Red Raptor Productions

On Friendship

2011-09-16T07:55:00.001-07:00

I had three friends
close as brothers
yet today I grieve,
to these three men
I made a vow
I'd die before I'd leave.

One friend had rage
that would overflow
and spill out like a cup,
he took his neighbor's Jack Daniels
in hope to fill back up.

One seemed true,
but met a girl
and turned into another,
he'd pat my back with one hand
and tie my noose with the other.

The third's hard luck
broke him down
in self-pity he'd sit and wallow,
the drugs he took led him down
a path I could not follow.

Then there's me
the worst of all
my head hung down in shame,
I swore, my brothers, I'd never leave,
but left you all the same.

Summer Movies 2011

2011-05-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick list of the movies I'm excited to see during the summer. I know some people already disagree with me. This list is in order of release dates.

Thor - The Marvel take of the god of thunder. I'll be there in a week!

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Strange Tides - Taping the energy and fun of the first film, all without Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom? Sounds good.

X-Men: First Class- It's the X-Men! And it looks like an X-Men movie! This one might be a the new how to for X-Men movies! (See X-Men Origins: Wolverine for the "what-not-to-do" lesson)

Super 8 - This one looks like E.T. meets Cloverfield and I do love that kind of stuff.

Green Lantern - I would not be exited if it wasn't for the extended trailer released a few weeks ago. Nice save.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - I find the less I look into this, the more I excited I stay. I'm going to stay with that.

Another Earth - A new one for me, but it's the story of the discovery of an alternative earth and is being compared to the level of Moon. You tricky comparers, comparing to Moon!

Captain America: The First Avenger - I was less excited, now I'm excited. I'm like a roller coaster of emotions!

Cowboys and Aliens - Stop making fun of the title! Both are things we want to see!

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - The trailer looks cheesy as all get out, but it has gorillas attacking helicopters and chimps sneaking into the capital.

Conan the Barbarian - I'm not sure how excited I am for this, but if it's anything like the Kurt Busiek comics I read a few years ago, it should be pretty good. Plus, Conan would fit right at home in a Savage World game.

I know these films all fall into the same type of films, but the summer is my time to enjoy them. You artsy film lovers get the fall and winter. I like my summer days full of superheroes and space odysseys. Plus, if you don't like any of these, odds are you're going to Harry Potter anyway and that will keep you talking forever.

If you think this is bad, wait until you see me 2012. Avengers, Spider-Man, Batman, Star Trek...Bad news for those close to me.

A Reading Fantasy

2011-03-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

I’m going to start talking about what I like to read by talking about what I’d like to read. During the summer, I try to make a reading list to stay on task. For the most part, I cover the list well, though I do take rabbit trails and find other titles I wasn’t expecting. Last summer, for instance, was taken over by science fiction. This summer, I’ve got a lot of fantasy coming my way.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie has recently come to my attention, during one of my many browsings on Amazon. The premise sounds cool; the stories of those partaking in a three day battle with all the blood, pain, and heroism that goes with it. One thing I am is a premise guy. I love hearing a great premise. I wish I could come up with better ones, but no such luck. Back to the book, it’s received a lot of great reviews but, as with most of the books on this list, it’s in hardcover only. And hardcover is worth its weight in gold.

One book that has me very excited is The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. It’s the second book in the Kingkiller Chronicles and I’m ready to be reading it. The first book, The Name of the Wind, blew me away (excuse the pun). It was the first book in a long time to make me tear up and have a near heart attack. The writing was great and the story was as complete as I could have hoped. The biggest problem was that it left me wanting more, which is why there is a second book. It’s also in hardcover only.

Brandon Sanderson leads the Writing Excuses podcast I listen to and his books are pretty good too. This summer I’ve got his Mistborn trilogy to read, and I want to pick up his newest tome, The Way of Kings. Both have received rave reviews and I know, having read Elantris, that Mr. Sanderson is a great writer. This Christmas, my mom gave me the entire Mistbord series, and I can’t wait to crack into them. The Way of Kings is the size of a small car, though, and a time commitment, so I have to wait. The other problem with this book? Hardcover only. It’s as if the stores don’t want me to read these books, penniless pauper that I am.

So, in the world of paperbacks, there are two book series I’m eying with interest. The first is Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I’ve been hearing a lot of different things about this one, either highly positive or cautiously interested. It’s about thirteen volumes, and I’ve been lent the first book. I know Jordan has influenced Sanderson quite a bit, with Sanderson taking over writing duties after Jordan died. I’m more excited for this than I think I should be, especially with my fear of overly-long series, but we’ll see how I fair.

I’m also interested in reading The Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. I haven’t heard much about this one; mainly that it’s a little grittier and that HBO is making a series based off of it. I’ve had one person tell me they love it and that’s about it. It will probably stay at the bottom of the pile, if only from the lack of information I have. But, since it’s in paperback, it might move up sooner than later.

That’s my reading list for the summer, or, at least the fantasy books. I think next I’ll talk about the sci-fi books I want to check out this break. Either way, I’ve got my reading cut out for me.

What Do I Read?

2011-03-07T12:16:00.000-08:00

What do I read? That’s not such a simple question. Most of my time is spent reading comics, especially during the school year. The reason for this is, basically, time. I can finish a trade paperback in one sitting, where a book will take more time. Not to mention the fact that my school’s interlibrary loan system allows for a constant input of comics, with no charge.

During the summer, I try to get my fiction intake, from both the local bookstore and library. Last summer, I had a great time reading all sorts of books, catching up on science fiction, fantasy, and other genres. It’s a lot of fun and I have the time to sit and read at my own pace.

When school is going on, my main reading comes in school books and my Christian literature (the latter I try to read all year long). I find reading my Christian books to be one the more refreshing things to do, helping me grow and keep my faith in mind. However, I can have a problem of reading only the literature and letting my Bible devotions take a hit. Not a good toss-up.

Now, when it comes to comics, I love my superheroes. No question, no argument. There are those, who for whatever reasons, stay away from superheroes and read all the world has to offer in other genres. Not me. I like my costume heroes fighting it out on rooftops. Sure, I have a few titles I follow with those in tights, but not much.

The summer reading, my fiction, is more varied, though I stay true to my geek roots. I love science fiction, my main source. I’ve been getting more and more into fantasy this year, mainly because of certain writers and books. I’m a bit ashamed how little I’ve read in the genre, but we’ll see how I fair after this summer. Michael Crichton isn’t a genre, but I love his stuff and usually read one or two of his books a year, though I’m running out of new stuff. I try to keep up a steady intake of classic literature, but fail more often than not.

This is such a small summary of what I read. Really, it all needs to be analyzed on an individual basis. Reading is very important to me. I stopped after I dropped out of high school and it was a sad, dark time. My vocabulary began to shrink and I couldn’t talk literature unless it had pictures. Over the past five years, I’ve really been making sure I read as much as I can and it feels great. I can’t wait to write more about it.

End of the Semester

2010-12-23T09:24:00.000-08:00

The semester has ended (so I’m late commenting on this) and the grades are slowly coming in. Very slowly.

Before this semester started, I was iffy about some of the classes I took and stoked about others. I knew I had to take Time, Motion and Communication; it’s required for my concentration and it’s something I should take either way. I was worried that, it being an animation class, I was going to hit the grounds in flames. I’m not very good with the abstract. When I look at something, I tend to see it for what it is, not what it might be. If I create a video about two people playing video games, I’m not making it with the intent of something else. The basic idea is “Eric and Glenn play Final Fantasy VII”. If you find that the video might represent brotherly love or childhood nostalgia, great, but those thoughts aren’t with me when filming.

This is the big reason I was and tend to be worried. I’m definitely in a major where it helps to be abstract and think in hard to compress thoughts. What happened though is that I actually learned. The Eric that went into TMC was not the same Eric that came out of TMC. If you look at my first work with typography to my last, or compare my first animated short to my second, the jump is ridiculous. I’m still not where I wish I was, and it’s a pain in the butt to be in a class with so many talented people, because I’ll always be behind just scratching to get to the middle class, but it was great to see real progress in my own ability. It was even good to be surrounded by talented people, to have to push myself and learn from their success. It’s a really cool thing to write a script that reads “General Zaroff is on his giant riding mole” and know that I’ll see it.

Which is another thing I learned about myself; even with animation, I’m a storyteller. My work is abstract or symbolic because my work is very much a story-centered one. Yes, my stories tend to be sad excuses for the medium, but they’re still a beginning, middle, and an end type of project. When I animated “A Most Dangerous Game”, I went in on how to tell the story best; camera shots, dialog, scenes, end joke. All I had at my hands for animation was just a tool to tell a story I normally couldn’t tell. That was the great realization about animation, and about my own style. I’m not so ashamed by skills with After Effects or Illustrator anymore because illustration isn’t my focus. The story is.

I was going to talk about my other classes, but that might run this a bit long. I’ll finish them up for the next blog.

The Influences We Don't Admit

2010-12-21T11:31:00.000-08:00

After writing my thoughts on influences and having been influenced in my writing, I realized I’ve limited myself. Obviously, what I’ve read is going to impact my writing a lot. But, in a big way, what I’ve been influenced in the most, is in my storytelling. Craft is important, but the stories I want to tell are always going to be the core. Instead of writing another essay on the authors who have influenced my storytelling, I’m just going to say that all the ones I previously mentioned count for this. Crichton, London, Applegate, Rothfuss, Adams, Lewis and others have all written great works that make me want to tell similar stories.

But let us not pretend that I’m not a child of my culture. I wish I could brag that it’s only been literary works that have influenced me, but that’s not the case. Movies, television, music, video games, and comic books have been working through my system for as long as I can remember. I really wanted to stop and look at some of the biggest examples in my life, which have really played a role in shaping my storytelling. So, knowing full many will read and scoff, here I go.

Final Fantasy VI is the first RPG I ever played, having bought it for the Super Nintendo very late in the game. I had no idea what I was I getting myself into. I could go on and on about the game play, style of graphics, music, and more, but that’s not what this essay is about. I’m here to talk about the story.

Final Fantasy VI has fourteen characters throughout the game and (with the exception of two) they all get character development and a story arch. Each character has a back story that is, especially for me, intriguing and elemental in their growth. You’re never confused by whose story we’re watching, because each is so different. Cyan having to lose his king and family (twice) and Terra’s birth the Esper World are among the most compelling, but they all get a great tale. I didn’t even remember Setzer having one until replaying it recently, and his short tale of losing the love of his life is quick, effective, and sorrowful.

From this video game, I learned that every character should be treated as importantly as the next. The biggest influence this gave me is that my characters must have a back story now; one that is as compelling and full as the main story. Now, I’m not entirely sure this is the best tactic, because it might come into info-dumping or bring to question why we don’t just tell that story instead. But I believe a great back story makes for a great character and creates a richer story overall.

X-Men will always be my favorite comic book series. I’m not going to get into an argument over it, my opinion is set. X-Men does so much, so well. It tells us a story that is bigger than itself, gives us characters richer than what we deserve, and stays cool while doing it all.

X-Men came about in my life almost the same time as Final Fantasy VI and I can say it had almost the same influence on me as that game (as well as Digimon). But X-Men did something else. It showed me the power of character interaction and hinting dialog.

Throughout the series, we have some amazingly interesting characters and they are always interacting with each other. Throughout my reading, I saw the power of these interactions; what they can tell us about the characters, what we can learn from throwaway lines. No character should interact with another character the same way as another. If two characters are talking, we should be able to know who they are, if only by the way the characters are talking to each other.

This interaction has also come into play with my writing. I make sure I know how each character sees the other one, even if it’s as simple as saying “Jace doesn’t like Doran”. This helps me understand how to write the dialog much better than I normally would. I’ve also gained the habit of making back stories interact, almost to the point of a hindrance, which I’m trying to reign back.

The Lord of the Rings, in which I’m talking about the movie trilogy, (sorry, book fans) was an epic eye-opener for me. I had never seen anything like it. I can think of no other term for it as these movies being the Star Wars of my time. I got pulled into this world with no resistance on my part and saturated my life in it. For three years, as these movies came out, my world revolved around the story of the One Ring.

I have to make sure to note again that I’m talking about the movies. I tried to read the books, made it all the way to the last one and hope to try again. But, the movies did something else for me. The epicness that Tolkien was trying to convey and failed to do for me was shown in fullness on screen. There are so many awe moments for me during these movies; Rivendell, the Mines of Moria, The Gates of Argonath, and these are only from Fellowship of the Ring.

Even with all these epic moments, though, the story never loses focus of the small moments and characters. When a character dies, we take the time to notice. When two character talk about their plans, we pay attention.

When writing my stories, I’m trying to write big, epic stories, because that’s what I love to read about. But if I lose focus of my characters, I get bored fast. Like Lord of the Rings, I’m trying to show how the smaller stories are interacting into a bigger story. Unfortunately, I’m not so good at this, but at least I have a goal so worthy of being followed.

There’s more of course; the cinametic nature of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s By the Way album, the episodic yet compelling style of the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica (take that, spell check), the amazing characters of Firefly, the world of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda or all that is Star Wars. All of these have effected how I tell my stories and what stories I’m trying to write.

Hey, look! Rowling didn’t have a thing to do with it…

A Return to Haverhil

2010-12-20T14:54:00.001-08:00

I'm often hard on Haverhill. I grew up here, lived most of my life in the city, and didn't get out until I was 21 (and it was God's work, not mine that got me out in the first place). There isn't much to say about the city, it's not a booming town of industry, commercialism, or one of blissful residential life.
There is a comic book store, though, a great one that met my needs for as long as I started there. It's a beautiful place, boxes of comics on the floor, shelves of trades, pricier issues on the walls...a real place to love comics and get lost in their worlds.

Pilgrim Lanes is a decent bowling alley and I would be sorry not to mention it's where I discovered Dance Dance Revolution for the first time. My friends and I played that game for four hours straight upon discovering it, and I've never looked back.

Haverhill doesn't have a a real, gourmet restaurant, but if you're looking for pizza or Chinese food, go no further. If there's one business that's booming in this town, it's the small shops. Arie's, Athens, Giovanni's, that place in Bradford I never learn the name of but has great Chinese. Or roast beef? Welcome to Chicks.
I never knew we had laser tag while living here. How strange.
You can drive to the beach, ride the train to Boston, and shop in New Hampshire without going a few minutes down the highway.

...

That's about it.

Though, most importantly, my family lives here. As much as I could live without ever returning to this town, I will make the drive every time to come home and see them. I've learned this more and more having been gone, that when I'm home, I don't really leave the house. The town has nothing to offer me. It's my mother and siblings, my grandmother and uncles, aunts and cousins that cause me to come back. And I will keep coming back.

Influenced

2010-12-02T09:03:00.000-08:00

Now that I’ve gone and insulted all those who write with Harry, Frodo, and Aslan in mind (Edwards need not apply), I figure it’s probably not a bad idea to think about the books that have affected my writing. It’s strange, but I never really think too hard about this. Maybe I’m not destined to be a creative writer like I dreamed, because my mind is so unwilling to work with others. But, I’m not self-centered as to think I’m beyond the arm of influences, especially with newer books. So, let’s take a look and mock at what I consider viable reading and influential to writing.

Michael Crichton would be the top choice, what with him being my favorite author and all. I have never read a Crichton book I didn’t like, nor have I read an ending of his that I loved. I’ve often found his books slow to start, but once they get going, there’s no stopping. I can read his stuff in hundred-page sittings, unable to put them down. One thing he does amazingly well is tell us about characters and situations, in basically exposition, and make it thrilling stuff. I wouldn’t think learning about a character’s college course selection could be interesting, but Crichton does it. If I could make my info-dumping half as interesting as he did, I’d be sitting on gold.
Top recommended reading: Jurassic Park, Timeline, Next

Jack London is next. I should state I don’t write about wolves (though, what more noble aspiration is there?) but London proved something else. One of the great things he is able to do is tell a story with little to no dialog. Yes, his books have dialog, but the story is carried by description and interaction. London proves you don’t need witty dialog and clever back and forth to make for a compelling story. As much as I love writing dialog, London reminds me you don’t need to drown your story in it. You just need a good story.
Top recommended reading: Call of the Wild, White Fang

K. A. Applegate is probably going to get me laughed at, but take your mockery and go eat it with you egg and Potter muffin. You don’t read more than fifty-four books over five years and not be influenced by them. No matter what your views of Animorphs are, these will probably be some of the most important books in regards to my writing. What Applegate did so well was create a world that was interesting beyond its characters, because of its characters. I wanted to know the whole story of the alien races because of the characters I knew from them. What she also did so well was write each book in a different characters view point, making it so you felt what you felt about the characters strongly. I can remember my excitement for picking up a book told from Marco’s view, and my disappointment for finding the next one in Rachel’s view. Because of Applegate, I’m always drawn to serial writing and multi-character storytelling. I can’t imagine telling a story without at least five main characters, making each as different as I can.
Top recommended reading: Animorphs, Everworld

There’s so much more than that. The exploration of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the powerful use of letters in The Screwtape Letters and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the pure and unrelenting use of humor in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Recently, I’ve discovered the great writing in The Name of the Wind and Starship Troopers. As I read more and more of these great books, hopefully more of my writing will improve. Unfortunately, none of these books or the others have a magical wizard going through puberty, so I’m sure they’ll be seen as lesser forms of inspiration.

