we're putting this in 'smash mode'

A few months ago the Imaginary Trends team was split up. One went on tour, one went to Chicago, one stayed in Pittsburgh and another went on...another tour. Trying to get things done when you live out of a suitcase can be pretty strenuous, and we knew that putting together some projects would be difficult (but not as difficult as watching "Two and a Half Men", amirite? Amirite?) but we continued down this road and dammit, we're not gonna stop now. Being the sole member of the group with a stable footing and not moving around the country or planning a move, I have to step it up and talk about Imaginary Trends whenever possible.

My speech at the funeral last week did NOT go over well, but I'm determined to keep on truckin'.

That's why I'm pleased to announce that we'll have our first trailer for "Code Monkey" shortly after the new year. Yes! That means you, yes YOU will be able to see us sing, dance, and ACT in a feature length movie-musical and this trailer will whet your appetite for the final product.

In any case, one of our founding members (Kyle) is at Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark tonight, and I can guarantee that "Code Monkey" will be equally as good and WITHOUT any injuries! Check back next week for the trailer and to see how goofy I look in glasses and uncombed hair.

~ Aaron J.

I could write a book or two, or start a magazine.

If you have come here looking for the demo version of "A Talk With George" from the Code Monkey movie, then click the link at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, hi there. What's up?

Imaginary Trends is pretty busy right now. Code Monkey has a brand-spankin' new editor, and we've officially begun hard work again on LAN'ded, our next project. If you don't know what those are, click on our "current projects" tab at the top of the screen. If you are REALLY lazy, then just watch the video to your right. Either way, you're losing calories, albeit a very small amount. Also check out our principle core team down below. Notice Jackie? Yeah. I added her down there. She SHOULD'VE been there a few months ago but I was lazy. Please acknowledge that she is awesome and talented and know that Code Monkey wouldn't have gotten off the ground without her.

So...LAN'ded. I keep detailing it to people, and those who have been involved with any one of our readings of the show are interested in knowing what was kept and what has changed. I'll just say this: the zombies and mimes are still there but in different forms/amounts, and Natalie has been cut until about the halfway point in the story. LAN'ded is now a project focused much more on Christian and Izzy now, and it works better that way.

The thing I'm excited about is that I'm asking for help on LAN'ded. It is essentially a call for artists over the Internet. Several web based musicians/nerdcore rappers/webshows have proven that people can indeed collaborate over the Internet without any problems so I'm taking my cause there! If you want to help out with our latest project LAN'ded then head to the "who are we" tab for more information. We'd love to hear from you.

I apologize for this being more of a strict and informative post but work is ramping up! Hopefully next update I will have a trailer or at least a teaser trailer...we shall see...

~ Aaron J.

DAAAAA Bears da bears da bears da bears da bears...

Hey gang! I've officially moved into my new place in Chicago. What a ride! After an 8 hour long train from Erie and a day of catching up on sleep, I can rest easy. Though the USPS may have lost most of my possessions in the long pipelines of the mail stream, I am happy and secure in my new city. To celebrate I cut together a short video detailing the projects that IT is working on right now. LAN'ded and Code Monkey are still at the forefront of my activities but like Street Fighter would say: WE HAVE A NEW CHALLENGER. She's not really a challenger though, she's a singer/songwriter named Blue and we are collaborating on a song. I'm unsure when it'll be released but when we nail down something tangible I'll drop a line here.

Now that I am secure (I think?) I can tackle these projects more and get back to more creative work. I'm really excited about collaborating with people here in Chicago on new geeky projects that can extend the theatre arts to those who don't get to see/perform it often.

However, for now I must sleep. The video to your right should explain why I'm so tired. Until next time, sayonara.

~ Aaron J.

the ring has been dropped into the pits of Mordor.

OR all of our footage has been dropped off to our editor. That's probably a more accurate idea of what has happened. It looks like the world premiere of "Code Monkey" will take place in Pittsburgh on November 19th at the [LOCATION DELETED UNTIL SECURED]. It's a pretty swanky place so I am mucho excited. Now the whole process of advertising and marketing the movie comes into play. I'm no PR whiz like the guy from Mad Men, but I am trying my hardest to gain some momentum for the project. I mean, when you're going to have a movie premiere at [LOCATION DELETED UNTIL SECURED] then you know you have your work cut out for you.

