Blessing or Curse: Behind the Scenes of the Youtube Victory

July 15, 2009: One crazy day! The day actually began at 9:00 the night before, as the clock reached midnight on the east coast, and the winner was announced. That's when the world became a very surreal place.. then a very dark place for the next 24 hours.

As most of you know, the kids and I decided to enter a Harry Potter contest on Youtube. It all started out so simple: one day I was surfing around my typical list of Harry Potter websites as I was sucked into the hype surrounding the release of the 6th film. On one of the sites I saw an ad for a video contest, the kind of thing that typically gets my attention as I enjoy the creative challenge. This one was simple: create a 90 second video explaining a Harry Potter style magical potion, how to make it and then demonstrate what effects it had. The only problem, the contest deadline for entries was that night at midnight. We had very little time to put this together.

I quickly grabbed Amanda and Little Calvin (Tyler was in Colorado visiting the grandparents for the week) and we began to brainstorm possible ideas. As I had been working on editing my mom's documentary, and had been neck deep in listening to stories of my Uncle's cruel pranks on my mom as a kid, suddenly a story popped to mind. At one point in time, while my mom was getting ready for a date, my uncle and a buddy snuck into the bathroom, and slipped out all her clothes, towels, bath mats, etc. leaving her stranded in the bathroom. Then, with her stuck, they delivered her diary to her waiting date, so that he could read everything she had written about him. This story has always been a favorite growing up, and suddenly we had a direction for our video... just done in a magical way.

We decided to create a video that would have much the same effect: it combines a bunch of random ingredients that when drunk, would magically give the drinker the power to "zap" things in and out. Little Calvin would make the potion, then in an attempt to humiliate his sister prior to her first date, would zap the towels, bath mats and shower curtains out of the bathroom. Then, taking his prank to the next level (as is normal for me), he would zap his sisters date into the house, then into the bathroom. This seemed really funny to us in our little naive world. I never really considered how the rest of the world may interpret this little stunt. In my mind.. if the video could have continued, the very next scene would have shown the poor, embarrassed young kid bailing out of the bathroom door.

When it came time to film this particular scene that night, we had a problem. In my original vision of this I pictured finding some obviously young kid starring in the "date" role. He'd get zapped in all dressed up in a shirt and tie, holding a corsage and looking all nervous, and then get zapped in the bathroom. Seeing the fear and awkwardness of the young, scared and obviously inexperienced kid, would create the awkward comedy that I was going for. But this particular night.. there were no teenagers to be found.. anywhere. All the kids from church were at scout camp that week, and the neighbors were all gone. Little Calvin and I even rode around the neighborhood on our bikes trying to find a teenager... ANY teenager. But none could be found. In desperation to get something in place so I could at least get the timing down, we decided to film me in the role, until we could find someone, then I'd just swap out the shot. But before we knew it, the midnight deadline was upon us, and not thinking about the public perception we uploaded our contest entry and called it good. The video made us laugh, and that's all that counted. Besides.. I figured with all the competition, this would never go anywhere.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the video got some attention, receiving maybe a few hundred hits from people watching and voting on their favorites. We just had to wait until July 15th to find out who won. And the prize was very simple: the winning video was to be featured on the home page of YouTube. Nothing big. We did the video for fun, not because the prize seemed all that great.

Now we are back to July 14th, 9 PM pacific, as I logged into Youtube only to see Little Calvin featured on the front. How cool! We had won and I was excited.

Now.. quick side note... a few years ago I saw a commercial which made me smile.. I don't even remember the company that it was for. But it showed a group of web developers launching their new website. Soon after hitting the launch button they received 10 orders and they all cheered. Suddenly it was 50 orders, then 100 orders and they all went ballistic in happiness for finding success. But then the numbers kept climbing.. 1,000 orders, 10,000 orders, 50,000 orders, 125,000 orders.. and suddenly all that excitement was swept away and was replaced by horror as everyone realized that they now had to fulfill all these orders. They wanted success.. but when it came on suddenly, somewhere a line was crossed from "cool" to "fear". That about sums up the next 24 hours for me.

