this’ll be a short post again, due to lots of work needing to get done today…
but i was curious – what movies are planned to come out this year that you are looking forward to? i ask, because there are only like 2 that i’m looking forward to… not a lot.
remake after remake, sequel after sequel… it now seems like hollywood has decided instead to just rummage through old childhood toy bins to find stories to make movies out of. i recently read that there are movies being made based on: the battleship board game, monopoly, stretch armstrong… i also read about one for candyland, he-man… (and let’s not forget about the recent films already made: transformers, g.i. joe…) so, so, so, so, so weird. and i just today read about lego: the movie. no joke… in fact, normally i would write something like that off, BUT the directors for “cloudy with a chance of meatballs” are possibly going to work on it… on a recent flight somewhere, i enjoyed “cloudy” much more than anticipated… so a lego movie from them could be interesting, at least.
in general, i think toy story should be the only toy-inspired movies out there. but who knows, maybe some of these strange un-toy-story-toy-movies will turn out decently.
as for movies coming out real soon… i’m looking forward to inception. and i always enjoy the harry potter films, so that’ll be fun as well. the last airbender certainly does not look like something i’d enjoy, and i certainly am not a huge fan of m. night shyamalan’s most recent “the happening” movie… but i’ll always love signs and a few others of his films, so i’ll give it a shot.
how about you? what are you looking forward to movie-wise for the rest of 2010?
love, ryan
p.s. speaking of movies and lego… check out these awesome lego-inspired movie posters:
lately, we’ve been having some pretty incredible storms around here in illinois. during one of which, lightening struck a major power line just a couple hundred feet from my house – causing a pretty remarkable live wire that sparked and flamed in the neighbors yard. a few neighbors ran outside in the pouring rain to inspect it and called the fire dept. while the firemen were pulling up, apparently a tornado siren went off at the same time… which none of us could really hear because of the fire trucks.. yikes.
anyway, since i lived to write about it on here, i’m sure you’ve already assumed that (thankfully) no one was hurt and the fire/electric line didn’t really do much damage, due to the flames not being able to spread on wet ground. that same wet ground also turned the entire yard into an electrical hot bed, since the live wire was just flailing around on it, sending electricity through the yard – which is truly dangerous. obviously. it took the electric company many, many hours to show up, get the whole mess under control and finally clean it all up. as you can imagine, the entire neighborhood was fully entertained by the spectacle. quite an evening.
anyway, i stumbled upon this incredible video that was taken in downtown chicago during one of these insane storms. watch this video… it’s pretty amazing. lightening strikes three of chicago’s tallest buildings at the same time… and a fellow chicagoan by the name of craig shimala caught it beautifully on film. i don’t generally love the danger associated with severe thunderstorms, but goodness – they sure can be gorgeous. this video is a perfect example of just that:
usually sunday is supposed to be laziest day of the week, but i traded mine for yesterday. lots of work to be done today!
occasionally we’ll blog about some of the gear we use… of course we understand that this type of thing isn’t that interesting to folks that aren’t into music making “gear,” so we’ll just post ‘em from time to time. today is one of those times.
“studio projects” is a company that makes microphones… they make very inexpensive ones at that! a friend of ours, (bleu, who we toured with years back) introduced us to these mics. so dan and i both bought a couple, which was many, many years back now. we purchased the “B1″ and the “B3″ models (both cost under $200) and used ‘em for demos, etc. over the years.. but in our most recent record (“storyboards”), we found ourselves using them in more substantial circumstances. for instance – the songs “clockwork” and “naive” were both songs that we knew we wanted to record using my kawaii upright piano here at home.. my piano just has a certain muted tone and color that we were looking for for those particular songs.. so, when it came time to record the piano, our intentions were to rent some significantly more expensive mics from a friend of ours.. but on the day we needed the mics, they weren’t available, so in the meantime dan and i decided to just set up our pair of “studio project” mics, just to test it all out. and to our surprise, we were super happy with the sound. so, we kept it… and that’s what you’re hearing on the album.
