#I love david arnold's music so much and. man. so excited to finally hear the season 2 soundtrack because SEASON ONE WAS ON FIRE I SWEAR

[holmosexualitea]

HAPPY SOUNDTRACK RELEASE DAY !!!

(for those who are also soundtrack enjoyers feel free to reblog with your favorite song(s) tagged !!!)

[cryptostache-blog]

The 'Stache Invades Crypto Invest Summit; What I Saw & What You Missed!

All good conventions in LA begin about the same way, with sitting in traffic on the 110, 101, or the 405 at some point! This was, of course the case as I headed downtown Los Angeles to Crypto Invest Summit at the LA Convention Center. If you follow my journey here you know that I have been writing about all the things I was excited to see and do at this falls event and I was not disappointed. Check out all the trouble I got into at CIS and day-by-day review of the event and keynote speakers! Crypto Invest Summit Double Top Pattern Emerges As I wrote in previous articles, I was super excited about hearing both Steve Wozniak as well as Tim Draper speak at the event and I found both of them inspirational & motivating in very different ways. Each day of the summit kicked off with one of these major keynotes and it really set the pace. I JUST about missed the start of the Woz speaking, but managed to get my badge and get in there quicker than I anticipated. Here is how Day 1 at CIS went. CIS Day 1

I got my media pass quickly thanks to the amazing staff at CIS and headed into the expanded main hall (it was much bigger this year than last year). I got there just in time to see Adam Draper finish his opening remarks with event co-founder Alon Goren. Adam has a style all his own compared his father Tim and I enjoyed hear the tail end of what he had to say about the future of crypto and predicting that in the next few years you will have 3 apps on your phone that use blockchain and you won't even know it. 

Steve Wozniak came out next and was being interviewed by my buddy David Bleznak of Totle who always kills it on stage. When you talk about tech legends they don't get much bigger than Steve and hearing him recant the beginnings of his career and correlating them to current conditions with crypto as an emerging market was fun. Steve tends to go off on a few tangents from time to time which I actually enjoyed even if it didn't really answer the question presented. The spark that you see in other "crypto people" you can hear in Steve's voice as he talks broadly about the subject, claiming he sold all his Bitcoin and only retains 1 for testing purposes.

Network Hokey Pokey At CIS After Steve speaking I headed over to the booth floor and started mingling with people and projects. I first ran into my friends over at Blockchain Beach who had a media booth and were on fire with the number of interviews they were pushing through. They even roped me into doing an interview for them with a project that was overbooked and I had a lot of fun helping out!

Shortly after that I finally got to meet CryptoBeadles of my youtube buddies who also produces great crypto content as well as co-founding the Monarch wallet (which I will be reviewing very soon). He had the whole crew out there with him doing interviews on site as well and I had a blast hanging with them at the booth throughout the day. I headed inside to check out the booths, but I could hardly make it a few feet without running into someone I knew! One of the things I love about going to these cons is talking with everyone. I got to do an interview with my buddy Gaston for Blockchain Beach as well with a quick appearance by Ernesto from Crypto Space San Pedro.

I ran into the infamous Kenn Bosak and of course we had to get a pic of the epic meeting! This guy is a crypto warrior, spreading adoption everywhere he goes. Talking with him, he said he is on pace to hit 50 conferences this year! wow!

When you go to these things a few times you do start to see a lot of the same people which makes it fun and what conference would be complete with out a little Brekkie Von Bitcoin? We had multiple Satoshi Droppers in the house including Andy & Daniel from the Coinboys, BitcoinBella and CryptoWendyO on Day 2. I certainly made a lot of new friends on the day and saw a ton of other people like Crypto Rick here below. 

Favorite Booths I make a point to talk to just about every booth at the conference since there are 2 days and you can easily do so with the amount of booths there depending on how many speakers you catch. 

My overall favorite has to go to the Abra booth as they had a great looking setup, but they best thing? They were giving you $25 in Bitcoin for downloading their mobile crypto wallet right there on the spot! Epic! They had this screen counting down to how much of the free Bitcoin was left. I would have loved to see it counting down in Satoshis, but still really cool. 

