The open to the morning show sucks monkey balls. Larry and Miriam wanted me to fix what we had before we go shoot something brand new. Once I finished the project, Larry asked me what I thought of it and I said it’s “polished crap”. Hey, you give me crap to work with and I can make it nice and shiny but it’s still just a piece of crap.
Larry thought my work was pretty swell and called it “a good salvage job”. Miriam, meanwhile, thinks I’m the coolest guy ever.
Athena, one of the new sales reps saw me today and said, “I like your belt and your shoes.”
I stopped and said thanks.
“I like a man who’s color-coordinated,” she said.
I don’t trust sales people, especially pretty ones who only want to butter me up so I don’t make them bad product. Still, I took it in stride.
“Considering all the graphics I make, I kinda have to be color-coordinated,” I replied. I probably could have thought of something more suave to say, but I didn’t feel like thinking at that moment for some silly reason.
It rained ferociously over McAllen today. The wind had eventually managed to push over some power lines somewhere and shut down an entire section of the city including the television station where I work. The emergency lighting that illuminated the hallways did a DOOM job throughout the office. Made me want to grab a shotgun and go hunt some hellspawn. But anyway…
The rain had brought a pretty rainbow over Calvary. Too bad everyone else was inside and couldn’t enjoy it. At least I took a picture of it.
I met Mirna, the woman who runs the bible study class my FAITH partner, Ana, invited me to. She kept looking at me with fondness. It must be love. She gave me some books and videotapes to watch and get caught up with. Just what I need: more homework. Didn’t I graduate from school so I wouldn’t have to do homework anymore?
Oh well. At least I’m surrounded by girls.
Made a promo for our new FOX affiliate today regarding a football-themed show that we will be airing soon. The interesting thing about the promo is that there is a part that says something along the lines of “be sure to watch this show on the local FOX affiliate” and I edited a shot of a woman holding a sign and swinging it back and forth. The shot comes from the raw footage of football plays, fans and cheerleaders I used to build the spot with.
The sign is an unfriendly epitaph to the opposing football team. I decided to use the shot as an advertisement for the FOX station. I took our station logo from our graphics department and inserted it onto the sign using Photoshop to creat the new sign and After Effects to marry the two images together along with a motion track.
I then stuck the new composition into the spot and voila! Instant self-promotion using the existing raw footage.
When Larry saw the spot, he was into it. Then he saw the comp.
“That-!” he started to say.
The shot continued on, then the shot of the coach giving his ten second “tune in” speech and then the tag and then the fade to black.
“That is terrific! Great job, young man,” Larry continued. He was sincerely excited about my work. I knew the shot would give the localizing kick the spot really needed.
And Larry smiled. I think Larry’s a Jason Fan now. At 5:40 he walked into my office with Miriam, the morning show host, saying “here he is, here’s the kid” — meant with affection, I’m sure. :) He had a videotape in his hand.
“This is the new opening to our morning show. The video is badly shot. The sound is awful, it’s too long…”
“So it sucks,” I interjected.
“Yeah. It sucks.”
We watch the open and it does, indeed, suck. Miriam had many ideas. I told her to write them down and that I would take care of it. I had to leave for FAITH by 5:50 so I bid a semi-fond farewell and took my leave. We will meet again at 10am tomorrow morning to discuss what can be done about the morning show open.
At FAITH training tonight we visited a Chinese woman who had previously accepted Christ as her personal Lord and savior. We made that visit a ministerial visitation and explained some things about the baptist faith that seperated us from her catholic upbringing.
All I know is no matter what your “religion” is, so long as you “faith” is centered on the fact that if you believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins and then rose again, you are a Christian and can have an eternity in Heaven with God Almighty to look forward to after your worldly death.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Today went pretty well. Mayra, the FOX sales manager stopped by my office door and said “good morning, Jason” and smiled. I thought that was odd and all my brain could think to say was “hi.” It’s not that I was blinded by her looks or anything like that — it’s the simple fact that I don’t believe Mayra’s the kind of person that just stops what she’s doing to say hi to someone; especially a lowly grunt like myself.
