Chris Hinton’s 2013 New Year’s Resolutions Progress Report

Well, well.  We’re already over the halfway mark for the year 2013 and it’ll soon be August.  It’s hard to believe.  Time flies when you’re having fun.

At the beginning of the year, I made a list of New Year’s resolutions.  Just thought I’d take this opportunity to share the list and give a quick progress report for those that might be interested.  For those that are not interested, I’ve included a link to view Def Leppard’s official music video for “Pour Some Sugar On Me.”  Click here for some of the craziest, coolest one armed drumming action you’ve ever seen, and for some of the biggest mullets in rock history.

I’ve put a check mark by the completed resolutions and indicated the outstanding ones in red.  Let’s get rocked, Def Leppard aficionados.  One armed drumroll please…

*   *   *

Chris Hinton’s 2013 New Year’s Resolutions:

#1)  Get a pretty cool haircut just like the movie stars  ( √ )
#2)  Learn how to play Eddie Van Halen guitar solos on a keytar so that I can impress my friends at parties  ( √ )
#3)  Eat more celery and kale for dinner instead of chili cheese dogs and one pound burritos ( √ )
#4)  Get in shape so that I can bend down to tie my shoes just like the “good old days” ( √ )
#5)  Do at least one thing a day that scares me (ie: doing math, saying “Bloody Mary” in the mirror three times in a row, or listening to a Nicki Minaj song the whole way through) ( √ )
#6)  Visit a wax museum  ( No )
#7)  Visit a non-wax museum ( √ )
#8) Buy new car mats  ( √ )
#9) Clean out the fridge ( √ )
#10) Get married  ( No )

*   *   *

Welp, there you have it.  Eight down, two to go.  I still have plenty of more time before the year winds down, but I’d like to keep my foot on the gas pedal.  Crank this mutha up a few decibels.  I’m a real go-getter.

There’s a bunch of newbies around here (welcome you dimwits).  Perhaps some of you are single ladies?  Feel free to check out my latest rejected Match.com dating profile if you haven’t already, and let’s see if we can’t knock the last two off the list.

I’ll see one of you lucky gals at the wax museum.   Look for me.  I’ll be the one wearing a burgundy turtleneck tucked neatly inside his daisy dukes.  Make the most of the remaining year, you all.  I will do the same.  Hugs and kisses.

Photoshop Lessons – How To Make A Sparkly Vampire Twilight Poster

Photoshop is a very useful tool.  It can be used for all sorts of things, like designing websites, retouching photos, or turning a homoeratic photo of you and your brother into a dazzling, sparkling Twilight poster that all of your friends will surely marvel over, such as this delightful gem.

For today’s Photoshop lesson, I will be teaching you how to make your very own sparkly vampire Twilight poster.  Don’t worry if you’re a Photoshop novice and don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, or if you don’t use Photoshop at all.  There are plenty of bad jokes I’ll be telling throughout the tutorial, so feel free to read along no matter what your Photoshop skill level may be.  Let’s get this Photoshop party started, shall we?

Step 1:  Pour A Shot Of Whiskey

Let’s face it, Photoshop can be really boring.  Retouching photos is a tedious process, that’s why I like to pour myself a shot of whiskey before I begin no matter if it’s morning, noon or night.  It really helps to get the creative juices flowing.  I also like to design crudely drawn stick figure logos that I send to advertising agencies looking to hire a skilled graphic designer, but that’s another lesson for another time.

My drink of choice is Makers Mark, but any old kind of whiskey will do for achieving great success.  Bottoms up.  You are now ready to roll up the sleeves and begin today’s lesson.

Step 2:  Choose A Photo To Begin With

Choosing the right photo to begin with is paramount if you’re to end up with a stellar finished piece.  For this demonstration, I chose a photo of my brother and I when we paused for a impromptu maternity photo shoot in the middle of the woods for some inexplainable reason.

If you don’t have a maternity photo of your own to work with, no worries.  Choose a photo where you are looking off in the distance all dreamy like and whatnot, just like your all time favoritest actors Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.  Below is the original, untouched photo that I will be using for this tutorial.

Step 3:  Removing The Background; Magnets Are Pretty Cool

The background of the original photo isn’t awful, but it doesn’t exactly scream werewolves and vampires.  It needs to be replaced with something more enchanting to really create that mysterious, fantasy world effect.  But first, I’m going to remove the original background.

