MUIR TRAIL

Ryan went on a little hike earlier this month.



The kid took 2 weeks off from working with us and hiked 200 miles in the Sierra Nevadas.



He brought our boy Shane along as well. They hiked about 15 miles a day while subsisting on a 1,200 calorie diet.



Meanwhile Matt and I stayed home, ate pizza and clicked our mice all day.



At least Ryan brought back a few photos.



To see more pictures of Ryan gallivanting around in the wilderness, check out his photography site.

SURF VID

We're shooting a little video down in San Diego this week.





Didn't have time to draw out storyboards so we shot stills instead.





Should be finished shooting in a week or so (cross your fingers).



Then maybe it'll be edited and up online about 2 weeks after that.



I'll keep you guys posted.

RANDOM

A few completely unrelated things...


Lunch meeting at Houston's in Irvine yesterday. Met with a new printer we just did some work with. They let me choose the restaurant so we ended up here.


Just saw this new feature on Flight Club's site - charts to track historical pricing data for rare sneakers. So genius...


So, by the way, Vanessa won this year's 0484 NBA Bracket Contest and the $84 Chipotle gift card. My roommate Amy actually came in second place. All of this just really makes you wonder how these 2 girls who spend their free time watching Gossip Girl and all of the Real Housewives series' managed to out-predict all of our other friends and clients who claim to be avid NBA fans.


Saw a commercial for these Sharpie Liquid Pencils the other day - made them look like an incredible breakthrough in writing technology. They're not. Everyone just stick with the G-2's for now and I'll let you know if I discover something better.


Lastly, Halo Reach, the newest installment in the franchise was released last week and grossed $200 million on it's first day. Only nobody cares because nothing beats the original, 'Halo 1'.

Matt and I do not play video games (believe it or not) but in high school and college Halo 1 was the one game that we played with some of our friends. When Halo 2 was released, we all thought it would be an improved extension to the one video game that we bothered playing occasionally. Only it wasn't - all the subsequent Halo games have sucked.

Anyway, I was on John Mayer's blog recently (don't judge, just listen to my story) and he had posted the following entry which so aptly described, with both incredible detail and cunning literary charm, the mystique of Halo 1.

"I miss the days when all I would do in my free time was play the first version of (the video game) Halo. The game was perfect. It was so balanced in terms of risk vs reward you could lose yourself in it for hours, if not days. People would plan to meet up only to challenge each other to multiplayer battles. Male-female relationships struggled under the Halo regime. When the sequel came out, it’s as if they changed too much in the fundamental experience, and the game lost its once unfailing charm.

All the game developers had to do was put out a sequel to Halo that added new maps, weapons, vehicles and opponents. Everything else was pitch perfect. I know the franchise has done extremely well, but I wish they’d revisit the first Halo and just add some new secondary elements while keeping the heart and soul of the original going. Forget about XBOX live functionality. In person multiplayer only. I long for the days when every TV in the house would be ripped from it’s location and repurposed as part of a makeshift home arcade. Lock your doors, pour 64 ounces of your favorite beverage and tell your loved ones you will be in touch. I may just have to break out the original and spend a weekend revisiting the good old days way back in the 2000s.
Sent from my flying car"

It's eerie how adamantly I agree with his exact sentiment. I immediately e-mailed a link to that post to all my other video game nerd friends. When I had dinner with my brother last Sunday, we spent a good deal of time arguing over the merits of Halo 1 vs. the subsequent franchise titles. Today he e-mailed me this picture along with some disparaging remarks about people who still play Halo 1. (if you don't play video games, don't bother clicking on the link - it even took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on in that picture)

Anyway, that's it. Sorry, I'll do my best to refrain from blogging about video games (or John Mayer) in the future.

THE TOWN

The Town is the best movie that you will watch all year.



For real. It's that good. It's better than Gone Baby Gone and that film was legit.

Affleck said that since GBG was his directorial debut, he just tried to get through filming without screwing it up. But with The Town, he was more comfortable and had the luxury of focusing on exactly how he wanted to tell the story. (Just so we're clear, I read this in a recent interview, Ben and I haven't spoken recently)

Anyway, I'm not even going to go any further - go see for yourself.

BBQ

Had a little BBQ last weekend at Matt's house.


