Logan’s Run Online

So any of you who are friends with me on Facebook (and that’s probably all of you who are reading this because no one reads my actual blog but just the notes that get synced over to my wall) have probably seen some of the albums I’ve uploaded recently. Why has Logan taken to uploading new pictures lately? Because I got a new DSLR camera! About a month ago I finally broke down after saving up enough cash and gift cards to buy a brand-new Canon EOS 60D from Best Buy (body only, no lens because I already own a Canon 50mm f/1.8):

Me and my new camera

Since then I’ve been shooting stills of everything and it’s really helped me get a much better understanding on shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and more as it relates to the film world and, more importantly, my video world. I bought the camera primarily to shoot video for any short films I produce–it can shoot 1080HD in 24p–but the stills have been an added bonus. I have yet to actually shoot any video on it for a film but I’m desperately itching for an excuse to shoot something–anything–even a simple dialogue scene with no over-arcing plot–just so I can get some more experience with the workflow in capturing and editing video with a DSLR. One thing I already know is going to be fun is running sync sound for pretty much any film I make: the on-board mic is terrible, which is why I bought a shotgun and boom, but the AGC on the camera body would totally destroy any audio I try to capture externally and run in-line with the video. So I’ll record audio onto my Zoom H4n, use a classic clapper, and sync it all in post: I can’t wait!

Yesterday I went to a somewhat-new club with some of my friends; I had wanted to check out this particular club (Mr. Sisters) for a while because of its combination restaurant/club atmosphere and because I had fun last week dancing and remembered how enjoyable it was. Overall it was pretty fun (albeit the clientele was somewhat older than the average at, say, Pulse) although one thing that irked me was having to pay a $10 cover because I’m under 21 right before I go to their restaurant portion and spend money again. I mean, the main point of a cover for under-21s is to make back the money you would have made had they been able to buy alcohol–that’s why covers are so often waived for people 21 and up–so you’d think since we were already going to spend money at the restaurant it would’ve rendered the cover moot. Oh well.

Anyway, onto the main point of this post: when leaving the club at the end of the night (around 1:30am), I kept my cup of ice (water) with me as I was exiting. (Yeah, we danced a lot, I got thirsty, water is good for hydration, plus I love ice.) One of the valet attendants at the entrance told me as I was leaving that I’d have to throw the cup away otherwise the police would stop me; I didn’t really argue with him so I tossed my ice in the trash (so sad; I was looking forward to it on the drive home!) and went on my merry way back to my car.

So why the restriction on leaving clubs with water or even just ice for that matter? I can understand the biggest issue people are trying to prevent: walking around with open containers of alcohol outside of the club and in public. But for someone like me who has an under-21 wristband, two prominent black X’s on my hands, and even an empty container (aside from the ice), what’s the purpose? Obviously the club has no ability to restrain me from leaving with my cup; that’s false imprisonment. What right do the police have, aside from them simply being police? Is there a law on the books that specifically makes it illegal to exit a nightclub with a container purchased inside? If not, aside from probable cause or reasonable suspicion the police have no ability to detain me either. (Again, I’m clearly under 21 with a cup of what was once ice water and now held nothing but ice–not even a liquid!) Would this same process apply if I had an empty container when leaving the club–say, having drank all the water AND consumed all the ice, with literally nothing inside of the cup? What if I cut the cup in half and tried to bring the broken pieces across the threshold–is that an issue? I realize I’m probably getting into really minced and extreme circumstances here, but I’m curious.

So now I open the discussion up to the masses out there who read my blog. What do you guys think?

Here’s a short tale from the annals of my experiences one Tuesday evening during SGA election season at UCF.

