We went to see the progress on our new condo today.  We had to enter through the garage, which was cool, because we hadn't seen that yet.  It's really coming along.  The walls are painted.  Almost all of the cabinetry is in.  All of the sinks are in.  They had mirrors up in all of the bathrooms.  The light switches were installed.  It's pretty much finishing touches, flooring and appliances.  The move-in date is still March 15th, but maybe something will happen sooner.  It was such a beautifully clear day today there, too.  We could see the snow-capped mountains to the east and the ocean to the west.  Wow.  Can't wait.

Now, you're getting tired of me.  I saw the preview for In Good Company today for the second time.  I'm really looking forward to this one.  A friend of Clinton's at Dreamworks is going to try to get the script to me, so I can read it before I see it.  I want to see if I can imagine the movie myself without the aid of the movie.  I figure that is a skill I'll need if I ever want to be an actual producer.

I realize that it's been years since I've really blogged last and nobody reads this anymore, but in case someone does, I'm trying to come up with a good word that I can use as a trademark for an idea I've had lately.  Something short that's probably not a real word that I can use as a domain name.  For instance, I really like TiVo, but sadly it's already taken.  Any ideas?  No, I can't post the idea here.

In the course of the last week, I saw National Treasure and Finding Neverland.  I expected very little from National Treasure, and apart from the in-your-face, surprise-attack-style product placement, I thought it was quite entertaining, actually even good.  Cage's sidekick is really good, and the characters' self-deprecation keeps the movie from taking itself too seriously.  Finding Neverland was really quite sad, but if you don't mind that so much, the story is moving, especially when you already know the story of Peter Pan and can see it forming before the Depp's character's eyes.  If you prefer to escape sadness in movies, be warned.

Oh yeah, we have to pay $1 for parking at the ArcLight now.  Boo.

You should...http://www.pinback.com/.

Wow, long vacation.  By the time we got back from vacation, I was pretty sick with a cold and tired from all the traveling.  Plus, I had loads of work stacked up waiting for my upon my return.  So, I didn't really feel like blogging.  It's a shame, because I had a lot of stuff that I wanted to say about the election that is now all moot.

Tonight, we went over to Tony & Martel's for the season premiere of Arrested Development.  It has been blessed with a solid time slot finally, following the Simpsons on Sunday nights.  Hopefully, it will play there consistently and not get pre-empted too often.  Is pre-empted hypenated?  Anyway, it was a great episode; I hope you all got to see it.  Mike and Alia, the actors who play George Michael and Maeby were also there, and it was fun to watch them watch their show.  Terence and Clinton were there as was a new girl from New York named Tanya.  It was a fun group to hang out with, and Clinton brought some sweet root beer.

Speaking of Clinton, he just purchased a Windows Media Center PC from Sony this week.  It's pretty awesome.  It's basically a powerful video editing workstation and a Tivo all rolled into one, plus a lot of other cool stuff.

This weekend, we're heading to San Diego to shoot Jamie and Clinton in a pilot/audition video for the Food Network.  Should be interesting.  Perhaps it will get posted.

And before I go, how about a pic from the va-cay.

I ventured out in the rain tonight to meet with Scott Coones (and supposedly Cameron Coen) about a short Scott wrote and I'm going to help produce.  If there had been thunder and lightning, it could have been a Texas thunderstorm.  We're off to Texas in the morning, and I'm not likely to blog while we're there.  Oh, we did get a portable dvd player for ourselves for an early Christmas present so we'll have something to do on the plane.

Many of you, especially Jeff, will love this.

Here's a cool article about ten cool new inventions.  My favorites are the drive-by-wire, plastic chips, and super-light cars.

