On the way back from our adventure in Austin, Texas, there was only one all-out touristy thing that we all wanted to do: visit Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee.

The man’s flying 2 bedroom apartment, named after his daughter.

This is where Elvis received The Beatles when they dropped by to visit.

They make a big point about how Elvis spent most of his time upstairs, and only came downstairs when people came over. Also, no one ever got to go upstairs – that was his private space. And so they’re not going to show us the upstairs out of respect. #EPICFAIL #WACK

So here we are going downstairs – but it’s cool because the whole stairway is mirrored!

The basement:

The sign on the TV set above reads “Gift from RCA to Elvis for the sale of 50 million records between the years of 1956 and 1960.”

This was the part I perked up at the most – the display case with the memorabilia from Elvis’ 1968 prime time TV special. He hadn’t had a hit in a while, and had been out of the public eye for a few years. It’s scarier for a performer to go out after he’s been big and isn’t so much any more than it is when he’s just starting and no one knows who he is yet. And on the show you can see how nervous Elvis is.

#WANT

This trophy room used to be Elvis’ personal racquetball court:

The house itself was way more modest than you might think, being that it’s the home of one of the biggest stars of all time, but it’s decked out so that you can see where Elvis got bored and decided to mess with a part of the house to make a new hangout pad for he and his friends.

I was really disappointed to not see the upstairs, especially after they play up how it was Elvis’ private space. And it’s chilling to reach the end of the tour, be standing at the graves of Elvis, both of his parents, and his grandmother, and realize that he was only 42 when he died.

I’m glad that, like the Hollywood sign, I got to see one of those things I always wanted to see through my own eyes.

And I’m glad that a quick stop into the gift shop means that DMC has a homey to kick it with.

Hello! Thanks for checking out my website.  Feels like I haven’t poured my random craziness into this blog in a while.

Winter is in full swing here in Toronto.  I’m still spoiled by the winter I spent bombing between Los Angeles and the Mexican Riviera on a luxury cruise ship two years ago.  I spent that winter away, most of that next year just hanging out in California, and I have never been the same since.  I got back just in time for last winter but I hadn’t resolved the personal issues that led me to seek a change of scenery in the first place so I was still away from Toronto and generally hiding from life.

Now I’m bringing the action and satisfaction, out in the big city, making moves and shaking things up.  I’m having fun, but I am definitely not cut out for this winter business.

It’s been a great few weeks since I moved into the new pad.  Living smack in the middle of everywhere you go downtown is pretty great.  We’ve got the green screen studio set up, have already run a few successful tests, and are almost ready to shoot a few new videos I’ve been cooking up.

Speaking of videos, this weekend is going to be the first table read of my next big movie – Julian Assange and The Double Damn Burger.  I cannot effin’ wait to hear those words come out of the mouths of the people I wrote them for.

In other work news, I’ve started working with a few new clients in just the last week or so on some really cool stuff.  One project in particular is an animation project.  I haven’t done an animation project in several years.  I’m really looking forward to putting that in front of you.  Stay tuned!

I think that about catches you up on what’s going down in my world.  But enough about me!  How are you doing??  Leave a comment and let me know what you’re up to.

And come see my Social Media Week session tonight!!!

Six months in a row of daily videos.

As a gift to myself, I got a Spider-Man t-shirt to add to my growing Spider-Man t-shirt collection.

And now my Spider-Man t-shirt collection consists of five times:

Which one should I wear the next time you and I hang out?

The cool kids at Teletoon had another premiere party, inviting a handful of bloggers to their HQ screening room for a sneak peek at the new season of Batman: The Brave and The Bold.

Check out my video of the event right here:

For those who don’t know, Batman: The Brave and The Bold is based on an old comic book series where each issue, Batman would team up with a lesser known character from the DC Comics roster.  On this new TV series, it’s the same thing – Batman teams up in each episode with a character who might not be popular enough to warrant his own show but who the fans would enjoy seeing animated.

This show is the bomb, I don’t mind telling you.  It’s obviously for kids, but it’s catchy and irresistable.  I have wondered for years why so many superhero cartoons are ugly, and why they don’t use the thick-line cartoony style of Powerpuff Girls or Spongebob Squarepants.  This show has finally taken that up.  I love the character design on this show.

One of the things I hate about superhero comics, and why no one gives a shit about them (generally speaking) is because they take themselves too seriously, and maintain a slavish devotion to ‘continuity’.  This show demonstrates how it should be done: there’s tons of little gags and gems for the comic book nerds who know the history, but they don’t care about reinventing the rules to suit the ridiculous story they’re trying to tell.  In one episode alone, we watched Batman fly a rocket ship into space, fly it to another planet in another galaxy in a matter of a few minutes, and then fight a race of aliens with an Iron Man-style robot suit that he changes into with the push of a button.

When they’re trying to be serious and Batman is hanging out on the Moon with Superman and the JLA, I hate it and I’m not interested.  When we’re not supposed to care about it the next time, it’s all in good fun.

I had a contest here on the blog to take a reader with me to Teletoon, and the winner would also get a Batman prize pack courtesy of The Silver Snail (follow them on Twitter! @SilverSnailTO)

What up to all my blogging, Twitter, and Internet brethren who were there: Michael Nus, 40deuce, Alice Quinn, Escape From RL, Sidewalk Hustle, Mental Kavity – drop me a line if I didn’t catch you in this list!!