I was at Applebee’s near campus with a bunch of friends from my major classes to spend some time together outside of the academic environment and have fun. Tuesday nights are karaoke nights (for which we did sing!) and half-off appetizers past 10pm, so we knew we’d be out late but we could socialize and have a good time doing so. We had just finished our food, singing, and revelry around 11:15pm and stepped outside the restaurant to take a picture and say our goodbyes before departing. As we were milling about right on the corner, some girls came up to us and asked “Have you voted yet?”, referring to the ongoing SGA election on campus. Right before they did so, we were chatting about a missing friend of ours–Brittany–and how no one could find her, so I worked the reference into my answer to the girls as a joke: “Are you Brittany?” Obviously denying being Brittany, she repeated her question, to which I said “no-no-no, Brittany, we’re looking for Brittany”. My friends laughed but she deadpanned and intoned “No, not funny, I’m asking a question”. She tried futilely to get us to vote for another few seconds before moving on; once she left, I asked my friends if I was too harsh, and they said I probably was but she was also too sensitive.

So here’s the point of this post: do you think I was too harsh in my joking? It’s near 11:30pm at Applebee’s, a restaurant that does not cater exclusively to UCF students. We’re not on campus and they’re soliciting from patrons who might not even be attending UCF. I see the campaigns constantly inundating me while on campus and at school, in class, and at my job, and before midnight off campus when I’m trying to have fun with my friends, I am once again confronted with this SGA issue. Do you really think I want that, then and there? Were they wrong to solicit in this manner, at this place and at this time? Was I wrong in brushing them off too coldly? I certainly got my point across, but of course on the drive home l’esprit d’escalier reared its head and I only then thought of a more gentle way of dismissing them. Thoughts?

Mom and I woke up this morning to a state of emergency in New Jersey when the Pasaic River started overflowing. Um…

We battled our way across the state, crossing the George Washington Bridge and getting into NYC around 10am. We circled around Columbia for a bit trying to find someplace cheap to park; we finally did and found our way into Dodge Hall, the building that houses Columbia’s School of the Arts and its film program. We chatted for a bit with someone from admissions about their application process (yet another school that doesn’t require the GRE!) before he sent us up to talk with someone specifically from the program itself. The woman we were sent to directed us to a current student who sat down with us and talked about her experience in the program (she’s going for screenwriting, though, and I’d be looking at “Creative Producing”), her application process, job/internship career, and living arrangements. It’s always great to get a current student’s perspective because, as a prospective student, that’s who I’d be if I were to go that school, so it’s useful to know what they think of their situation.

Afterward we walked down Broadway for a few blocks (~40 or so), trying to get to midtown before our lunchtime but we didn’t exactly make it so we just sat down and ate at a soup joint before taking the subway back uptown to Duane Reade. Mom bought some makeup products (ಠ_ಠ) and we picked up our car and drove across the Lincoln Tunnel to Newark Airport.

Of course, by the time we arrived here the rain for NJ made its way over here (and seemed to pick up some fog along the way), so now our flight is delayed two hours. Instead of boarding at 5pm, now we have to wait until 7pm just to board, which is another 4 hours from now. Thankfully I’ve got power outlets to charge my phone and laptop, but there’s no free wifi at this airport, so I’m back to my Android’s mobile hotspot (god I love this thing). Update at the end of the night when I’m finally back home in Boca!

Edit: flight delayed four hours and didn’t launch out of Newark until 9:24pm. We landed a bit past midnight and I didn’t actually get home until 1am. Blargh!

Edit 2: Kelsey didn’t actually check this to see if I updated. Her fault!

Today was (on average) an uneventful day, although the stopover in Syracuse for a couple of hours in the middle of the day proved amazing. The day was bookended by driving, two and a half hours from Albany to Syracuse and then another three and a half afterward through PA to Jersey where we ‘re staying before heading into NYC tomorrow. The drives were pretty uneventful: lots of snow, mountains, some rain, and Mom and I chatting and reading grad school program brochures and magazines. Our little rental Ford Focus got us through!

