Originally posted at Project Pedal

I'm going to try to keep this post short tonight - although I have a massive amount of info' to share with everyone, I think it's best if I pace myself.

Tonight I'm just going to lay the ground rules for the next few days. As the title of this post says, there are 4 days left until we leave, in an RV, up the Pacific Coast for a 5 day shoot of what will become the pilot-episode for Project Pedal.


I'm going to post, at least once, every day up until we leave for filming - while we are on the road, we have a long list of free wi-fi hot spots along our planned route. That is, until Nevada, there just isn't anything in Nevada. We'll do our best to publish what we can, when we can.

Tomorrow I have a final meeting with Matt, the producer, we'll go over last minute details. Then around 9 o'clock at night, Tim will be coming in from Hawaii, Nick, my brother, flies in on the 2nd from Detroit. The DP (who is no longer Olivier, but I'll get into that story later) gets back into town on the 3rd. And we all leave, as one big happy family, very early on the 4th.


Don't forget to read over the little update-box-thingy that I just worked so on, you'll find it near the top of the post column, just under the header. It has all kinds of entertaining (some people might disagree) info about the trip.

I just finished watching a clip from a '69 Senate hearing with Fred Rogers, or Mr. Rogers, as most people know him - speaking against a budget cut to public television proposed by Nixon... no doubt to "balance" the ongoing Vietnam invasion.

I was a bit caught off guard by it - I would have never expected to be so moved by his words. I wish now that I had watched more of his show as a child growing up.

Something about the way he slowed down the conversation - made sure people felt calm and involved. His presence seemed to shift, on a dime, the mood in the congress - it went from business to personal, and I think suddenly the members remembered that their cuts had real, long-lasting affects on the outside world.


Mostly, I wanted to post this clip to show people that one person can have a strong effect - Mr. Rogers, during this hearing, wasn't the life-long children's mentor and icon he later came to be, he was young, and had only been doing his show for a short number of years. Pastore had never even heard of, or seen his public access show.



But with words - and only words, Fred Rogers does something very simple and powerful - brings out people's inner-child and with that... a strong sense of morality. I wish he were still alive.

First off, if you haven't the seen the video of Amanda and I stuck in the snow during our location-scouting adventure, click here and watch this before coming back and watching her reaction. Yes... I did cry myself to sleep that night.

I woke up late for work this morning, I had to be in downtown Hollywood at 8 o'clock and I just happened to wake up from a dream about soccer at 7:34... and considering it takes 30 minutes to get to work... Actually, it takes about 8 minutes to get 90% there, then the last two blocks in traffic eat up a good 20 minutes on a bad day. Hence... I need a moped. Where was I...?

I jumped out of bed - I had, as always, forgot to take out my contacts, which means the first 5 minutes of my morning I'm completely blind until my eyes un-dry themselves. I wet down my hair - luckily I just gave myself a haircut or else I'd have had unfixable bedhair. Grabbed 3 packets of oatmeal and a clifbar and ran out the door with Amanda.

We noticed after getting on the 101 that we had almost not seen a single car while driving down Cahuenga Blvd'... which is very rare. Then we remembered it was Memorial day, I managed to make it to ifilm in less than 15 minutes. At 8 I'm usually the only one there anyways, except for the engineer guys, and I have to go through their door to get to the content review office - but, it being a holiday, no one was there. Which meant none of the doors were open.

So - long story short - I got to work from home today. I also managed to fix Amanda's flat tire on her bicycle that has been sitting on our balcony since our bike trip last year. Exciting story, I know.


I'm looking forward to going to my friend's concert Wednesday night at the Knitting Factory - I think to end this post I'll add some video I took last week in Long Beach, I've only posted 'Bad Thing' and I still have 'Pleasures of the Flesh' left. Enjoy.

Film's official site | watch this movie in full screen

This post actually has nothing to do with JFK's birthday, but it is - so I thought I'd mention it somewhere. It's been an incredibly busy last few days, Amanda managed to check off everything on her stuff-to-do-while-family-is-in-town list... except for a trip out to our favorite spot: the rocks.

