I’m sitting here at the Toyota dealership in Leesburg getting my 15k mile maintenance done… the guy at the counter told me it could take up to two hours! What better time for some in the field blogging action?

Katie and I have been together for over 5 years, and to celebrate we decided to take a trip to San Francisco. We were told they get a decent amount of rain, lots of fog, and ever changing temperatures. We lucked out and the weather couldn’t have been nicer, clear skies and no fog…the temperature did fluctuate quite a bit though. We visited Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Alcatraz Island (and escaped!), watched the Chinese New Year’s parade, and of course walked haf way across The Golden Gate Bridge. We stayed in the Stratford Hotel on Powell Street where the trolleys run and is around the corner from Union Square.

I managed to snap a decent number of photos, but I have only processed and posted images from our third and final day in California. Check out my San Francisco photo set in Flickr, more photos are on the way.

PS: About 3/4 through this blog my car was done – it only took an hour after all.

First off….go vote tomorrow. Now on to my log:

Saturday night was the big night…the Amends to My Life midnight movie premiere (my first ever attendance at a premiere [possibly the last?]). Kevin and I were invited to this private, “formal” affair after developing the Amends to My Life website about a month ago. A few quick facts about the movie/movie premiere:

• Title: Amends to My Life
• Runtime: 102 minutes
• Screenplay by: Ben Solenberger and Jaymes Camery
• Theater: Carmike Cinemas – Apple Blossom Six
• Attendance: 175+ (according to the official ATML blog)

Film Synopsis:

Can a friendship survive anything?

Two high school seniors go through their last few months of school by having fun and living every day for laughs. As the school year comes to an end these guys must decide. College or work? If they part ways will the friendship survive time, women, careers, school, and just plain life? This is a film that shows the evolution of change in friends. All relationships can be broken. By what?

Everybody has a purpose and that’s what these guys must figure out for themselves.

So this heterosexuals first problem was what to wear…the event was “formal” but I also heard a rumor that at least one person who was pretty involved with the whole shindig would be wearing some sort of full body costume (guess he chickened out). I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to bust out the tuxedo t-shirt! Katie and I searched for it but it turned up one day too late. Instead I went with khakis / shirt / tie…and I convinced Kevin (pictured right curtsying) not to wear his suit jacket so he wouldn’t out-shine me. It turns out we were about the median when it came to formal dress. Some people were in jeans and t-shirts, others full suits and red-carpet-ready dresses.

As we arrived we saw the marquee with “Amends to My Life Premier” all lit up. Both Jaymes and Ben spoke to the audience about the movie, thanking everyone involved (which was almost everyone in attendance). Ben informed the audience that this was indeed an independent, ultra low budget movie (funded almost entirely by Ben as I understand it)…and with that in mind we might notice a few flubs here and there, especially with the audio (which turned out to be my biggest criticism with the movie). The last thing Ben said was “Now, there is a bit a vulgar language in the film, so please don’t be offended”. This film is not rated, but it would certainly be rated R just for the language (there was no violence, and sadly no nudity either).

The movie started about 12:30am. I recognized a couple of Winchester hot spots used for filming including Cork Street Tavern and the very movie theater we were sitting in. While Ben was the driving force behind the physical comedy aspect of the film, Lauren Schacher (a.k.a Lauren Perkins) was central in many of the more serious scenes and I thought she did a great job. I did laugh out loud (LOLOLOL!!!) quite a few times during the movie, some jokes seemed forced and some went over well. I wish that Adam Breslaw (who played Ben’s hardware store coworker Carl) had a larger role in the movie…he really gave a great performance even though he only had one scene.

By the end of the movie I had a pounding headache (mostly due to the fact that I am still getting over a nasty cold)…but this made me notice the audio levels a bit(which I said before was my main gripe) – some parts I was straining to hear the dialogue and then something in the background would be painfully overpowering. I’m sure this was less of an issue for everyone who didn’t have a cold inducing headache.  Another big issue for me was the difference between high school Ben and James, and old Ben and James, there was as section of the movie with flashback scenes between the old and the young characters, and I had a hard time differentiating between them.
Overall, for what it was (an ultra low budget, independent movie) I think it turned out good. It was funny, and a bit thought provoking. After the credits rolled (Kevin and I were credited) we picked up our copy of the DVD, and headed to the most obvious place 2:30am hangout: Waffle House!

I’m working (as little as possible) from home today. I’m sick and I feel like crap, so that means it’s time to catch up on some blogging.

First things first: Toine (of doh blog fame) is officially a word in the Urban Dictionary. Check out the definition and give it a thumbs up while you’re there.

This past weekend Katie and I made a trip to New Jersey to visit her family. While in the area I figured I go and visit stanus.net himself in his new abode of New York City. Since Stan has yet to get a job he was free to meet me on Friday…well he was free to meet me after I convinced him to get up extra early to meet me in Times Square at 12:45 in the afternoon. Yeah he’s a bum. We grabbed some food where Stan expressed his disappointment in the amount of bee-log output as of late…maybe this super blog will keep him satisfied for a while.

The picture I would have used for this blog (had it ever been taken) was Stan embracing the “naked cowboy” that always plays his guitar in Times Square. We saw him but by the time we made it in his direction he was gone…maybe a bit too cold for his whitey tighties. Instead this is me in Times Square (Photo courtesy Stanus)

Stan really wanted to go to MTV to get on TRL (Total Request Live) but I convinced him we should walk a couple bocks to go to Rockefeller center so we could check out the NBC studios and possible get standby tickets to see Conan. Well Conan was on vacation but we did get to see Dr Keith Ablow (Topic: I don’t want to be a virgin anymore). This was not too exciting – Dr Keith didn’t really need to be a doctor…I think Riki Lake would have dove into these peoples problems more than Albow did. After yelling things toine-related during audience reactions/applause we slipped out after the show was over (they were going to record more segments for other shows after that! But we had had enough Albow for one sitting).

After Albow we went on the NBC studio tour – since we were the 2nd to last group of the day, Stan and I made up 50% of the tour group. The highlight of the tour was checking out the Saturday Night Live studio as they were painting sets and getting things set up for the show. The studio definitely looked smaller than I would have imagined…but so did all the sets we saw that day (Dateline, Ablow, and on a different trip the Conan set).

Overall it was a good weekend…before heading home my future father-in-law gave me an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) to try out. In a future episode of the Bee-Log I will prepare the meal and review it here.

Go vote on Tuesday. If you live in Virginia, vote no on ballot question #1, and vote for a change in the Senate race….polls say this will be a close one so get out there and vote for Webb, or vote for a third party, but most importantly just get out and vote.