Syracuse is the meat of today’s post: we spent a few hours at the university in between our two long drives. It was a bit confusing to find our way around the campus at first but I think that was only because we were intimidated at its snow: EVERYTHING was covered in snow. From the pictures on the brochures it seems a lot nicer when it’s not wintertime, not to mention easier to navigate. Still, we parked and found admissions, which pointed us to graduate admissions, who redirected us back to the Newhouse School’s building. Traipsing all the way around the quad of Syracuse in the cold wasn’t the best but certainly gave us some quality map skills! We also got to eat at their union while waiting, which gave me a small taste of their student life.

The Newhouse School is the college under which the grad program I’m interested in (Television-Radio-Film) is located. It seems to be three different buildings, all built at different times but now connected within tunnels and hallways. I met briefly with Michael Schoonmaker, one of the professors and director of the program, to discuss its curriculum and extra affairs; afterward, he invited me to sit in on a class he was teaching, which was awesome for me (being able to get that first-hand experience of how this program runs and is taught is great!). Something very unique about it that I discovered was that it combines some classes with both undergrads and grads, so, for instance, in the class I was observing, it seemed undergrads were doing the tech work of shooting, audio acquisition, editing, etc. while grads took care of producing, directing, and managing. The very hands-on, real-world nature of this program impressed both me and my mom greatly, so Syracuse is still very much in the running for me when considering potential programs.

Then we went back to driving, this time for many, many hours into Jersey. Our hotel was a Comfort Suites; it wasn’t too exceptional but definitely wasn’t bad, either. Last day is Columbia before returning home!

Boston, 3.0! Got a later start today since I got to wake up at 8:30am and pack everything up. We checked out of the hotel and rode the T back over to BU where I met with Professor Geoffrey Poister of BU’s MS in TV program. His discussion with me really led me to be able to more carefully consider the differences between the two programs and (hopefully!) eventually choose which I’ll apply to for next fall. Plus he gave me some great advice regarding some Canon DSLRs and when to look at purchasing new video equipment: right after the NAB conference in April when all of the companies reveal their new goodies!

After our meeting, my mom and I had a lot of time to kill before we were able to pick up our rental car so we decided to walk all the way from BU down Comm Ave to the North End again for some good Boston pizza. It was a very brisk 3.5-mile walk in the cold as we were trying to reach Thacher street to get to this parlor recommended to us by someone at BU: “Regina’s Pizza”. Well, we finally end up again on Hanover when we realize that Regina’s Pizza and Thacher aren’t even in Boston’s North End and are, in fact, south of where we were at BU. So we just ate a random pizza joint there before walking back to the hotel.

We picked up our luggage and got our rental car and then jumped on the Massachusetts Turnpike! It’s literally a straight shot west for about 130 miles to Albany from where we were so that’s where we are now: on the turnpike with about an hour’s drive left. The Ford Focus we rented has USB and mini-jack AUX ports (presumably for iPods to put on the stereo) so I plugged my phone in to charge it up and not worry about battery, turned on GPS so we’ve got turn-by-turn directions, and even set up a mobile wifi hotspot over my 3G data connection (I love my Android), which I then connected to with my laptop and on which I am now typing this (part of my) blog entry! Isn’t technology fantastic? 65mph down the highway and here I’ve got the entire Internet at my disposal! (Until my laptop’s battery runs out, at least.) That’s all I can say for now, although I’ll finish typing up this blog entry and edit it tonight with Albany thoughts once we’re settled in at our new hotel.

Edit: we arrived in Albany a couple of hours ago and BOY is it cold. With frosted tree-tops, snow-covered mountains, icicle-frozen banches, and ice-slicked driveways, we made our way down the mountainside into which the hotel is built. We checked in (free cookies in the lobby!) and Mom went to take a shower while I went off to their fitness center and worked out for a bit (I tried their pool but it’s not nearly big enough to do laps) and even made a lap around the outside of the hotel in the snow and running shorts. Came back, showered, we headed out to dinner and just came back to the room. I’ll be sleeping very soon since we have to wake up at 7am to drive out to Syracuse!