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Okay, we’ve covered the back history. The montage sequence sets up the story: Back in the day there’s an evil mayor (henceforth known as the bad guy) who runs Los Angeles. When the people are being taken advantage of, they go to Don Diego De La Vega for help. Don Diego’s crazy son Don Fransisco is the one who actually helps them, because at night he goes to his C64 cave and turns into Zorro. So one day my sister and my friend Ryan go to talk to Don Diego in our dining room to ask for help because their daughter Angie was kidnapped. Zorro finds out by choking Blue guy, who then takes an inordinate amount of time to get to bad guy island. Of course, bad guy is not concerned with Zorro knowing his whereabouts because

So Zorro shows up in our basement, and sure enough gets the butt end of a sword. Then Bad Guy sets off some well labled TNT, we get some C64 fire, and finally one of my first and last usages of model FX.

Other notes

• The “Sunny Side Video” logo was actually an Amiga Basic program I wrote. I wrote the rotation computations and the animated slide. Not surprisingly, I’m now a computer programmer.
• In the scene in the Dining room, I was standing in front of my Mom’s china hutch operating the camera. Then I took a perilous step back. It took years for my mom to forgive me for that one.
• My Dad made the “bad guy island” model, and my science teacher blew it up.
• This was the first instance of Jason being in one of my videos. He’s shown up in some of my later stuff too.

Whenever I visit my parents, I can always be sure that I will feel at home because my room is pretty much the same as when I left for college many years ago. My parents have done a little work – new carpet, new wallpaper, new desk – but things are more or less been left as they were, from the books about programming the Amiga on the bookshelf to the porn under the mattress. When I was up there last for Christmas, I decided it was time I admitted I owned a house and brought some of these things back home with me. Let’s face it: since I’m only there 5% of the year, there’s no reason my mom shouldn’t use the room as a sewing room.

Of the things I brought back, what I was most excited about – yes, even more than the Magic Eye book – were the videos I worked on in High School. Some history: the Minnesota Spanish teachers had a statewide arts competition, and one of the areas of competition was video. The only real rule was that the dialog had to be in Spanish; otherwise it was a free for all. At the time my friend Rob and I were cable access nerds who volunteered at Northwest Community Television, videotaping everything from sports events to “Tuesday Night Trivia”, a live trivia show. For an outcast nerd like me, this was a place to put a lot of pent up creative energy.

Our freshman year we decided to team up to do “Un Dia En La Vida De Robin Hood” (A day in the life of Robin Hood). For those of you who took other languages, the plot is pretty simple. Robin Hood (Me) needs to steal some gold from the local gold truck shipment for the poor. First he has to cross “The River” (a.k.a Meadow Lake) in disguise, but his fan club gives him away and he gets in a boat chase with the boat guards(?). On the other side of the river he intercepts the gold carriage, but the Sheriff of Nottingham (Rob) was secretly hiding so he could catch Robin in the act(??). Some Commodore 64 assisted sword fight action ensues(???), which ends predictably.

How can you not love something that has “Wacky Sax” as the credits music? You can’t. Don’t be hating.

I remember the day we brought the final copy in for the submission to the contest. For some reason I had to miss the first five minutes of Spanish class, so I gave the tape to Rob with very clear instructions this cannot be shown in class. Predictably when I returned they had already finished watching. The part that shocked me was that they were actually impressed with what we had done. There were questions about how we’d edited it together, and how we’d done this or that. It was the first time I’d put my heart into something and people said “hey wow, that was kind of cool.”

I realize this looks like typical YouTube fodder now. I could defend it by saying it was before computer video editing existed and all editing was strictly tape to tape (computer controlled within five frames of accuracy), but I’ll be honest: it does look pretty bad. What can I say, I was sixteen years old. The wonderful thing about kids and film making is that you’re basically giving them endless possibilities. The thing they have to learn for themselves is to learn from what they’ve done; to strive to be better.

Did I learn that lesson? I’ve got three more of these. I could post them all together, or I could stretch this out for another couple posts because this is the most exciting thing I have going on. Guess which one I’m doing?

A few photos from 2009.

Happy Holidays everyone.

I spent a good portion of my Thanksgiving break watching the first season of Mad Men. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a show on AMC about Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early sixties. John Hamm plays Don Draper, the dashing creative director of the advertising firm Sterling Cooper. The first episode sets up the various departments of a advertising agency; the copywriters, art department, customer relations, secretarial staff, and alcohol.

The show has won every award possible and has been a critical darling since it came out, but I had to slog through it. For a show whose main characters are sex and booze it is remarkably dull. There are some central mysteries and characters that drive the show forward, but I never found myself getting behind anyone. Everyone seemed both having the time of their lives and incredibly unhappy and it did nothing for me.