Under the Influence

2010-11-17T16:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve been hearing a lot of people talk about their influences and what got them into writing. What strikes me is how ubiquitous Harry Potter is with most up and coming writers.

This scares me.

Don’t get me wrong, anything that gets someone to start writing is awesome and I’m glad that it’s reading that’s getting people to write. No, what scares me is how unoriginal this answer is becoming and how it might affect all of this coming literature.

First, let me state, I don’t really think Harry Potter is bad reading. I was enthralled with it for the first four books, but I moved on between the fourth and fifth book. But, just because it’s not bad reading doesn’t mean it’s great reading. But, that’s not the point. What I’m worried about is how many people are going to be writing books that read like J.K. Rowling.

I don’t read a lot of fantasy in general; I tend to be a sci-fi fan more often than not. Part of the problem (and this is the general sense, not the definite rule) is that I have a hard time finding fantasy that is different. I’ve heard writers talk about how J.R. Tolkien ruined fantasy for the rest of us because he did it so well with Lord of the Rings that we all want to write something just as great. Only we can’t so we write a lot of crap that reads like Elvin fan fiction. Look at Eragon for more proof.

It might be because I’m going to a Christian college, but it seems like a lot of people only like three things; C.S. Lewis, J.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling. The last one is rather new, which means for the past forty years or so, it was only the first two influencing writers.

Why? Why are Christian writers so afraid to read anything else? If we add in the Twilight series, the situation only seems worse. I hear writers say they want their books to be different and too affect people the way these books affect them, but it won’t happen this way. Think about it; if you read Harry Potter and it changed you and made you want to write, and you write something just like Harry and his adventures, your reader will not have the same reaction as you. Why? Because everyone and their dead relative has read Harry Potter. Do you know why these books with lions, witches, and wardrobes changed you so? It’s because they were different than everything else.

I’m not arguing for writers to write without being influenced. Doing so is impossible and not worth doing. Why would you want to write unless something struck you before? No, what I’m arguing is for the broader reading of these up and coming authors. You want to write fantasy because you read Lewis? Good, now go read Neverwhere or The Name of the Wind, something that you didn’t pick up because your youth group leader really dug it as a kid. Science fiction? Have you ever read Starship Troopers or The Foundation series?

I don’t want to sound bitter, after all, where’s my up and coming novella? But, I get tired of sitting in writing classes and hearing how much Rowling influenced peoples writing. You and everyone else, buddy. Now, go do something different or prepare to get lost in the slush pile of YA book series that litter the shelves of middle school libraries.

The Seminary

2010-11-09T10:28:00.000-08:00

In the question of nature vs. nurture, we try to decide whether how we are raised is more important than where we are raised. Is our outcome as people determined on others, or by our situations? When I think back on my life, I’m not sure there’s a difference. People define our situations and our situations are made by people. A prime example of this is the time I spent working at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

I was fifteen when I started working there, still in school and angry at the world for whatever reasons I could come up with. It had been a year since my mom kicked my stepdad out of the house and I was starting to show signs of teenage rebellion (I thank the Lord I never have to try that again…). My youth pastor, and friend, said he would be able to get me a summer position working as a janitor. For a kid making no money, anything sounded good. I took the job and began working the summer of 2001.

Cleaning toilets and carpet cleaning became my existence, and I learned all kinds of ways to move furniture without using my back. The job, as it stood, was not a pretty one. I have strong memories of being inside a dumpster with a wet-vac, slurping up tomato juice as it splashed my face. Or bringing a sleeper sofa down four floors only to bring it back up only to bring it back down. Very few assignments would leave me with a skip in my step.

No matter how bad the work was, though, it taught me lessons I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. I never really knew the value of hard work or following instructions. I never learned how to save or spend money until then. The work was hard, dull, and, at times, humiliating, but it was work and kept me out of trouble during troubling years.

A job is not just work, however. A job is people. The benefit of working at a seminary is that the people there are mature Christians; older and wiser and willing to talk and listen, even to a moody teenager who thought he already had all the answers to life, the universe, and everything. When you are sent on a job (or as I affectionately called them, missions) you are with your co-workers for long periods of time and you get to know them more than you normally would. I didn’t fit in at high school, I never did. I couldn’t relate to the students, didn’t want to. But my co-workers, that was another story. The conversations were much more intriguing to me, more adult. I could discuss things that were important to me; trouble with the idea of God, family, college. They were at least ten or so years older than me but they didn’t care. The talked anyway, treating me like someone beyond my age.

I still remember the day one of them invited me to the movies. I had said no at first, scared to spend time with people because, as far as I knew, you couldn’t trust others. Five minutes down the road, though, I turned around and took them up on the offer. This was the turning point. After this, they were no longer my co-workers, but my friends. It was strange to have friends that much older than me, who I felt I could trust. Over time, I started staying over nights, in order to save on trips. They would put me up in their rooms and let me join in at get-togethers and events. I had been invited to birthday parties, youth groups, and weddings.

In a way, the seminary became a second home to me. In some ways, it was my first home. I worked there, ate there, and even slept there on occasions. The people were faces I saw every day, and who were good friends. I felt like I belonged there, that I mattered. I worked forty-plus hours a week and was one of the most recognizable employees. I felt that, even with the age gap, I fit in.

Then something happened. I began to miss my carpool without calling in. I began taking more days off. I began slacking. I don’t know why this happened. I don’t know what came over me. Was I becoming discontent with the work? Probably, the work was never a love for me. But it didn’t seem enough to make me want to leave, to leave my friends and the place. All I know is that I started becoming someone who couldn’t keep a job.

And with one phone call, it all ended. I hadn’t been home to answer it, but my mom had and relayed it back to me. I remember the sudden realization, that all my current choices had a consequence. I was fired, with good reason and no defense. The job that helped define me and make into someone I didn’t mind being was gone because I had decided to be lazy and selfish. No more hanging out with guys after work, no more going to lunch with them. I was no longer the kid that worked the graduate school; I was just a bum without a job.

It was hard coming to terms with that truth. Reality hit hard and my emotions were all over the place, sadness guiding them. I had something great and I let it go.

The last lesson I had learned was one of the most important. I haven’t been fired from a job since and I show up to work every day I’m scheduled. I don’t allow myself the error of not going in. I see the responsibility I have with a job clearer than I ever did at the seminary.

This is what I wonder about. Am I the type of person I am now because of the job, or the people? How would I have turned out without having worked there? Without the power to view alternate realities, I’m without an answer. I can only guess that I would have found ways to get in trouble and stay as I was, never finding ways to grow. Yes, I was a janitor, but I was also a teenager looking for guidance and friends. That’s what the seminary gave me and it has been more important than any paycheck.

Drop Out

2010-11-04T05:06:00.000-07:00

Dropping out of high school was one the easiest things I ever did. There are decisions in life that you dwell over, that you sit and think all day long about until your racked brain still refuses to come to a conclusion. Not the case with me. In fact, I remember being in third grade and having someone tell me you can drop out of school at sixteen. “I’m going to do that!” I had said, full of excitement and hope. I wouldn’t have to live the nightmare of school forever and I would be free to pursue my own dreams; dreams of sleeping in late and playing video games all day. That was the life I wanted.

I humored my loved ones for a few months my first year of high school, testing the waters and seeing what this new world had to offer. I was, in all cases, disappointed. I first knew there was trouble when I found out all my friends from my previous school had gone to other places, leaving me almost alone to this terrible world. With the exception of one very good and smart professor of history, my teachers were, in the best of words, imbeciles. It was hard to learn from someone I didn’t respect and to learn with others who I respected even less. The other students were fools; shallow and too into their selves to be worth my time (I, of course, was obviously into myself). Not that I was much worth of a student, I barely passed my classes and I was a geek to the point that geeks wouldn’t hang out with me. High school was a time of being alone and being ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Trouble loomed when I began skipping school; for a day or a week at a time. For a while, I could get away with it. I would go to the library, the one place no one would come looking for me, and read until school was over. After a time, my family started to fight back, driving me to school instead of the bus. I would get out of the car, walk into the building, watch my mother drive away, and leave school soon after. There was no stopping me. In a battle like this, the victor was going to be the one who cared the most, who had the passion for victory. I wanted to be out of school more than they wanted me in.

I said at the beginning that dropping out had been the easiest thing I ever did. All the things I did to do accomplish this; skipping, lying, hiding, they were all easy to do. Walking in to the building at sixteen, signing the papers, and declaring my leave from high school was simple and rather anti-climatic after years of dreaming. The hard part was lying in my room, listening to my mother cry. I remember her talking to my grandmother, her words fighting through the sobs. I tried to ignore it, to shut myself out of the moment and focus on my victory. But, even under my pillow, I could still hear her. Her fears of my future, the pain I had caused her. It bothered me then and it bothers me now to remember. I had won, but the victory was not as enjoyable as I thought.

Winning meant I had my reward. I stayed at home while others went to work or school. My days consisted of video games and movies, of staying up and sleeping in late. I beat all my games, read all my comics, and watched all my shows. I saw my friends less and less, and my family grew to accept me waking up at dinner and going to bed around lunch.

My victory cost me purpose and meaning. My life was now just a day to day routine of superfluous entertainment and microwavable dinners. When I moved out, got my own apartment and had a steady job making pizza, my life still lacked anything worth working for. I would wake up and wonder what I was doing. I was working to work, eating to eat, and living just because it was something I was supposed to do. Dropping out of school had been what I wanted, but it forced me into a corner of life with few chances and very small opportunities.

God, however, loves to work with few chances. After my life had really hit rock bottom, God introduced me to a Christian college that would accept me, even with my G.E.D. Looking at few choices, I applied, hoping for direction of any sort. Arriving at school, I feared I would repeat my old habits, skipping class and running away from my problems.

College, as everyone had promised, was a different beast than high school. All the issues I had had before were gone; the teachers loved what they taught, the students wanted to learn, and I found I could relate to them as friends. It was a strange thing to see happen to me, to watch me fall in love with school.

It’s been eight years since I dropped out of highs school and it’s now my fourth year of college with one to go. Irony and grace abound in the situation. I’ll have spent as much time in college as I did out of school. God’s humor is rather funny when you stop and get the joke. But, his grace is more than deserved. I know the chances I had, the statistics that said I would be flipping burgers and cleaning toilets all my life. I have been in those worlds, working as a janitor and a fast food employee. These should have been my life after my decision, but God took my biggest failure and worked it into something else. My life should be defined by its failure, but it’s now a great testimony to God’s work. The tears my mother had can still be seen in my mind, but I hope they have been long been wiped away by the present course. I am ashamed to say I took the lazy way out of school and I’m embarrassed when I have to explain why I’m older than the other students at my college. But, I am never ashamed to share how I made it off the path I had set and was brought to a better, more hopeful road laid out for me by a wise God.

Making the Mundane More Manageable

2010-10-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

What does it even mean to make the mundane more manageable? I’d like to say I had a great vision when I came up with this mission statement, some grand meaning and purpose. In truth, I just wanted a tagline for my blog. “On the Edge of Meanwhile”, “Just like You Imagine”, and “Pretentiousness Becomes Me” all came to me, but, being a fan of alliteration, the mundane won out.

As I often do, when I have created something randomly, I looked for the meaning. I’ve done this before in my videos, specifically a music video. I’ve juxtaposed random footage together and, using the song, decided on what the story is long after I’ve told it. Existential, yes, but it works when I’m too lazy to plan beforehand.

The Mundane. Every day we go through this; brushing our teeth, doing the laundry, reading a book. Sometimes, we do things that should be fun but have become too routine; playing a board game, working out, walking through the woods. We let these things rule our lives, mainly because we have too. I’m not going to stop brushing my teeth because I’ve done it for twenty-four years already, nor will I stop playing Guess Who with my sister even though I know the end result will be me wondering how a girl can win five in row while her brother silently weeps. This is the mundane. This is what we live in.

To make it manageable, though, is something else. Doing this requires us to step back from our lives and look at everything we’re doing, all the little things. Our minds are so trained on ignoring these small tasks that we forget we even do them. We need to train ourselves to see with new eyes, to see the absurd in the things we do, and find ways to make them more absurd.

I see this playing in our older videos; before I even came up with our slogan; dancing instead of studying, being haunted by a vacuum cleaner, the thought process of a clock radio, shaving to epic music, solving crimes in the dorm, and singing about a lost pie. These things are not by any means worth noting but we have tried to make them more than what they are.

Since coming up with this idea, I try to keep it in mind while making new videos. I find when I try to stray too far from our tag, I have a harder time getting the job done. But when I focus in more, looking for the weirdness in potted plants or Windows 7, I thrive.

I suppose I’ve always seen life like this, especially when I was younger. Everything should have been more than it was, bigger and cooler. School concerts should have been light shows and bus rides should have had an element of adventure to them. But, back then, it was cute. Kid stuff. Now, it’s weird to look at a salad and think, “What else could this be?” That’s part of the reason, I believe, I make these videos. To share these thoughts aloud earns me glares; to film these thoughts on Youtube gains me laughs.

As I’ve said, I can’t sit here and claim to have had a grand vision for the future and humanity when I came up with Red Raptor’s subtext. I can, however, say I’ve found great meaning in it since. I never let it dictate my ideas, it guides them. When I think, “What’s a funny idea?” I try to follow it up with, “What’s a boring idea?”

I Never Had My Zombie Apocalypse

2010-10-27T12:17:00.000-07:00

Leaves changing colors, the chill of morning lasting until sundown, the threat of EEE disappearing as the mosquitoes die off, it must be fall. It must be October. It must be Halloween.

With the holiday upon us, I find myself reflecting on those creatures who have haunted my imagination for years; who caused me to sleep in my closet out of fear and right a “return to sender” note on my hand, just in case. The walking dead. Zombies.

I’m not entirely sure zombies struck a chord with me. I didn’t even give them much thought until I was about seventeen. The night I watched my first zombie movie, I couldn’t sleep. I grabbed my over-sized beanbag chair and brought it into my bedroom closet, keeping the door closed with anything I could find. There, my eyes remained open, knowing full well that I had trapped myself. If zombies came, attacked my family, turned them into undead, I would be stuck in the closet, unable to get out. My room was too high to jump and not injure myself. I had no escape exit. That weekend, I joined my friend for a music festival and we stayed in a cabin, away in the woods with a sadistic tree constantly dragging its branches along my window. When I returned home, my newest magazine had a half-rotted zombie on the cover. They were everywhere and I was under-prepared.

It was then that I started planning my escape routes. I memorized where I run to, which cute girl from school I would rescue, how I would live. My plans were many, in order to have alternatives to any situations. I would find a double-decker bus and make it a traveling home; I would make it to the roof at work and live off the remains of the cafeteria. When I had my own apartment, I was going to take a sledge hammer to all the staircases and cut a hole from each floor leading down to the first. From there, I would attach a rope and climb down to raid the convenience store for food on a need basis. After I had plundered the shop, I would leave town on a bike and make my way north to fortify a more permanent location.

These were my plans and thoughts for years. Zombies were a real fear. The bat under my bed was not for burglars, but for the undead. What kind of man lives like this? How paranoid was I and how worse would I become? After awhile, my eccentric phobia waned and I was able to rejoin society as a semi-productive member of society.

Was it my fear of conformity, of being lost in the crowd? Maybe I was afraid of being chased with nowhere to go. These days, I think I was just longing for adventure, for a social shift to reshape the world. In all my scenarios, I was the hero and I lived through the apocalypse. My world was falling apart around me and I couldn’t see much light down the tunnel. For a high school dropout, the world doesn’t have a lot to offer you anymore. My chances of success were slim and, if you asked, I had no answers. Such a situation as zombies destroying the world and leaving the status quo fresh was slightly attractive. Is it sad that my life was so in pieces that I craved the dead to walk just so I would have purpose?

In the end, zombies never came and my God sorted my life out for me, all without the use of undead monsters. That doesn’t mean zombies are gone from my mind. Old habits die hard and I still find myself planning my escape routes. I always make sure my friends and family are prepared to remove my head if I am turned and promise them I would do the same for them. The what-if scenarios still play through my mind and, if you search for “Eric and Brendan’s Zombie Blog” on Youtube, you’ll see my theories play out on video. Just because my life doesn’t need zombies doesn’t mean I’m going to lower my defenses. Once I do that, the walking dead has already won.

By the Way

2010-10-26T09:18:00.000-07:00

I never had a favorite band before I was 17. I didn’t know what it really meant to relate to a song or group. It’s strange that, without knowing why, I craved to find a band, some music, in which to identify with.

During my time working as a janitor, I would bring my portable CD player every day and tear through my collection, looking for something to listen to during the hours I would be away from the main office. It was hard, because I knew what every CD I chose, I would be stuck listening to two or three times. After a while, I had listened to all my CD’s to death and couldn’t handle the repetition anymore. I flipped through my carrying case violently, looking for anything that I hadn’t listened to yet.

I found the CD behind another one, hidden because I had decided I didn’t really think I would like it. The album was given to me by a friend, who thought I would like the band. I took out the CD and listened to my first Red Hot Chili Peppers album.

My mind was blown.

