it's our beatlemania, man. fab. far out
Booyeah! Double whammy time!
First up, fun with a Bear suit:
You can check out Bear’s IMDb page by clicking here (please!)
Secondly, here’s the trailer for Bear:
Later this month, the 31st of October, I will be flying to Helsinki Finland to challenge Finland’s greatest Guitar Hero player (they’re figuring out who that is right now in a nationwide promotion). I’ll be showing up at Digiexpo, which is kind of like Finland’s E3.
Here’s the announcement video:
This video is probably one of the first videos on my YouTube channel that took longer than one day to film. Thanks to:
Sam Gorski – Camera, lab scientist
Brian Firenzi – The Random Finnish Guy (Check out his site: http://5secondfilms.com)
Alicia Martinez – Producer
Matt Arnold – Additional Camera, Lab scientist
Brandon Laatsch – My trainer
Niko Pueringer – Another one of my trainers
The basic gist of this one was to parody the Rocky IV montage (or rather, the 3rd Rocky IV montage). It seemed a natural fit – American former champion goes to Russia to challenge their champion. In that montage, Rocky uses natural means to beat rigid scientific methods. Here, I wanted to contrast old school gaming with brute force practice (which is what a lot of the pro rhythm game types tend to fall into). It’s all about cross training for me, and I hope the humor comes through.
The arcade was at the Redondo Beach pier – they had a whole slew of great classic arcade games ( the Pong machine didn’t really work, but was totally cool regardless). Special thanks to Ashley Halle, who tipped us off to the location. We were worried that someone might stop us, given that it’s LA and you can barely walk around with a camera without a permit, let alone use it, but we were able to film pretty openly and nobody gave two shits.
The majority of this one was shot on the Sony EX1, a camera I am liking more and more, and if it weren’t for the blasted lame 4:2:0 thing, would be a kickin’ sweet camera. Also if it weren’t such a bitch to hand hold. Super slow mo guitar smashing was on the Sony V1U, which has an option to do slow mo at the expense of resolution.
I plan on bringing along a little camera and continuing this little narrative in Finland, so that should be a lot of fun. It’s been a long ass time between videos due to how busy I was with other Actual Film Projects, so it’s nice to get something up onto the ol’ channel again.
I make myself desktop backgrounds to inspire myself sometimes.
Yelp.com is my usual go to place for food reviews. Generally, they will point you in the right direction. However, about half of Yelp’s reviewers are the stupidest fucking idiots in the world. If a review of a goddamned RESTAURANT starts with an ENTIRE PARAGRAPH about what you were doing with your hipster friends before you got to the freaking restaurant, it’s usually safe to completely ignore the review.
My favorite are the ones that start off with qualifiers such as “Normally I hate this kind of food” or “I am not a fan of _____ food,” which to me is the exact same as writing “My opinion on this matter is literally useless but I am such an attention whore that I am giving it anyway.” And for some reason, Asian chicks seem to be the worst offenders of this.
Even better are the reviews that seem to be just fine for a place, and every indicator they put down seems to say they liked it, but then the review is 1 star. You never see this anywhere else – you never hear someone go “Oh man, Terminator was great! The effects were awesome! I had such a good time! The girl I took to it totally made out with me afterwards because that’s how good the movie was! Overall, the movie was 1.5 out of 5 stars. I can’t recommend it to anyone.) It’s like these people live in a bizzaro world where 1 star means “Great!” 2 stars mean “Pretty good!” and 5 stars means “Nuke this establishment from orbit”
So hey all you code junkies get on it – write a Yelp aggregator plug-in (like the YouTube Comments Snob plug-in that Chris Finke wrote) that analyzes the review for misspellings, and also if the reviewer invalidates their opinion in the first fucking line of their own review (”Normally I hate” and “Usually I never” and “Boyfriend dragged me” are all good first line indicators).
Here are some excerpts from my favorite idiot Yelpers I’ve come across:
seashell l. writes about Carnitas Michoacan #3 (2 star review):
I ventured into East LA in search of really good tacos. Mind you, I’m not really a fan of Mexican food, but a client of mine told me that he goes to East LA for tamales. So I figured…what the heck, I’ll check it out.
The first sentence and the second sentence literally cancel each other out. He is not a fan of Mexican food, yet he goes searching for really good tacos? That’s like me being like “Man, fuck soccer” while I jog to the local park wearing cleats in search of some pick up games. Also good work on telling us the gripping story of how you went to the restaurant.
