A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Ok, I really need to get back to making these posts every Monday instead of screwing around and waiting until I'm too tired to write it. Sometimes I have to kick my own ass to do something. :: BIG news, I finally got myself a laptop. I think it's about time that I got one, so that now I can do everything that I was looking for a public computer for whenever I was away from home, without needing access to a library or whatever! There were plenty of reasons for me to get one, and it'll take too long to list, but let me say that none of them really required that much power. As thus, I found on Craigslist, an IBM Thinkpad T23 with a wireless card, for $150, which was absolutely what I was looking for. I'm not going to run games on it, and I'm not going to be editing podcasts or anything, so all I really needed was something that would go online with no problems, run photoshop when I need it, and have Bejeweled. :: Finals are fast approaching, and I'm ready for them, despite popular belief. I understand the concepts behind both of the subjects, I feel confident, and yeah. I'm good. :: THE NEW MALDROID CD ARRIVED! I could not be happier. I really couldn't, my favorite independent band's first full CD, with new tracks that aren't just remixes. I really suggest everyone puck up a copy of this CD, and if not, just go to their band page on fuzz.com, they've got plenty of tracks you can listen to there to convince you. :: My stereo system is getting really old. I've had it for somewhere around 8 years now, and it's worked fine for the past 8 years, and then all of the sudden over the past 2 weeks it's just been starting to commit suicide on me. It's skipping around on CD's I put in, the sound quality has suddenly become shit, and the volume it's able to put out has been slowly dropping. So I'm in the market for a new one I guess... :: I haven't gotten Mario Kart yet, though I will sometime before the week is up, and I'll review it in next weeks post. However, I'm still playing and unlocking things in Smash Brothers Brawl. God damn, the amount of good stuff to unlock in that game is just mind boggling. :: Oh, and I've started work at a machine shop which fabricates railings over in Perth Amboy. I work there doing whatever CAD drawings they need, and then helping fabricate, powder coat, and do whatever else they need around the shop. I'm also good for traveling and helping with installation or taking measurements. It's a good job, and best of all, I'm in the double digits per hour on what they're paying me. I think I've found my ideal job for now. SO right now I'm working Fridays from 8:am to 3:30 PM when they shut down, and Tuesdays from 8:AM to 11:30 AM. :: I've also got a batch of photos for DeviantART that I'm going to edit and put up sometime soon. ::

-- Music Release -- (not really)
You know what, I think it';s this that's been driving my blog posts to two weeks between. Because I feel compelled now to not break the "A new mash-up for every blog post" thing that I've been doing. Maybe I should break that, especially because I'm only still working on a few tracks that are not done yet, and I don't want to release (not anymore anyways) tracks that aren't fully done and polished. So from here on in, don't expect a new track each and every week, I think that's overwith. I will post here though whenever I come up with a new one. HOWEVER! Now that the nbew Maldroid CD is out, I am trying to find a good track to mix with some of the songs on there, and that'll probably be my next finished piece.


Daily Life:
Ok, so let me set the scene for today, because nothing else that happened the past 2 weeks was really worth mentioning more than today. My grandmother down in Florida has been having health issues and has been in and out of the hospital for a few months now. My parents recently decided that it'd be best for her to come up here and live with us. Not sure for how long, probably until she goes. And a note, I may sound a bit dim when I talk about the fact that she doesn't have long left, but I know she doesn't. I came to the realization that she would go within the next 10 years about 4 years ago, and have had the time to let it sink in and have accepted that someday soon she'll be gone. Yes it'll hurt when she does finally go, but I'm just saying.

Now, she arrived yesterday off the plane from Florida, and we've been preparing the house all weekend so that it will cater to her needs. We have a new TV that she will have no problems figuring out how to operate, the stairway has an electric chair that will lift her up, and all this other stuff. We've even hired a, what do you call it, not a nurse, but one of those helpers to help her do whatever. I'll figure out what they're called later. So I've had to help with all of this, which I don't really mind so much, seeing as how I understand it needs to be done and stuff.

