Les Miserables Trailer

Alright, not to go into too much detail but seeing this trailer made me wet my pants with excitement.  I was fortunate enough to stumble upon the Les Miserables teaser a few days ago and couldn’t help but let myself experience an amazing eargasm hearing Anne Hathaway belt out “I Dreamed a Dream.”

This story is by far my favorite of all time.  It trumps anything and everything I’ve ever loved plotwise in my life and the musical has always been the greatest Broadway experience I’ve ever had.  I can’t deny that this is the movie that I’m most excited for.  When I heard that Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe were doing a movie version of Les Miserables, I was stoked.  To discover that it’s the musical they’re doing just puts me over the top into a state of enlightened and ecstatic bliss.  And after seeing this trailer, I discovered that it’s an amazing all-star cast.

December can’t come soon enough!

 

Make Believe

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” – Agatha Christie

I recently watched a video done by Merlin Mann, Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (for Now).  I want to preface this with the following message: Because I listen to Merlin Mann a lot, his seemingly crazy and random ramblings now make complete and perfect sense to me.  Also, because I recently listened to him talk about how he hates it when people falsely associate themselves with him by using his content, I want to note here that I am in no way associated with Merlin (other than being “not familiar with his work”) and that he in no way even knows I exist until the next time he Googles his name and finds this article…if it gets enough hits.

That being said, the point I took from this video is that there’s only so much research and time you can spend learning your craft, learning your life, finding the most productive way to do something, etc…, before you ACTUALLY have to just buckle down and do it!  A message I could have used as a teenager when I was obsessed with perfecting my writing skills before actually trying to write anything.

The truth is you can read every book ever written on great parenting but if you don’t spend time with your kid, all that knowledge is completely useless and it will get you nowhere.

Merlin states that in order to become an expert, or what he referred to as a Master, you have to do it for a long, long time.  The example he made was of a few different level skilled butchers in a butcher shop.  When the novice weighs out meat, he takes the slicer and waits until the scale reads the precise amount.  The Master just slices until the meat feels like the right weight in his hand…and he’s right!  When the novice asks the Master how he was able to do that, the Master replies “be a butcher for 40 years.”

I used the quote by Agatha Christie at the top because I have been trying to force my creativity by reading a lot lately and have realized that Merlin is right.  I need to get away for a minute, let my hands play, do something other than work than come back and write.  It’s time to stop researching, stop planning, and just sit down and do it!

That’s my goal this week.  What’s yours?

– Paul

 

Random Thoughts, Episode 1

So I’ve decided that I want to start a new segment where every now and again I will share some of the random thoughts I have throughout my life.  Hopefully you find them as entertaining, inspirational, annoying, etc… as I do.  Without further adieu, episode 1 of Random Thoughts:

1 – I miss New York City.  And I wish I could live there.  Somewhere by Broadway.  Or Central Park.  Or, well, anywhere.

2 – My sister, Katie, is actually hella cool…but don’t tell her I said that.  It would ruin my reputation as the mean older brother.

3 – No breakfast is complete without the inclusion of Bacon (and yes, I believe Bacon has earned the right to always carry a capital B regardless of its placement in a sentence).

4 – My insomnia is pissing me off.  The only reason is because I haven’t been able to go to bed in time to wake up to watch a sunrise nor have I been able to stay up long enough to see a sunrise.

5 – I love Sara Bareilles’s voice.  Seriously, I would take her voice out to a fancy dinner, spend all night dancing with it and then spend all night lying in bed with it while it sang to me.

6 – Old people shouldn’t wear shorts or sandals or high heels or bikinis or anything else that’s meant to show off any part of your body.  Overalls with a turtleneck underneath with old man loafers are acceptable.

7 – I want a big aquarium in my house when I get one.  Inside would be sharks and eels and manta rays.  Probably a giant squid.

8 – I really thought I’d always like roller coasters.  But judging from recent events, I don’t like them anymore.  Seriously, Lagoon isn’t as glamorous as I remembered it being.

9 – I am damn lucky to have a daughter as wonderful as mine.  She isn’t nearly as, um, let’s say, uh, rambunctious as most children.

10 – Remember that daughter I was just talking about in #9?  I want to take her to Disneyland.  Or Disney World.  Mostly so she can see the princesses she won’t stop obsessing over!

11 – I’m starting to get the hang of other children though there are still many times I want to smack them across the face (I know, it’s terrible, but it’s just who I am).

12 – Seth MacFarlane in concert – not funny.  So disappointing!  He has an amazing voice but when the guy behind Family Guy and American Dad says he’s gonna sing in concert, you expect more.

13 – I fall in love with my wife all over again at least once a day.  I hope and pray that the rush of that experience never goes away.

Alright, that sums up my random thoughts for today.  Let me know what y’all (see how clever that is, combining you and all into one word – stupid hicks) think and I may keep doing it.

– Paul

 

Skyfall Trailer

As per usual, the teaser trailer of the new Bond film does not disappoint.  God bless Daniel Craig.  He is amazing!  I may be a little guilty of nostalgic judgment when I say that Connery is still the best Bond, though I’m a little young to be accused of it.  Daniel Craig is a close second.

The trailer opens in the breathtaking and, I’m sure, symbolic scene of Bond overlooking a city.  It continues on to show a bit of what appears to be a workout/training regimen with the consistent vocals of what is most likely a psych evaluation of Bond.

Of course Craig doesn’t let us down with his cold, heartless and altogether badass attitude as he answers the shrink’s questions.  He’s the new cold-hearted killer version of Bond that neither the books nor the movies ever showed us before.  Though his character strays a bit from the Bond novels (at least the ones I’ve read), I must say he is quite an amazing character.

From there it looks like England will be losing quite a few soldiers and/or spies in whatever events will take place during the film.  We also see two beautiful Bond girls and an array of Bond in the traditional over-the-top peril.

Right before the titles, I’m assuming we see the silhouette of our next villain.  I must say I love the new Bond villains a lot more than the ones that faced our previous Bond actors.  They’re much darker and more mysterious than the almost comical men and organizations we saw in the past.

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling about my fanboy obsessions and let you judge the thing for yourself:

 

Hey, Call Me a Treasure Hunter…

I’ve never been very good at making New Years Resolutions.  Truth be told, I’ve never been very good at making resolutions at all.  I make goals that suit my immediate wants and those change on a monthly, weekly, hell, even daily basis.

So why should a blog be any different?  I have so many different topics I want to discuss that I can’t seem to find out who my target audience is…or focus on one particular topic at a time.  I’m honestly quite terrible at it.  Like really bad.  I’ve probably been through literally hundreds of blogs in the last 5 years.  Pathetic, I know.

Well, it’s got to be the New Year for some country somewhere so here I am making my resolution again.  This blog is a catch-all.  The name, Hey, Call Me a Treasure Hunter, comes from one of my favorite video games, Final Fantasy VI.  I’m a firm believer that all art is theft.  I’ll explain my reasons for that later on in this blog.  For now, suffice it to say that I consider myself a treasure hunter, not a thief, not a hoarder.  I explore, I collect, and I hunt for the newest rush.

If you like it, great.  If you don’t, well, I guess the blog’s free…so you can either read it or not.  It’s up to you.