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Okay , quick update, and then big update: I got Guitar hero III for the Wii for $22 after trading in a shitload of games and like 5 memory cards. Sweet. That was on Tuesday, which I slept through most of the day, but then went to EB Games for an hour or two, hung out with the guy that works there for a couple hours, and then left. Went to the TV Film Society meeting, and came back. Lyndsae and I carved a bunch of awesome pumpkins, and then finally went to bed at like 2am. Wednesday was halloween, Lyndsae, Sweeney and I went to Disneyland right after we got out of life at 5pm, got some Carls Jr. and hung out at the park until like 9pm. We got back, and Lyndsae and I went around and said hi to some people that just moved into the apartment next to us, some Pi Kapps. The rest of the night went pretty well too. On thursday, I went to class all day, and came back, Lyndsae and I went to Blockbuster at like 11pm, and then after cleaning up a bit, having some food, and watching Meet The Robinsons, we went to bed. On Friday, Lyndsae and i woke up and said our goodbyes, and we both went to work. At like 11am however, I got to home for a couple minutes to pick up some rabbit-ears to give to chuck. He doesn't get Cable, and his family just wants to watch this one show, "The Ghost Whisperer" or something I guess, and they've been getting it in really poorly I guess. Anyways, after work at the Equipment Check-Out room, I made sure my bike was locked up, grabbed my backpack full of clothes, and my poker chips set, and set out to find the TV Film Society Group: My Journey was about to begin.
Long Update:
I hooked up with the gang of like 8 people, and we all drove up to CSU Channel Islands, in the Minivan. Included in this gang of people: Me, Sweeney, Michelle, David, Sense, Brett, Diane, and Preston. We left at 12:15pm, and finally got there to start our adventure at about 2:30pm, just a little later than the 12pm we were supposed to get there, for orientation. What we were all there for was a Media Arts Festival that happens once a year.
Basically, it's a two or three day event where all the CSU schools get together and submit the films or whatever they've been working on, and are judged up against everyone else. There's like 3 or 4 categories, including Animation, Music Videos, Comedy, and Drama or something. During the day, all these professors, or doctors, or just really successful people come in and give these two hour seminars on what they do, how they got into it, how they do it, how other people have done it, whatever. There were 16 different workshops to choose from, but only four timeslots, so sometimes you had to pick the lesser of two evils, but other than that, it's just like two or three days of class in any subject you choose, followed by the actual film screenings at night.
So we were supposed to get to this place at Noon it turns out, but we didn't find that out until like 11:30am, at which point we were already screwed. We hopped in a minivan, blazing my iPod most of the way, eating candy, taking pictures, and ripping on each other the whole way. We checked in, went stright to each of our first seminar of choice, and decided to meet back up later. I chose Screenwriting, which was a pretty pointless class, because they guy talked about how he's this super successful screenwriter, and how he hates working with everyone, and you want to hang yourself with all the shitty deadlines you have, but other than that, it was a great job. Thanks.
I left my class, and hooked up with everyone else, where we quickly went back to the hotel, and walked over to In & Out burger with the kids from CSU Fresno. After munchin a bunch, we walked back over to the hotel, grabbed our shit, and went to the film screening, which was 5 1/2 hours of absolute filth and crap. Oh my god, no one knows how to make a film short. At the end of the night, which was like 11:45pm, we slumped back to the car and drove to the liquor store, picked up some snacks and some buurr, and went back to the hotel room and had a pretty good party. I busted out my poker chips, we got some ice, and chilled the buurr in the sink, and all night, we were just kickin back, playing a few drinking games. Later, someone mentioned the word Frisbee, so we got one somehow, and found a big, open dirt field, which me, Jermaine, Sense, David, Michelle, Sweeney, Aaron and I played for a good two or three hours; pretty buzzed. There was a security cop that kept turning around and shining spotlights on us, but he wasn't a cop, and we weren't scared. At some point, I jumped on Sense to try to catch a really high frisbee, but it failed. Sense responded by piggy-backing on me, but he caught his. We tried to get another one that whizzed by us, and I fell, with him on my back, into some soft, crumbly dirt. Later, we dusted ourselves off, took a few pictures, and went back to the room to play some good ol' down home Texas Hold 'Em. At about 4:30am, we called it a night and went to bed.
Four hours later, we all woke up in our quadruple occupancy, two-bed rooms, and just stumbled around getting dressed and showered to be at the film festival at 9:30am. We hopped in the van, rapping and singing about how great CVS is for some reason... wait. Why was CVS the ongoing joke for the weekend...? I have no idea. But any song that came on the radio, we immedeatly put CVS lyrics to it. Had to be there I guess....
We got to the festival, and luckily, pretty much all of us had chosen Directing and Acting in Film as their 9:30am class. Some lady who directed everything in the world gave a presentation along with her token black actress who's been spotted in just about every unimportant role in TV. Anyways, we did some cold readings, switching out the actors and directors, and it was pretty good stuff; kept me and all my friends from falling asleep.