I had fun at the Sense chat booth too as well as got to do a quick interview for them (Brekkie did one too!). Sense is a decentralized messaging app. They had one of those fun wheels and my first spin landed on a CryptoKitty, but they were out, so I ended up getting an invite to Taco Tuesday at their office sometime soon along with a sweet hat. I talked to Matthew at Kingsland School of Blockchain and I really liked what they are trying to do with training blockchain engineers and helping make the end connection. Since this is right up my alley I wanted to let them know I supported their cause and would love to help out if I could in any way.  The IDEX / Aurora crew was also at the summit and I got to talk to them a bit about the recent decision to stop allowing New York customers use their platform. They have a solid team and I think with a hybrid solution this makes a lot of sense legal wise to be cautious of where you operate.  Of course Totle is always on the top of my list and the Title sponsor of the event did not disappoint with David, Jordan, and the rest of the team help many learn how to improve their DEX experience by using the Totle software. 

Rounding out the list is the Autonomy chain project that had a cool autonomous car prototype there showing you how the scanner works. The folks over at Crypto Poker Exchange have a very clean and fun looking blockchain poker, and I HAD to include ODB coin (named after the late, great Old Dirty Bastard of Wu Tang) who are making coins for individual music artist.  Day 2 At CIS

As I walked into day two at Crypto Invest Summit bright and early, there was CryptoWendyO already doing interviews at the Blockchain Beach booth, so I said hi real quick and headed over to the main hall to hear legendary investor Tim Draper speak.  When it comes to crypto Tim knows his stuff a little better than The Woz does and I really love how excited he gets over how it can change our future. This is a guy who lost his BTC in the Mt. Gox crash and then doubled down and went in again because he believes in it that much. We kicked the morning off with some jumping jacks at Tim's request and then Alon settled in and they dove in. I think when we see well known and respected men like Tim & Steve giving crypto their seal of approval it really means we are headed in the right direction of mass adoption in my opinion. 

Directly after the great keynote by Tim, Ran Neu-Ner the host of CNBC's "Crypto Trader" show did a live taping and had Tim on as the first guest along with a few other great guests. It was cool to see them hustle to pull this off completely unscripted! I will say one of the highlights was this really funny eToro commercial featuring a Game of Thrones kinda theme! https://youtu.be/Ihd0moB0ehM I cut out a bit early before the taping ended to get in the VERY long time to get a free copy of Tim Draper's new book "How To Be The Startup Hero" signed by the man himself.

They had a huge pile of books to give away to everyone at the summit, but damn was that line long! I waited about an hour and thirty minutes but it was worth it to get a personalized copy of the book and this great selfie with Tim!

I hung out for a little while longer at the convention talking with people and projects and I was even surprised by my buddy Arnold with these amazing mustache shaped cuff links that he gave me! How amazing are the people I continue to meet in this crazy crypto world?!?

After such a great conference I am really looking forward to the next one, but until then... 'Stache That Crypto Friends!

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[justgotham]

Eagle-eyed fans may have noticed something a bit different in the performance of Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. “Scarecrow” in the last few episodes of FOX’s hit series Gotham. The character’s reintroduction comes with a new actor behind the burlap mask, one David W. Thompson, a Cortlandt Manor native.

We got to chat with Thompson amidst his debut, and now that his arc is in full swing we can finally let slip on Westchester’s newest supervillain.

So you went to Walter Panas High School. (I went to Lakeland, but I won’t hold it against you.) Did you get involved with the Panas Players or any other on-stage productions back then?

I did not. They predominantly did musicals, and while I enjoyed singing in the shower, I don’t think anyone else really wanted to hear me sing.

How did you first get into acting professionally?

I started getting involved in middle school at Copper Beach. My first play there was A Midsummer Night’s Dream where I was Puck in sixth grade. I remember there was this one scene where I was supposed to walk in and I have this flower, and I remember stepping on stage, and Oberon says, “Do you have the flower, welcome traveler?” and I remember looking down and I did not have the flower. I was gonna say, “Yes” and then I looked down and said, “No!” and I ran back down out into the wings and I grabbed it and came back, and everyone was laughing. Afterwards they’re like, “Dave, you played that off so well!” and I said, “I don’t know about that.”

I did a couple plays in middle school, and some local theatre. There’s the Depot Theatre in Garrison; they have some one-act play festivals I was involved with for a couple years. Some of those local playwrights said, “You should go do some short films in the city and get in involved with student films.”

