I've finally had a Glee vidbunny. Not my usual style, either. *ponders*

In other news, I still need Glee icons.

Been getting poked a bit about where Erin & I are registered, so here it is:

http://www.amazon.com/wedding

Fun!

Comment with a song, a fandom, or both. From the comments, I will take the song and fandom combination that amuses/inspires me the most (providing I have the source, obv.) and make a quickie vid.

Go.

Huge news. HUGE. Massive. Hugely massive.

Which I can't tell you about now.

But it's awesome.

I will reveal all soon. Later.

I'll make a more comprehensive post on the State of the Nate soon (tonight, probably, while avoiding doing my Shocktober reviews), but I have some very good news.

I have a car

Or, more accurately, I will have a car starting Thursday. You see, my mom enters this raffle every year where the tickets are $100 each and the prizes are insanely cool. Last week she found out that, for the first time ever, she actually won something -- a new car. What kind of car doesn't matter, because she's trading it in for two used ones (one for her and one for her husband). The upshot for me is that I get her old 1999 Chevy Cavalier, which is in pretty good condition and should serve me well enough for tooling around town.

This is a great increase over my previous situation of not having a car and bumming a ride or asking people to pick me up from the light rail station every time I went to Tempe or Mesa.

Short version: Woot! CAR!

My dad's website (which I designed and do some admin work on) has been going up and down, up and down all day. The Dreamhost control panel tells me that the site's directory doesn't exist, nor does its Apache configuration, which I could buy if the site wasn't working half the time. Also (this is a Drupal site), when you go to any of the "hard-coded" pages ("admin", "blog", etc.), you get a 404 error. Makes no flipping sense.

Also, it keeps rejecting my FTP password.

No idea what's going on, but I am not pleased.

My new iPod Touch is completely awesome. I can use it as a remote control for iTunes on my MacBook Pro. I can keep track of my calendar. I can browse the web. I can check my email. I finally found a use for those silly Digital Copy discs that come with my Blu-rays. I can find discounts and coupons close to me using Greg Grunberg's Yowza!!

It apparently plays music as well.

The only real downside is that, not being an iPhone, all the 'net functionality is dependent on being in range of a wifi hub.

A non-roommate, non-vidder has requested a vid from me. A classic movies vid.

It's official. I am an awesome vidder.

This is the Coolest Thing Ever (For Today, Anyway):

Apparently, my life is a big snob. When it is made of fail, it must be made of 24-karat fail.

*headdesk* *repeatedly*

I don't know which is the more traumatizing event of my evening: going to the emergency room for stitches on my finger or seeing my stepfather's naked ass.

Not that I don't have a lot to do, but it's not exactly taking up a load of brainspace.

So, I give you the opportunity to know more about the weirdness that is me. Ask any question about me or my opinions (fannish, silly, personal) in the comments and I will answer.

I am moving in less than a week and while I started the packing process early, I feel like I am hopelessly behind. Good thing there's a three-day weekend.

( Things to do in the next six days or so )

I'm probably forgetting something. Oh well.

That is all.

*collapses from packing*

So this post is largely for Vividcon folks who may be thinking to themselves, "Who was that exceptionally tall man with the vague resemblance to David Tennant?" Here's the facts:





My name is Nate. As of this last weekend, because fandom is like that, I can be called "Jetpack" with no ill effects. I blame jarrow. I'm a member of Apocalypse West. My girlfriend, echan, vids with the House of Torres. I made my first vid (a Angel & Spike crack!vid set to Wonder Boy by Tenacious D) in a demo version of Sony Vegas all the way back in 2004. Then I stopped for four years until I made the leap to a Macbook Pro in 2008. At that point I started vidding like a madperson. Everything except my VVC premieres can be found at MonkeysWithJetpacks.com.

I consider myself a student of film, although it's largely a self-education. I adore horror movies and musicals, science fiction novels, Doctor Who, Monty Python, monkeys with jetpacks (duh), great cinema, lord king bad movies, pointless banter about non-essential topics, PHP, Drupal, Gregory Peck's left eyebrow, and McFarland Books. I firmly believe that the real hero of the Evil Dead movies is the Chin and that After Hours and Josie and the Pussycats are highly underrated films. My slash goggles are set to high but I have no specific interest in slash -- I prefer gen or friendship. I don't have a lot of patience for the willfully ignorant. As a librarian's son, I have a tendency to exist in the extremes of massively organized and completely disarrayed, with very few in-betweens.

