In Memoriam: My Duffel Bag.

A week and a half ago, I went to a shoot at the LA City College for an NBC pilot. I was one of very many background actors playing students at a fictional community college. When I got there, I followed the crowd and found all the extras sitting at an outdoor picnic area kinda near where the craft service was. I left my duffel bag by one of the tables and went to the big courtyard to do my background acting.

Several hours later, I returned to the picnic tables and saw that my duffel bag was gone. I asked one of the PAs to help me find it, and she tried, but it was nowhere. It was later brought to my attention that the background holding area was the building NEXT to the picnic area, so no one was really watching my bag while I was on set. So it could've been stolen by pretty much anyone with the power to stroll onto the LA City College campus. Which means, anyone with legs (or a wheelchair).

I hadn't put much thought into what items were in my duffel bag that day. But eventually, I came to remember all the possessions that were taken from me by a soon-to-be-dead man (or woman). Here's what I came up with:

1. The duffel bag. This was a pretty nice duffel bag. I bought it during my 2005 LA internship, in which I'd stayed at UCLA for 6 weeks. When it was time to fly home, I didn't have enough room in my suitcase, so I bought this duffel bag at the UCLA store. I don't want to think about how much it cost, but this bag itself was probably the most expensive of the items stolen. It was awesome.

2. My Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights 2008 employee badge holder. You get this when you work at Halloween Horror Nights (in 2008). I had it wrapped around the strap of the duffel bag. It has my name on it. So whoever has the bag knows exactly who they are fucking with.

3. My new black shoes. Every time I go to a shoot, they take a look at my brightly colored sneakers and force me to change into plain black shoes from the wardrobe trailer that never fit. So I bought some nice comfortable black shoes at Target, which I've only worn a couple times since. I don't know what sucks more; having something stolen that I've had forever, or having something stolen that I JUST BOUGHT.

4. My red henley. This was just a nice long-sleeved shirt with some buttons on top. You see it in my regular shirt rotation during the colder months. Or at least you did, for a long time. NOT ANYMORE.

5. My brown long-sleeved shirt with the blue stripes. I got it at Penney's in 2007. I am seen wearing it during casting on the WSTEC webdocs. These two shirts were in the bag because the wardrobe people like for you to bring OPTIONS.

6. My pocket Sudoku puzzle book. This didn't cost very much. I bought it at Gelson's because The Onion discontinued their usual Sudoku section and I wanted to do puzzles while in line at the UCB Theatre.

7. My Bigfoot crossword puzzle book. This didn't cost very much either, but I had to SEND AWAY for it. Whoever stole my bag is going to have lots of fun while they await my guaranteed vengeance.

8. My notebook. I've been writing all kinds of shit in this notebook for the past seven months. It's really annoying to lose something like that.

You know, about a month ago, I saw these two guys pick something up off the sidewalk and toss it back down. When I got to it, I picked it up and examined it. It was a wallet, with no money in it, but filled with all kinds of credit cards and other wallet shit. I figured I would just take it into a lost and found or something, but I couldn't be sure what building this person was going to when they lost it. So I took it home and mailed it to the address in the person's driver's license. I did this when everyone else was just throwing it back on the sidewalk. You'd think that would give me some good karma. But instead, the universe saw fit to pay me back for this by stealing my duffel bag. Could it be that my karma is making me pay for some grander crimes I committed in a former life? Cuz if so, that is BULLSHIT!

Bloggin' 'Bout Bloggin'.

Apparently, this is my 101st entry on this blog.

I haven't "blogged" with any kind of regularity for a while. I'm always writing. But it's not always blogs. Sometimes, it's captions for photo albums, or parts of a script, or just some other weird long-term thing I'm working on. At this moment, however, I feel bad that my blogging seems so sparse. I imagine it will be disappointing to whatever set of eyes lands here someday, looking for a more complete account of a human life.

I used to have another blog, on Livejournal. There's a link to it on the side there. It was essentially the same as this blog. I also have a couple of "themed" blogspot blogs that I rarely use, and I used to occasionally blog on MySpace. My favorite kind of blog is one like this, where I just write about whatever I feel like and there's no real theme. But all these blogs came into existence for the same reason. So I could write shit when I wasn't writing, like, fiction. I feel better when I write. My Livejournal specifically is something I started because I was depressed, and it would cheer me up to just write some bullshit. Even if it had nothing to do with what I was sad about. Well, especially if it had nothing to do with what I was sad about.

Dude, why the fuck does my furniture make noise? Every fucking night, when it's really late and very quiet, my bookshelf makes a loud clacking noise. Like it's settling or something. YOU'RE AN INANIMATE FUCKING OBJECT, SHUT THE FUCK UP. Every time this noise happens, my heart skips a beat. I hate that shit. One day, I'm just gonna have an insane futuristic room with all the shelves built into the walls. This will of course be a secret room in a big mansion. Which has its ups and downs. On one hand, if something happens to me in my secret room, rescue workers won't find me and I'll die. But if a bad guy breaks into my home while I'm in it, he won't find me either.

This blog entry took a dark turn.

"Hi Superman!"