There are multiple tools available in Photoshop for making selections.  No doubt I will be recommending that you use the most unfavorable tool by professional designers, being that I was usually out playing ultimate frisbee rather then attending my graphic design classes in college.  I’ll drink to $60,000 dollars down the tubes and to racking up a massive debt.  Three cheers for frisbee!  Damn you frisbee.  You ruined my life.

Now that you are slightly buzzed, go to the upper left hand corner and select the Lasso Tool.  I usually prefer the Magnetic Lasso Tool from the drop down menu primarily because I think magnets are pretty cool.  I enjoy collecting them and hanging them on my fridge just like my late Nana used to do.  I’ve collected magnets from 32 states and 8 different countries, and also a magnet of Fabio that was given to me as a gag gift.

Once you’ve selected the Magnetic Lasso Tool, you’ll want to trace an outline of the area you want to remove.  Carefully make your selection, then hit the delete button.  Presto!  The original background is removed from the photo and you should end up with an isolated layer that looks like so.

Step 4:  Replace The Original Background With An Image Stolen From The Internet

Now it’s time to replace the original background.  I did a Google search for “Fantasy Forest Backgrounds” and found a lot of great photos to steal.  I downloaded about 10 photos to play around with before settling on this one.  You may have to try a photo that’s lighter, darker, or a different color depending on the lighting of your original photo.  Experiment with different images and choose a background photo that you like best.  You are doing great!  You will be a sparkly vampire in no time.

Step 5:  Human Skin Is The Worst

In the original photo, you notice that our skin looks way too human.  It’s red and orange, and it sure doesn’t look like the kind of skin that can make you run faster than a mountain lion or stop a moving car with your bare hands.  Let’s take another drink and fix that.

Similar to how I made a selection to remove the background, I will now make a selection of the unsightly human skin to add to a new layer.  It might look a little strange for now, but that’s probably because you’ve been drinking way too much, you silly goose!  Quit farting around and put the whiskey down.  Your selection should look something like this.

Oh, hey there.  Didn’t mean to include a photo of Fabio that I lifted from the Official Fabio International Fan Club wearing his leather jacket, with thumb tucked into his mom jeans looking ever so el casuél.

I think maybe I’ve had one too many drinks myself.  Here is the isolated skin selection that I meant to include.  We look like we were dipped in acid.

Step 6:  Make Yourself Sparkle 

I sure miss grandma.  She made the best banana loaf bread.  I wish that she had been born a vampire and didn’t age since 1918 just like Edward, but alas, grandma was born a mortal like Bella Swan and died of chronic liver disease.  I hope this tutorial has been fun and enlightening so far.  Now let’s wrap it up, shall we dimwits?

You are probably feeling pretty good by now, so I won’t go into too many boring details unless you wanna pay me lots of cash monies so that I can eat tonight.  No?  Okay, moving on.

To make the skin pasty white – you know, because vampires hate light, except for the fact that the vampires in Twilight walked around in the daylight all the time, but we won’t get into that here, now will we –  I adjusted the levels using the Selective Color, Gradient Map, and Exposure tools found in the Layers drop down menu.  I also added an outer glow to the layer of me awkwardly straddling my brother using Layer Styles.  It’s looking pretty fly for two pasty white guys.  The sparkly vampire Twilight poster is nearly complete.

Step 7:  Get Punched In The Face

The poster is lacking something to give it that final punch.  It needs more Fabio.  Because what is a sparkly vampire Twilight poster without some long hair flowing, chisel-chested Fabio staring dreamily at us with those engaging eyes.  Punch us in the face, Fabio, but please go gentle with our hearts.

I’d like to raise one last toast.  To the fabulous Fabio, ladies and gentlemen, to my fellow dimwits.  Prepare to keep those glasses raised, because you will be the toast of the town when you reveal your finished poster to your friends and colleagues.

Congratulations on becoming the newest Hollywood star of the greatest movie series ever made, and cheers to you for a job well done.  That concludes the Photoshop tutorial for today.  Join me next time as I teach you how to Photoshop yourself into a Manotaur with a Mike Tyson face tattoo.

Guest Blogger – John Stamos

If you’ve read my “About This Shizz,”  then you’re aware of the fact that I work in the film industry.  It’s really not all that glamorous, so don’t get too overly excited fellow dimwits.  My job mostly consists of ordering Porta Potties for set and picking up cigarette butts that darling crew members flick on the ground.  But the job does have its perks.

