The Elephant King's commercials

My buddy Tate just did two super funny commercials for Time Warner. The boy can flat-out dance!

Spidey 3 Trailer-New!!!

In the words of Borat," Very nice!"

SNL Season Premiere

Last night's show was probably one of the top four SNL shows that I've been to...Dane Cook's opening stand-up was hilarious! Top to bottom, the sketches were funny and "Weekend Update" with Seth Meyers taking over for Tina Fey was surprisingly good. Everything had a new feel to it with a different opening montage, new "WU" stuff, and Darrell Hammond doing some new jokes during the warm-up before the show. The best part was meeting Dane Cook; that guy came out and took pictures, sign autographs, and hung out for a bit which blew everyone away. Oh yeah, The Killers were pretty good too.

"I play for keeps!"

Two things that will blow your mind: 1)Will Ferrell as Ricky Bobby and 2) Travis Pastrana nailing the frickin double backflip in MotoX Best Trick!

Grey's Anatomy, good... Snow Patrol, good...Grey's Anatomy's Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars" video? Really good.

Eyes Open

Snow Patrol's new CD is incredible! I really like their first one but they've gotten alot better this time around. My favorite of the year thus far.

U-R-S-P-R-A-C-H-E

Did anyone see the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee? I can't believe I was that fascinated with the thing. I know it further proves how much of a dork I am but I was watching it over playoff basketball(granted it was the Mavs/Suns game). I think the fact that I love competition in any form factors into the equation, plus I like words and definitions and watching people fail.

Steven flippin' Spielberg!

Smokes, I shook hands with Mr. Spielberg last Saturday night! I mean, this is the cinematic genius responsible for ET, Jaws, Indiana Jones, Hook...the man revolutionize film-making with incredible CGI/live action integration in Jurassic Park and amazing first-person action in Saving Private Ryan. He's so much more of a compelling story-teller than a Hollywood director...Schindler's List, Amistad, Munich, The Color Purple...I can go on and on. I had a bunch of things I had wanted to say to him, but all I could manage was some gibberish about my name and a photo. Its gonna be hard to top this encounter!

The Colbert Presidential Report

Stephen Colbert roasted President Bush and clowned on, basically, everyone else at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last Saturday night. I'm a fan of Colbert's since his days on the "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" but even more so now. Here's just some of the things that got me slapping my knee:
"Everyone asks for personnel changes, so the White House has personnel changes and everybody's like, oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First of all, that's a horrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg."
"I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq."
"Fox [News] believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side. I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term."
"When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday-no matter what happened Tuesday."
You can watch it all here, here, and here. Oh yeah, President Bush did this skit with Steve Bridges, the Bush impersonator, that was pretty funny too.

The Elephant King aka Tate's movie

Last night, Ric and I went to the world premeire of "The Elephant King" at the TriBeCa Film Festival. I've been wanting to go to the festival for quite some time now, and this was the perfect setting since Tate stars in it. First off, it is a great movie; I mean, sure, Tate rocks and everything but there are some really good performances by other cast members as well, most notably the guy who plays the older brother. Seth Grossman's (director/screen-writer) script doesn't drag at all but moves the plot along at a nice pace. You can tell he knew Thailand pretty well by the way he framed some of the scenes and captured the coloful settings, both at night and during the day. By the way, Tate can flat-out act; the boy had a couple of scenes with Ellen Burstyn(an Oscar winner) and more than held his own. I can tell he was pretty nervous at the premeire especially knowing his parents were about to watch his love scenes...it was pretty funny hearing his parents' reactions to those parts after the movie. From some of the scenes he showed us before, I expected the film to be good but it was better than I had thought. Ric and I want to make shirts that say "Yeah, we know the Elephant King" but I would've felt bad for those who didn't know him...just kidding, I wouldn't have felt bad. Sweet movie, Tate.

games & ice cream

My favorite board game as a kid was Monoploy; we would play this thing for hours until I eventually won by either owning more money than the bank or forcing others to concede out of anger or sheer hopelessness! I'm not kidding either, we were serious about this game...it was all fun and stuff as long as I owned everything. Anyway, Monopoly is coming out with "The Here and Now Edition" in which they will use US landmarks in 22 US cities. The cool thing is that you can be a part of the selection process by voting on the landmarks you want to see in the new edition. Pretty sweet, huh? Speaking of sweet, today is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's. Games, good...ice cream, good...

the car show

Ric, Torie (with Jonah J), and I went to the car show yesterday and, thankfully, it wasn't crowded. There were all kinds of cars as you can imagine ranging from incredibly ugly ones to crazy hi-tech ones to futuristic concept ones. A few highlights: Lexus unveiled the first vehicle to parallel park itself, Ford has the Reflex which is that silver roadster right there that comes with a built-in baby-seat, and Nissan is coming out with a car that looks like a video-game console on wheels. All the high-end exotic car-makers were there too: Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, Bentley, Maybach...sicness!

videos

Thanks to YouTube, I can finally show some of the stuff I've filmed with my digital camera. So far I've included a few of my videos (one from New Orleans, New Year's Eve, and some breakdancin') and a couple of favorites (Bill Hader and the Real Simpsons). And by the way, you can check out the official video made of our trip to New Orleans at the 411; just go to the online media section and select New Orleans Relief Trip. Its an amazing film; Kaiti did such an awesome job especially with the music!

YouTube

I checked out a very sweet Simpsons video on YouTube about a month ago not realizing how big YouTube was. I had never heard of the site before that and didn't really know what it was about. Needless to say, I do now. YouTube is everywhere...the concept is pretty simple: film yourself or other people doing stuff and put it online for the world to see. You wanna know what the measuring stick is to see if something is big-time or not? Its when Time magazine does a three-page online article about it. There are millions of videos on there ranging from stupid tricks to elaborate films to just crazy stuff captured on tape. Bill Hader from SNL told me he just made a new video a few weeks back thats on there now. So, I go to check it out and discover a bunch of other ones he's made too; I looked up Andy Samberg and found a buttload of stuff he's done with the Lonely Island crew. Viral videos are the new wave of the future making YouTube the new MySpace...

Starbucks entertainment

One of the previews for Thank You for Smoking (which was an excellent movie mainly b/c I'm a big fan of satires) was Akeelah and the Bee. The movie looked good enough but what surprised me was the fact that it was produced by Starbucks...what the heck? I thought they made coffee? In related news, Tom Hanks is set to film a movie titled How Starbucks Saved My Life...no, really, that's actually true. This all comes as further proof that Starbucks is on a quest to best Oprah for world dominance.

Real Life Simpsons Intro

Yo, if you like the Simpsons whatsoever, you have to check out this video!!!