Hello again.

It's certainly been awhile, hasn't it?

But I'm back now. And I'm hoping to get back to this blog with a renewed energy, posting snippets from long form projects I've been working on as well as writing about anything and everything that I feel compelled to write about: sports, movies, tv, the weather, etc. We'll see what comes of it, but I have a lot of creative projects in the works and I look forward to sharing them with the world.

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

In the meantime, check out my tumblr and follow me on twitter!

http://awareofthebear.tumblr.com/

@AlexFricknSmith

To Victory!

Hello everybody. This summer I was introduced to Victory Brewing Company out of Downingtown, PA and all of their great beers. It's an awesome brewery and you can tell that they truly love what they do over there. They've seen a lot of well deserved success, with a lot of their beers winning awards at various competitions. A couple of weeks ago I found out they were having a video contest and immediately the ideas started flowing. After bouncing around several different concepts, we came up with a game show spoof about that moment in front of the beer fridge when it seems impossible to make a decision. The videos are all up at Victory's website and I'd love it if you head over there to check out all of the great entries. Leave a comment to let them know what you think of our video!

http://victorybeer.com/inspired/2011-video-contest/entry-hoose-your-brew/

When you're done come back here and check out this clip of outtakes from filming. It was a fun day, filming in 103 degree heat. Casey, a great character actor, would not take the leather jacket off until filming was done and almost suffered a heat stroke. Almost.


Choose Your Brew! Outtakes from Alex Smith on Vimeo.

To find out more about Victory check out there site here.

Thanks for your support, and thanks for watching.


This has been an All Smiles Production.

SUPER DELAYED FOLLOWUP:


We won.

I don’t have time for this but…

What time is it, anyway? As I try to wake up I sip on some coffee wondering just what time it is. My coffeepot tells me it’s 7:41, while my microwave believes that it’s 7:56. My cell phone reassures me that it’s 7:44, even though the hands on the clock above my sink seems convinced that it’s 10:26. I briefly entertain the idea that I’m living in some sort of limbo of fifteen minutes, but I know that there’s an explanation.  My cell phone is linked up to a satellite, so that gives it some credibility. The different times on the appliances can probably be attributed to faulty programming or the age of the beaten-up machines. And the clock above the sink, well that’s been broken for some time now.  The point is, however, are one of these times more correct than the others, or does it even really matter?

Time, and the way we relate to it, is a very strange phenomenon. You may think back to a day a couple of years ago and say “Feels like yesterday” even though yesterday feels like an eternity ago.  It happens to me all the time.  On Monday I feel as if Friday will never come, but by Friday I can’t believe how fast the week has gone by. Truth is, time is something we experience, something we perceive, and like most experiences and perceptions, it is different depending on the individual.  You may have a day that seems to drag on forever, minutes seeming like hours, while for someone else in the same room the hours may fly by like minutes. Time, as we know it today, has become another institution of society, a social creation that we have learned to live by.

Many, many moons ago humanity considered time as cyclical. We would mark the progression of time by the cycles and patterns we could observe; the rise and fall of the sun, the waning of the moon, the passing of the seasons. We were in touch with the natural flow of the world, the real rhythm of time, and in this way, we had a relaxed order to the chaos of our lives.  We would work for the necessities of life as we needed them and enjoy the down time together when we were content and satisfied. As our lives became more structured, more regulated, order has only resulted in more chaos. The varying religious and governing organizations began to record events that they thought to be important and, in doing so, established a past, a present, and a future. This marked a shift in our relationship with time from cyclical to linear, no longer flowing but constantly marching forward.  While this understanding of time gave a sense of significance and weight to history, it also created the sense of time as a finite commodity.

