I met John in Portland, Oregon at the Northwest YouTube Gathering in 2009. He was 12 years old at the time, though it was immediately apparent that his brain operates at a level most people don’t achieve until after a few years of college. We had some stimulating conversation, and I left the gathering eager to see how he’d develop his passion for visual media in the coming years.

He later contacted me, wanting to conduct an interview with me for a school project. I thought that some of you may find the result to be a semi-interesting read, so I’m posting it here in its entirety: (more…)

I think this is generally where I’m supposed to say something like, “Wow, it’s been a long time since I updated this,” or, “Sorry I haven’t posted in a while,” or, “I’ve been too busy,” etc, but the truth is that I haven’t too busy;  I kind of forgot my blog existed.

I’ve always been this way: I get interested with something, be it writing music, writing stories, making videos, keeping a blog, knitting, working out, reading, or a plethora of other endeavors, and I work on it with a certain zeal, and then I suddenly find myself interested in something else.  I think I’ve inherited this trait from my father, though it afflicts him in a different way: he spends a bunch of money on books or equipment in preparation for a given hobby, but tends to lose interest before actually getting into it.

To a certain extent, (more…)

To complete my mission for the Fiesta Movement this month, I have to spend an entire day relying on my Twitter followers to feed me. To be completely honest, I’m not thrilled about it, as e-begging is something that I generally try to stay away from, but if you’re interested in taking me out to eat tomorrow, June 24th, it would help me out immensely.

There are a few things to be aware of: Most importantly, you have to be more or less in the greater Los Angeles area. I’ll be driving to you in the Fiesta. You also have to be comfortable being filmed for a video to go up on my YouTube channel. You will be required to sign a release form so that I can include you in the video (if you’re under 18, you’ll need a parent or legal guardian to sign as well). Assuming plans don’t change, I’ll have Stefan, Kasey, and Kasey’s brother, Drew, with me, but unless you insist, you won’t have to pay for them as well.

Breakfast should take place sometime between 9:00 AM and noon, lunch should take place sometime between noon and 3:00 PM, and dinner should take place sometime between 6:00PM and 9:00PM. If you are interested in meeting up with me for any of these meal-slots, send me an email at michaelaranda@synemastudios.com letting me know when you’d like to meet up.

Let’s see if we can make this work. Weee!

On Sunday, April 19th, I was dropped off in Venice, California to attend a top-secret Fiesta Movement mission briefing. I, along with roughly forty others, was ushered into a building and instructed to mingle and consume food.

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I currently have a massive headache that is making it difficult for me to think effectively, so I’ll apologize in advance if this post ends up not flowing very well.

As many readers of this blog will be aware, in addition to my personal channel, I have a channel called VlogRamen over on YouTube that I run with my long-time friend, Stefan Chin. For a multitude of reasons, I’ve not had the time or energy to post videos over there for a little over a month. I had planned to post a return-to-VlogRamen video this week, then last night happened.

As I was attempting to fix some issues with my video driver, (more…)