The wonderful changing world of CURLEY
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Im posting from my table at the cheesecake factory in sherman oaks. Im doing a corporate video for them and having lunch right now... If you go to a CF some day, try the louisianna chicken. Its da bom! Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
I drove all the Fuck over LA yesterday. For anyone who wants to map it out, I took the 134E to 5S to 78E to Escondido, where I was working. I got pulled over for the first time in Souther California here. The Cop didn't give me a ticket either! YAY!. Then, I went home via the 15 to the 91W to 71N to 210W back home. When I got home, I got a call that there was a check waiting for me in El Segundo. So, I took the 101N to 405S to 105W to El Segundo for the check by the time I got back on the road, it was after 4, and the 405 was a parking lot. So I headed up La Cienega to Wilshire to Crescent Heights, over the hill on Laurel Canyon to Ventura to Vineland, and back home. This made for about 7 hours of driving in one day!
Today I worked for my friend Michael Shoemaker, who owns www.shoezartstudios.com. The photos on the page are taken by me. I helped build the place. Today, we tore down some walls upstairs, well, in fact, we completely took out three rooms, and made it one big room! I also took down some grid pipes from the insert stage.
Current mood:  accomplished
Thursday, January 22, 2009
That's right. I'm broke as shit. I also worked on DVD commentary for "The Shield" season 7 today, and tomorrow. The staff on the show call him Chickles (Like chuckles). I've spent more time on the Fox Studios lot than any other, and will have worked there 4 times this month.
I've been using iCal a lot as of late, and it's gotten me thinking about an iPhone, or at least an iPod Touch.
When I'm not broke anymore.
Which will be around St. Patricks Day
Then I'll celebrate
Current mood:  tired
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
This morning began with my landlord knocking on my door. You see, my landlord gets away with murder, and pretty much comes around whenever he feels like it. He's showing the unit in back, and has been around pretty much every day. My car was blocking the driveway (because nobody lives in the unit in back), so he wakes me up at 8AM to move my car so he can park "on his property" is the way he says it to remind us that he owns the place, not us. So I was up early enough for the inauguration. I watched the ceremony this morning. I rushed to make coffee and toast while the dignitaries and such filled the stage. I didn't want to be chewing toast during the speech. I was a little disappointed with Aretha. Maybe she was cold, but I didn't hear the soul I usually do in her singing. I was astounded by the flubbing of the oath. I mean, talk about something that EVERYONE saw you screw up! Whoever's fault it was doesn't matter. I was awe struck by the visuals of the crowds, and the words, and the message, and the implications of what may come. I went to Shoezart Studios today to help my friend Michael finish his Studio. There are pictures Here. It has been a great project to work on, and we really made an amazing improvement on the studio. While driving around today, I came to feel as if a huge weight was lifting, off of the country, off of myself, off of the whole world. Working tomorrow (today) at 7. Ugh. At least I'm only booming, so no pressure. Also, there was this, from yesterday:

Current mood:  hopeful
Saturday, January 17, 2009
 The long dark winter is lifting. Tuesday, there is a new dawn!

Current mood:  hopeful
Friday, July 25, 2008
Friday, September 14, 2007
Okay, it's been forever since I last posted anything, and it's not for lack of stuff to talk about. I got a little tired of itto be honest, and I'm not sure I'm done with that. I wanted to post just to let everyone know that the biggest movie I've worked on yet is finally in theatres nation wide starting today! Dragon Wars is the biggest Korean produced movie in history, but it's in english, and set in Los Angeles. It's not a "Good Movie" in the ways that Citizen Kane or American History X are, but it might be a good movie in the way that Independence Day or Godzilla (The one with Matthew Broaderick) are. Put it this way, if you like the thought of a 600 foot long evil cobra ravaging downtown LA, and basically winning, then you're in for a treat.
That being said, I've been busy otherwise. Yesterday, 9/13/2007, marked the inception of Curley Sound as a business. We got ourselves a DBA, and we're pretty psyched about what that could mean for us. We also had our first screening in the second season of the Variety Screening Series last night. We screened "In The Valley of Elah" which is Paul Haggis' new movie. Paul and Charlize Therone were there, and the entire thing went off without a hitch. I took a half day at Current, which turned out to be a stellar idea, as one of our illustious bosses was doing a special project, and I would've been late if I had stayed.
