“If You Can Feel What I’m Feelin’, Then It’s a Musical Masterpiece…” R.I.P. Adam Yauch

Everyone dies. Rich people, poor people, smart people, good people, bad people and talented people.
It’s a natural part of life that every single one of us will someday face and succumb to. Knowing that doesn’t make it any more comforting or acceptable to me.
I’ve long feared death and been troubled by it since I was a young child lying in my bedroom late one night thinking about everyone I know and love dying and being gone forever.

I don’t believe in “God”, no matter how many times I said prayers at night with my parents. They always felt like something I said because I was told to, not because in my heart I felt it.
The words were never reassuring and to this day I don’t have any sense of an afterlife where those who pass on go to live in bliss w/ the creator.
I’d like to believe there is some sort of afterlife…but I’m not about to claim I know what that afterlife is or what anyone can expect from it.

That being said, this post isn’t a rant on religion, but I did want to establish my perspective on the subject of what lies beyond our mortal coil.
Bottomline is, I don’t know. None of us do. That’s part of the fear and the fascination I have with it.

Death is final. There’s no coming back from it. Sure, if you’re one of those people who dies and then is brought back to life by the paramedics or doctors, I guess you “cheat” death on some level, but only momentarily. The reality though, is that when you die, you’re gone.

It’s not something I look forward to, it’s not something I am going to be OK with once those close to me are buried in the ground, and it’s not something that I ever like to hear about happening to someone I’ve known my whole life. I’m not talking about my parents, or one of my brothers, or even a close friend.
I’m talking about artist Adam Yauch, commonly known as MCA of the Beastie Boys.

Did I personally know Adam Yauch? No. I never met the guy and I never had any physical interaction with the man. I only listened to his music and saw him on television or the internet.
His death today still affects me a great deal. Not nearly as much as it affects his family and friends and those closest to him. I can’t imagine the loss they feel, but as someone who grew up listening to the Beastie Boys since I was 11 years old, this loss is still an impact on me.

I grew up in a small college and farm town 2 hours east of Seattle, WA called Ellensburg. I actually grew up on a farm and until around the age of 11 and 12 listened to The Oak Ridge Boys, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Kenny Loggins and The Statler Brothers. I was raised on Country music.
It wasn’t until around 6th grade that I was turned on to other types of music. Motley Crue, Poison, Bon Jovi, Metallica — it really changed my life. But one group in particular that affected me moreso than I realized at the time was The Beastie Boys.

I had borrowed and copied ‘License to Ill’ from a friend of mine and played that cassette on repeat for hours in my room. The song everyone was going apeshit over in my school was “Fight for Your Right (To Party)”. At the age of 11 I was too young to really comprehend a lot of that album. I didn’t know what Brass Monkey was, or that No Sleep Til Brooklyn was a song about touring — I was young and naive. But what I did comprehend was the energy and the power of the music I was hearing.
3 white guys rapping? It was unheard of.
Rap was just becoming huge at the time and it was most definitely not something white people were adept at. But these 3 kids from Brooklyn were doing it and became one of the biggest rap groups in history.

When you’re a white kid on a farm, and you’re looking for something — ANYTHING — to rebel against your immediate surroundings, there was nothing better than that album. I would crank it at full volume and just rock the fuck out. From the opening drums of “Rhymin and Stealin” to the quirky, sexist rant of “Girls”, the empowering “Fight For Your Right”, all the way to the fun and engaging story of “Paul Revere”, that album changed my comprehension of reality.
It was my first introduction to rap. Even though I would be exposed to Run DMC, 2 Live Crew, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Vanilla Ice and Digital Underground over the next few years, none of those groups affected me or excited me like The Beastie Boys.

I slept on their second album, ‘Paul’s Boutique’ until later in life, and sort of forgot about the Beastie Boys for awhile as I was getting in to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fishbone, Primus and Faith No More. I was very excited by the possibility of combining rap with metal. It was new, it was different and it was even more exciting than hearing ‘License To Ill’ for the first time.
Lo and behold though, once I moved away from home and lived in Seattle I was re-introduced to the Beastie Boys via ‘Check Your Head’ — to this date one of my favorite albums of all time.
I fell in love with those 3 white guys from Brooklyn all over again. This carried on into their album ‘Ill Communication’, after which we went our separate ways, but I never omitted them from any mixtape or mix CD I would put together and they were always one of my favorites.

I grew up on the Beastie Boys. They were part of the soundtrack to my youth and continue to be a staple in my musical palette. Without them we wouldn’t have bands like Rage Against The Machine, 311, Korn, Faith No More or even Eminem. They paved the way for a lot of the music we hear today and I dare someone to argue that they weren’t the catalyst for Rap music’s mainstream rise in the 80′s and subsequent take over of popular music up through today.

So, while I write this blog post I think about this person whom I have never met, who never knew I even existed, yet this individual changed my life in a profound way that even those closest to me cannot lay claim to.

