AND THE WINNER IS!!!

Dr. Greg Graffin of Bad Religion very well may be the smartest man on the entire Warped Tour. I always have an intense respect for any touring musicians with a college degree, and Graffin is a college professor at UCLA in his spare time. Bad Religion is one of those bands that I get overly moved watching. They have some of the most profound lyrics. I think if Greg Graffin was president the world would be a better place.

Edit:... Golly check out those fancy Ultimate Ears Greg is rockin', gee wiz!

Fat Mike from NoFX ran onto stage during Bad Religion's set to sing along. This might be my favorite photo from the day, but I'm only on my first batch of images, so I could be wrong.

Hide & Seek Sneek Peek!
Here's a sneeker of the Peace tank top being released on Saturday. Brittany Flickinger and Lenay Olsen were two of our lovely models...

Sometimes just getting a late night phone call from a great friend relating how awesome they are doing can make you feel better. Cheered me up so much hearing how happy he is. On that note, BYRON GIVE ME MY LUCK BACK YOU LUCK STEALER!

Here are the entries! Awesome work guys! This is going to be tough...

I was recently told that I'll be given an Octodrive to give away. I've decided that the fairest way for me to make this an international competition (in my twisted brain) is to conduct a 24 hour film festival!
For those of you who don't know what a 24 hour film festival is, it's fairly self explanatory. You will have 24 hours from a given start time (8am Pacific time on Saturday June 20th!) to write, shoot, and edit a short film. The non self explanatory rules are that you will be given a prompt for the film via my twitter (twitter.com/meganthompson). You will also have an assortment of film themes to choose from which will be given at the end of this blog entry. Another requirement will be that you have to include lines in your script that have come directly from Mark Hoppus, Pete Wentz, and my Twitter. At the end of your film please let us know what lines were from our twitters, and the date we posted them, as it might not be obvious. I'll be checking, so no fudging!

Here is a good example from a friend's 3 hour film festival.



You have quite a bit more creative freedom than most 24 hour film festivals. So get ready and have a lot of fun with it!

RULES
All films MUST be submitted and uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo by 8am Sunday June 21st. If they are not uploaded, they will be disqualified.
All films must be under five minutes in length.
FILMS MUST BE SHOT USING NON PROFESSIONAL GEAR! Point and Shoot cameras like the Canon Powershot, or Sony Cybershot, Flip Cameras, and iSight Cameras only!
Films must include one line taken from Mark Hoppus' twitter (twitter.com/markhoppus)
Films must include one line taken from Pete Wentz's twitter (twitter.com/petewentz)
Films must include one line taken from Megan Thompson's twitter (twitter.com/meganthompson)
Films must include the random character/object/word to be given at the kick off at 8am Saturday June 20th.
Films must be made in one of the following Genres...
Western, Sci Fi, Horror, Action Adventure, or Slapstick Comedy
If films are not in English, please include subtitles, or a link to where I can read the script in English.
At the end of your film please include a slate of the chosen lines, the chosen genre, and your twitter URL so we can announce if you are the winner!

Remember kids have fun, be fair, be safe, and be legal!

ACK! LOOKIT!!! Those are my ultimate ears! I LOVE THEM! Thank you Todd!

Whoa what a weekend! Byron left Saturday, then Sunday morning I drove 6 hours to Sacramento for the Bidwell music video shoot. The show was a lot of fun and I'm once again amazed by how awesome video on my camera looks! I got home late Monday and still don't feel I'm 100% back to awesome.
Yesterday I found out from Todd at Ultimate Ears that A. My in ears are finished! and B. I'm being given an octodrive to give away! I'm so excited, and plan on making the kids work really hard to get this one. I'm thinking a 24 hour film festival with rules to be given out in a few days. I figure if my friends who are good at making a shorts can make one in 3 hours 24 hours is plenty of time for the novice filmmakers out there who want a drive. The catch is that to level the playing field, everyone will have to shoot on either a point and shoot camera or an iChat camera on their Mac. No professional video equipment allowed! Mwuahahaha!
Ok back to work.

Byron from Hide & Seek Clothing came down to shoot their summer line. I dragged him around to The Viper Room to assist with a shoot for the band Saint Motel.

Today was pretty incredible. It's always amazing meeting a band that you love when they turn out to be really great guys. We shot in a sketchy hotel, and before the shoot began we noticed cops outside a room down the hall. They didn't mind us milling around, but we were getting curious, and someone went to investigate why they were down there. It turned out that there was a dead guy in the room, and they were waiting for the coroner! By far the most memorable shoot of my career thus far. We somehow kept it together to finish up the shoot in the hallway, with all of this going on next door.
Another "Welcome to LA" moment.

I was there...

Tonight I survived the crowd at Jimmy Kimmel and watched those Blink-182 rascals play an awesome set of nine or ten songs. I haven't had that much fun since we went to Six Flags on Tuesday!... no seriously, this has been the most fun week ever. I don't really know how I'm going to top it.
How about topping it with my first feature shoot for Alternative Press Magazine tomorrow? Oh, ok, that sounds pretty good actually...

