We've moved, sorry for the inconvenience

Howdy,

This is just a note to say that, until further notice, my (minimal) blogging efforts have been moved here:

http://natedern.tumblr.com/

Gracias,

nate

new web series: Noah and Dru's Novel

Hey friends,

I've recently been collaborating with a few friends of mine on a new web series called Noah and Dru's Novel. It is about two friends co-authoring a novel together.

In a departure from my usual self indulgence, I actually stay behind the camera on this one. Noah and Dru are played by the very funny Noah Forman and Dru Johnston, two-thirds of NYC comedy powerhouse The New Deal and shot by my hetero life partner Isaac Ravishankara. We're also honored to be a featured original series on UCBcomedy.com.

Take a look at your leisure, eh?

Noah and Dru's Novel - Episode 1 - Ground Rules



http://www.ucbcomedy.com/videos/play/6180/noah-and-drus-novel-ep-1

Love,
nate

a prayer in which God is asked to reconsider a longstanding policy

Hey friends,

Sometimes I make a video that I am so proud of I can't help but tell all of my friends to watch it.

Sometimes I make a video that causes me to pause and wonder if perhaps I shouldn't make it public for fear of possible negative ramifications in the future.

This video falls into the second category. I hope you enjoy/aren't too offended:

a prayer in which God is asked to reconsider a longstanding policy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycTfVygxKC0



Love,
nate

my 150th YouTube video

Hey friends,

Well, although I spent several months since my last production fine tuning this video, I think you'll agree it was worth the wait. I proudly present to you my 150th* YouTube video:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArO7lCRHnbs

Love,
nate

*I've made more than 150 YouTube videos, but some have been deleted for alleged copyright infringement etc over the years.

Catch-22

I just finished reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22 for the first time. I started reading it weeks (months) ago and I think it is the first significant novel I've read almost entirely in intermittent ten or twenty minute subway ride spurts. I think this disjointed reading didn't detract too much from my experience, and in fact might have fit quite well with the jarring, non-chronological, and tangled events of the book (The last book I tried to read on the subway was Proust's Swann's Way, an effort which I abandoned 70 or so pages in, although even if I'd been on vacation in a secluded cabin without the distractions of cramped subway cars and worrying about missing my stop the erudite prose still probably would have gone right over my head).

One delightful thing about reading this book was that although I had been aware of it, as well as the phrase it created, for most of my life, I actually had no idea what it was about, akin to the rare pleasure of seeing a movie without having first seen a trailer that spoiled most of the major plot points. And when I say I didn't know what it was about, I mean, like, had no idea. Didn't know it was about war (although I figured that out quickly), didn't know it was an absurd comedy of sorts (once I realized this fact, it greatly increased how much I enjoyed/understood what was going on).

Since finishing it about an hour ago, I've read a few (one) articles about it online. I read that Heller has said that he actually didn't think he was writing a book about war, he was writing a book about bureaucracy and the absurd logic therein. That seems right.

Whenever I finish a book or a movie that really stirs me up and strikes me as significant, as this one did, I feel an impulse to talk about it or write about or do something inspired by it. And here we are. As usual, I don't have any clever thoughts or observations about it. Certainly nothing that hasn't been said better by people who have read more and actually know what they're talking about.

Hmm.

Here are a few passages that I especially liked (Note: my literary power of analysis does not exceed citing a few quotations. I am like a fourteen year-old boy who shows his admiration for Napoleon Dynamite or Old School by repeating the funny lines with his friends):

SPOILER ALERTS TO FOLLOW!

He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the rim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.
p. 440 in my copy

Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.
p. 405

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he would have to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. “That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed. “It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
p. 46

Hmm. Last thought. Joseph Heller wrote that book when he was 38 or something. I'm 25 or something. Nobody has done anything significant by this time, right? I'm okay to just keep plugging away and sooner or later I'll do something worthwhile? Right? Maybe by 13 years from now? Wait, you say that if I want to do something monumental I never will because I will be trying too hard, but if I don't want to do something monumental I never will because I won't be trying hard enough? That's sort of like, eh, what's that thing called...Murphy's Law? Yeah, that's it. Murphy's Law.


Love,
nate

Wikipedia to charge users in order to keep site free

Hey friends,

Check out this fake news video I just made with the help of a few funny friends:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISUX50FkEEQ

I got the idea to do the video after seeing those increasingly emotional "personal testimonials" on the top of Wikipedia asking for voluntary donations. For what it is worth, I love Wikipedia. Love it.

