Brutal Halloween!

Just got done dressing up for halloween. Here's how it went down:

Before:


With a 'stache, I look JUST like my dad:


Completely clean shaven:


Straightened hair = NATHAN EXPLOSION


I pulled my pants up to old man height after the picture, and it looks better.

I am a retard

I just learned the lesson of why you should always proofread everything. Apparently for the past few weeks, I've been sending out a resume with false information on it. And wondering why I wasn't getting any callbacks.

It says I worked at Zoic from March until April 2007. Wow a whole month's worth of experience.

I'm a genius sometimes.

Bored

Just bored on the plane.

It's raining!

It never rains here! And it's raining so hard our porch is flooding!

Correction.

Dear readers,

I am very sorry to inform you that I, Austin Brown, had made a mistake in the previous post. I rescind the statement that Shawn ate 3 wings. He actually ate 5.1 wings, with the .1 being a bite of a 6th.

Please accept this humble bloggers apology.

Thank you,

Austin Brown

So fucking hot.

Oh. My. fucking. GOD.

Went to go eat wings today right. Not that big of a deal, I've been there a ton, the wings are fucking delicious. Well Shawn loves hot shit. He decides he wants to try Suicide flavor. Well the guy behind the counter dips a toothpick into it and gives it to another of my friends, Ryan, who then proceeds to down like 3 glasses of water and a few packets of sugar. He says "It's like someone sprayed mace into my mouth."

So Shawn gets the tray of 12 and starts chomping on the first one. I have never ever heard him utter the words he said after putting that first one in his mouth. "Holy fucking shit, this is hot."

He manages to down 3 of them in the span of like 30 minutes. And then he tells me he'll give me 50 bucks to eat just one. Knowing what it did to the both of them, I said fuck that. A little while later he says 20 for a good sized bite. Well I could use 20 bucks, so I did it. About 5 seconds later I decide "The heat hasn't kicked in yet, I'll finish it and get the 50." So I did.

Holy mother of fucking god. I have never had anything so hot in my mouth ever. I actually stuck my tongue into the ranch. Nothing helped except for putting ice directly on the heated parts.


And now I just got out of the bathroom. My stomach is killing me and now my asshole burns. I almost feel like it wasn't worth it, but 50 bucks can go a long long way.

I'm hungry

And I'm watching Hogan Knows Best. It's my guilty pleasure shh.

Ok that's all I got.

Holy shit, earthquake

So we just had a pretty big tremor. Scared the absolute living shit out of both Callie and I. It started off small and I thought Callie was jumping around in the living room but then it got pretty big.

What an incredibly shitty and awesome feeling. You feel so helpless as the entire earth literally shakes everything around you.

Apparently it was a 4.8 on the scale. Jesus christ that was fucking scary.


Brandon was a bit closer and had all of his toys topple off of his shelf and land on him at his desk. He went outside and his car alarm was going off. Jesus fucking christ.

4th of July

Our 1st hot dogs on the grill!

I've come to a realization

Over the past few days, I've come to a realization. I am the youngest person at Zoic. It's kind of strange. I'm not sure why, but it just seems weird to me. It's not like I haven't been the youngest person at a company before (hello Su Casa), but to be one in such a large place that's all about technology is strange.

A little link

For your reading pleasure. I don't really want to turn this thing into a link depository, but I felt this was good enough to share.

An open letter to parents who bring their children to horror movies.

Update?!

I'm avoiding working... so I thought I'd give a little update.

I'm working on an ASPCA commercial that was giving me hell. It isn't anymore. Cause I'm the man like that.

Today was supposed to be my last day. Our deadline got pushed back by 2 weeks, so I'm here until the 29th.

Umm. My cube-mate is very funny. He runs a website. www.fatguysonly.com It's very sparse right now, but it'll get there.

And that's about all I've got for now.

Man

This thing has gone unused lately. I need to fix that.

Work!

I totally said I was going to post a picture of my desk like 2 weeks ago. Well here it is. It's super grainy because there's no light in here right now except for the monitors.

I was working on a show called Drive for Fox which comes out here pretty soon, but they moved me off of that and at this moment I'm not doing anything. I worked on a pilot for two days (they called me in on Sunday to work) and then most of last night and all of today will be training hours. Which is why you don't see Linux on those monitors. Or Shake. I'm trying to learn a program called Combustion.

Actually I wanted to learn After Effects, but I don't want to go and buy a book for it. And they don't have any here. The only book they have is a Combustion book. Oh well. Combustion is rad so I'm happy to learn something new.

It's going to be a long and sloooowwww night.

Oscar party!

So I get to go to an Oscar party with my roommate. And to do this I had to buy some clothes to go in. I am a sexy beast.

Incredibly good mood

So today started off really shitty. Forgot to park in the right spot last night and woke up to a $50 street cleaning ticket.

Then after getting to work, I got sent on the worst run ever. I was gone for 2 1/2 hours.

But all is well in the universe now. I get back to work and was told to get on a computer ASAP and start working on my shots. My producer tells me "Now you're on the alias, so just e-mail that whenever you're done." I have no idea what she means. After I finish my shot, I e-mail her and tell her it's done, and that I'd e-mail the alias if I knew what that meant.

Turns out what it meant was "you do have an email address. It's xxxx@zoicstudios.com".

:D :D :D :D :D

I'm the first intern with an e-mail address out of my group. I've also worked on multiple shots. So I happen to think I might be a bit close to getting a job.