Jill C. writes about Chanos (3 star review)
It’s Lent season again…the time where we, Catholics, choose a thing or two to give up for 40 days and 40 nights as well as not eating meat every Friday. This year, I chose to give up rice. Yes, it is crazy…but it was either that or sex. Which would you choose??? (alright then!)
Jill has spent the first paragraph of her review telling us about her religion and her choice for lent this year, and also somehow managed to slip in the fact that she’s a whore. Great job, Jill.
Also since the sex she is enjoying during Lent is possibly pre-marital, it would stand to reason that she sucks ass at being a Catholic, which makes the fact that she’s giving up rice totally arbitrary. I love it when you can join a religion and pick and choose which parts to follow.
Why’d you give up rice, Jill? What possible difference could it make!? You’re getting railed non-stop, you think God is going to be like “Yeah, well even though you were getting it good, you diiiiid give up rice, so… COME ON IN!”
We STILL haven’t had ANY indication what this review is about yet either. Here’s the rest of the “review:”
Not eating rice hasn’t been so bad. The hard part is that I always forget when Friday comes around. After skipping dinner to catch a movie, my stomach was not happy with me. Skipping meals does no good anyway. It only slows down your metabolism. It defeats the purpose. Chano’s seemed like a good idea at the time. They are open late and a small taco fix should suffice.
Two tacos Al Pastor. $1.59 each. Green hot sauce. That was good enough for me and my growling tummy.
Then I remembered the next day that I wasn’t supposed to eat MEAT! Ugh! Everyday I get closer to hell.
We get about two lines talking about what she ordered, and how it filled her up. That’s IT? This is what counts as a restaurant review? It’s mostly just vapid ranting and attention whoring about how Lent is so hard for her! Boo fucking hoo, hipster scum.
By the way, Jill has 500+ friends and is Yelp Elite. Also, Asian chick. Just saying.
Jesus Christ, all her reviews are like this.
Charles M. writes about La Taquiza (2 star review)
Not the finest dining I have had here in Los Angeles. To begin with, La Taquiza is in a SKETCH part of LA. I’m not talking just a little bit sketchy. I’m talking about SUUUPER sketchy. Homeless dudes yelling everywhere, lowriders with huge basses thumping by, and all sorts of inner LA sketchiness. Being a white kid from NorCal, this restaurant’s neighborhood is not exactly where I should be hanging out everyday.
Oh man if he hadn’t said he was a white kid from Nor Cal I never would have guessed. Really? Figueroa a hair south of downtown is capital SKETCH part of LA? Hot balls, if that’s “sketch” then the place I’m living now must be a freaking oil painting of danger. I wonder if he comes from a family with money? Let’s find out based on a line from a random review for a car wash:
My family and I have been getting car washes here all my life. Between our 5 cars, that’s a HUGE amount of car washes.
Check. But I wonder… how rich? His review for a country club suggests: Very. Now, I wonder if he’s raging against the machine due to his rich upbringing? Perhaps his 1 star review of In-And-Out will shed some light on this:
But I learned not too long ago that the company (In-and-Out) donates disgusting amounts of money to right wing fundamentalist christian organizations. Being a militant Atheist, I strongly disagree with fundamentalist christian views, such as the hate for fellow human beings expressed in Proposition 8. Therefore I will NEVER again in my life give a single dollar to the In n Out company until they prove that they have completely changed their views.
Double check.
Erin H. writes about Tommy’s (1 star review)
Seriously now, what’s the deal with everyone loving this place. Everytime I drive by it’s a long line. My boyfriend will leave the house to go get some Tommy’s (3 minute drive) and it takes him an hour. He comes back with food items that are barely recognizable underneath a mountain of brown sludge that i’m told is ‘chili’.
Her entire first paragraph suggests her review is based on driving by and seeing a long line, and the fact that her boyfriend brings back food that doesn’t look appetizing to her.
Sandi K. writes about Galco’s (3 star review)
I expected Galco’s to be a little bigger. I was looking for sodas without caffeine or high fructose corn syrup and found about a dozen or so that we hadn’t tried before.
Middle of the road review for what must have been a disappointing experience for her. A dozen sodas they never tried before wasn’t enough, and the place was smaller than she though. Wonder-fucking-full.
James S. writes about Paseo (1 star review)
Not a review of the food.
