Come over for a potty!

How inappropriate.

Batman Does No. 2 in Chicago!

I took a screen shot of the awesome new trailer for "Batman:The Dark Knight" where it totally gives away that it was filmed here in Chicago. It probably wasn't a secret to those of us living here, but I thought they might disguise it more with CG to make it look more like Gotham. Anyway, I was extremely excited because I totally see my apartment building in this shot. I included a daytime shot of the same area taken from the Sears Tower for comparison's sake. Check out some of the past posts about my building if you still don't believe it. Living in downtown Chicago is awesome.

Oh, Sh*t!

This has got to be one of the saddest pictures I've ever taken.




Dropping an ice cream cone has to be one of the most underrated tragedies to befall us in our lifetimes. True, they're only 5 bucks or so and easily replaceable, but they still give us a quick lesson in the fragility of life and the impermanence of beauty. Of course, now that I look closer, this person ordered some sort of disgusting mint flavored ice cream. Yecch. Seriously, They had it coming!

Gotta Van Gogh

One of my favorite paintings in the Chicago Art Institute, from one of my favorite painters of all time. This photo really shows off the qualities that I love about Van Gogh's work. The use of intense color and thick luscious brush strokes. Everyone should do their own self portrait, whether it's just in pencil, crayon, fingerpaints, or even ShrinkyDinks!! Give it a shot. You may learn something about yourself. Hopefully more than just that your left ear is crooked.

Wee Little City

I took some pictures of a model of Millenium Park I made.



Isn't it cute... awwwwwww.

Gee Whiz!

There's a water park in downtown Chicago. Actually it's a fountain made of two 50-foot glass block towers with video projections of random faces. Although actually named 'Crown Fountain', it is known as 'The Spitting Fountain' since every few minutes a jet of water shoots out of their pursed lips. The spray lands in a shallow reflecting pool between the towers, which is crowded with hundreds of barefooted screaming children. In an effort to avoid the insanity, I shot these pictures at night. The progression of photos is an homage to the art museum scene in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off' where the camera gets closer and closer to the Georges Seurat pointillism masterpiece 'La Grande Jatte' until all you see are the individual brush strokes with no sense of the overall picture. Strange that I would use this fountain to do an homage to that film, seeing as that scene was filmed only a block away in the Art Institute of Chicago. Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

"P" is for POST

Yeah, Yeah...I know it's been a long long time since my last post, but it was not due to lack of effort. Blogger changed stuff around a while back, now known as Blogger 2: Electric Boogaloo, and this new incarnation is about as good as that movie. I tried to post many times, and either had weird errors or was told to log-in again which would never work. Oh well, let's hope I've given them enough time to get their heads out of their Blog-holes.

Anyway, for those of you who have been eagerly awaiting a new post (which I'm sure is a number greater than zero, and less than 3), here goes.

Last fall, November 9th or so of last year, I took a nice evening stroll from my apartment through Millennium Park and down to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was 65 degrees, approaching dusk, and other than there being a construction crane in every shot, it was absolutely beautiful. I'm hoping to start my new photo blog "Another photo ruined by a damn crane" very soon. So without further adieu...Enjoy!

Pianists are funny

Evan "tagged" me with some sort of chain blog thing. It involves answering the following questions and then passing it on to three other blogs. I don't recall there being any sort of catastrophe or punishment inflicted upon me if I just ignore this, but hey, I've got nothing better to do. Well, I could always use more sleep....Naaaah!!

Three people/things that make me laugh:
Sarah Silverman's new ad, where a group of people are out at a restaurant and someone farts, then they all laugh and take turns farting, except silverman who tries, only to reveal "I pooped". Gets me every time. Um....knowing there are people who call themselves 'Pianists' instead of piano players. Louis CK's Shameless special totally killed me. I literally died choking on a Spicy tuna roll during it.

Three things that scare me: Shopping at Borders and ABBA starts playing over the loud speaker, memory loss, and ....