Looking back, so many of those songs spoke of how I felt those days, as a 17 year old high school dropout, I was lost and looking for meaning. Some truth. Identity. The album, By the Way, sung to me songs that I felt I was trying to say myself, a collection I later described as “the soundtrack to my soul”. Melodramatic? Maybe. But, back then, so was life. Each song meant something in its own way, and formed a story of my views of girls, God, and life.

“By the Way”, the first and titular song of the album, has the energy I felt back then, this frustrated desire to break free and just run. At night, when everyone was asleep, I would still be up, wanting to see the world in a heavy glow of street lights and marquees. I felt, as if I was always waiting for something, that I would never be around for when it arrived.

“Universally Speaking” was the second song and took a much slower pace than the first one. It sang about love, something I only had a theory of back then, and it presented the emotion as extremely fragile. At that age, I knew it was truth and knew that I hadn’t found that experience yet and that I would want to, badly.

“This is the Place” always struck me hard to understand at the time, because it was filled with so many metaphors about drugs and sex. But, the chorus won me over, striking a cord with my problem with anger. I would sing along, knowing that I was like a powder keg at times, and this chorus would warn the world. It became even more relevant to me the day I was reading the last book of “The Sandman” by Neil Gaiman. This song came on and, combined with the surreal images of the comic and the abstract lyrics of Anthony Kiedis, I found the whole experience to fit, and make sense of both the story and song.

“Dosed” was a song I always found sad but beautiful and couldn’t relate to through my own experience. As I grew older and had my own relationships, I saw this song form a real meaning around my life. As those relationships ended “Dosed” became the music of those heartbreaks. I could finally understand what the words meant, and what it meant to feel that way about another person and. "Take it away, I never had it anyway." Sometimes, I think I preferred the song in my ignorance of the subject matter.

“Don’t Forget Me” was the song of choice for me on this album, if I could have a favorite at all. The guitar solo alone could have made this true, but, there was more. At 17, no longer in school or seeing my friends on a regular basis, working at a job where everyone was two generations older than I was, I felt the fear of being completely forgotten by the world. The song didn’t give me the resolution I felt I wanted, but, it spoke of my worries in a way I could relate to and find comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only suffering from this fear.

“The Zephyr Song” was the first song I listened to on this album, because I had seen the music video one night while unable to sleep. The video was one of those psychedelic scenes, full of symmetry and exaggerated images. But, as I sat there at night, listening to the tune and the lyrics, I didn’t feel like the song was too “trippy”. If I could have gotten away from life, lived forever, like the singer, I would have at any moment.

“Can’t Stop” is a faster, funkier song but it was actually the song that made me think the most of God. During those days, I didn’t know I felt about religion or faith, and I had really wandered away from the idea of being a Christian. Even so, I couldn’t shake the presence of God from my life, and I wondered why this was. The phrase, “ever wonder if it’s all for you?” said it all and every time this came on, I would stop and look around, trying to convince myself that the world wasn’t made by God and wasn’t all for me.

“I Could Die for You” was another love song about something I didn’t feel I had experienced yet but it gave me an idea of what I wanted. I’ve often been accused of being in love with love and I think that this whole album could be to blame. As I’ve gotten older, I gained a healthier view of relationships and love, but the effects are still there.

“Midnight” described my friends and I, or at least, how I viewed us. We were “the lotus kids” and the world better “have taken note of this” as I knew the four of us would make any scene worth being in. There was something about this song that made hanging out with my friends seem more important and (forgive me for bringing up a dead word) more epic.

“Throw Away Your Television” was all I could think about as I worked the same job, every day, doing the same assignments. I just wanted to throw away all of this away, and stop experience this repeat of my so-called life.

The next song I won’t comment on because I thought it was a love song, but later found out it was a Spanish swear word and has left me confused on how to interpret the song then and now. Either way, if it was a love song, I suffered from all the same issues as before.

“Tear” became the song that described my feeling of being alone and not wanting to live that life forever. There was the idea that I was spending my time by myself, which had a powerful meaning to me, as if being alone made me feel less so. Yet, at the same time, I needed to get out of this self-exiled position I had placed myself in. Contradicting, but it made sense to a moody existential teenager.

“On Mercury” was one of those songs that I loved but made realize that the band was definitely influenced by drugs. It always made me somewhat uneasy how much they had this element going, and how much I felt like I related to it. I have never done drugs in my life, but, somehow, I almost understood what they were saying. What really made me think was the idea of memories and how we manipulate them to fit our reality. I still don’t understand it.

“Minor Thing” was just an extremely melodic song, and still is. I had really enjoyed the concept of difficult and hard tasks becoming minor things for someone who knows how to readjust a situation. When I was younger (and even now) I always wanted to be that guy that walks into a situation and helps calm it down; the Aragorn, Batman, or Han Solo of life. I never was (and even now), but this songs reminds me of that desire every time.

“Warm Tape” really hit me because, at the time, I was in deep thought of my own mortality. I think of death and become worried beyond belief. I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live forever, even if it meant walking a world where all my friends and family were gone. I would listen to this song and imagine what it would be like, to be the only one left, and think of the meaningless of that kind of existence. “Miles and miles of every world I roam, settle for love, I’m never far from home.” I could run and run in hope of immortality, but, in the end, I would never be happy without others. Friendship became very important to me when this song played through my headphones.

“Venice Queen” was a song I often skipped, even though it was very good song. I never understood its real meaning and it was split into two songs. The second half was much more likable to me, as I could follow its story much better. The idea that there was someone out there that I wanted to tell I loved, but couldn’t, gave the brooding teenage Eric something to think of when it came to girls and my lack of initiative with them. It didn’t change my awkwardness with them, but it gave me something to think about afterward.

Looking back like this, it’s hard to believe that I was ever so moody or subjective about life. I was going to have “Warm Tape” played at my funeral, “By the Way” described the bohemian life I was going to have in the big city I never moved to, my friends would always be memorialized through “Midnight” even if we never went to parties or caused trouble in the streets. It may be one of those right time, right place albums, but it will always mean more than that to me. This album, these songs, were as I said before, the soundtrack to my soul.

17 is a weird age.

8-bit Lullabies

2010-10-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

I once had a girl explain to me the idea of ‘heart music’. While I was unable to find an official definition for this term, I though she explained it to me well enough. She described ‘heart music’ as the type of music that makes your heart full of joy; that can make you happy in any mood. She also noted that ‘heart music’ tends to be the music you grew up on. This idea really connected to me, as I tend to like over-romanticizing the little things. But, I wondered to myself, what is my heart music?

I didn’t grow up listening to a lot of music; my mom didn’t play much around me. With my dad, when I saw him, he would play music I definitely did not enjoy. But, it wasn’t hard for me to come up with the answer. There’s one type of music that I listen to in any mood, happy or sad. There’s one type of music I grew up with, the soundtrack to my childhood. My ‘heart music’ is video game music.

“Well,” the educated, well-bred scholar would say, “that’s a very dumb answer.” But, I don’t think I’m the only one who would answer with this. My generation grew up on the Nintendo, all eight bits of it. No matter how you view the medium, I grew up playing video games, for hours at a time, and that means that I listened to a childhood full of their soundtracks. When I hear the Mario Brothers’ theme, it’s not just the background music of an old game; it’s the sound of my past. It links me to a simpler time when I didn’t need to worry about anything other than the next save point.

But I’m not just a nostalgic fool (at least, not always). Video game soundtracks fit my life at anytime, more so than any other style of music. I can play it when my life is going down the tubes and find comfort. I can listen to it when life is high in the sky and continue to skip along. I can listen to it in the car and be content, and there is nothing else I turn on when I’m reading or writing (even right now). But, these songs aren’t limited to just what has been released on the games. Others in the world have found they too love this music dearly, and they created my favorite website of them all, Overclocked Remix. These people, in the hundreds, edit and remix old and new game music. It gets released for free and those people, like myself, get to listen to their favorite songs in all new ways. Orchestra becomes rock, electronic becomes a piano solo, and my heart sings with them.

As I’ve grown older, my taste in music has changed; hopefully for the better. I discovered the Red Hot Chili Peppers and felt like I finally understood music. I became a classic rock fan and felt like I really understood music. I became a Christian music fan and finally understood music completely. But, none of these types make me disappear from the world. They’re good, and I love them, but they don’t tug at my heart strings. No, it’s the melodies of my youth that do that, that strum the chords of my soul and remind me why I own headphones. I travel back to the worlds I explored in these games; I remember where I was in life. I hear the songs of a Final Fantasy game and remember the heat of the summer as I sat in my gigantic black beanbag chair. I listen to a Zelda tune and I remember the smell of fresh laundry, trying to fold it as fast as I can to get back to the game. I play the theme from Metroid and I can still see the snow falling outside, with myself wrapped in a blanket as New England shut down.

Call this childish, claim it immature. Tell me I don’t have a real sense of music and that I waste brain cells listening to music that deserves no attention, it doesn’t matter. This music isn’t just music; it’s a road to my past and a path to my memories. I wouldn’t trade that for all the Led Zepplin in the world.

Space Drama

2010-10-25T13:39:00.000-07:00

I have problems with dramatic narratives. It’s not a problem between a love of comedy or drama. I don’t believe you can have one without the other. In fact, just saying I have a problem with all dramatic narratives is unfair. But, I don’t enjoy watching or reading drama for the sake of drama. I get bored fast while watching a cop show or a political thriller; they just seem so mundane to me. We experience all these things in real life, why would I want to watch a man struggle to rebuild his broken family when I lived through already?

But, I don’t think you can have a good story without dealing with basic issues of life and drama. So, how does this get fix? Simply put the drama is space.
Not a complete fix, I’ll admit but a very strong step. Political thriller with spaceships just becomes more interesting to watch then something in Washington. Space just allows for the mundane to seem less so and, in doing so, creates a sense of interest for me.

The visual aspect plays an important role, for sure. Space allows for us to see things that only it can show us; stars burning closer than we would want them to, nebulas in the distance coloring the blackness of space like our evening sunset, planets with terrain unlike anything we’ve walked on. The world our characters inhabit becomes a character unto itself. People don’t travel from meeting to meeting in their limousines or buses, but in ships sleeker than the newest beard trimmer. Suddenly, the drama becomes interesting to look at. This is to say that I think all drama should be in space for the visual aspect, as that would lead to a very shallow and mindless experience. There has to be more.

Characters become more interesting in space. A mayor is intriguing when he’s leading a town on a desert planet full of meteor strikes. Our heroes can come from places we’ve never heard of and can experience things that our Othellos can’t. A family trying to get over the loss of their son becomes much more involving for me when the family is doing so about an exploratory space journey.

The best thing about a space story, aside from it being in space, is that a good science fiction story is always another type of story. You don’t enjoy science fiction because it is just science fiction. You read “Starship Troopers” because it’s a strong military book. We watch “Blade Runner” because it’s a classic film noir. We memorize the lines from “Firefly” because it’s a western with intriguing cowboys. But, by bringing these genres into the vast frontier of the stars, we add an element of unknown and mystery a boot camp in California couldn’t provide.
The problem ends up being that, without a proper story or, more importantly, strong characters, the work becomes boring anyway. Space adds much to a piece of fiction but it isn’t magic (that would be fantasy; Star Wars being sci-fi fantasy) and it isn’t a cure all for bad story-telling. If a character isn’t strong enough that we wouldn’t care about him in France, we won’t care about him on Mars. Space allows us to see the human drama unfold in new ways, sometimes highly metaphorical, but with the heart remaining. The battle between man and machine in “Battlestar Galactica” is a basic story of humanity’s untrustworthiness and fear of the unknown. Isaac Asimov’s “Foundations” is a retelling of our growth as a society and the power of religion. These are the basic elements of any good dramatic story, but we read or watch them in whole new ways.

Perhaps this is just the musings of someone who wishes he could get off planet tomorrow and see what the rest of the universe has to offer. Sometimes I feel like I wasn’t made for this earth and I should be traveling the stars, dealing with growing pains aboard a starship surfing a dying sun. The human condition is something we have to deal with wherever we go, but I have to believe it’s a whole lot more fun working through it in space.

The Day I Was Shot

2010-10-07T08:24:00.001-07:00

I was walking out of 7/11, slurpy in hand and a skip in my step. It was a warm spring day and I had left my trackjack at home. It was Saturday and I didn’t have a care in the world. A dangerous thing when you’ve got a day to kill and 20 dollars to spend.

I saw him out of the corner of my eye, dressed in black and his eyes hidden in the shadow of his brim hat. He was walking out of the shadows, bringing the darkness with him in his steps. There was something about his presence that seemed to distort the air around him, as if his mere existence was an uneasy prospect for reality.

I looked down to the ground and began to walk the other way, minding my own business and sipping on my beverage when a strong grip pulled my shoulder back. I tried to yell but my body was knocked against the concrete wall, my breath stolen from me. I still couldn’t see his eyes but his smile grew across his whole face.

“I want your money.”

“All I’ve got is a twenty!” I tried to explain, hoping he would see me as someone not worth bothering. His smiled remained.

“I also want your slurpy.”

I reacted out of instinct, sure that it was my slurpy or my life and I didn’t want to see the two separated. My fist flew and hit his face hard, the energy of my punch expelled in a blue glow. The man fell back, surprised by the power, but his grip didn’t let go. He pulled me up off my feet and threw me across the parking lot the way a mother tosses laundry aside. I smashed into the car windshield and I could feel the glass shards pierce my skin. My bloody hands tried to lift my body out of the window when the man leaped from his spot and landed on the car’s already damaged hood. He moved down to lift me up, but adrenaline ran through me and I rolled off the car. Without thinking. I channeled the energy into both my hands and pushed the car with all my strength. The blue power poured across the vehicle and the man, and then both erupted in fire. I was knocked back by the explosion but rolled to my feet.

The man had transformed, his tall stature now a prehistoric predator, an Allosaurus, or so I thought I recognized it. I whistled and began running, keeping my whistle’s pitch at a constant. The dinosaurs bite got closer and closer, causing me to trip in my step. I ran into the street, dogging traffic left and right as the monster behind me followed, crushing the cars in his way. I let one last whistle out and turned to face the Allosaurus. As he came at me, his hot breathe full of hunger, I closed my eyes and lifted my hand in trust.

The Pegasus flew in just as the dinosaur’s jaw snapped and I was in the air, holding on to his mane and throwing myself over on it’s back. I turned behind me and saw the man was now following us on a cloud, moving through the air with defying speed. I kicked the Pegasus and it dived down back to the city, into the subway system. It’s wings flapping hard, the flying horse was in constant change from flight to running, the man close behind. I could hear the subway coming, directly in front of us. I kicked the horse, commanding it to turn around and I let go, falling backwards to the tracks. The man flew past me, his face in surprise and horror. I smiled and the train sped over me, my body pressed flat against the ground. I didn’t see the man hit the train, but I could see the cloud dissipate into nothingness.

The train passed and I climbed to my feet, still clutching the slurpy in my hand. I smiled, and sipped my beverage in joy, knowing I had earned it.

The bullet hit my side before I heard the shot. I stood there, shocked, and my hand began to shake. I tightened my grip on the drink, but I fell to my knees, blood spilling to the ground. I turned to my head, confused, and saw the man adjusting his hat, his eyes still hidden. He leaned down, removing the slurpy from my hand. A tear fell from my face to the puddle of blood under me. The man smiled.

“I get what I want.” He said, his voice almost singing. “And what I want is your slurpy.” He laughed and began to sip the drink, walking away and waving back at me without turning. My vision began to fade and I fell to the ground, my Saturday ruined.

-Eric Mikols

Predator Still to Me

2010-09-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

By Eric Mikols

When I was a kid (not to say I’m old now), there were a few immutable facts that I lived with. I knew, for a fact, that the earth was round. I also knew, for a fact, that George Washington was our first president. For a fact, I knew that two plus two always equaled four and it was utter nonsense to think it would ever equal more or less. There was no arguing these facts, and why would I want to? They made sense and the world worked fine with them. When I was a kid, I knew for a fact that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was the most fearsome predator the world has ever seen.

Now they tell me that he wasn’t.

Jack Horner has become a betrayer to me. As I grew up, he was the man I wanted to be. A famous paleontologist: foremost in his field with both finds and knowledge. He was a consultant for “Jurassic Park” and has gained a strong reputation for his theory on dinosaur growth. Then, as if he were mad at me, as if I had wronged him, he took my world and tried to shatter it to pieces. His 1994 article "Steak knives, beady eyes, and tiny little arms (a portrait of Tyrannosaurus as a scavenger)" in The Paleontological Society Special Publication was hate mail seemingly sent to my heart and childhood. Though no one else read it like I did, I still imagine the conversation he would have with my younger self;

“What’s your favorite dinosaur, young and wide-eyed Eric?”
“Gee, golly, and gosh, it’s always gonna be the T-Rex!”
“Why so?”
“Well, because he’s the best one there is! He’s the meanest, biggest, and coolest dinosaur ever and the biggest predator of all time!”
“He was a scavenger.”

And the world fell apart and I didn’t know what to hold to. I didn’t believe it (and still don’t). The Tyrannosaur couldn’t be a scavenger. He was the Tyrant Lizard.

I’m not going to say Jack Horner doesn’t know his facts. He’s still an expert of Hadrosaurs and his discovery of the Maiasaura is one the most important findings for dinosaur parenting behavior (and he should stick with mothering herbivores). But, he’s obviously wrong on this point of the Tyrannosaurus and I hope he someday recants (after all, even villains like Darth Vader could turn around near the end, so why not Jack?).