Now, yesterday was a great day because I had a long time walking across campus and back again in the rain to get the guy to lend me the starter jumper cables because I'd left the lights on on my truck when I went into class and by the time I came out the batteries were gone. And then I had stayed up until around 3:00 AM catching up on stuff and putting off writing all of this. So skip ahead a bit, I basically had to get up at 7:30 to go to work, which I don't mind so much, but it meant that I got 4 hours of sleep last night and have thus been tired all day today. So work wasn't bad, you know, it's work. Work is work, you expect it to be what it is, and that it was. So let's skip to around 11:30, when work was ending for me. The last thing that really needed to be done to the house to prepare for grandma was a special electric recliner that we got, and had shipped to where I work. So it was there today, and I have to heave it into the truck and then get it back out and into the house and assemble it. That all wasn't so bad, it was pretty much all assembled, and lifting it wasn't so hard, but what really sucked was while I was assembling it, I didn't realize how sharp the edges on one of the steel portions was, and basically gashed my middle finger (my typing finger, which is why there's probably more than one spelling erropr in this post) and have been swapping band aids all damned day.

So that wasn't so bad. Skip ahead a bit, after a short 2 or 3 hour break, when all of the sudden, my da gets home, and he wants me to mow the lawn. If you haven't heard me rant about it before, I'll save you the details. I'd rather eat my own poo than mow lawns. I did it for years to make money, and I'm sick of it. It didn't help at all that this was the first mow of spring,m which is always the worst because the grass is up past your ankles, and it's moist as hell. Luckily he helped using the other mower and we got it done fairly quickly, especially for how much grass there was and how much it all sucked. So that happened, then I go back upstairs, anbd by now it's somewhere around 5:50 or so.

Now, I hear him calling for me from the other room. NOW he realizes that the bed that my grandmother is sleeping in is a few inches too high for her to climb into every night, and so he wants to see if we can find a way to lower it. More work. So we ended up, after pulling apart and reassembling my sisters mattress 3 times, swapping the mattress from my room with hers. All in all, more work than needed to be done, but at least it's work I don't have to do later. (That's the optimist in me talking, if you can't tell)

Skip ahead a little bit, to around 6:30 or so. I develop a HUGE headache out of absolutely NOWHERE. So now I'm tired, sleepy, and I have a migrane that's keeping me awake. I'm currently in the 1st level of hell. I somehow make it through the family dinner, which thank god it was pizza, otherwise I probably would have lost it then a little bit. (oh, and did I mention that the only thing I had to eat today before then was a bologna sandwich as soon as I got home from work and am hungry as hell, and they don't want me having more than 4 slices of pizza?)

So after I do that, I SOMEHOW manage to fall asleep while watching TV upstairs, only to be woken up and kicked out when my dad needed to change and watch TV himself. So I walked over to my room and somehow managed to fall asleep again. I just woke up an hour or two ago and somehow I feel just a little bit better.

Juggle This:
Whoah, I did a LOT since the last post. Ok, so I've really been getting into clubs again thanks to my Radical Fish being so much lighter and less tiresome than the airflites. As such, I've finally gotten good enough that I can start being creative with them, which was just a matter of practicing, and since I hated clubs with a passion (still kinda do), I never practiced and they just kinda sat there. So of all the things I've done with them recently, I think 3 things stand out above everything else over the past 2 weeks. I first came up with a variation of the 1 high 2 low handspin (throw one high, flip the other two in different directions to the same hands and catch them before the high throw), where I do the one high, turn both clubs 90 degrees so that the body faces inward, and switch them be doing a front-faced (club rotating sideways, parallel to the body) single and then catch the high throw. It's a really cool looking trick that isn't really all that hard, but it works.

Another thing I got recently was my first 3up 180 with 3 clubs. I spent only about 10 minutes trying before I got it on camera, and it felt good, and looked even better. I threw them absolutely perfectly, and it just looks so pretty on the footage I got. Unfortunately I did that in the theater at MCC and the closest outlet that I could find to the stage was still somewhere around 30 feet away, so it's a bit zoomed out, but it still looks good. Also, in the same practice session, I had the idea to try another variation of the 1 high 2 low trick, where you throw the 1 high, then throw 2 reverse crotch throws in synch. I tried it once, failed miserably, and thought about how I could do something similar but easier. After a few attempts at random moves, I came up with doing a 753 with the 3 under the leg. Made it on the 5th try or so, and it looks great.
Other than that, I really haven't been practicing rings anywhere NEAR enough, and even though 5 rings I can still pick up and do without having to warm up, I don't feel comfortable doing tricks with 5 anymore. I'll be having a giant ring practice session either tomorrow or Thursday to try and get some back, but I'm not sure. I'm still hoping to get good enough to compete in ring intermediates come WJF5 time. Which reminds me, I need to make another profile video.

