Jdcnow - Archived Blog Posts

[jdcnow]

Good evening from Texas, tonight. Hope you're doing well!

Well, after much consideration, I'm moving my LiveJournal blog over to here at JUB, since I'm here all the time, anyway.

Now, to all my friends over at the "nick_n_nora" and "kyle_fish" communities, keep writing your stories. I do occasionally pop over and see what you've posted.

I know that for quite sometime now, the only thing that kept my LJ page active is my "Fridays With Thurber" replay. But I like JUB because I get the good back-and-forth conversation of message board users along with the blogging. I will still keep the LJ page up, and may (no promises) decide to post some of my graphic artwork. Who knows.

Let's see what this blog can do... Thanks.

 

[jdcnow]

Good evening from northern Texas. I hope you are all doing well, tonight.

One of the thing I love most about Fridays is that not only is it payday at the convenience store I work at, but we get another great story from one of the great humorist of the 20th century, the late great James Thurber, as read by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

The tradition started when Keith would read Thurber's stories to his late father. Turns out Dad like them so much that he recommended that Keith read them on the air. Keith did, and the viewer response was so overwhelmingly positive that he quickly made Fridays With Thurber a permenant weekly segment on the show.

I don't care whether you're age 5, 35, or 65, I think there's a certain luxury of just sitting down and being read to that I don't think we ever outgrow. I thoroughly enjoy these stories, and I hope you will, too.

As I did at my old LiveJournal page, I will post the links to the videos here.

Here is part one of a multi-parter. Please enjoy, "The Catbird Seat."

 

[jdcnow]

Well good early morning from northern Texas, tonight. I hope you're all doing well.

So I saw John Cameron Mitchell's film, "Shortbus", tonight. OMG, what a film! Now I felt so sorry for the therapist girl who kept faking her orgasm with her husband. And it's living proof of something I've discovered long ago: Hairstylists have the worst hair, doctors have the most health problems, and therapists have the most issues.

I felt incredibly bad for James and Jamie. Poor Jamie just felt like the love he kept giving James wasn't enough. But James finally confessed that Jamie's love for him was so overwhelmingly inherently good, that he didn't know how to respond to that. And {SPOILER ALERT} how odd is it that the creepy guy in the apartment building across the street had been spying on Jamie and James *for years*! And it turns out, the creepy guy is the one who saves James' life!

Well, I got my ACT Prep book in. Now, I'm going to need a graphing calculator. Those things aren't cheap! ACK!

I've got a week's pay piling up in my bank account that I have some ideas for, but I'm trying to decide: Should I get the chip in my two front teeth fixed, or put that towards chipping away at the small debt ($1,300 between two companies) I still owe. IDK.

Random sexiest guy I saw on the forum boards, this week:

If you look up "sexy" in the dictionary, I'm sure this guy's in there, somewhere.

At the end of this post, as at the end of future ones, I'll put a list for myself of things I need to do, or take care of. I do this as a self-accountability measure, and it works.

Gameplan for the forseeable future:
Today >> Trash pickup day. Swing by Amazon to see if they have any old graphing calculators for cheap. Shopping list: get some of the ready-made salads, a bag of the beef fajita strips, a big bag of the shredded cheese, the Florida's Natural orange juice. Wait and see how much Friday's check is before getting money orders for the bills. And see if there's any Texas Rangers gear in any of the stores.

Thanks!

 

[jdcnow]

Part 2 of "The Catbird Seat" by James Thurber, as read by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann

 

[jdcnow]

And here's to hoping that Keith will be able to return to read us more stories.

As you can imagine, I'm not at all happy that Keith is off the air. Bring him back. Now.

 

[jdcnow]

Frankly, it's good to have Keith back.

 

[jdcnow]

And look, Worst Persons is back, too! YAY!

 

[jdcnow]

Part 3. Enjoy

 

[jdcnow]

People turn out in droves to help a North Texas army veteran who was about to lose his home. This man's story was so moving, that even his housing lender cut him a break. Good evening, everyone. I hope you're doing well, tonight.

This man's story and the people who helped him are the subject of the weekly commentary from John McCaa of WFAA-TV in Dallas.

I like to focus on character in the Uncut Commentary - this week is no exception.

Forty eight hours ago, a U.S. army veteran, Danny Stone, was about to lose his home of 33 years.