In the debate between critics and the audience, I’m finding myself sliding from one side to the other. During the time I’ve been a filmmaker, I’ve often heard people tell me that they never listen to critics. Usually their reason is that the critic had an opinion about a work that they disagreed with, and it destroyed their faith in the critical process. Take this example from Roger Ebert’s website

Q. I saw your review for the new movie “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” You have a lot of nerve!! I remember when you and Siskel reviewed the movie “The Accidental Tourist” and gave it four stars, and with that recommendation I went and saw it, and you know what? It was the BIGGEST PIECE OF **** known to man! I decided from that day that I would not listen to you or Gene Siskel and save my money. So, for the next year or so, I did not go to the movies and today, I use my formula: wait two months after a movie comes out and spend the $1 at RedBox to rent it if I dare. Thanks, Roger, thanks for making people not want to go to the movies.
Joe Flambe

A. Hey, in the case of “New Moon,” that was the least that I could do.

Joe’s argument, that because Ebert loved “The Accidental Tourist” and he hated it all of Ebert’s reviews must be completely invalid, would be hard to argue even if he hadn’t picked such a laughable counterpoint (Joe, are you really a 16 year old girl?). I’ve usually argued on the side of the critics. What critics do is give their opinion on the film’s merits. They’re not meant to be unbiased – that’s impossible – but they try to be fair and exclude things like that they were having a bad day.

Something has changed for me though – In the past few years I’ve turned to TV and movies less as a cultural exercise and more as an escape from my day to day routine. When I was younger I had patience for work that wanted to explore new areas. I used to think a film that was 20% interesting and 80% total mess was still worth watching because I might see something new. My patience has shrunk in parallel with my spare time. I don’t have time for quirky angsty mumble-core movies about love from people who seem to have never felt it, or pretentious art house fodder. As of late, I find that I’m not using my spare time to catch up of all the films I haven’t seen, which is a hole I can never fill. Instead I’m catching up on sit-coms and animated shows where you can down episodes like popcorn.

A critics’ job is to watch everything that comes out. If there was a cake critic, who had to spend all day eating every kind of cake there was. Naturally, they’re going to get pretty tired of your chocolate cakes and angel food cakes really quickly, but will champion cakes that are unique and different and didn’t give them indigestion. At this point, I’m only eating cake once a month, so my perspective is very different. I want something moist, sweet, and goes well with ice cream.

If I seem to be overly concerned about a very mundane topic, it’s because I’ve been reading movie reviews for as long as I can remember. I have The Onion AV Club, Roger Ebert, and a number of other movie sites on my RSS reader. As I’m getting older I have to acknowledge that I’m just one of the masses, and not one of the elitists.

I logged into Facebook this afternoon and saw this

Fred was a Film TA when I was going to KU. I think Facebook is just trying help me reconnect with an old contact, but in this case the reason I haven’t talked to Fred lately is because he died of cancer this year. The page remains as a way for people to post stories about Fred. Considering this is becoming more and more popular, I see this “feature” creating a lot of unintended grief.

I wrote this as some sort of email rant back in 2002. As it never made it onto a livejournal page, It can finally have it’s blog debut. Sad thing is I still agree with… me.

Isn’t it ironic that the Recording Industry of America is claiming people are unfairly stealing from them? I mean, isn’t that like Pinochet claiming that some guy on the street is unfairly killing people he hadn’t gotten around to yet? “Oh, I’m sorry for stealing – we as the music listening public forgot that that’s *your* job.” Lets face it – between enslaving artists and over-inflating music prices, the recording industry doesn’t exactly have an exemplary ethics record to begin with.

Ok, this is a topic that in the grand scheme of the world falls under “Hair color of Gwen Stephani” in the importance-o-meter, but many people are paying lots of money to blow it out of proportion, so I figure I can throw my two cents in, since everyone else already has.

Here’s the thing – the largest percentage of people who download music are 18-25 year olds. These are not a group of organized terrorists, having secret meetings plotting the end of the RIAA. It’s easier than that – they’re just POOR! They’re either in college and living off ramen noodles, or not in college and have the incredible income available to those with a High School education. Face it, 18-25 year olds do not make incredible amounts of money – unless, of course, they’re singing with 4 other white guys on stage.

A major point of confusion seems to be the difference between “using digital music” and “stealing digital music”. There’s a reason people use MP3’s – they are a convenient medium. The players are small, the playlists are large. Now, here’s where I’m lost. In 9th grade economics we learned this simple concept called “Supply and Demand”. You see, when demand is high for something, you increase supply. The RIAA’s approach is the complete opposite though – customers want it, so it *must* be a bad thing and be destroyed. And look at the alternatives they give us? If people want cheap, convenient music, they can join a record club! 10 CD’s for 4 cents, and then you get inundated with paying full price for albums no one else wanted for the rest of your life. Wow, Chumbawumba’s latest? Gee, thanks.