although we recently purchased a super fancy neumann mic for vocals and such, these 2 inexpensive studio proejcts mics have been so great for us, and we’ll keep using them ’til they break. they’re quite lovely little microphones.
here’s a couple photos of ours (taken of course with my iphone 4!! sweeeet)
in other music gear related news – i am finally upgrading our pro tools software to pro tools 8. i’m excited about this… there’s a few features that’ll come in handy for us and the plethora of secret projects we’ve been working on lately… (that’s right, i used “plethora” in a sentence… deal with it.) i will anxiously await the boxed software’s arrival!
hello! on this fine saturday, i have a story to tell you…
a few weeks ago, i woke up to a clicking sound at my bedroom window. half awake, i got up to see what it was. it was a tiny yellow bird tapping it’s beak on my window. at first i thought that it’s probably seeing it’s own reflection, thinking it was another bird to challenge, or that maybe there’s something wrong with it. so i got very close to the window and waved my hands around so it could see me. it stopped tapping, but stayed standing still on the window ledge staring right back at me, completely unafraid. so, i gently tapped the window to scare it away (i was starting to worry that it would hurt itself by hitting it’s little beak into the glass all day) but a nothing happened. the little yellow bird just stayed put and starred right back at me, unafraid. so, i walked away and noticed when i did, it flew away… but when i walked near my other bedroom window it followed me to it and began tapping that window. it seemed like it was trying to get my attention! thinking that maybe it couldn’t see me through the other window because of a reflection, i tried the same things again… waving, talking and tapping back. same effect… just sat and starred back at me.
eventually we both went about our day… i left the bedroom and the little yellow bird flew away.
a few days later, i hear more tapping, but this time on a completely different window of the house. it was the same little yellow bird back for a another visit. same things happened – he tapped his little beak until it got my attention and then sat and starred at me, with it’s super cute little bird eyes.
it happened once or twice after that day. but my little yellow bird friend hasn’t visited in a few weeks now. i miss him! he was adorably small and obviously wanted to be friends.
someone mentioned to me the possibility that maybe it was someone’s pet that escaped it’s owners and thought it lived at our house. obviously not being afraid of people – i thought that was very possible! found a few articles online of similar stories about a little yellow bird with similar behaviors (weird) so, perhaps it was just a curious little type of bird. i’m convinced now that it is in fact a wild bird, and not someone’s pet… because it visited throughout a week or so time span, which i would assume a pet wouldn’t know how to survive for that long in the wild, being used to being fed by people and all. at least i HOPE it wasn’t someone’s pet. i tried a couple ideas to catch it in a little bird cage, but it never came back to give me a shot at rescuing it! bummer.
anyway, totally random. i still have no idea what was going on, but i really enjoyed my little yellow bird friend. for the life of me, i’m not sure why i didn’t grab my camera in time to photograph him/her… i think i was too surprised by it’s behaviors to think of picture taking. but if he comes back, i’ll be ready… to take it’s picture and/or to ask it if it would like to be my pet/friend.
anyway, hope your weekend is lovely!
love, ryan
p.s. here’s a photo i found online of one that looks slightly similar…
hello again. hope your week is coming to a nice finish so far.
i’m spending the rest of day playing around with a couple musical ideas i’m excited about. feels nice to be in the middle of projects (even if they’re all secret lately… sorry!)
i took some iphone 4 photographs for you to see. so, of nothing special in particular, but you can at least see the quality. it’s a beautiful little camera, for sure. here’s a link to view them on my flickr page, where you can see high res versions (hit the “all sizes” text near the photos on flickr)
i’ll post more soon, when i find some more interesting things to take pictures of.
speak soon!
love, ryan
P.S. here’s a really random video i stumbled upon a couple days ago… crazy.
but who knows, maybe some of these strange un-toy-story-toy-movies will turn out decently.