Current mood:  accomplished
Thursday, July 5, 2007
Yesterday was a pretty great 4th of July. Brian and I ended up at 2 parties. We hung out with friends, swam in the pool, bbq'd several kinds of meats and things, and then went to see the fireworks at the top of this hill in East LA. The view was amazing, and we saw hundreds of fireworks, many by locals in their back yards, and many that were professional. The entire East LA pocket was ringing with distant reports, low rumbles, high cracks, and it sounded like war for about 3 hours straight! The smoke was so heavy in the air that we could no longer see the lights of downtown, and the lights at Dodgers Stadium were cloudy! Now, back to your regularly scheduled work week!
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Today just got better, cuz Ijust got OZZFEST TICKETS!!!
Lots of things are going on lately. Here's the rundown: Saturday I worked for my boss on the film he produced while working at Current. "Lonely Street" is a comedy about a loser detective who gets hired by Elvis Presley, who's been in hiding all these years, to do security for him, and hilarity ensues. It stars Jay Mohr, Robert Patrick (As Elvis!!!), Joe Mantegna, Mike Starr, and features a couple of other cool actors, namely the sidekick guy from Borat, and the Bali Indian guy from 40 Year Old Virgin. We shot from noon till 3AM, and it was pretty cool. I did scenes with all of them except Robert Patrick.
I got home yesterday to find two pieces of mail for me. One telling me that my car is paid off!!! The other was a Jury Summons. I have to call on July 15th to see if I have to go. I don't have a problem with that, as I've never had one before.
Brian and i organized all the gear yesterday, which was much needed. We've been so busy lately that things were all thrown here and there, and in piles and stuff. I want to spend some money on cases, and get really organized. I can afford some now maybe too, now that the car payment has gone away! While organizing, I found my hard drive that I thought I lost! It's a 120 gig USB drive with all my music on it. I have a 300Gig drive too, but it's big, bulky, and has to be plugged into the wall to work, so this one is way better, as it fits in the palm of your hand, and runs off the usb cable.
In an hour or so, I'll be putting my code in to see if I get Ozzfest tickets. They're free this year, and I'm sure every retard on the planet will be trying to get them at precisely the same time I will, so it should be interesting to see if it works. Later today I get to go to the dentist and have a mold taken for my crown, which will be the end of my implant saga. That only took 18 months... jeesh.
Current mood:  Psyched
Thursday, June 7, 2007
So yesterday we had Shavo Odadjian on the set for a celebrity interview. I guess that's the wrong term for most people out there saying to themselves "What the Sam Hill is a Shavo Odadjian?" Well he's the Bass player for a rather well known band (again, in the right circles) called System of a Down. He was a cool guy, and by far the most metal of the guests we've had on in the two years here. That was our last thing scheduled for that day, except that our boss had a "special project" for us that he had people stay late for. It was ten shots of a guy typing, and he wanted to record sound for it! I ended up calling him and saying I had to go, so I clipped the mic on, turned the fader up to the right spot and bounced. It came out fine, I'm sure. Because, well, it's a frikken typewriter!
I drove to Santa Monica, where a friend of mine has a production office. I met with him about doing a short in two weekends from now, and they all were very professional. I've only seen this guy at parties and stuff like that before, so it was weird to be being sort of interviewed by him. I directed him towards the now re-living web site for "D-War" (www.d-war.com) and just then his boss came in, and found out that I did the sound on it, and reminded my friend that their lead actress was Amanda Brooks, who is the lead actress in D-War. He shook my hand and said good job, and that pretty much sealed the deal! I was kind of shocked, because I've been trying to think of ways to use this film to my advantage while it's hot, and in the public mindset.
As I'm driving home, I got a call from my boss. He's doing re-shoots on a film he shot a fewmonths ago, which is typical. He said something about how they're going over schedule and want to do "B camera" stuff with sync sound, so I said sure and sped home. I had fast food for dinner, and packed up my gear. The location was just around the corner from my place, so that was good. The "A camera" sound guy was Dan Monahan, who I've known since my first year here. We don't speak too often, for no real reason, but he knows me, and we're cool. It was the second "Hollywood" thing that happened to me that day. I ended up recording three shots of people shooting a gun, then saying a line, and then two sets of just voice recording, phone messages to be exact. The originators of the voices were Joe Mantegna, and Mike Starr. Now, Jay Mohr was also there, and I wanted to speak with him, as he knows another guy I worked with on a bunch of Stand up Comedy DVDs. Either way, it was easy work, and I'm getting paid "Ass saving money" which is always good. The down side of all this? I didn't get to bed until 5 and a half hours ago, and i've been at workfor half an hour now. You do the sleep math there...
