Briggs' in the house

While I refuse to make the actual video of this public (I might show you, but then I would have to kill you), here are some pictures from my sister and I drunkenly belting out "I Love Rock 'N Roll" by Joan Jett last night at Hula Hula. Enjoy.

Take notes

The smoothest pick-up lines ever:



This is the most quotable thing I've heard in a long time!

*

Rules of the Amazon Elevator

1. Every person must press his or her own floor button. Do not ask anyone to press a button for you, even if you have to awkwardly reach around several people to do it yourself.
2. Anyone violating Rule #1 should be silently criticized via sneers and raised eyebrows.
3. The elevator floors offer many interesting patterns which should be quietly studied as the elevator goes up and/or down.
4. Elevator rides are perfect for using your Blackberry as a sort of prop to convey that you are an important, busy person who cannot be out of touch for even one minute.
5. The lighted up/down arrows above every elevator on every floor mean nothing; for most accurate results, hold the door open and ask which direction they are going.
6. When informed that the elevator is going the opposite direction of your intended travel, simultaneously do three things: step back, half-hearted smile, mumble something.
7. Should a female enter the elevator, cease all talk and hold your breath silently until the elevator reaches your floor.
8. Interlopers from floors 8 and 9 can be identified by lack of Targus laptop bags. Do not make eye contact under any circumstances.

An argument for the extra helping of cake...

"Do you think this makes me look fat?"

*

yes, i realize it's on backwards.

Dramatic Lemur

Shrew happy hour

At a really open bar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/science/29obdrin.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=login

Just another Monday

My return Dream Job...

http://reebok.com.edgesuite.net/lastexit_terrys_world_dsl.wmv

oh, at&t...

Sweet Wishes

I was disgruntled this morning until I my husband sent me this short film by Mark Ryden and Marion Peck.

the grandfather clock that sat in her home for 35 years now sits in mine.

my grandmother died saturday. i'm at the age where death lingers nearby like an unwelcome companion -- an age where i will begin to loose the people i love.

my grandmother has been dying for as long as i can remember. she was a warm, loving and accepting person. she lived most of her life working the land, as a nurse and raising her 4 boys. i have been witness to many of the hardships she has had to endure the past several years, but i know that her life was hard. yet no matter what, she forged ahead with the utmost grace and dignity. a chapter in the lesson book we should all read.

choose beats

Mediterranean Festival!

Hi guys,

Well, I always feel kinda weird talking about my dancing, I feel like people maybe think I'm just all about me when I do...

But hey, who am I kidding? It IS all about me! :-)

So with that said, just want to post a little bit about the big festival this weekend that's an annual occurence, the Mediterranean Fantasy Festival. It's a festival of bellydancers and also promotes any kind of eastern dance. I am performing twice, Saturday morning at 10:48 a.m. with my Indian dance troupe on the indoor stage and then bellydance at 2-something on Sunday on the outdoor stage with my troupe and some of my teacher's students.

I find that people often confuse Indian dance with bellydance, so let me enlighten. There are many many forms of Indian dance, my company combines the classical Indian Kathak dances with modern Hindi film dancing. Kathak originates in India from the time of the Mughal empire and the word Kathak means "storytelling". Traditional Kathak "tells" stories about the Hindu deities from the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas.

Modern Hindi film dance is derived from Kathak but pulls from lots of folk dancing and western style dancing such as salsa, hip hop, bellydance, jazz, etc.

I figure most of you probably know what bellydance is. ;-)

Anyway, always happy to have people come to my performances or ask questions, I love to talk dance!

Words and Thoughts in RGB

Words and Thoughts in RGB from Eduardo Morais on Vimeo.

rita

rita
Originally uploaded by mostrostudios

That's right I named my motorcycle Rita, so what? Cheesy? You bet but I didn't care then and I don't care now because it fit. Ask me sometime over a beer if you are interested. I spent two years building her from a box of parts and pictures torn out of magazines for inspiration. This picture was taken in the summer of 96, I love this picture because all I did that summer was ride, it was awesome because I didn't have a single problem all summer long which is amazing considering that i was the mechanic.

