Nicknames

You remember last week? When I said it was decently significant? I showed you a screenshot of a tweet? Yeah? No? Here's a refresher: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2012/12/thisisbig.html. More on that in a bit.

Folks, it's finals season. This is the time when people start gettin' a lil loopy, the library is WHERE IT'S AT, and sleep becomes a thing of the past. Projects, projects, projects; papers, papers, papers.  Finals season is when college gets real. Classes begin to mesh. And whether you want to or not, you have to recall information you have learned throughout the semester to a point where an "A" is deserved. My largest project is an assignment for my Graphic Design Forms I class; a 100+ page graphic design book on an episode of "This American Life," the radio show on WBEZ hosted by the elegant Ira Glass.  I chose an episode called "Content Unknown," and I have been enjoying myself thoroughly. Here are three of the 50+ spreads.

So, something big happened last week.  It requires some backstory though.


On October 20, 2012, my house, The Bakery threw the FIRST Bakery Dance Party, a party that exceeded all expectations and was a blast and a half. Here's the blog post detailing that event: http://emliv.blogspot.com/2012/10/blog-post.html.  At this party, at my house, a number of visitors showed up that the members of our house did not know, which is GREAT. It was cool to open our house up to not only our friends, but to the Biola community at large. There was a certain point when I noticed a certain girl enter the scene, I had never seen her before, and she caught my interest. Huh. I continued dancing to my lil hearts content, shooting photos up the wazoo and happened to snap a few of this certain girl. Here's one of them:

At the end of the party, I noticed this certain girl heading out to leave, so I quickly stopped her and asked for her name. She said, "My name's Morgan."  I have to be honest... I didn't know what to say! I must've answered "uhh... me too!" We had a short exchange and that was that. Fast forward a couple days, Ms. Morgan McGannon sees me sitting at the Flour Fountain, she joins me, and we start a conversation that lasts from 10:30am to 3:00pm. I asked for her number. Fast forward a couple days to November 8, I have asked Morgan out and we head to downtown Los Angeles for the LA Artwalk. It's a good time, we cruise around, look at some bizarre art, look at some bizarre people, enjoying each other's company. As we walked around, we stumbled upon this RAD Hyundai hideout with all sorts of crazy things to do, including this wild photobooth that connected directly to facebook. Take a look!

 We then took off to Hollywood Blvd, the Walk of Fame, a place you can't go without wild memories being made. It was a late Thursday night, the Walk of Fame was not as crowded as it would be on a Saturday afternoon. Earlier that evening, the film "Lincoln" had premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theater, so the red carpet, large trailers, and the rest of the big kado were being cleaned up, preventing us from experiencing the grandeur of the famed Chinese Theater. We had to walk around it and as we were, we were approached by two gentlemen. They proceeded to ask if we would like to help them out with their web series called "The Dark Knight Retires," the scene would involved the actress (which would be Morgan) getting mugged, and the scene would end. They assured us it wouldn't take long. Morgan quickly agreed, which surprised me, because the two gentlemen did not have a camera in hand, did not necessarily look like filmmakers, and Batman was nowhere to be seen. To make sure these two dudes weren't con artists/muggers/bad guys, I started to lay down detailed questions that con men wouldn't have answers to "What lenses are you shooting on? How many episodes in your websites? What episode is this that we're filming? When does it premiere? What is your medium for release?" They answered these questions without hesitation, so I eased up. Turns out, "The Dark Knight Retires" is a webseries made my "YouTube Celebrity" Mr. Hunter Davis. Here's the trailer for the series:



So, the scene takes place, Morgan does great, and the whole event is hysterical. The shoot finishes with a Taft-Hartley signing and we were on our merry way.

Perhaps my favorite part of this story happened after it was all over; it was when Morgan turned to me and said "This WOULD happen to me, this kinda stuff ALWAYS happens to me!" To which I responded, "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU JUST SAID THAT. This kinda stuff ALWAYS happens to me too!" If we keep this up, we'll have stories to fill novels to fill libraries.  Here's a picture. I was under the impression we were supposed to be "hard" like Batman. oops.

Night ends, Morgan and I keep chat chat chattin'. Chit chattin' a lot. Here's a couple more pictures. And then more chat chattin'.

And then, long, DTR-esque, story short, I take Ms. Morgan McGannon to Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles to ice skate. You know, we're skating around, the moment came,...

And that was that! So we're all OH-FISH as of what was actually December 6th, and you know what? It's been GREAT! It's a been a whirlwind of a couple days and it's been amazing to think about the process it took to get to this point. Unfortunately, this isn't quite a topic for this blog discussion, but if you're curious about what in the world I'm talking about, ask me and we'll chat. I will say this though: it's been incredible to see God show up within our conversations and within our relationship. She's got a heart of gold and challenges me to be a better person, something that is immensely important to me. The evolution of our relationship has been ridiculously natural and easy... it's difficult to convey over text. I'm way too excited to see what God's got in store for us and that fact that we're both trusting God to guide, discern, and wise us up is, in a word, RAD. Phew. Love it.




Next order of business: THE BAKERY DANCE PARTY 2.0. This was round two. People DUG that last one, they demanded another. We opened up our house, The Bakery, and, well, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

TOO MUCH GOOD STUFF.  To see the FULL album of SWEATY PICTURES: click: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.304126426364600.65411.279911478786095

I'm literally speechless. We provided music and water and around 270 people showed up to our little house. UNREAL. (By the way, that number was determined by: 150+ leaving through the front door at the end of the night, 11:30. People leaving through the back gate into the driveway, probably around 50. People coming and going throughout the evening, probably around 60-80 [Our most packed moment was around 10:15]). People came for good clean fun, NO alcohol, NO freaking, JUST A BLAST. And when sweat is literally pouring down the walls like waterfalls and dripping from the ceiling like rain, you know it's been a perspirational night.

GOTTA LOVE IT.



And that's the post ladies and gents. It was a big one. This week was HUGE. Unreal. Never would have guessed in a million years. Oh, one last thing, the Bakery Dance Party 2.0 was placed an interesting time. Remember how Morgan and I met during the first one? 2.0 was the day after I asked her to be my girlfriend. The Bakery brings people together.

GOTTA LOVE IT.



Goodnight and good luck.