Today her Mom and Ray leave from LAX - when they land in Detroit, it will be 95-some degrees... in May... I think we might be heading for another record breaking hottest-year-ever.

The next few days are going to be hectic... to say the least, we've got a mile long list of last minute planning for the Pedal-pilot episode, which films on June 5th, then things don't slow down, I'm sure they'll become even crazier - which isn't even a real word - but I'll get into the why's of that in a later post.


Just out of curiosity, who out there reading has seen 'An Inconvenient Truth' yet?

Yesterday, while at work, one of the editors that sits behind me started laughing out loud to himself - a few of us wondered over to his computer after he started to explain that Tom Delay, the multi-indicted republican ex-house-majority leader from Texas, nick named 'The Hammer', has put on his legal defense website a short clip from the Colbert Report. In it, Stephen Colbert interviews Robert Greenwald about his new film 'The Big Buy', which is about how dirty of a guy Delay is and why he's in so much trouble.

Of course, the joke for the Colbert Report is that Stephen is an O'Reilly-like character, a right-wing, ultra-conservative, nationalistic, ego-maniac... and everything that he says is a joke - and also the opposite of what he really thinks. I guess Tom Delay doesn't have the capacity to understand satire.

Imagine what kind of... idiot... for the lack of a better word - puts on his legal defense site a clip that mocks him and every last one of his unpersuasive arguments. Probably the same kind of person who would look something like this during his mugshot.

I know I posted a trailer for 'An Inconvenient Truth' a few months ago - but the film opened up today in New York and L.A., Amanda and I are taking her mom and step-dad to a showing tomorrow night. Here is a link to a 'take action' section of the film's site.

When is the last time you questioned the carbonation process and why it exists? Could something you least expect be harming you and your children?

read more | digg story

Here are the results of my walking around the apartment - very bored - and taping random things. Fair warning, it could be the most unexciting 4 minutes of you life.

For the past few weeks I've been doing comment moderating for the Huffington Post - my friend, Eric, also started doing this a few days ago. Yesterday he had asked if I had actually gotten paid yet, I said 'no, but I was behind on emailing in my timesheets'.

We joked the it was just a scam and no one ever really got paid - they just kept hiring new people every few weeks. But sitting in the mailbox all day long was my first Huff-Po' check. For the almost three hours that I trained / got-familiar with the site my first week earlier in May. Yay!

It's cleaning time. Amanda has broken out the eight cans of carpet cleaner - I just finished doing the build-up of dishes that used to barricade the kitchen - then I fixed the screen door to the balcony, since our bastard of a cat decided to push his way through it yesterday to get to his boyfriend next door.



Still left on the to-do list written on the chalkboard: vacuum... counters... mop... dust.

Here are some particularly uninteresting pictures of our progress - yes, I'm obviously finding things to do to avoid cleaning:







And just because it was on the camera when I imported the photos - here is a random pic' of the view from our office window. The red flowers on the trees are getting so bright that in the morning, when the sun hits them just right, the whole living room glows pink.

Last week, our friend's band, 'A Faulty Chromosome' played their second show in Long Beach. Here's one of their songs called 'Bad Thing'. Enjoy.

Update: If you liked that - click here to watch them perform one of my favorite songs 'Pleasures of the Flesh'.

Where do I start with this story? Tim lives in Hawaii, near the University, he works at a Marine Bio' lab that sits right along the coast. I think it's about three miles from his place to his work - and he almost always rides his bicycle.

Apparently, if you time all the lights right - you can coast the entire way down with having to brake for traffic. Unless that is - the traffic doesn't brake for you. Which is what happened a few days ago.

Tim is flying down the hill - hitting all the lights just right - probably doing a good 25 miles an hour, when without any warning, there is a large car turning three feet in-front of him. He doesn't even have time to think about hitting the brakes.