My latest video for the [Juggling] series is ALMOST done with the footage. I just need maybe 30 more seconds of finished footage before I can start really editing it. It's about time too, because it's been almost 2 months since Cold Physics, and about a month since the Stupid Tricks video, so I think it's overdue.

I've started dusting off some of my old "weird props" routines, like the picture frame act, my cu[p and spoon tricks, and even my old tennis balls and racket which I haven't performed with for years. Why? Wes. "What The Duck?", after watching it, I started thinking about how I used to fill my gap in skill with all this random stuff that crowds would find fun and different, and now I'm just getting more and more boring trying to make technicality and harder tricks seem more fun. So I'll be practicing all that stuff.

I think I can officially say that JoJ, is done. The comic is done, the main podcast is god, and I've still got ideas to make it better anbd will still do it, the problem is I don't go to hardly any conventions to report on, and I don't buy any juggling DVD's that I can review. So I can still make them, and probably will, but they'll probably just end up being convention videos. Kind of a shame, but I look at it like this. Sure, Luke made Juggling Podcast also, but if it weren't for Jason Garfield being on JoJ and then thinking about how great of a medium it is, he probably never would have started his own podcast. And if it weren't for me being the second juggling podcast, Extreme Juggling Podcast probably wouldn't have been made either, seeing as how an idea doesn't really warrant a parody until at least 2 people do it. Not to mention that (and I have to give props to Taxman for starting ME into bitstrips) the Jugglers Crib comic probably wouldn't be if I didn't push the JoJ comic on rec.juggling. So I see the entire JoJ "saga/project/franchise" as a success, because it inspired others to do things, and do them better.

A Couple Weeks In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150

Listen Up!
Ok, so sorry about missing last weeks post to start things off. I'm not exactly why I missed it, just lazy I guess. Whatev, at least this post will make up for it. :: So, let's start off with an update about Jugglers On Juggling, which I haven't done in a while. The main podcast is a bit of an interesting story, especially because I'm having trouble figuring out what to do with it. The comics are doing well, even though they are a bit underwhelming in the response they are getting, but so far it's been all positive. :: College sucks, what else is new. :: Job hunting has begun again for me, and I've got a number of places to catch up on and check back with. ight now, what looks like it's going to be the absolute BEST right now, in terms of probability of success, usefulness, and just what will overall work the best, is working part time for the welding company doing general labor and CAD work. Oh, and this welding company, is right down the street, and I've performed for the owner's kid. So yeah, it looks best right now. :: Well, I figure it's time to start working on my next juggling video maybe? I've already gotten footage of tricks better than any of my other vids, and have enough footage to start maybe. 97531, a clean 7 ball qualify, 6 ball tricks, and whatever else I have so far. ::

-- Music Release --
This is definitely one of my better tracks, and I don't care what anyone thinks. A started realizing how my mash-ups have recently been slipping into mediocrity because I was trying to put a new one out every week instead of when I had a genuine inspiration for one. So I'm not going to FORCE myself to make a new one each week anymore. As for this one, I recently went looking through my video games and TV music folder, seeing as how I had the brain-wave to come up with a mashup of two or more video game themes or something, and in the Austin Powers: Goldmember soundtrack folder I found this little gem by Smash Mouth that I listened to and then couldn't stop listening to. I immediately thought "I have to do something to this." I then remembered my recent revelation that my best mashes so far have been one overpowering track and one underlaying track with maybe an overpowering beat and minimal lyrics. I then thought about how I wanted to do something with a Kraftwek track, and so I looked in that folder for something to do. Suddenly, I found myself saying "Trans, Europe, Express" in time with the Smash Mouth track, and immediately I put it together. This was the end result of about 6 re-recordings and a rare burst of inspiration. Smash Mouth vs Kraftwerk - International Express

Daily Life 1:
So I got my first gig as an extra for Universal Talent last weekend. A background person for a Capital One commercial shoot in NYC on the 30th. THAT was a fun day. So I start off, my first time ever being part of a shoot (sure I've witnessed them before and have a good idea of what happens come camera-rolling time), and proceed to ask random people where the extras should go. Oh, and i didn't mention yet that I stayed up All Night beforehand in order to catch a 5:30 AM train to NYC in order to be at the set by 7:00. So finally someone tells me to go talk to this person, and she tells me to go get checked in at the holding area. Yay! Instructions to follow! So I head down to the cafe which was being rented out as the holding area, and inside there's a crapload of extras sitting and waiting for the person in charge of the extras (the one I talked to) to come in and check everyone's wardrobe.