Current mood:  tired
Friday, May 25, 2007
So I'm sitting in the control room at Current right now watching the first hour of our live test. That's right, a network called "Current" has been on the air for almost two years now (!) and has not been live the entire time, except for one hour last year when they showed burning man burn live. Now we're doing our tech dry run, where we are pretending to be live for real. It's nice. I'm jazzed about it because I've felt that this is the way things should've been done since the beginning. It's also good because most fo the problems we've been having here would be deal killers for a live network, meaning those who are at fault will sink or swim, live on the air. I can't wait.
This past Saturday I did a day of reshoots for a movie I did four years ago, which never got finished. Now, the guy is doing reshoots on a different camera, different format, and with only a sound guy, not a full (albeit spotty) crew, with a full lighting rig, trucks, props, makeup... none of that now. Whatever, it's his movie.
Sunday was much cooler. I got called to fill in on a 35mm short, which turned out to be pretty crazy. I was there an hour before call time so I could set up stuff nice and slowly. They didn't shoot anything for three hours after call, and that was not a sound shot! The lead actor was Norman Reedus, or the blond brother in Boondock Saints. I had watched that movie not two days prior to meeting him, which was cool. The shoot was nuts, though. The director had us steal a scene on a sidewalk in front of an open Starbucks, which I'm amazed that we pulled off without getting shut down. We went back to the house, and finished the day.
Monday came, and I was out on location with Current's Vanguard Journalism team. We were shooting a documentary piece for Al Gore's "Live Earth" concert on 7/7/07 about Demoic Acid poisoning of marine mammals. We started the day by meeting one of the leaders of the Rescue team at the beach where he and two life guards rescued a distressed sea lion. It was pretty cool to witness, and I wish I wasn't shooting, or slipping all over the rocks trying to keep up with the camera dude to which I was tied. We followed him back to the rescue center, which smelled immensely badly of fish and seal poo. They unloaded the sea lion into a prep cage, and then we got another call! We went back to a different beach and rescued a baby sea lion. We stayed there, and the rescue guy went back to the center. We did stuff like this for Tuesday and Wednesday too, but Wednesday was special because they released four animals back into the ocean. Two sea lions and two baby elephant-seals, which are absolutely adorable. One of them looked right at us right before it slipped into the water, almost to say goodbye, and even folded its flipper at us. It was strange, and made me feel pretty special for even witnessing it.
Now we're doing this live thing, and I couldn't be happier.
Current mood:  Psyched
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Thursday night I loaded up my sound cart with everything I had pretty much, except for what Brian needed for his shoot. I loaded it into my van, and took it to work with me the next day. I had our neighbor pick up 800 feet of audio cable, and a microphone at the rental shop, and he brought it over to me when I was done with work. I took the gear pretty much around the corner to the venue, where I unloaded everything and began to work. I ran a total of 1200 feet of cable, running 4 mics up into the rafters above the audience, and audio feeds to all four cameras. It took about three and a half hours, and I went home to sleep. I got back to the venue with some stuff I forgot around 8:30 on Saturday, and finalized the setup. The technocrane arrived, and set up in front of me, whcih is no big deal, as I don't need to see the stage to do my job. Besides, i like watching techno-cranes work, they are awesome. If you've never heard of a techno crane, please check this out. As showtime came, I put a sanken wireless mic on Julia Sweeney, and we began the sound check. Initially it sounded awful, and we worked for a while to fix it. The mic was picking up way too much of the PA system, and so I had to switch to a different lavaliere mic. Thankfully, the new lav did the trick, and the day went off without a hitch. I was bugging out right before it started, however. I get extremely stressed when I do live shows. All in all it was good. When the second show ended it was 10:30, so we had already been there 14 hours, and still had to take everything back down! I didn't get out of there until 12:15 Sunday morning. I didn't sleep enough that night either. Sunday was pretty chill, except I went to what I thought was a cast & crew screening, and turned out to be a film festival. I got there at 10PM, and it wasn't over until after midnight. The film I went to see had the biggest posse for sure, and they made lots of noise during the credits. One of the other films had a familiar name in the credits, and when the Q&A session began after the screening, it was confirmed, that a guy from my film School in Buffalo was out here doing cinematography and producing! I went up to talk to him, and he recognized me instantly, which surprised me, as we weren't that close in school, and I look way different now too. Either way, he invited me to a party at his place, which I didn't leave until 3AM Monday! Iwent home, took a nap, and went to work, where I was prettymuch a zombie. I slept like a rock last night.