By midnight.. just 3 hours in, Little Calvin's video had over 8,000 views, doubling any other video I had ever posted. And suddenly I started feeling a little.. uncomfortable... It was like 8,000 people were staring at my kid, and peering into my living room. Then I realized there was a whole other level to this. I checked my e-mail only to find my in-box absolutely flooded with e-mails, coming in at almost 3 every minute. About 90% of the comments were very positive and encouraging.

"Cute video."

"This kids a winner!"

"Ohhh. how cute!"

"You totally made me laugh!"

On and on.. but mixed in with these comments, I found something I never expected.. HATE. THREATS. PROFANITY. People were saying ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE, SICKENING things about my child. I couldn't believe it. This was simply a kid who had entered a contest to show his love for the Harry Potter characters, movies and books that he loves, and people were saying far worse things than I ever thought I would be reading. I suddenly found myself sick to my stomach.. what had I just done?

By the time I woke up the next morning, after a very light sleep, over 90,000 people had watched the video and my in-box was overflowing. Again.. mostly positive comments, but many were filled with hate, vulgarity and even threats against us for putting our child on Youtube, for subjecting him to witchcraft, and even to forcing him to drink glass shards. PEOPLE ACTUALLY THOUGHT IT WAS REAL! Hasn't anyone heard of movie making?! Yes, and the Harry Potter characters actually fly on brooms and cast spells. Good Grief.

That's when I realized that my little naive idea, was being perceived in a way that I never intended in my rush to get it finished and uploaded.

"What a sick kid! He zaps some old fat creep into his sisters bathroom to rape her!"

WHAT!? NO NO NO NO NO! That is so not what I was thinking!! But the hate mail continued to pour in. I never dreamed people would read sexual innuendos into our video, they would look at it as promoting homosexuality (I'm totally not kidding), violence, sexual molestation, racism (not kidding there either) and child abuse.

By the end of the 24 hours on Youtube's home page, I was counting down the minutes until it was removed and things could finally calm down a bit. The video was getting close to clearing 200,000 views, numbers so far beyond what I was expecting, it was nuts. I spent several hours that night attempting to carefully go through over 1200 comments, deleting all the offensive ones, so that if Little Calvin ever looked through the comments he wouldn't freak out. People have a right to not like the video, that is totally fine and in our free country they can disagree or not understand the video. I left those comments there. But for those that got out of hand, or used foul language, I exercised my rights as the video owner to delete their comments and block them from making future ones. If they can exercise their freedoms, so can I.

Now, a week and a half later, views have slowed dramatically. We will soon cross the 200,000 threshold, which is still so weird to me. It was just so bizarre to read all these comments. The good news... as a struggling filmmaker, trying to find ways of getting eyeballs on my work.. suddenly having my Youtube channel pounded for a day, was great. Not only did our Harry Potter video get slammed, but all my videos as well. I went from 2 subscribers to almost 150 overnight, thus giving me more chances at exposure for my films. It just felt very odd, like having 200,000 people peering in my living room, and being critical of what they saw all at once.

Was the prize a help, or a hindrance? A blessing or a curse? Did I just do something to help my career, or expose my kids to the scum of the world? I haven't fully sorted my feelings out yet. But what a wild and crazy day, one that I will not soon forget!

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Side note: Last week I was doing some late night channel surfing to wind down for the day and came across the intro for "The Soup" on the E! network. Suddenly Joel McHale, the host, starts taking about clips of Harry Potter fans making videos of potions and I literally yelled "NOOOOOOO!" at my TV. It was weird enough to wrap my head around 200,000 Youtube views, but having my child on "The Soup" was just too much. Luckily, He was referring to something else. For a second I feared this could get even more out of control, but it didn't go there.

We Won!

Quick note!

I just found out that we won the Harry Potter Youtube potions video contest. Our winning video is being used to help promote the opening of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and will be featured on the home page of Youtube ONLY ON Wednesday, July 15th. Just go to Youtube, and watch the big Harry Potter banner across the top of the screen.. and sure enough, there is Little Calvin, plotting revenge on his sister.

More information, on the video and "what the heck we were thinking" coming soon!

2 Months of Insanity

Time to take a breath! Time to come back to the real world, step away from the camera and video editing software for a moment. Time to finally post a blog update.