Now, the wardrobe is supposed to be dark clothing, summer attire, and that's it. SO I decided to wear my Diggnation shirt, figuring it'd be cool. Of course, noone ever told me rule 1 of being an extra, no logos. So when everyone else was getting checked for wardrobe, I had to go get a loaner shirt, which of course the largest size they have is a slim XXL. It's fine, but it's a cold day and the shirt was pressed flat across my back. (Ok, let me explain, I don't get cold, at ALL. There is only one place on my body that ever feels cold and if it feels cold, I'm cold. That space is my back.) So yeah, I get the new shirt, and run back to the line to get photo'd in and mu number assigned. Then we're finally brought out and told what to do before they start rolling. This entire process takes from 7:00 to somewhere around 9:00. I completed at least 3 Sudoku puzzles while waiting on line for things.

So we're outside, and there's complimentary donuts and other breakfast items, so I grab one and yeah. A little while later we start shooting, and this is where the REAL fun begins. I already said, the commercial is supposed to be set in the summer, and here we are on Wall St in 50 degree weather with a wind chill of somewhere around 20 degrees. So between takes everyone would have their jackets on, and the main actors would be bundled up to no end. Then they'd give us the sign to take off our jackets and they'd start rolling. The best part was that some of the times between takes would be somewhere in the range of 10-20 minutes, so everyone would jump into the Starbucks right behind the set, and either grab a coffee or just stand in the warm lobby. Of course there were some that also decided to hang in the subway entrance or near the steam-spewing manholes nearby (as I did), and it was good. So basically, this went on for HOURS, until around 3:00, when it came time to shoot the second scene of the three scene commercial.

Now, since they didn't make me sign an NDA, I can tell you the plot of the commercial. It's setup as a big race through NYC between a track runner, a speed skater (ice, which was one of the jokes of the commercial was that the ice skater trips 5 feet into the race and loses because he's on pavement), a motorcross bike, and a stock car. So there was the starting gate scene, the start of the race, and the later scene where the car (which was obviously in the lead) is stuck in NYC traffic while the runner ran straight past it. The best part was during the second scene, where all the extras were moved to the sides of the road, right at the curb, as the race was started. The car was on the outside, and I was on it's side, so on all 3 takes, I would literally be leaning over and the stock car would pass within less than a foot or two, at somewhere around 40 miles per hour, and accelerating hard. That was awesome to say the least.

So I caught a few Z's between the second and third scenes because they had to have everyone who brought cars setup the traffic jam, so they told everyone else to wait for an hour in the holding area. And then when that was over, we were brought back out to be pedestrians and they shot the last scene. Simple as that. So after everything was done, I handed back in my loaned shirt, signed out, and proceeded to find the subway, which is a nice story in itself. But first let me say that overall, it was a pretty good experience. It was a nice pace, I got paid $150 bucks basically to suck up the cold and stand around for a few hours cheering and being part of a crowd, and I'm now a little more familiar with the procedure for being an extra.

Now, as for the deal with the subway, I'd planned the night before EXACTLY what subway train I was taking (The 2) because it led from Penn Station, to literally the intersection where the shoot was taking place. Thing was, they closed that train down while the shoot was taking place, and I spent about 20 minutes walking around the Wall St area looking for the next subway train that would take me to Penn Station. Eventually, I figured it out, and my god, I am taking the subway from now on when I go to NYC. It is multitudes of times cheaper than cabbing everywhere. So yeah. I got back home sometime around 8 PM, so I was spent, to say the least, but it was worth it.

Daily Life 2:
So let's skip straight to All College Night now. I get up on the 11th, and head out to help set everything up and start getting footage for the video I said I'd produce. Now, I said I'd produce a video the night before during the Computer Enthusiasts Meeting because JT (Jersey Cowboy) said he wasn't going to get that much video footage this year, plus after doing last years ACN video, which was basically a 1 minute video of people waving at the camera, I figured I'm MUCH more experienced with music videos and could make a better one. I still can't direct or make anything else better than JT, but Music video's are what I've been making since High School.

