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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
Thanks for stopping by! 
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PROMPT: Photo albums. On the first day (today), tell us all about your experience with photo albums (physical or electronic). Do you still have pictures from when you or your children were young? Did your mother ever bring out your baby photo album at an inopportune/embarrassing moment (family reunion, boyfriend/girlfriend visiting, etc.)? Feel free to share some pictures with us if you want to Bigsmile On the second day (tomorrow), let us in on your future photo album plans. Any big trips coming up you hope to document? What is your motivation for recording these important events if there is potential they will only sit in their albums on a shelf for most of their life until they are removed, leafed through, and winced at? As a follow-up question: do you think that hiding behind a camera lens removes the photographer from the experience taking place in front of them?
My family has never really been one for taking lots of photos. We have quite a few albums from when my brother and I were younger (infants through the age of five or six), but not a whole lot after that... just a smattering of photographs here and there from important moments like graduations and first days of school and awards ceremonies of one type or another. My parents never really brought out the albums and showed the pictures at embarrassing moments, although there are a few embarrassing pictures in the albums that I've showed people myself. If you look at our family photos over the years, you can probably fit an entire trip on one or two rolls of film. There are a couple shots here and there, then one or two staged family shots of everyone who attended... and that's about it.
When my wife and I first started traveling on our own, I took a lot of pictures. Part of it was the advent of the digital camera and that fact that I could take literally hundreds of pictures without having to pay to have them developed, and part of it, I think, was to get a change from my parents' habit of not really capturing much of anything for the sake of posterity. We only went on a couple of trips like that, though, where I'd come home with hundreds and hundreds of photographs of architecture and scenery that I thought were important or memorable while I was there. I've largely stopped doing that, though; it's rare for me to go on a trip and come home with more than a hundred photos, even when I'm going somewhere exciting that I've never been before.
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PROMPT: What comedy movie makes you laugh the hardest?
GET SHORTY is a movie I never get tired of, and I always find myself cracking up at the same lines, time after time. It's one of my favorite Elmore Leonard novels, and I think Scott Frank (screenwriter) and Barry Sonnenfeld (director) did a masterful job capturing the sarcastic wit and cleverness of the story and characters. Every time I watch this movie I also get something new out of it, whether it's innuendo in a line that I didn't catch before, or a particular mannerism or bit of physical comedy from a character that I had forgotten about.
I'm a fan of all kinds of different comedies, but GET SHORTY does a great job of combining a lot of the elements that I love most, especially witty banter, recurring jokes, and deadpan humor. It's also got one of the greatest comedy ensembles I've ever seen with John Travolta, Rene Russo, Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, James Gandolfini, Delroy Lindo, Dennis Farina, David Paymer, and Miguel Sandoval all playing prominent and memorable roles in the movie.
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PROMPT: Your worst DIY disaster(s).
The worst DIY disaster I've been a part of - by far - is when my grandparents first bought a house when they moved back to Northern California. This was more than a decade ago at this point, but they had retired to Montana a number of years ago and then moved back to the Sacramento area once they got to a point where they needed help taking care of a house. After they bought the house and we had started helping clean up and landscape the place, we realized that the lawn in the backyard wasn't faring so well because it was a thin layer of soil over the top of a filled-in swimming pool. Since the swimming pool had never been removed, no roots ever took under the soil since there was concrete about two inches under the surface. My grandparents decided to take the swimming pool out entirely, and the whole family came out to help them remove it.
During the course of breaking up the concrete footprint of the pool, carting it out of the backyard, and filling the hole in with real soil, assorted family members suffered the following various injuries: concrete fragment in the eye, concrete block dropped on the foot, several pulled muscles, a pick axe to the foot, a hammer to the hand, and - worst of all - a concrete chip that lodged in an uncle's finger until the nail, which nail had to be removed so the hospital could surgically remove the concrete. By the end of the whole ordeal, over half the family was nursing some kind of soreness or injury.  We began to think that pool was covered in the first place because it was cursed! 
Ultimately, we did successfully remove the pool and get a lawn and other landscaping installed, so I suppose, disaster or not, it was an overall success.
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PROMPT: What upcoming show or movie are you most eagerly anticipating and why?
There are a ton of movies I'm looking forward to this year, even a few sequels which I usually don't enjoy. HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 is exciting because I absolutely loved the first one, and 22 JUMP STREET is near the top of my list because the original - almost inexplicably - ended up being incredibly funny and even a little smart. Plus there's the obligatory superhero movies that I can't wait for (X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2), and a few other assorted projects (NEIGHBORS, JUPITER ASCENDING, SIN CITY 2: A DAME TO KILL FOR, GONE GIRL, etc.). But there's usually a specific reason why I'm looking forward to a particular movie, and it's rare that there's a project that I'm generally looking forward to for a variety of reasons. The last one was DIVERGENT (which I actually saw tonight), and it just so happens that the next one is a Shailene Woodley project as well: THE FAULT IN OUR STARS.
Here's the trailer:
And here's a small list of reasons why I think this is going to be great:
 Starring Shailene Woodley (DIVERGENT, THE SPECTACULAR NOW, THE DESCENDANTS)
Written by Scott Neustadter & Michael Weber (500 DAYS OF SUMMER, THE SPECTACULAR NOW)
Based on a critically-acclaimed book by John Green
Directed by Josh Boone (STUCK IN LOVE)
This was one of my favorite books that I read last year, and I think Shailene Woodley is one of the most talented young actresses working today. I'm incredibly excited to see how they translate the story to the screen... and I don't have to wait very long because it's coming out in June! 
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