What are you doing with your life!?

Well, where do I even begin…
(psst… try the beginning.)
Oh, good idea, me.

So life never ceases to amaze me. Never letting me rest too long, always keeping me on my toes. I wrote on here awhile back about how my life got twisted, turned upside down. And I told you all about how I became a technician near Bel Air. Torrance to be exact.

I haven’t talked much about my adventures in California. Of which there have been many. Not as much as I would have liked, but I wasn’t established here very well. I packed up and moved so quickly that it put me behind on my bills and forced to borrow from friends. Friends should never be treated as banks, and I hate borrowing from them, but desperate times causes us all to bend our own personal rules.

10 months I have been out here in Los Angeles. It has flown by so fast. From the first few months trying to get settled, the next few months trying to balance work and play. Then moving down to Torrance with Lyndsay to be closer to my office, and now even more new adventures, but we’ll get to those soon enough.

From the first couple of weeks out here and getting my rental car rammed on the way to work, I realized this was going to be a completely different ball game from mild Kansas. And boy was it. The accident with the rental was drawn out for a few months. A crazy senior from Yemen was the one who ran the light and smashed into the car. A month after the accident he tried to sue me for injuries. Luckily, because the evidence that he ran the light was overwhelming he decided to withdraw his suit.

Kyle and I played car tetris with most of my worldly belongings loaded up his parents’ denali and played “Convoy” across the country. We bought walkie talkies so we could talk to each other even though we were in separate cars. The “10-4 good buddy” jokes only lasted about 5 hours into the trip, but they repeated at hours 13 and 21. We also discovered that our separate FM transmitters for our mp3 players had a range large enough so that we could both listen to the same music. Basically we turned our road trip into raid night on ventrilo. “More DOTS! Many gas stations, left side!”

The car lasted until around February. When I fell prey to Interstate 405. The 405 has been dubbed the absolute worst highway in the whole Unites States for traffic. I was mildly handling the 60-90 minute commute to work from the apartment. In fairness, California residents did warn me that it would be a horrible drive. I was a naive Kansas boy who thought 30 miles meant 30 minutes. Which it does in Kansas. But alas, during the routine stop and go, I go’d went i should have stopped and rear ended the car in front of me. Really did a number on my car. It was drivable, but it was ugly. Then on top of that, to save money back in Kansas, I had set my insurance deductible to a ridiculous $2000. The initial estimate was set at $2600 for the structural damage. The hood was bent in on itself and couldn’t be opened. While I saved up for it, I rode the bus to work to save on gas and to give my poor car a break. The bus ride changed my commute time from 60-90 minutes, to 2 to 2.5 hours. I was not enjoying life very much. With the commute to work taking a round trip total of 5-6 hours out of my day, starting with catchign the bus at 4:30AM and getting home around 7PM, I had enough time to eat and sleep before starting the cycle over.

But I lived with Kyle and all my new friends, Heather and Arazi, TJ, and the illusive Turner. And while they were not roommates proper Laura and James were there all the time. This was my new family. But our schedules did not play nice. Kyle for instance, slept in until noon… 9AM! Sorry Kyle, you were totally up by 9. Some days. When you had something to do. So Kyle’s average sleeping schedule had him still in bed at least 5 hours after I left the apartment. I would estimate his average bedtime was at least midnight, probably closer to 1AM. Out of the 24 hour day, I was away with work for around 15 of them. Leaving me with 9 hours inside of the apartment for leisure activity and sleep. 6 of those hours were during my friends’ prime time, 7PM-1AM. So from those hours as a group we would hang out, play video games like Rock Band or maybe even board games, watch movies, just generally being an awesome little group of friends. We were a community. But by the time I got home, I wanted to go to bed. I rarely did at first. Thinking, “I’ll sleep tomorrow!” and I would partake in the evenings activities, trying to make it through the day on 3-4 hours of sleep.

Eventually the need for sleep won out, I would come home, sometimes trying to sneak into the apartment as to not let anyone notice my presence and go straight to bed. I would remain there asleep until they came looking for me. Wondering why I would not play in all their reindeer games. Weekends would come and I just wanted to lie in bed the entire time.