Most regular readers of the blog know that May and June can be some of the crazier months for me, what with so many video projects hitting at once. As it's been a while since I have posted, let me do a quick recap. Over the last 2 months, here's what's been on the schedule:

1. Filming the Colorado documentary: I already posted on the filming process and a quick trailer for the upcoming film, which is finally starting the editing phase this week.

2. The "Sound of Music" performance DVDs: To help finance my Mom's documentary film, and since I was there anyway, I offered to film my mom's last musical, not as part of the documentary film, but for the performance, for people to buy to remember the actual play. A simple guy would just pop a camera on a tripod, press record, and burn out the results to disk. But me being me, I don't do things the easy way. I had to film all three nights from multiple camera angles and then put together a "performance" not from one night, but taking the best from all 3 nights and combining them into one. That translates into big workloads, and a fast turnaround as we promised to have finished DVDs delivered to them prior to their graduation just 2 weeks after the performance.

3. Marist Senior Tribute: A HUGE project for me, taking a ton of time. This is a special tribute DVD developed for the graduating class of Marist High School. There is an interesting story for me to tell in conjunction with this project, but I will save that for when I can post bits of the video online, whereas now, that could hurt DVD sales. So for now, suffice it to say that the project took a lot of time over the last 3 months, but the huge order of DVDs was dropped off yesterday.. and I can finally breath again.

4. Territorial Elementary: Each year my wife and I work together to document the year for Little Calvin's class and their growth. From classroom activities, to assemblies, to field trips, it all gets combined into one DVD for the parents. Since all the schools end at the same time, the deadlines for this disk are usually the same as for the Marist videos, making for one hellish, sleep deprived week! But we get it done somehow. Luckily, Dawn does a majority of the editing and assembly for these, but it still requires clean up, special introductions, and sound mixing from me.

5. Marist Graduation: Although its for the same school and related to the graduating class, it's a completely different project: filming the graduation ceremony (requiring multiple cameras and a lot of coordination) and then editing and producing the DVDs.

6. Camp Wilani DVDs: Every other year, Little Calvin's school, and I mean the ENTIRE school spends a week at a local summer camp for outdoor school. The experience is very rewarding for the kids (even when freak, intense, severe storms cause the evacuation of camp one day) and of course that means that our cameras are rolling, filming the week. This project has a FAST turn around, as the camp is held shortly before the end of school, and the disks must be produced in time to get them to parents before summer break starts. Again, my wife works a lot of hours keeping up on the editing, and I work the other details. I'd say we make a very good team!

7. Business projects: In my free time (ha!) I also produced a video for a local engineering firm to use to help sell one of their high tech products. Due to the specifics on the contract and the proprietary nature of the shoot, I can't go into details, but.. suffice it to say it was a fun shoot, and interesting video to put together as a break from looking at high school or elementary school students.

8. "The Great Pine Cone War": Finally, in a bit of insanity, I somehow agreed to help our local scout troop earn their cinematography merit badge. I joined them on an overnight camp-out to direct them in the filming of their movie, necessary for earning the badge. Sure, it was a lot of fun returning to my boy scout roots and spending a day chasing teenagers through the forest with a camera in hand, dousing them with fake blood, as well as a number of creative ideas. I also worked with them to get the film edited.

So there.. 8 big projects in 2 months. Anyone wondering why I have grossly neglected my blog, Facebook postings, and e-mails? There you go! Now it's time to enjoy my summer.. oh wait.. I have more to edit! And since I have no shortage of work to be done, anyone guess what I proposed to Little Calvin as something that might be fun to do this summer? Yup.. video production! Every day! For his blog we are doing a video diary of "almost" every day of his summer vacation, requiring nightly editing sessions together. So far we've made our own episode of Wipeout, survived the death of his beloved first pet, and had fun coming up with new ways to present each day. You can see the episodes here, and remember we are attempting to post each week day, so check back frequently.

So that's the latest from the Calvin household. Now that the "strict deadline" projects have been completed I will be able to return to more regular updates, Growing Up Calvin features and crazy family stories and adventures.

Now, I can finally scratch "update blog" off the "to do" list... Back to the video editing..

"Last Week" Trailer Released

Just a quick note today...

