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Name: Tom
Country: United States
State: Please select...
Gender: Male
Interests: Film, writing (fiction & non-fiction prose), piano-playing
Expertise: Film, writing (fiction & non-fiction prose), piano-playing
Occupation: Student
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
3/27/2006
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|  (I'm the feral druid, J's the priest) On September 22, 2008 at 11:55 P.M. my brother and I, along with 23 other people, participated in the final pull that would result in our guild-first Illidan Stormrage kill; thus completing an obsession that started June of last year. Afterwards, we went out to Steak'n'Shake to toast to this moment. :)
To many people, what we did is absolutely meaningless and perhaps they may be right. Then again I'm reminded on a moment between Saladin and the knight that defended Jerusalem. The knight asked Saladin what the city was worth and Saladin replied, "Nothing". Saladin turned to leave back to his tent when he faced the knight once more proclaiming, "Everything." It means nothing when considering that thousands of guilds have already killed him and that many of them are farming Illidan to death and can't stand the fight anymore. It means nothing in the face of Sunwell, a place of much greater technical difficulty and a place that is being farmed to death by almost every serious progression guild. It means even less than nothing for anyone that doesn't care about WoW and for whom all of this is just about as stupid as it gets.
It means everything to me as I had fought long and hard for it, having rerolled twice already. It means everything to me when considering the personal sacrifices I did make to arrive at this moment - leaving LotF was a very tough thing to do for me, among RL issues that had to take a backseat for a while. It means everything to me having not given up on it, even though there was no reason to continue and many people almost effectively rationalized against it. It means everything to me when the goal was nothing more than just SOMETHING that needed to be accomplished and where I could not face failing myself again after the abyss that was RIT. And perhaps that's all that it needs to mean.
I could write a lot more about the experience as it's caused me to meditate on value relativism and Machiavellian determinism. There'll be another time and forum for that. For now, I'm happy. I did it. It feels appropriate to quote cartman in saying, "Now I can play the game :)"
P.S.
This will be my final post on Xanga; I intend to take down all the posts soon and move them to a much more private blog. Yes, I did realize a long while ago that Xanga was dead i.e. no one posts here regularly anymore but I'm almost sure that most of you are still subscribed to it - so yeah :)
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| A long time ago, I promised a substantial update on this Xanga. I have some of it already written out and saved somewhere on my desktop but I never finished it. Part of that was because so much was still going on in my life currently that I wanted to wait until things wrapped up in hopes of writing something more meaningful. That's happened to some extent; yet I still don't see myself spending time doing an extensive writeup & random amateurish stream-of-consciousness-style commentary (which is what most of my stuff on this blog pretty much is). I suppose I shall do a factual update so the ones of you that are interested may know.
It's been almost a year now since I left Rochester, not knowing where I would wind up. It's safe to say that it's not where I ideally wanted to see myself but so more for that. So to backtrack:
-I moved home and promptly took the next 3 weeks as a personal vacation i.e. sleeping in really long; catching up on a couple movies and playing WoW for extended periods of time that I had always wanted to do. Levelled an undead warrior; made him prot and raided with him until December when ... you guys know the rest. Anyways, that was that.
-July: Decided I had enough of a vacation and started in earnest pursuing a film job in the area. Found nothing. Or at least nothing promising. Almost had a gig crewing for some independent film in southern Ohio but that never came to fruition. Pursue various leads; screw some of the up as well - meh - it was so long ago, I don't remember nor care to dwell on it for too long.
-August: Getting desperate to find any source of income, I look around and find my hometown to be a pretty dry spot. I quickly grab a job at Dairy Queen which turned out to be a huge mistake. I barely got over 30 hours at minimum wage; got scheduled so erratically that I couldn't find a second job to complement it plus the boss was Darwin's gift to mankind. He honestly thought himself to be a superior race (He did in fact state this on one occasion) and made sure us lowly serfs working for him knew it. Everyone hated him/wanted to quit but couldn't due to economic pressures, ect.
