Category Archives: Life

Pic of the day September 13, 2010

"Cuatro tacos al pastor, por favor."

At night these little taco stands pop up around Lincoln Heights. This one at Ave. 26 and Humboldt seems to be there the most consistently. I finally tried one of these spots out. It was awesome.

-Bryan

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Settling in: Adventures in clothing storage

The new pad

Yeah so there is some pretty big news I guess I neglected to mention on this blog because I actually have mentioned nothing on this blog because I am a terrible blogger. And the main part of the news is that I have moved out of the old garage and I am now living in Lincoln Heights.

before: a terrible jumble

I have moved in with Dwight, who I guess is sort of a colleague of mine. He is a great key grip and you might remember him from his In-N-Out tour. His old roommate got married and moved out and so I took the old roommate’s place. We live in the top floor of a pretty rad old victorian house with some great views. I’m pretty happy with the place.

For a couple of weeks after moving in, I didn’t really have time to get around to solving the problem of having a lack of storage space in my new room. I had piles of clothes and other things just taking over the whole room.

I had been trying for a couple of weeks to find a dresser I liked on craigslist but the owners would keep flaking out after the point of letting me know where to pick up the dresser. Well, to be fair, in one case the guy let me know that someone else had already bought it before I could make it down there, but anyway, I got tired of the pile of junk in my room and decided to head out to Ikea and just buy something new.

Recently my sister bought a new dresser from Ikea for her old room and I just remember the particle board or MDF or whatever “outgassing” like crazy and just filling the whole house with these eye-watering fumes. I decided to try to avoid having the same problem by unboxing all of the parts in a well-ventilated room in the back of the house and I let everything air out for a solid 24 hours or more before bringing the parts into my room and assembling them.

Pre-outgassing

In the end, the pre-outgassing was only partially successful as the fumes still filled up my room for a few days afterward but it wasn’t as strong, I don’t think. It’s been well over a week now and the smell is still there a bit, especially inside the drawers.

a helping hand

Ikea says that building this thing is a two-person job so I enlisted the help of my good friend Mr. Coleman to get me through some of the tricker bits.

after

The end result is looking a lot neater. I was hoping to get one of these used (and pre-outgassed!) for about a third of what I ended up paying but in the end my impatience for the huge unruly pile of crap won out over my frugal side and I made this semi-impulse buy. I say semi-impulse buy because basically all of the ones I tried to get on craigslist were this exact one, haha.

So anyway, yeah. I’m liking it so far here at the new pad. So. Yeah. End update.

-Bryan

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Dwight’s In-N-Out Tour

Back in my San Diego days way before anyone ever conceived of a “vlog”, I used to shoot little impromptu videos with my friends every once in a while but I guess since I started taking film production seriously, I kinda stopped with the little videos. Well, here’s my first new one in a long time!

My friend (and talented key grip) Dwight Stone really loves In-N-Out and has taken on a little project to show his appreciation for the company. I joined him earlier tonight on one leg of his mission. Check it out:

I actually understand his love and ability to eat burgers day in and day out, and I joined him even though I ate at In-N-Out the night before, too. That’s because the cheeseburger is pretty much my favorite food in the world. But that’s a different post.

-Bryan

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Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Here’s a little random update on some random stuff.

I worked as an extra on this past week’s episode of Cold Case. I didn’t see myself at all but I did see my car… waaaaaaaaaay in the back, haha.

Cold Case

A little over two weeks ago I bought Forza III for XBOX 360. I played it for about two hours before I had to go somewhere. When I came home I went to turn on my xbox and I got the dreaded red ring of death. It was quite frustrating to have that happen right after getting a new game, haha. Well I finally got it back the other day and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying Forza. I don’t think I’ll be needing a Playstation 3 or waiting for Gran Turismo 5 anymore. It’s awesome.

And now on the topic of thanksgiving. I recently came to the conclusion that rule of law is the most taken-for-granted thing in America. Few people who grew up here know what it is like to live without it. Let me tell you that without rule of law, everything pretty much sucks and nothing can get better.

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Good news, bad news (or “Going back to the beginning”)

Good news: I got to work on the Warner Brothers studio backlot!

Bad news: I was working as an extra.

Good news: Extras get paid

Bad news: I really need the money this time, haha.

Back when I was still living in San Diego I answered a craigslist ad and ended up working as an extra on an episode of Veronica Mars which was shot there. At the time I was considering moving up to L.A. and going to film school, but I really had no idea if I really wanted to give up my life of leisure in San Diego to enter an industry I really didn’t know anything about. Working as an extra on a TV show seemed like a great way to be able to get on a real, professional set, without having to know anybody or know anything.

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