Horner argues that the T-Rex was a scavenger because its arms were too short to grab onto prey and hold it with any sort of grip. Well, that seems a little biased to me. If we were to follow Jack’s reasoning, those with short arms couldn’t play basketball, wrestle, or swing on a rope. Say we concede that the T-Rex had short arms (he did, after all). What of the shark? The most fearsome predator of the sea and it has no arms at all! Am I supposed to believe that a Tyrannosaur, with a mouth the size of small car, one that puts Jaws to shame, couldn’t do the same job as a big fish? Horner needs to stop limiting one’s ability by their slight hindrances.

Jack Horner also suggests that the Rex was a scavenger because its olfactory bulbs (the glands that contribute to scent) gave it a great sense of smell, allowing it to scout out carcasses over large distances. He compares our dinosaur king to vultures. Well, that sure sounds like a reason for something to scavenge; even though it could use the same sense of smell to find fresh prey, or other Tyrannosaurs (who would be a threat since they were predators). Horner’s first argument is to attack the T-Rex’s disability, and his second argument is to attack its strength? Where’s the consistency?

We could go on with Horner’s defenses but they all fall apart. Weak teeth, slow speed, and a digestion system that can handle bone marrow all crop up in his crazy, angry mind. Weak teeth? I can crack a Jolly Rancher in half with my molars and I’m just a puny human. Don’t tell me the T-Rex had weak teeth, especially considering that theropods (bipedal dinosaurs) replace theirs rapidly. Slow speed? What about the fact that his big brain (one of the largest of the Cretaceous period) would allow him to be more clever and stealthy than his smaller brained contemporaries? That sounds like turning a weakness into strength to me. Digesting bone marrow? Why wouldn’t the T-Rex try to get the most bang for his buck? Does Horner mention the T-Rex had binocular vision that looked straight ahead, as a good predator should? Or that other dinosaurs have been found with wounds from a Tyrannosaurus bite before death? No. He doesn’t want to look at both sides like a reasonable person.

Myself, I’m a reasonable person. I’m willing to concede (though with heartache) that the T-Rex wasn’t perfect. It had a big brain for its time, yes, but it would be outsmarted by today’s house cat. I was even able to hold myself together when they discovered bigger carnivorous dinosaurs like the Spinosaurus and the Giganotosaurus (though, with a name like that, it sounds like Giganotosaurus had a bigger ego as well). But, these are points I’m willing to recognize.

Let’s take science out of the equation and focus on some of the deeper, more meaningful ideas presented here. By making the Tyrannosaur a scavenger, we are taking the coolest dinosaur that ever lived and making him a lowly carrion feeder. We are taking a king and making it a pauper. This isn’t like arguing for the roundness of the planet, where people become afraid to travel because they think they’ll fall off the flat world. No, this is taking something great and trying to bring it down to our level. Why? Was the idea of the Tyrannosaurus Rex too freighting for the world, and Horner? Did we have to make him a scavenger to stop him from haunting our dreams? It seems selfish that, in order for us to sleep better, we make these comments and theories about a predator that’s been dead for years and can’t defend its own appropriately given name!

I know this slaps Jack Horner in the face to read, but I feel no remorse. My face is still red from his backhanded attack of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. No, Jack Horner, the T-Rex was not a scavenger. You are. You scavenge the world for dreams and truths and try to tear them apart. There was no victory to be had in proving the Tyrannosaurus as a scavenger. The only thing you gained was destroying my childhood. As a young boy, I grew up idolizing the Rex, wishing to see it in all its glory. He was my celebrity, my hero. The T-Rex was the master of all he surveyed and you shattered that image like broken glass. As I try to pick up the pieces, you, Mr. Horner, stand over and laugh, knowing that my childhood is among those shards, unable to ever be repaired. Perhaps, one day, the world will see you as a fraud and traitor to your own field. Perhaps, you will be knocked down as you did to my favorite dinosaur, having your colleagues looking at you as nothing more than an intern who got lucky in the 1970s (when you stumbled upon the Maiasaura nest). The books will not read you as a hero, but as little Jack Horner, who sat in his corner, eating his undeserved pie, who looked in my heart, tore it apart, and filled the world with his lies.

Horner, Jack R. "Steak knives, beady eyes, and tiny little arms (a portrait of Tyrannosaurus as a scavenger)". The Paleontological Society Special Publication 7 (1994) 157–164. Print.

The Customer

2010-09-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

Customers are strange creatures. Like a suicide bomber, they seem self-destructive and always looking for a target to take out in their last moments. I could discuss customers in many fashions; retail, service, entertainment, the list can go as long as we can come up with new things people will want. However, from my own experience, I find it best to discuss the customers of the food industry, mainly the wonderful world of pizza (with sandwiches thrown in for good measure).

The idea of the customer to the food industry is a little fearful, because you are taking the already unstable mind of the consumer and adding hunger to the mix. ‘Wants’ can make a normal person go a little off the edge, but throw in a very basic ‘need’ such as food, and you have a person who wants what he wants, and needs it now.

Though you, the employee, are there to help the customer achieve this goal, all they see you as is an obstacle they need to get through in order to reach their desire. We must accept the fact that all customers to the food industry are already angry, and you are the enemy. You might wonder if there is a way to avoid this situation, but there is none. Until we event a vending machine that can handle already cooked pizza, there is no faster means of receiving it. So, we come to understand the customer is angry.

This is not the only thing that angers customers, though. Choices become a fire under their powder keg rage. Why? For starters, the lack of choices attacks on their right to be able to choose from any food at any time. After all, they are entitled to have what they want, how they want. Take this entitlement and limit it and you offend not only their creative intellects for coming up with such choices, but their God-given right of options. In the world of pizza, all topping should be able to be chosen, be it the simple pepperoni or the rare Russian sturgeon. A customer is not going to be satisfied with only one type of cheese, especially having been to ‘real’ Italian restaurants that sell ‘real’ Italian pizza. When selling pizza by the slice, you must always have options; pepperoni for those who like meat but not a lot, meat pizzas for those who want meat but not the taste, vegetable for those who hate meat in general, and cheese slices for those who hate everything.

But, these are only the basic options you can allow because many customers will come in with their own types of ideas of what makes a good pizza slice. There is no real winning solution here, as your best hope is to have many plain slices around that you can add to as the customer roars for options. However, a hungry shopper, while desiring many choices, can quickly become paralyzed with too many options. You will quickly notice these types by the ones that rush in the store, salivating for food, yet stop dead in their tracks when they see the mass amount of choices before them. They will stare at the food, as if they are seeing it for the first time. They will look at you, as if pleading for help. In the end, they will purchase a pepperoni slice, not wanting to get too fancy but still avoiding the normality of plain cheese.

I will assume that most of you will be able to get the customer past the moments of making a decision, as hard as this can be. After all, options are not without prices. We live in a world of coupons and weekly deals, where the customer must be bargained to buy what you are selling at all times. How many pizzas can they get for free will always be the main question, as most shoppers will be hoping to spend as little as to no money as they can. Here we come again to offending these people. For you to even gather the gall to assume they would want your product enough to pay for it is purely an illusion of grandeur. Most of the time, you must assume, the customer doesn’t want anything you have. So, you must reason them to you. You can’t give them a pizza for free, but you can give them toppings for free, as well as drinks or second pizzas. They will always be happy for free items, even when they see that, at the end, you are still asking for money. I cannot tell you of how many times I have made it all the way to the end of the transaction and had the customer leave in a fiery rage because money was required.

These are but parts of the customer experience you, the employee, will have to deal with personally. But do not think that these are the limits to the trial. For instance, while most customers like to arrive for food with time to spare, there are those that are so busy doing important jobs that the only time they have for pizza is three minutes before you close. They, though late, are still customers and deserve food as they demand it, even after you’ve cleaned and closed most of your kitchen. It’s not their fault you took unwarranted initiative; they are far busier than you can ever believe and you have no other purpose then to provide them with food.

Customers. I have seen them come in and wipe out a store of the entire product you have to offer and leave behind more trash than is physically manageable. I have seen them storm through, wave their arms and demand all of heaven’s treasure upon them and then leave in fury when you only gave them half. They are irrational, determined, and they are how we are paid. Without them, business dies and we leave poor. Good luck to you, employee.

Summer 2010

2010-08-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

A Review

Another summer has come and gone and I now hold this one up to review. I figure if you can't come up with 10 good things to say about a summer break, no matter how bad it is, you've got a big thankfulness issue. And since I hate having issues, here's 10 things that made this summer worth having!

1. Samson- Okay, he's not really my dog, but he's the closest thing I've ever had. Part Husky, part German Shepherd, this pup is awesome. Walking him through the covered bridge and relaxing in the big field nearby has been great, as has chasing geese.

2. Jordan and Glenn getting baptized- What a blessing to see both my brothers getting baptized on the same day. I don't know what the future holds for these awesome young men, but I'm looking forward to seeing God work in their lives.

3. Sam Cobb's wedding- Sure, I filmed it and that's always refreshing, but it was great seeing all my BICS friends and getting to relax with a group of people I love dearly, and feel loved by. Plus, as much as I razed on the guy, the ice cream was pretty good.

4. Reading list- I got through some seriously good books this summer. Not all were gold mind you (here's looking at you, Dresden Files) but the good far outweighed the bad. Timeline, The Great Train Robbery, The Holiness of God, I Am Not a Serial Killer, Starship Troopers, Until We Have Faces, The Hand of God, and Foundations to name a few.

5. Writing again- But I don't want to talk about. Taking up writing, for me, is a big thing and because it's not perfect beyond belief, this is the only mention it will get.

6. Ligonier National Conference- Very cool and would go again easily. I got to listen to R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Alistair Begg and Burk Parson talk about Christian faith and the tough questions we face and I'm better for it. The talks were great, the fellowship was awesome, and I got to eat at Red Lobster. Very nice.

7. Simplifying- I got to continue simplifying my life and the clutter that is my material ownerships this summer. Finally removed my Nintendo and PS2 from my life and now, for the first time since I can remember, I am without a video game system and I don't regret it. I also cut my movies by another third and got rid of tons of books I'll never read again. It's nice to know I don't have so much crap waiting in boxes for my life to slow down.

8. Work- Wow, who would have thought? But, it's true. We live in a country where not everyone can get a job at the moment, but God has been good to me since I started working, never leaving me without a job. This summer has been great because I never had a lack of hours or pay and it's not only kept me busy and helped me pay for school, but it also has allowed me to grow more and more every day. Sanctifying hurts, but it's well worth it.

9. Good friends- Joel and Michelle are some of the most welcoming and heartfelt people I know. They never turn me away and go through a lost of trouble to help me during the summer. The BICS guys I got to see this summer where good as well, and Luke Peters was always on call for a Patrick's Pub trip. Not just that, but my friends Corey and Erica once again opened up their home to me and their love and kindness continues to be one of the most important and best things I have going for me. Plus, their kids crack me up and give me tons to talk about at school.

10. Allergies- Because sneezing can be fun.

The Monkey Who Would Take Flight

2010-03-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

“I want to fly” the monkey said, looking up to the sky above. His mother looked at him and shook her head.

“You can’t fly, you’re a monkey. Be happy in your tree.” She said.

The monkey sighed. “Trees only go so high. I want to go above the trees, above the giraffes, and above the whole jungle.” His mother just looked at him.

“That’s a dumb dream; you can never do it. Live sensibly and have dreams worth dreaming.” She scolded him. The mother then jumped away into some trees and the monkey was left to himself.

“Live sensibly?” He repeated to himself. Dejected, the monkey climbed up to his tree and made his way to the top. From there, he could see the jungle for miles. He could see the lions lying down under the shade of a lone tree, escaping from the heat of afternoon sun. He could see the gazelles making their way to the nearest river, and he could see the crocodiles waiting in anticipation for the coming meal. He could see more than most of the animals of the jungle, but he wanted more. The monkey looked up and saw the birds above flying, free of not only the ground but the branches of trees. The monkey sighed. “Have dreams worth dreaming.”

With his spirit slightly broken, the monkey began to make his way down the tree. Before he could reach the bottom, however, he heard a moan coming from another part of the jungle. Curious, the monkey leapt from tree to tree, making his way closer to the sound. Soon, he came to the source of the moaning. There, stumbling through the jungle, was an elephant. The monkey noticed that every time the elephant stepped with one of his legs he made a sound of pain and lifted the leg as soon as it touched the earth.

“Are you hurt?” the monkey asked, with concern.

“I am, yes.” answered the elephant.

“What happened?”

“I accidentally stepped on a turtle and now I have a piece of its shell stuck in my foot. I tried getting it out, but I can’t seem to reach it or get hold of it.”

“I could get it out.” The monkey suggested.

“Would you, please?”

The monkey hopped to the ground and ran over to the elephant. The elephant raised his foot and the monkey, seeing the wound, grabbed the piece of turtle shell and, using all his strength, pulled it out. The elephant sighed with great relief. “Oh, thank you. You have no idea how much that hurt.”

“I’m happy I could help.” The monkey replied and began to go on his way.

“Wait!” called the elephant, “Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

The monkey laughed with a sigh. “The only thing I wish right now is that I could fly and be as free as the birds.”

“I think I can help!” the elephant said happily, “You are light and small enough for me to toss in the air with my trunk! I could throw you into the sky; you might even fly higher than the birds!”

The monkey jumped and laughed, his eyes wide with joy. “Would you? Could you get me to the sky?”

The elephant chuckled. “I would be happy to!” Grabbing the monkey with his trunk, the elephant threw the monkey with all his strength straight into the air. The monkey went higher and higher, past the tree tops, over the heads of all the animals, even further than the birds. The monkey laughed and flapped his arms, feeling the freedom he had longed for. He was no longer bound to the earth. He was living his dream.

He took such joy in the flight that he didn’t notice the fall and inevitable crash to earth.

-Eric Mikols

Young Avengers #1

2010-03-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Here we have the video I will now call "Eric's Shame".
I don't really hate this video. What I don't like is how popular it has become compared to the others. The humor is funny, but not that funny. I only made one more episode after this, and I've decided that I will not return for a third. But, how did it happen in the first place?
I was walking through Wal-Mart (as you do when you live in Haverhill) and I was going through the toy section (as you do when you are in your twenties) and I was checking out the clearance section (as you do when you have no money). Most of the stuff they had was junk but then I noticed a hidden treasure. Sitting on the shelf was the Young Avengers set for just $20! I had just read the series and was in love with the concept, so I bought the box with haste.
Later, I was hanging around in my apartment and looking at these guys on my entertainment set and I was wondering, "What the heck do I do now?" Then I started thinking how I could use them in a video, and what kind of video they would be in. The one idea I kept coming back to was the idea of a talk show, set up like the view, in which nothing ever gets resolved. I felt I had struck gold.
I grabbed a painting a friend made for me, set up on my kitchen counter and went to work. Ironlad would lead the group's discussion, Patriot would take the negative side, Hulkling would take the positive, and Wiccan would be an idiot. For the first episode, I would bring up the discussion of global warming, having just finished "State of Fear" by Micheal Crichton.
THe problems in this video are many. The concept is strong but the execution of the idea fell apart. A crappy set, poor movement for the action figures, and the jokes fall flat more often than not. For some reason, I couldn't get Hulkling's voice to stay the same! To really work, this idea needed better production values. I think a real set, with couches or plants, would have added. I also think that this idea (like others), needed a script. There are funny jokes in this video, but they get lost in the improve conversation.
As I said, I did make a second one, which was even longer, but the problems were the same if not worse. This series is done and hopefully I've learned from it.

Humanity's Last Midnight

2010-03-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

This video is one of my remake videos. As in, I made the original on Windows Movie Maker during my first two months of editing. The original was my last video of this era and it was one of my best, I thought.
So, when I started editing again with my Adobe, I was interested in going back and redoing some of my better music videos, this being one of the candidates. I started this is with one real goal in mind, to make a better video. I wanted the action to really sync up with the music and I wanted the video to move quick.
This song, "Mitternact", was introduced to me by my Uncle John. For some reason, I got this stuck in my head and couldn't stop listening to the thing. I would go to work, put the CD in, and listen to it for hours straight, wondering how I could use the song in any kind of video. It didn't help that my uncle showed me this video, leaving me thinking I couldn't do anything worth doing with the song. But then, I started thinking of the last Matrix movie, which had been a huge disappointment to me, but did have some pretty intense action shots that looked like someone had used the concept art straight in the movie.
I decided I wasn't going to focus on anything in the movies but the very last battles of the last film. I didn't want to focus on the heroes except for Neo and Smith. For Zion and the Nebuchadnezzar, I was just going to show how intense there struggle was, all the while the real fate is being determined by a one on one fist fight.
Syncing certain things in the video were unbelievably fun. Any instance I timed the Neo/Smith fight well was a joy. I loved syncing all the punches and water effects to the song's clashing. There were also a few accidental moments of syncing, such as the ship hitting two poles in time with the beat.
There is of course a very big problem for me in this video; the ending. I want to blame it one the fact that I was sick and I just wanted to be done, but the I had a pretty lame ending in the original version. There was just something about the way all the fights ended that I couldn't really grasp in showing well. It all seems a bit rushed in this video, as if I was ready to move on to the next video (which has been the case before).
Overall, this is another doodle in my sketch book. I learned some techniques and made a video that was somewhat enjoyable. I have gotten better at these things and without this video and its faults, I might not have learned.

