Fast Food Demons Taunting Me!

Enter the Chickenchaku

This guy is actually an awesome guitarist. I'd love to check out his live show. He's quite the performance artist.





I'm glad I found this. It's time to start laughing again.

Here's a taste of his guitar work...

Ninjabeats vs. erniesbudolab - Vegemite Challenge

Oh My God! Nina totally surprised me on her blogTV channel. I showed her my bottle of Vegemite, and then she challenged me to an eating contest. I think we both "lost" and "won." She won the volume category, and I won the least number of gags. We both lost because we had to eat something afterwards just to kill the aftertaste.


No Title- Broadcast your self LIVE

Nina's a kick-in-the-head fun friend. I'm so glad I've got a buddy to joke around with on the internet!

Gigil(ing) Grandmas

GIGIL: A most perplexing Tagalog word. Watch this video and find out what it means.

Talking with Miss Lulu (YouTube - BruneiDoLL)

Lulu is a breath of fresh air. She's got a keen sense of observation and international humor which can be seen in her many YouTube posts. She speaks four(?) languages fluently! Through our mutual friend, Nina, I learned about Lulu and found out she's a fellow karateka (Oss!). When not spending time in the dojo at home in Brunei, she's attending university in Australia. The following is an observation she made...

Story of Teenage Rebel:



Since all my closests friends, here in California, have moved out of state to find new lives and new careers in this tough economy, and even though I keep in touch with them by phone, for weekly and daily contact with people I've come to rely on the friendships I've built on YouTube and Blogger to keep me sane. Lulu and Nina are the kid sisters I never had, so it's cool joking around with them. And Aviva from Bowmansinoki (Blogger), has been a real lifesaver and another sister to me. Back on subject: Lulu asked at the end of her video if her viewers were going through a "rebellious phase" with their parents...

My Video Response:



By the way, Lulu is an absolute choco-holic! Mention chocolate, and she perks up. She also takes pretty good pictures as a hobby. See her self portraits and those of her friends and associates (and love of chocolate) here at passion4cocoa!

Two Videos in One Day = No Sleep

I'm cranking out as many vids as I can before the Holidays really puts a cramp in my side. And, I've got another gasshuku to go to in mid-October.

So, here's two videos I made yesterday:

VIDEO #1: "My New iPod"



The cassette player in my pick up truck finally croaked. Lately, I've been getting tired of "rewind" "fast forward" and "search" just to groove to my road tunes. I won't toss all my mix tapes. Those are going into my archives. All these non-linear functions on all of digital gear has created an impatient society. Now I'm one of them. Good bye analog cassettes...hello iTunes!

VIDEO #2: "Kevin's Birthday Salute"



Kevin is my bestest buddy. In ways, he is more a brother to me than my real life brothers. We've known each other since the age of 14. I've helped him, in small and subtle ways, to grow in the entertainment industry. And for the last 12 years, I've spent almost every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Eve with him and his family.

Kevin and his wife Melinda now live in Cape Cod. They've found the kind of setting where they feel safe to raise their children as well as launch new careers.

Ernie's Interview with Professor Stephen Hawking

No! Of course it's not a real interview. I wanted to challenge (with the hopes of improving) my editing skills.

This project required about six hours of sitting in front of my computer just to research, locate, and download stills and flash video. Then, I had to convert the flash into mpeg and avi files in order to edit them in Premiere.

At times, I had to separate the audio from the video. Such was the case when I created the Hawking dialog. Speach synthesis was generated using the speak function in the software Movie Magic Screenwriter.



In all there are about seven layers of complexity in this project and another six hours of meshing all the elements together. After watching the final cut, I know there's lots of room for improvement. Primarily, I need to step up from Premiere to Final Cut Pro which means I need a new and more powerful computer to run FCP. Great... Certainly, I haven't truly maximized the potential of the platform I currently have. A few more projects with what I've got will convince me one way or the other. Still, it's tough being a one man show!

But for now, I'm pleased with my progress. For my next project, I'd like to try audio punch-ins, over-dubbing, and green screen video. Just to keep things interesting.

Ernie's Randomania 1

Just some random goofiness:

It's a Cakewalk!

Actually, I'm demonstrating the fancy ringtones I have loaded on my cell phone with the aid of Cakewalk's audio production software Sonar 6.

Ernie's 5 Facts - Tag Game

Them YouTubers keep tagging me to say "5" of this or "5" of that...



This was a good exercise in organization and optimizing production and post-production time.

What's Bugging Wilson?

When I get really bored looking at my own blog and YouTube channel, I'll randomly enter in search words or I'll find a video (but not watch it) and click on related videos listed in the side bar.

I don't know how I arrived at YoolerTV. It's a Chinese YouTube channel that usually won't end up on an American/English search. Yet, here it is:



I have no idea what the girl is saying, or why Wilson the cat is so annoyed. The rest of YoolerTV seems to be a bit pervy. But, as an audio technician, I think those canned sound effects in the background are "corny cool!"

