(briefly, because I am headed out the door)
I’m a substitute teacher on the side. Today, I guess a local high school is desperate because they know I can’t stay for the whole day. So I will work from 7:45 to about 1:30 or so as a sub, then go to my real job and work from 2 to 10.
Woot!
I found a treasure of my childhood on YouTube the other day:
Awesomely bad. What’s especially funny is that he had another ad that ran at the same time period, and it had completely different branding. It was put together so much better, used smooth optical letters instead of the low-grade font they chose for the subtitles. It even had a good announcer. But it didn’t end with the cute kids. I think one ad was aimed at adults and one was aimed at kids. But they seem so dissonant when compared to each other.
Technorati Tags: Washington, tae kwon do, self-defense, tv commercials, WTTG, WDCA, 1980s
Erin wrote about the Top Chef finale, so I figured I should weigh in, since Top Chef and Heroes are the only shows we both watch lately.
OK, Where do I begin? Dale, Casey and Hung were the last three. Hung was my favorite, and I liked Dale, but I liked Casey more, because, as Erin said, when I look at her, I see dollar signs. She could put her name on cookware or packaged sauces, or a cookbook or something, and much of America would buy it. I don’t see the same thing in Hung or Dale. I don’t know that it is race or gender or what. It’s just something about her face. Great skill combined with a great face will get you far in life, if you let it.
If I had a hundred thousand dollars I would try to use it for some sort of licensing deal with her. Then we’d make her a Target exclusive. But I bet Magical Elves, the company that makes the show, probably has first dibs on her name. So, I would not get very far. 
Plus, I don’t have $100,000.
I’m really happy for Hung. Erin is right, I can be arrogant at times, and I see a bit of that in him. Though, I tend not to be as obnoxious as the cameras made him out to be. I wish I could cook like him. Or even cut food like he does. The fact that he immigrated to the country and loves it, and became Top Chef on top of that, is inspirational and awesome.
Technorati Tags: Top Chef
So, I learned a bit about grant writing recently, when I applied for an artists re-grant from the local agency that administers state arts funds. In the past, I have had a libertarian bent, especially when it comes to using public funds for this sort of stuff. But I have never been totally 100% libertarian, and I guess my political philosophy keeps changing.
Anyway, the grant is called a “Crossroads Grant,” and it’s quite competitive. I am up against some really talented artists. These are people who might know a lot more about arts than me. Especially since I have not considered myself an artist as my main line of work. Photojournalism is an art, but it is a very geeky one, and when it’s done right, all of it is just a matter of luck (and preparation).
I am mostly a dormant artist: I think of artistic things, but I never seem to find the time or money to do them. Case in point: my animation project, “Totally Outstanding Teen Crimefighting Girls.” I never finished it, because I didn’t shoot it properly and had nasty, hummy audio. I thought that by putting my point-and-shoot camera on the tripod and taking a bunch of pictures, I could animate people. Little did I know that every time I pressed the shutter, it made the camera move slightly, enough to destroy the illusion of animation in some cases. Also, my failure to work with ISO and aperture settings to create a shallow depth of field caused moving backgrounds to distract from the animation.
But since I like this technique, and want to see how it would look with soft backgrounds, I proposed a grant for creation of a different animated story, and included some of the unfinished animation in my grant proposal. I uploaded it to YouTube below. I don’t like what YouTube did to it (it actually messed up some of the animation’s timing, but lots of people use YouTube, so here you go):
You can also see the Hi-Res QuickTime version (13.7 MB, 640×480 H.264; requires QuickTime 7 and a reasonably quick computer).
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