Dancing in the Apartment

2010-03-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Don't expect to much explanation for this one.
I was kind of a streak of making videos one after another before this and I was getting a kick out of just doing anything and everything I thought of. I was watching my sister and brother this day and entertaining them was not the easiest thing (since they're both genius).
I said, "Hey! Let's make a dance video! To this song!"
Jordan said, "Yea!"
We made this video.
I don't claim to be the focus of interest in this video, Jordan is the attraction here. This was the first time he started dancing in front of the camera and we try to get him doing it as often as we can. He's so small in this video, and has that dorky-yet too young to judge appeal.
As for the the intro to this video, about presidents and such, it's all random and we just wanted to hook the viewer.
But, hey, just because I don't have much to say about this video doesn't mean it isn't awesome. Because it is. It's just, this video stands as how my love for completely random, plot-less videos can sometimes work.

The Phantom of the Apartment

2010-02-10T14:01:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, I suppose we had to get to this a some point, no?
The problem with starting these commentaries with my first videos is that I have to deal with these kind. This video came out of a night of boredom (don't they all?) and there was very little planning/skill used that night. This is also the first time I gave someone else the camera and it didn't really encourage me to share more.
This was made on a night like any other. Glenn, myself, and another friend were in my apartment, bored. I suggested, as I often do, to make a video. I had originally wanted to make a video to "Dare" by the Gorillaz, but I couldn't get anyone to agree to dance. I tried to show them what it would look like, but I ended up smashing my hands into my light fixture and broke it. That idea was shot.
Still bored, another friend came over and suddenly I had an idea. I decided we would do the "Phantom of the Opera" song.
I wanted to play the Phantom. I wanted to make a half-mask out of a paper plate and play a creep/suave man. However, Glenn, as awesome as he is, did not know the words to the song. This meant he could not play the girl. So, we made Glenn the Phantom, made the mask a full paper bag covering to hide his mouth, and put him in my suit jacket (gone now).
Now that Glenn was the Phantom, it was someone's turn to be picked as the girl. The problem with having friends who are "shy" is that they won't get in front of the camera no matter what, leaving you as the only option. Now, as much as I wish I played the Phantom, I did have few things going for me here. My hair was longer than it ever had been, keeping me from needing a wig. I also knew all the words, which was good, since she doesn't where a mask. Grab my friends coat, hairband, and scarf, and there I was, all dressed up with no where to go.
I won't say much more about the filming process. I didn't have the camera and this was back before I checked footage after shooting. I learned my lesson in the editing room when I realized we didn't have enough footage and we had screwed a the stairway scene up. When we do get to the end, we get much better footage, in fact, it's one my favorite scenes in RRP history. I like that Glenn is singing and dancing around me one way, while the camera is going the other way. Not really the most innovating technique, but it adds something, and this was back when I was learning everything as I went.
There is little I can say to defend this video. It's old, it's broken, and it really doesn't hold up well. But, I have a strong affection for it as it is one of my favorite Glenn videos, and people always laugh when they see me as the girl.
Don't mind the Christmas tree; it was late January.

Hoover Damned

2010-02-04T11:52:00.000-08:00

"Hoover Damned" stands as one of my favorites.
We are not well funded, Red Raptor Productions. We are a group of poor, low-budget students and commoners. When we have an idea, we have to fit it into our account, which sits at 0. But, I hate being limited.
The idea for doing a monster movie came on a random Friday night, as many of my ideas tend to do. I had Glenn and Mack Morrison with me that night. Boredom struck and I suggested we do a video. It being around 11:00 pm, our choices were limited. We had to be indoors or night, and if indoor, we had to be quiet as to not disturb the neighbors. I wanted to do something different, since I was still on a creative high from "Monkey Business". I wanted to do a monster movie; one that was a silent picture. What kind of monster could we make at that late hour with no money?
Grab the vacuum cleaner.
Not very intimidating? That thing is full of cords and suction, a perfect killing machine. For the first scene, we have Glenn; unassuming, relaxed, and unaware. We have Mack behind the camera, making sure the vacuum is moving at a good speed, and we have me moving the vacuum and trying to be as intimidating as I can be. We may push the line of believability with the slow crawl, but the whole video breaks reality.
Glenn fighting the vacuum for freedom breaks him free to the hallway, and now we have one of my favorite moments. The slow chase of the vacuum down the hall is so much fun for me to watch. Mack pushed the vacuum and I walked on my knees behind him, following Glenn as fast/slow as we could. Glenn's reaction to the vacuum behind him was great. Glenn had real fear in his eyes, something I've only seen as he played "Jordan" in "Guitar Hero II".
Now, we have Glenn run into my room, though he ends up in the other room. I wish the reveal that the vacuum is in the same room as him was done better. His reaction is too quick and the light takes to long to adjust. I also wish the fight between the two could have looked better, but the knife scene is well shot, so I think.
Notice a jump in footage when the vacuum exits the room after our hero? It's because we're trying to do a long shot of the vacuum moving, without showing ourselves pushing it. I need a puppet.
We needed to kill this machine, but how do you kill a vacuum? Pennies, or loose change. We grabbed my bucket of coins and Glenn delivered the death blow. I wish the shot of the coins was better, I think the black and white makes it hard to discern what they really are. But, the vacuum sucks them up, chokes on 'em, and falls to its death. We do a slow pan to Glenn, now safe and relaxed.
I wish the shot at the end came in better, but we were happy with what we had at the time. It might have been a better shot had we had the vacuum light on the entire video, but I never know how I'm ending a video like this until we get there.
The music is from the game "The Movies"; not a great game, but it had music that fit the mood perfectly. It was classic, cheesy, and made the picture work.
It should also be noted, Glenn's last name is spelled "Benitez", not the "Benitaz" as I spell it here. My bad.

The Monkey and Dog Show #4

2010-01-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

Here we have one my favorite episodes of "The Monkey and Dog Show". This came from my second wind of energy for the show, after a break from the first two episodes. Coming up with reasons for Monkey to get mad at Dog is a bit harder than you might think, and trying to figure out how he will react to Dog is tricky at time. Having Monkey just threaten Dog gets old, because you can only threaten so many times until your threats become mute. So, sometimes Monkey needs to give in. Sometimes.
Crazy Hat Day is not a holiday I celebrate, because I don't get it off from work, but I like the idea very much. The idea came from the fact that, while living in my first apartment, I collected a strange assortments of hats. Looking for an idea for the show, I just had to glance around my living room. I loved the idea that Dog would be so excited for this holiday, because it's a simple one and Dog isn't very complex.
Most of the hat humor was going to come from the progression of hats that Dog changed. Just having him wear one the whole time wouldn't have been too funny, so we build up to it. Ending with the sombrero made me happy, not because of the hat so much as the size and the way Dog doesn't seem to mind.
Dog's logic for the holiday is funny, but I really enjoy Monkey's dialog in this one. "Yea, not gonna do that today...or ever." And the idea that Monkey has a holiday called "Monkey Day", where he just beats up Dog is rather sadistic.
It's interesting, but these first 4 episodes, Monkey isn't really that abusive to Dog. The first episode, Monkey concedes and opens Dog's spaghettios. It's in the second one is where Monkey gets mean, but the next two he's rather patient. It's seems that after this one, it just kind of became the thing to do, hence 5 and 7. But is Monkey really that angry? Well, we just have to wait for the fifth episode, don't we?

Jurassic Park in the Dark

2010-01-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

If ever I created a video love letter, this is it.
When I started editing videos in '04, my second music video was the original version of this one. When I received my copy of Adobe Premire, I wanted to redo it right away, because I love "Jurassic Park" and the song by Weird Al.
I'm a bit weak when it comes to telling a story in a music video. Some people can do it with no problem, and the story is better than the original, but not with me. I tend to think I have a story and then lose it in the process. I think it's part of the reason why in the beginning of my editing, I picked a lot of songs that told stories for me. Then, all I had to do was come up with images that went with the story. "Jurassic Park" was the easiest for me because I knew all the scenes and knew where they were and where they could go in the song.
When I made the original video, I was still in the clouds with the process, but when I remade it, I had the benifit of retrospect. I could watch the original and see what worked and what didn't. I could see where I needed longer shots of a scene or where a scene needed to be cut. That helped a lot. With Adobe, I was able to pick and clip my scenes to the nearest second and really get what I needed.
The thing with this song is that Weird Al doesn't just tell a story, he adds sound effects; dinosaurs and screams. So, part of the fun was syncing up his sounds with the video. Showing people running while Al is screaming was a lot of fun to choose.
The montage of scenes was fun to do, but I'll admit that these parts in a video tend to make me get lazy. I just pick the coolest, quickest shots, and try to arrange them in an order that seems cool. There's not a lot of thought that really goes into it and I would like to try another montage scene where I really think about what I'm putting into it.
The end of this video kind of drags, because the lyrics become less descriptive of the movie. For some strange reason I find that the joke "I'm never coming back this way again" worked better in the original.
But, if you ever wonder how I feel about "Jurassic Park" and why I love it, watch this video and watch the end of it; the last scene says it all.

The Year of Our Lord

2009-12-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

Personal blog time.

I've tried turning this blog into an offshoot of Red Raptor, and I've liked it, but sometimes you just need to say something that isn't about 2 minute videos of dance and manatee humor.

2009 was a long year. I went through a lot and came out of a lot. It started with a very cranky Christmas, but I did get to read "Wild at Heart", which has changed some views I had about myself and Christian men. The second semester of BICS was my last and hardest year there. The work and study was harder to apply to life and I was having a hard time dealing with the balance of work and socializing. I can see now that I was really struggling with pride and the change of responsibility and desire. But, because of God, I got through it (passed Greek) and got my certificate. I spent some time in Nashville, TN working for Cottage Cove Ministries and making them a video, which was very cool.

The summer was hard, in different ways. My biggest struggle was work, because I am a lazy slug. Working at Big Y was something new, and I had to work more hours than I had in a long time. I struggled a lot with how I spent my free time; watching movies and reading instead of doing anything productive. I spent the summer living with the Mclaughlins and Corey talked to me about serving. It was hard hearing for me, because I wanted my time to be my time. But, I know, that my time isn't my own. Hard lesson indeed.

It should be mentioned that I got accepted to Houghton as well and there was no real reason why that should have happened. It was very impulsive and I had failed to talk to God about the matter. But, God had grace upon me and allowed it to happen. There was a lot of praying for financial aid, because in no way could I pay for school on my own, but once again, God took care of me and paid for my school year, as a loving father would.

Houghton has made this year something new entirely. For the first time, I was in classes for a major I decided on, and that does something to your way of thinking about school. I also had to adjust to a new setting alone and this time I felt more confident and prepared then ever. Not because I thought I was hot-stuff, but because over the past two years at BICS, and even this summer, I have been learning how to talk to people and how to find my identity not in myself, but in Christ. Houghton has been a blast. I'm back into swing dancing, I gave blood for the first time (I miss you blood!), I preformed in a play, and I finally read "Ender's Game". The classes have been great, though they've had their moments.

This isn't a brag list. I have nothing to brag about. Everything I just talked about has only been possible because of God and God alone. Anywhere I've been, anything I've done, anyone I've meet; it's all because of God. This year is a year Jesus Christ showed his unbelievable glory to me. It wasn't a year of the health and wealth gospel in my life; it was a year of God showing he can use any situation for His glory and if I'm looking for it, I can find the most joy. There was sorrow this year. Many things didn't work out the way I wanted them and I failed at doing a good amount of tasks I had set. I'm still not the Christian man I should be, and I've spent a good portion of the year unsure of what I want to do with my life. But God still uses that to remind me to rely on Him; all year.

God is faithful and will be faithful, even in 2010.

Blog to Book

2009-12-23T14:16:00.000-08:00

This essay was written as a response paper for my Personal Media class at Houghton College. In it, we are to read an article (see the link below) and respond to it with what we have been learning about how we communicate in with new digital tools.

Good job?

With personal media tools cheaper and more accessible than ever, anyone has the ability to have their voices heard. With the rise of blogs, more and more people are able to show off their writing skills to the world (I’ll be posting this essay to my blog as well). With more people writing, are more being noticed? Are the ones being noticed worth being noticed?

Christian Lander has been noticed; his blog “Stuff White People Like” gained a book deal for $300,000. I looked around online for a bit to find the average book deal price, and it can range from $1,000 to $1,000,000, but most new writers don’t get past $100,000. Why does Lander get such a deal? Because his blog gets 1.5 million hits? Is that the new standard for book deals? Is it a good one?

Book publishers are hoping so. They want to see those million hits become sales and who could blame them. By signing Lander, they have a new author with a built in fanbase. The issue isn’t the publisher’s intentions, they need to make a profit and don’t want to take risky chances. The issue is whether or not bloggers make for the best writers. Taking Lander as an example, his blog is a topic-a-day format commenting on things that he believes most white people enjoy for comedic effect. While the blog could be called racist, I found it to be slightly funny, all though frivolous in content, like a joke calendar you laugh at, quote a few times, and move on from. As a blog, the concept works great, everyday there’s a new topic to laugh at and forget the next. As a book, you have a set number of commentaries that don’t change. As the article stated, the blog to book process hasn’t turned out to be very profitable on average. Books based on other blogs, such as Gawker.com, have sold disappointingly low, in the low thousands with few gaining large readership offline.

Here we have aspiring writers being noticed, though not always with the greatest results. Though blogger enthusiast might hate to admit it, there may be a difference between amateur blogging and professional writing that isn’t so easy to close the gap to. One of the reasons Lander was published was because his blog was so unblog-like. Other blogs, such as Skull-A-Day, are photoblogs getting book deals. It would seem that in order to get a book deal with a blog, one must learn to not write like a blogger.

I have a blog and I would be lying if I said I never wanted it to be noticed. Many times I have thought about doing something with my blog that would attract attention and gain me more fame then I have now. I also like hearing about people finding new ways to get their writing noticed, because it gives me more hope for myself, but what about the quality of writing? Sure, publishers are bringing a fanbase to them, but are they going to attract new fans? By looking for easy sales, are they lowering their standards? I doubt very much that “Stuff White People Like” would have been given $300,000 had it been sent in to a publishing house the old fashion way. It might have been noticed and published, but for much less, I’m sure.

There is good to be found. The fact that people are being noticed by blogging show that new personal media works; perhaps not as well as some had hoped it would, but it shows promise. People can get their work and ideas out and gain success in ways they couldn’t before. Most people who write blogs just want to have their voice heard and don’t focus on their style, so much as find their style. This creates a sense of uniqueness to many blogs and helps show their differences. But, how many imitators will now be trying to replicate Lander? Blogs will start looking like all other forms of media; mostly passable with few exceptions of creativity. Could the blog to book process create an indie-blogging genre; of smart blogs going unnoticed while more accessible blogs make the real money? If this happens, I think blogging will end up missing the point.

The Challenge

2009-12-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

I started making videos for fun. When I first film "Fernando, Felipe, and Veronica" with my friend Mat, I never thought about ongoing series or production values. I was just thrilled to have a video camera at my hands. As "Monkey and Dog" and "Green Arrow" formed, I began to love making videos as a hobby.
People used to tell me I should go to school for it and I would tell them I didn't want to turn my hobby into a career because I didn't want to hate my new favorite past time. But, as time went on, I kept finding myself overjoyed at each new video. During the first year of BICS, I was very sure I would go on to Lancaster Bible College like everyone else. I made a few videos during the year, but not as much as before and not very good ones at that (I almost destroyed "Monkey and Dog" with the 6th episode). But then, during the summer, I had a revelation. I made a few videos during my break, but it wasn't until "Eric and Brendan's Zombie Blog" that it hit me how much I loved video work. The idea of having a series ongoing and new; it was awesome. I knew I wanted to do that for as long as I could.
But, man dingo, it can be annoying. I'm not doing this stuff professionally, nor I am I doing it full time for school. I'm managing my Youtube site as if I was professional, but it's not so easy posting as if I were. My biggest gripe is that I don't have a constant flow of videos to keep the site always active. I also get slightly discouraged when a new video I think might get me some views under-preforms (see "Eric and Brendan's Zombie Blog" and "Once Upon a Final Fantasy"). But, this is not so much a complaint as a challenge. I'm not content with leaving my videos at low views and I've been networking them to get them noticed more. It should also be noted that I've been making Red Raptor Productions more expanded, with the help of Twitter, Facebook, and this blog.
The challenge to make my videos better is a good one. I'm working on a series right now about brothers that I hope to have done by January and I've got a few ideas for music videos. I want RRP to have Christmas specials, more commentaries, and more for you to enjoy. Next semester, I'll be taking a Digital Video class, and that should give me more ideas and material to work with.
The challenge is for material and we're going to meet it head on.