I'm so EXCITED


Oh, and then later on someone asked me if I wanted a cappuccino and for some reason my mind did not register what that word meant. At all. I actually thought they had made the damn word up and gave them an incredibly weird look.

Thetons!

Come get a free stress test to check your theton level! Damn you L. Ron Hubbard!


Because no one seems to know, this is how it works. You hold those little metal cylinders and they measure your "stress level." This in turns tells them how many thetons you have in your body. These people are in fact, Scientologists.

A lot to read about not a lot of stuff

Last Thursday I was assigned my first real project. I had done a couple of really simple things before it, like getting some high-res skyscraper photos, but nothing that really used any sort of artistic talent or anything. But my first real project was some pretty simple rotoscoping stuff.

Or so I thought. I went in about noon on Friday, thinking I could bust it out in a few hours. Little did I know that I had to knock off about 16 layers of rust that had built up over the past 6 months in the oilfield. Friday was spent with my head banging against the wall, and getting almost nowhere. I was really tired and in a pretty bad mood, but I was supposed to go to a concert later. I was not about to go back to Sherman Oaks, then drive all the way back to Hollywood so I just kept working until about 7. More on the concert later.

I come in today, after completely worrying about getting this shot done all fucking weekend. I even came in early. Within like 20 minutes, I retrack the shot, and everything comes out near perfectly. I clean it up, and I'm already done with half of it. The half I spent all day Friday on. All day Friday. I felt so freaking dumb. It was a productive day though.

Friday I went with some coworkers to go see a bunch of bands I hadn't ever heard of. The one I was there to "see" was Natives of the New Dawn. The lineup was Slinky, Natives of the New Dawn, Ghost, and Swampa Z. Z. I can't even explain how Natives or Swampa sounded. They were just so different that if I explain how they sounded you would tell me that it doesn't exist. Hell, Tommy told me I was lying to him.

Natives was like this weird combination of funk, hip hop, jazz, and a whole lot of rock. They were a bunch of white guys. Their keyboardist was like this real chubby guy with a beard and shaggy curly hair. And you would never expect the sounds that come out of his mouth. This dude could fucking sing. Their lead guy was a redheaded dude with a beard, gauged ears, and glasses. But the dude could flow.

And Swampa Z. Z. was crazy too! They're from Hawaii and were like hip hop and rock and ska and tons of stuff, but with this definite Hawaiian vibe to them. They did this really long 80's medley of just a ton of songs, but they all had their weird hip-hop hawaiian feel to them. They were really really fucking good.

Slinky was like this basic ska band, but they were all really talented. And only 15. They made me sad that I own a guitar. Their singer looked like my little brother.

Ghost sucked. Really generic white rapper.

And that's all I got for now. That's a lot to read.

Callie is weird

Apparently, she thinks I'm gross for using my laptop and pooping at the same time. It's the epitome of productivity, and she thinks I'm gross?!

I'm pretty sure it's why laptops were actually invented. Since the dawn of time, man's progress been slowed by his bowel movements. Now that we have finally overcome such a barrier, we should be allowed to do so! Free from prejudice!

Now I'm going to get off of my soapbox.

My internship

Well, a couple of people have asked how I like the internship, and I've finally decided to sit down and post about it. I've been there for a week now, and worked 3 days.

My intern orientation was last Wednesday, where I got to meet all the other interns, and one of the owners of the company, and a couple of other people. There were 6 of us, and I think over half of them were going back to school after the internship. This is awesome, because that raises my chances of getting hired. We got a little tour, signed some paperwork (woohoo NDA!), and then I was done for the day. We only work two days a week, and Wednesday is not my day.

They also told us that we'd be doing nothing but answering phones our first two days on the job. Well, that just didn't happen. I also got a gigantic scare that morning.

The night before, Callie tells me I should probably leave around 8:30, if I want to get there before 10. So I set my alarms for 8, and head to bed. I wake up at 6. Sit there for a bit, and look at my clock. "Oh yes, it's only 6, more sleep for me," I think to myself. I go back to sleep, and wake up again. Look at the clock. Look at it again. It's 8:57. Holy. Shit. I freak out, jump out of bed, run brush my teeth, throw some clothes on, and head out the door. Traffic is of course terrible, and on the way there, my gas light turns on. I eventually do make it there around 9:35.

I go in, and instead of sitting on my ass and answering phones all day, I'm told to grab some coffee and a bagel, and grab my keys because I'm going on a run. I didn't have to go too far, but I didn't answer the phones in the slightest bit all day. I painted sticks and ping pong balls with another guy from Texas named Shawn, and made a new friend. Ate lunch a little while later, and then printed stuff out.

The day went by really fast and I met a metric fuckton of people. Just introduced myself to everyone I could.

It's generally a pretty laid back atmosphere. And there's a kitchen. It is the strangest feeling having a kitchen at a workplace where my parents don't own it. Because we had a kitchen at Su Casa, but I was working for my parents, so I didn't feel awkward eating out of it. But now that it's someone else's kitchen, it feels really weird. It took me pretty much all 3 days to be able to eat anything out of there. Like the first day when I was told to grab a bagel, I just grabbed some coffee. Even though there were bagels already out, ready for my consumption.

I'll try and post more as time goes on, but I can't really promise anything. I will promise a picture of the place soon though. I'll take one with my phone.

Hopefully I'll kick a lot of ass and get a job quicker than anticipated. That'd be awesome.