I spent my 22nd birthday

With Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, and their outrageously adorable children. Clearly the best birthday ever.

It was his first time riding The Haunted Mansion Holiday, based off his film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Shoes

• Les Mis for Megs
• Phantom for Brittany
• Batman?
• Sweeney Todd
• Sleeping Beauty

Vans are so expensive, but they're by far the best canvas.

Merry Christmas! Love, The Universe

Not going to jinx the other one, but it's going to be a fantastic birthday gift. Thanks world, glad I'm back in good graces.

Edit: So I got pulled off the Pete Caroll tour, as usual, but met him & shook hands backstage!

Sylvia Ji

That's a lie.

Current pulse rate

I'm reading:

• Born Standing Up (Steve Martin's autobiography)
• The Poisonwood Bible
• On the Road
  

I'm listening to:

• Portugal. The Man
• Beirut
• Right Away, Great Captain!
  
• Band of Horses
• Bright Eyes (sidenote: Conor Oberst is all together too good to listen to, breaking it down into small chunks is completely necessary.) (2nd sidenote: I am so very thankful to whatever kept me from listening to Bright Eyes until now. I'm so glad I didn't mar it by listening to him in high school.)
  

I'm working on:

• Les Mis shoes for Megan.
• Getting the last things in order to study abroad.
• Moving out of my apartment.
• Organizing all the shit on my computer (sidenote: It's relatively pointless, but I think it's important. And relaxing. It's virtually the same thing as a desk, and it'll be easier to keep track of everything when I change over to the MacBook.)

Ideally I would:

• Be finding some resolution, rather than leaving frayed ends.
  
• Have a bullshit 6 week job in San Clemente vs. being anywhere near Disneyland.
• Eat better.

I'm so glad I:

• Got my sleep schedule back under control.
• Know Sean McKesson.
  
• Worked for Disney, but will not go to the park again for a long, long time. (After I leave.)
  
• Am going to buy the MacBook.
  
• Let it all happen.

I:

• Don't need definition, am not trying to make a relationship. But in trying to not make a relationship, we're seriously fucking each other over. Who's more unattached? I have no problem with unattachment. I have no problem with attachment. I just don't want to be cold.
• Realize the internet is a bad place for declarations. (And would love to pass that little gem on to Kim Katz.)
  
• Am ok with being in debt for a little while. I'm not currently.
  
• Want to get to know my brother's friends, because I know he has impeccable taste. I am worried about encroaching on his territory, but I don't think he'd mind.

I wish you'd say...

Life is so much better when I'm nowhere near Anaheim.
Whenever I'm coming back from being away I feel like I'm driving into a graveyard. This city is rotting, filled with shadows of people who dilute their dreams for the sake of remaining comfortably miserable. It's what they know, change is too unnerving, too big, too hopeful.

I can't wait to sever ties.

I'm eager to get away from stagnating here.
I hope that one day you'll get out too.

But darling, I am leavin'.

For as much as I bitch about it...

I've been able to do a lot of really ridiculously cool things in working for The Walt Disney Company.

• I met my best friend.
• I've been in the park when it's completely empty, all lit up and perfect. Similarly, I've seen the sun rise over an empty Main Street.
• I've walked through The Haunted Mansion.
• I've met, hugged, laughed and generally tried to keep from freaking out around my hero, John Lassester, and he is more fantastic than I ever could have imagined.
  
• I watched the Christmas Fantasy Parade next to Gwen Stefani, I saw Heath Ledger in person, Travis Barker knows me by name. I've narrowly escaped molestation by the train wreck that is John Stamos, I was a Candlelight Narrator host for Jane Seymour, John Frusciante and I have discussed the wonders of Arrested Development and the necessity of reading DaVinci's notebooks. In Italian. I did not lose K-Fed's kid, and Britney's are really pretty cute. Brad Garrett gives me and Lenice personal stand-up shows, and we're both honorary members of Team Lasseter.
• I was put on a Johnny Depp tour. (He didn't come in, but it meant a lot to be assigned.)
  