Stay tuned!

Woo! Today is Hide & Seek Clothing Day! Byron's asleep on the couch, and I'm inhaling coffee. We're doing the white backdrop photos for the website here, then cruising up to Van Nuys for the outdoors Huck Finn stuff. Today I'm rocking the new peach deep V from the summer line. Everything feels so good! Too many clothing companies just use the cheapest American Apparel option, but Hide & Seek seriously make sure each shirt feels amazing. Before I start to sound like an advertisement...
We saw Up last night and it was so great! Such a great story, and really cute. Strangely enough the character, Doug, made me want a dog even more than I already do. Blah.

And now for something completely different...

John Denver was pretty cool. I think that Fearless should put together a Punk Goes John Denver compilation. I'd buy it!

Anthony Raneri is hands down my favorite singer. Sorrow by Bad Religion is one of my all time favorite songs. Put the two together and you have me watching this video on a loop all day. Warped Tour, I WILL be watching Bayside every single day, that is a fact.

Tomorrow Byron from Hide & Seek gets here for a few days of photoshoot madness, and ridiculous fun. I'm going to see if I can find us a way into Six Flags on Monday, and we're going to see blink-182 play on Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday. Sunday we're shooting the new line, and I'm so excited for the shoot. I love being this busy! It's so nice to always look forward to something, as opposed to dreading time passing because nothing is happening. Not going to lie, I'm still very broke, but less so, and I can actually pay my bills and then go get a coffee without hating myself or using my credit card! Woo hoo! Wednesday's shoot is shaping up to be really fun. I have a crew assembled already. Cale's going to come help with lights, Jenni is coming to do hair and makeup again, and I even think I've wrangled a studio. All I need now is to know which idea the band liked. Then I'll know if I need to wrangle a favor and find a stylist, or book a room in a seedy hotel.
Tonight I'm going out to Anaheim to film Sleep District play at the House of Blues, and photograph Bidwell at the same show. It will be so fun to see Bidwell again, and it will be my first time seeing my friends in Sleep District live, so I'm all around stoked!
Tomorrow Byron and I are going to see Up in 3D! I'm giddy!

It's kind of ironic that the cooler my shoots get, the less I'm allowed to talk about them. All I really want to do is tell everyone that I'm doing a shoot with________ for _______ Magazine.

I will tell you that I'm rewatching Suicide Kings and Reservoir Dogs for research. This shoot is going to be a lot of fun, and involve a lot of duct tape, some metal snippers, and my awesome green arm chair.

I'm going to be shooting a band a few of you may have heard of next week... I AM SO STOKED!

Twitter is an amazing tool. I barely even open Myspace anymore. Maybe this is the slow transition back into actually talking to people. Who knows.
I've spent the entire morning opening and responding to emails, and on the phone with managers, and setting up shoots for June. I love being this busy! Today is going to be an edit-a-thon. Tomorrow I'm filming Sleep District at the House of Blues in Anaheim, and photographing Bidwell at the same show. Should be very fun, that venue is amazing.
Saturday Byron from Hide and Seek flies in for our shoot. The summer line is amazing! I am SO excited for some new clothes to rock this summer. New gear is the best way to start the summer. We're shooting on Sunday and I have a rockstar lineup of models! It's going to be a very fun day. Then we'll head up to Bakersfield for the Rockin Roots Festival. Of Mice and Men are debuting and I'm going to take some live photos for them. Monday I want to take Byron to Six Flags... anyone have a hookup to get us in for cheap?
Yesterday I went down to Irvine and had impressions taken of my ear canal for Warped Tour. My Ultimate Ears should be here in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait to unveil them for you all! The shop was really incredible, and everyone I met was so nice. I met with the president and I'm going to have a ton of creative freedom on Warped which will be so great. I'm really stoked to be working for such a sweet company. Thanks to Mark for hooking me up with the job!
In other news, here's the first video update with footage from my FlipHD...

One day these will make sense...

Here's a few photos from the last week. This past weekend I was hanging out in the studio with Sleep District as they recorded a new song. The bottom two images are of Slade from Anarbor backstage before his set at Chain Reaction. Anarbor are super nice guys, and we share a manager, who is also a super great guy, so we're like super great siblings kinda... or something.

Glamour Kills has released the Jordan Raths photos! I'm stoked :) They'll be used on posters for the Zumiez Couch Tour. So keep an eye out. I'm excited to work with them again soon.

Since I moved to LA I've been really good about not making frivolous purchases. I've tried to be better with money and not impulse buy stuff I don't need. I was even talking to my mom on the phone yesterday about how I was putting everything into a savings account to prepare for a rainy day. That being said I have been wanting to get a camcorder ever since my old Mini DV camcorder bit the dust a few years ago. The desire to do behind the scenes footage from my shoots has been growing exponentially ever since I got to LA. Today I went to Best Buy to get a new CF card for my 5D and walked out with an 8gig card and this...

So prepare yourselves for a lot of video updates, behind the scenes, and random videos of rock stars being dumb.