I got the day off on Tuesday, so I decided to get a few errands taken off my to do list. I took my car to the shop to get the driver’s side power window fixed, a saw my doctor for my annual check-up, oh, yeah, and I went and married Katherine.
“You did what?” many people have asked. We are having a wedding in June, and we are going on a honeymoon to New York City in May. Since we weren’t really doing anything in the traditional order, we decided to get the paperwork out of the way. It turns out that getting married in Larimer County, Colorado is fairly simple. Katherine filled out the forms online, and the next day we went to the office to get the paperwork. Actually, it is the same place where car registration takes place. The only strange part of the process was the fact that we weren’t allowed to sign the marriage certificate at that office.
So we went home, and in a very beautiful ceremony that involved Katherine, myself, and the dog, we signed the marriage license. We wanted Maury to sign as the witness, but when we put the pen in his paws he kept trying to tear it apart with his teeth. But he watched us– hoping to get a treat when we were finished. The next day Katherine took the paperwork back and now we are officially married.
So now Katherine Herbig is now Katherine Lutfey who gets to change her name. I don’t have do to any of that– I won the coin toss over whose last name we were going to use. We thought of combining our last names, but then we decided that if we have kids and they wanted to get married to someone else with a hyphenated last name they would have four last names, and that just seems like a bit much. So now Katherine has the exciting privilege of changing her social security card, driver’s license, passport, and Starbucks frequent drinker reward card.
Not everyone keeps as up to date on Finnish Star Trek parodies as they probably should. That’s exactly why I run this website. Ever wonder what happens when 5 Finns, 300 extras, and whole bunch of computing power get mixed together for seven years? The answer is “Star Wreck,” a parody of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Babylon 5”. These guys made an entire movie– and it looks just like a “real” movie. The movie is Finnish and subtitled into English (which in itself provides for some additional jokes in the translation).
Being a follower of the original shows helps, but isn’t required to enjoy the movie. When I wasn’t laughing at the jokes, I kept thinking to myself, “hey, a small group of Finns put this together– there is hope for the Universe!”
Here is the trailer from YouTube. More information, including the full movie, bonus information, and future movie releases, can be found free at StarWreck.com
This is another idea I’ve come up with for a new UPS commercial.
The entire commercial is similar to the style of the television show “24,” with views of different scenes at the same point in time.
Voice Over: “The following takes place between 5:00 P.M. and 9:00 A.M.”
A timer appears at the bottom of the screen with 5:00 P.M. on the left side and 9:00 A.M on the right. A UPS driver walks into an office building and picks up a next day air package from the front desk and the timer starts moving. He walks out of the office and the camera zooms up into the sky to show him overhead walking towards a UPS truck parked on the street. A label points to the UPS truck and identifies the package car number. The driver gets in and pulls away from the curb. A different color marker shows the path of the package car. The camera angle keeps zooming out. The path of the package can still be seen as the package car drives back to the center. Other paths and labels appear following different package cars as they head back towards the center.
The camera zooms down and into the building to show the package being taken out of the truck and placed on the belt. It then gets loaded on a feeder truck. The camera zooms out again and a new label is shown that follows the feeder truck as it drives to the airport. As it approaches the airport other feeder truck labels and paths can be seen. The camera zooms down and inside the cargo hold and shows the bin being loaded onto the airplane. It zooms back out and shows the path of the airplane. It zooms out enough to see the entire country. As night falls darkness gradually covers the country and lights of major cities can be seen. As the airplane approaches Louisville, Kentucky, UPS airplanes with labels and paths from all around the country can be seen approaching the airport, forming orderly lines preparing for their landing.
The camera zooms in again showing the package being unloaded and sorted in the facility. It gets loaded on a different plane and the camera once again zooms out and the paths of all the outgoing planes can be seen diverging from the center of the country. The process of zooming in and zooming out to show the progress of the package is continued throughout the process until the package is delivered. The timer slows down when the package is being handled and speeds up when the package is in transit to get the entire journey into a 30 second commercial. When the package is in a facility the map frame gets smaller and new frames pop up to show people moving the package. When it starts moving the map frame gets bigger and takes up the entire screen.
An interesting aspect of the commercial is that it could be made with actual global positioning data from UPS with an actual package. Just attach a small camera to the package and have a small camera crew follow it from point A to B. The zooming in and out would have to be done with some CGI magic. Ideally the package would go from the east coast to the west coast to maximize the distance traveled.
This idea is way beyond anything I can create with my current video production resources, so I figured I would put it up on my newfunny.com websites for the world to see and maybe someone can make it a reality.