By happy accident we had the largest group of our friends at church tonight all at one time.  Me, Jamie, Doug, Clinton, Summer, Clinton's friend from Groundlings, Nick, his girlfriend, and Terence.  The service, unfortunately, was not a standout.  It really went on forever and the fill-in pastor used poor analogies and repetition to drive home a point, maybe.  But I don't know what that point was.  Oh well, just one service.  Afterwards, Terence and Summer joined us four regulars at Chipotle.  Halfway through my burrito, I got this weird vision of me eating a second burrito, something I've never dreamed of doing because of fullness.  I mentioned this vision, and Doug admitted that he was thinking the same thing.  He went and got a second burrito and proceeded to play with it as much as eat it.  By the time I finished my first, I knew I couldn't handle a whole other burrito, so I just went to get chips and guac.  While I was gone, Doug had smeared his messy, messy hands all over his shirt and parts of his burrito had fallen down all over his pants and shoes.  What a character.  Then, we all did some seat-swapping, and I got to chat with Terence for a little while.  We're talking about setting up a trip to the Sundance film festival in January for the group.

The next two days, Jamie works for another Maxim shoot, and then we head to Texas on Wednesday.  Yeehaw! 

The rain is coming down again!

It's raining in California!  I can actually hear it coming down!

UPDATE: Our kitchen ceiling leaked!

Twas an eventful Saturday.  I'm a little under the weather, so I slept way in.  Once up and showered, we picked up Clinton and headed to Quiznos for lunch.  Then, it was off to Urban Outfitters to exchange a shirt that was too small.  Next, we headed to the Grove and Farmer's Market for a little shopping.  While there, I saw an advertisement for a movie called The Machinist, which I had not heard anything about.  This really surprised me as it is scheduled for release on Friday, Oct. 22nd and it is starring Christian Bale.  I was immediately intrigued to go home and watch the trailer.  Discussing it with Clinton, the conversation turned to who would be a good actor to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond, as Brosnan is only doing one more Bond film.  Clinton suggested Bale, to which I questioned his Britishness.  Clinton and Jamie (and IMDB) confirmed that he is indeed British (if Wales counts).  Here were some other names that came up for Bond potentials:  Jude Law, Ewan McGregor, Heath Ledger.  Hmm, I thought that list was going to be longer.  Clinton?  Jamie?  Am I forgetting someone?  None of these seem to quite hit the nail on the head for me, certainly not as much as Brosnan did back before he had been tapped.  However, once it was confirmed that Bale hailed from across the pond, I started to think that he might be a good pick.  Then I started to wonder why I seemed to have this affinity for Bale as an actor.  I couldn't name a single movie of his that I had seen.  I have seen the trailer for the new Batman movie, which I fully expect to be awesome.  That could have been the answer.  So, I looked up his credits on IMDB to see what else I might have seen him in.  The most recent thing I'd seen him in was Newsies, and while Jamie loves that movie, I was sure that wasn't what had done it for me.  Then I saw it, Empire of the Sun.  I saw that movie maybe as early as junior high, and I loved it.  It's a war movie and a little bit depressing, typically negatives for me in selecting movies, but something about it just really hooked me.  So, all that to say, rent Empire of the Sun, I'll see The Machinist asap and get back to you, and start getting excited for Batman Begins.

So far, I've just watched the first 30 minutes of the debate, and now I've got to go to bed.  But first, I had to blog about something that Kerry said.  When asked about some Catholic archbishops' opinions that it would be a sin to vote for Kerry because he supports abortion and embryonic stem cell research, Kerry responded with the following.

I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith....  My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, "What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead."  And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.

I'm a little surprised by this.  I think Kerry is trying to impress his religious viewers by quoting the Bible, but it seems to me that he sets himself up here.  I was really surprised by his mention that his faith is the inspiration that leads him to fight against poverty and for the environment.  This statement completely destroys his excuse for being pro-abortion.  The scripture alone points out that faith without deeds is dead.  Since Kerry feels he is prevented by the Constitution to support his “faith“ that tells him that abortion is wrong, he lacks the works that give life to that faith.  As a result, that faith might as well be dead.  But, in the biggest contradiction of all, Kerry admits that he has no problem legislating his “faith“ as it relates to poverty and the environment.  Why then can he not legislate his “faith“ on the fundamental issue of human life?

If you like this sort of topic, David Mobley has a separate, but related blog entry about legislation and right and wrong.