My work ethic faltered, my social life faltered, and my friends began to feel I was being distant. I began to feel my routine was becoming a rut. Then I actually started feeling the need to become distant. I am pretty sure this caused some ruptures in some of my new friendships, which I hope one day they can be repaired.

But it came down to a choice, Work or Play?

What could I do? What would any of us do? Seriously, what would you choose?

Feel free to leave some comments, I’ll be continuing my tales and catching you all up on my many adventures. Until next time, true believers…

“The Erik” Sanburn
Sleepless Wonder

The Unwatchable Movie Challenge: Reel 3

Welcome back to the Unwatchable Movie Challenge after 3 months of emptiness. The move from Kansas to California really took a beating on me. (As well as my car…) But we came back in the third round with a real contender. A movie so bad they didn’t release it for 26 years!

Movie: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
Tagline: Lost Horror Film of the Seventies.
Director: George Barry
Starring: Demene Hall, William Russ, Julie Ritter, Linda Bond, Patrick Spence-Thomas.
Filmed: 1977
Released: 2003 
This film has no rating.
Runtime: 77 min
Genre: Horror
Writer: George Barry

Length of Movie I Watched:
There was a group of about 5 of us that sat through this whole thing.

Verdict: There was a reason this thing took over 20 years to get released. As far as I’m concerned this thing probably should have stayed buried.

Death Bed: The Bed that Eats. Really? Where does that idea get fun? The writer/director George Barry supposedly came up with this in a dream, and tried to make the movie resemble that. The pacing is really off because of the attempt to make this surreal. But believe me, the pacing is by far not the worst aspect of this film. This movie is jumbled, poorly thought out and the exposition to how and why the bed eats is lackadaisical. So if you can muscle through the structure of the film and really get down to the core, a demonic bed that dissolves people in a frothy brew between the sheets, then you just run into more problems. The acting is obviously going to be sub-par, you wouldn’t want someone coming in and showing up the bed with “Acting Skills.” The filmography is rough and the lighting is poor. Sound design is half-assed and doesn’t always make sense. There really isn’t anything good to say about this movie.

The funny thing about this is the fact it took Mr. Barry 5 years to finish filming this. FIVE FREAKING YEARS! He started in 1972 and didn’t get it finished until 1977. He shopped it around for awhile but surprisingly no one wanted to distribute a crappy film about a bed that eats. Weird, huh? He finally gave up in the 80’s, and then right before the DVD release in 2003 his daughter started getting the word out again. He actually had forgotten he made the movie for some time. If the movie is so bad that it’s creator who wasted years of his life on this project could manage to force the idea out of his head, it might not be a good movie. What I wanna know is if the shooting schedule was really lazy or if he kept going back to redo scenes and improve the movie? I mean the idea that this release may be the 3rd or 4th revision and THAT was the very best he could do, that’s scary. That is scarier than anything actually in the film.

Patton Oswalt, who is a comedic genius, has a rather long bit on Death Bed from one of his albums. That’s where Kyle and I first heard about this film. In fact, they probably owe a lot of DVD sales to Patton’s stand up act.

There you have it. Reel 3 of the Unwatchable Movie Challenge. Kyle’s second pick was much worse than Teeth, but those mutilated penises will forever haunt me. Now it’s time for me to choose another movie. I’m going to try and aim away from the Horror genre, although Netflix did just release Dead Snow on Instant Watch. However I might try and dig deep for some really bad obscure comedy from the 80s or something.

I will leave you all with clips from Death Bed. Watch at your own risk.

--“The Erik” Sanburn

The Unwatchable Movie Challenge: Reel 2

Movie: Teenape Goes to Camp
Tagline: No more teachers, no more books …only Teenape’s dirty looks!
Director: Chris Seaver
Starring: Meredith Host, Casey Bowker, Jesse Ames, A.J. Stabone, Josh Suire
Released: 2008 
This film has no rating.
Runtime: 61 min
Genre: Comedy | Horror
Writer: Chris Seaver

Length of Movie I Watched:
I sat through every terrible minute of it.

Verdict: As bad as this poster makes this move look, it is worse. If you have an ounce of decency in your soul, spare yourself and anyone else the pain of having to watch this.

 

Here’s the trailer. Watch at your own risk.

