This morning when I got up I couldn't help but feel like maybe my bed-head hair is a little too similar to my "combed", or "styled" hair.
But, it just goes to show why it's so much better to be male than female. Can you find the differences in these two pictures? You'll notice there really aren't many.
Also, here's a pizza I made on halloween. I wanted to make sure to wait for a month or so before uploading Halloween pics so that they would seem more unique and special, rather than getting lost in the flurry of other people's costumes that aren't as cool as my pizza.
Also, whoever programmed the process for arranging pictures on these blog entries must really hate the human race. Holy crap. Could it possibly be more difficult? I don't think so.
Today was epic enough that I decided I can spare a moment and the brainpower necessary to post something for all 3 of you to read.
I met Harry Gregson-Williams today. As part of the graduate film scoring class at USC, we went to his studio in Venice and had a little chat with him and his crew.
He showed us all his cool gadgets and even let us see a clip of what he's working on right now. He played us some of his best music and even broke it down for us to hear some of the unique parts that make it up. He treated us all to pizza and let us spend an hour or so walking around the studio, chatting with him and his crew, and perusing his vast collection of scores... and trophies...
You might ask why this is such a big deal for me, even to the point that I would make a blog post about it.
Let me tell you.
The score to the film ANTZ, which came out 12 years ago, is what inspired me to become a film composer. Harry wrote that score. I told him that and he replied with several cool stories about the recording process to that film.
And many other films that are on my list of all time favorites. His work is hugely responsible for my realization that I wanted to do the exact same thing for the rest of my life. The man is basically my childhood hero, and today I got to talk to him. In friggen' person!
Today I held in my hands an enormous book that contains the entire original score to The Chronicles of Narnia. I spent a half hour reading through my favorite scenes. It was awesome to see how all the music from such a huge film as that was written.
For those of you unfamiliar with film music, it's a pretty big deal to be able to see an original score of any film, especially one so awesome as Narnia. I love that movie.
It was just an incredible experience for me. Everything that was previously just vague ideas in the back of my mind about what big film music must be like has suddenly become very clear. Awesome.
Our first recording session in the Film Scoring program was yesterday.
We each got a few minutes to record our string quartets with the best musicians in the world. Never before have I seen such talented sight-readers. Every single note. Flawless.
Here's a picture my buddy took during my time at the podium. The violinist with his back to the camera is the concertmaster for John Williams' orchestra.
I've spent more money in the last couple weeks than I have in the last 3 years combined.
Change of subject.
I thought that you, my multitudeous readers, would like to see a couple things that I've done lately. A director friend of mine, named Devin Graham, took one of my hymn arrangements and cut a video to it of people break-dancing.
He showed it to me when it was done and I thought it was actually quite amusing. It sort of works. Perhaps he has created a new genre.
Of course that didn't take much effort on my part since I didn't even know about it until it was done. But here's something, also filmed by Devin, that I wrote music to in about 1.5 hours. It was a speed-write, which explains the lack of originality or compositional quality. But it works okay, and it was fun. Plus I got to bust out some new samples that I bought but hadn't had a chance to use yet...
That's all just frosting on the cake compared to what I've been doing for school so far, which I can't show you yet, not that I'm not allowed to disclose it, but simply that I'm too lazy to upload to YouTube.
But one of these days!
Long story short: My entire life has been monopolized by USC. I no longer do anything social, outdoorsy, or interesting in any way. Well, interesting maybe... but only in terms of the finished products. The actual process of me sitting at my keyputer for 15 hours at a time is not worth writing about.
Our first recording session is this Saturday, and the musicians are professionals, including the guy who has been concertmaster for John Williams for about 30 years.
Which reminds me: We had a masterclass with Randy Newman yesterday. It's so weird.... I always thought that he was black. Even when he performed for us a couple songs, including "You've Got a Friend in Me", from Toy Story, I couldn't believe it. He's a funny guy though. I think he dropped the F-bomb maybe 20, 30 times?
Nearly any time I meet a new person and they ask me about my family, it goes down like this:
"So how many siblings to you have?"
"I have three brothers."
"Oh neat. So where do you fall in the line up?"
"I'm the third."
"Oh okay so you're the youngest then."
"....*sigh*.... no. No, I'm not."
Sure. I could talk to them like an idiot and explain the math as though they never passed 1st grade...
"Well you see I have three brothers, which gives us a grand total of four boys, since I'm not technically my own brother. If you take the three of my siblings and then add me to the mix, you still with me? We good? It makes sense on paper."
I just don't want to.
Anyway there was a nice sunset last night. Here's a picture I took from my deck.
As part of my quarter-life crisis, I've taken a look at my health and realized that if I don't stop eating so much sugar all the time, I will most certainly die a terrible, slow death.
Not that I care about being a grown-up or anything. I just don't want friggen' diabetes. On a typical day I would eat about 4 servings of Cinnamon Toast Crunch(not exaggerating), drink about 1/3 gallon of juice, eat some cookies or something similar, and of course I go through a carton of cookies n' cream ice cream every week.
So I quit. Cold turkey.
How has it been going, you ask? Good question. Allow me to illustrate it for you.
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
It's true. Quitting any addiction is tough, but I think the sugar addiction was devised and plotted since before the world was. By Lucifer himself.
Head aches... mood swings.... violent seizures.
But... I think it's worth it. Sugar is the leading cause of obesity in the United States. When you really step back and look at how healthy Americans were 100 years ago versus how we are today... it's kinda' gross.
It boggles my mind that there are so many people my age that don't know how to swim.
I was just talking with the receptionist where I work and she said that she deliberately chooses not to learn because she's afraid of drowning.
................riiiight.
These days I really do make a conscious effort to avoid making people feel stupid. Honestly. Having more friends is all part of my devious and sinister master-plan to conquer the universe.
So I stood there for a good solid 3 seconds waging war inside my mind about whether or not I should inform her that if she doesn't learn how to swim, her chances of drowning will dramatically increase.
In the end I gave into temptation, justified on the basis that other people make me feel dumb on at least a tri-daily basis, so it's fair.
