I Could Not Stop Laughing

Enjoy...

I Love Tom Cruise

The Dark Knight on Blu-Ray

The biggest movie of the year is released on DVD/Blu-Ray, today. Also, I am going on vacation. Yeah, you guessed it, I will spend my time off watching The Dark Knight and all the special features. I also just got Call of Duty: World at War for PS3...yep, that is pretty much what I will be doing. Although walkinvisible would rather have me updating my blog during my free time.

Flames take on Canadiens tonight in a rematch of the 1986 and 1989 Stanley Cup Finals, the last time two Canadian teams met in the Finals. Could tonight's game be a sneak peek of the 2009 Cup Finals??? GO FLAMES!

November 5, 1955

Important day in history, as today...back in 1955, is when Dr. Emmet Lathrop Brown came up with the idea of the flux capacitor. The idea came to him in a vision after being knocked out. He bumped his head after slipping off the toilet while standing on it to hang a clock. The flux capacitor, as we all know, is what makes time travel possible.

Hard to believe that was 53 years ago. It seems like it was yesterday or maybe even...tomorrow.

How awesome is the picture above? Pretty damn AWESOME! Yeah, that is a Calgary Flames jacket I am wearing.

Dream Halloween 2008

My Darth Mater went up for auction at the Dream Halloween charity in Los Angeles...well, technically, Santa Monica.


There were a lot of celebrities there, movie stars and TV stars. But, no TV star as famous as this guy:


Yep, that is the real original Batmobile from the Batman TV series form 1966. Anyway, here is a picture of some dork with Darth Mater. You can see the size of it...if you know how big I am.

Along with about 15 other pieces, the item was auctioned off.

The winning bid went for $10,000 to this guy:

Uh...the one on the right won the auction, the one on the left has no money. It just happen that he is the President of Mattel's Boy's Division, so sorta like my boss. I wonder if he knows who I am or what I do for the company.

Before I left, I got a picture of one of the coolest people you will ever meet. A huge TV star for the past 20 years, and still does not look a day over 10 years old...Bart Simpson.

Back to Pixar

Got a chance to go back to Pixar. This time it was for business. I cannot go into detail of what went on, but I can share what 'unofficially' went on.

Fort Knox of cereal.

Last time I mentioned the FREE cereal bar. This time, Jun and I took full advantage of the word FREE. I could live here.

Fridge full of milk. Whole milk, low fat, non fat...even different kinds of soy milk.

I went sans milk, and i kept the biodegradable spoon. Honey Nut Chex, in case you want to know. That is Luigi in the back.


Parting shot, one last picture before we left for the day. Hope to back there soon.

To Boldly Go...

My buddy Jun need to get to a vent in his attic. I volunteered to go up in his attic. A hole needed to be cut into the existing vent, then the new vent tube shoved into the hole.

That is me in a very tight space.

Here is he hole. I had cut the hole, then cut darts along the edge and folded the exposed sharp edge over. Nice and smooth. There was not much elbow room there to move, not much leverage. I was on my stomach the entire time. Jun is going to let me live in his attic...rent free!

Shot of Jun from the attic. Prep for the new tube.


Expanding foam to seal the gaps. Seven inch tube shoved into a five and half inch hole.


Jun patching up the old exhaust hole.

A view from ground level. New vent tube next to old vent hole.

Telemarketers and Spammers

I just got a call from a telemarketer...

Wait, before I get to that....Yesterday, I replied to a spam email. In the past few months, I have been getting an email from a Nancy Keenan. I tried to block it, report it...yet I just kept getting them. So, in a fit of rage, I went to the website she was promoting and got all the email addresses I could fine and wrote to them. Basically profanity and calling them terrorists. I sent it about 50 times, hoping the clog their inbox as they have clogged mine. I will not taint my blog by giving them any free advertising (not like anyone reads this). But know that you know her name, please be warned.

...anyway, I just got a call from a telemarketer. I could have sworn that I 'registered' on the 'no call' list. Now, this is my mobile phone that they call, so I am paying for theses minutes that they are wasting. So, I get a call from an unknown number. I usually do not pick up, but sometimes international numbers come up as 'unknown'...and there is a chance that someone from overseas may be trying to reach me.

Today, the guy on the other end wanted to sell car insurance (I think). He introduced himself and asked if i was up to date with my car registration. I really cannot remember the details, but he did ask for what make and model my car is...

First of all, I did notice that it took the douche bag a few seconds to reply back when I answered. I obviously did not recognize the voice or really what the hell he was talking about.

...I said, "what?" and he said, "I want to verify what make and model your car is." This is the good part...I said, "Car? I do not even have a driver's license"...at that point, he hung up. What a total douche bag!

I win!

So, I have decided that I am going to have fun with spammers and telemarketers. Telemarketers are more fun, because you get immediate feedback. I encourage all of you to do that same, see how long you can keep the telemarketer on the line before he/she hangs up on you. Forward junk mail to spammers. Give them all a taste of their own medicine.

Calgary Flames on Wikipedia

There, right on the front page. Calgary Flames as the featured article. Do not bother going there after today, it will change. I included a screen shot of it just for my records, because I know you are not reading this.

Car Fire

Saw this on the freeway. Must be a huge Calgary Flames fan. GO FLAMES!

Darth Mater

I am way too lazy to write anything up for this right now. So, click here and look at some photos of Darth Mater. Maybe later I will write something up.

UPDATE: At Comic-Con, some people were asking me what I actually did on Darth Mater. I did 90% of the sculpting of Darth Mater. Joe Sid (who is listed on the plaque) sculpted the cape.

The Mater you see underneath was first sculpted by me in 2004 and was made for the Cars toy line that you may see in the stores today. This was done from scratch in the computer using a program called Freeform and using reference photos provided by Pixar. I was also part of the license pitch that brought the Cars license to Mattel.