Three things I love:
My family & friends, Bingos in SCRABBLE, walking down Michigan Avenue and seeing the 'Adventures in Babysitting' Building. (It's actually called the 'stone container building', which I sometimes call the 'box cutter building', or the 'box container' building, all of which are fine)

Three things I hate:
ABBA, traffic, alarm clocks

Three things I don’t understand:
The stock market, flavored water, and why I like broadway musicals but don't usually like other people who like broadway musicals.

Three things on my desk:
A pad of graph paper where I am secretly practicing writing in Devanagari script (Hindi), A wind-up Jay Jay the Jet Plane, and crumbs from God knows what.

Three things I want to do before I die:
Work at Pixar, or at the very least take a tour of Pixar and chain myself to John Lasseter. Be called a 'Pianist' for the right reasons, ie play the piano like a pro and not just a mispronunciation of 'penis'. And finally finish Diablo 2 for cryin' out loud.

Three things I can do:
Make the best devilled eggs EVER, juggle random objects (preferably not sharp), and recite the entire Willy Wonka screenplay from memory.

Three things I would like to learn:
I am constantly trying to learn other languages. So far I have studied Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and most recently Hindi and all I have to show for it is the ability to count to twenty in 6 languages. Je suis le maird. Still on that piano learnin' fix, so that would be good. And maybe some time management/focusing skills would be a good idea to learn, seeing as how I'm writing this at 4:30 in the morning.

Three favorite foods:
Spicy tuna rolls, but only once every few weeks, because once I have it I usually say something like "I dont want to eat this ever again", but usually end up having it again in a few weeks. Maybe that should be in things I don't understand. Hmmm. Let's see...Oh Yeah! An aged filet mignon with bernaise sauce. Or is it bearnaise? I don't care, it'll give me the padoodles either way. And last but not least, Chicken Brian from Carrabas. Need to take the Metra to the suburbs for that. I'll be right back...

Three beverages I drink regularly:
I dropped a rare coin at the bottom of a Coca-Cola can. I swear, that's the only reason I drink the stuff. I can quit any time. No problem, really. I quit all the time. GET OFF MY BACK!!! Um...oh yeah, gallons of water. And chocolate milk in any form, including NesQuik powder with skim milk (formerly Quik until some marketing major wanted to punch up the Nestle "branding strategy"), those 'Milk-chug' things, Yoohoo, or the leftover chocolate sludge at the bottom of a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles.

Three TV shows/Books I watched/read as a kid:
The Electric Company "HEY YOU GUYS!!", 3-2-1 contact "The Bloodhound Gang" and The Great Space Coaster "No Gnews is good Gnews with Gary Gnu" all melded together. Saw the movie "Watership Down" and peed my pants when Fivel starts tripping out screaming "The field...is...covered with blood!" Definitely traumatizing. I think I liked the Gummy Bears for some reason. "Bouncing here and there and everywhere". I liked crappy Saturday morning cartoons based on video games. Remember Pac Man, or Dragon's Lair? They both had weekly series that I was addicted to. Holy crap, that's way more than three and I barely scratched the surface.

Three blogs I will "tag" and have them hate me:
I'm going to tag Photomom Strikes Again, A Year of Working, and Cardhouse.

Chicago is Number One!

I was able to get some surprisingly cool pictures last weekend when dad came up to visit. Chicago can be a pretty place if seen from the right angles. Here are a few of my favorite from Millenium Park. Enjoy.

Can you say "Creepy" boys and girls?

"OH THE HORROR!!! WHAT HAPPENED TO THEIR HEADS??!"






These are the mannequins in Marshall Fields/Macy's Children's department. Seriously. Someone thought these were a good idea.

HAPPY NOW?

Here are some long awaited, and quite anticlimactic pictures of my apartment.
Enjoy...













Floorplan and furniture ideas...

Peety, we hardly knew ye

I was out on my balcony this morning taking pictures for an upcoming blog entry, when I noticed that a cute little bird was dead on the floor. I have ruled it a suicide. There was no note.

Sadly, the first thing I thought was "I gotta get me a picture o' that!"
So here you go.