• I've been in Walt's Apartment. I've given people tours of Walt's Apartment. I've played the Regina music box, I own a Lamp pin.
• I worked Miley Cyrus's Sweet 16, hosted the opening of High School Musical 2, the Dream Job Winners, the Snow White film restoration event, and opened Toy Story Midway Mania with John.
• I watched Walt Disney's first feature animation, Snow White, sitting next to whom many consider to be the modern reincarnation of Walt.
• I watched the Pixar Play Parade with John, the first time he'd seen it. He told me to look past the Toy Story zoetrope and look at the people's faces, watching as it came to life, and that that is "why we do what we do." He gave me (me!) a personal tour of the artwork he had handpicked to display for the Snow White exhibit.
• I'm going straight to Pixar when I'm done with school.

Two things

One: I am intrigued by the different levels of honesty people hold with each other--how some people are let in on more things than others, and while those others are not being lied to or deceived, they simply aren't let in on all the facets of your life. Not that everyone needs to know everything, really, but the decision to allot some people with less information than others is very interesting. The reasons why are interesting. Better friendships, more trust, longer history?

Sean says, "I figure I'm generally as honest as I ever am with anybody but the better I know and trust you, the more I'll divulge about the why and the how and such." You only let your closest people in deeper, "because every new layer of intention and motivation and background you divulge gets closer to your absolute core. And sometimes you're holding back without realizing it. Either you're not sure how you really feel about something, or uncomfortable with what some of these deeper layers would indicate about yourself, not just to everybody else. Knowing yourself is a scary thing sometimes."

You're so much more eloquent than I am, darling.

Two: People try too hard to upgrade their situations; social situations especially, whether it be a significant other or the people you went out with for the evening.

Instead of relishing the small perfections of a significant other, people focus on faults and start making charts and graphs of the improvements the next one should posses, like an assembly line, a ladder to the top.

How can you commit your whole self to loving someone when you're so busy focusing on the flaws you'd like to be rid of? So much time that you could have spent reveling in your relationship with this person was wasted, the potential never fully realized.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be better at things, to get better things in or from life, but I cannot begin to express how achingly sad it would be to never have been fully immersed, wholly consumed by your perfect love for another, flawed though they may be.

People don't love completely. More accurately, people are afraid to love completely. You have to. Drowning is the only way you can do love justice. If you don't give in, if you don't jump in, if you're not in fifty feet over your head, you're doing it wrong.

Undoubtedly you'll be hurt this way. In giving full devotion, you do nothing but risk. But the risk is phenomenal and any resulting hurt is so much better than the pretense of being safe. It's so much better than not giving everything. To get deeply hurt is nearly as good as deeply loving. It's the only thing that matters, the only thing that's really, really, really meaningful.


Three things, then.

An exercise in practicality

I think if I write this all out, I'll be able to forget or clean the slate more thoroughly, which seems a necessity now. When things are better or clearer or just a little more white-washed with the passing of time, I'll check back and will be able to remember all of the good. It was truly very good for the majority of our time together, and it will be with this sweetness that I remember it:

• The Getty
• Knott's
• Comic Con
• Pixar
• San Fransisco
• Angel's game
• Elton John

Elaborations soon.

So I Be Written in the Book of Love

This was Keith Olberman's Special Comment (November 10th, 2008) on California's passing of Proposition 8:



Beautifully said, Keith.

Exhausted

I don't want to have to teach people about myself.

What hurts the most is that someone else will have to learn that green is my color, that I love peacocks and Pixar and Sleeping Beauty.

You spend all this time learning about your someone...to be able to read them and know them without speaking. Now someone else has to learn it.

That's what's sad about break ups.
To think that all of this information your someone has collected and filed away about you might just be thrown out and forgotten. Or be rendered meaningless, which is the case in most scenarios, I think.

Ending a relationship is very sad, no matter how else you feel about it, no matter what led you to it. There's still that sinking sad.

Disney's Slate (Part I)

Bolt - November 26th, 2008


Bolt has got a lot of people in The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) on the edge of their seats for several very good reasons. This is the first theatrical release from Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) in which John Lasseter will stretch his wings as Chief Creative Officer. After John and other WDAS and Pixar directors were shown rough cuts of the working film they made several suggestions to the director Chris Sanders (of Lilo and Stitch fame) and when he wouldn't comply with the suggestions he was replaced by Chris Williams and Byron Howard. John Lasseter notes "Chris Sanders is extremely talented, but he couldn’t take it to the place it had to be."

