This is what I deal with. All the time. “The Vendor / Client Relationship – In Real World Situations”
This not only makes me laugh out loud by myself, but makes me want to punch someone in the face because it rings so goddamn true.
Chris Milk is one of my favorite directors. You’ve probably already seen some of his work. He did the video for Gnarles Barkley’s “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul”. Anyways, he’s just released this beautiful 42 second short film produced for the 42 Second Dream Film Festival.
MMA fighter Kevin Casey decided it would be a good idea to make a rap video with him and his crew. It even has a token white boy in the video dancing in the background. Oh yes Norma Jean, it gets much MUCH better. The white boy in question is none other than Orange County’s best trust fund baby, king of the douche bags, aspiring “rapper”, and all around poser, Spencer Pratt.
I’m not one for celebrity gossip or whatever, but for some reason, this fool really chaps my ass. I think he epitomizes exactly what people mean when they talk about the fakeness of Los Angeles etc. Whatever tho. Check the video out. Pure comedy GOLD.
Haven’t really had any time whatsoever to update, but I wanted to take like 5-10 minutes just to recap how things have been going the last 12 days:
That about covers the past couple of weeks up till now. I’m still editing that FL video in my extremely limited spare time. I wanna get that done soon. Plus I should have a couple new projects to pimp online in the next month. Should be exciting.
Holy shit.
So today is my 29th birthday. It’s strange to know that this is the last year of an entire decade of my life. Your 20′s are supposed to be full of promise, and adventure, and new experiences. Now that I think about it, as I embark on the final 365 days of my 20′s, mine have been full of adventure and plenty of experiences (both good and bad).
I wasn’t really thinking about it (typical) until I had a conversation with my friend Hana the other day. We were in her car on the 101 heading out to pick up a hard drive that has some video footage I’m editing and compositing (more on that later). Typical California day: bright and sunny, warm, smoggy. There wasn’t much traffic, which for 4:15pm on a Sunday was odd, but welcomed. As our conversations always seem to do, we traversed the banal to the esoteric. At some point after we picked up the drive, but before arriving back at my apartment, we ended up talking about where we were in life compared to where we THOUGHT we’d be 10 years ago. More like her telling me “Ari, I’m nowhere near where I thought I would be and that shit sucks.”
Which got me thinking a lot about where I thought I would be by the time I hit 29. Honestly, if you had asked me 10 years ago where I’d be when I was 29, I had my textbook response already practiced and read to tell you with a completely unintentional air of smugness: “Twenty-nine, workin’ at Pixar, living in California, and probably married.” That was my answer. Ten years later I find it hard to swallow that a) that’s how simply I could boil my future life down to just a single sentence, and b) I was SO far off the mark (besides the California thing, but even then, Pixar is located near SF, not LA).
Compare where I am to where I thought I would be. Currently I do in fact live in California, southern Cal, but still California. I do not work for Pixar, in fact, thanks to the recession, I’ve found it pretty hard to work for anyone. I am not married. The girl that I thought I would be with just recently got engaged to someone else. But, even though I’m completely off the mark of where I was so sure I’d be 10 years ago, I’ve never been happier.
Why is that? For me, personally, I think that very few people’s plans about where they see themselves “10 years from now” ever pan out. It’s asinine to try to see yourself 87,600 hours into the future when I personally have problems figuring out where I’ll be on a Friday night, and at MOST that’s 72 hours in my future. My Mother and Father said it best (and their advice seems to ring truer and truer as I get older) when they said that life isn’t a race, and it’s not a destination. It’s the JOURNEY that matters. It truly is. There have been so many unexpected events in my life. So many things that you can’t even try to anticipate. It’s not about any of that, but how you deal with it. I made the move to Los Angeles a little over a year ago, and sure, I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m working towards it.
I know there are people that believe in me, and at the same time I know there are people who don’t. That’s just how things go. I eat well. I exercise and keep myself healthy. I’m making friends and meeting new people. I own a motorcycle, something I’ve wanted since I was a kid. I wake up everyday not a slave to someone else’s schedule. Since moving to LA, I’ve had one of the most explosive growths as an artist since as far back as I can remember even picking up a pencil and drawing. Everyday I’m experiencing new things and meeting new people. I have an amazing network of friends and family that supports me in everything I do.
Yeah, I’m not at Pixar, married, and living in [Northern] California. The way I see it, I’m actually much better off. I wouldn’t trade in any of the hardships, heartaches, confusion, uncertainty, joy, anticipation, anxiousness, elation, and adventure for anything in the world. It’s everything I’ve done up to this point that’s mattered. This point in time on it’s own is meaningless without everything else that’s occurred.
So as I sit on the edge of my 20′s, looking into the last year of this decade of my life, I’m not going to try to figure out where I’ll be 10 years from this point. Who knows. That’s all part of the fun.