Which led to some small but recognizable parts in fairly big shows like Boardwalk Empire and The Unbreakable Kimmie Schmitt, as well as films like Win Win and A Christmas Story 2. Now Gotham is shaping up to be potentially huge role for you. Can you tell us a little about what it was like going up for such a well-known character as Scarecrow/Jonathan Crane?

It was kind of terrifying at first. There was a recast. The prior actor, Charlie Trahan, wasn’t able to do this arc in this half of the season. So when I auditioned they sent me some clips of him earlier in the show, and they said, “So if you could do something like this, but also kind of make it your own … but really kind of stick to what he was doing … but feel free to play with it!” which was very ambiguous, very vague instruction.

I’ve also been a big Batman fan. I loved the Nolan films and I think Cillian Murphy was fantastic in his iteration of Scarecrow, but I think what Gotham is doing is just a different approach. It’s been fun to kind of take the roots of the character, as well as the work that Charlie put in, and then kind of shaping it into my own thing as well. I’ve been kind of terrified of ruining this thing, this beloved character, for people who really enjoy this show, and I hope to do it justice.

It’s been a lot of fun so far, and the arc that I’m involved with for the duration of the season is very exciting. I look forward to watching it — I haven’t really seen any of it yet. I’ll be watching it for the first time with everyone else.

You do look a little like a young Cillian Murphy. Do you think that helped your case?

I don’t think it hurt. I think we have similar body types: tall, scrawny, even scarecrow-looking guys.

[Pun entirely intended] We’re a little afraid of how a student of the Meisner method approaches the character of a fear-based supervillain. How do you get into that type of headspace?

I think I approached this character in a much more physical way. Really only my eyes are visible through the costume, and it’s kind of big and bulky, and I’m kind of a gangly guy, so a lot of it was me trying to express his intensity through the eyes, as well as finding a physicality that is unlike mine. In the Nolan iteration he’s a perfector and he’s a very angry person, but I think in this one he’s really kind of tortured, and then he was injected with all these kinds of chemicals by his father, and he was locked away and abused in this facility for years, so I think he kind of lost a lot of his humanity throughout that. I think it was kind of tapping into that sort of more bestial, primitive side of this tortured character.

Have you worked on your maniacal laugh yet? All good villains have a maniacal laugh.

There is one scene where I play with an evil laugh, and I remember trying it out with a friend beforehand, and I just kind of did it, and he said, “Hey, that sounded alright,” and I said, “Yeah, I think I was just doing Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs.” We’ll see how that comes out.

You mentioned you were a big fan of Batman as a kid. Did you have any favorite version?

I was a huge fan of the animated series when I was younger — that was the best show! Mark Hamill as the Joker! Yeah, to me, that is always my definitive Batman. Also, I loved Batman and Robin, the one with Ivy, and Bane, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, I was a huge fan of that as a kid.

What are you afraid of?

Oh, jeez. When I was younger I was really afraid of dolls, like little dead girls. The Grudge and The Ring, I’ve never seen either of those, but the trailers always terrified me when I was a child. I had this neighbor who lived across the street, literally I think maybe 30 feet door-to-door, and I was hanging out at his house, and I’d be walking home late at night, and I would ask him to walk me to the end of his property, and I remember I’d be maybe ten or fifteen feet away from my door, he’d say, “Watch out for a doll!” and I would cover my ears and run back into my house.  Really good friend.

Last year you co-created and starred in the four-part web series Rhinebrook, about a young man who uses his brother’s ID to take his place teaching at a prestigious boarding school. We dare to hope, but was Rhinebeck the inspiration for Rhinebrook?

Maybe at least partially? The name, there’s a regal sound to it, and I remember my friend and co-creator of it, Austin Cauldwell, we were bouncing around some different names, and I remember one day he just emailed me “Rinebrook?” and I say, “Yeah, that sounds good.”

But we can be sure you are, in fact, the real David W. Thompson?

[Laughs] I, uh … I can neither confirm nor deny.

Lastly, for new things coming up moving forward, can any of your local fans- or, can you key us in on any new projects you might have coming up?  Anything post-Gotham?

A few things are in the works. When I know, you’ll know.