Anyway, in 2-3 weeks time, I sculpted Mater and it was approved by Pixar...fast forward to 2005, the movie and toys come out. Both are successful, and made/is still making tons of money for both companies.

Because of the success of the Cars movie the Mattel Design Team created a display of the characters from the movie to be auctioned off at Dream Halloween benefiting the Children Affected By AIDS Foundation. That is the first picture you see on the link above...heck, let me just steal it...hold on....here:

...there. Now, I did nothing on this one. Well, actually, like I said I did sculpt Mater, as well as, Lightning McQueen, and The King. So, those are in there a few times in different variations.

For this year's Dream Halloween, they wanted something big. Ben at Pixar came up with the idea of "Darth Mater". Gentle Giant did a few sketches and Pixar decided on the concept and I was tasked to sculpt it. Since I already had the Mater file, all I had to do was the Darth parts.

The Darth parts took about two weeks to sculpt. I worked with Ben and Emery from Pixar. Basically, I did everything you see except for that cape. Painting was done by Brandon, he is on the plaque, too. In fact, here is a picture that I jacked:

The other pictures on that site are not that great due to poor lighting at Comic-Con. Brandon did a wonderful job. There are traces of 'rust' and 'different metals'. He really made my sculpt look ten times better.

The rest was done by a bunch of people at Mattel. The pieces were printed by our Rapid Prototype Group, Perry and Bobby. Clean up of the 28 pieces were done by our shop guys. Sorry, I do not know who in the shop worked on it, but they are listed as Mattel Model Shop on the plaque. The plaques and base were made by Jim and Rex in the shop. Assembly of parts by Hank,Mike, and James (listed on plaque), this includes fitting pieces together, installing lights, installing motor, and making it move. Our Electronics Group and Sound Lab (again, I apologize, I do not know the individuals who worked on this) did the electronics, including lights, sound, movement programming.


Yeah, that is about it. In all, I estimate about thirty people had their hands on this. When Dream Halloween comes around, I will update with photos and winning bid.

Pixar Animation Studios

Yeah, I have been away for a while. Not like anyone reads this anyway. But, I did go on a trip. Actually, I went to visit Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville.


This is the entrance to the parking lot, right after you check in with security.

In the front of the building, a large scale replica of Luxo. I was told that it actually lights up at night. How cool is that?

...and the lobby. The entire left is the cafeteria. On the left is a company store. It was being remodeled at the time, so I did not get to spend any money. Also on the left is the mail room and a game room, fully equipped with a ping pong table, air hockey, Playstation, XBox, and some other fun stuff. Then the highlight of the tour, at least for me...they have a cereal bar! And it is FREE! Free cereal any time! Oh, see that blue bowl sitting on the counter? Inside that is Twizzlers, and it is free!

You can also see a WALL*E display in the lobby, along with banners on either side of the atrium. In the far back is a large theatre, with two smaller theaters on either side.

Oh look, here is proof that I was there, too. Sully and Mike was just hanging out in the lobby. Unfortunately, we were only allowed to photo the lobby/atrium area. these are all the photos that I took. They had a display of the Incredibles and Finding Nemo that I wanted a photo with. Bummer.

If you ever get a chance to visit Pixar, do it! Absolutely one the coolest places I have ever been to.

I Got Jacked

So, I am going through Facebook and looking to be Theoren Fleury's friend. Laugh all you want, I am sure you have done it too. Anyway, I found a group called Retire Theoren Fleury's Jersey. Naturally, I joined. While searching through the pictures, I found this photo:

Look familiar? Click here to see where it originally came from. Yeah, I totally got jacked. Oh well, I have been borrowing photos for this blog since day one. I guess that means someone other than walkinvisable is reading this blog of mine.

Bruce Lee Mini Series to Debut in China

This looks pretty good. The series will be shown in China later this year. It is based on The Legend of Bruce Lee, which is also the title. See how clever I am to incorporate it in that sentence? Actually, judging from this trailer, it looks like a lot of the story is made up, not really a true life story of the man. If you remember Dragon, that also had a lot of fictional elements based on Bruce Lee's life. Anyway, watch the trailer.



By the way, Bruce Lee was from Hong Kong which means he spoke Cantonese, not Mandarin. Since this movie is made in China and funded by the Chinese government, the movie is mainly in Mandarin. Oh well, guess I have to read subtitles.

Mario Gets A Hummer From Luigi

I found this hidden feature whilst playing Super Mario Galaxy. So, I stopped everything, set up a tripod and took a video of it. I also put this on YouTube...which is the first video I have ever posted. It also means that I did not steal this video. My very own and I am willing to share it with you and the rest of the world. Yeah, I am totally hi-tech. Enjoy it, I know Mario did.

Leap Day

Hey, it is Leap Day...whatever.

Remember That Business Trip?

Back in August, I took a business trip to Stamford, CT. I could not tell you what is was about, but since the news is out, now I can.

We went to Stamford, home of WWE Headquarters, to pitch for the WWE toy license. Long story short, we got the license.

Yeah, that is Shane McMahon and Linda McMahon raising our hands in victory. I am, of course, in the Bret "Hitman" Hart t-shirt.

Lazy Blogger

Lately I have been just stealing videos from YouTube and posting it on here instead of actually writing something. I figured the less writing i do, the less you have to read...not that anyone is actually reading anything here anyway. Plus, those are some pretty nifty moves.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a great place for information. We all know how it works. Someone out there presents information and anyone...even you can verify the facts and/or add your own. I found this alternative called Uncyclopedia, were all the information is wrong, but damn funny!

Sheep Shaving in New Zealand

Here is a clip of a sheep getting clipped. I have seen this before on TV, but seeing it live is something else. Enjoy.