-October: I visit my brother at his college for his 21st birthday. 'Twas a good day; met some people, got to think about some things and whatnot. Later that week, he dropped out of college. Yes, we knew about it for several weeks now and I suppose I should back up a little to provide a little context. J found himself a girlfriend and one thing led to another and eventually it lead to a little baby girl named Evie. I'll spare you all the interim drama that happened in the meantime; a few close friends know what went on and I would kindly ask them to keep it in confidence. Anyways, J didn't see it feasible anymore to continue college and work fulltime to support his family so he dropped out to start looking.
We find a peculiar add that we nonetheless pursue. We get hired by this mysterious marketing firm that wants us to "demo products" with lots of earning and promotion opportunity. Some of you already know where this was going. Needless to say after trying to rip off poor people for $2000 to buy a Kirby Vaccuum for a day, we quit that nonsence. Cost us around a $100+ each and over a week's worth of our time but on the brightside, it got me out of Dairy Queen and for that I'm thankful. I just recently got my tax returns from that place and for 4 months worth of work, I only earned $1800. I was in worse shape leaving it than before.
-November: We start looking for jobs everywhere now. By the time everything was said and done, we had applied to more than a 100 places - at least 5 apps a day plus the sporadic interview. Halfway through we find a temp agency and get placed with a data services company that wants us to update their databases with the college cards. You know those cards you filled out when you first started college shopping? It was a wonderful job but it only lasted us for a day and a half - we got sent home early. The third day we came and were told that they laid off the entire second shift - so much for reliability.
-More looking ensues, bordering on desperation. There was nothing in this area we could find (and could live off of - don't make the mistake to apply to any fastfood/store job - you do not get the hours your want and you wind up with far less money than what you actually need).
-December: We get a call that we've been accepted for temp work at a chocolate factory. We recoice for a moment. Evie, my brother's and his GF's daughter, is born and yes she is quite sweet. The running joke now is when will I complete my cabin for her. Not that it makes any sense but w/e :). I started working at the factory the day she was born, J starts a day later. We quit 2 days afterwords for a variety of reasons; however, the main one was that our cousin informed us of a customer service center that was always hiring, paid decent money and'd be sure to hire us. They did. Around this time after we find out, we rerolled with you guys, powerstomping a holy priest from 1-70 in three weeks. 2 weeks later, he's at 1600+ healing and growing. I'm still amazed at how we pulled that off. Oh my feral druid did well too - pretty much the best tank/dps gear I can obtain/craft/farm for before 25 man content. On Emerald Dream, I was known to quite a bit of people as the raiding sermonizer, "Prepare thyself! For Lady Vashj is at hand! Gather unto thee all the best equipment and shun the evildoing loot-whores and drama-mongers for they shall drag you into the pits of tartarus! (is that even spelled right? meh) Practicing what I preached unto many, I proceeded to grind up my gear at record-pace; tanking takes a lot of preparation - half of the encounter is won outside the instance (another quarter is not having braindead idiots that think it's acceptable to come to ssc with green sorcerer pants - wtf! Spellstrike is that way >> ) But I digress, since I know a good deal of you care little :).
-January:
We begin training and by the end of the month, we're working. We do night shifts answering calls for Cox communication cable TV support so if you're in the southern California area, there's a slim chance if you call in that you may pull me - I usually work the eastcoast area. Oh and for those who may be curious: we can barely do anything more than what you can do yourself so 9/10 times we're gonna sent out a tech to turn your TV on for you (oh I have had many of those calls where they ask "The TV is currently turned off, should that be on? Oh I'm getting cable now, thank you so much!"). The best way to help yourself is unplugging the cablebox for 30 seconds, then plugging it back in; then if you call, request a tech immediately, saying that you already did all of the troubleshooting steps - unless it's a signal issue, in which case either wait it out, ask for a signal or PAY YOUR DAMN CABLE BILL! Most of my calls consist of teaching people the basic truth that when you pay your bill you will receive services. Pay not, and thou shalst not receive your latest On-Demand content no matter at how much thou then proceedest to bitch.
