School of Rock

Did I mention that since September, I've been teaching guitar lessons part-time at the School of Rock franchise here in Vancouver, WA? No? Okay, then I'm mentioning it now.

It's been a great experience and a lot of fun. I've had the pleasure of working with students of all ages, including a young maestro whose skills are so advanced that in one of our lessons, I actually had him teach ME stuff.

Big thanks to school owner/general manager Kenneth Weiner (who is also the lead singer of Monty Vega & The Sittin' Shivas, whose song "Flash Bang Grenade" is the title theme for the Hold My Beer short film - Ken also makes a cameo appearance as a homebrewer in the film's climactic contest scene), music directors Dylan and Justin, school admin/coordinator Christina, and the rest of the staff and students for welcoming me and being awesome.

Rock on!

Post-Thanksgiving Post

Oftentimes, I get ideas for blog posts from whatever the most recent photos in my phone are. This week, those photos are:

Look at the size of those things! I cannot take credit for them; all the credit goes to Kyle, Second Player Score's drummer, and his wife Bobbie, both of whom are amazing cookers of food.

The funny thing (funny to me, at least) is that as I was saving this photo to my computer (I called it "Turkey 2025") to make it easier for me to write this post, I came across another photo called "Turkey 2020," which - appropriately for the year - was much sadder. You can see it in this post.

Anyway, here's the other one:

And no, this was not me contemplating going on a diet after eating way too much over Thanksgiving weekend (although that would not be a bad idea). It was just that, while shopping for other stuff, I saw these and thought, "Hmm, I haven't had tofu in a long time" followed by "I wonder if my youngest kid (who is into Japanese culture) might like tofu?" So I took this picture to text to them to see if it was something they would be interested in trying. And they actually said yes! Or more like "sure, why not, whatever, Dad."

And no, I'm not planning on making tofurkey.

Thanksgiving Gratitude Post, Book Recommendation Edition

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! In this post, I wanted to share with you a few of my favorite books about gratitude.

The Last Law of Attraction Book You'll Ever Need to Read, by Andrew Kap

Even if you don't believe in all of that "law of attraction" stuff, this book contains a lot of great exercises to help you practice gratitude. One of my favorites is what author Andrew Kap calls "The Discount Trigger Method,"* where you choose a positive response to what you might normally consider a negative event. For example, whenever my cat Boots meows incessantly at 2am, instead of getting upset at him, I think, "I'm just happy that he's here in the house, safe, and feels healthy and active enough to be meowing so much." I swear, it makes a big and positive difference. Seriously, I'm not kidding! My life has changed for the better ever since I read this book, and I go back and reread it every so often whenever I need a refresher.

* As for why it's called "The Discount Trigger Method," you'll just have to read the book.

Feeling Grateful: How to Add More Goodness to your Gladness by Kobi Yamada and Charles Santoso

A picture book about a bear cub out on a day of adventure, it's tailored to young kids but contains great messages for all ages.

Joel Suzuki, Volume One: Secret of the Songshell by Brian Tashima

Shameless self-promotion, I know, but appreciation and gratitude are the main themes of this book (as well as a sub-theme of Volume Seven: Vision of the Virtuoso).

Anyway, hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

Hold My Beer, The Documentary?

Just when you thought I was done posting about Hold My Beer, the film! Actually, this isn't about the narrative film (which you can watch here for free, please watch it and tell your friends, thank you), but a companion documentary piece that is the brainchild of Kyle, the drummer and coproducer in Second Player Score.

Kyle actually came up with the idea for a documentary a while ago, when we were still in preproduction for the narrative film. His thought was to interview the owners of breweries based in Vancouver, WA and ask them about how they got started, what kinds of challenges they've faced, how they overcame them, etc. - basically, their own real-life "Hold My Beer" moments. We didn't have time to produce it alongside the scripted film, but now we do! At least we think we do, so Kyle went ahead and contacted a bunch of brewery owners to arrange the interviews, starting with our friends Tom and Devon of Loowit Brewing (the picture above is of a test shoot Kyle and I did at Loowit this past weekend).

We think - or we hope, anyway - that it will make for interesting viewing, especially given the current state of the craft beer industry, which apparently is in a bit of an ebb but will hopefully make a robust recovery.

Stay tuned for more updates!

My Latest Filmmaking Experience (Including...Acting??)

I'm grateful to have had the opportunity this past weekend to help my friend Craig McCourry, an accomplished filmmaker and the founder of the Battle Ground Film House group, with his latest short film project!

Titled The Singularity Protocol, it's a period sci-fi/drama about two British soldiers during World War II who get trapped in an underground bunker and then subsequently make contact with an AI from the distant future (or not-so-distant from our perspective).

We shot it over two days at his studio in Battle Ground, WA, and it was a great experience. The main actors were from New York and one of the producers was from Palo Alto, but the rest of the crew were local to the Vancouver/Battle Ground area, most of us already having met before in the aforementioned Film House group.

I ran sound, which, thanks to the cool tech provided by Craig and the DP/cameramen James Chick and Joey Hammond, was a pretty straightforward gig - I just had to monitor the sound recorders to make sure the batteries didn't die mid-take or anything like that.

I also got to make my acting debut (my uncredited cameo in Hold My Beer doesn't count) as a Japanese soldier named Kenji Saito who gets shot by one of the main characters! By the time I appear, I'm already a corpse, so I didn't have any lines. However, I discovered that acting dead is a lot harder than you may think, as you have to hold your breath and lay completely motionless for what feels like a very long time. But it was still a lot of fun! I think I may have caught the acting bug...

Anyway, big thanks to Craig, James, Joey, Grace Mak, Kathy Wen, Mary McCargar, Marianna Cruz, Chris Crowley, Marty Meisner, actors Kenny and Mason, and everyone else who was there for making it an amazing experience!

Woohoo!

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is out today!

I pre-ordered my copy. Did you?

An Apology

Hi there! In this post, I'd like to issue an apology to the Google algorithm or whatever it is that manages this blog's traffic.

A bit of backstory: after diligently posting at least once a week (except for this one time in July 2021 when I missed a couple of weeks) since 2012, my view count had slowly but steadily increased to an average of around a hundred views per post. Which is not a lot, I suppose, but it was something.

Then, after I openly wondered if I was autistic/neurodivergent this past March, the average view count per post spiked up to around 200-300, remaining steady (and peaking at over 400 when I confirmed that I am, in fact, on the spectrum) every week.

That is, until last month, when I announced that I had joined another social media platform that will remain nameless here. Why will it remain nameless? Because after I wrote that post, my view count per post went down to around 100, then 60, then into the low double digits.

When that happened, I wondered: could it be due to the content of the posts? That didn't seem likely, as I had been writing about basically the same stuff as always - philanthropic events, anime theme songs, etc. So that left just one explanation: my blog was being punished by the controlling algorithm for having mentioned a rival platform.

I mean, what else could it be? Even if the algorithm had simply stripped away bot views, the overall reduction seems pretty precipitous to me.

So sumimasen deshita (one of many Japanese ways to say "I'm sorry"), Google/Blogger algorithm. I won't ever mention another platform again. Please forgive me and restore my readership.

Even if most of them are bots.