Current mood:  tired
Wednesday, May 2, 2007
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Current mood:  Legally Binding
Monday, April 16, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
I've been restricting my caloric intake, and trying to be more active lately, and it's working. When my parents visited, I was the biggest I'd been since I moved here by far, and was definitely not loving it. Since then, I've taken an active role in getting fit again. One of my main inspirations is that I've met a girl named Becca, and things are going well. I want to look good for her, and myself, and so I've been getting back into my good old habits from five years ago. I'm still not working out nearly as much as I should be, but the diet thing is going well, and I know I have what it takes to do it.
Current mood:  happy
Thursday, April 12, 2007
With all this hullabaloo about Don Imus floating around, and the racial cards being played in the Duke Lacrosse thing, I find myself increasingly put off by the use of the term "minority" to define anything not white. If you think about it, it's not correct in almost any of the ways it's used. If a white person leaves their place of racial origin, and travels to a land where they are farout numbered by people of a different race, then they, by definition, are a minority. Everybody on this planet has ancestry that descends back to a specific region. With the increasing cross-racial relationships we see, this is blurring as well. If you look at it on a person to person basis, there are 7 billion unique persons alive right now, making them all minorities. Just as I do not want anyone to ever be put down for the color of their skin, it irks me in equal fashion that people might use it to their advantage.
Current mood:  contemplative
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
I worked on Friday night, and Saturday most of the day on a Podcast, which if done on the regular would be the worlds first and only HD podcast. I don't know if that really matters to anyone, but it was kinda cool.
Sunday I went on a date. I went to her house to watch "The secretary" and I didn't leave until 3:30 in the morning. It was good, and I can't wait to do it again. It's been a long time, so there are lots of things swimming around in my head, from triumph to self doubt, and not knowing what will happen next is something very different for me. I think I like it. I'm definitely more aware of things than I have been in a long time.
As a result, I dragged ass all day yesterday. I took a nap when I got home, got up for a while, and went back to bed. I woke up this morning at around 9:45, when I was supposed to be at work at 8:30! This hasn't happened at this job yet, but like two minutes after I got out of bed, the phone rang. It was them, and I bolted out the door. Got here just in time to do the first shot of the day, so no big deal. It's funny to me that I can be 90 minutes late for work, and not miss anything! : )
Current mood:  ???
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
I created a forum called "I Saw it" which is a place for people to journal things that they have witnessed that are interesting to them. It's very free form, and has the potential to be very interesting. Please check it out here, and participate if you've ever seen anything interesting! I Saw It
Current mood:  accomplished
Friday, March 23, 2007
My friend and former neighbor JP got here a couple days ago, and he's been enjoying himself it seems. He's spending most of his time with my bro as I'm working all day. We made beer-can chicken the other day on the grill, and I must say that it was without a doubt one of the best chickens I've ever eaten! If you're not familiar with the concept, here's the recipie:
1 Whole Chicken, thawed comepletely, and de-gutted (eww) 1 can of your favorite beer (or Dr. Pepper apparently) spices of your liking skewers or some kind of stabilizing device aluminum foil
Cut the top of the can off the beer, and empty about 1/3 of it into your sink or belly. stab the inside of the chicken with a fork or other stabbing device several times. Rub spices all over the inside and outside of the chicken, and put some in the beer can as well.
Heat the grill to 350, and if you have 3 burners, use the outter two, leave the middle off.
Put the can open side up in the chicken's body cavity (eww), and secure the legs into a tripod position. Some people put bacon over the neck hole, but it's not neccessary. Put the aluminum foil over the middle of the grill, and try to make a lip so the juices won't flow into the grill. Place the chicken on the foil in as stable of a position as you can get it. Close the lid and let it go for two full hours. DEE LISH!!!
I got a new cell phone yesterday in return for re-upping my commitment ot Verizon for another 2 years. I got a Casio phone that is supposed to be the most rugged phone out there, and it's water resistant!
I wore the battery out last night having a lovely three and a half hour conversation with a girl I met, so that's cool. More to come on this...
I ran into the director of a feature I'm supposed to do. Turns out things have been delayed, but it's still going on, so another month or two extra in the control room. It can't all be good news, right?
Current mood:  Thrilled
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