Voice of Nola (MIH 32)

Told y'all it was coming.

Writing the Ship

If your still here and you want to know the status of Make It Happen, read on.

We had our production meeting a couple of weekends ago. We talked about the trip, the project as it began, and the future of Make It Happen. Next we wrote a Post Production priority list and created a calendar full of intimidating deadlines. Then we captured all the tapes that weren't yet in our system... which was a lot. Now everything is digitized. We're cutting footage, and we're almost done with the New Orleans vlog featuring Chuck Perkins. Expect it soon. Yeah, yeah, we've been saying that forever, but it's true, it is coming.

As for Abby and I, we're finally settling in to San Francisco. Abby got a job, so we're both working. Now we can pay rent with no worries and we are devoting all our spare time to editing the hours of footage we compiled on the road.

Make It Happen started as a basic idea and a desire to travel. So what is it now? For the moment it will be a web video series, with accompanying behind-the-scenes vlogs profiling people participating in independent projects that TeamJaded finds interesting.

The ultimate goal is now, and has always been a feature length documentary. Once all the material we shot on the road is out for mass consumption, we will move forward with turning Make It Happen in to the doc that it was always meant to be.

The catch is... That doc may not be about what we shot on the road.

Did I just blow your mind?

Stay tuned.

Post-Its

At Seesmic, we made a video describing how to use the interface. It was kind of silly because one of the owners, the french guys appeared all over the screen in miniature, directing the viewer to buttons that needed pressing. Apparently it was a big hit in web business world, and people wanted to know how we did it. That was pretty simple... green screen and Final Cut, no big mystery. But viewers requested a making of video, so this is what we gave them...


I give you that because TeamJaded has been neglecting you on the video front. I'll be back in a little while with a bigger update.

Here's the link to that intro vid if you wanted to watch it.

World's Ends Meet

This is the view from down the street from our new digs in the Mishstro. The pic is totally borrowed from here. Thanks!

We’ve been back in San Fran for a couple of months now, and you’re all probably wondering what happened with the updates, vlogs, trailer, and well everything…

Have you heard of Maslo and his hierarchy of needs?


We’re stuck on survival at the moment. S.F. is one of the most expensive cities to live in, and if you’ll look to your right you might notice that we’ve been in the business of accepting donations since the get go… but this is not us asking for more money. The point is we just don’t have much cash flow; so making it in “the city” hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world.

We are making it though, for the moment. Jeremey is “freelancing” himself full-time to a dot com start-up called Seesmic and making just enough money to get by with no time to spare for anything else except eating and sleeping, and sometimes not that. Abby is actively on the hunt for work in the worst economy in our lifetime. Meanwhile, she’s also busy laying the groundwork for TeamJaded to ramp up production and more importantly post-production.

So expect new video content, it’s coming. We’re working on prioritizing our Post List and hopefully getting some time to dig in soon. Thanks for being patient with us.

In the meantime we gotta send shout-outs to some of our friends making it happen:

Roughneck, Decade of Aggression finally premiered last week, so expect it in a skate-shop near you at some point in the future.


Lowcard #22 is out and it’s bound.


Sisterz of the Underground just celebrated their 7-year anniversary. Happy anniversary ladies, we’re sure the party at Club 6 was a blow out.



And here is some random Seesmicness, Free Ingrid:

LA is not L.A. (MIH 12)

Despite our efforts to eat Ramen and PB&J, we’ve experienced an influx of amazing food. Our gracious Austin host, Shannon, took us to Sam’s BBQ.


Our plates (and subsequently, bellies) were filled with delicious chicken, sausage and brisket, beans, potato salad, and pickles. We amazed ourselves as we realized we had eaten almost every bit of food.


Abby learned she liked potato salad, and everyone agreed the Sweat Tea was awesome.

On our way out of Austin, we stumbled upon this sign next to an Exxon Station.


We’re pretty psyched to see that Presbyterian Austinites aren’t feeling the Bush War.

After Austin we drove to Louisiana, making a pit stop in Hruska’s in Ellinger, TX. We ate yummy turkey sandwiches at a place that served Kolaches.