In the meantime, everyone who visits here should check out our behind the scenes videos to the right. It shows how we managed to rehearse and pull off some of the shots in the film. When you operate on no budget, you tend to get a big more...creative.

Off to make cold calls hoping someone gives us a million dollars!

~ Aaron J.

The next big step towards our totally awesome and epic musical of epicness

I'm never nervous about starting a project or jumping into production from a pre-production phase, but this Sunday the 11th has me very ANXIOUS. There's a big difference between being anxious and nervous and I think I'm just generally anxious in a positive way. Since Jackie and I shook hands and jumped feet first into this piece we've had several barricades and checkpoints to fight through, but hard work and perseverance have paid off. I'd be a jerk if I didn't thank some people right now, so I'm going to.

Jackie Baker has been a dear friend of mine for years now, and without her hard work and dedication to this project we would never have seen the end of pre-production. She's one of the best directors I've ever worked with and has more moxie than I can shake a stick at, and if you've ever tried to shake sticks at moxie then you know it is an intangible impossibility.

David Bielewicz has been instrumental in the music recording process (see the pun?). Without his willingness to let us rearrange his whole life just so we could nail our soundtrack we wouldn't be where we are today. He's never said no to any request and I cannot thank him enough for stepping up his game.

Sean Lenhart, another good friend of mine, is a plethora of good ideas with radiant enthusiasm to match. Never once has Sean been without a fun morsel for us to think about when trying to dress a scene up and has volunteered time and time again to help out.

Jim Overly volunteered to take time out of his crazy busy schedule to record some piano parts for us on our "Mr. Fancy Pants/Future Soon" mash-up and was constantly in high spirits, even when our mixer broke down! His adept abilities also helped us mold the sound of some of our pieces and I know for a fact I could not have done any of that without him. I hope he feels better soon :)

There's really a ton more people I could thank, and I plan on doing so later on but I don't want this to be insanely long so I'm going to cut it short right now. The fact of the matter is that we start principle photography on Sunday @ 6 AM and I'm giddy. Also, I should be going over lines. To everyone who has followed our progress on twitter (www.twitter.com/ImAaronJ) and Facebook (search for the Imaginary Trends facebook group!), I personally thank you. You're all awesome. Like, fer realzies.

Wish us luck, we're ready to go and I couldn't be more optimistic. Sometimes everything just lines up perfectly and you're surrounded by people you love to work with. The next big step starts now.

~ Aaron J.

Consolidation and Moderation

June has reared its ugly head and you know what that means: Code Monkey, our first movie musical is about to start production. In addition to Toy Story 3 being released, I can easily say this is the most important event of the year. I can't say that the road to our first true day of production has been smooth, but the passion and sometimes foolhardiness of my cast and crew has made any problem easy to work around. Making a movie with no budget, and using only volunteers is a daunting task but with high spirits great things can happen.

We go into a recording studio Tuesday to lay down the soundtrack to Code Monkey. In what might be my most anticipated part of the production, we will be singing JoCo's music with our own piano/guitar arrangements. I can't say I'm not nervous, I'm just anxious! Being a fan of Jonathan Coulton for years now, I'm so used to hearing the usual renditions of his music. Being given the freedom to experiment with his creations is a little scary but I like what we're trying to create. I guess Tuesday we will see...

We've recently closed down our dedicated "ChristianInTheWired" page on YouTube and moved everything to our main site. It has been quite good for us seeing as how we gained 51 subscribers in 4 days. Guess it just goes to show you that big decisions pay off sometimes. I expect to see us making many more big decisions soon, especially with me moving to Chicago. Time will tell...

~ Aaron J.

she COULD be my white mage...

Well look at that, we've got ourselves a full fledged music video right over there. -->

Making music videos is difficult because 1) it takes forever to edit when you're the only person filming/editing/directing and 2) actually making music content always takes much longer than non-musical content. For our first foray into the MTV-of-the-80's type world, I don't think we did too bad. DJ Cliche (AKA Sam Begich) worked on the remix after I came up with lyrics and a few months later here we are. Now that I learned a few more tricks I think a second one shouldn't be too difficult to turn out.