You read about my crazy week filming my latest documentary in my previous post, but now I am releasing the trailer for the film. Traditionally, the film is completed FIRST, then a trailer produced, but in order to take advantage of a marketing opportunity, I had to switch those around for this one. So, it may be a bit early, but at least you will be able to get a visual look at my week and the film yet to come. Enjoy!

Telling the Story.. Regardless

Two years ago, I was sitting in a middle school gym, watching my daughter performing in her choir concert. This was a special occasion. Her choir teacher had been teaching choir at the school for the past 30 years and was now getting ready to retire. This was his final performance of his long career. As I watched this whole event unfold, with tears, with flowers, with standing ovations and many hugs, I wondered what it must feel like for him. Was he relieved it was all over? Was he sad to see it all go? He had obviously made a huge difference in the lives of thousands of students.. but what kind of things were going through his head as he had prepared that week for his last show?

The filmmaker in me was very intrigued by this, and as I drove home I thought ahead to my own mother's retirement just two years later in 2009. Her story was similar.. teacher for the last 40 years. She took over the schools speech and debate team in the early nineties and turned it into the most dominating speech program in the state for ten years, with teams of 75 students. She had taken over the drama program, staging elaborate spring musicals each year. But she had done all this with the philosophy of "teach the student, not the subject" that had made her one of the most popular teachers in the high school for years. So that begged the question from me.. what would it feel like for her as she prepared for and performed her final musical of her career? Suddenly I had a story that I felt could make for an interesting and inspiring documentary film and I began to make my travel plans.

And so, last Saturday I flew to Colorado with all my film gear, ready to document the week leading up to this final performance at the high school I had graduated from YEARS ago (returning there after all these years was a bizarre experience in and of itself..) The musical was "The Sound of Music" my mom's all time favorite that she had saved for her final year. The week's schedule was packed filming all the rehearsals and the interaction between the kids as well as driving around the state interviewing former students, friends, colleagues, the cast, everyone that I could track down to give insight into the story.

This whole experience was a bit different for me. In my past sports related films, the typical "emotional" moments came when the key player on the team is injured at the end of the season and the rest of the team must figure out how to pull together to play and win without them. But this story was a very different beast as it had a much more in depth emotional story to go along with it. Most of these kids and teachers had been involved in the random school hostage crisis and the in-school killing of one of their classmates, Emily Keyes, 3 years ago (read about it here). The girl that was killed was one of my Mom's speech students and several of the lead cast members in the play had been the hostages. There was still a lot these people were dealing with from that event, causing some very emotional interviews. I certainly was not used to watching both men and women break down in tears on camera and I left many of the interviews just feeling emotionally exhausted. While that killing was not a HUGE part of the story, it was still an important part that had to be told as my Mom was one of the instrumental people that day, in helping rally the students together to cope, and in pulling the community back together with her speech at the funeral.

So I had my job... I had to document the events of the week.. regardless of how they unfolded. My goal with the project was to be realistic, not some reality show type of story where events are exaggerated to create more drama. I just wanted to tell the story of what my mother had done and the difference she had made. I wanted to visually see what she went through.. the stress, the emotional swings, and the chaos that has made the final week of prep before the spring musical become dubbed "Hell week". I was worried everything would go smoothly and I would be left without a compelling story to tell.. turns out.. I had nothing to fear.

It started first thing Monday morning with a freak snow storm, sending my mom into a panic that school (and her biggest rehearsal of the week) would be canceled.

Luckily all arrived at school, but that rehearsal was so lousy, it about sent my mom over the edge and she doubted this play would come together on time.

Then there was the truly wacky, unexpected events of the week... the two kids that attempted (for whatever reason) to crawl up into the air ducts above the auditorium (I think they were trying to ditch class) only to have one almost fall through the ceiling, as it gave away under their weight. Luckily, he caught himself and got out, preventing a potential deadly fall to the concrete auditorium floor three stories below. (the poor students who were alarmed watching his leg suddenly come bursting through the ceiling in a crash, were rather upset, however..). Then there was the cast member that was standing between two cars on a sloped driveway. When one of the cars accidently rolled backwards, she was pinned between the two cars, causing quite a bit of damage to her legs making her unable to perform. Soon I had to wonder if every time the phone rang I needed to start filming, as we never knew what to expect next.

