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Author Micah Cambre

making a living

I’m back from my week of Hollywood excitement. It was a busy week as I kept myself doing as much as I could sightseeing lots of things.

So what was my purpose in Los Angeles? Originally, I wanted it to be a vacation where I could visit lots of people working in the music/movie industry practicing audio engineering in one form or another. I was hoping to see a few sessions, some with recording and scoring, some with post production. What I actually saw was a 2 hours post production section. It confirmed that the one class that I don’t enjoy as much is the one class that I really need to get something out of the most. Isn’t that ironic…

I’m also a few years away from even thinking about living and working in a more mainstream market. I need experience. I know many of the technical reasons why certain things are done, but practicing and implementing these reasons takes experience I don’t have. And I’m glad that it’s early enough for me to realize this. So now it’s on to finding a job somewhere that I can make a comfortable living.

Wanna read some interesting health news? Check it out:
cranberry goodness

I made the paper

Well, I’m here only a few days and I already made the paper… that Dallas Morning News that is. I was interviewed by a reporter for the paper who saw me talking to J-Love and I knew that it would probably be published because of how I did it. But I wasn’t expecting anyone to care that I did that. Still pretty cool however.

See it here.

You have to sign in to the site to see the article, but I might try to post the quote or the article on my website for reference. Can’t do it now because it’d take too much time.

Yesterday was a busy day as I started driving along the coast. Got my first glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. Pretty cool to have seen the Atlantic and now the Pacific. I ended up going back to Hollywood to see the area where the Oscars were held. I believe that I saw Roger Ebert exit a hotel in near the Hollywood strip and he was joking with a lady accompanying him. It turns out he was probably on his way to the taping of The Tonight Show.

I also just missed seeing Jimmy Kimmel walk into his theater because they were breaking down cameras by the theater where he tapes. I went to the NBC studios today and I’m thinking about either tomorrow morning or Thursday morning waking up early to go to a taping of The Tonight Show. I’d have to get there by 7-7:30 to get Stand-by tickets so we’ll see. That would be really cool if it happened though.

I ended my evening last night with a Clippers-Rockets game where the Rockets smeared the Clippers. The Staples Center has some really comfortable seats, and even the top row of the highest level seating isn’t bad to see anything. Nothing like many pro football stadium seats.

Today wasn’t too productive but I decided to spend a few hours at Universal Studios. It was expensive for the ticket but I’ll be able to use it again when Jonathan and I make our “Tour of the West” roadtrip. (I made that name up but it sounds good)

…Oh yeah, I believe I also saw in passing the Ozarka guy. The same guy who now acts on Alias. He was at the Clippers game. He’s extremely short!!

I’m going to San Diego sometime in the next two days, possibly tomorrow. That’s the last thing I plan on doing while I’m here.

I’m a little upset because I can’t get ahold of the guy who I was originally trying to watch and visit. He’s an audio engineer and works with many people, but I was looking forward to observing him interact with a composer. Doesn’t look very promising being that I’ve heard from him once and he hasn’t called back. Guess I’ll keep sightseeing.

Hollywood Fever

I missed my initial flight to fly into LAX. Typical. So, after waiting for a few hours, reparking my car, and rearriving at the airport, I waited on standby for the next flight . . . the last flight of the night. Obviously, I didn’t get on that flight either. In a brush of miracles, they found an extra seat flying into Burbank. So I made it that night!

My first brush of fame was with the girl who won the Colorado tryout for American Idol. She was sitting across the plane from me and I mostly listened to the person next to me chat with her.

So I guess the biggest thing to happen up to now was I found the Oscar after parties where all the celebs partied. So I parked my car and walked over to check out celebs. See, I had been driving in Hollywood that evening trying to find the sign and couldn’t find it for the life of me. I didn’t want it to be an unproductive drive so I stuck around for a long while, ate, and then accidentally found the parties. Dumb luck.

So who did I see? I’ll try to remember…

Jessica Alba
Richard Gere
Cameron Diaz
Jennifer Lopez
Ben Affleck
Chris Cooper
John C. Reilly
Jennifer Love Hewitt
Brendan Fraser
Adrian Brody
Sean Astin
Queen Latifah
Ray Liotta
Michael Caine
Lucy Liu
Susan Surandan
Bono
Topher Grace
Doris Roberts
Roger Ebert
Jon Voight
Naomi Campbell
Carey Lowell
Diane Lane (distantly
Josh Brolin (distantly)
Peter O’Toole
Natalie Portman (how could I forget her!)
Marcia Gay Harden
Geena Davis
Rob Marshall
Martin Landau
Ted Danson
Mary Steenburgen
Tim Robbins
Susan Surandon
I also saw many producers and film production crew who won Oscars, though I don’t know their names.

And Jen Love acknowledged me! She was walking out of the InStyle party and I was across the street when I saw her walk out. She walked down the street to get find her ride when I yelled across “Hey Jennifer”, she then looked over and I yelled “I’m from Texas” with my thumb up and a big smile. She smiled back and gave me the Hook’em Horns sign when I mimicked it back to her. That ruled! (See above for link in Dallas Morning News, I made the paper!!)