Love you, too.

nate

Babies

Hey friends,

My latest video is a parody of the trailer for the new Focus Features doc Babies, set to come out April 16, 2010. My version is called Babies: Look Who's Talking Still:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c68dvASusmY



I first got in my head that I wanted to do a parody of the trailer when I saw it before seeing Where The Wild Things Are in theaters. It was just too celebratory and jubilant not too. The four vocal tracks that I to the existing music are basically just what I hear in my head when I watch the real trailer.

Love,
nate

TwitPrompt

Howdy friends,

I hope you're all having nice Decembers so far. I'm writing to let you know about my latest project: TwitPrompt.

Here is how it works: everyday I post a new prompt on Twitter that you can Tweet a response to, if you feel so inclined. For example, today's prompt is #Snowmen_make_me_think_of.

If you are the Twittering type, please follow TwitPrompt here:
http://twitter.com/twitprompt

Any feedback would be appreciate.

I hope whatever you are doing, you are happy and healthy.
nate

--
http://natedern.com/

QLP, my one year video log, is over

Hey friends,

Recently I celebrated my 25th birthday, which marked the end of my one year weekly vlog project "Quarterlife Pounder." If you ever have 270 minutes (or so) to put out of commission, you can watch all 53 videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/nateonjesuslane#grid/user/D8FA8D90334DFA31



Love,
nate

escalator trick

Howdy,

In this installment of Monumental Works of Art, Nate Dern does the escalator trick:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQwIFLjAtg4



Cinematography by Graham Johnson.

Love,
nate

My first revenue sharing video on YouTube

Hey gang,

So, a while back I made a silly choose your own adventure video on YouTube. It recently has been approaching 100,000 views, which in YouTubeVille is evidently just enough views to qualify it for revenue sharing. Such a milestone might not seem significant to some, but I'm pretty stoked about it. So watch, enjoy, click the ad that appears next to the video, and by so doing you will be sending fractions of a penny into my wallet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2ivvPyLF-I

Stomach flu,
nate

HAVE A GREAT DAY!

Love,
nate

"Data Hoarder" in Wall Street Journal blog

Hey friends,

"Data Hoarders", a parody of AandE's Hoarders, that I directed and edited was mentioned in a Wall Street Journal blog. Check it out...

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/10/20/aes-hoarders-the-digital-age-version/

Wall Street!

nate

Video I was in by LandlineTV: Hosting a Health Care Launch Party

Hey friends,

Check out this video done by the funny dudes at Landline that I got to be parodying the Windows 7 Launch Party video:



Also, I enjoyed this comment referring to me:



Love,
homeless nate

Horribly Injured Americans Against Obamacare (video I helped edit for UCBcomedy.com)

Hey friends,

Here is a video that I helped edit for UCBcomedy.com:



What do you think of political parody spoofs like this one? Do they make a difference? Is the only result that people who already agree with this viewpoint will like it and people who disagree with this viewpoint will find it unfair? But could that be said of any political discourse? How do you change someone's mind? Will political satire ever change the mind of people who are undecided in their beliefs? Or is it naive to think that there are people who are undecided when in fact most people's most fundamental beliefs are concretely and irrevocably formed very very early on in their childhood? How do you change someone's mind? Is this a patronizing question to ask? Should I ask instead how could someone change my mind?

Thanks for watching,
nate

video I edited for UCBcomedy.com: House Porsche

Behold...House Porsche



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

The The Final Destination (next summer!): Death Gets Smarter.

Hey friendos,

Made this video over the weekend. I need to learn that if I'm going to make a parody of something, I should do it when that something is still relevant.

Oh well. If you've got an idea, you've got an idea, gnome saying?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1itRINOA5wQ

nate

I won Facebook!

Good news, friends.

Well, for a while there it looked like I was a washed up failure, but things have turned around for ol' Nate: I won Facebook.

Sadly, when you win Facebook, the only thing you get is the inability to add more Facebook friends. Ironic, since having won Facebook this is probably the prime time when Facebook users would want to add me as a Facebook friend, me being the winner of Facebook and all.

So it goes.

24 Years Late: I just watched The Breakfast Club for the first time and I'd like to talk about it, please.

So. I just watched The Breakfast Club (1985) for the first time. It was for "research" for another project I have going on in my life. If you were here in my apartment with me right now, I'd want to talk to you about it, even though you probably saw it a long time ago and are probably over, or more likely never were interested in, discussing it at length. So consider yourself fortunate that instead of berating you verbally with these thoughts, you only have to peruse them in text form until you decide to click away. Perhaps you already have. Without further ado:

Why oh why is it called The Breakfast Club?