This film has created new advances in non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) that has enabled animators to give the 3-D backgrounds a hand painted look (specifically based off the work of Edward Hopper). There are between three and fifteen patents pending for the new advances in the NPR technology WDAS created for use on Bolt. Sounds kind of like Walt and the invention of the multi-plane camera.... Could it be that WDAS is becoming an innovator again? We'll wait until the box office dictates how successful these new forays are - then we'll see how much The Mouse will let its animators innovate.

Disney's been opening pretty well with its less inventive films, take Chicken Little for example. At $40.1 million, it was the second largest opening in Disney [not Disney-Pixar] produced movies only to The Lion King's opening at $40.9 million. However, as opening weekend passed and the poor reviews came in, it quickly became apparent that Chicken Little had very little to stand on. Chicken Little made $313.9 million worldwide whereas The Lion King would go on to make $783.8 million.

I think Bolt will do well enough in theaters, as Disney's main audience of children and families is always a fairly dependable chunk of income, but teenage/college/older Disney fans still haven't been given a driving reason to go see this film. They've been burned before by the bad sequels and unimpressive low-grade animation pieces (Home on the Range? Kronk's New Groove?), and I think it's going to take something more to reclaim the audience that expects more from Disney's animated legacy.

Ignorant, Misogynistic Morons

The Bush administration is attempting to re-draft a regulation defining abortion as:

“...any of the various procedures — including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action — that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”

Mary Jane Gallagher, president of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which represents providers, said, “The proposed definition of abortion is so broad that it would cover many types of birth control, including oral contraceptives and emergency contraception.”

“We worry that under the proposal, contraceptive services would become less available to low-income and uninsured women,” Ms. Gallagher said.

Indeed, among other things the proposal expresses concern about state laws that require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims who request it.

Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, said, “Why on earth is the Bush administration trying to discourage doctors and clinics from providing contraception to women who need it?” - The New York Times

Why don't they just outlaw condoms and call male masturbation attempted abortion? Does that not also result in the 'termination of the life of a human being before implantation' if we're really going to push the limits here?

Holy hell, I cannot wait until these people get out of their cruel joke of a position of power and can get back to sticking their heads in the ground.

I'll Bite...

The Dark Knight Updates

In three days The Dark Knight broke ten records:

1. Biggest Opening Weekend Profit - $155,000
2. Biggest Single Day Profit - $68 Million
3. Biggest Opening of 2008
4. Biggest July Movie Opening
5. Most Advanced Tickets Sold
6. Widest Release - 4,366 Theaters
7. Biggest Midnight Screening - $18.5 Million
8. Biggest IMAX Midnight Screening - $650,000
9. Biggest IMAX Opening Weekend Profit - $6 Million
10. Biggest Opening for PG13

And it's still going strong... I went to see it again [I saw it for the first time at 12:01 at the Dowtown Disney AMC] in the new IMAX at the GardenWalk last night and the theater was full.
[And then Christian Bale goes and pulls a stunt like this? At this moment, you are the biggest star in the world, everyone is watching you... What the hell are you doing?]

It's Simple... Kill the Bat-Man.

The Dark Knight is destroying the box office... The film made $18 million from the 12:01 showings last Thursday night alone. This is going to be one hell of a weekend for Warner Brothers and super hero/comic book movies.

Moving On

The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught. -The Marquis de Vauvenargues

Only the Good Die Young

I came home from a phenomenal tour today with Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Marketing (all branches therein) and had planned to write so much about it and where my career might go, and as I logged on to the internet and did the usual Chapman/Disney/Facebook check my heart dropped...

Marc Russell died today in a motorcycle accident.

Marc was one of the first boys I 'dated.' (If you could really call it that back in middle school where a boy asked you if you liked him, you said yes and then ignored him for a week...) He sat next to me in math and generously helped me lower my grade.

One of my dearest friends, Brett Mackenzie, was one of Marc's closest friends in middle school. The two of them together was just one ridiculous, offensive thing after the next. They planned for weeks to be Marc and Tom from Blink 182 for Halloween and discussed with me, at liberty, the merits of one fake lip ring over the next.