As society progressed, our needs have become more complex, ever more complicated, while the time available to us has only seemed to dwindle. With so much more to do, we’ve had to take advantage of every second, literally. The clock evolved from the simplicity of the sundial to the precision of mechanical cog-driven watches.  Eventually, in addition to the hour and minute hands, the second hand was added so that we can keep track of every second ticking into the future.  Technology has brought precision to a whole new level with digital clocks, as now we see nanoseconds fly by.  This has once again changed our relationship with time from a linear perspective to what sociologists John Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey refer to as psychological time. Time is not just a finite commodity, but one that we are quickly running out of, and as those nanoseconds continue to fly by we try to use every last one, multitasking in any way possible. We speed through drive thru fast food joints and even Starbucks while chatting on the phone, watch TV while surfing the web, diminishing our attention spans to the point where self expression is confined to 140 letter tweets and keeping in touch is now just checking Facebook for status updates. We rush through our lives as if our time is more important than everyone else’s, with little patience or understanding when there’s a traffic block or someone takes too long at the bank.

I know, because I do this too. On a recent drive to Vermont, I was stuck in traffic while merging onto the NY Thruway. Traffic was backed up all the way into the E-Z Pass lane, the FAST PASS E-Z pass lane. In this situation Dave got to witness a little bit of road rage come out. I couldn’t believe the NERVE of that traffic, slowing me to a standstill in the E-Z pass lane. However, with a deep breath I was able to regain my composure and instead of being frustrated and impatient, I enjoyed the comedic stylings of David Cross and a conversation with a good friend.  I think it’s about time that we all relax and learn to go with the flow. Forget all the nanoseconds you might be wasting and give your full attention to the matter at hand. It’s a cliché, sure, but stop and smell the roses.

This has been an All Smiles Production.

Broviet Russia

In Broviet Russia, revolution starts you. Broviet Russia was the first sketch we filmed for The Debonaires and, in some ways, was sort of the driving force of the whole show. Once we started writing it the ideas kept pouring out and Broviet Russia seemed destined for a spin off. However, as the show progressed we had such a wealth of material we wanted to make and the ambitious plans for Broviet Russia had to take a back seat. For now, all we can do is spread the word and shake our groove things at the Communist Party! Originally, the first episode of Broviet Russia was split in three parts but now, for the first time, you can watch the whole story in one fell swoop.



You can now watch any sketch from The Debonaires at your leisure at vimeo.com/thedebonaires, and full episodes can still be found at the Debonaires' blog.

This has been an All Smiles Production.

From the Curb of Your Suburb

For those that don't know, my name is A Smiles. In the summer of 2008, after listening to mainstream hip hop on the radio, I decided that popular hip hop seemed to lack some of the same vibe and energy that made the genre so enjoyable for me. While there was definitely the influence of party rap, there was nothing like the stylings of Jurassic 5 or A Tribe Called Quest that made me fall in love with the music. Always looking for new outlets of creative expression, I decided to get in the game. So I donned the name A Smiles and collaborated with my friend, C Money. With the help of a talented young producer, C Bones, we began to churn out hit after chart topping hit. That chart might have been most played in my iTunes, but that's alright. I'm just glad we're topping charts. First recording the dance sensation "Swivel and Snap" C Money and I have continued to make progress on our debut LP "From the Curb of Your Suburb" over the years. The album is slated to drop at, uh, some time in the future. Here's a quick preview of a track titled "Fuck Banks, Get to the Deli":

04 Fuck Banks, Get to the Deli

As the album continues to come together with some fun-loving jams keep your ears to the ground for songs to pop up as they are finished. To build the hype a little more, here's a random verse that might find its way into the mix:

I can sense your affliction
You've got that East Coast addiction
But if you come to me for your fix
You best be ready to get your kicks
cuz I'm the East Coast overdose
I'll leave you comatose,
seismic flows, rocking the Atlantic coast,
triple double just like Derek Rose,
leave you on the floor, burnt as toast
cuz I'm a killa, always chasing that skrilla
rock steady, sturdy as a pillar
Holding up the pantheon
Even when the gods are gone
Ancient as the legends go,
but Fresh as the story unfolds
So if you think you can rock like this,
Then go ahead, embrace the sickness
You got that East Coast addiction
Carry it with conviction


Thanks for listening. This has been an All Smiles Production.