Still, I appreciated the gesture of common coworker courtesy. Hmm. That sounds like the title to a government pamphlet.
Some company was brought in to install a dish on the roof of the building, possible for the new FOX affiliate under construction within. They used one of those giant mobile crane things and sat it in the south-side parking lot and asked all of us there to park elsewhere for the time being. After lunch, they were finished and I returned my car to its usual south-side space.
Unfortunately, when they were moving the giant crane out of the lot, it’s wheels jacked up the parking lot pretty bad.
THAT must have been fun to watch!
I was at the office too late tonight and couldn’t go to Wednesday night youth worship to check out how T-Ray’s sound system was doing after the revisions I made to it last night. But, no matter: there’s always next week.
Wednesday night practice at Calvary went well. Tim’s training another drummer because he’ll be leaving for college this week. I’m going to need to re-arrange the stage a bit to accomodate the drummer needing to be nearer our band leader, Nancy, on piano.
The band and I moved the equipment around, but I’m going to want to go in later on this week to make everything pretty for Sunday. That reminds me: I also need to submit that itemized purchase list for more audio equipment.
I’m also going to need to make Taylor’s CD for her — she’ll be expecting that on Sunday. She actually expected it today but I’ve been too busy to take care of that. Also, when am I going to get those DVD’s Ana promised me?
First night of FAITH visitations. Pretty emotional. We made one visit this evening to an apartment occupied by college-age Hindiis. One was sortuv receptive to our testimony, the other — his cousin — was not. Both were polite, though. I came out of it with mixed emotions. I think I was sad neither of them made a profession. I was mad that the cousin was not receptive. I was happy to be serving God. Most of the time I’m a big, big sinner and it’s only when I’m working for Him that I’m truly happy. I was exhausted afterward.
After work I help T-Ray over at the chapel set up for the youth stuff they do there. Actually, it was more like I re-organized the youth chapel and T-Ray helped. I told him I’d come in on Wednesday night worship to oversee the new setup’s maiden voyage.
The date with Cecilia actually happened. I am cheerfully surprised. In fact, Cecilia called me 45 minutes before she was supposed to and enquired if we were still on for the evening. How nice.
We had dinner at Denny’s as planned. Took seperate cars to Barnes & Noble where she looked at books about London and I looked at books about Photoshop CS2 (they didn’t have anything on the Avid Adrenaline). We later sat on the floor together in the religion section. Cecilia was going through a little pile of London books and Christian dating books.
I was reading The Idiot’s Guide to The Bible.
Afterward, we took my car to Calvary where we sat in the church sanctuary and discussed long term relationship type stuff. At the moment, we’re just friends but our long-term intents with this date have been made clear. Cecilia showed me the one song she admits she can play on the piano. I showed her the wide range of songs I’ve personally written for piano.
Afterward, Scott Hollinger and his son Tim showed up. After taking Cecilia back to her car at the B&N parking lot, I came back to the church to surf the [broadband] web and chat with the Hollingers. I told them of my date this evening and how well it seemed to have gone. I admitted to bringing my dates who were not from the church to Calvary to 1) show them where I’m coming from spiritually and 2) to show off on the piano. Scott very thoughtfully said “I could go for a guy who played the piano for me.” Pfft, so would I. I mean, c’mon, right? I even did my best Joe Cocker and performed You Are So Beautiful to much applause.
C’mon! I’d date me! :)
That title could be really racist if it wanted to.
I did my first shoot today in Mission at a local tile place with Raul, the sales rep. I was quizzing myself on the intricacies of the camera and when I went back to the office I found that the footage I captured turned out just fine. I also found out that “hottie of the moment” Claudia Lorenzo from the local morning show was fired for some reason. I’m saddened by this; I enjoyed catching her in the hallways around the office. But, you know what they say: “I hate it when she leaves, but I love watching her go.”
Noellia, the attractive older woman who is Larry’s secretary, had funny sunglasses on her desk and wanted one of the girls in traffic to wear them. When she declined, I wore them in her stead.