Yesterday I was walking past a school and all the kids were having recess at the outdoor basketball court. I happened to be wearing a blue shirt with the Superman logo on it, red shorts, and even Superman-colored sneakers. As I'm walking past, I hear someone yelling, "Hi Superman! Hi Superman! Hi Superman!" So I look and it's this tiny little kid pressed up against the fence, trying to get my attention. So I wave at him, and he immediately bolts in the other direction.

What I like about this is that I don't look at all like Superman, but whatever discrepancies there were in my costume and physical appearance were completely ignored by this kid, and, depending on how fanciful he was, it's possible that in his mind, on that day, he saw Superman in reality. Awesome.

New Logos.

Look at these new Pepsis.


The "smile" gets bigger or smaller depending on the drink's... what, potency? Pepsi has gone through a LOT of different looks over the years, but I think far and away my absolute favorite is the white can with the old logo from the late 80's/early 90's:


Simple. Elegant. Perfect. If you like Pepsi. I'm more of a Coca-Cola man.

Here's some other recent beverage makeovers.

When I was in high school, Nestea looked like this:


That looks like a fun drink! Now, Nestea looks like this:


That looks like medicine.

And how bout Sierra Mist? I only started drinking this a couple years ago. It looked like this:


That also looks like a fun drink! Now it looks like this:


That looks like a horror movie.

Also:


I feel like every time they redesign beverage logos-- or any logos, for that matter-- I like the new logo a lot less. But I suppose logo changes are necessary... for time travelers to be able to triangulate the approximate year in a pinch.

-Diego

Carolers!

The other night I was out for a run when I turned a corner and found myself looking at real life CAROLERS. As in, a group of people singing "O Come All Ye Faithful." I was quite amazed at the sight. Even though I've been aware of the existence of carolers my entire life, and I've seen them all the time in videos, this was the first time I ever saw them with my naked eye. And as I observed this phenomenon for real, I was struck by what a bizarre thing it is, for this group of assorted persons to stand around in the darkened streets outside a house and sing with their unprofessional singing voices. A woman came out of the house cradling her dog like a baby and just watched them, like she might watch her TV. What a weird thing! The neighbor also popped out, while talking on the phone, possibly telling someone about weird things happening in his neighborhood.

I wonder what other extremely common things I've managed to never see in person.

-Diego

The Day the Earth Did Something Stupid.

Twentieth Century Fox has announced that on Friday, December 12, 2008, not only will it release the remake of 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (starring Keanu Reeves) into both regular theatres and IMAX, it will also be transmitting the film into deep space.

I can't believe it either! IMAX!

The movie will be fired into Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to our own solar system, and they'll be receiving it sometime in the year 2012. This is the first intergalactic feature-length movie transmission, so that's pretty cool. Only... well, right now, this movie's got 8 out of 11 rotten reviews on rottentomatoes.com, giving it a shameful 27% on the tomatometer.

What if there's an advanced civilization in Alpha Centauri? These possibly genocidal aliens are going to watch the transmission and make the following observations:

- This movie is shitty and pisses us off.
- This movie gives us the idea to take over Earth.
- The assholes who sent us this are a mere 4.37 light years away.

Then today, I saw a commercial for it on TV. At the end of the commercial, the announcer said this:

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. RATED PG-13. THE ONLY PLACE YOU CAN SEE THE NEW "X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE" TRAILER.

I was actually looking forward to this movie before all these promotional stunts. Doesn't Twentieth Century Fox realize how blatantly they are forecasting that the movie itself is not good?

All I can say is, they better attach that Wolverine trailer to the deep space transmission, because if they don't, those aliens are going to be fucking PISSED.

-Diego

Golden Oldies.

I wasn't very well-versed in popular music when I was growing up. I picked up some of it peripherally, but my entire time at elementary school, when I would listen to the radio in my room, it was always tuned to Majic 102.7, an oldies station in South Florida. That was over ten years ago. I was back in Florida recently, driving around on some nights, so in my search for decent music (which ultimately eluded me), I tuned to Majic 102.7. But something was very different about this station now. Not all of the songs they were playing were oldies. But they hadn't changed formats or anything. Then I noticed that the station was now purporting to feature all the "greatest hits of the 60s and 70s."

Whoa. Excuse me. But oldies are from the 50s and 60s. Not the 70s. Apparently, somewhere around the turn of the century, oldies stations started concentrating less on the 50s and more on the 70s to stay hip to their demographics. This sounds to me like an immeasurably foolish precedent.

You can't redefine what constitutes an oldie as the decades pass. Pretty soon, everything's gonna be an oldie. But everything from the past few decades already has a name. Like disco, classic rock, punk, grunge, or easy listening. And so it goes for all music present and future, because whenever a style of music changes enough that it can be classified as something else, they always come up with a new name. Like nu metal, psychobilly, hatecore, indie pop, or even pornogrind.

My point is that the term "oldies" was coined for one style of music. The original rock and pop music from the 50s and 60s. If they change that, and give its name to something else, the world will be dumber for it. Words from our cultural lexicon change their meaning all the time, but the cause is typically general ignorance. This isn't like Nick at Nite phasing out The Dick Van Dyke Show and airing George Lopez under the banner of classic TV (as egregiously foul as that is). This is serious. This is our language. Fuck everyone who contributes to the death of the golden oldie.

-Diego