Monkey Business

2009-12-04T17:47:00.000-08:00

Our first epic!
One thing I used to pride myself (and not as much anymore with my desire for scripted material) was my ability to pull an idea out of nowhere. My brother was over one day, as was Glenn and our friend Mack, and I wanted to make a video. Being myself, I wanted to do something that I couldn't really do well, which was a film-noir mystery. This video has the benefit of coming after "Phantom of the Office", so I had a few things to work off. I knew I could use Dog as a detective, having introduced that idea in the former video and that the comedy would come from Dog as a character. But, wanting my friends in it, I made Glenn a detective as well.
This would be the first time I ever filmed anybody else outside of one video. For the most part, I hadn't used other people in any other videos. It was also going to be the first time I used Dog in a video with others. I felt rather silly at first, holding the camera, while puppeteering Dog and doing his voice. Luckily, Glenn just went with it. He never looked at me, or the camera (he's able to act as if it weren't there) and he acted with Dog like a pro.
The thing with this video is that it was all improve. We had a basic outline for the order of scenes; interrogation, fight, bar, ect. But, we didn't have any dialog. So, as the scenes were filmed, Glenn had to keep up improving with a stuffed Dog. He did great! The fact that he and Dog have any charisma is all due to him. It was so much fun to film this and see Glenn talk to Dog as if he were a real actor, and to see Glenn react to Dog's improve. Glenn's actions were also improves at times. When Dog said "pound it", Glenn did. The scene near the end, with Dog and Glenn hiding from the gunfire, Glenn outdid himself reacting to Dog's passion, and explained that magic created the gun. Brilliant.
I didn't really want the mystery to be a big deal, since I couldn't do a real one any justice, so I made the interrogation scenes rather obvious. My brother would play the villain, Mr. Naughty, and that was it. Give him a cinnamon stick as a cigar and a fez as a hat and Jordan was the antagonist. Jordan has some trouble with lines. During the scene in which he tells our heroes he's going to get rid of them and all the evidence, the poor kid could only say "elephants". We took more than enough takes of him getting rid of pachyderms. Jordan was still young then, and had trouble not looking at the camera, but he has gotten much better.
For the fight scene, I knew we would need more than one person attacking Glenn and Dog, but we only had us four (and Monkey was dead). So, I made the decision that Mack would play quintuplets. I did my best to try and get that idea across, but I'm not sure it worked. It made staging the fight scene tricky, and that part worked, but I think it might look like Mack is just really fast. Either way, the fight was the first time I was Dog and not holing the camera, and it's strange to see myself doing Dog's voice on screen.
I should also mention that the scene with Dog explaining he had to get his magic stick took many takes, only so we could get one with out Glenn cracking up. This happened again when Dog and Glenn were at the bar. Let's forget for a second that Mack plays a one-armed bartender and wipes down a stereo with only his hand. Lets forget that Glenn is wearing a sombrero, signifying he's drinking. Let's forget that we never explain Mr. Naughty as Glenn, Dog, and Monkey's mystery killer. When Dog said he lost his uncle to a 2X4 launcher, Glenn lost it. We had about 3 minutes of laughter filmed, because when he lost it, we all lost it. It was a lot of fun, I can tell you.
Yes, Dog and Glenn get the dialog wrong when figuring out that Mr. Naughty is the killer, but they do figure it out and this takes us to our climax. With no guns to use, we took some marshmallow shooters and called it a day. I never figured Dog would die, but when we came to the end, it just made sense to me. When I was young and played Jurassic Park with my action figures, I always killed the survivors. Why? I don't know. But, I did. So, somehow, that has carried on and now Dog dies at the end of the movie. At first, if I recall, we were going to play "Baker Street" for his death, but "Space Lion" from Cowboy Bebop won me over. It had a much more sorrowful sound to it, and the connotation from it's episode of the show worked for me too. The slow-motion pull back was a bit too long, but I loved the song during the credits.
Yes, this video has its faults. It should be shorter, have better dialog, and less interrogation scenes, but it had some really fun stuff. The dialog made me happy at times, with Dog telling Mr. Naughty that, "I know you'd kill your mom for a nickle and a lollipop." For a video thought up and filmed in a few hours, and with no budget or script, we made up for it with acting and passion. Let no one ever say we don't have the passion.

The Dark Knight: When Worldviews Collide

2009-11-18T17:24:00.000-08:00

This essay was written for my Ethics and Worldviews class at the Berkshire Institute of Christian Studies. For the essay, we had to take a piece of pop culture and find the following: the worldviews presented in the movie, the fingerprints of God, and a means of using it apolitically and as a witnessing tool.

The Dark Knight: When Worldviews Collide
Eric Mikols

The character of Batman, created in 1939, has seen many changes throughout his career. Starting as a dark detective, created by Bob Kane, Batman became a campy crime-fighter, played by Adam West, in the “Batman” television show (which became his status in the comics as well). When the show ended, the writer Danny O’Neil and others decided to bring Batman back to his detective roots and tried to bring back the darker nature of the character. Batman saw another change in the 1980’s when comic book writer Frank Miller took over. Creating “Batman: Year One” and “The Dark Knight Returns”, Miller took Batman into a dark corner that most comics hadn’t gone. This influenced the tone of the first “Batman” movie, directed by Tim Burton, in 1989. Sixteen years later “Batman Begins” came out in 2005 and changed the character once more, bringing him back to his dark roots and origin. Director Christopher Nolen brought a realistic and psychologically dark take to Batman and in the 2008 sequel, “The Dark Knight”, he went even deeper into the character Batman and the world he inhabits.

What is interesting about “The Dark Knight” is that it doesn’t hold just one worldview but many and they interact in ways that are very similar to the real world. For this paper, we are going to focus on the three main characters; Batman/Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent/Two-Face, and the Joker.

Starting with Harvey Dent, we find a naturalist. Harvey Dent makes no claims to believe in a God and neither does he makes make claims about other religions. When given choices, he flips his coin and claims to criticizers that he makes his own luck (with a two-sided coin). In the movie, Dent is captured and the left side of his face is horribly burned. Finding that he has nothing to fall back on, he retreats to his coin (now charred on one side) and claims that luck is the only true justice, that it is unbiased and completely free.

The character of the Joker is next and we find the child of naturalism: nihilism. The Joker believes in and claims to be an agent of chaos. Why? Because, as he explains; the only sane way to live in this world is to live without rules. He stands as a man who sees that the world has no point to it, that human life is worthless, and death is the only end. The whole point of the Joker’s actions is to prove his point, to show that life is nothing and then you die. We can even see the effects that nihilism would have on a person in the Joker. Like a real nihilist, the Joker cannot successfully live in the world; he has no fingerprints, no D.N.A. matches, and he has no other alias. He has completely removed himself from reality in order to cope with reality. In the end, the only place for the Joker to go is to Arkham asylum.

Finally, we come to the Batman, who represents existentialism. When trying to create the identity of Batman, Bruce Wayne states that he needs to become more than a man, something that can be seen as a symbol. He wants people to see Batman as indestructible, as an idea. We can see the existentialism in the way he is giving meaning to everything. Batman doesn’t have a cave; he has a Batcave. Not just a car; a Batmobile. He is a man who instills meaning into everything he does. As he says in “Batman Begins”, “It’s not who I am on the inside, but my actions that define me.”

The most interesting part of these views is that these characters interact in a way their worldviews interact. Throughout the movie, the Joker is trying to corrupt Harvey Dent. Nihilism is the outcome of naturalism and tries, in a way, to remove it. Near the end of the movie, Harvey Dent is almost taken by the view the Joker offers, but tries to hold onto his trust in luck. As for Batman, it’s interesting that he is existentialism, fighting the nihilistic character, the Joker. Considering existentialism was created in order to fight nihilism, this adds something to the struggle in the movie.

What’s more is that during the climax of the film, the Joker has corrupted Harvey Dent. Commissioner Gordon and Batman both agree that if the citizens of Gotham see Dent’s fate then they will lose hope in the restoration of the city. In order to keep Dent’s reputation untarnished, Batman agrees to take the place of Dent’s crimes. Batman is willing to become what the city needs him to be. He is the ever changing symbol that society makes him.

There is a paradox found in the Joker. During the movie, he seems to lose a sense of his nihilism. What he finds is meaning in Batman. When Batman asks the Joker why he is trying to kill him, the Joker laughs and tells Batman that he isn’t trying to kill him. In fact, the Joker questions what he would do without Batman. Batman has given the Joker a challenge and in that way, given the Joker meaning. If the Joker was to kill Batman, he would have to return to nihilism.

It seems like the director is hinting at a world of elements. There is no God, but there is nature, chaos, and chance. During one scene in “Batman Begins”, Batman has a corrupt cop strung up to the top of a building. Batman questions the cop, who swears to God he doesn’t know anything. To this, Batman demands that that the cop swears to him. Batman is trying to instill the fear of God into his enemies by replacing God in their mindset.

Yet, even with the denial of God, there still are signs of his existence. Bruce Wayne knows he needs to become Batman to protect the good people. But where does this notion of good come from? How do we know the right from the wrong? Where does his sense of justice come from? During the beginning of “Batman Begins”, Bruce Wayne tells how he lived with criminals to understand them, but then his view of those who steal changes and he realizes not all wrongdoers are as evil as he thought. There is a sense that humans can know right and live that way, but are too fallen to do it on their own.

There are a other things Christians can find to embrace in this film. The idea of Batman taking the place of Dent’s crimes could be used as an example of Christ’s work for us. Batman will now be held responsible for everything that Dent did, just as Christ was. We can also see how fallen and hopeless the world is without Christ in the picture. When these characters lose what they have, they realize there is nothing left. No amount of endurance, hope, or dedication can help them deal with the real world.

If I were to witness to someone with “The Dark Knight” I would use the Joker as an example of absolute truth. I would point out that it is fully agreed that what the Joker is doing is wrong. I would than ask why it isn’t ok for the Joker to act the way he does. If truth is relative and reality belongs to the individual, how can we truly judge the Joker’s actions as wrong? We would have to question who the villain is in the movie; is it the Joker who sees killing as a joke and death as the punch line, or is it Batman, who is persecuting the Joker for his beliefs.

Throughout the movie, we’re meant to see the Joker as the villain; yet post-modernism would say there are no villains, just people with different views. But the Bible presents a very clear description of right and wrong and God is always true. Where, as Harvey Dent and Batman take part in questionable decisions for the “good” of the city, God doesn’t have to cross any lines.

Loose Ends

2009-11-08T13:55:00.000-08:00

Oh, how this one raked me through the coals.
It started out fine. My mom introduced me to the song and the more I listened to it, the more I wanted to do an AMV to it. My first instinct was "Cowboy Bebop", but having done a few with it, I wanted another anime. I had just finished "Trigun" and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to use it the video. But, my love for Bebop was still there, so I chose to do a combination video (my first).
The decision to go from black and white to color came from a few things. The first was that I was still in love with how Bebop looked in black and white. The other came from me wanting to do something tricky, even though I didn't have a handle on Adobe's effects. So, I chose something simple that I though would add style to the video.
I wanted to present the parallels that Vash and Spike have, because I thought they were obvious, almost embarrassingly so that I thought I should almost avoid it. The fact that Spike and Vash are both men who surround themselves with people but still suffer from being loners was interesting. So was the fact that their brother figures were their antagonist. I wanted to show how both characters are running from their pasts, and how they're going to have to deal with what happened soon, and painfully.
I started editing in May 2005. I was done with the first part with Spike when I started my first relationship. Leave it to a chick, but editing was at a standstill. Other problems arose. I couldn't edit the two animes together without the system crashing, and exporting was not happening. So, I had to make separate projects, edit the video in three parts, and then combine them in post-production. The song was also two long, mainly for the second chorus, and it through off the symmetry I was trying to achieve. So, I cut the song down and spliced it together at a part I won't reveal, in order to keep you from noticing it. I'm actually proud of how well the cut worked out.
When you watch the video, you can tell the video quality suffers. It's from all the post-production work I had to do in order to get the pieces together. I wish it had come out better, because I really like this one. I though that as an action AMV it worked well, and with not to many effects it came out well. The swipe effect was used because I kept wanting to be like VicBond007 but I still have not achieved that man's skill.
A video I'm happy with, though wish it's quality was better. It took 8 months to finish the video but I felt great when it was done. What do you think?

The Monkey and Dog Show #3

2009-11-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

I'll be the first to admit it. This is not the best Monkey and Dog have to offer. The concept is funny enough. Play off the idea brought up in "Monkey Business" and "Phantom of the Apartment" that Dog is a detective on the side. Add the idea I came up with a co-worker, that Monkey is a spy, and I thought there would be comic gold.
Kind of.
One problem is that between episode two and this one stands a year of not doing Monkey and Dog in their normal sitcom routine. I even had a hard time getting the voices right again.
When you get to the episode itself, there are pacing problems. Dog's time at the computer, while funny at first, drags on too much. This is another problem of me not scripting at the time, and just seeing what dialog comes out. Sometimes it work and other times I got something like this.
One problem that Monkey has in this episode, that you could say he has in all episodes really, is that his dialog is very drawn out. I never really got a handle on delivering Monkey's dialog without taking forever to do so. Part of the issue, I think, is that Monkey is funniest when he's not talking a lot. His five word comments are always funnier when played off of Dog's whinny nature and the more lines Monkey has, the less funny he is. It also takes away from the moment of rage, the moment where Monkey explodes.
Dog suffered a bit as well, though not as bad as Monkey. I had been using Dog in other videos, so his character was still fresh in my mind. A problem that occurs in this video is that Dog really isn't a victim. While that routine would get old, I'm not sure it had yet. But, when Monkey is subdued and Dog is more out there, the balance is off.
The twist at the end, that Monkey is indeed a spy, came across well. The reveal, the fake accent and the eye patch all made me happy. There were plans for this reveal; Monkey would drop Russian vocabulary, we would meet his parents, and there may have been an evil/good Monkey storyline. But, alas, it was not to be.

A Hero is Only as Good as His Villain?

2009-11-01T14:28:00.001-08:00

“The Dark Knight” was a great movie. I saw it 4 times in theaters, the last being in IMAX. I think the movie is by far the greatest Batman movie ever made and wanted others to see it. But, I feel the world fell in love with it for the wrong reasons.

Ask people what they like about “The Dark Knight” and you will most likely hear the Joker brought up. Some like the character because of the performance by Heath Ledger, and they should; Ledger portrayed the Joker better than anyone else has. Others say they like the character because of how bad he is, and they should; the Joker really got to cut loose in the movie. But, I have yet to hear someone say they like it because of Batman.

Is that sad? You might not think so. But, to me, I see this as a problem. We have elevated the villain character above the hero. Why? Batman was performed by Christian Bale, who is the best Batman to date, and who is a great actor. Batman got to be more like Batman than any other film. So, why do we love the film for the villain?

I can understand why we do enjoy a good villain. They get to be evil, which we don’t get to be. They tend to be more charismatic, have better lines, and break more things. I also believe without a good villain, it’s hard to have a good hero. “The Dark Knight” has a great villain, so why don’t we say it has a great hero?

I worry sometimes that we are becoming a society who looks for evil as entertainment. I don’t mean this as in we seek out evil media like movies and tv, but the content in these films. Why do we have six “Saw” films and more to come? Why do we hope the Joker kills more people than before? Why do we not want the heroes to succeed anymore? Have we become so jaded on true heroes that we can even pretend with fake ones? Do we love the Joker because he fits the world as we know it better than Batman? Have we really reached the point where villains are easier to relate to than heroes?

Cowboy City

2009-10-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

When I first started editing videos, I was using Windows Movie Maker. This was a sad time indeed. You will never see these videos (I made 15 of them) because I am ashamed of them. However, it did not turn me off from editing. In fact, it made me more hungry for editing, wanting a better program. When I finally got my hands on Adobe Premier, I was a very happy boy.
The first thing I ever made with Adobe was a remake of one of my videos "Living in the Fridge" (this video will be up later). I wanted to get used to the controls and see how everything worked. I enjoyed Premier very much and found it to be a great program, but I didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to edit.
Then I saw the "Sin City" trailer for the first time.
I thought this trailer was amazing, I want to see the movie that second and couldn't stop watching the trailer. Maybe it was the actors involved, maybe it was the music (probably), but whatever it was, it worked. And then I had this idea.
I tried explaining to my uncle, that the crew of Cowboy Bebop was made for this trailer, but he couldn't really see it. But, it's all I could see. This was back when I spent all my time watching videos from Anime Music Videos and I loved watching the trailer videos. I was a little worried about how it would look, but I did it anyways.
I think this video came out great, wish it had more views, and had a blast watching it for the first time. However, there are somethings I wish I had fixed.
I wish I had used the color replacement tool, but back then I was happy just to be able to use black and white. I also wish I had made the end bumper better, but these are the things I used to deal with. Story-wise, I wish I had chosen some better scenes for Jet, just because I don't think he's as well represented. I am extremely happy with my character choices overall, though. I think they all fit perfect, and I've toyed with the idea of making a sequel with the longer trailer, just to see these guys do their thing again. But, it most likely will never happen.
I was very happy with this video. I used a program I was unfamiliar with, made a type of video I had never made before, felt good about my first dialog/lipsyncing process, enjoyed doing the music montage to no end, and felt like I had a first rate video to show for one.
Now, go watch Cowboy Bebop.

Why Girls Don't and Won't Read Comics

2009-10-02T13:33:00.000-07:00

This essay was written as a response paper for my Intro to Mass Media class at Houghton College. In it, we are to read an article (see the link below) and respond to it with what we have been learning about how we communicate in mass forms.

I feel bad reading this article.

