Raymond, Joshua, Rob

My friend Raymond, who is a social butterfly, will be taking a 3-month vacation in Manila and yesterday, I spent the entire day with him. He has helped me greatly in meeting new people in New York, surprising since I've lived here for years and he has only been here for a few months. I've met so many interesting people directly or indirectly through Raymond including Jay McCarroll from Project Runway and some really cool Pinoys in New York. Incidentally, Raymond is a writer/producer of a very successful film from the Philippines called The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros. He'll be back in September to promote the film again in the U.S. when the movie gets it's theater run in New York and Los Angeles.

So last Friday Raymond invited me to watch A Scanner Darkly, where he introduced me to the theater manager, and an animator whom he met in Provincetown, Joshua Frankel. Joshua directed a 5-minute animated film called Bicycle Messengers. He's also involved in some really cool stuff including the new Coke commercial I found a few days ago. If you watch the commercial and look for the marching band in the end, Joshua did that. He was also in the animated pre-visualization team for the new movie My Super Ex-Girlfriend. He's directly responsible for the direction and animation of the shark scene in that movie, so I'm looking forward to watching that.

We did many things yesterday, and our last stop was the 24-hour Apple Store in 5th Avenue. Since I consider Raymond my flirting mentor (haha, OMG, the incrimination), we chatted it up with Rob who was friendly enough to answer all our silly questions at 3 AM at the Genius Bar. I now feel I can go anytime after midnight to the Apple Store and talk to somebody. What a novel concept! And Rob knew about this blog when I mentioned that I was a "blogger" -- sweet.

Anyway, will miss Raymond and look forward to his return. And look forward as well to interact further with the people he has brought in to my life. Thanks Mon!