So Reel 2 finally happened. This time around I was the one issuing the challenge. I started to miss “Teeth” a little bit while watching this. At least in Reel 1 the production values were existent, but with a company name like “Low Budget Productions” I shouldn’t have expected anything great. This movie definitely tested our ability to watch a bad movie and really amped up the challenge from Reel 1. I think as far as the “Unwatchable Movie Challenge” goes, if you think to yourself, “Maybe I shouldn’t have picked this movie after all” throughout the film, it was a good challenge.

This movie opens for no reason with a Pirates of the Caribbean parody. It then changes to follow the 80’s raunchy comedies path for the majority of the movie and eventually switches again to slasher and action parodies.
The acting is subpar, no, that doesn’t describe it well enough. When I was in high school I produced a half hour television pilot with some friends. We all were decent high-school actors, but we cast additional people who had no idea what acting was. Instead of coaching and directing the less experienced up to match our levels, everybody just seemed to suck worse. I loved to watch that show after we made it, coming back to it now, I despise it. It is absolutely atrocious. THIS MOVIE IS WORSE THAN THAT! It honestly just seems like a bunch of friends wanted to make something silly, they did, and somehow they are distributing this film and several more all over the place. I picked this up off of Netflix. While browsing their website I discovered that they have received a nod from Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman. www.dorkswithoutfaces.com/lowbudgetpictures/index.html 

The writing is forced, they want to offend you in the style that South Park or Family Guy has offensive humor just to offend everyone. It doesn’t come off as offensive or funny. Perhaps I am biased, because I am a comedy writer and don’t really enjoy that kind of style of forcing dirty words into lines because of the “Ha Ha, you said poopy!” type of humor. But going back as far as the original “Scary Movie” and the ridiculous amounts of crap that monster has spawned I have hated them. I think humor should be more layered than poop jokes. And just because they have several layers of poop, doesn’t make it a layered joke.

Obviously, Teenape will have his followers, he will have people that think his gorilla mask that barely covers his face is part of the “feel” of the film. I have no problem with low budget raunchy comedies. I love Troma. I love camp, and that’s not the log cabins in the woods kind of camp, I mean campy humor. Over the top, obviously fake gore also has no problems in my book. But there is a way to do it right. There are cheap ways to make your title character not sound like he is talking inside a mask for an hour. There are cheap ways to cast your production with competent actors. And the cheapest thing of all is writing decent material to work with. I like low budget indie films. I think they can find a place and now and then even contend with the big budget Hollywood blockbusters. “Teenape goes to Camp” fails on all levels as a film. I have not seen any of their other productions, but I hope that they are much better. For the sake of all humanity.

I don’t even want to think where Reel 3 is going to take us…

Until next time, may god have mercy on your soul,
-- “The Erik” Sanburn

P.S. Coming next week I will be releasing the 5-part short story chronicling my recent adventures in life. I know a lot of you aren’t up with the full story, but all will be revealed soon.

The Unwatchable Movie Challenge

Over Labor Day weekend my best friend from California came back to visit. Kyle “MickeyC” McCarley drove straight through from L.A. to Hutchinson with his two roomies, Heather and Arazi. It was a nice weekend. Little sleep, but non-stop good times.

I know I miss the guy when he’s off doing his thing half a country away, but never do I realize exactly how much until we are reunited. A good friend of mine, Lauren, refers to us as the “Moron Twins.” Not as an insult per say, but more as a reference to the sheer stupidity that ensues from us reuniting. We get a overly excited and revert in age and maturity when around each other. Spending time with Kyle is always a highlight of my year.

Since Kyle decided to pay a surprise visit, I had already made plans to go to the Starlite Drive-In on Sunday evening. Despite my attempts to persuade him into going, he refused. He refused on the grounds that the movies we would be seeing were not worth the money to get in. Now I’m not here to debate whether the price to see G-Force, Aliens in the Attic, and G.I. Joe was worth it or not. My motto has always been, “I’ll watch anything.” Now I’m not sure if that’s really a motto or just something I say now and then, because outside of movies, I won’t watch anything. That’d be gross and awkward.