You're in focus!

One of the writers at work has a blog called
'A year in Pictures of Working'

http://ayearofworking.blogspot.com/

I'm in it a few times, but purely by accident so far. His last post though was about a friend's birthday party. I happened to take a picture as he took his picture. So, basically, my blog is so lame that I have to live vicariously through his blog by taking a picture of him taking a picture.

Plus I got a new camera (thanks in big part to a very generous Amazon.com gift card from my cousin Shari and her husband Joe) and it's awesome!!

Real mature, Innis!

Sorry it took a while for me to post another entry. Notice that I didn’t say “write” another entry, as I wrote a few since the last that were gobbled by an evil and apparently hungry spell checker. Discouraging to say the least, so I gave up for a while, not thinking I could re-create the comedy gold I had written before. Now where was I…

I stayed home from work last Wednesday when I had some major stomach problems about 4am that morning. I didn’t sleep at all because of the cramping and running to the bathroom. Who knew sitting on a toilet could be so exhausting? I’ll think twice before I have the meatball sub at subway. Well, maybe I just won’t get all the hot peppers next time. Ouch.

Speaking of fun crap, I’m actually doing some bona fide 3d character animation at work. It may or may not be used in the new project we are doing, since stuff is up in the air right now, but I’d say the chance of usage is 80 percent…75-80. Here is a montage I made with some of the experimental expressions I’ve done for this character. I’m having a blast. Enjoy.

If urine my neighborhood...

This is where I live. Isn't it frikkin sweet!?!

http://www.lakeshoreeast.com

http://www.theshoreham.com/

Oh. I have a couch now. Well, a love-seat and a chair anyway. Make that a super comfortable love-seat and chair. I wanted to get a sleeper for all you possible visitors, but it was just too big for my living room. So bring your inflatable mattress.

Urine Idiot!

Today, I actually said to someone "If worse comes to worse" instead of "If push comes to shove" or "worst case scenario". I've been doing that a LOT lately, just totally screwing up or combining cliche phrases. A few favorites are "Half of one, six-dozen of another" instead of "Six of one, half-dozen of another" and "Let's start at ground one" combining "Back to square one" and "ground zero" and maybe even "start at the top". Sometimes I make no sense at all, but I think people know what I mean and refrain from correcting me just to be nice. Or they think I'm a brilliant innovator in phrase turning, like Fergie from the Black eyed peas, who recently made up the word "pronunciated", a combillection of "pronounce" and "enunciate." Combillection? See. I can do it too!

There's got to be a term for my recent word problems. For instance, there are malapropisms, which means using the wrong, but similar sounding, word. Kinda like george McFly saying "You are my density." Then there are spoonerisms, which involve transposition of the initial sounds of two words in a phrase, such as "Hake a Tike" or "Deed the fog". Unfortunately, I do this way too much as well, but it's not what I'm looking for. Hmmm...There are Tom Swifties, where an adverb punnily describes something someone says. For instance, "My doctor had to remove my left ventricle" said Tom half-heartedly. Hmmm... solecisms, or incorrect grammar usage... that ain't it. ;)

Oh well, I suppose you could just say I've been mixing metaphors, but that would be like taking candy from the horse's mouth.

Urinal Etiquette

I'm SO mad right now. (well, not really, but it's much more dramatic to start it that way)
I had this great idea for a bit, whether I use it for dinner conversation or a stand-up routine, whatever, and it was awesome. It was all about urinal etiquette in the men's room. You know, which urinal to choose, how to stand, where to look, etc. Coincidentally I saw a video on "You-Tube" that pretty much covered all my jokes. It's done in a sort of 'The Sims' 3D animated style, which kind of sucks, but it is pretty funny. Check it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzO1mCAVyMw PG-13



Here's another attempt by someone, but I disagree with their arbitrary rules.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKnWd3JVnfE G

Urinal Cakes

Seriously...who the hell thought that was a good name? I am quite certain that nothing in the pies, cakes, and tarts family should be associated with peeing.