Michael Pontchartrain Ludin had a birthday

So after the fire starter music video was all wrapped up, we headed over to Mike's place for a birthday celebration. He made delicious bean dip, which I ate a lot of. I brought a photographic recording device with me as well as some flash bulbs. We turned Mikes lifting chamber into a studio! There were even signs made and hung above the portico. 

To see the insanity follow the link : flickr photos

Winter Fire Festival - Seattle Center

On Saturday Kat and I went to see people who do medieval type cosplay with swords and whips, while they are on FIRE! The girls were cool, guys...well not so much. Actually no one was cool, but it doesn't matter. They are playing with fire, and that always wins in my book. Also it was less of a festival and more of a "light things on fire and dance to Godsmack in the middle of a fountain gathering". Maybe I don't really know what it was, but I was entertained and I got a couple good pictures from it.

The rest of the photos are here : flickr pictures

New Vinyl

Darren took me to a really cool record shop this weekend in Wallingford. My favorite so far is Be-Bop Deluxe Futurama. Minnie Riperton melts my face off with her voice, and the RAM album by McCartney is great.

Grave of the Fireflies

Directed by Isao Takahata. The movie is an adaptation of an autobiographical novel by the same name. The novel was written as an apology to the authors sister who died from malnutrition during WWII. Grave of the Fireflies is hauntingly real, you forget it is animation after a few minutes in. The movie is set in Kobe Japan towards the end of WWII, when American B-29 bombers sent down incendiary bombs that killed over 8,000 people. A brother and sister are left without parents to fend for themselves, and it is a devastating story about the casualties of war. 

For me this is the best anti-war film ever made. Simply because the film focuses completely on these 2 kids, there are no politics involved, no one mentions the U.S., the kids don't care about competing ideologies, they just need food. 

While I love films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Kiki's delivery service, they all fall short of exploiting the real power animation has to offer. Grave of the Fireflies should be on everyones list. You only need to see it once, it has the power all good movies do of haunting you long after you see it. 

Little Christmas

Everyone gets mini books and book ends!

More and More

Went out walking earlier. Here are some more photos!

Last Night

3 more shots from last night. The snow is piling up. rooftop, pine street and butt less chaps

Early Snow

Some pictures from last Sunday + some from Thursday.

The snow is pretty, but unlike Chicago they do not salt the roads. So everyone is pretty much snowed in here.

I guess it's better for the environment, but it's funny they just let a city shut down like this.

Thanksgiving Photoshoot

Link to Flickr

Funny

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

The Streets Rejoiced

Election Night 2008 on Capitol Hill in Seattle was something I have never experienced in my life. The last time I saw this kind of community fanfare was in Alabama, of course in the south people rejoice when their favorite college football team wins, here in Seattle people celebrate over their quarterback of Hope. Kathryn and I watched the election on TV, after Obama gave his victory speech we headed out to find some food. But that plan fell apart, instead we just slowly drove up and down Pike Street witnessing these joyous crowds. At work today I had a humorous conversation with friend, basically we decided if Obama didn't win tonight, our neighborhood {capitol hill} would be burned to the ground by morning. I am glad to report instead of fires we had high fives and excited chants of victory. While driving up Pike Street it felt like we were stars in a parade, people were screaming at us, giving us High Fives, I sat on the window of my car as we drove and people patted me on the back, and squeezed my arm like an excited kid might do. While straddling my car door I snapped pics left and right, everyone wanted their photo taken, I could hardly keep up. No matter who you voted for, tonight was historic.

Obama you did it. Now don't F this up.

The rest of the pictures can be found here :
http://thehastingsbrothers.com/photoalbums/election2008/

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Large Update

word

PAX - a sea of nerds! I secretly wished I was one of them.

PAX - the Exhibition Floor

Darksiders booth for - Will, John and Yan. Sorry, iPhone picture.

Eggs Benedict at Chace's Pancake House

Strawberry Swedish Pancake

My fresh ride.

It has been said I am a gentleman but never a gentle man.

Delicious

Those pots only cost like 3 bucks.

Exquisite.

Handsome.

Enchanting!

Little Babycakes.

1

2

headache.

Sorry about all the pictures, there is probably a way to inject them in between paragraphs of text to make it flow more. Someday I will know how to use this better.

Last weekend Kathryn, Darren and I went to Bumbershoot and the Penny Arcade Expo. Bumbershoot was fun, I got to see Darondo live. Imagine if Jim Varney were black man and sang like you would think a homeless man should. This is Darondo. He sang about 3 songs and gave some hilarious yet dirty advice for all the couples in the audience. It was a great show. I also had some delicious corn on a stick. This was saturday. Sunday we all went to PAX. Basically a nerdfest. Sweet delicious nerds that buy our games and xbox hardware. It was actually fun, I ran into the gears of war team, waited in line for Little Big Planet for about 5 minutes and gave up, then took some pictures of the Darksiders booth for my friends at Vigil. The best part was the sea of PC players, all packed nicely in a room.

This weekend the car my Mom gave me arrived. Which is really awesome. What wasn't awesome was waking up early saturday morning and taking a bus from Seattle to Bellevue to meet the car shipper. But Kathryn came with me so it wasn't as bad. Plus I got to check out Bellevue, which isn't anything great but we found an awesome breakfast restaurant and a place to buy plants from. Lucky for me there was a pots store that had everything 70% off. So I bought like 12 pots for like 15 bucks. Then I visited the Bellevue Nursery and loaded up on plants. As you can see in the pictures above I am an expert at planting things. Kathryn was laughing or super annoyed while I was picking out my plants, I was trying to mix colors like I would in a painting. Which means I probably got a bunch of plants that will kill each other, since they all need different soils. Anyway, I am proud since this my first try at gardening, next I want to build some large planters to go along the edge of my outdoor space and go really crazy with some plants.

Sorry I forgot a lot of stories that may or may not have been interesting. Next time I will try and do better.

Until then, peace out.

Oh yeah. Pineapple Express, and Tropic Thunder are both really funny. I recommend them for enjoyment.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

yep, pretty much.

I eat diamonds for breakfast.

That's racist

Aww. Sorry she will be gone in the morning. But at least you have the A-team!

I wanted to check out a local theater near my new apartment this weekend. There is one down the street called The Egyptian. Saturday night they happened to be playing Breakfast at Tiffany's which I had never seen before so I decided to check it out.
I guess I didn't know what I was getting myself into. For some reason I was expecting a fun romantic comedy, instead I got a really sad and depressing film. Focusing mainly on a girl who just wont grow up. I thought for the longest time people liked this film because the character Holly was someone to be admired, someone other women might want to be in real life. I see now the hype was for Audrey Hepburns' performance, the hype is well deserved, she did an amazing job. The character is someone you do despise though, and if you don't, you really should. Her character hit a nerve all too close to home, and I remember leaving the theater with a very deep sadness. With that said I still would have liked the film, if it had not been for that terrible ending. The problem is, in the morning she will run off again with her same fears and incredibly weak will, this of course the director does not show. Hollywood is funny that way, sadly I know the real ending to Breakfast at Tiffany's and it is not happy at all.