Now an interesting thing is - when Tim first built his bike, four years ago, for our cross country bicycle trip, he decided to spend the extra money on rims that are made for jumps. He had, until now, never really noticed a difference. His bike punched the front of the car, the rims didn't even budge, the bike frame however, snapped in several places. Tim's leg was cut down his inner thigh from the angel-bars, he hit shoulder & head first into the windshield - shattering the passenger half. He flipped up and over the side of the car before coming down on the cement.

The guy driving the car ran out asking if Tim was ok. Tim, running on adrenaline and in shock, casually asked the driver if he was ok. The driver said, "I'm not the one who just got hit".


The craziest thing about this story is - this is second time, since I've known Tim, that he has busted a windshield with his head. When we were just out of high school - we were playing a prank on some people, and long story short, we were driving through a field in our friend, Chris's tiny car, when Chris saw a small ditch - he for some reason - punched the gas and not the brakes. I happened to be hanging out the back window with a super-soaker full of pickle juice, but I got myself back in just in time. We hit the ditch hard and came to a dead stop.

Several minutes later, Chris noticed his windshield was splintered on the passenger side. We asked Tim if he hit the window and he said something like, "maybe... my head kinda' hurts a little". We thought he was going to have a concussion, but he was fine.


I think I'll wait till after we finish our mock-bike-trip this June to tell Matt, the producer, any 'getting-hit-by-a-car-on-a-bicycle' stories. I'm sure he's worried enough as it is.

This picture of Amanda busting a gut was taken while she was in Miami with her sister & cousins. I have no other reason for posting it aside from it makes me laugh.

While Amanda and I were off location scouting for the 'Pedal' pilot-episode, we managed to get ourselves severely stuck in the snow for about an hour... you might be asking yourself, "I thought you two stayed mainly in California, how in the world did you get stuck in the snow"?

Well, that's a good question - I guess it's a bit too early in the year to be driving through the mountains outside of Lake Tahoe. One minute there are patches of snow here and there along the side the road, and the next thing we know - our car is literally sitting ontop of the snow. Enjoy.

I really need to remember to bring Amanda's shuffle to work with me the next time I'm working a late shift. I'm officially the last one left in the building - it's dead quiet in here with the exception of the air conditioning.



I've just kicked off my shoes and stretched out a bit - I think I've been slouching in the chair without realizing it, my lower back feels stiff.

It's strange, but I've been doing so many video post lately, I'm not quite comfortable with writing. Although... I did just remember that sitting next to me is a G5 with 4 separate 2.5 processors in it... which for those out there not too tech-savvy, means: ridiculously fast. I'm curious if I could pack my camera along when I'm working late and sneak in a quick video post - I'd have it imported, rendered and exported in no time at all.

Speaking of rendering - I waited all day long for some concert footage I took last night to export on my not-to-impressive Mac Mini. I'm hoping when I get home it will be ready to tinker with in After Effects. I'll write more about that later though.

In the meantime - I need to go make myself some food.

PS. Yes... I'm fully aware that I typed "feel" instead of "fell". I was thrown off guard by the falling lamp.

So, Judy of Random Thoughts, to answer your question - the good news Amanda eluded to last friday is a new job at iFilm. Yesterday was actually my first day - I went in for a few hours to do training.

I've also been doing some moderating for the Huffington Post - whenever I'm not busy typing the last of the script for the Project Pedal pilot... which films in only 25 days.

Unfortunately - despite the new jobs at both iFilm and the Huffington Post... and still putting in hours at Ikea for the time being, the transition in jobs has somehow left Amanda and I "broke as a joke".

And being completely broke while desperately needing a cheap/ used moped to get to and from work in downtown Hollywood is never good. Not to mention all the time off of work we'll both be taking to prepare and film almost the entire first half of June...

yay! today is a good day. :) the sun is shining! life is good.

mike is totally frustrated with me and my lack of writing posts for caliblog... so here i go... attempting to please my man.

i had to babysit 2 hours later than normal today so i actually got to sleep in a bit and get up and ready at my leisure which is so much better than my usual jumping up 10 min before i have to be there and running out the door all disheveled and with out breakfast. so that was nice... when i got here, it was just in time to put nick down for his big nap of the day (about 2 hrs) so i have some time to myself... which is nice... so here i am writing. sitting out by the back porch where the sun is shining next to the pool.. the house is quiet. :) ahhh....