• Again, I've never really had a discussion with anyone about this film, so perhaps this is old news, but please tell me it is generally agreed upon that this is a silly title? Five kids all have detention together on a Saturday from 7-3, early on they discuss different "clubs" (social clubs vs academic clubs vs sport teams vs belonging to no clubs), they eat lunch together, they indicate that they may or may not be friends once this day is over, and then they leave, some of them kissing before they do. They never eat breakfast. 7am does seem early, which is what a lot of the internet posts defending the title or attempting to explain the title pointed to, but actually 7am only seems early for those of us who are no longer on the primary/secondary school schedule. That is just a normal school day that those kids went through. Listen, to me, your title should be one of two things: 1) obviously from the story you are telling (examples of this abound: The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, 10 Things I Hate About You), or 2) although not from the story, title is something that compliments or offers a new twist on our understanding of the story (in The Fountainhead, the word "fountainhead" never appears in the book, but that title works because it supports a theme of the book). In contrast, The Breakfast Club toes the line between making sense and not making sense, in a way that aggravates me more than it should. It feels like an attempt was made to go for the first category of title I described above, something directly from the movie, but there is no justification for "Brian"/Anthony Michael Hall signing their essay "The Breakfast Club." Some of the internet posts defending the title cited this as the reason for the film's title, but this is circular logic to me. The Detention Club maybe? The Saturday Club perhaps? It felt like it was going for a title like this. On the other hand, if the intention was to go for the second type of less obvious title, than I think it wasn't taken far enough. Something like, Nothing Better To Do or What We Did To Get In Here or Five White Kids. Speaking of that...

All types of kids (all of the types of white relatively good looking kids, that is)

• So I suppose it can be attributed to being an artifact of the times or whatever, but if one was going to write a blog entry about one's first time watching The Breakfast Club (which I seem to be doing) then I think it would be impossible not to at least mention this fact. I mean, especially for a film that is about taking five strangers from different backgrounds and showing that they have more in common than they think, it might have been a bit more ambitious to choose a slightly more representative cross section of American society at the time. But hey, at this point it is what it is. I'm mainly sharing my viewing experience, not offering an earnest plea for how the movie should have been made. By the time both the teacher and the janitor were also good looking white dudes, it just seemed like it wasn't simply a grave oversight, but actually possibly an active effort to keep this film white. That being said, this film wouldn't be a classic and hold the place that it does in popular culture without doing a few things pretty damn well...

Ambitious decisions

• Despite the misgivings shared above, there were some things that I really admired. For example, it takes place in one location: a school. Not only that, most of the "action" takes place within the library. Action has been placed in quotation marks because not much action actually occurs, which is also ambitious. I imagine watching this film (pre the teen romantic comedies of the 90s and way pre mumble core films about youth) back in 1985, there was a tremendous feeling amongst middle class teenagers of being able to relate to these characters in a way that previous films might not have had. I imagine movie goers might have even exclaimed things like, "Hey, they're just like us!" or "Hey, they're just sitting around the school talking about stuff - that is what we do!" or even "Hey, they're making jokes, smoking weed in detention, and throwing lunch meat on library statues - aka what we did yesterday!" And while at times there are punches of 80s music that now feel dated and hilarious, there are also long stretches where there is no musical scoring at all, just the dialogue, something that I admire a lot. Music, sometimes more than anything else, in movies tells the viewer what emotion he or she should be feeling at this time. Without music, there is more onus on the viewer to decide how he or she feels about what is on the screen at that moment. At the beginning of the film especially, there is a long break in music between the opening credits and the first time it kicks in again after we've been introduced to all of the characters. During this stretch, there is nothing to entertain us or get us drawn in but the individuals and the unremarkable dialogue we're observing on the screen. I think that is ambitious for a mainstream film.
  

Length of the essay

• They are supposed to write a 1000 word essay. The essay that is read at the end is probably around 90 words. This is fine, but for crazy people like me, if this isn't addressed at least, then inevitably I will notice it and it will take me out of the movie going experience. I was unable to enjoy the satisfaction of the ending because I was just thinking, "Wow, that was way less than 1000 words." Again, ending with an Anthony Michael Hall 1000 word voice over would probably be a bad call, but if you're going to make such a big deal about the length of the essay at the top of the film, then you at least need to address it. One line is all I need. "Well, this isn't quite 1000 words, but here goes..." Again, I am a crazy person, so keep that in mind.
  

Phew. Aren't you glad you weren't here in person for me to say all of this stuff to you?

Thanks for reading. Please feel free to tell me why I'm wrong.

Love,
nate

Empire Autos Extends Cash For Clunkers!

Hey friends,

I wrote this for a sketch class I'm in right now. Let me know what you think.

Clunkers,
nate