Anyways, that's that; that's what happened and where I stand now. Random thoughts: I'm hardly on facebook anymore. It's gotten waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too cluttered to matter but I do check it from time to time. I'm thinking of coming up sometime to Rochester to chill out with ya'll and whatnot. Will probably be closer to end of school year as I'll have more time to figure something out. Looking forward to seeing most of you again - I get to chat to a few of ya on WoW, which is fun. There's a lot more stuff I could and probably should and that I indented to write here but to be honest, I'm just too tired to think about it right now much less develop it into something that transcends idle ramblings. Ya I'm looking into getting into something film-related. I've been developing some ideas that will turn themselves into scripts at somepoint this year or so I hope. I'm probably gonna start shooting documentaries - there's tons of really incredible material around me that I feel bad of missing it already so I'm looking into an affordable but workable camera. I have some goals to reach first though before pursuing this in earnest - it's incredibly silly and to some the epitomy of foolishness yet for having professed my doing it for the last 9 months and still nowhere in sight, I can't allow to tear myself from letting it go. Sounds vague, I know, but I don't want to state anymore than I already have. So on to something more cheerful:
Go out and see Michael Clayton! :) One of my favorite films of last year I have to secretly confess. Oh and for those not watching House yet, what's wrong with you! Also, any good new Anime series out there to try? I've been cautious and still mean to catch up with bleach/Solty-Rei (which I absolutely loved watching). So yeah, that's it. Hope to talk to more of you soon.
I will also try to post picture of my newborn niece soon; as soon as I can get J to finally e-mail me the whole bunch of them.
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| Wow - it's been a while since I've written an update and let me tell you a lot has happened in my life during these last couple months. For better or worse, I'm definitely not the same person anymore - the balance between the two is finally shifting now to the better part ;). I'm preparing an incredibly long writeup (I know that most people hate those but this time I'll ask you to put up with it) that will hopefully cover a lot of what happened as well as some "meditations" that I've been having lately - on leadership and inner peace. I'm tempted to wait until my course has sorted itself much more out - basically I'm in the middle of a transition and once again faced with choices that I hoped to have settled by now. It's kind of like Peter walking on the water; you have to keep your look on Christ, otherwise, the fear around you will sink you. Another thing I've learned ;). But I figure I write an update now within the next couple days while it's still fresh that wait forever. There's a lot of writing I always wanted to do but never finished (Brian knows what I'm talking about) so I don't want this to be such a thing.
In the interim, I have a couple tiny favors to ask of all of you that still read this: I NEED new music! Desperately - my collection is growing stale and I can't seem to find to add anything new to it. I'm looking for euro-techno or any sort of good techo. I love the genre but I have very little of it but I don't know where to look. Otherwise, any good bands you may know of - no Ska please :). I picked up the WoW 2007 sampler a while ago and found myself sorely disappointed - not a single song or band I could take out of there and usually I discover 1-2 new bands per sampler. So please help me out :).
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| So I went to the renaissance fair today which was a lot of fun. My brother works there occasionally as a minstrel which is actually pretty cool. I've never been to a renaissance fair before and I don't know how they usually are but this one was really cool. Really, it almost reminded me on any other con except it was period-themed and usually has more fun people (no sailor-moon bubba or his twisted cousin to be found).
The food is great; we got some lunch from Friar Pluck, who prepared and served his food in renaissance character - he puts whole chickens on a grill and gives you half of a whole chicken. There are "utensils"; however, they're ... cumbersome which worked out for me as my character was a barbarian anyways. Oh yeah ...
So me and Ryan, a friend most of you have already have been acquainted with and who needs no introduction, have always wanted to visit hannes up at the fair; partly because I hardly see him these days (working 3rd shift and ... you know) and because I've never been. J impresses upon me to bring my sword, which made me nervous at first but I consede. Ryan, however, is not satisfied with a mere prop, no; we venture to a local costume shop where we (and by that I mean he - I found a simple peasant shirt+vest in 2 minutes) browse through the period noble garb, trying on a vast assortment and procure an entire outfit complete with cheap-ass ring. He looked quite ridiculous; however, strangely appropriate. It helps that he's generally pompous and boisterous so he did his costume quite proud. I crafted a simple scabbard out of two belts and gaffers tape (or rather ryan did most of it; he apparently has a knack for stuff like that). I wore it over my back so there were quite a bit of "gravity" issues.
