Diamond Dave

EwzHealth Month #1

A month ago I started a new life of healthy living through daily exercise and better eating. The results have been largely positive.

You don't get to see the first 10 lbs I lost because I hadn't had proper measurements but the starting spot would have been ~310lbs. That is to say, I've lost 20 pounds in the last month. It's a step in the right direction, but I've still got a long way to go.

I didn't discuss this on the EwzHealth site, but I have a big problem setting goals for this. Mostly because the publicly supported method for deciding ideal body weight, the Body Mass Index, it bullshit. No, it really is. [NSFW links]

You see the Body Mass Index or BMI was never meant to be used for what it's used for today and it shows. When I started my plan I was ~310 which is a 44.5 on the BMI scale. That's obese. 20 lbs less at 291 and I'm at 41.7 which is still obese. That's fine. I know I tip the scales and that 20 isn't all that much at my current size. But here's the thing: to be "Overweight" and not "Obese" I would need to get under 30 on the BMI scale. To reach that I'd need to lose a total of 100lbs. Doing that might kill me. (no really it wouldn't be healthy to lose that much) The next big hurdle would be get out of "Overweight" and in to "Normal Weight" which is between 18.5–24.9 on the BMI scale. I would need to lose another 50 lbs to be at my "Ideal Weight" by BMI standards.

The end result of that would be me (at 5'10") weighing 150lbs. I would be half my starting weight and it would incredibly unhealthy to make that big a change. In fact it might not be possible to do without outright starving myself. The amount of work it would take to lose that much weight would lead to muscle mass which the BMI scale doesn't take into account. That is why my current goal is to reach 240. It's a great number to be at (it's on my driver's license) even though it counts as "Obese".

Aguirre!

My good friend Nic gave me a few of the new LEGO Minifigures as a gift so I dug out my old Legos and built one a habitat. More will be along the way.

Quest for Glory 2!

No it’s not a video game. That’s the name of the tour coming to Indianapolis that I am SO hyped for.

I have a mad crush on Allison Weiss and the fact that she’s coming to Indy has me freaking out. By freaking out I mean blogging. My emotional scale might not be set right. Nonetheless you should be excited too because if you are my friend you’ll want to be there. I’m not kidding. I paid real money for Allison and Bess’ albums. Do you know how rare that is?

Most important: go to http://questforglory.tumblr.com/ and plan to be at Birdy’s with me on the 21st.

Random Action – Extras

On the second day of Random Action Extras weekend I present to you first a rap song written and performed by our actor and sound guy, Nic Belmonte.

Isn’t that amazing? Our composer was none to pleased about getting the Puff Daddy treatment but it’s something I’ll always have over Nic.

Finally we’ve got the Random Action collection Trailer that aired before the showing of Without Troy. My good friend Matt O’Neal cut it together for us. He’s a talented guy and really captured the series well.

Random Action – Fight Choreography

It’s Random Action Extras Weekend so let’s get nuts. This was one of the original promised extras for the RAEP5 DVD that never got finished at the time. I finally got around to it this week. ENJOY!

Ah, but this isn’t the first fight choreography video I made. The last one was just a slideshow which just doesn’t earn the love that the above video deserves.

At this point in my life I get as much joy out of watching the choreography as I do the fight in the finished film.

Crazy Weezy Epilogue – Flex Dolla Dolla Bill

I made a final cameo as Weezy in this Random Acts video. Yes I’m ghostriding the whip. Sorry the video is LQ. I didn’t shoot this so I don’t have the HD video it was originally shot in.

Crazy Weezy Part 3 – E! True Hollywood Story

I wrote the first and second appearances of Crazy Weezy but this one I took a really hands off approach. The reason for that? I wasn’t in Random Acts at the time. I had moved on to new projects but I kept getting pulled back in for guest spots. I don’t have a lot to say about this. Un-fun fact: I dented my car by slamming myself against it in one scene. Yeop.