WALL-E Updates

From the LA Times Entertainment section,

"Pixar's new film, "Wall-E," is not only strikingly original, but dare I say it, artistically daring--and yet here it is, in the middle of a sequel-laden summer, earning rave reviews and making $62.5 million in its opening weekend, the third best Pixar opening ever. The critics have been rapturous. (See here and here and here.) In fact, for all the talk that critics are out of touch with mainstream moviegoers, critics and audiences are in agreement on one key thing: Nobody makes better movies than Pixar." - Full article here.

Ain't that the truth.

John Lasseter
Academy Award - Special Achievement
(1st Feature Length Computer Animation): Toy Story, 1996
Golden Globe - Best Picture, Musical/Comedy: Toy Story 2, 2000
Golden Globe - Best Animated Feature: Cars, 2007

Andrew Stanton
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: Finding Nemo, 2004
Director of WALL-E, In Theaters Now!

Brad Bird
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: The Incredibles, 2004
Academy Award - Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille, 2008

Sean, Graeme -- You're the toughest critics I know, I'd love to hear what you thought about WALL-E.

Pineapple Express

While I was touring around the park today with Whoopi Goldberg, I passed a kid wearing a Bob Marley shirt with this image:
And it struck me that he and James Franco look very much alike. Except for the dreadlocks and the whole Jamaican thing...
It's the squinty eyes mostly, I think.

WALL-E at the Box Office

"Playing at approximately 4000 theaters across the United States and Canada, WALL-E has broken Finding Nemo's opening day record of $20.2 million dollars (2003) by raking in between $23.1 and $23.2 million at the "domestic" box office on Friday, handing Pixar its best opening day ever.

The film is now on its way to challenge Finding Nemo's opening weekend record of $70.4 million, which is, to date, Pixar's best opening weekend success." - The Pixar Blog

While I still prefer The Incredibles and Ratatouille, I've seen WALL-E twice in the past two days, and I expect the film to open very, very well. The technique of Pixar films improves by leaps and bounds with each film they create, and WALL-E is no exception. I'm sure you've seen the stills:


Is there anyone else that can do this? Dreamworks? Kung Fu Panda received a few reviews comparing its animation technique to that of Pixar's.... (Pixar Better Watch Their Back)

I'll respectfully disagree on that point, though, you know, I may be slightly biased. But even with Kung Fu Panda's valiant effort in animation, the heart, nuance and story in Pixar films are really just untouchable.

Roger Ebert says WALL-E "involves ideas, not simply mindless scenarios involving characters karate-kicking each other into high-angle shots. It involves a little work on the part of the audience, and a little thought, and might be especially stimulating to younger viewers."

What I am most enchanted with is the suggestive nature of WALL-E. The viewer is given the opportunity to take whatever societal commentary from the film that they see fit, or they can watch it as a character piece. Nothing is blatant or forced. The audience will become enveloped in the story and the ridiculously endearing characters, but must be active in piecing together the message of the film.

Holding Court in a Downstairs Bar

• Entertainment Casting
• Bartending at Cafe Tu Tu Tango
• Lucielle's
  
• Merchandising for Lucky Brand Jeans
• Marketing for Pixar
  

The Coldplay Bandwagon

As much as Coldplay has never really made the huge impression on me that everyone else seems to gush about, their new album is really something to behold. Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends was mostly recorded in churches throughout Spain and Latin America and the atmosphere of these old, sacred places has imbued this album with a richness you can truly feel.

I love the once-in-a-lifetime feeling that comes from a group juxtaposing exotic, unusual instruments with their familiar sound. It's what pushes music through the fuzz of all of the super-produced, overly manipulated songs on the radio. It weaves all the right threads together to create something recognizably epic. It's why I love The Decemberists, and it's certainly why I've been listening to the last five tracks of Viva La Vida for the last hour.

Strawberry Swing, track nine, is by far my favorite.
Congratulations Chris Martin, you have won me over.

(Also, your wife is weirdly attractive in Iron Man... it's totally the red hair.)

Grad Nites

When your school tells you to behave or Disneyland security will throw you in Disney Jail, they're serious. Just because it's Disneyland doesn't mean the Anaheim Police won't throw you around...

Also, Disneyland allows students to carry contraceptives in the forms of birth control pills and condoms -- watch out for The Haunted Mansion, it'll getcha' every time!

"I don't know what to say.

I just...
I got excited.

I just wanted to shout it
from on top of a mountain.

But I didn't have a mountain.
I had a newsroom and a camera." - Ron Burgundy, Anchorman