Apparently, I'm not the only one with the witchking blade; when we pulled in, I saw a guy with the witchking blade strapped to his backpack, which worked cooler than my homemade creation. I met him later on which was cool.
Most of the people didn't dress in the period but the ones that did seemed to get the most of out it; lots of role-playing for sure (give me your tears gypsie).
There were some strange costumes though. I saw one Link, complete with shield and sword and he looked really cool. I also saw the most modestly-dressed succubus ever. Then again, I never went over to Odin's Ale, which I should have since I wasn't driving but a drink is best enjoyed with company and there was none to be had. The jousting event was pretty cool though; they almost knocked each other off the horse but the guy recovered.
The thing that really made the fair though was the vendors. There were lots of cool things to get from charms and necklaces to real leatherworkers, swordsmiths and costume garb. Apparently J bought a pair of real leather boots for ZOMG amount of money (we're talking you won't see such high prices in designer stores (i.e. the mall) because everything fancier is just hedonism rearing its ugly head ;) ) We spent time with an Italian leatherworker who explained the difference between good and sucktastic boots (I forgot already though, sorry). Then some guy ordered a scabbard and let me tell you, those scabbards are a thing of beauty. I left after a while to find J again but ryan told me that one such scabbard runs for around $300-350. Mind you, it is custom-made for your sword and only fine leather and ornaments are used. I'm seriously tempted to get one for my blade :).
The fair ended with a medieval reenactment of robin hood which was cool. Of course the fair owner appeared as King Richard to "save the day" and lead everyone in song.
I also ran into who must have been Jess' older cousin :). I forgot to bring a camera but in case I find pictures that someone else took, I'll try to post them here. Definitely the most fun I've had in a while; worth the two-hour ride with Ryan, although honestly, riding with him isn't bad ever since I discovered Tim Russert & Meet the Press, which we now watch on the dashboard of his prius. Apparently though there exists this bond between prius owners as they feel the need to park near each other or to alert each other to their presence that they're fighting the man. Then again, 50 mpg is pretty hot.
I better stop rambling now; I'll do an update about what's been going on here in a bit - we'll see how that goes. yeah ... :). Enjoy thy read.
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| An old tradition that people used to engage in whenever receiving an academy award would be to open with "I would like to thank God." Nowadays, God has become unfashionable so that doesn't happen; even so, for many of them to say it was somewhat silly insofar that few of the were actually grateful.
I, on the other hand, would like to thank God.
This film has been an incredibly difficult experience. I've had two different sets of actors; multiple sets of crew, of which principal people left at the worse times. There were several times where my ability to complete the film was on thin ice.
Some shoots were great; some were hell. Some made me nervous the entire time and some made me thankful that we were shooting at all. Post production took incredibly long as well will some things succeeding greatly while other things I wish I could spend more time on. Nonetheless, the most important thing here is that it's done.
I would like to thank God for bringing me through this. Seriously.
I would like to thank everyone that ever helped me with this film, especially the one that stuck around during the hard times. Especially, I'd like to thank Eric for jumping in whenever I needed him. I'd like to thank Brian for putting up with me during that time :) as well as jumping in at the last minute when I needed him. He does make a cool paralegal :). I'd like to thank Brett for being one of the most reliable help on set. I'd like to thank Derek for his invaluable help in the project creatively. I'd like to thank all of you from CCC, and there were many of you, that came out for the Restaurant scene and other stuff.
Yes, there are some serious production quality misgivings. I still can't get over the shody wallpaper job we wound up with. I'm still a little upset that I could not get a single DP to commit to the project and so the shooting quality is somewhat uneven as I was crash-learning camera choreography on the fly. However, it is what it is and I must say that it was an incredible learning experience. I can only look forward to the fact that the next film will be so much better because of it. I know I certainly grew as a director, which was what my original goal was for this project anyways.
I'm making DvD's for whoever wants a copy. Contact me either here or e-mail/phone and I will get you a copy this weekend. Eventually, I'll upload it to YouTube or something so more of you'll be able to see it.
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