Always a good sign.
I went Saturday night: out of sandwiches. I went tonight. Sold out of sandwiches. 1 star for being really out of sandwiches = being really annoying. I asked about it and the guy, although kind of ‘nice’ wasn’t saying anything other than “yep..sold out”. It would have been nice had he pulled his head out and said ” you know, we’re out of sandwiches, again, I’m sorry about that…here’s the deal…we just don’t have room to store extra bread…or meat…or whatever” as opposed to just “yeah..we’re out”…I know you’re out, I’m more curious to know why after running out so consistently you don’t prep for more sandwiches. Anyway…after I get around to eating one (it’s been a year since my last go around) I’ll write a proper food review. But until then…I’ve spent about $10 on gas just to hear “yeah..we’re out”
Basically King James gives the place 1 star because they’re sold out (which should say something about how good they are) two nights in a row when he manages to raise himself from his throne and drag himself over to the establishment. Then, when the employee doesn’t suck him off with an explanation of why they’re out (which any idiot, including King James himself, can infer), he rages against em and leaves this scathing review.
Really you freaking moron? Why don’t you just make more sandwiches? AS IF THE OWNER HAD NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT? As if the OWNER thought, “Gee we sell out a lot if only we had more sandwiches. Oh well, since I HATE MONEY I guess I’ll just stay the course!”
James is probably the kind of idiot who claimed the Nintendo Wii shortage was a calculated effort by Nintendo to deprive their company of FREE MONEY.
Jason A. writes of Paseo (2 star review)
“Why so hostile?” you might ask. This place is overrated. Overrated like the MPAA overrates movies. Yeah, that overrated.
Jason A needs a basic lesson on how the MPAA works. They assign a rating not based on quality but on content. You can’t “overrate” that. If the MPAA assigned twelve R reviews to a movie, then they’d be “overrating” it. Jason sucks at simile. Not like me – I’m awesome at it. Take a look up the page at the masterful “sketchy/oil painting” pun-tafor I made. That shit was awesome.
Finally one more before I have an aneurysm:
Kristen S. (Another Yelp ELITE, by the way) writes of Dick’s Drive-in (1 star review)
I think Dicks is greasy. But I’m a vegetarian so I don’t get the burgers, but the fries are gross- so are the shakes. I suppose it’s not about the food…but really…what is it about then?
YOU STUPID CUNT IT IS ABOUT THE FOOD.
IT’S ABOUT THE FOOD YOU DON’T EAT BECAUSE YOU’RE A FUCKING VEGETARIAN REVIEWING A GOD DAMNED BURGER PLACE
Augh! Fuck Yelp! Anybody else have any good terrible reviews to share?
A couple years back I remember reading about a study, conducted at the University of Aberdeen, which basically concluded that a male’s attractiveness to females is at least partly based on how he is perceived by other females. That is, women will look to other women to help them determine attractiveness, which is intuitively obvious to anyone who’s noticed that the dudes who are hitched up or wearing wedding bands are the ones that the other ladies flock to.
The study took two pictures of men roughly equal in attractiveness to each other, and put a picture of a woman smiling at one of them. A majority prefered the ones that the woman was smiling at.
So basically, I have designed a shirt based on the results of this study which will scientifically and subliminally increase your attractiveness to females. I’ve attached a mockup below:
New blog is now: http://www.facerocker.com
Peace
The unstoppable Brandon Laatsch created this bad boy a while ago:
He was contacted by a couple of music video directors a couple of months ago and they wanted to make a music video for The Gutter Twins on the Subpop label, who are composed of a dude from System of a Down and a dude from way-back Seattle grunge era band Screaming Trees, which is rad.
They basically saw the original video, and then cast Brandon and his brother in the real thing (this is a clip with the good stuff):
Funny thing was when Brandon, homemade pyro extraordinaire, went face to face with some real pyros. Most of them hadn’t ever progressed to his point (two stage explosions, remote detonation) of his amateur pyro career because they got actual jobs as pyrotechnicians before their experiments would lead them to the level he’s at now. Brandon also noticed that in general, they tend to use more gasoline than what he was used to because what they used to ignite the gas was much more powerful – they could get away with being more wasteful with the gas. For Brandon, the gasoline was the part you had to go buy at the station, so he was much more conservative with it.
Sometimes, YouTube popularity can lead to some real world results, I guess.
