six bars.

Last night I was able to attend Thought Bar. I brought Jon with me. Brian was supposed to come, but softball messed up his back and he couldn’t come.

Scott Derrickson was the speaker. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Scott took a more personal approach to the discussion; explaining his journery as a Christian in broad terms. He’s been influenced by many authors and films–he has arrived at faith with much thought. We discussed a wide range of topics from the Inerrant-ness of the Bible to how Top Gun influenced him in becoming a filmmaker.

I asked Scott to share five movies with us that we (I) probably hadn’t seen. I’ll do my best to recount them:

1. Ikiru – His personal favorite.
2. Let the Right One In (Vampire movie, “One of the best movies in the past three years.”)
3. Wings of Desire
4. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Recommended after he asked me what my favorite movie was, “Dogville” I said.)
5. Taxi Driver (I’ve seen this one)
6. The Sweet Hereafter

I’ve heard Scott speak once before. He suggested that if you couldn’t afford film school, to watch a movie everyday. I haven’t watched one everyday since I heard him say that, but I often think about it when I pop in a movie at ten am on a Saturday morning.