Stress and anxiety filled the cast as everyone prepared for opening night. A week's worth of rough rehearsals was weighing heavily and no one knew if they could pull it off. But to their credit, the Thursday night opening show went off without a hitch, leaving everyone excited and ready to do it all over again for the next 2 nights.

By the time Saturday night came along.. I was very pleased with myself. I knew I had the story, now captured on camera, that I had been looking for. I had captured the events of the week, the thoughts of the students and others through their interviews, I had the emotions.. from sheer happiness and pride to the emotional breakdowns of saying goodbyes.. and I had the emotional element from showing how everyone had recovered from the Emily Keyes tragedy. It was a good story and I knew that all I had to do was get the last few shots.. odds and ends of the cast, and the standing ovations and community accolades my mom was sure to receive at the end of the night. And so I set off early to the high school to get all the cameras prepped and in place to film what I needed for the night.

Shortly after I arrived and 90 minutes before show time.. the "call" came in. Saturday afternoon, one of the students from the high school.. one my Mom's speech team members, and very active member of her drama department, had been killed in a head-on car accident on the highway west of the school (news reports here). No one saw this one coming.. no one was prepared for this pain. Suddenly I found myself in an odd spot. My job was to document the events of the week.. regardless of what they might be, and so I quickly grabbed the camera and began to film what was happening, but filming these poor students who I had come to enjoy so much over the past week, as they walked through the door looking confused as to what was going on around them, then hearing the news that their friend was dead, then collapsing in their own grief and sobs.. part of me felt really creepy and uncomfortable and intrusive filming this.

Yet this was what the story had turned into... So I had to. Suddenly this whole, documentary filmmaker role took on a different meaning from what I had experienced in the past. Sure, you want a compelling, emotional story to tell.. but watching people have to suffer and grieve.. just isn't a fun experience. I never thought even for a second that someone would die in the process of my little film!!

Soon, my mom gathered the cast in the auditorium, everyone one of them sobbing almost uncontrollably. The decision had to be made.. go on and perform the final show, or cancel it and reschedule it for another night. Although she feared the backlash from public school parents, she pulled the cast together and offered a prayer, asking for comfort to them and to the family. All the students seemed to want to be a part of it and felt bonded together from the experience. Soon the decision was made to go on with the show, knowing that so many people had traveled a long way to witness that "final show" of my mom's career. They decided to dedicate the play to Kjersti. Her schedule had not allowed her to be in the musical, but she was still a part of the drama department and friends with all the cast, even having been there the previous night to watch the show, and the cast felt it appropriate to go on for her.

By show time, most had found a way to dig deep, to turn off the tears (most just barely) and go on stage and that nights performance turned out.. brilliantly. They all did fantastic in their roles. Even the poor sophomore lead playing the Captain, who had been scared to death to kiss a girl on stage, took the opportunity to "just go for it" to the amazement of the cast!

The school principal even stated afterward that he had never been prouder of a group of kids as this one, to go on with a stellar performance so quickly after getting such shocking news. But a moment I will never forget came at the very end of the show. I don't know who had the idea or how it circulated, but just after the final curtain call, the cast all lined up in the front of the stage, held hands and sang an impromptu acapella version of the song "My favorite things" from the musical.

"When the dogs bite, when the bees sting, when I'm feeling sad. I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so bad," came their unified voices. Everyone knew what that meant, what they had all been through and overcome, and there wasn't a dry eye in the audience.

And so Sunday morning as I packed up my gear and got on my plane, I knew I suddenly had a story much bigger than I had ever expected. I was completely exhausted and ready to sleep for days. But now it's time to put this all together, to tell the story of my Mom, the effect she has had and one that will adequately honor both Emily and Kjersti.. two students whose lives ended up cut much too short.

It was a fun, insightful, busy, exhausting, emotional week, but having the opportunity to tell this story, regardless of how it all turned out, I feel will be very rewarding. Now.. on to the editing booth...

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Update: Here's a more in-depth article, addressing both the death and the decision to go ahead with the musical performance, even after the cast had just been notified.