Toward the end of the day, Eduardo and I began discussing independent filmmaking and said he was looking for a director to helm short films he and his buddies are wanting to create. I said I was interested. He wants to do some Sin City shorts to gear up for a great big Star Wars fan film love story thing. I’ve always wanted to do one of those.
At LifeHouse this evening I got to see Eliza again. She’s a nice girl. While she was talking to another guy and exchanging phone numbers — numbers she didn’t give me — I sat down with Cecilia, the asian girl, and chatted about stuff. Her favorite color, like mine, is blue but she enjoys wearing bright, cheerful colors. I, however, gravitate toward earthy tones for myself.
Cecilia thinks I’m funny and a joy to be around. The conversation was [skillfully] shifted [by me] to relationships [ah-haha] and I was able to ask her out. She seemed interested and agreed that we could have dinner this weekend. So I’m calling Cecilia Kong at 6:30 Sunday evening for dinner at Denny’s. That’s right: she’s into Denny’s. And that’s cool ‘cuz I dig their hash browns.
Of course I’m testing her mettle. I hope she doesn’t wind up like all the other girls — since forever — and actually is expecting me to call her and is anxiously awaiting out little get-together. But she’s Korean so I have high hopes that means she’s not a, ya know, mindless American chick that forgets about your dates and doesn’t call you back when she says she will…
Oh, and yesterday, Emily Drefke called me “spiffy” and Elizabeth Etter stole, er, borrowed some of my breath mints from the sound booth at church. No matter, though: I don’t know where those breath mints came from. I did think it was funny that she shared one with me from her pocket. It had lent on it but I didn’t care.
We finished the long form music video for the local car dealership. The director of marketing for the dealership, Marsha, came in to view the spot.
Nick, the agency rep, took me to Golden Corral for lunch. We ate well and I kept the conversations humorous. On our way out, I opened the door for Larry as he was coming in. We didn’t shake hands, but he didn’t shake Nick’s hand, either.
Marsha wanted to make one or two changes to the spot so I’ll be doing those tomorrow. I played the piano at church tonight after band practice for about an hour and a half. My hands are tired.
Mike, the church custodian, saw Eliza at this evening’s worship service at her church and tells me that she talked about me; asked about me. Eliza says that she’ll be at LifeHouse tomorrow night. Again, I look forward to seeing her.
Taylor, an 8 or 9 or 10 year old girl I befriended at church, gave me a two-for-the-price-of-one gift card for Fantasyland, a local skate park, out of friendship. I thought that was cool. Maybe I’ll ask Eliza out.
Erata:
This particular episode of Deep Space Nine season six I’m watching is called “Waltz” and it’s pretty damn good. I always liked Gul Dukat; hated him; pittied him. Mark Alaimo is a fine actor and I appreciated recognizing him in Total Recall. I also like Casey Biggs as Damar and, of course, Jeffrey Combs as Weyoun. Great episode, Waltz.
They started me off fast on the Avid. Here I am on an editing suite I’ve never touched before in my life and I’m having to do a five minute music video for a local car dealership. Nick, the agency rep, is a good guy and I’ve always enjoyed working with him. We had fun putting together the first few minutes of this thing. It’s hard figuring out how to make the Avid work, however.
Tonight was the first night of FAITH which I have commited to from 6-9pm Tuesday nights, for the next 16 weeks. There’s a lot of reading and memorizing of Bible verses involved, but it’s nothing I can’t handle, I think. Joe, one of the instructors, asked us to keep some sort of journal. I thought of this blog and smiled.
Sandra called me this evening during the meeting so I called her back afterward. We talked until 1am. I asked her to be my prayer partner to keep me in her thoughts Tuesday nights whilst I’m doing the FAITH thing. “I’m looking forward to completing your training,” said Darth Vader.
After church services I edited the sermon together for air on a local television station as I do every week. I started doing this on Sunday afternoon at the request of Tony Worley who wanted to give the station as much time as possible to troubleshoot in case of any tape-related problems. The parents are out of town until tomorrow so I’ll have the evening to myself to watch Deep Space Nine in their bedroom as loud as I want it.
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