On one hand, I want to cheer for comics trying to obtain more female readers; I have two sisters and would love them to read the things I have read. On the other hand, this article was written more than two years ago and the results of the comic industries efforts are laughable. I wish I didn’t have to laugh.
The issue with girls not reading comics have been going on for years. Some girls like them, most girls don’t. Outside of the article, I’ll be using my own knowledge of the comic industry and the girls I have known related to this subject.

With girls and comics, there is the issue of content being offered and content being sold. Comic companies were talking about selling these girl-friendly comics; at least, they were going to create the content. But, walk into a comic store (as I have for years) and you will find these products are not there, not in an amount that would matter. With comics, it’s easy for issues to get lost in the shuffle. The comic industry is a limping industry with declining sales, and retailers have only so much space on their shelves for profit. So, they don’t buy as much girl-friendly material because they have more guy customers. It’s a sad system. Comics are written, drawn, sold, read, and bought by guys. Bring in a female writer and have her write for girls, but retailers won’t order them for sale, because they have no female customers. Well, let’s sell them at bookstores, since more girls go to bookstores than comic shops. But girls don’t go to the comics section because all they sell are superhero comics; they wouldn’t have anything girls would be interested in. A girl won’t go to the guy section of the bookstore more than she would in a clothing store. So, the girls make their way over to the manga section, where there interest is assured.

It’s about presumptions, for sure. Girls think there is nothing for them in comics, so they stay away. When they do investigate, they find little to reward them. The comic industry is a strange one in that, unlike other mediums, it seems to only be able to do one thing successfully, superheroes. There are exceptions; Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” for one, which has a large female following, but the comics on the shelves of comic shops are superheroes. Why would girls want to read a power fantasy for guys, drawn with a sexually fantastic view of women?

That’s the real issue. Comics are written for guys, manga are written for both guys and girls. Comics create female superheroes, but most girls think Wonder Woman is dumb, with too little clothing. I have yet to meet a girl who respect for her. Wonder Woman has rarely been a success story for comic books. She was created by a psychologist of the name Dr. William Moulton Marston, who used it as an expression of sexual fetishes. In the 1960’s, few women were relating to Wonder Woman, so writer Danny O’Neil removed her powers to show how much like a real woman the character was. Unfortunately, O’Neil received many letters after informing him that he had just removed the best female role model in comics; from female readers. Wonder Woman is a lose/lose character, who’s biggest fanbase is men, due to her fiery attitude and great (and unrealistic) looks.

Another is issue with comics attracting new readership (let alone female readership) is that comics rarely end. The X-Men comics have been going on for more than 40 years with the same history. The only time I got my sister to read X-Men was when they started a new series that redid the whole history because there was no back-continuity for her to read. This much history is hard to get into and understand; and without the knowledge newer stories are hard to follow. Comics are also filled with continuity errors after years of editing. After I asked a girl why she enjoys the “Harry Potter” books, one of answers was that the whole series was consistent with itself. Manga, on the other hand, ends. Most have a plan, a definitive end, and keep their own continuity straight. Readers can easily follow the beginning to the end. I try to tell my sisters about the past continuity of Batman and they can only roll their eyes. Give them a manga that last for 12 books and it’s a different story.

There is another issue; different cultures are represented. With comics, they are an American cultural product. They deal with a lot of American issues, but are also written by Americans with American views. Manga is a different culture with different ways of doing things; which attracts female readers interested in the differences.

The comic industry doesn’t seem to get that girls communicate differently than boys, but they also miss another key factor. Comics are a guy-centric culture. Where with manga, girls can talk to girls easily, comics don’t have that advantage. A girl who is interested in the adventures of the Green Lantern Corps will be talking to guys about it, and that will wear thin. Guys have made comics for themselves, they have turn the comic culture into a guy culture, thus keeping girls from having a way in. But manga isn’t a guy culture; girls can get in and not fear being an outsider. Males have created this comic culture as an escapist entertainment, to keep other things out, and unfortunately, it worked.

Star Hawk Down

2009-09-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

Here we have the second most viewed video of Red Raptor Productions (if I had it my way, this would be the number 1 video, but more on that in a later post). This is one I'm proud of and I'm happy to see the positive reception.
This idea came from the fact that I absolutely loved "Black Hawk Down" and I though the trailer was amazing. It was one of those trailers that had a great combination of information, visual cues, and awesome music (thanks to Moby's "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad"). I hadn't yet watched "The Clone Wars" series yet, but I knew of its existence. I can't remember how it hit me, I just remember that the idea of the mixing the two came and I loved the idea.
It took awhile because I had to wait for the DVDs to come out, and wait for Uncle John to buy them. Once he did, I started to work towards an idea I had thought of a year before.
Watching the series for the first time, I knew these two would go together better than I had before. When I saw the second episode, the one where the ship gets hit by a droid missile, I almost felt like I was cheating. The episode was such a Black Hawk-styled episode, it was perfect.
Picking the characters to the voices wasn't so hard, I knew Josh Hartnett was going to be Anakin, just because of the age. Picking Obi-Wan as Eric Bana was easy as well, because Bana had to be played by someone with experience and military respect. Once I knew that Dooku was the George Harris, Yoda had to become Sam Sheperd.
The editing was mixed bag of enjoyment and frustration. On one hand, the missile strike and the montage that follows was more fun than should be allowed, and coming up with the ending was a joy. But, the lip syncing was rather annoying. Some was easier than others; the scene where Anakin tells Obi-Wan they "can watch a country destroy itself on CNN" was easy as pie. I should also add the syncing dialogue to storm troopers is the greatest thing in the world!
But the scene where Anikin is asking a storm trooper if he's ever shot at anyone? It was not as fun.
The problem was that the only way to sync Anikan up right was to reverse the footage. But there are storm troopers in the background. If you look at this scene, you can notice them walking backwards. That was frustrating. Yoda's first lines were a nightmare as well, because he doesn't move at all. I had to repeat many clips to get that one done.
I also cut some trailer audio, the scene being where Ewan McGregor is asking Orlando Bloom his age. I could not for the life of me find footage to go with this scene, so I cut the track and moved along. I think it works well.
If I could redo this video, the only real thing I would change is the inclusion of Mace Windu. Not because I don't like him, but because he wasn't in the rest of the video. He shows up for two seconds and that's it! Not very good constancy on my part.
I would have also liked to use more footage from the second volume, but for some reason I couldn't get my program to recognize the clips. This wasn't so bad, because the first volume works well. I'm not sure I could have found a place for General Grievous anyway.
But the small complaints I have with this video are completely overshadowed by the positives, the build up, the action, the ending. I am glad this has as many views as it does and I owe to the original trailer for being so well done.

The Monkey and Dog Show #2

2009-09-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

The second episode of Monkey and Dog. Now stuff gets good!
In one day, I made the first episode of both M&D and Green Arrow with no intent to ever do them again. But, boredom set in again. The second episode is such a jump from the first it amazes me. For instance, editing! We also have camera angles and movement! Wow!
Monkey comes across pretty harsh in this one, but we also get to see more of his patience. He does try his best not to explode, but Dog always gets the better of him. There's a very ugly zoom at the moment of breakdown and I wish I did it better.
This is still the very humble, yet persistent Dog. His voice is very subdued and lacks the confidence that comes in later episode. However, this is where we get to see Dog trail off in thought, something he does in almost every other appearance.
I love the dialog in this one. Dog's request and wanting to understand where Monkey is coming from is really funny to me. The truth is, though, I never knew where these videos were going. I just started with the idea that Dog wanted to watch t.v. and Monkey wanted to be left alone. But I didn't know how they would end. The dialog is all improve and it has to be a very fast back in forth, because I need to get to both characters. There's a real problem with that, but one fun thing about it is I never knew what was going to happen. When Dog fell, it was just something I had him do. You can hear me laughing as he struggles on the floor. This is also one of the many appearances of my foot moving something.
You may also notice a stack of comics on the coffee table. I was playing "X-Men Legends II" and I was reading the Age of Apocalypse comics along side it. So that's that.
I would be a year until I made another episode of M&D and I wish I had kept going because I think there would have been more. The year also changes the characters a bit, as will be seen in later episodes. But, this is still one of my favorites!

The Monkey and Dog Show #1

2009-09-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here it is. The first video ever put up on Youtube by Red Raptor Productions. Of course, back then, it was just myself and it shows. I was borrowing my friends camera for a project for our youth group, and my girlfriend was in Florida, leaving me to my boredom. Only now, I had a camera. So, taking the two stuffed animals I had at the time; a monkey given to me by my grandmother and a Build-a-Bear dog my girlfriend made, I set up a sitcom. There was no real idea to make this into a series, I just wanted to do a one shot to stay entertained.
"The Monkey and Dog Show" may be the most important thing I ever filmed. It was the second thing I ever filmed; the first being "Fernando, Phillipe, and Veronica" which we hide from the world. It was my first time making characters that people found endearing and set up for more stories.
However, let me not pretend this is a golden piece of work. No cutting, no script, and I'm cracking myself up at 1:23. I'm even moving the camera along the table for the zoom. I can understand Lucas sometimes.

Some fun facts!
-I'm moving Dog with my foot.
-I never finished the book Monkey's reading.
-You can see the title of the show behind Dog because I never think about my sets.
-That's the first time I ever tried Dog's voice and it surprised even me. Monkey is just my normal voice, only slightly exaggerated.
-Dog falls over into his plate because he really fell over with my foot kicking him too hard. I love the shot it made though.
-Monkey's threat to Dog involving his spine is referenced in episode five!

This was the first of many videos to involve Monkey and Dog. They show up in later videos in different roles or cameos. This is also the first video to be done with stuffed animals/action figures. It's not that I don't like people, I just didn't have anyone back then. But, as a jumping point for the rest of my directing career, I could have done worse.

The New Red Raptor Productions

2009-09-08T17:20:00.000-07:00

Red Raptor Productions is going extreme!
Extreme is such a lame term. Anything that has extreme in front of it is usually crap. But I can't say we're going awesome! Or can I...?
Red Raptor Productions is going awesome!
I can deal with that.

What do we do at Red Raptor? We make videos! Comedy! Dance! We do other things that don't get a lot of views! We also put up music videos of our favorite films and we love fake trailers!

Let me tell you about the crew.

Eric Mikols (duskvstweak)- This is the guy writing the blog. I started making music video's with Windows Movie Maker and got into filming when I "borrowed" my Uncle's video camera. I'm the guy in charge of the Youtube site and now the keeper of the blog. I'm also the one with the twitter. I direct most, if not all, the videos and I'm the editor as well. I'm still trying to refine my style; slowing down the filming process, taking more footage, trying to script more. Right now, I'm at Houghton College majoring in communications, so I hope to someday turn this hobby into a profession!
But I'm not doing this alone!

Glenn Benitez- Glenn was there almost at beginning. He's been the star of many videos, holding his own to Dog in "Monkey Business" and surviving against the devil's vacuum in "Hoover Damned". Though he is often away these days, Glenn is still a constant presence in the videos of Red Raptor. I have often described Glenn as my muse and I find some of my funniest videos to have him in them. He is also the only person besides myself to have puppeteer Monkey.

Jordan Cusenza- My brother, who everyday becomes cooler than I am. We often put Jordan in dancing roles because he can out-dance the lot of us. The first time he ever busted-a-move was in "Dancing in the Apartment" and we don't want him to stop! But he's not just a silent lady killer. Jordan also acts! He stole the show in "The Nature of Madness"! The reason you don't see him so much on Youtube is because is video's tend to have copyrighted music in them, leaving him on my PC. But not to fear! Red Raptor's new policy is to use little to no copyrighted music in our original films (while hoping no one notices the music videos), so Jordan will be a present force!

Brendan Bates-Brendan came into the game late, and I'm not sure he knows he's even in yet. But, co-staring in 28 zombie blogs makes him one of the most present faces of Red Raptor Productions. Don't forget his roles in "Party Like a Rockstar" and "The Ghosts of Christmas". Brendan enjoys the Red Hot Chili Peppers and can often be found on a set of skis.

That's us! Many others have been part of the group for periods of time; Travis Philips, Luke Peters, Sam Cobb and Julia Cusenza have played big parts in our work. Not to mention the number of stuffed animals and action figures. We'll be adding more to the fold soon and we don't plan on stopping anytime soon. I'm in the process of writing a script for a new web series and you can never say "no" to a fun dance video.
We're doing more now as well! This blog will soon be filled with commentaries for all the videos we have and will put up, I just got a Twitter account, and we hope to be a force of networking power. We won't just be putting up blogs of the videos, but other things as well. It will almost be a text-based version of our Youtube.
So stay around and invite you're friends, it's gonna be fun!

Where Has All the Character Gone?

2009-09-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

This summer hurt.
Maybe it's because last summer was amazing for movies, or. the movies I enjoyed. "Iron Man", "The Incredible Hulk", "Hellboy II", "The Dark Knight", I even enjoyed "Death Race". Other ones were good as well, most notably "Wall-E". 2008 had good movies. Until the summer ended.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still", "Quantum of Solace", "The Spirit"; disappointing was the word I used to describe them. I was hoping that the change of the year would refresh the theaters. But "Next" and "Watchmen" came and lead to decent but forgettable movies. And the summer was worst of all.
"Wolverine" and "Terminator Salvation" were bland and unneeded. "Star Trek" was fun but to fast for it's own good. "Transformers II" doesn't need more than a mention. The only movie I walked away enjoying was "District 9".
Why has this been such a drought in quality films? The problem (for me, you might have enjoyed these movies) is that these films are getting to fast to enjoy and the characters are suffering because of it. Endings are becoming darker, while being safer and safer.
Let's take "Terminator Salvation" as my example. Out of all these movies, I was looking forward to this film the most. The preview made it look like it was going to turn the "Terminator" films on their heads and create something new and amazing. But then the movie started and didn't stop for a breathe once. We are to care for characters we never get to know, and (spoiler warning) we lose the only character who is worth anything. The movie even teases us with an ending that would have been bold and unexpected, but returns the safe status as soon as it can.
But I digress. The real problem I am seeing in movies lately is true care for character, thus creating less investment and, in turn, less dilemma. Why should we care that our character is trying to get home when we don't care about the character here and now. Why should we care if the hero is about to die, when he's been dead throughout the whole film.
I enjoyed "District 9" because I never knew what was going to happen, and I actually cared for the heroes. To think that Christopher would not make it safe to his ship was a scary thought, because I wanted him to succeed. But, had I not liked the character, it wouldn't have mattered how many twist and turns the plot took.
I have been complaining about the speed of films as well. "Lord of the Rings" is a slow movie series, especially once we bought the extended editions. But why do we sit through a three hour and more film that moves slower than the one starring Vin Diesel? Because we care about the character. We will forfeit time if the characters are likable. We will sit and watch long bits of dialogue if the ones speaking are ones we want to hear. Christian Bale as John Conner is not someone we want to hear. Samuel Jackson as the Octopus is not someone we want to hear.
"Wolverine" suffered because it had characters we liked, or wanted to like, but didn't spend time with them. Who cares if Wade Wilson is made into a monster if we didn't get to know him early on? We know we should like Gambit, but the movie never shows us why.
Now the summer is over and the movies I had hoped would be amazing have failed. We move to the fall and I see little hope in the future. Next summer has the return of Tony Stark in "Iron Man II" but what else is coming along. If we keep sacrificing character for action and here-now-gone plot, we are going to have very sad stories coming our way.

Our Joy is Our Treasure

2008-11-11T06:15:00.001-08:00

Can the world see your joy?

Psalm 4:6-7
“Many are asking, “Who can show us any good?”
Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord.
You have filled my heart with greater joy than when their grain and new wine abound.”

Christians should always stand out from the world. When you compare the lives of a Christian to that of a non-believer, you should be able to see a difference. Through Christ, a Christian should show the fruit of the Spirit and live in a way that non-Christians can’t quite understand. We should live in exceeding joy.
This is quite different from the rest of the world, because lets face it, there is very little joy in the world. Failing economy, lose/lose elections, intolerance, war, truth decay, and over-population rule this age and with it; fear, anger, hate, suffering; this is the path to the dark side. But, Christians should be able to see these circumstances and move past them. We are not living for the here and now, but for the coming and soon to be.
As Christians, we should be living in joy. What is joy? We need to realize that joy is beyond temporary feelings. Joy is not just happy or excited, everyone experiences that. No, joy is the ability to look ahead and to see what is coming beyond the present. It’s the ability to face trial and know that we still have hope.
But where does joy come from? I believe that joy comes from two things in particular. I believe that joy comes from truth and love. But let’s face it; the world has distorted these two things severely. So let’s look at what truth and love mean to the world and to Christians.
What is truth? Truth is reality and certainty. But that’s not how the world sees it. For the world, reality is how you make it and truth is inconsistent. This is a world where everything is relative and there are no absolute truths. Promises are made to be broken, rules are made to be disobeyed, and your truth is good for you but not for me. Truth is like your favorite shirt that your girlfriend hates; she may know it’s a terrible shirt but you know that it’s awesome.
So if the is how the world sees truth, how does the world see love? For the world, love is all you need, but you can never get. Look at how the world handles it. Marriage is supposed to be the example of how Christ loved the church, yet the divorce rate is 50% and it’s the same stat for Christians! Is this the love we show each other and teach our children? And when we can’t find love in people we try to find it in things. We buy and buy, we eat and eat, and we want and want just to fill in a hole and to find something we can love.
There is a lack of honest joy in the world and even pop culture exemplifies this. One band I particular enjoy, though their lyrics get a little to melancholy, is the band “The Postal Service”. But one song always catches my attention; “Clark Gable”. In the song, the singer is retelling how he tried to win the heart of his old girlfriend by filming an old-style film. In the chorus though, he makes this statement.

