You'd think I had moved to Hollywood...

...with the number of movies I've seen since I moved to California.

Sam and I saw The Hangover during on my first Saturday night in Palm Springs before we hit up the infamous Spa Resort Casino.

Then, the next weekend, I saw The Proposal and had a major wardrobe malfunction.

But this past weekend, we really kicked things into high gear. On Sunday, I went to see Transformers with some guys from The Desert Sun, and on Monday, my mom and I saw the Best of the Fest comedy collection on the last day of the Palm Springs International ShortFest. That was nine, count 'em, nine short films of varying levels of hilarity.

0 comments | 7/01/2009 06:58:00 PM

six years of The Room
You're tearing me apart, Lisa!

So Twitter told me and IMDb confirmed that tonight was the sixth anniversary (to the day!) of the release of The Room, the best worst movie of all time.

How awesome is it that the actual date of the anniversary fell on the last Saturday of the month — the typical date for Room screenings in LA and other cities? Had I known about the anniversary, I probably would've tried to get the night off from work to experience the magic that is a Hollywood screening of The Room. But tonight was a pretty baller night at and after work, so I have no complaints.

Still, I feel like it may be time to start letting my new coworkers in on what is sure to become their most or least favorite movie... Yes, the crazy cult of The Room is coming to Palm Springs and looking for new recruits.

Anyway, happy birthday, The Room! I wish you many more years of tearing us apart!

0 comments | 6/28/2009 03:46:00 AM

Stay in the know.

Now that I'm back in the content-creation game as opposed to just editing others' work, it's probably worth mentioning that you can keep up with the latest things I've written or shot by keeping an eye on the news column in the right sidebar of Brian.Indrelunas.com:

news

For those of you who are especially hip and with it technologically, those same story links are also available as an RSS feed.

0 comments | 6/22/2009 12:37:00 PM

Saturday Night Fever
coming soon to a newsroom near you

I just got home from my first Saturday-night shift posting the Sunday paper on mydesert.com. It was fun stuff, and on my way home, it occurred to me that I may have to start bringing some disco-related elements into my Saturday-night work environment. That way, my night shifts would be truly symptomatic of the Saturday Night Fever, which btw has an epic soundtrack but is an awful movie, if you ask me.

first Desert Sun byline

But I digress. So swinging back to the topic of all things Desert Sun-related, it's probably worth noting that my first byline appeared in print and my first video appeared online Friday.

On Thursday, I went out to write about and shoot a bomb technicians' conference being held in La Quinta. For a print reporter who initially harbored childhood aspirations of working in TV news, going out to both write a print story and shoot a video is quite the experience. It's exhausting, frequently awkward, but totally awesome.

I wrote the print story all by myself like a big boy but enlisted the help of 3M (i.e., MultiMedia Matt) who edited the footage that I shot into a video for mydesert.com.

Then today, the first video I went out to shoot became the second to appear on mydesert. This one, about a local teen who's going to compete in the national junior-high rodeo championships, supplements a sportswriter's print story, and I'm proud to report that I busted out my nascent Final Cut skills and did almost all the editing on the rodeo video myself. I left some things that I didn't know how to do for Matt to finish up, but I lined up all the clips and such myself.

0 comments | 6/21/2009 01:40:00 AM

FML: Wardrobe malfunction

This afternoon, I decided to be an independent woman and see "The Proposal" at the movie theater that's a half-mile or so from my apartment.

I got there and got a small bag of popcorn. The woman at the concession stand asked if I wanted butter, and I said yes. After she loaded up a bag with savory, buttery popcorn — in what could be seen as an omen of what's to come — I accidentally knocked over the bag when when I tried to grab it off the counter.

But armed with a partially refilled bag of buttery popcorn, I settled into a seat in Theater 5 and set the bag on my lap. The first few times I picked up the popcorn bag, I noticed the bottom felt a little greasy. Not wanting to get any savory, buttery goodness on my pants, I repositioned the bag so that it was pressed up against my torso and not touching my shorts at all. About halfway through the movie, I finished my little bag of buttery delight and put it down on the floor.

Butter FAIL.

As the end credits rolled, I picked up the bag — not yet knowing how it had betrayed me — and threw it away as I stepped out of the theater into the light. It was there I discovered that not only did I get butter all over my shorts, but my greasy bag also left some on my shirt as well.

I took off my shirt and walked home on side streets to minimize the public spectacle, but my shorts were still plenty visible and there really aren't streets between my apartment and the theater that are deserted on a Friday evening.

So I strolled through downtown Palm Springs looking like I had wet myself — or worse — and chuckled all the way home since I really don't get embarrassed about much of anything anymore. (My sense of shame died on Jan. 5, 2007.)

Then, when I got home, I put my Tide pen, bathtub and laundry detergent to work in an effort to salvage the clothes:

textile triage

And I also, of course, submitted the whole affair to fmylife.com.

20:24 » Also, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person this has happened to... and I'm a little frightened that Cyndi's jealous of my pants. lol

0 comments | 6/19/2009 08:14:00 PM