Brian.Indrelunas.com: June 2009

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:

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.

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.

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:

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

First day at The Desert Sun

Today when I arrived for my first day at work, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I not only had a desk but also a working phone extension. (Never mind that someone somewhere in the world confused it for a fax number about five times in a row around midday.) My e-mail had — and still has — yet to be set up, but two out of three ain't bad.

Not having to borrow some vacationing or furloughed coworker's desk for one's first few days is an epic win for any new hire. Plus, I discovered that I'm sitting in quite possibly one of the best little corners of the newsroom: There were enough off-the-wall discussions over there today that The Desert Sun is already fast approaching the gold standard for newsroom atmosphere set by The State Press. I'm also mere steps away from the executive editor's candy dispensary.

Anyway, today I of course did some HR paperwork and consequently got my employee badge, seen above. I also learned all about our content-management system and got some preliminary info on the reporting and shooting I'll be doing in the days and weeks to come. And I got logins and passwords for the CMS and the photo and video services we use, which pretty much made up for the lack of a network/e-mail login.

In the words of Ice Cube, "I gotta say, it was a good day."

0 comments | 6/15/2009 10:22:00 PM

SPA RESORT CASINO!!!

Best (and also least imaginative) name ever...

6/14 12:28 » Well, my first visit to Spa Resort Casino was pretty magical. Sam documented the whole experience on Twitter, but let me just reiterate that Spa Resort Casino's 99-cent margaritas are real margaritas.

0 comments | 6/14/2009 12:17:00 AM

Things I read this morning

This morning, I read an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education's magazine section written by a university dean who experimented with different ways of reading the same book — via a printed book, an audiobook, an iPhone and a Kindle.

"The iPhone is a Kindle killer," Ann Kirschner concluded in the article, which I ironically enough read on my iPhone.

Kirschner cast the Kindle as the older reader's device of choice, describing the time she took hers on vacation:

All the grown-ups on beach chairs seemed to have one, as if we all had obeyed some secret command to buy Kindles and wear sunscreen. In fact, readers 50 or older are the largest group of Kindle buyers. Therein lies the clue to Kindle's short life. Middle-aged readers think that the dimension of the screen is critical. It's not: The members of the generation that grew up playing Game Boys and telling time on their cellphones will have absolutely no problem reading from a small screen.

That made me wonder if ASU's upcoming experiment with the jumbo-sized Kindles as a replacement for textbooks will actually go over well with twentysomething students or just with their professors (who, it should be noted, in some cases also read books on iThings themselves).

Or maybe something like the iPhone will become the next big textbook thing. Missouri's J-school is requiring that incoming students buy an iPhone or iPod Touch, but The Maneater reports that the school aims to deliver recorded lectures, not textual material, to the devices.

Also of note

Today's LA Times profiles a Watts priest who has not only seen the shifting demographics that I saw in nearby South LA but has worked to bridge the gap between Watts' black and Latino residents. Oh, and this guy who speaks Spanish and has masses with gospel standards is a 56-year-old white guy from Ireland.

Over on the other coast, The New York Times looked at a company that puts former LDS missionaries' door-to-door skills to work selling security systems instead of selling people on the Book of Mormon.

And in other Mormon news, @tessamuggeridge noted that KSL-TV reports a Desert News church-news Twitter account was hacked. But more interesting, I think, is that there's a Social Media Club of Salt Lake City, from which KSL draws its "computer expert" source.

0 comments | 6/12/2009 10:33:00 AM

In case you missed it: Arpaio tweets

I was only in Arizona for a few hours on Tuesday, and I do remember seeing a Tessa tweet about how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is on Twitter now as @RealSheriffJoe, but the news didn't really sink in until today, when I stumbled across the actual tweets and — of course — the inevitable press release.

Yes, the same sheriff who "[did] not have or use a computer" three months ago can be seen right there on twitpic sitting in front of a laptop:

The times, they are a-changin'?

0 comments | 6/11/2009 05:48:00 PM

The Last (Arizona) Supper: Elmer's

In mere moments, I'm leaving Arizona forever*, but right now I'm
having dinner near where my Arizona adventure began eightish years ago.

Yep, I'm sitting across the street from Chandler High chowing down on
a bean-and-cheese burro and a small order of strips at Elmer's.

And just like during my high school days, I'm of course having trouble
keeping my burro from exploding as I reach the end of it.

Well, here's to Arizona...

(* Not really forever. I'll come back to visit; I promise.)

0 comments | 6/09/2009 05:43:00 PM

The journey continues...

This little plane brought me over to LA en route to Phoenix, where
I'll make my way down to Chandler, throw a few more things in my car
and (hopefully, if I'm not too tired) drive back out to Palm Springs
tonight.

0 comments | 6/09/2009 11:00:00 AM

O hai Ginger!

0 comments | 6/08/2009 06:11:00 PM

I'm here!

And I'm all unloaded too, thanks to the help of Student Movers...

0 comments | 6/08/2009 04:29:00 PM

Goodbye, Arizona.

0 comments | 6/08/2009 09:18:00 AM

So I finally cleaned out my room...

...which means I'm almost ready to take off.

Btw, before tonight's cleaning/trashing/packing extravaganza, most of
the floor you see now was not at all visible.

0 comments | 6/08/2009 12:36:00 AM

the final countdown

today

Load up furniture and most boxes (Check.)

Sunday

Pack clothes

Find other miscellaneous things to move

Get to bed early

Monday

Drive U-Haul truck to Palm Springs

Do lease stuff; get keys

Unload truck

Tuesday

Drop off truck

Fly back to Phoenix

Pick up car and drive it to Palm Springs

0 comments | 6/06/2009 11:33:00 PM

Why didn't I eat at Sushi 101 when I was actually in college?

Sushi is delicious — especially Golden State rolls.

Enough said.

0 comments | 6/06/2009 11:30:00 PM

In case you haven't heard...

I'm in the D.C. area for the rest of the week for job orientation — hence the photo with the Washington Monument.

Speaking of photos, I'll be sending off a few here and there from my fancy new iPhone while I'm back East, so keep an eye on Flickr and/or the top-right corner of Brian.Indrelunas.com to see the latest D.C./Va. snapshots.

0 comments | 6/04/2009 11:54:00 AM

I am the Washington Monument.

Good morning from D.C.!

0 comments | 6/04/2009 08:25:00 AM

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