In case you don’t know what Kolaches are, they’re basically fried dough with stuff (cheese, meat, etc) in them. We voted ‘no’ on the fried and decided to stick with the healthier food.


We arrived in Louisiana late in the afternoon.


We made ourselves pretty and headed out to Lake Charles’ own Brick House. It was here Jeremey was reunited after ten years of separation with his high school graduating class. Buffet style food, a couple drink tickets, sentimental 90’s pop music, and awkward conversations filled the evening. Abby enjoyed herself while Jeremey pretended it wasn’t actually happening. After the expensive get-together, we headed to Jeremey’s friends house, while the class of ’97 went to a local bar.

Since then we’ve been working to get y'all another vlog. Be on the lookout for a video about our adventures across the Southwest.

Who Dat (MIH 11)

We are in Austin, TX. We got here late Sunday night and then had a little adventure looking for Star Seed’s Café, which was “close” to where we’re staying.


But apparently close in Austin means several miles, not like close in S.F. which means you can walk to it. Soooo we ended up at Denny’s- but it was a totally rocking Denny’s all decked out fifties style with a big outdoor patio… it was cool, we swear. We’ve been slacking on the blog the last couple of days. We’re staying with Jeremey’s friend Shannon of Banana Farm fame...



and Shannon's girlfriend Amy (Buckshot) of the Texas Roller Girls. They’ve got a big tournament this weekend so if you’re in the Austin area go out there and show them some love.

Shannon and Amy just moved into a new spot and don’t have the Internet. So right now we’re lurking at Clementine’s Coffee on Manor using their free wifi.


Austin’s been pretty rad; we shot our first story on the road, Austin Craft Mafia. Now, there’s a ton of ladies who are part of the Craft Mafia… we shot three of them. The first was Hope Perkins who does amazing portraits of dead rappers.


She did not do one of Mac Dre for Jeremey…


(but she said she’d do it for $250.)

...Oh yeah and we saw the most bizarre bug outside of Hope's place...


If anybody can name it, we'll let you donate fifty bucks to us.

Tina Sparkles was next. She showed us how she makes the coolest guitar straps in the world. Last but not least was Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching who was gracious enough to let us interrupt her incredibly busy day to interview her and shoot her operation. She has so much stuff going on, we’re truly grateful that she let us bug her for a couple of hours. She dropped some very thoughtful and intelligent commentary about D.I.Y. culture on us and she even hooked Abby up with an embroidery kit.

Thanks ladies. And look out for some tidbits from those shoots coming soon.

We spent part of Monday night at a New Orleans Saints Bar with Shannon and some other Austin folks watching the Saints get stomped.


So then we headed to Long Branch to numb the pain. Everybody keeps telling us to go swimming in one of the creeks here, but we didn’t bring swimsuits and Wally World was a huge disappointment. Next stop Savers…

Oh yeah, and the Queso is rocking.

The heat goes on... (MIH4)

We’ve been reaching out to quite a few stories these past few weeks- from Austin to NOLA to NYC. We’re really psyched about some of the responses we’re getting, and looking forward to meeting the people behind the emails. One of the stories we just recently contacted is the Lost Film Fest. Jeremey and I have yet to see the spectacle ourselves, however, we know this is going to be an awesome shoot. Scott, the mastermind behind Lost Film Fest said they’re in the process of booking a pretty solid show (with some amazing attendees, but I’m not sure if we can disclose that yet!). We’re hoping to line up our schedule to sync with the performance (which will be in Philly). That means we wont be shooting this one until mid-November, but time will fly.

On a side note, a few weeks ago we made a quick trip to LA. It was here we discovered our air conditioner didn’t work in our two-week-old (used) car. You NEVER need AC in SF, so for those two weeks we were oblivious to the impending heat-monster-Honda. But let me tell you, while driving south on the 5 with the windows down, we were not happy campers (I actually hate the term "Happy Campers". I apologize for using it). So our car is in the shop right now… think good thoughts that they will fix it (cheap) and we wont have to sweat our way across the country.

Only 11 days 'til we hit the road.