Kyle asked me just before I left to meet up with Carissa and Candace’s family and indulge in a triple featured evening, “Why would you pay to see those movies?”
To which I explained, “It’s ten bucks a carload, so it’s only like two dollars to see three movies. That’s a really good deal.”
“I don’t know about that. Those movies are going to be crap, I wouldn’t watch them for free,” Kyle quipped.
I understood where he was coming from, I wasn’t exactly expecting these movies to be anything more than cheap laughs and eye candy, “You know me though, I’ll watch anything.”
"You’ve always been like that. I don’t get it. I’m going to find a movie you won’t watch,” Kyle threatened.
"Alright, good luck. I doubt you could find one,” I baited him.
"I’ll take that action!” Dustin who had remained quiet for most of this argument chimed in.
"It’s an official challenge then,” stated Kyle, who’s mind began to whir with memories of poorly developed films.
I decided to amend the proposal slightly, “Alright, but before I agree to this, anything you challenge me to sit through, you have to sit through it with me. So remember that you have to watch it too.”
"Deal,” Kyle quickly signed up.
"Fine,” Dustin said as he jumped up from his chair. He reached out to shake hands to signify a deal had been confirmed.
"A gentlemen’s agreement. Huzzah!” We all exclaimed in unison. A pact had been made that day. An evil deal that would only lead us down a path of destruction. For we had all three just willingly signed on to sift through hours upon hours of offensive, poorly made, badly written, horrible movies.

So the challenge is on. Will Dustin and Kyle find a movie that I will refuse to sit through? Will our minds rot from the garbage we will surely be feeding it? Can The Erik outlast the challengers in their own movie choices? All this and more on the next exciting episode of “As The Donut Gyrates.”

Feel free to help out the boys and post suggestions of your favorite “Bad Movies.” Only these two chuckleheads can issue a challenge, but they are going to need all the help they can get.

Also, while I would never call this a “Bad Movie,” unlike the majority of the film going public, Howard the Duck is playing at the Palace this weekend for their Cult Movie series. If anyone wants to see this magical 1986 Marvel Comic-based film, let me know. I will go to every single showing if I have friends to go with.

Palace West Theatre Presents
A CULT FILM SERIES
Shows play every Friday & Saturday between 9:00-10pm and 11:30-Midnight. With a new film each week through Dec. 5th
TICKETS ARE ONLY $2.50!
For showtimes call 691-9700
http://www.palacemovies.com/showtimes/new_cult.pdf
http://www.palacemovies.com
Proof of age is required

September 25th & 26th

Keep looking to the skies, true believers!
-- "The Erik" Sanburn

I'm Sorry Extra Pound, It's Over Between Us. We had Some Good Times though. It's Not You, It's.... Acutally, it is You.

Article no. 1: I will Reduce Volume and Girth of my Body.

That's right folks, the most cliche of all new year's resolutions. The obligatory weight loss resolution. Everyone knows Americans are stereotyped as rich egocentric fat people. When any true American knows, that we're not rich... pfft, silly foreigners.

I'm not fat by any means, I'm overweight for sure. But hey, who isn't these days? When society's view of ideal weight in females is about 32lbs, how can one not be overweight? However, society aside, I could stand to lose a few. I'm currently weighing in about 208. Not terrible, but according to the BMI index and my Nintendo WiiFit it is bad. Overweight they tell me. Ideally for my height I should be weighing 170-175. I can't remember when I have ever weighed that, though obviously at some point I did. 185 is my average weight, I have let it slide a bit.

So I want to lose weight. How can I achieve this goal? I have a plan of action. My WiiFit and Wii Sports. While working up a sweat with the Wii may not always have the same thrills as running down zombies in Left 4 Dead, it is more productive. I have finally hit the stage alot of gamers hit with the Wii. It's starting to collect dust. Not anymore, I'm bringing it back and am going to start actively using it every night.

Wii Sports is a decent form of exercise in of itself, with Tennis, Baseball, and my favorite Boxing. Heck even after bowling a few frames you feel it the next day. Then Nintendo introduced the WiiFit. A program completely geared toward healthy living with Yoga, Strength training, and recreational activities all designed to make you Fit and improve balance and coordination. Brilliant! 

I'm actually looking forward to bringing out the Wii and dropping a few extra pounds.