I Punched a Cop - Parody

I'm just a silly magnet. Here, I sing a parody of Katy Perry's song I Kissed a Girl.



I needed a break from working on nunchaku videos.

I Hope I Don't Become Too Fame-Ass

My YouTube following(?) is growing steady, and my tutorial video library is too.

Hybrid Shmybrid!

Here is the USA, we have very big cars. Even our "economy" cars are bigger than economy cars found in Asia and Europe. Why? The American diet has made us huge. I've done my part (and continue to do so) by lowering my body weight. I used to be as heavy as 243 lbs. I'm now 217 lbs. I feel that I can drop another 20 to 30 lbs. in another year or so.

Back to cars: We Americans need to do more to reduce our carbon emissions (make our carbon footprint smaller). Reducing our tendencies to be obese; using more efficient light bulbs; building tighter homes; cleaner and safer energy generation/collecting; AND making cars that produce less pollution.

I thought about hybrid vehicles. Then, I discovered that the auto manufacturers have no plans on how to dispose of the hybrid batteries once the cars reach the end of their service lives. They are so new that disposal sites do not have a way to process or contain them. That led me to think that we need to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines until we have a way of applying solar, flywheel, or some other imaginative energy storage solution not yet available.

We're already seeing Smart cars being brought over from Europe here on American streets. People giggle and point when they see them. I think "cool!" Can they be made even smaller?

Then I found this:



The Chinese are notorious for producing counterfeit products; usually jewelry, fashion clothing, electronics, and software. This inventive guy in Shanghai built this car from planks of wood tied together with wire and pieces from the farm yard. It even has a headlight! Somehow, though, I don't think this will pass as a Prius. All I can say is...I WANT ONE! I'll be the envy of all the local Green warriors.

Ernie Opens His Prize From GirlTalkMD!

A few weeks ago, I entered a YouTube Contest conducted by GirlTalkMD, a Mother/Daughter team from Canada. They wanted to know: What's in our purses? They revealed what they had in theirs and invited the YouTube community to video reply with the contents of their purses. Well...I don't carry a purse, but I revealed what I carry in my fannypack. Technically, it's a gun holster that looks like a fannypack. Don't worry. I don't carry a gun. I like it because it's got lots of cargo compartments.


[One more thing to carry...yeah, I know!

Chill Pills or Sloppy Joes?

Christine's original video here

Where Do They Get The Names?

Fellow blogger, Aviva Bowman, asked how do they (Japanese food/candy companies) come up with those strange flavor combinations when they adapt Western recipes/snacks for their markets. I'm like her; some work, others don't.

It's chocolate. It's crunchy... It's CRUNKY?



I thought CRUNKY would have the taste and feel of CRUNCH, but it misses the mark big time. Perhaps it's the percentage of cocoa or the way the "crispies" were made. I assume the candy was made the way it is so that it can survive tropical shipping. An American bar would melt a lot faster, in my opinion. On the pallete, CRUNKY has an almost plastic feel on the tongue, like the residue those wax-lip candies leave behind after you chew on them for awhile.

The parent company LOTTE is huge!

Lotte Group is a large South Korea-Japan chaebol (conglomerate). LOTTE Co., Ltd. was established in June 1948 in Tokyo, Japan by a Korean businessman, Shin Kyuk-Ho (신격호) also known as Shigemitsu Takeo (重光 武雄).

Lotte Group consists of over 50 business units employing 38,000 people engaged in such diverse industries as candy manufacturing, beverages, hotels, fast food, retail, financial services, heavy chemicals, electronics, IT, construction, publishing, and entertainment. Today, Lotte is South Korea's 5th largest conglomerate. Lotte has major operations in South Korea, Japan, China, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, USA, and Russia and continues to expand. (Wikipedia)

I would like to submit my name for the position of: Official Candy Name Thinker-Upper. (I'd like to have offices in Tokyo, Naha, London, New York, and Culver City.) I'll head up the task of re-branding items people think are "weird."

[Scroll down for my "Pocky Party" video. I back dated it to coincide with the original YouTube posting date.]

Pocky Party

Here's a YouTube video response to YouTuber "wallofweird" (aka Katrina).

Rockin' on the 4th of July

Ernie Replies to GirlTalkMD

The Girls at GirlTalkMD (on YouTube) subscribe to my YouTube channel. They're a mother-daughter team, and they're both a kick in the head. Recently they posted a video called "What's in Our Purses?" Responders, mostly women, have to disclose the contents of their purses.

My buddy, RetardedMango and I, as far as I know are the only guys to participate. Mango described his "purse" as a MAN-BAG. And, I said guys don't carry purses, but I opened up my fannypack for public inspection...



[Double click the frame above to go to YouTube to find links to the original GirlTalkMD video as well as other responders.]