Stone had no problem defending the country - cancer was another matter.

It teamed up with lung disease and congestive heart failure to put him behind on his house payments to a federal trustee and into foreclosure.

Neighbors tried to help but things didn't look good.

Usually, it would have ended there but sometimes good people decide waiting for somebody else to act is simply not enough.

Steve Stoler did that story Wednesday. By yesterday, the phone lines were burning up with people wanting to help - money, aid, a place to stay.

You name it, strangers forced their way into the life of this man, who was so shy and so proud, he didn't even tell his sons he was in trouble.

Even the lender is extending him a bit of a break.

Yes, these are hard times. People can be unbelievably unfriendly and cruel but there is an old saying: only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.

Thanks for shining bright for one of our veterans, when he needed us the most.

My thoughts tell me yours: jmccaa@wfaa.com.

 

[jdcnow]

In lieu of Keith's having tonight off, I'm posting the link to last Friday's double header. "The Glass In The Field" and "A Note At The End". Please enjoy.

 

[jdcnow]

Now that the holidays are in the books for another year, things can finally get back to nornal. In tonight's Fridays With Thurber, meet an admiral whose poor vision yields some unusual advantages. Please enjoy.

 

[jdcnow]

Good evening from northern Texas, tonight. I hope you're doing well.

First off, thank you, thank you, thank you all for the kind words for the birthday e-card graphics I posted, earlier this week.

One of my most enjoyable hobbies is to draw and create visual graphics on my computer. I am completely freelance and independent. I do all of my work on my own. A huge shout-out here, to Ms. Champion and Mrs. Dean, my middle and high school computer teachers who lit the spark in me to be interested in graphics creation, and stuff. To you two wonderful ladies, I am forever in both of your debts, and I promise one day to make you proud.

My hope is to one day, go to college and study visual graphics. I hope to use my graphics skills in order to get on to a TV station's graphics and creative services dept., where hopefully, I can transition over to doing weather forecasting (my other true passion).

A lot of the inspiration for doing what I do comes from the strangest of places: television news. I don't mention my YouTube channel here on JUB, because it's mostly filled with clips that only people who are interested in this sort of thing, like myself, would truly appreciate. But here it is, if you ever want to swing by. I have watched stations for years and am a collector of TV news memorabilia. Stations like ESPN, CNBC. MSNBC, CNN, as well as local TV stations from all across the USA have given me inspiration and creative ideas I need to create my own graphics for various uses.

I will tell you >> It's NOT nearly as easy as it looks. Depending on how complex of a project it is, the graphics I work on can take me anywhere from a few hours at the quickest, to a few months or longer. You have to both love and live for the process, because good graphics that are worth showing off, and are worth other people's time to look at, take HUGE amounts of time to perfect.

If you have the time to watch this, here's a 10 minute short film about the design group that made the graphics for The CBS Evening News when Katie Couric took over. Graphic artists Jean McCarvill and Dave Allen of Nation Ministry Of Design, located in New York, describe all of the design elements and all of the work that went into how the whole graphics package came to be.



Here are some demo reels from various companies that do graphics for television. Some of their work is truly awesome, when you think of the vast quantities of time, effort, and expertise that went into each individual graphics package.

Although there are many companies that do this, the top 3 most popular companies are Hothaus Creative out of Dallas, Tampa Bay-based Giant Octopus, and RenderOn (although I don't know where they are based out of).

Here is Hothouse's Reel. They do a very good job of blending video photography with graphics. Pretty awesome.
(A note here >> Every time you see the [HD] logo in the upper-right, that means that particular package was created for high-definition. This reel was created when HDTV first caught on.)


This is Giant Octopus' Reel. They do a great job of blending 2D and 3D elements with pictures and photography.


Here is RenderOn's Reel. 3D work is pretty much all they do, and they do it pretty darn well, too! Their website (see link above) has some kickass sample reels of each individual graphics package they've created.


Mainly what I do is still images. As good as people think I am (thank you!!!), I actually do not have the skills or software to create motion graphics. I use Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Paint, and a piece of software called Paint.NET (a cheap version of Photoshop) for all of my graphics work.

Just about the only sample of my work I currently have on the web would be the Chromosome Y Calendar I have posted over in Hot Men & Gay Porn. Feel free to click on over and enjoy!

Thanks!