I’ve built up some good connections over the years, and was able to pull a few strings in order to land my very first guest blogger to be featured on The Dimwit Diary.

Without further ado, I hand it over to John Stamos, famed actor of the 1990’s hit TV series “Full House,” and leave you with an honest and brave confessional letter that he was gracious enough to share with us all.

Thank you, Mr. Stamos.  You’re a kind soul and you have amazing hair.

*   *   *   *   *

July 25, 2012
Thursday,  9:45 PM

Dear The Baha Men,

It is with no great pleasure that I am sitting down to write you this letter on an unusually cloudy evening in Los Angeles.  Perhaps the grey clouds are fitting.  I am disheartened beyond belief.

Twelve years ago, you proposed a question:  Who let the dogs out?  You put it in form of a catchy song with an infectious groove and those funky junkanoo beats.  The song went sailing to the top of the charts.  It was a good time to be The Baha Men:  platinum record, platinum jewelry and platinum hair.

Others may have been fooled into thinking that you were on top of the world, but you weren’t fooling me.  I know how much you loved your dogs – those friendly, cuddly rottweilers, Pepper Spray and Mace.

They were like your children.  When someone carelessly let them out one evening and they never returned, so was it the case with your heart.  A large piece of it hopped over the chain link fence and never returned to its rightful owners.

I am regretful that I’ve waited this long to come forward, but after twelve years of unrelenting guilt, I couldn’t bear even one more second of it.

It was me that let the dogs out – John Stamos.

I know the question that you woofed in the chorus is not why did you let the dogs out, but for my own sanity’s sake, I feel as though I must offer an explanation.  I snuck into your estate one late evening and lured your dogs out with a juicy steak because I was upset that you didn’t come to my 37th birthday party.

I was incredibly angry and deeply hurt.  It may seem juvenile to you, but to me it would have meant the world if The Baha Men had attended my birthday party.  And not just the world to me, It would have meant the world to a lot of other people as well.

I told everyone that you were going to be there.  I even put it on the invitations:  Special Musical Performance by The Baha Men.  Sally Jessy Raphael told me that was the only reason she was coming to my birthday party.  I believed her, because immediately after she found out that you weren’t going to be in attendance for the evening, she went storming out of my house, and that red glasses wearing biatch took everyone else at the party with her.

Pardon my language, The Baha Men.  It’s just, I’ve harbored a lot of resentment for that woman over the years.  That was one of the worst evenings of my life, and Sally was intent on making the next several years a living hell for me, turning my friends against me, Hollywood producers, spreading rumors and making up lies.  I was virtuously blacklisted by everyone.

Sally had quite a lot of influence back in those days, which kills me because I never quite saw the appeal.  She had big glasses and feathered hair.  So what?  So did my dad, but he never got his own crappy talk show, although there was a time where he was involved in some pretty serious negotiations.  But that’s not the point of all of this.  The point is this:  I’m extremely sorry and I’m requesting your forgiveness.

I know I can never bring Pepper Spray and Mace back.  I paid my cousin Dino a fifty spot to put them down.  But what I can do is offer you this $35 gift certificate to P.F. Chang’s China Bistro.  The gift certificate is only valid for one year.  Sorry, but management refused to budge no matter how many times I reminded them that I played the rock-‘n-roll bad boy biker, Jesse Katsopolis, on Full House.  I wish it was more, but much like your career, mine was also short lived and the cash flow is more like a cash trickle these days.  It’s a tough economy for all of us.

Please accept my deepest apologies.  I have two dogs of my own, and I know how much it would pain me if someone were to let them out and I was never to see them again.  In fairness though, I probably wouldn’t have made a cheesy remake of that song, and an even worse video to boot.  We all grieve in different ways, I suppose.  I hope that your heart has had time to mend and that you were able to find some healing along the way.

I also hope that we can all manage a way to move on from this.  Perhaps one day we will even be able to laugh about it, and maybe it will even provide inspiration for you to make another chart topping hit one day soon.  I don’t know how the song would go.  Maybe some more barking as people can’t seem to get enough of those incessant who, who, who’s.  I’ll leave the song writing up to the experts, to you my dear friends.  The Baha Men.

With kindest personal regards,

John Stamos

PS.  If you still talk to Sally, tell her I said to bite me.