Scott Bush

Three things you should NOT search for on Google’s Image search (I’ve con­ve­niently made each entry a link to that search to test your resolve. Don’t blame me if you click them…):

1. Bed Bugs
2. Fun­nel Spider
3. Meth Mouth

I warned you…

Tomor­row morn­ing I’ll be act­ing in my brother-in-law’s movie Unseen Abil­i­ties. Most of the movie is already filmed but tomorrow’s shoot will fill in some miss­ing scenes, one of which is a hos­pi­tal scene where the main char­ac­ter is treated after an acci­dent. I’ll be play­ing “unnamed doc­tor,” and I expect my screen time not to exceed five sec­onds. But it’ll still be great to be a part—however small—of this project. I’m very impressed with Dustin’s direct­ing and man­ag­ing of the project, Joe and Eli’s act­ing, and Joe and Dustin’s joint efforts to edit the film (on a badass Mac Pro, of course).

Not since col­lege have I been in front of a cam­era play­ing a role. Two friends and I “starred” in a par­ody of 1999’s Blair Witch Project we filmed in and around the Uni­ver­sity of Washington’s com­puter labs. It was filmed to intro­duce incom­ing stu­dent employ­ees of the com­puter lab to the UWired cul­ture. For those who care, it was called The Balmer Lab Project and cen­tered around a “rival” com­puter lab on cam­pus. (I’ll see if I can dig up some video of that, but trust me: you’re not miss­ing much).

I’d be remiss if I didn’t men­tion my first big role: a police cap­tain in a classmate’s senior project film: MTHS Vice. Don’t remem­ber much about it except I for­got I was in a scene one after­noon and showed up late, in shorts and a tee-shirt, wear­ing glasses I’d not been wear­ing in ear­lier shoots. Oh well. Lisa grad­u­ated and that was that.

I had an oppor­tu­nity to waste some time on YouTube today and thought I’d share two very watch­able shorts. Both are stop motion and let me tell you, stop motion has come a long way from Gumby.

The first, Tony vs. Paul, is bet­ter than the sec­ond, My Ani­mated World, both in tech­ni­cal pre­ci­sion and over­all story. I’ll wait while you check them out.

Can you believe the time these peo­ple spent on these films? That fact alone is wor­thy of all the praise you can lav­ish upon them. But add to that the incred­i­ble cre­ativ­ity of these guys. I’m not as impressed with My Ani­mated World because it’s a bit jerkier and the story isn’t quite as com­pelling. But of course you have to respect the old-school Tetris and Snake interludes.There are a ton of other stop-motion films out there worth watch­ing. Maybe it’s due in part to new soft­ware tools like Boinx Software’s iStop­Mo­tion? Or per­haps it’s just this generation’s abun­dance of free time? Either way it makes for some watch­able con­tent on YouTube.

Tak­ing a page from my friend Brad’s bookblog, “Lists make great cop-out posts,” I’m fol­low­ing suit. I’ve not writ­ten as much as I’d like lately and my hand­ful of faith­ful read­ers (only a few fin­gers of which are related) are get­ting annoyed with me. Here you go:

Four Jobs I’ve Had

1. Mac­in­tosh com­puter salesman
2. Com­puter “pre­ven­ta­tive main­te­nance tech­ni­cian” (a euphemism for com­puter janitor)
3. Tech­ni­cal writer at an inter­net start-up
4. Online mar­ket­ing manager

Four Places I’ve Lived

1. Greater Seat­tle area
2. See #1
3. See #1
4. See #1

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

1. Sein­field
2. Heroes
3. Good Eats
4. Star Trek (DS9, TNG, VOY, ENT) — yes, I admit it

Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation

1. Angers, Que­bec — Canada
2. Hanoi, Dong Ha, Saigon — Vietnam
3. Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima — Japan
4. San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia — USA

Four Web­sites I Visit Daily (well, often)

1. Macru­mors
2. CNN
3. Defec­tive Yeti
4. Var­i­ous friends blogs

Four Favorite Foods

1. Sushi — rolls, nigiri, tem­pura, etc.
2. Phở — Than Brother’s veg­e­tar­ian tofu phở
3. Mex­i­can — Gordi­tos bur­ri­tos are excellent
4. Mac and Cheese — the orig­i­nal and best com­fort food

Four Places I’d Rather Be

1. At the dojo training
2. At Zoka’s read­ing and drink­ing coffee
3. Trav­el­ing some­where and see­ing some­where new
4. Watch­ing a sun­set in Edmonds with my wife (awwww…)

“The hap­pi­est day in a boat owner’s life is the day he buys his boat. The sec­ond hap­pi­est day in a boat owner’s life is the day he sells his boat.”

Exchange “boat” for “rental property.”

I’m no fan of fast food, but it’s impos­si­ble not to notice all the adver­tis­ing they put out. Some of it is vapid, unimag­i­na­tive junk (McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it”); some creepy (any­thing with Burger King’s plas­tic, giant-headed “king” char­ac­ter); and some actu­ally funny (Jack in the Box’s ads fea­tur­ing “Jack“—who also has a giant head).

The other day I was hor­ri­fied by Dairy Queen’s ani­mated com­mer­cial. If you’re for­tu­nate enough to have avoided it, con­grat­u­la­tions; let me explain it. An male shrimp is pop­ping fried bits into his mouth from a DQ box. His wife (pre­sum­ably; maybe they’re just shack­ing up?) appears and he tells her he’s eat­ing pop­corn. Appar­ently smarter than her exo-skeletal mate, she says “that’s not pop­corn, that’s pop­corn shrimp!” A preg­nant pause, then: “where are the chil­dren?!” she screams, and he joins her.

What is DQ say­ing here? That their food is so good that it inspires not only can­a­bal­ism, but infan­ti­ci­dal canna­bal­ism? Assum­ing the shrimp knows what he’s eat­ing, that’s what it means. The alter­na­tive is almost worse: that a restau­rant has kid­napped baby shrimp (a crus­tacean ver­sion of the Gob­blers from the Golden Com­pass) and know­ingly feed­ing it its cus­tomers. Who the hell’s behind the counter at DQ? Han­ni­bal Lecter?

Mar­ket­ing 101 tells us that this com­mer­cial works great because here we are talk­ing about it: “no such thing as bad pub­lic­ity.” But damn, this com­mer­cial is gross and yes, bor­der­ing on offen­sive. DQ, you’ve lost my busi­ness! (Sure, I’ve only eaten there twice in the past few years, if you call hav­ing a Bliz­zard “eating.”)