The Hiding from the Bulls

Sanfermin2
Originally uploaded by mostrostudios

The feast of San Fermin ended this Monday, most of you probably know this as the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. I went in 1999 with some friends and ran twice during a four day stay. The first day, we really didn't know what we were doing, the street was jam packed with Spaniards, we couldn't see anything in front of us or behind us and all we knew was that fireworks would signal that the bulls had been released. We hear the rockets, people start to run but we don't see bulls yet and clearly most of the locals aren't moving so we wait as well. We wait, people run by, we wait some more as more people run by grinning like fools. I turn and look down the street and now I can see a wave of people running up the street, picking up people as it moves and just behind it I can see the tips of horns bobbing back and forth. I turn to see if my friends want to run and I realize that they are gone so I take off. The course that you run through the streets is a just over a mile long and the bulls run it in just over 2 minutes. You read that right, the bulls run a two minute mile! I made it about 30 yards when I looked over my shoulder and realized that the bulls were right behind me. Just ahead of me I saw that I was coming up on 'hamburger wall/corner' a ninety degree bend in the coarse that usually causes some of the bulls to fall and if you get trapped on the wrong side of the bulls you get crushed into the wall by them. I decided to pull up and hope that they ran by me. As I did I saw bull stumble and basically slide by on the cobblestones. It felt like it was just inches away. Unbeknownst to me, a photographer caught my in the moment of glory so I was able to bring home a picture of me pinned up against the fence praying that the bulls ran by. That was day one, over in about 1 minute of running but day two was a much different story!

Another Brooklyn Shot

P1010005
Originally uploaded by mostrostudios

A shot of the front of my first place in Brooklyn. My apartment is the windows right above the doorway that says C&A Gear, you can see my air conditioning unit behind the fire escape stairs. C&A gear was a machine shop run by a 60 year old italian guy, the neighborhood was part of the Gotti territory once upon a time. I don't remember ever seeing work going on in there but he was there every day.

The DMZ

P1010009
Originally uploaded by mostrostudios

In 2002, I was living in Brooklyn and I went home to my parents house in Texas for the Christmas holiday. I was only there for about four days and it was really nice, my family gets along for the most part, our dinners are lively with as much laughter as loud disagreements over what ever topic is being discussed but that is how I grew up so all in all it was a great, relaxing weekend.

On my arrival back to Brooklyn I was greeted by a Lincoln town car that had been abandoned in front of my building, stripped (no wheels, doors, engine, hood, trunk lid), set on fire and then as the coupe de grace someone shoved a Christmas tree into the interior lights and all. It was as if the city was declaring 'fuck christmas'. I was tempted to dig through my bags and snap a picture immediately but it was late and I was tired so I figured I would do it in the morning when woke up. Well when I woke up the car was gone, I still don't know how I slept through that and I have always regretted not getting a picture of that scene. So even though the car was gone I did step outside my building and snap a few pictures of my neighborhood. This picture was taken literally from my front door step, you wouldn't believe the size of the rats!

Cards

You know what I miss? Playing cards. When I lived in VA, my friends and I played MAD cards. Our favorite game was Spades. Friday or Saturday or Sunday nights (or really, any night was a Spades night) we'd get together, buy some chips and whatever, usually beer or wine to help us man up and play the night away, and then we'd sit down at the card table and play for hours. Deal out the cards, hold your breath when you pick up your hand, search for those Jokers (the highest cards in the deck). We even made up our own house rules when we got bored with the way things were going.


And it wasn't just a friendly game either, we were serious. There were many long silences and dirty looks from partners (Spades is a partners card game) and god forbid there were any real partners there, we'd be getting REALLY dirty looks from them. But nothing came between us and the game. I think we even had several late nights playing on Christmas Eve!

When I was little, my grandparents would have family poker nights once a month, we'd have all kinds of snacks, usually some fabulous home-made southern BBQ, and we'd play old-fashioned 5 card draw, blackjack, 7 card stud, etc. My sister was the poker queen, I was the blackjack girl.

What the hell happened to friends getting together to play a game of good ol' cards?

Civic Duty.

There's a small chance that you, the reader, those that still frequent here, don't know why I was out of the office on Monday 7/14.

I was in Los Angeles, testifying in a trial case to put a man away for (in essence) the rest of his life. The ol' 3rd strike.

I wrote a 3-part on going blog entry (day before, before and after) of what I was experiencing. Instead of weighing down this blog, I have linked out to where the posts live on my blog:

Civic Duty, 1.

Civic Duty, 2.

Civic Duty, 3.

Homework Assignment - Record Yourself Being Yourself

Here are a few excerpts from my homework assignment this weekend. I am pretty sure I broke the law capturing the first one. At the very least I thought these to be embarrasing enough to make for an interesting post.