Summer is an odd time for me. Being a pasty thin white boy I can't help but be agast at the idea of wearing shorts and a t-shirt outside. After all, have you SEEN my shins? Gross. The other boon is that a good deal of awesome-tastic movies get to be released for me. I say "me" because who else would want to see a Prince of Persia movie? Obviously none of my friends. Mucho disappointment.

Who is to say what is next? Well, me, that is who. I'm proud to say that another Yinzer Quikkie will be filmed (possibly two!) sometime around July with some former improv buddies. Considering the last time the Yinzer Quikkies took place we nearly made all of the Jewish population upset, I can only imagine what will befall us now...

~ Aaron J.

like that chumbawumba song

Well friends, it really has been a trying month for us at IT. Between a few sad moments, minor tragedies, and constant scheduling setbacks, we've had our calender ripped to shreds. I'm happy to say I finally got my camera fixed and got the ball rolling on a few projects today.

A project that Kyle and I have discussed before, "Code Monkey", is ready to at least be announced. Having spoken to Ky, and a handful of other enthusiastic partners, I know that it's time to start considering it to be a major project. LAN'ded won't be tossed by the wayside, oh no, quite the opposite. Actually, the entire set of Christian's room was destroyed in only what I'll term "The Great Flood of 2010", only to reemerge in different areas of my actual living quarters.

Hey, when life hands you lemons...

...you throw them back and ask for kiwi.

Or something like that.

Anyway, videos planned for Christian had to be put on the backburner for a while, but friday he'll make his long awaited crash landing back onto youtube. Poor guy was neglected for too long and I miss playing around with him.

What's on the plate for next week? Who knows?

But we're alive.

Rickenbacher vs. Gretsch

Well, it seems like we're not exactly around, doesn't it?

The bad thing about being self-employed in a business like this is that without a steady income of either gold, riches, cash, or prizes, when life gets in the way it sort of tends to take a stellar precedent. Both Kyle and I have had major losses this week in one way or another and matters just need to be attended to.

I know what you're thinking...

And no, it's not Cloverfield. That was a month ago and it was dealt with swiftly and efficiently. Sadly these things are more serious, but we're still alive and kicking. Expect things to pick up again soon.

Until then, go read a book. They still make those things, you can find them in a library. Whatever those are.

~ Aaron J.

6 Days into the New Year

According to John Cusack and 2012, we only have 2 more years of this so-called life so we better make the best of it. Personally I'm going to be filling up my January with trips to Buffalo, Chicago, and hopefully Pittsburgh cause frankly, 2 years is not enough time for me to wreck havoc like I want to.

Today's offering (a day late caue YouTube's servers went AWOL) is a look behind the scenes at some of the shenanigans that went on during my Pitt trip, and the second Yinzer Quikkie. Both are tasty morsels of insane delight, won't you have a spoonful?

I can't lie when I say I'm expecting great things out of January. Kyle and I are going to meet up and film some things in different cities whilst he tours around with the inquizitive monkey show. We've discussed the possibilities of using mimes, and also incorporating some form of music for the vids as well. Whatever happens, the Earth's axis is sure to start tipping. Maybe 2012 is right, and Imaginary Trends is the igniting flame to a world of destruction.

Whatevs, at least people will know who we are.

~ Aaron J.

And so it begins... (aka: Screw you 2009)

A new dawn...

A new day...

A new year...

A new era...

A new chance for us to follow through on our efforts to provide quality content on a more than weekly basis!

2010 is upon is - so while most people spend January trying to decide what to call this new year ("twenty ten" - "two thousand ten" - "Harold"), we are hard at work coming up with a fresh new game plan! We have exciting new musical sketches planned that will blow Bono back to his potato-loving motherland... Wonderful new characters that even Jimmy Stewart would laud and praise... And if all goes according to plan, remarkably flattering action figures of the I.T. creative team!

Obviously that last one was mostly self-serving, but rest assured that we plan to make you laugh your way through this promising new year. My horoscope said I would accomplish something in 2010 - I'd better not let those "propheteering" stars down...