plus today is friday which means tomorrow is my (one) day off! i love my day off.

mike and i have lots of good news.... first, my mom is coming out visit! yay! i'm so excited. i thought for sure she wasn't going to be able to because she only had a few specific days she could come and it was looking like affordable tickets would be hard to find, but yesterday... right before i went to work, i found some cheap tickets and booked them for her :) so she is coming.. may 24th - 29th. so far she is really the only person to come and visit me (mike's brother and his friend tim have come to see him, but that's about it). she has been out 2 other times but the first time was just a one day lay-over she and ray had on thier way to see my god-mother in new zealand. and the second time, was a very nice visit, but it was only her (ray wasn't able to come), so this time it will be her and ray for almost 5 whole days! (but for those of you counting - dad, emily, mike's mom, and mike's dad - that is 3 times... that's right ... 3 times!)

anyway... mike has really good news too but i'll let him tell you... it's only fair.

so we may be doing some celebrating tonight. :) hmmm... what should we do?

also i gave my boss my official letter or resignation last night. me last day at ikea is june 1st. basically i'm just taking 3 months off. my manager and the head of the HR department both okayed my taking a leave of absence but my manager's manager said no... 3 months was too long to hold my spot. so i have to go through the process of terminating and being rehired on sept 4th. uhg... but my manager says that won't be a problem at all. oh... what will i be doing for 3 months you ask? oh.. right. well, the first part of june i'll be biking and helping mike with the pedal pilot and after that, while my uncle thurm is in Wisconsin, i'll be watching nick full time (something like, mon-fri. 8-6) so... yeah... i'll be a bit busy. if everything goes right i'll have my dog walking business off the ground by then and my not even need to go back to ikea :) - keep your fingers crossed!

ok... that's all i can think of to write about. let's hope the rest of my day keeps going this good! bye.

This documentary is just over an hour long - but it's important and well worth the time.

PS. If the video doesn't play for you smoothly - click here to go to the google video site and there is a download video button to the right.

Part 1 of 3


Part 2 of 3


Part 3 of 3

Originally posted at Project Pedal...

I have to admit at the end of day 2 - I was feeling very down about our location scouting. The weather was grey and rainy, the landscape wasn't changing enough, etc.

Not to mention our being very, very limited on time... meaning we wouldn't be able to drive as far east as we hoped, which turned out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Instead of staying on US 50 for the next 400 hundred-some miles, like the ACA maps suggested, Amanda and I headed south on 95, after Fallon, towards Death Valley. Which proved to be the picture-perfect "loneliest road" I was looking for: a straight shot of highway for as long as the eye could see, with no traffic, dead grass and sand on both sides, high mountains in the distance.

We also passed through Goldfield, NV, an amazing ghost town - after a google-search I found that back in it's day, it was home to over 30,000 people - in 1906, when it produced 11 million in gold. The town also had one of the longest bars in history - requiring up to 80 tenders at a time to serve drinks. Now that I've read so much on it - I can't wait to go back, just passing through gave me chills. The Goldfield Hotel is still in perfect shape, and had a reputation of being the finest hotel between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific - in 1908, Teddy Roosevelt gave a speech from the main balcony.


But moving on - I'm very happy with the scouting in retrospect, we have three very different landscapes now: the ocean, the mountains, and the desert. Actually, make that five - add in: big city and one-street-towns. It should make for an interesting progression. For those who aren't caught up on the upcoming pilot episode, here's the plan:

June 5th - 8th, a small cast and crew will travel from San Gregorio, CA to San Francisco, to Fallon, NV... and from this point on we'll pretend we are continuing east, but actually we'll be heading south towards Death Valley. The four days of shooting will be editing to look like the second week of a coast-to-coast bike trip.

Tomorrow I plan on posting the loose outline for the pilot - I just have to re-type it on the computer, I've only been using the typewriter.