Growing Up Calvin: The Fireball

It's time for another episode of "Growing Up Calvin", although this time, I am fast forwarding through time, when I was a bit older. Lets just say I was in high school. (If you are wondering what this "growing up" thing is all about, click here to read what this whole series is about, so you'll be up to speed.)

Like always, the story begins with "One day when I was bored..." This particular story takes place at a time of celebration. My friends and I had just finished our final day of school before spring break was to begin. I was very happy to have time away from home as we were getting ready to spend spring break driving over to Utah to spend time with my Grandmother and Aunt in Provo. But there was a small gap of time in between when the bus dropped us off and when my mom would be home to make us start packing to leave the following morning. What to do... what to do... Sadly, the solution came with one of my secret favorite activities: lighting things on fire. I was a huge pyromaniac, legend for what I was crazy enough to do with fire and explosives. Good thing I grew up back in the 80's where none of this stuff was considered a "warning sign". In today's world I would have been arrested long before this little episode.

My friend Alan was visiting and it didn't take us long to come up with an evil plan. It all started out so simply.. We decided we wanted to play with fire... you know, like when you take a little black powder, scoop it into a pile and light it up so you can see that little fireball jump into the air. We wanted to do that... just bigger.

We began by digging a hole in the driveway. Yes, you read the correctly. Back in these days, in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, we didn't yet have paved roads or driveways. So it was nice and easy to dig holes, and just make sure they were filled in by the time my Dad got home, so as not to raise questions. It didn't have to be deep, just a few inches down to be safe (safety... ha ha!), and to make room for our... ingredients.

With that done, it was time to raid my Dad's explosives storage, the one he never dreamed would be used this way. First things first, we filled the hole with, not one, but two full cans of gun powder, the more the merrier, right? But that didn't seem like a lot, so suddenly our brains vanished. We added everything we could find that had the potential of burning... Anything that had the "WARNING: FLAMABLE" label on it was fair game from the garage.. paint remover, paint thinner, flares from the back of the car, fireworks from my secret stash in my bedroom, a few bullets from my Dad's ammo case (that one really gets me today.. man, were we stupid). All of this stuff went into the hole, all mixed up like a giant stew. Then to top it all off, we grabbed the spare gas can, and added enough gasoline to the hole to turn this whole concoction into thin mud. Yes, a black powder, gasoline, bullet mud.

Now we had to have a way to ignite this thing and turned to the gasoline as the simple solution. We just drew a line with the gas from the hole, back into the garage, so that we could hide out behind the car. (Yet another thing in retrospect that makes me shake my head... It never dawned on me that the line of gasoline burning INSDIE the garage, next to a vehicle could be an issue.. luckily this wasn't an issue that day)

The plan was now all in place, 20 yards away was our mud pit, and there we were, matches in hand ready to light off our little explosion to revel in the wall of flames. I struck the match, set it to the ground and watched in awe as things were about to get really exciting. The end result? Let me just say...

It was amazing! Wall of fire to the sky!!!! Fireworks erupting, noises everywhere from the fireworks.. flames in different colors thanks to things like the flares.. it was brilliant.

Now to a few other.. issues we had not even considered. First, we had just finished a rather dry winter. Not much snow and things were nice and dry.. key word there, dry. Second, this was not a calm day, it was actually rather gusty outside. So there we were for that split second rejoicing that our plan had worked, our fire ball reaching to the sky. But that excitement turned quickly to panic, as a wind gust picked up that wall of fire, and set it back down just over the driveways edge, into the dry brush of the yard. As you can imagine, it quickly ignited, spreading fire all over the place. It became instantly obvious that if we didn't put this out, the fire would quickly spread.. up the giant trees, to neighboring homes... this could get bad.

I lunged for the fire extinguisher, as Alan ran for the hose. Meanwhile, all my poor sister could hear as she was down in her room packing, was the two of us running around upstairs in a panic. I am sure she was rolling her eyes as she came up the stairs to see what the commotion was about. At this point we had used up the extinguisher, the hose wasn't long enough to reach around the house, and so we were lugging tubs of water in and out of the kitchen at a high rate of speed.

She immediately joined the fire fighting effort, and eventually (thank goodness before we had to call the fire department) we got the fire out, just was it was reaching the tree bases. Upon surveying the scene, a nice portion of my Dad's precious land, was black and torched.. and I knew that I was dead meat, yet very lucky as it could have been so much worse.