“I want so badly to believe
That there is truth and love is real.”

Is this an overstatement or a real representation of how the world feels?
If this is how the world sees truth and love, how do Christians see it? Or at least, how should we see it?
Christians need to find there truth in God and his promises. Psalm 105:8 reads,

“He remembers his covenant forever,
The word he commanded, for a thousand generations.”

And Paul in writing Titus 1:2 also says,

“A faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time.”

So, Christian truth needs to come from God and his promises. What about Christian love? 1 John 4:7-8 (though you should read the whole chapter) says it best,

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

God’s love is perfect and infallible and what we should always strive to achieve. We will never get there in this life, but someday we will be able to experience this love first hand and stand in the glory of it. This is where we should get our joy.
It seems too often that Christians forget about the truth and love of the Gospel and of our relationship with the Lord. We can so easily fall into the despair of the mucky-muck and lose sight of the future. But the future is the very thing we should never loose focus on. Through the promises and love of God, we have hope, and with hope we have joy. A Christians joy should be a defining element in his or hers life. Our joy makes the world stop and scratch its head. Joy will keep us going through this dark world and joy will remind us of our bright future. Psalm 30:11-12 reads,

“You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”

Our Treasure

2008-09-12T12:55:00.000-07:00

According to this report at BBC News, these are the top 10 funeral songs.

1 - "Goodbye My Lover" - James Blunt
2 - "Angels" - Robbie Williams
3 - "I've Had The Time Of My Life" - Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley
4 - "Wind Beneath My Wings" - Bette Midler
5 - "Pie Jesu" - Requiem
6 - "Candle In The Wind" - Elton John
7 - "With Or Without You" - U2
8 - "Tears In Heaven" - Eric Clapton
9 - "Every Breath You Take - The Police
10 -"Unchained Melody" - Righteous Brothers

Why do I bring this up? Because I've been thinking of this myself. A funeral song, if you get to pick it yourself, is the last real comment you get to leave on your life, you experience, and everything in between. As a moody teenager, I used to think I wanted my song to be "Warm Tape" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I got a little older and then decided I wanted "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" by Creedance Clearwater Revival. I still think they're great songs and have a cool feel for a funeral song. But now I think I need a better song to define my departure.

See, being a Christian, my last song should not be one of sorrow or regret. It should not be a song about not wanting to leave or not doing enough. It should be a song of rejoicing and acceptance. This world is temporary and death is the transition from this world to the real one. To think that when you close your eyes for the last time it's not for the last time, that's something to be thankful for.

As Christians, what should our song be? Far be it from me to ever tell anyone what the answer is. However, I do have three I would like to comment on. These songs I think represent a Christian's point of view on death and rebirth.

All My Tears by Jars of Clay

A cover off of their latest album "Good Monsters". The first verse goes as such;

"When I go don't cry for me
In my fathers arms Ill be.
The wounds this world left on my soul
Will all be healed and Ill be whole."

Right here I knew this would be a great song to have played at my departure. Sometimes death can have such a crippling effect on us. We weep for those who have died and the fact that we will not see them in this life anymore. But, we can't forget that death leads to the ultimate reward. We will be in our heavenly father's arms and everything this would has ever done to us will be washed away. Any self-confidence issues this would has caused me, any heartache that we have felt, it will all be gone. We will be our true selves at last and finally have the relationship with God we desperately crave.
The rest of the song is a great reminder of what being with God will be like. It's just a great reminder of our true hope as Christians.

Treasure by Tree 63
I heard this song when I bought their greatest hits album. I was instantly drawn to this song. It has a great upbeat sound and you can tell this band truly loves the world. Here's the first verse of the song;

"Taken up out of the world
Shaken up with just a word,
Turned around so suddenly
I'm alive eternally."

As Christians, we should always remember that we are already taken from this world. We died to sin and this world when we accepted Christ into our lives. Romans 6:4 reads;

"Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."(NASB)

We are now alive eternally. At this very moment! Think about what that means! If you have accepted Christ into your life, you now are everlasting. You will never die and you will never stop. Christ has saved us so completely, nothing can separate us from His love.
The song chorus is simple yet so great to stop and think about.

"My heart is where my treasure lies

My great reward is in Your eyes,
My every breath belongs to You
You are my treasure."

Where is your heart? If you have accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, then you heart is now with God. Your treasure is now in the kingdom, waiting for you. Those that leave this world finally receive their great reward and that is not a thing to mourn for.

Pierced by Audio Adrenaline

From Audio Adrenaline's "Worldwide" album. This song is great gospel/worship chorus and I can't understand why it has yet to make into my churches service. The chorus goes like this;

"Make me, take me, break me, I am pierced.
Make me, take me, break me, I am pierced."

Simple, no? What else does this chorus need to say to get its message across. Part of the sanctification process is allowing God to carry you where He desires you to be, even death. Christ made us, took us from death, and we should trust Him when He needs to break us. We are already pierced through our new birth in our Lord. When you final day comes, will you be ready for Christ to take you?

I understand that death will always be a sorrowful event. That's the curse of living in this fallen world. Those we care for and love will leave this world, sometimes sooner than we expect. But we should always remind ourselves that when Christ's kingdom comes, we will never have to experience death again.
We should face death with fear and trembling, we should always be ready for our Lord to come and takes us. After all, that's are ultimate goal. We leave this world of death for a kingdom of life. I just hope what ever song is played at my funeral represents the truth I know.

Growing with Help

2008-05-31T21:18:00.001-07:00

It's tough living in the real world when you know it's not the "real" world. Everyone tries to ignore the idea of absolute truth and you feel rather alone. I had forgotten how bad it can be and now I'm back in the swing of things and I find myself remembering what it was like.
I haven't done what I wanted to do this summer. I wanted to strengthen all of my friends and family, evangelize like a madman, and make good use of what I learned this past year. But, all I've found myself doing is reading, playing "Hulk: Ultimate Destruction", and hanging out with my friends like I used to. I know that I can't expect to change the world all at once, but I haven't done anything to change anything.
One problem I see is that I thought I would do it instantly and I need to realize this stuff takes time. I also need to realize that it's not by my hand that anything gets done, it's by God's. And because I thought, in a way, that it would be by strength. So now, because my strength will never be enough, I haven't moved forward.
So, how do I fix this? I need to trust in God more and more everyday. I need to pray to Him to give me opportunities to practice my faith, and to help me use my faith effectively. I need to reemphasize my spiritual life and read more Bible and learn more scripture, pray daily, discuss theology regularly, and fix my intake. "Rome" is an amazing show, but it can't be the thing that makes up my mental stimulation. There is so much out there to read that can help me grow, I just need to find it.
I hope I'm not the only one that feels like this sometime, and I hope I'm not the only one of those who knows I need to fix it. We all can become so content in our walk with Christ that we forget to grow at all. We treat our faith like a dollar bill that we never spend and it works for nothing. What good is dead faith?
We need to remember (myself especially) that while our salvation and justification was all by God's work through Christ, sanctification and growing is a combined effort of us and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will work in us and through us, but we must work with Him to become more Christ-like. It's like Paul tells us in Romans 15:16,

"To be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit."

It's like the Green Lantern and his ring.

The Green Lantern's power comes from his ring, without the ring, the Green Lantern has no power. However, the ring does nothing on it's own. It's the Green Lantern's will power that forces the ring to act. We, like the Green Lantern, have no power. Our power lies in the Holy Spirit. Yet, it is through prayer and discipline that we can use the Holy Spirit and He can use us.
We need to keep growing in our faith, we cannot let ourselves stay complacent in our lives with being half-way there. We must always be striving to be more like Christ and being a better example of Christ to others. Romans 12:1-2 says,

"Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect."

More Than Conquerors

2008-04-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

A Hermeneutical Exercise of Romans 8:28-39

“28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 31What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36As it is written:

"For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:28-39 (NIV)

As you can see, my passage of Romans is Chapter 8, verses 28-39. In my NIV Student Bible, this section is titled “More Than Conquerors”. Why is this passage so important to our Christian living and how can it relate to us now just as it did thousands of years ago?

To understand these questions, we must first understand the book of Romans as well. Romans was a letter written by the Apostle Paul to the Roman church. Romans 1:1-16 proves this by being Paul’s opening comments, declaring who he is and what he is here for. The Roman church, made of mostly Gentiles, had not been visited by Paul yet and he was hoping that he would be able to see them on his way to Spain. Paul did not want to impose himself on the Romans, for he did not start this church, but he did want to bless them and strengthen them as well as himself.

Romans has at times been called a summarization of the Christian faith. While this view is a strong one, Romans really speaks about righteousness more than anything. Whether it’s Christ’s righteousness, our righteousness in Christ or living a righteous life, Romans helps us understand the outcome of faith in a better way.

Now, for the text in question, what does this passage mean? It starts with verse 28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” This verse tells us that God works all things for good. But what does that mean?

By God working all things for good, He is taking everything that happens for what He knows is good. This verse does not read, “God will only let good things happen”, but rather that He will use all things, including bad things, for good. The verse then says He works together all things for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to his purpose.

“…Those who love Him…” could only mean believers. Now, a non-believer’s life may seem amazing, full of riches and pleasure, but in the long run he is just a pile of dead bones. Meanwhile, a Christian may be struggling through a life of poverty and suffering and be rejoicing in the fact that God is working in him. When Paul writes “…who have been called according to His purpose” we can see the coming discussion of election.

We have been called by God to believe in Him. Normally, we would be blind to His word and His love, but because God has shown such mercy on us, He has opened our eyes and allowed us to accept His gift of eternal life. But the next part of that line, “…according to His purpose” shows us that He has chosen us based off of his will, plan, and desire and not off of anything we have done.

Romans 29 and 30 then read,

“For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified"

Ah, the wonderful proof of election and mercy.

“For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” We have been called to become like Christ. God cannot look at sin. When Christ was on the cross, even though He lived a blameless life, God turned away from His son for Jesus had taken up our sins on Himself. If God cannot tolerate sin so much that He could not look at His most cherished son, how could He look at us? Now that Christ has died and taken the punishment for our sins, we stand in His righteousness. But, we do not act like we have Christ’s righteousness. We still sin and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) But throughout life, God is working in us to make us more like Christ. This process is known as the Ordo Salutis, which is Latin for “the Order of Salvation.”

According to Romans 8:30; the Lord first foreknew us, predestined us, called us, justified us, and finally glorified us. By saying He foreknew us; we must understand that foreknew means to fore love. In Amos 3:2 God says to the people of Israel, "You only have I known among all the families of the earth." And Jesus says in Matthew 7:23, "I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness."

God loved Israel first and foremost over all other nations on earth and Jesus never loved the Pharisees He spoke to. So God loved us, then He predestined us.

What did God predestine us for? Does this mean all our choices and paths are chosen before we even know what to choose ourselves? Is life us just going through motions already drawn out by an animator? No. God predestined us to Him. God made it so we would come to Him and that we would be saved, but He has given us the ability to choose our actions. But, naturally, our actions would be sinful and focused on ourselves. By predestining us, God has opened our eyes and allowed us to see the error of our ways and the glory of coming to our Lord. Genesis 1:26 reads,

“Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

God made us in His image. What does this mean? In part, it means that God made us with the free will and the ability to choose. He also made us in charge of everything He created. Does this sound like someone making all our decisions for us? I don’t believe so.

After God predestined us, He called us. We, like everyone else, have received what is known as the outward call. This call would be the preaching of the gospel and the natural revelation of the creation itself. But, unlike everyone else, we have also received the inward call. This call would be the special revelation that is given by the Holy Spirit and allows us to hear God’s word for what it is; truth. Because of this, we are able to accept the gift of eternal life and be adopted into God’s family.

Once we are called, we are then justified. What does this mean, to be justified? In this context, it would be a legal term. What it would mean, is that we are not righteous, but by the transference of Christ’s righteousness to us, we are now looked on as righteous. Christ’s death justified our salvation. Because this is by God’s doing and the work of Christ, we can also see where Catholicism misses the point. We are not saved by any works we do, because God sees all the work Christ did. We do works out of gratitude as fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). Justification comes by faith, not by works.

Finally, after God justified us, He has also glorified us. What is interesting here is that glorified is in the past tense for a future occurrence. Why would Paul write this? I believe that it is because God’s work in us is so complete and final that nothing will break us from this salvation. Paul might as well speak in past tense because, in his mind, the work is done. We, still bound by time, must wait for our final glorification when we become like Christ, but to God we are already there.

Verse 31 is one of my favorite verses. Paul asks the question of what could be against us if God is for us. If God’s plan is so complete and perfect, then what do we have to fear? If God gave His only son for us, would He truly let something defeat us?

We should take pride that, when we face persecution, we face it in the name of Christ. We should understand that those who attack us are really attacking our Lord Christ and are fighting His light in anger and hate. (1 Peter 4:14)

Paul gives us a list of things we would worry about; trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword. We could add homelessness, disease, poverty, war, and all other things and Paul’s message would have been the same. None of these things can defeat us. In fact, we are more than conquerors because we don’t just defeat these things on a physical level or mental level, but we defeat them on a spiritual level. We are able to defeat them because of Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, and the fact that He still intercedes for us.

Paul then states his assurance in Christ’s work and God’s plan by listing off all the things that can’t separate us from God; death, life, angels, demons, present, future, powers, height, depth, and everything else in creation. That’s a thorough list.

The state of death cannot separate us. In fact, once we die, we can be rest assured that our next conscience moment will be us by Christ. No matter if you believe in soul sleep or not, this must be agreed upon. And if that is the fact of the matter, than even death fails at separating us from the Lord. Life, with all of its troubles, also fails. All the hardships of life can only strengthen our resolve and trust in the Lord.

Angels could not separate us, even as powerful as they are. They serve the Lord and act as our protectors. Demons will not be able to defeat us because none can withstand the power of Christ. With but a word of His name, demons shudder and retreat. The Bible states our bodies our a temple for Christ and that He lives in us through the Holy Spirit, and if that is so, than how can a demon hope to destroy us?

We must also remember that things of the present cannot defeat us. No matter what is going on this very day; whether it be financial issues, sickness, war, or suffering, nothing that is happening today will steal us from Christ. We must also remember that nothing coming will defeat us. We can stop fearing the future because whatever happens, we will still stand firm in Christ. Are we afraid of future attacks on American soil? Why? It will not remove us from Christ. Are we afraid that we may develop a disease that our father before us had? Why? It will not remove us from Chris either.

Nothing of power can defeat us in Christ. What power does man have that is not given by the Lord, who is for us? Living in a country of relative freedom, we forget this sometimes. I believe that those living in countries where they risk their very lives to read God’s word and worship Him understand this better than we can. They do not fear their communist rulers and malicious dictators because these threats will not remove them from God’s plan.

Height, depths, or anything else in creation will defeat us. God has made it all. Everything that is and ever will be exists by the very nature of God’s will. If Christ is in us, as the ruler of everything, than how can anything defeat us? Back in verse 28, we read that God works everything for the good of those who love Him. He works everything: meaning all of creation. Did Paul not state something you fear might remove your from the Lord? Stop fearing because nothing will remove you. God’s love is so complete and infinite we are safe.

None of this means we are going to be free from troubles. Christ says that we will have trials (John 16:33). But, throughout all of our suffering we can remember that Christ has already won the day and we have won it through Him.

I also believe it is by no coincidence that Romans 9-12 follows these verses. To go from this to the question of Israel’s salvation must be a planned thought by Paul. I believe that Paul is trying to remind Israel that you cannot fall from grace, nor does God forget you. Israel was chosen before all other nations, predestined, and is now going through their sanctification/perseverance stage. Soon, they too will accept Christ and be saved, glorified. But their hearts are hard and their willingness to come to Lord dull. But we should trust that the Lord is still working with them.

While reading sermons on this passage I have come to a better understand of our security of the Lord. But not just that, I have learned of the need for us to trust in the Lord in all things. In fact, the best example I found was a blog online. It is written by a woman named Emily Hunter McGowin, and posted on her blog site named, "Think. Laugh. Weep. Worship". She writes about her mother-in-law slowly dying from cancer. But, through all of it, both women stand strong in their resolve and know that even through such a time of despairing and pain, Christ is with them and God is working the whole thing for their good. The trial may not be good itself, but in the end, they will be stronger from it.

But this isn’t a case of “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. No, this is much more powerful and worthwhile. In light of this fact, we should stand taller in the face of adversity. I myself have problems sharing Christ with others, in fear of them rejecting not only the gospel, but myself. Yet, how much can their rejection really do to me? God is for me. I am guarded, protected, watched over, loved by, cared for, and strengthened by the very creator of the universe. I am allied with the one whose breath keeps creation in existence.

Romans 8:28-39 raises a real challenge for all those whom would see us fall. We should read these verses and say to our opposition, “Come and get me.” Let them come and try to remove us and destroy us. We are God’s children; foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified. Ephesians 2:8 says, “…And this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”

God, the maker of everything, chose us. He will not give us up.