In most cases, I would bring it out. Do it a couple of times and then give up. Most do. However, my office is participating in the Choose to Lose program. I don't know if this is a nationwide thing or just something local, but every January businesses in the Hutchinson area gather teams and set weight loss goals and work through March on achieving them. I think this is a great program to have the community working together to better themselves with a little competitive motivation. Choose to Lose starts January 12th I believe and will run through March. Weigh ins are weekly and extra points are rewarded for exercise. So hopefully this will provide enough motivation to keep me going. I'm going to set my goal for Choose to Lose at 10 lbs. Seems reasonable for 3 months.

Now my own personal goal is to be at 185lbs. by May 19th, my birthday, and then by the end of the year to try and get to 170-175. The WiiFit will stop calling me fat if I hit my ideal BMI, and it's something that I wanna try and do. I also hope that in the process I can tone up some as well. Abs of Jello may be something funny to say, but it would be nice to not feel self conscious about my torso. I mean, as nice as it would be to have some Brad Pitt looking abs with a v-line that catches all the fair maidens eyes at the pool, it's probably not going to happen. But I'm tired of having dinky doo syndrome.

Dinky doo syndrome is a problem in males when your stomach sticks out past your dinky doo.

Crude, I know, but it makes me chuckle slightly. And dinky doos aside, a flat stomach would be cool to try out for awhile.

This is the Year of the Donut. I'm a Donut Boy. The Donut Boys are a group of us that perform for WoW Radio, we produce the Chalice of Silvermoon web series. We decided that 2009 is "The Year of the Donut" a special year in which we work really hard to improve our talents, hone our skills, and gain popularity throughout the Internet. A year of self-improvement. Which is also what I see for myself in 2009. So when I start feeling like I don't want to do anything, I wanna sit around or sleep all day, I tell myself, "This is the Year of the Donut." This keeps me motivated, reminds me that I have a goal. I have to improve myself so I can help the group. Sum of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That's Synergy, baby!

Weight Goals for 2009:  Down to 185 by May 19th. Down to 170 by December 31st. God Speed Soldier...

Keep looking to the skies, true believers!

-- "The Erik" Sanburn

The Legend of Half-Beard and the New Year's Resolution

Well, hello! I bet you thought I abandoned my readers, but I didn't forget the 3 of you! Busy, Busy, busy... I'm always so busy.

Christmas came and went. It was a nice holiday, time of gathering, family, and holiday pay. I got a lot of nice gifts from my family. Some nice green holly for my wallet as well, that means cash... I bought a beard trimmer. Yes, I am aware how lame that is, but I needed it. So to test out the length settings I shaved half of my face. See below.

Yeah, so, that was silly of me. Fear not, I corrected the imbalanced face hair. It's coming in even and not resembling the homeless is always a goal.

New Year's Eve. My tamest in a long time. I have no crazy photos for you, because all I did was play some video games and watch the ball drop in New York. I just didn't feel like going out that night. I took a nap until midnight central time and woke up long enough to mumble, "happy new year!" and fall back asleep. So while the majority of the human race likes to make New Year's resolutions, those that achieve them are definitely a minority. However, with the doting public staring in at me, perhaps that would be some much needed motivation.

Yes, as you  may have guessed, I'm turning this into the obligatory resolution post. here are my cliche resolutions.

1. Lose Weight
   
2. Eat out less
   
3. Get more out of debt
   
4. Finish the house
   
5. Clean up for Stef
   
6. Finish these certifications: 
   
1. Server+
   
2. Network+
   
3. Security+
   
4. IBM Server
   
5. HP Desktop
   
6. HP Notebook
   
7. HP Server
   
8. Linux+
   
9. Various Microsoft Certs.


7. Upgrade my payscale twice
   
8. Fix the chaliceofsilvermoon.com website
   
9. Create a donutboys.net website
   
10. Begin Operation: Internet Takeover
    
11. Finish recording for Chalice Season 3
    
12. Finish production for Chalice Season 3
    

That's my list. I'm going to keep a tally on the sidebar so everyone can see my progress. Also I will be going into details each item over the rest of this month. Happy New Year and everyone look forward to great possibilities!