So I start gathering footage and help set up. Things go slowly, then I realize how little lighting we have for the DJ table, and by little, I mean the one blacklight that I brought in, which was NOT going to cut it. So I drive over to Spencers at6 Menlo, because I know exactly what they have there (having worked there for 3 months). I piked up a 12' rope light and a rotating police light. Both of them worked very well throughout the night, and yeah. So I did that, during rush hour, and basically arrived only in time to help put the finishing touches on stuff before people started showing up, but hey, what can you do.

So everything got finished setting up, I finished getting my pre-party footage, and we turned off the lights and started pumping everything up. The thing we did and didn't realize, was that we had run 3 projectors, 3 game consoles, two PC's, two computer monitors, and an entire speaker system, through two outlets. Not surprisingly, about an hour into the party, we blew the fuse and tthe power to those outlets went. Yay. So we resolved the issue, I'm still not sure how exactly, but we got it fixed and back up and running. The rest of the party went without a lot of incident, I DJ'd (horribly), juggled, got footage of people raving (mostly Wang), and ate the free spaghetti from next door. There is nothing on earth better than a spaghetti bar, and I don't care what anyone says about that.

So yeah, the rest of the party went fine, and I got home around 2:00, only to realize that my feet were now the equivalent of Jello. I slept it off and the next day edited the video at the top of this section.

Juggle This:
97531 and 15$ in lost balls. All I have to say, well, except for thew entire story that follows.
So let's begin a couple months ago, when I was still gathering footage for Sunlight None. I decided that since I was now able to do 7531's as easily as I would do say, 633's, I figured it was time for me to try 97531. I started off just trying to get a flash to a collect, starting from the right hand. Not from a pattern or anything, just throw the 97531. For anyone who's actually done the trick, you'd know that starting 97531 with the RIGHT hand when you're used to doing 7531 staring with the right hand, it's going to be a hell of a hard trick. HOWEVER, thanks to my unrivaled determination, I somehow managed to do a 97531, only the 3 and the 1 were switched hands, so I actually did 97[53]1. I threw the 5 and the 3 as a same handed multiplex. I realized that when I went back home and reviewed the footage, and said to myself "I can't use this", and it's sat on my HD ever since.

Skip ahead to now. I decide that it's time for me to try 97531 again, seeing as how I'm starting to have trouble thinking of new ways to combine 5 ball half showers with random siteswaps, and connecting siteswaps hasn't worked to well for me either. I have the brain wave as I start trying it on the 2nd, to try throwing the 9 with the left hand to make it easier. I tried thinking about the trick in a number of different ways to make it easier for me to wrap my head around. I first thought of it as a 97522 with the 2's being switches, but that turned ugly real quick. I then thought about it as being a 97 (or more like 8x8x) with a 531 underneath. That almost worked, but it looked nothing like a 97531. Then I thought, hey, why don't I just consider it a high throw with a 7531 under it. I thought of that after realizing that my 9's and 7's were nowhere near separated enough. It made sense, and before I knew it, I was throwing it right almost every time. Soon afterwards, I got it to a collect, and I couldn't have been happier. Well, yes, I could have, but the point is, I fuckin' did it.

So I decided, hey, the night is young, why stop now? I kept going and eventually made at least 6 more 97531's to a collect cleanly, including one where I'd done a 7777700 earlier in the run. I'd also managed to come VERY close to qualifying afterwards, and was at this time singing Daft Punk's One More Time in my head to psyche myself up for it. Eventually, my persistence paid off and I'd counted 10 catches after catching the trick. It was nowhere near pretty, and could only be called a cascade if you looked at it strictly in terms of what balls landed in which hand, and when they landed. Regardless, I did it, after 4 years of wanting to do this trick, I'd finally done it, and unlike how I would normally slam the balls to the floor, I thought "Hey, that's getting old. Go back to launching them all upwards."

Now, for those who couldn't tell the layout of the foyer I practice in usually, it has a balcony that circles the entire foyer, and 2 doors that you can access the balcony from. Regardless of all circumstances, the two doors are locked at around 8:00 PM. As I threw the balls up after doing the trick, two of them landed right on the balcony. I figured that the janitors would see them and at least leave them in the offices upstairs so that I could run in and claim them the next day, but apparently not, and I've lost 15 bucks. Thank you Pedro and Bob. Still, I think it's a fair price, 15 dollars for getting a 97531 to a qualify on camera, I'll take it.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150