It’s electricity, baby!

FINALLY, there’s electricity in our house. It feels so sweet. I’m gonna actually sleep in my warm bed in our heated house. Not that the neighbor’s house wasn’t comfy, it’s just nice to be back in my house.

I’m off to LA tomorrow evening for a week in LA. I REALLY hope that I get to see all my contacts and work everything out. I need this to be productive job wise. Or at least help me formulate some idea of what I want to do.

I might go to Hollywood Sunday night to try to see some movie stars! I’m staying near the Airport so who knows, maybe I’ll see some anyway. Should be a fun trip overall.

cold war

We’re at war.

I’m freezing.

Our power went out in the house, so Aunt Lois and I are at the neighbor’s for the night.

There’s 2 feet of snow outside trapping our transportation.

I have a midterm tomorrow.

My midterm yesterday was cancelled along with all of school.

When the power is out, it’s difficult to find something to do in the dark with a candle.

It’s been a harsh week.

I’m leaving for LA in 2 days!!

I signed my first contract for my cell phone yesterday so I hope the service is worth it.

I’m feeling better being in a heated house now, but I wish it was mine.

I hope my plane doesn’t get delayed or cancelled on Saturday.

This whole week has been cold war.

snow day, no mid terms!

Well, I get woken up by a phone call. I’m really tired and wanna go back to sleep. But I then decide to check and see if I have to go to school. You see, there’s a winter weather advisory for this area because of all the potential snow. I then look out the window at about a FOOT of snow on the lawn. Yikes! I better not have to go to school… I then watch the news long enough to see that . . . SCHOOL’S CLOSED!!! Thank God. I even had a midterm today. I wonder if they’re going to reschedule this snow day at the end of the semester?

So what am I gonna do with this new day off? Probably work on the web pages a little, maybe study for my midterm on Thursday, and who knows what else.

In other news, we’re going to war. And I leave for LA on Saturday. That’s not good. I’ll be in a strange place under tense political conditions trying to find someone to pay me money eventually in a horrible economy. Let’s just hope I don’t somehow end up in Compton. That would be bad.

case for war

Although I’m not a political person, I just want to direct you to a web page that has a great point. So many people out there are totally against war. Many others are for war. But there also seems to be a lot of us who are for peace but not against war. How can that be? I think it’s best expressed here.

host trouble

It seems that the host I’m using is having constant problems with their service. I don’t know whether I should go to another host or stay because these frequent outages are very annoying. I’m addicted to my e-mails and when the servers are down for more than 12 hours and I can’t check anything, that certainly makes me wanna look elsewhere. Luckily I’m not on a contract so I can cancel at anytime.

But the reason I’ve stayed so long is because I have an insane amount of benefits, such as 1.5GB of storage and 7GB of monthly transfer. As well, I’m allowed to create up to 15000 e-mail addresses. How many have I created right now? Only 2. Haha.

So basically, who cares about the e-mails. It’s the huge storage and big monthly transfer for only $4 a month that makes me stay. Should I leave?

the whelming midst

does my title make sense? i thought it sounds cool. Basically, it means I’m in the midst of a whelming time where I have papers, midterms, and trying to get my project turned into a CD. Then I’m off to LA, baby! Right in time for Oscar night!!! I doubt I’ll be in Hollywood that night but I might try to go if I can. I’ll have to talk to the people who are putting me up if they wanna go or not because right now they’re my ride.

As for my CD, so many things have to be done before I can even begin to get funding for it. I’m a little scared that it won’t happen and I’ll be upset about it because of all the money and preparation I’ve put into it. I think that there are a few things that I can share about it. I’m pretty sure that we have a good recording of everything. I’m pretty sure that we can use 10-14 songs from the whole recording and turn them into a CD. And I’m sure that the UCF can make back all of its money and earn a few thousand in profit no matter what. My roadblock at the current moment is time. I still have to get the recording, listen to it, approve the budget needs and time needs from Bill and his boss, and then mix and get it replicated. All this would take no less than a month unless I SPEED through the mixing and mastering process. It won’t be easy at all but I think it could be done. But obviously, politics and time are my obstacles.

Be really careful on eBay. Make sure you’re paying attention to who you’re bidding from because if they have no feedback, you might lose your money. It happened to me and I’m in the process of filing fraud charges.

gas price war

So the US will probably go to war in a few weeks. Or in a few days. Everyone has their own opinion about it.

There is, however, one war you could help fight another war. I got an e-mail from Russell about a possible gas war the consumers could fight. I’ll post some edited text from the e-mail and you can judge for yourself.

“Word has it we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the summer. Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action. Phillip Hollsworth offered this good idea; This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a certain day” campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to “hurt” ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them. BUT, who ever thought of this idea has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read it and join with us!

By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $1.97 for regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50- $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace….not sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war. Here’s the idea: For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers.”

Sounds much more intelligent than the “don’t buy gasoline at all” campaign.