Team Cool Kids - pre-red carpet

While I’m in New York making a Team Cool Kids video (with my comedy partner in crime, Lindsay Harbert) for the Samsung “Four Seasons Of Hope” Charity Gala (expect the video online within the next 24 hours), E3 is happening back at home in Los Angeles.  Man, I’ve never wanted to be in two places at once more than this week.

I got to meet and see some famous celeb types tonight (Jennifer Lopez and Marc Antony, Matthew McConaughey, Boomer Esiason, Dan Marino, and BILL Frickin CLINTON!?!) and witness a truly amazing event that is doing amazing things for education and medical needs for children.  It was pretty remarkable what a group of stand-out individuals, a lot of hope, and some money can do to help our youth. Go charity, go!

Samsung Four Seasons Of Hope Gala - The Set-Up

As I’m editing our footage from the star-studded night and trying to catch-up with all the E3 news from my LA cohorts, I found this gem online and it made me miss my nerd friends back in LA who are walking the convention floor, playing games, and enjoying the sensationally over-the-top after parties.  Go have fun, you assholes.  I’m helping kids.

I haven’t seen much press on Portal 2 from E3 yet, which surprises me.  Portal is one of my favorite games and this sequel looks radgasmic.

So you’re given an opportunity to interview Eli Manning – the quarterback of the NY Giants; one of the biggest athletes in the National Football League and Superbowl MVP/winner.   What do you do with that time?  Make a comedy bit, of course!  Here is our video that we made with Eli, who was an awesome sport and was totally down for the bit.  He was extremely nice, personable and down-to-earth.  Thanks Eli!

Also, a BIG thanks to Samsung and the Four Seasons Of Hope organization for bringing Team Cool Kids out to NY for the event!  It was a BLAST!  Below is the video we made describing the event and what the organizations are doing for our education system.  Pretty cool stuff…

So I’m on this new kick of creating some new YouTube content.  One of the stipulations is that I come up with an idea and just shoot it, edit it, and post it.  I don’t want to worry whether a video is “funny” or not.  I was nervous about this video.  My idea was to somehow incorporate kittens into a random song about nothing.  I also wanted the video to not appeal to everyone’s sense of humor.  I think I hit the nail on the head.  This is a perfect of example of something that seems random in concept and results in a funny product.  I love this video so hard, it just makes me want to F myself.  Seriously, I love myself. Real bad.  Enjoy “Don’t Say Kittens” as many times as you want.  And hell, repost this shit if you are one of the peeps that loves it as hard as me!

It has been a couple of days since my last update so I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch you all up to our happenings.  First of all, the video above is our Challenge #3 entry.  The video won the third challenge popular vote with an astounding 47%!  Unfortunately, the way Samsung has been judging has the public vote as a small percentage of the overall challenge vote.  Other judges from Samsung also weigh in and help choose a winner.  So for challenge #3, while the public thought our video was the best (and it clearly was), Samsung did not.  Team Cool Kids shall NEVER give up! It just means we’ll have to work that much harder next time!  However, the video that DID win was hilarious and well executed by Freddie & David (whom we love).

Samsung Mobile Explorers Challenge #3 Results

I’m currently working on the video entry for Challenge #4 and it is taking considerably longer than I anticipated due to unforseen computer crashes, software failures, and transcoding glitches.  These are all criteria that we just can’t take into consideration when we plan our videos out ahead of time and guage time allocation.  However, when all is said and done, this video should be damn good and feature far more production value than any of the other entries.  The challenge theme was “Freestyle” so we could do anything we wanted. And we did a lot. Just wait until tomorrow morning at 9am when the videos are posted and the voting begins.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Lindsay and myself have also been blogging and droppin photos over on our facebook (check it here) everyday.  There have been so many amazing moments while we’ve been here that it’s hard to remember them all.  In recent days, we experienced REAL korean BBQ with Samsung’s CMO/EVP David Steel; a field trip to the Salish Longhouse in Squamish; Hannah Teter’s silver medal finish in the Ladies Halfpipe finals up at Cypress; holding Hannah’s actual silver medal in my hands; the band “Stars” performance at the Orpheum; and pretty much walking every niche of this gorgeous city.  This trip has been amazing.

View of the sunset along the Sea to Sky highway

Yes, it has been stressful. Yes, I’m exhausted. Yes, I miss home.  But the overall experience and memories I know I’ll have for the rest of my life will be worth it.  Just walking through the streets of downtown Vancouver last night showed me just how much energy and pride Canadians have for their country and the 10s of thousands of visitors that are currently visiting.  It was by far the most people I’ve ever seen in one place at one time.  It was electric.

Ok, my renders are wrapping up so it’s back to the grind. I miss you all and will try to keep you posted on what else happens over the last stretch of this adventure.  Team Cool Kids is so close to taking this thing. None of us can give up now. We have to see this through so let’s just nut-up and win this frakkin’ competition together!  In the meantime, enjoy this secret video I made about our driver up here, Duffy. She’s a goddess.

Here is Challenge #2′s video.  The challenge, “Your Samsung Love Song” involved making a song that both captured the olympic energy and dealt with Samsung. We feel we were pretty much the only team to nail it (though David & Freddie KILL us with laughter everytime! They’re our besties).  We utilize the number one tool for communication, the mouth, to create every note in this video. PLEASE VOTE for Team Cool kids by heading on over to the Samsung USA facebook page, clicking the “Mobile Explorers” tab and entering the Samsung theater.  We need the votes for SURE on this one kids!