Archive for category Friends & Family

My son Dan’s band Valentine is playing The Key Club in Hollywood tonight.  On the band instruction page it has this paragraph:

MISC. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Please do your best to refrain from throwing ANYTHING (this includes WATER!!! Please try and keep the stage and everyone around you dry) from the stage into the audience. The only obvious exception being T-shirts and guitar picks. If you have CDs that you want to give away either arrange to have them at your merch table or hand them to the crowd. Anything else must be approved in advance. And although it should go without mentioning it, we’re going to anyway: ABSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE THERE TO BE ANY PYRO, FIRE BREATHING OR ANYTHING INVOLVING AN OPEN FLAME ON STAGE. THE ANSWER IS UNEQUIVOCALLY NO.

Come on man…what a little fire never hurt anyone…right?

Review of film “The 20 Second Rule”. My son Dan did the sound design: http://sk4.us/131 Plus it’s origin of scorpion story: http://sk4.us/101

This is their idea of a do not disturb sign. Coolest hotel ever.

Son Dan is attending “ShortFest” The Palm Springs International Film Festival where his The 20 Second Rule movie premieres.  He sends along this picture with the caption above.  He adds the cool hotel is the Ace Hotel Palm Springs

While looking through drawers at my in-law’s house in the Chicago area we came across this old Marshall Field’s gift certificate.  There’s no date on the certificate but from the name of the gift giver my in-law’s guess it’s probably from the 1970’s.  So what do you do with an old gift certificate?  Since Marshall Field’s was bought out by Macy’s I thought I’dd call Macy’s customer service line.  I patiently explained what I had and the representative told me that I would have to call the 800 number on the back of the certificate.  I told her there was no 800 number on the back, she said all Macy’s gift certificates have an 800 support number.  Explained again it was a Marshall Field’s certificate, got transfered to the Gift Card help line who had no answers.  We’ll just take it to our local Macy’s to see what they say. Inflation alone would make $50 then… be $300 now.  If we could only get interest on this nearly 40 year old relic it probably would be worth $1,000.

Interesting…somewhat surreal picture from April 2008.  My youngest son Brad took this picture on Coronado Island, California.

Don’t you love all the extra options you get when you put a DVD in the player? You have your “Main Menu” and your “Special Features”. I always like watching the “Deleted Scenes” to see what part of the movie they had to cut. Sometime you can see why the cut the scene. Sometimes you don’t know why. This is the story of one deleted scene from the movie Herbie Fully Loaded (2005) starring Lindsay Lohan & Justin Long….also featuring the band Mavin with my son Dan Kremer. Well, sort of. Dan and Mavin became victims of the movie being too long, a subplot being cut, and their performance being relegated to the “Deleted Scenes”.

The original script had Lindsay playing Maggie Peyton and Brecklin Meyer playing her brother Ray, Jr. The subplot had Ray secretly being in a rock and roll band. His dream was to play drums, not race cars. The real band Mavin would play the part of Ray’s band in the movie. In this deleted scene Maggie discovers that Ray is in the rock band and it causes some conflict between the siblings. If you watch real close and don’t blink your eyes you’ll see the band. If the lead singer looks familiar he’s AJ Trauth the actor from “Even Stevens” and “Pepper Dennis”.

Dan had fun, made a few bucks, got to work with Lindsay, and their song “Welcome to My World” (iTunes Link) got on the soundtrack.

Click the “Click to Play” button above to watch the full deleted scene video.

Do you happen to remember the Disney original animated series "American Dragon: Jake Long "? Probably not. It ran for two seasons ending in 2007.  For the second season of the series the theme song and music video was performed by the super tween famous Jonas Brothers (girlish scream!).  But the theme and video for season one was performed by the group Mavin.  Who’s that handsome young man you see above partially obscured by the "Click to Play" button?  That would be my oldest son Dan.  He was the bass player and sang harmonies for Mavin.  View the video and pay close attention to the signature bass line that starts the song.  That bass line was used over and over again for the full two seasons…and Dan got a nice residual check from the folks at Disney. You may recognize the lead singer as A.J. Trauth a Disney star as "Twitty" in Even Stevens.

Click the “Click to Play” button above to watch the full music video.

My favorite Christmas gift.  A real pencil eraser that has a 1GB USB drive in it.  Thanks to my brother Bruce for it! Click here for a larger picture.

A brand new Nordstrom department store opened up on the northside of Indianapolis.  My wife Nancy and several of her friends went to the grand opening.  Nordstrom was giving out some party goodies including pink  feather boas.  Our friend Kathy was the first person into the store and was so excited, she did a little dance that was captured by the local ABC News station WRTV.  Here’s the video.  Kathy, you go girl !!!

I’ve had a couple of posts in the past that I have called “Only In L.A. Moments”.  With this story I am expanding out to an “Only in California Story”.  My son Dan lives in the O.C. more specifically North Tustin in Orange County, California.  He lives in a house with several friends including a filmmaker.  The filmmaker is in the middle of shooting the short film The 20 Second Rule with a sub-plot line that involves a character of a Voodoo Princess.  Dan returned home late Saturday to find a film crew at the house wrapping up a day of shooting the Voodoo scenes.  The filmmaker roommate took Dan aside and said he had some really bad news.  While they were filming a scene with the Voodoo Princess a live scorpion they were using as part of the scene escaped.  They tried to find him but had no luck.  So there’s a live scorpion somewhere in the house.  Of course since this is a movie, they couldn’t use a little scorpion that wouldn’t show well on camera. They had to use a really big scorpion.  The good news was it was the kind of scorpion that is not venomous.  It’s the kind whose sting won’t kill you, but it is painful.  The woman who brought the scorpion thinks, but is not sure, that the scorpion had his stinger removed.  She went on to tell everyone that scorpions apparently like dark cool places like closets and to be careful putting on your shoes.  I joked with Dan that it was better they liked shoes instead of something like an underwear drawer.

UPDATE: One week later the scorpion was caught!  Here is a picture of the scorpion in a jar…and here is another picture showing how big and ugly the scorpion is.

Today we take for granted comedy TV shows like “The Office”, “Two and a Half Men”, “My Name Is Earl” and others. They are “sitcoms” short for situation comedies. What’s the history of the sitcom? How did we get to the comedic form we are all so familiar with. Sure there are roots in theatre from Shakespeare on through Vaudeville, but mass market sitcoms started first on radio twenty years before the first commercial TV comedy.

One of the first, and by far the most sucessful radio comedy shows was “Fibber McGee and Molly”. It ran on NBC from 1935 thru 1959. Twenty four years is a long run for any show, radio or TV. 

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Back in 2004 my family was on vacation in Las Vegas.  We met up with my brother Clark and his family and visited the Sahara Hotel to ride their NASCAR roller coaster.  While in the casino lobby my brother was approached by a TV producer who asked if his family would like to appear in a TV commercial. The producer included our group and we were all off to the Sahara hotel buffet restaurant to sing its praises to the TV camera.  My speaking part was cut, but my brother Clark, niece Elise, wife Nancy, and sons Brad and Dan made the spot.  We were told by friends they saw it on Las Vegas and Los Angeles TV stations.  If you look real close you can see me in the background with my “I’m on vacation” hawaiian shirt.  We didn’t get paid, just got a free dinner and had some fun.  Here’s the video…