Why doesn’t the recording industry encourage MP3 swapping anyways? Kids giving their friends tracks from their favorite album isn’t stealing – it’s FREE ADVERTISING. Maybe they’ll become fans and buy the t-shirts, posters, and other krappy paraphernalia sold with a group.

So, to summarize – yes, people steal music, but the recording industry stole from us first. If they had some common sense, they would realize the marketing potential rather than focusing on 18-25 year olds who can’t afford to pay outrageous prices anyways.

RIP Stanley J. Kral, Father, Grandfather, and Great Grandfather.

Conversation my brother and I had this afternoon over twitter:

nicreationsOMG! Google is going to fuse the browser and the OS together! That’s so… Windows 98?

ChrisKral@nicreations I with you there. Didn’t uSoft get in some legal trouble for doing exactly that?

nicreations@ChrisKral Yes, but this is Google! We all love Google (Just like we all loved uSoft in 1985 when IBM was the bad guy).

ChrisKral@nicreations In 1985, I was 10 years old. I was too busy playing on the C64 to care one way or the other about either uSoft or IBM.

nicreations@ChrisKral He who forgets computer history is destine to repeat it. Too bad computer history is made by 20 year-olds.

ChrisKral@nicreations True, and it looks like it is repeating.

Let’s me make my non-medical opinion clear to start: I don’t think there is much health value in lifting weights. I know that weight lifting builds muscle and a pound of muscle burns 10 calories a day just sitting around, but you burn a whole lot more running and you get the cardiovascular benefits. In my mind the main reason people lift weights is vanity, pure and simple.

Of course, what is wrong with vanity? Sure, some people have a problem with it, but that’s their loss. Who doesn’t want to look good naked? To the women out there who are scared they’d end up looking like Schwarzenegger I have three words: Michelle Obama arms.

He may be the Commander in Chief, but she’s the one with the guns.

I first started going to my college gym when I was a freshman because I wanted to shake the “99 lbs weakling” image I had in high school. Fun fact: in 8th grade they had to pair me the other 99 lbs kid for wrestling in gym class. By college I had gained a whole… well, 20 lbs, so I still had an image to shake. I didn’t know anything about weights, so I did what all 99 lbs weaklings do – I went to the book store. Thankfully, I found Bill Pearl’s book Getting Stronger, a book full of workouts for building muscle.

I find that a big problem when people try weightlifting is that they get a bit over-psyched – they find some picture that will be “their inspiration”, they sign up for the 12 month membership at Gold’s Gym, and then find it is a lot easier not to go. It is a setup for failure, except it’s failure with a gym membership that has a fiscal exit penalty.

For starters, be honest with yourself. Unless you work out 8 hours a day and get into illegal doping, you will not look like that photo, but only because the human body was never meant to look like that.  Really there’s a much easier program to look like the person in the photo: it’s called Photoshop.

Personally I’m happy we’re past the 1980’s action movies where the heroes were monosyllabic and all looked like they never left the gym.

Second, if you get a gym membership to lift weights, you are basically paying money so you have access to a room full of heavy objects to lift, but for $30 you can get your own heavy objects to lift, so why pay rent on a room you don’t need? As you progress you will no longer be able to afford the equipment, but I don’t believe in putting in the investment of a membership until you know it will be used. Finally, weight lifting will not help you lose fat, and being heavy will make it harder to see results. Only get started if you know what you want out of it.

I think Bill Pearl’s starter workout is a fantastic introduction (for those doing this with home equipment, do push-ups instead of the bench press). Make sure you follow his advice before getting started – you don’t want to hurt yourself! Every body is unique and results will vary, but if you keep up a three times a week schedule within a month you will notices differences for the better.

Where to go from there? Depends on how much you enjoy what you’re doing. I’ve had friends who, once they got over their initial skepticism, tried out weight lifting and became engrossed once they began seeing results. For others it never stuck. Your results will vary, but hopefully this has given you some reason to try.

The KCCC Triathlon was last weekend. I thought my time was decent but I do need to work harder on cycling (I think I’m doing okay with running). The next triathlon I am signed up for is the Shawnee Mission Park triathlon in early July, where I am signed up for the full course instead of the sprint distance.

After fighting rain and my lack of skill with hammers, I now have a shed in my backyard. I needed a shed so I could store a lawn mower so I could start doing yard work, even though nothing in that last phrase sounded appealing to me. Many thanks to Brian C for all the hard work he put into it.

And finally, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog is now available in brick & mortar stores! As you may or may not know, Dr. Horrible is the internet musical sensation starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion,  and Felicia Day. Movie Monkey Applies To The ELE is also on the DVD as one of the special features (which got a nice mention in this review).