UVMtv Presents: An Interview With Jon Kilik

Thanks to my work with UVMtv and being a Film and Television Studies minor at the University of Vermont, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to interview Jon Kilik. It was a really incredible experience for me, being able to sit down and learn something from an Academy Award nominated producer that graduated from UVM with the class of '78.  Soon to be an alumni myself, it was inspiring to talk with someone who pursued their love of film and became one of the most sought after independent producers in the industry. After graduating from UVM, Kilik moved to New York where he worked on movie sets and eventually met up with Spike Lee to produce Do the Right Thing. From there he built a career producing very powerful films, working on most of the other Spike Lee joints as well as Robert DeNiro's A Bronx Tale, Dead Man Walking, and the aforementioned Academy recognized Babel and Biutiful. I could go on but instead of me telling you all about him, why don't I let him speak for himself:

This has been an All Smiles Production.

I, Robot?: The Post-Human Condition

Here’s a scenario you can probably relate to: You are sitting around with your friends, discussing movies, and there’s a name on the tip of your tongue but, Oh! What is that name? He’s that dude, he plays that character, yeah, in that movie, with that director, and it may have been in theaters. Your probing remains too vague for there to be any hope of an answer, even with your collective brain power, and yet, Thank Zeus! Your friend has the latest smart phone, the most up-to-date iProduct. With a few carefully worded Google searches you can successfully remember that it was John Turturro that played the butler in Big Daddy. With the power of Google in your pocket, unlimited access to trivial information goes from the tip of your tongue to the tips of your fingers. My fear, however, is that that is where the information remains.

With this kind of unabated access to information, there is no longer a need for retention. Retention goes straight out the window. Thanks to the speed and ease of connectivity made possible by today’s phones, there no longer seems any purpose in trying to remember all of the roles John Turturro has played in his long-winded career. Especially since IMDB is a few clicks away, no matter where you are. And it’s not just actors and their roles, but all information—Why is there any need to waste the storage space in your brain when the phone can serve us as an external hard drive, of sorts.

It might seem like I’m being extreme, but think about the calculator.  As calculators became more commonly used, the need to understand and do math became diminished to the point where even divvying up a bill or determining how much to tip a waiter is a challenge (but don’t worry, our phone can do that too). An overreliance on the calculator has reduced our ability to the most simple of math skills.

What’s to stop the same thing from happening to our memory? Do you even remember what happened last year, this past summer, or even last weekend without flipping through Facebook pictures first? Now that our phones are capable of giving us directions, downloading and storing entire libraries of books, paying our bills... they are almost as capable as us. If this reliance on our phones continues, our minds will become mush.

As an avid viewer, and stay at home contestant, of Jeopardy I tend to worry about the show’s future. A couple of months back, when I was in my living room, obnoxiously shouting out answers, competing for prize money I had no stake in, a commercial came on for IBM’s Jeopardy contest.  An IBM supercomputer named Watson was designed and built to compete with the show’s best competitors. Not only did it compete, it destroyed them. Over the course of two matches, Watson earned $77,147, compared to the $24,000 and $21,600 that the mere humans racked up. While Jeopardy continues on for now, I wonder when the contestant pool will dry up. I mean, we already have shows such as Jeff Foxworthy’s “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” I would hate to see the day when Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader, the answer to which determines if you are a redneck, becomes Are You Smarter than Your Smart Phone, the answer to which will be no.

And yet, there is a solution. Just as you can still do math by learning and practicing and applying those skills, you can still exercise your brains. Turn off the cell phones, log off Facebook, and use your mind instead. Write a letter, memorize a poem, do the crosswords, play Sudoku. Anything to fight the technologic revolution. At the beginning, as technology and computers progressed, each new model was heralded as even more “user-friendly” than before. And yet, as technology surpasses what we once thought possible, it feels as if we are being forced to become more “computer-friendly” in every aspect of our daily lives

This has been an All Smiles Production.