]]> http://www.seanward.net/3860-batman-the-brave-and-the-bold-season-2-preview/feed/ 0 http://www.seanward.net/3312-see-your-home-town-for-the-first-time/ http://www.seanward.net/3312-see-your-home-town-for-the-first-time/#comments Wed, 05 May 2010 19:13:36 +0000 Sean http://www.seanward.net/?p=3312

Sometimes it’s fun to see your hometown as though it’s all new to you.  Half the fun of getting away is coming back.

When I’m walking around the streets of Toronto, I will often absent-mindedly put myself into a hypnotized state where I try to make it all feel like New York or Olso or some other foreign city that I am seeing for the first time.

Last week, Toronto was on fire.  No one knew what was going on and you could feel the vibe downtown get tense as people didn’t know what to think.  You could hear smatterings of people starting to fear the worst, but it turned out to be a south-facing condo on fire.

I always assume the best until reason to believe otherwise presents itself.  That’s why I can just chill when we don’t know what’s going on.

This photo is from a series I am doing of interesting views of the CN Tower.  I want to do 100 of them and do something with the series.  Maybe a show, maybe just a blog post.  Who Knows???

This woman didn’t even want me to take a picture of the food in the container.  Whaaaat?  One of my spring rolls is in that box!

I take a lot of pictures of interesting Toronto scenes.  Always keep your eyes open to see your city from angles you’ve never looked at before and

And finally, enjoy a rare look at the arc reactor in my chest.

Saturday, May 1 was Free Comic Book Day.  For the third year in a row, I was invited to be one of the guest artists at the Silver Snail, drawing sketches for the crowd.

Star Wars is always a popular theme.

And this year Star Trek started to catch up in popularity.

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This was the one I was asked to draw by David and Satro, of Count Dracula and Robin from Batman eating spaghetti like the famous scene from Lady and the Tramp. The Ninja Turtle sort of elbowed his way in without anyone really catching what had happened until it had already happened.

Princess Leia Lady Gaga.

I was asked for Princess Leia as Lady Gaga.  I have her part Episode Four with the hair, the rest Jabba’s slave girl for a performance of Telephone.

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This one was really simple. I asked what the dude wanted a drawing of, and he said “Cars”. “As in the Pixar movie?”, says I. “Just… cars.”, he says.

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This guy went down the row and asked every artist to do something with Ninja Turtles.

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This one I did just to Tweet it from the table.

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Late in the day, I ran right through tired and into delirious. And that’s when I was asked for “Catwoman”. Yes, that is a hook for a hand. And a pizza cutter for an other hand.

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Spock’s second appearance of the day. Sometime between then and now he’s won himself a wrestling championship.

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And then to finish the day off with a sandwich called The Big Ham. It wasn’t that big.

This video went up to Youtube a couple of days ago and I am only now doing the blog post that I intended for it to accompany. It’s been pretty mad-cap busy in Sean-Land this week, but when is it not?

This slice-of-life vlog was recorded on the set of a video that I produced and created with my long-time friend and collaborator, Ms. Jennica Beshiri – follow her on Twitter @kidjennica – for Bite TV’s Bite Daily blog which, as you know, I have been writing for.  As for what’s up with the cereal… all will be revealed when you see the video.

Not sure yet when this video, At Home With Lights starring Jennica as Lights and me as a reporter, will be online but you know that you’ll know as soon as I know.  Stay tuned!

I promise that this knife is not gratuitous.

Subscribe to my Youtube channel! youtube.com/seanward

This is one of the first pictures I took with the camera on my new phone.  I am looking very forward to doing a post about that but for now, suffice it to say that Google Android is the bomb.

Hey!

Thanks for stopping by my blog. I have stuff that I have been meaning to post that has been backing up for a couple of weeks! That’s the trouble of not having a still camera, living in the fast lane, and having so damn many things on the go!

It’s been action packed around here.

The two photos above were taken at Nuit D’Azure, a wicked party put on by Notable.TV.  Julian and the Notable team have got the Hot Party thing down cold.  Posing with Carly and Christina.

Here’s me with Julian Brass, the man behind Notable.tv

Then later that same weekend, the Toronto Social Media scene enjoyed a full-on gathering of the tribes with PodCamp Toronto 2010.  It was day of learning followed by an epic night of partying.  Can’t remember more fun recently.  We turned a particular corner into the VIP section and it turned into chaos of free booze, food, people, and cacophonous revelry.  Many thanks to Social Media Group for staging the epic after party.  Oh my word.

Here’s me with Andrew and Crystal – @hyfen and @crystalgibson

More VIP action with @unbrelievable @shawnhawaii @40deuce

These had to be platters no. 7 and 8 of nachos.

That’s it for now on the partying and hanging out end of things!  So much has been going on that I can barely keep it straight in my head.  But I thought you might enjoy this peek at the Blog Star life, in case you too thought you might enjoy hot parties and fun people.  Blogging & Twitter is where it’s at!

If you want to see more new party pics, check out our Blog Stars Oscar Night red carpet party!

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