Updatin'

Hey ladies and germs, I'd been meaning to give a good ol' life update so you know where I work, where I live, and where to send presents to me and things like that.

I live on at the 12,053rd residence of Guerin St. (the second apartment) in Studio City, California. At the end of my street is CBS studios, where they shoot CSI:NY (the parts that aren't in New York I guess) and other famous television shows. It's a great location with many neat places to walk to like a 24-hour diner, Trader Joe's, Von's grocery store, a bunch of fashionable clothing stores, and a Farmer's Market that happens on Sunday mornings. Johnny Knoxville shops at the same Trader Joe's as me. When I saw him, I walked up to him and hit myself in the nuts. He was not impressed.

I live with Katie McNeill, Garret Kemble, CC Pearce, and Jonathan Nelson Mackey. We got this dope town house. Here is our landlord (no joke). CC got the master bedroom, and Katie the other real bedroom. Garrett got the converted office, and Jon and I share the dining room. It's pretty funny looking, especially because there's a chandelier meant to hang over the middle of a table in the center of the room. It's at eye-level and Jon and I are both tall, so you can often here a whomping twinkling of glass followed by a quick burst of profanity as we knock our heads against it over and over again. The house has a big living room and a nice patio, so it doesn't feel too cramped. We've had a long list of guests also living with us since we got here, like Tim Phillips, Bobby Sweatt, Mark Mowbray, and numerous others. Feel free to add yourself to this list at any time.

I got a job watching DVDs all day. For example, today, I watched 8 hours of Walker, Texas Ranger. I look for issues like misspellings in the Closed Captions, video defects, and things I think are funny to show my boss and people I work with. Jon and I not only share a room at home, but work in a small space together as well.

I did a short internship as a second assistant editor for a new Haley Joel Osment movie. I think I've told all of you about my ant-faced experience so I'll spare the details. I did watch a rough cut of the movie the other day, after which, one of the other intern viewers asked "Did they use as old man as a stand in for Haley in that one shot? His hand was so hairy."

After seeing what editing a movie is like, I decided it isn't something I want to do professionally. I'd love to do it some more on my own, but the guys I worked with were 15 or 20 years older than me and still organizing footage for someone older than them to edit. I'm okay putting my life into working towards an artistic goal, but not for that job. Now, I'm using my spare time to record new songs and work towards becoming a real live musician.

So, all in all, LA kind of sucks, but there are some great people here, and I'm experiencing some great things. I drove down Laurel Canyon Blvd. the other day to Highway 1 to Malibu. Driving through the canyons is amazingly pretty, especially after being around the concrete grossness of the city. It feels more mountain-towny. Very twisty roads with suprisingly beautiful overlooks of the city. There's a nice cove along the highway where I pulled off to sit on the beach and watch the sunset. Although you couldn't see the sun directly when it went behind some trees, it reflected off the ocean in this way that made it glow orange and pink, which slowly turned to a glimmery white as it was close to a full moon. That filled in my heart a little bit where it's missing the North Carolina fall.

I've got some tunes to better express the experience of being out here. I'm sure there's a way to put them into the blogosphere. They could probably help to fill in the gaps of crappy writing skills and lack of sweet adjectives.

Woot on that friends, I'll leave you with a picture from my birthday party this past Friday. It was an "Express Yourself" theme where everyone was told to wear clothes expressing their inner being. My inner being is available at American Apparel.