Adam Yauch, you will be missed by not just myself, but by the entire world. Those that don’t understand you and your fellow Beastie Boys’ impact on the world of music might learn so now because of your death, but they will never have the experience that I had.

Thank you for being a part of my life and for breaking boundaries and giving a white kid from Ellensburg a piece of motivation and determination to fulfill his dreams.
You are, and will forever be, truly missed. My heart goes out to your family and your friends.

R.I.P. MCA.

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LEVI’S SPEC COMMERCIAL “SERIOUSLY”

Today was an interesting today. I had absolutely no intention of doing anything other than working and hang out with my friend Jared.
We had decided to go to lunch and catch up a bit.

His friend Christian tagged along and we were at Subway eating and talking about the music business and viral videos and Twitter when Jared mentioned a commercial idea that he had talked of in the past.
The concept was simple and so in my excitement to film something and be creative I said, “Fuck it, let’s do it today!”

So the three of us loaded up into my truck, drove back to my house to grab my Canon t2i and headed back to the area where we ate lunch in Emeryville, CA and proceeded to shoot this commercial idea.
We brought along my friend Jared’s roommate, Mike, and our cast was complete.

The entire shoot took about an hour and a half and by the time we actually started shooting it was getting dark and overcast.
The very last shots we got in it actually started to rain.

Overall it was a fun shoot and I came home and edited together what you see below.
The whole thing took about 4 hours over the course of 12. It was a lot of fun and we think it came out pretty close to how we envisioned.

My friend Jared Schmit plays the Annoyed Guy, Mike Bishop plays the Passerby and Christian Olesen plays the Guy with No Pants.
The original idea was to pitch this to Levi’s for fun just to see if they would like it, but most of all we just did it to see if we could.
We did. Enjoy!

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HELP! I’M ALIVE… @ WONDERCON 2012

Felicia Day w/ our zombie mascot, Walter

It’s been a minute since WonderCon, but I wanted to write up a blog about it since it was a pretty awesome experience.

This was the second year in a row ‘Help! I’m Alive…’ was at WonderCon.
This year we had a 10×10 booth and were placed in the very center of the convention floor right between CapCom & Game of Thrones. Needless to say we got a lot of traffic, especially due to our booth babes and zombie babes!

The exposure was really impressive as our zombies and promo models appeared on sites such as G4TV, Huffington Post, The Chive, Movie Viral and a few others here and there. I know the REELZ Channel even interviewed our very own Chrysalis Rose!

On top of all that it was 3 days of WonderCon Madness! Cosplay girls, superheroes, Star Wars, props, photo ops and so much more — I wish we could do these every weekend!!

One of the highlights for sure was Felicia Day taking a photo with our zombie dummy mascot, Walter!
I was sitting at the booth and I saw her walking down one of the adjacent aisles and I seized the opportunity to run over and ask her if she’d take a photo with our zombie.
I’m not sure why, but she followed me over to our booth and posed for the photo you see above.
If you don’t know who Felicia Day is, you should Google her. She’s pretty awesome!

We showed 12 different scenes from our pilot episode, which went over great!!
Everyone was asking about the show and when it would be available to watch. While we were wanting to premiere the pilot at WonderCon, we realized after editing everything together that we had shot that we still wanted to shoot a few more scenes to really make it the best episode it could be.

Huge thank you to The Geek Speak Show who came by and conducted a video interview w/ us. Henry and the crew have been huge supporters of the show since last year’s WonderCon and we really appreciate the love.
Check out this interview:

As we prep for our final days of shooting the pilot so we can put it online, we’re also going through the stack of business cards we got from various people who showed an interest in the show and who wanted to be a part of it in some form or another. From actors to promotion to distribution — people really liked ‘Help! I’m Alive…’.

Here are some photos from WonderCon 2012:

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WONDERCON 2012

This weekend I hit the open road and drive down to Anaheim for WonderCon 2012 where we will be world premiering the pilot episode of the web series I’ve been working on for about the past 2 years: Help! I’m Alive…! Very excited!!

Here’s a behind-the-scenes clip from set:

Come check us out at Booth 544 on the Convention floor!
See you there…

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LATYRX “HARDSHIP ENTERPRISE” NEW MUSIC VIDEO

Today we dropped the new music video from Latyrx (Lyrics Born & Lateef the Truthspeaker) for the song “Hardship Enterprise” — a track off of Lateef’s new album FIREWIRE.

The video was shot at The Independent on November 26th, 2011.
It was directed by myself and Mark Austin Heim (Maximum Flavor Media). Mark, myself and our editor, Triv, put the edit together just this last Friday and then I took it home to “tweak” it and finished it last night.

A little last minute, but I’d like to think we work well under pressure.

Originally we were wanting to put this out as a live version of the song from The Independent, but decided to turn it into an official music video.
Great show and I’m happy with the video turned out.

Check Latyrx out at www.LatyrxAuthentic.com

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