I'm learning that the most selfish thing I can do is fail to put my own needs first. I suffer from an inferiority complex about my superiority complex. I have the best friends in the world. No, better.

I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

First of all, I'm pleased as punch to have added a new fandom to Vividcon's database. I'll be adding more as time goes on. Next year... I have plans. Awesome plans. Of awesome.

I'll be making a separate post here later that's a general introduction for folks friending me for the first time. Don't be shy about friending me if I haven't done so first. I met a lot of neat people at Vividcon and I'm having trouble remembering all of their LJ/DW names. I should've kept a notebook!

Vividcon was... exceptionally different. I haven't had this much socialization at a Con since, um... ever. In a lot of ways, it was thoroughly exhausting for someone like me who's a stealth introvert. I did get to meet a ton of great people, see a lot of awesome vids, and learn a few things.

I had a minor-key introduction to showing my content to a group for the first time in the Bechdel Test vidshow, where my Josie and the Pussycats vid More Than One Way to Celebrity Skin a Pussycat debuted. I think the response went quite well, all things told.

Then came Premieres. The response to my Hammer Frankenstein vid Don't Stop Me Now didn't seem as positive, but at the time, I felt it was largely because I couldn't really hear that much over the sound of Freddie Mercury. A few people did approach me later to tell me they liked it, though!

Then... then came Vid Review. I don't really know how I felt about it. I think I heard more of the negative comments than the positive ones, but listening to other tear-downs directed at vids made by relative newbies, I can't say I found the experience to be an endorsement for return visits. I'm committed to being a better vidder and I will improve, however.

A list of vid recs will come later. Right now I should probably get back to work.

Title: More Than One Way to Celebrity Skin a Pussycat
Song: Hole - Celebrity Skin
Fandom: Josie and the Pussycats movie

Summary: Being unknown sucks. Fame sucks more. Friends? Friends are rock'n'roll.

Direct Youtube Link

Notes: This premiered at Vividcon 2009 during the Bechdel Test vidshow. You can thank jmtorres for making me finish it and echan, butterflykiki, diannelamerc, and lizbetann for being patient betas.

Sometimes you arrive at a crossroad and you just want to hang out and see who else comes by.

This is not always healthy.

I am very sad that I'm not going to Comic-Con this year, but there's a number of very good reasons (including just needing a year off) why this must be so. I'm still going to miss the hell out of my friends and all the cool stuff (and the McFarland booth -- oh you lovely McFarland booth). I usually take, like, a billion pictures at Con every year and I keep all the ones that don't turn out to be insanely fuzzy.

So here's what I need from my friends who are going. Lots and lots of pictures, video, audio recordings, daily logs -- anything that will help me feel the Con experience vicariously. I'll try to post a daily reminder where you can dump links of media you've uploaded, squee posts, etc. Have friends going to Con? Encourage them to do the same! If you have my phone number, text me (or call me anytime after 6PM PST) and squee at me about how you just stumbled into Misha Collins's personal space. With any luck, it won't feel like I've missed a year when I'm back in San Diego next July.

Just watched all five episodes in one go.

( Spoilers )

Yeah, I'm posting this everywhere there are eyes to see it, but dammit, celebration is in order. Classic-Horror.com was born (as Classic Horror, a subsection of my personal *cough*Angelfire*cough* site) on June 15th, 1999. Today, I celebrate ten years of the site (and yes, I'm going off Eastern time, for a variety of reasons involving the wonky Internet at the apartment).

Given that I am not likely to ever spawn, Classic-Horror.com is probably the closest thing I'm ever going to have to offspring. Let me tell you, I'm an insanely proud parent.

As part of the celebration, we've launched a brand-new design for the site, which I dig entirely.

I forgot to mention that I am in Boston all this week and available to hang out Tuesday and Thursday night.

If folks are interested.

So I'm trying to suss out how anybody could call gay marriage "discrimination." As sort of a guide I made, in GIMP, a very rough outline of what I think the individual viewpoints on the debate are, using stick figures that make xkcd look like Van Gogh. Let me know if I'm missing something or if I've inadvertently become really really offensive.

( Large image is large )

Yes, those are jetpacks in the third image.