Crazy Weezy Part 2 – Study Guide

I thought I was done with Crazy Weezy but as the most successful character to come out of Random Acts eventually I would be pulled back in. It turns out that Crazy Weezy is just me plus 5 espresso shots. Those were real by the way. It takes quite a bit of caffeine to actually get me going that sure did it. Those reactions were only slightly exaggerated. The real problem? That wasn’t the only take. We did a practice one that I didn’t know was a practice so I did the a shot without the camera rolling and had to refill.

Crazy Weezy’s Used Cars

It’s Crazy Weezy Week here and that means starting here. This was the first sketch to use my character of Crazy Weezy and our first sketch to use all of RA on set. Turns out that makes it the most error prone sketch ever. You can assume the reason that booms are in all the shots, crew are in reflections, shots are overblown, and every other problem is because we wanted it to look like a bad used car commercial. Too bad that ain’t true. Coolest feature? That car was in the 2 Fast 2 Furious. That’s what makes this the most requested video Random Acts ever did.

The Gang Hits St. Louis

Austin and Emily are getting married so we hit the spots in St Louis. The Brewery Tour, the art museum, the Arch: nothing is safe.

Freedom Force – Minxy Flatbush

Now available on my Freedom Force site.

The City Museum in St. Louis

The City Museum is seriously the coolest place in the world. It’s an adventure 100%.

Random Action – Episode 5

You’ll really want to watch this one in HD. 720p probably. 1080p starts to show the flaws too well.

This was a great undertaking for us at the time, like nothing we had ever done before. In HD no less! All of the other episodes were shot in a day but this one was shot over a month. Our crew was much larger, in that we had one. I’m particularly proud of our transition to color. Scene to scene we used color to create mood which was a lot of fun to engineer in post.

The fight scenes were a lot of fun to choreograph. You can even watch a slideshow of photos taken during our practice sessions.

The actual shooting was… interesting. There were injuries and interruptions around every corner. Tom gut hit in the head with a sword. “Gospel Fest” was in the next room while we shot the first fight. Somebody called the cops on us while we shot the last sign. I busted my ankle scrambling to the door to greet the cops on the roof.

I wasn’t there the day the basement scene was shot. I would have stopped Jeff from looking like he was molesting Tom after he gets shot.

The Roof scene is my favorite part and I hope yours too. Suprisingly, it was the easiest to shoot as well. Jeff and Steve has such great chemistry that there’s no way it could have gone wrong. Such great chemistry that some of the fighting is real. Brothers.

We weren’t sure how the fall from the roof would work till the editing stage. We shot it a few ways and none looked good. We had a plan to take a cheaper camera and rigging it to a balloon/parachute to drop off the roof for a perfect shot of the fall but it didn’t come to be. I still think it could have worked but I have my detractors.

Available Now!

All available for download on my Freedom Force site. Yes, Freedom Force, the only game that lets you play as Axe Cop, Dr McNinja, and then combine them.

Random Action – Episode 4

There was a yearlong break between the release of ep3 and ep4, despite us having shot it just a week later.

Tom, Jeff and myself drove to West Lafayette to shoot on the Purdue campus with my friend Jarrod. He worked with me on most of my stuff from high school. In this case he plays El Oso.

We were forced to use a MUCH worse camera than we used on our other episodes and we shot after dark resulting in near unwatchable footage. I had a rough cut ready a week after we shot it but I couldn’t bring myself to release it.

The next year I had an assignment to do an open ended video project so I finished my cut and synced it to the Raveonettes and turned it in. At that point our parent series Random Acts had started a new season with a new title style so we adopted it resulting in a new color scheme.

I still have the footage for a secret non-cannon ending that has an old flame of Jeff’s save his life. She was played by Jeff’s girlfriend at the time. At the time the script was written at least. They broke up days before we shot it. The footage is so… so bad.

When we shot Episode 5 we changed the ending so that it’s Marlowe who saves Jeff. I still regret there being no women in the series but at least they were behind the scenes for episode 5.