this week (despite being a bit under the weather) i attended a couple of 'meet and greets' with some working musicians for upcoming features on rehearsals.com. my buddy and bass player is a camera operator for the tapings, and by accepting his invitations to the show i was rewarded with some seriously inspired storytelling from a couple of good souls.

the first night was a couple of hours with richard sherman, who wrote the music for mary poppins, the jungle book, it's a small world, and countless other staple tunes while working directly under walt disney. mr. sherman had a magical way of capturing our attention with incredible personal stories filled with love and passion. i kid you not, he actually had a twinkle in his eye while he played the piano, sang familiar songs for us and relayed his amazing tales. his lessons were clear: keep up the hard work with your craft, be a good person, and luck is simply the result of good preparation met with opportunity.

the second night was a rockin' good time with kenny aronoff. upon first impression i believed we were going to be entertained by a fantastic session drummer with some standard canned stories. i was so pleasantly surprised once he started speaking - he was an incredibly hard working, motivated and good-natured human being and in my opinion deserves every bit of success that comes his way. that and, he rocked us all with his incredible drumming. honestly, check out his site and his album credits. after seeing his photos its difficult not to get a mental image of what kind of person he is, but believe me its probably not accurate. he's good natured, humble and another great story teller.

on thursday i went to see king kong and i was blown away. peter jackson has truly cemented himself as a great director. despite a lengthy three hours, i was gripped the whole time - either by the unbelievable action sequences or the emotional scenes. this movie is a simple love story at heart and is actually quite affecting. i thought the performances were good, the passion was moving and kong's rendition was extremely impressive - i forgot it was cg and he just became another character. i definitely recommend seeing it in the theater.

today i took henrik to the airport and saw him off. it was great having him as a housemate, and i'll miss the fella. i do have a place to crash when i visit sweden now, so i'll be sure to plan a summer trip this year. that's it for now... tomorrow is another character design class with kazu, chris, khang and crew and most likely some sort of ramen.