Enjoy!

faceBlendsScreenCapture

faceBlendsScreenCapture
Originally uploaded by mostrostudios

It's been a while since I have posted ; I've been making progress but it isn't something that is easy to capture in a screen shot. This is a little movie as I test out one of the character's face rig. The face rig is the shapes built into the face that allow for lip sync and expressions as well as controls to drive it. This guy's rig is prettty basic but it should have enough control for a decent range of expressions as well as lip sync.

There are a couple of theories behind how to lip sync, phenomes or visemes. Phenomes are based on the sound your mouth makes during speech and goes back to the days of hand drawn cell animation. Visemes are a little simpler, it breaks down words to their most basic parts and then assigns shapes the mouth makes when speeking those parts. For example the letters B, M, P all looks very similar when spoken, same goes for F, and V. I have tried both techniques and have had a lot more success with visemes.

i would kill for this!

H3DII-39

The Hasselblad H3DII-39 combines a 39 million pixel sensor, with the world's most advanced DSLR – and when combined with Hasselblad Phocus, the ultimate image processing tool, the result is the world's most powerful image processing system – from lens to laptop.

my first digital slr was a Canon/Kodak model. Back then, the body set me back about $10k for 1.6 MP.

it's probably easy to tell what's on my mind today...

my wife and kids. the past few weeks have been wonderful at home; henry is out of school for the summer and jack is really beginning to find his place and become interesting. we're spending more time outside in our yard, eating more ice creme and barbecuing most every night. my family centers me.

*

*

my new 6x6 back leaks!

You know what's ticking me off today? Perfection.

I am convinced that perfection is an invention of the devil.

At a very early age, I became addicted to perfection. My mom once told me that, as a kid, I wouldn’t start drawing until my crayons were all lined up perfectly - labels up - along the top edge of my coloring book. She also went on to say that this compulsive preparation would often last longer than time spent actually laying down color.

While this was all quite amusing to my mother, it was an early glimpse at my malfunctioning relationship with perfection.

As we all learn quickly, life is a little harder than keeping within the lines with your well-kept Crayolas. Everyday, the tests get a little harder and the results mean a little more. And as life's degree of difficulty continues to increase, the ability to be perfect decreases accordingly.

And this is where the devil has earned his horns.

One's desire for perfection often stands defiantly in the face of one's ability to achieve it. In fact, the ever increasing rarity of perfection only bolsters the craving. This, in turn, leaves one less and less likely to recognize their achievements. And when faced with the fear of possibly making another mistake, performance is greatly handicapped if the person risks performing at all.

For the fortunate, the measurement of success has little to do with the proximity to perfection. For me, success and perfection have become married. And this has proven to be one of the few marriages in this world where the two parties remain committed to eachother.

A long time ago the devil spotted me dime bag of perfection. And to this day I haven't been able to shake the habit. He is my pusher man, reveling in the wake of frustration left by his cursed little invention.

And it ticks me off.

Self explanatory

Catchy

http://youtube.com/watch?v=t7X9MQi7uOU

greg loves rap videos about tech stuff...

so, without further ado!

please vote!!!

I have submitted a photo to nearly every issue of jpg magazine with no success of being published. this one is currently in the running for issue #18. the theme is geometry. if you have a moment, please go to jpgmag.com/photos/172494 and vote... i'm determined to get something published there.

*

Dalai Lama

Cloning is an easy, accurate reproduction that implies that we are putting an end to our evolutionary possibilities. We declare that we are perfect, and we stop there. And, on the other hand, if we do attain immortality, that is, if we suppress our death, by the same token we will have to suppress birth, because the earth would become too rapidly overburdened.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

50's - 60's Mod

Creative Inspiration

www.youtube.com/user/THECZHED

*

*

The condom

Today, human beings will have sex more than 100 million times. Today's sex will also make one million women around the world pregnant — about half of them unintentionally.

The condom is a remarkable little device; a fraction of an ounce, and thin as 1/500 of an inch, it simultaneously fights three of the most serious problems facing humans: sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and population growth.

Researchers theorize that just a 14 percent increase in the use of contraceptives could translate into 1 billion fewer births by the middle of this century. A billion fewer humans might spare the planet perhaps 4 billion tons of carbon-dioxide emissions each year.

Inadequate contraception is not just a Third World issue. Roughly half of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. And a baby born in North America will use roughly 25 times more resources over the course of its life than a baby born in the developing world.

Dance of Mimes

Ok, I've found him, the star of the next Holiday Promotion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb8CH0rTcY4

alter in cottonwood, idaho