Back home. Good to see the family again. Better to be in my own bed. Thanks again to everyone for their heartfelt condolences. My grandma was a fun, fantastic lady. She taught me the value of conversational humor and for that, I will always be grateful.

Just landed a half-hour ago, smooth travel for a rough trip. Everyone's condolences and words of kindness have meant so much to me.

My grandmother, Norma Carlson Harrington, affectionately known as Grandma Debe, died on Sunday, May 18, 2009. My mother called her that night and didn't receive a response, something highly unusual for Grandma Debe, so she called my uncle Kevin, who hadn't heard from her recently. Eventually Uncle Mark was sent to check on her and he found her, sitting on the couch, looking like she was watching television. But she wasn't watching anything.

I'm grateful that she went without pain.

Every year on my birthday, Grandma Debe sent me a card with a dollar bill inside. The money wasn't the important thing, though -- it was the state of the money. Each bill was always, without variation, brand-new -- she had taken the time to go to the bank and ask for a fresh, newly minted dollar. She raised my mother and her four brothers on very little money and, as far as I'm concerned, she did a bang-up job. She wasn't perfect -- she was, well, a little crazy, actually. But she loved her family without reservation. When my sister came out, so many other family members had difficulty dealing with the news, but Debe didn't give a hoot.

She was a damn good hugger, too. There's not enough people in this world who can give a champion hug, and we just lost another one.

I'll miss you, Grandma.

New post over at Cinema Geek -- Movie Cities I Love: Vienna from The Third Man (1949).

I think I'm kind of finding my rhythm over there. It's less about movies and more about the experience of being a movie lover. I'll probably move some of my movie-related journal posts over there (backdated, of course).

In which I get a little navel-gazey about Classic-Horror's upcoming tenth anniversary and contemplate exactly what running the site for 10 freaking years means for me. I'm of two very different minds on the subject.

Looking forward to future awesomeness.

I'll probably be at Dreamwidth for the conceivable future, but only about as much as I'm on LJ, which is to say, not very much.

You can find me as jetpack_monkey over there as well.

This is half for my own tracking purposes and half just to illustrate my own insanity. My to-do list through October:

( To spare the uninterested... )

First, I have started a new project with an attached blog. Visit Sifting Through the Great Unwatched as I try to watch four hundred movies in my DVD collection that I've never seen before. In the course of a single year. Should be fun.

Second, I will be attending VividCon this year. It'll be my first year in attendance and I'm totally stoked.

Saturday night, we had a little birthday shindig here at lizbetann and diannelamerc's here in Los Angeles (one night early since I'm flying home today). In addition to Lizbet and Dee, midnightfae, airawyn, and theninthdoctor and his boyfriend were all there. We watched the first episode of Merlin (not sold yet) and I showed them Hustle (which they loved). It was awesome. And there was cake! Yay for cake!

When I arrived home, I had a package from coltsbane. To which I say two things:

1) OMG Thank you so much!

and

2) OMGWTFWALDO?

You can tell I'm avoiding actual accomplishment when I've managed to put together my annual mix CD a whole eleven days before my birthday. I think this is the last year where it's going to be just one CD. As I add another track for every year (the mix that represents the year I was 25 has 25 tracks, the one for age 24 has 24, etc.), it gets harder to squeeze all of the music onto a single CD. Not that anybody actually, y'know, listens to 70-minute audio CDs anymore.

Anyway. Same drill as before. Each track is either a song I discovered, listened to incessantly, or that speaks to some part of the last twelve months. I offer no interpretations or explanations.

This year as a bonus, I've included a CD cover and track listing that should (I think) fit neatly in a jewel case. I'll upload a zip file of the mix as soon as I get some of the iTunes tracks converted to a usable format.

( The track listing )

( The CD Cover and Track List Insert )

Stuff from Phoenix Comicon:

Zombie Events
My Panels

and as an extra-special bonus:

My interview with Wil Wheaton

Incidentally, he's just as geeky and just as awesome and you'd expect from reading his blog. Maybe moreso.

Still writing up my coverage of my panels from Comic-Con (to be posted on Classic-Horror.com), but I did want to say that I was extremely well-received, especially in my second panel, and that I let off a few choice zingers. The one that got the best reaction:

Audience member: "What's your guys opinion on gore porn?"

Me: "Let's not call it 'gore porn.' The word 'pornography' has a very specific definition and I, for one, would like to enjoy it."

I was giddy at the laughter and clapping. GIDDY.