Amazing for me, a little ray of light shown down on me that day, or rather... dark. By the time my folks got home that night, it had already gotten dark, therefor no need to confess anything... heck, what they couldn't see couldn't hurt them, right. And we (My Mom, sister and I) left early the next morning for Utah, before it was light. And as my Dad was working long hours that year, he left in the wee hours of the morning for his job, and got home late at night. It wasn't until 6 days later that I saw my mom, talking on the phone to my Dad, get a puzzled look on her face, suddenly look at me, and said "Ummmm, your Father has a question for you..."

Gulp.

Amazingly all I heard was "would you like to explain to me why my yard is all black?" To which I simply replied "No... I'd rather not.. trust me, you probably don't want to know." He agreed he didn't want to know. I think it helped that we were a state away for several more days, so that by the time we got home, he no longer had the urge to kill me.

Now.. to the part of the story where I tend to get the hardest time from people: Most people hear this and say "so what.. you were in 7th, or 8th grade? A Freshman?" Nope.... I was a senior." Yup, I lit my little fireball 2 months prior to graduation.

Sadly, this was not the last of my pyromaniac experiences, they do continue on, but those are stories for different times. But, this is one I especially shake my head on now that I have learned better. We were so stupid.. it could have been so much worse... I guess it's all a part of growing up Calvin.

By the way.. the bullets in our little mixture.... we never found a single trace of them. They vanished, not even the casings to be found. Yikes!

The "My Eyes.. My Burning Eyes!" Dilemma

One of the many things that I do to help bring in some money while I continue my search for a new job is media conversion. What that means is this: a lot of people have many great family memories, filmed long ago, that are stored on old VHS tapes, 8mm camcorder tapes, or other media formats. In this day and age, it not only does them no good, but risks that footage as old tapes wear down. So, people bring their old tapes to me and I convert their media to a digital format, either putting their videos onto DVD or providing them with the digital format, that they can now edit in their own software.

For the most part, doing this for people has been pretty straight forward, and rarely are there issues... until today. A friend of mine contacted me and told me they needed some old 8mm tapes converted from a bunch of footage shot in the early nineties. They then handed me a pile of tapes, admitting that they had no clue what all was on them and asked me to convert them so it could be edited into something useful.

This afternoon I took the first of these tapes and began to convert it over, as it can be a lengthy process, while I was watching the afternoon session of general conference, no less. Now... keep in mind.. I don't sit there and watch other people's video footage as it converts. By default, I do have to look over every few minutes, long enough to make sure that the transfer is still taking place, the quality is ok, and that there have not been any funky computer or software crashes, but other than that, I pretty much tune it out... its none of my business.

But today.. again.. while watching General Conference, I happened to glance over at my monitor, only to see my friend... um.... well... how do I put this.. let's just say "doing something on videotape that I don't think they expected to have leave their bedroom...." Yes.. my eyes boinged out of my head for a brief moment as I franticly tried to turn my monitor off.. still seeing WAAAAAAYYYY more than I ever thought I would of this person...... Not too many people can claim to have watched general conference and..... that... simultaneously.

But that leaves me to the question I have been pondering the rest of the night... what do I do now? Do I just give my friend the tapes back and the digital version and pretend like nothing happened.. and wonder how long it will take them to realize the reality of what they gave me to convert, potentially leading to some seriously awkward future conversations? Do I hand the tapes back with a warning to preview the tapes for potentially embarrassing footage before handing them over? Do I delete the embarrassing footage, hoping they don't realize it was there and will never miss it, thus taking away the chances for the "awkward discussion"? Or is that part of what they were intending for me to convert, looking forward to using it and not ashamed of having people see it?

Right now I seem to be leaning towards just handing it all back to them, and then let them learn their own lesson about previewing tapes first. But I know that the next time we talk... there could be some awkward questions.. things I'd really like to avoid. That way I did my job, I didn't make judgements for another person based on my own morales. But still..

So I pose the dilema to you.. what would you do? I welcome any comments and you can even take the poll on the right... Ah my crazy life. I guess it's fun never knowing what you'll see next, even if it could be a bit, shocking.