After that, we went on a quest to find the cafeteria. After doing so, we got some breakfast. I had a bacon and sausage breakfast burrito, and it was good. So after eating, we hopped into our next class at 12:30, which for me was Cinematography with some dry, boring italian guy. He lectured and did powerpoint, showing us what separates the beginners from the advanced, and the advanced from the great. We all kept falling asleep though, despite his information and time being very valuable. Anyways, we barely made it out of there alive, but came out, and walked around a bit, checking out the campus that used to be an insane asylum in the 60's, 70's and 80's. After that, we went to our final class, which was Film Scoring. I was only with my friend Brett on this one, but it was a really intersting class, like all the others, and I also came out with a lot more information that I would have even considered about the subject. Note to Self: Become proficient at reading music.
After that, I lost my notes I had been keeping, so i spent a good 30 minutes trying to hunt them down, retracing my steps. I finally found them lying in the grass in a field we crossed earlier. It wouldn't have been a big deal, but all the information I learned, I wrote down, which erased it in my head. Anyways, we went back to the hotel, and tried finding a place to eat, but we never really found anywhere. There was rumor that there was going to be a reception after the awards ceremony, but we weren't sure how valid the claims were. We went to the campus again, and after watching a few honorary awards for special faculty that had helped to make the media artys festival possible, we took a 20 minute intermission before delving into awards. At that time, Sweeney and Aaron had just walked in, full from eating. Apparently, they saw that the faculty were eating in this big reception before the ceremoney, so they devised a plan, snuck over by the food, and when they were caught, they went to one of the only professors from our school, and sat with him for a second until the heat died down. They came back after eating pasta with chicken, salads, garlic bread, tiramisu, and all kinds of drinks. I (along with like 7 other people) went directly to Dr. P to ask him if we could get in on this food now that everyone was full. He guided us into the big auditorium buffet, and we feasted. There was wine, and all the food still, but there were no forks left. I used two plastic knives as chopsticks for the pasta at first, but after discovering that someone had hand sanitizer, I used that, and then ate with my fingers. It wasn't pretty, but no one was at that point.
We got back to the ceremony unscathed, no one had seen us, and we all had eaten for free. The ceremony went off for an hour or two, and our school ended up winning best in show video, so that was cool. Soon after, it was found out that someone in our group had heard a rumor of a murderer called "Scary Derry", and now, wanted to go ghost hunting. We debated about it for an hour or so by the car: It's incredibly foggy out here, we're completely alone on an island, we would be trespassing onto unsafe property, and he might still be out there. Add that to our professor's story about how she went with a huge group of friends one year and saw a big tribal event with painted people dancing around a fire, and we now have enough reasons to go. So we hop in the car, no one except me and Sweeney actually want to do it, and with Diane driving, we passed up the opportunity to do it. Until Sweeney complained a little. We turned the van around, met at the end of a small road in the middle of nowhere, and counted off numbers, making us 20 people strong. Right before we went however, three people in a car chickened out and left. 17 people, two small flashlights, and a video camera. Sorta Blair Witchy, but it was scarier than hell. We had to hop over these "No Trespassing" gates, and choose which fork in the road to take about three times, but after walking for almost half an hour in the middle of a cold, foggy, dusty, pitch black trail, we came across some huge powerlines, with some old, disfigured lawnchairs next to them. After shining our flashlights around a bit, we saw a big old house. It showcased a bull skull with horns on the outside, and after we got brave enough to maybe touch it, we got too close, and an alarm went off. We all panicked, and decided to walk away as quickly as we could without losing anyone. We heard rustling in the bushes, but refused to stop walking. All of us linking arms in rows of five or six, we charged out of the trail and found our cars, with no cops, or people shot from the landowner.
Holy shit.
So we got back in our cars, and went back to the liquor store to get more buurr. We went back to the hotel room, drank some buurrs, and watched Space Cowboys while playing Texas hold 'Em. Crap. Other rooms were having parties too though, so Sweeney and I walked around the motel and hung out with the people we went on a ghost hunt with, and then tried watching the video of the hunt, but we didn't have TV cables to hook up the camera. Lame.
So at like, 5:00am, the parties were dying down, and Sweeney and I were back in the hotel room, deciding it was time for bed. Preston went off, out of nowhere on me, saying that i was really irresponsible or something; which caught everyone else in the room with us by surprise. I wasn't sure what his motive was, but i think he was either drunk, or jealous of the night that Brett, Sweeney, Sense, Aaron, and I were having; but either way, not cool, man.
We woke up at 10:30am the next morning, cleaned up the wreckage that our room had acquired, and by 11am, we were packed up, with the room not horribly awful, and out by the van, ready to go. We took some, "None of us got any sleep, but god damn we had fun" pictures first thing before we got in the van; and then we all tried to find a Denny's to recover. We waited a good 20 minutes for a table, and then just all hung out, really mildly (as a first in this whole weekend) and ate breakfast. After that, we got in the car, and drove back to Orange County; mooning Aaron in his truck a good 7 or 8 times. After we got back to campus, Sweeney and I laid on the floor for a while, and then Lyndsae came by and we all biked to our respective homes. Completely drained, Lyndsae and i ate lunch, and then I went to work from 5pm - 11:30pm. I came home, called my mom, talked to her for a good hour or so, took a shower, and went to bed, only to wake up a little late for class. Luckily, I didn't do the homework in that class, and she didn't collect it. So that worked out nicely. And I scored some brownie points for my professor seeing me at the festival, so it turned out okay. I went to work at the equipment check out room right after that to cover for Yvette who was blisteringly sick; and now, here I am, updated, and getting paid to do it.