Grilled some stuff. Had a few people over. Watched Djokovic pull that win off over Federer in the US Open semis.


Ryan just returned from his 2-week 200 mile John Muir Trail hike. Meanwhile Robert just had surgery on his hip. I think he feels like his poor lateral mobility is the reason he can't beat me in tennis. So he decided to get some procedure to help fix his hip when he really just could've worked on his first serve consistency and taken a lesson or two. We'll see how it ends up working out for him.


Matt brought the Torch back and picked up one of these instead. Ryan bought one too. They're trying to recruit me but I'm not sure I can go back to tapping on that touchscreen keyboard and charging my phone every 30 minutes. Might keep my Blackberry for phone related purposes and buy an iPad for the fun stuff and call it a day.

MACHETE

Got some Machete swag in the mail the other day.



Our boys that we work with over at SA Studios in downtown LA handled a bunch of the PR and marketing for the film. Anyway, they were nice enough to send Matt and I some gear from the movie.



They orchestrated a ton of promotion for this film including getting none other than David Choe to do some custom movie inspired artwork. Watch this clip of Choe and Danny Trejo hanging out - it's part of a series of web vids that SA Studios put together.



For more photos of the low rider filled movie premiere, check out our boy John P's blog over on Fatlace.

TORCH

Stopped by the AT&T store the other day.

Matt needed a new phone since he put his last Blackberry in that cooler full of ice. Over the past few weeks he narrowed it down to the iPhone 4, the Blackberry Torch and he even considered the Samsung Captivate.



Anyway, we debated about it for awhile at the store and he eventually ended up picking up the Torch. It has the physical keyboard and the touchscreen, it has BBM, good battery life and of course Drake uses one to write all his songs on, so we figured we couldn't really go wrong with it. I got kind of jealous while we were at the store and we almost bought 2 but I figured I'd let Matt play with it for a week and let me know how it went.



So far, not too good. The internet doesn't really work, texting on the phone does not work, BBM is broken and the phone makes a weird noise during calls. Seriously - I thought Matt might've been exaggerated its' uselessness but I played with it Tuesday when we drove up to Santa Barbara and it is indeed worthless. I think it's sort of just a fluke/defective unit - Matt's going to take it back this weekend and grab another so we'll see.

UCSB

Matt and I took the afternoon off and drove up the coast the other day.

Our boy Jeff is the new assistant coach for Creighton Men's soccer so we went up to watch them play the Gauchos in Isla Vista.



Jeff's team won 1-0 which was good because you don't know how disappointed I'd have been if we had had to freeze our asses off in those bleachers for 2 hours only to witness a 0-0 tie.



Back when we were in college, Jeff was better than all of these kids combined - seriously. He was arguably the best player in the country his Senior year and led his team to the National Championship game. I mean, come on, they don't hand out Wikipedia pages to just anyone.



Anyway, it was a good day. We got to hang out with Daniel for awhile and then we all spent some time with Jeff after the game. Basically just another instance where all of our friends with non-real jobs got to kill some time together and discuss the important things in life - like the upcoming Fantasy Basketball Season and the countless bachelor parties that are being planned for next year.

THE LABOR DAY MIXTAPE

There are less than 3 weeks of summer left.

So here are 7 songs to help you savor the last days of the season. Throw them on your iPod and make all your friends jealous. These songs are all pretty new - play them loud enough and they might just make you the coolest person in your office this week.

Nobody else bootlegs music like 0484CREATIVE.

You can thank us later.

DOWNLOAD HERE

ALL GOOD

Sometimes everything just seems to fall into place.

Few photos and screenshots from the past couple weeks...


Beverly Blvd.


Our boy Colin from Maxim hit us up - they're considering giving away some Represent Kobe shirts through their website.


Drizzy tix


Splurging in Vegas is different - it's all money you're going to leave inside the casino anyway. You might as well take something nice home with you.


Andy Murray, Westwood


Started doing work with a new agency last week - NYC office of Momentum Worldwide


Paradise & Flamingo. No leftovers.


Sent over work samples to Warner Brothers Records the other day (via JTW & Co.). They're considering us for a CD packaging project for one of their artists whose identity is currently undisclosed. Matt's hoping that it ends up being Adam Sandler while I'm crossing my fingers that it's for Craig David.

Stay tuned...