Hello, Michelle Khare’s “Challenge Accepted: 90-Day Black Belt” premiere in Hollywood, CA

by   •   Face, Travel
 

Last week, on Monday, October 21, I had an opportunity to attend Michelle Khare’s red carpet premiere event for her first feature-length episode of Challenge Accepted, “90-Day Black Belt,” at a movie theater in Hollywood, California.

I was already familiar with Michelle Khare from seeing her past Challenge Accepted episodes where she tried various different academies for the San Diego Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Secret Service. Having a professional background in criminal justice and law enforcement, I enjoyed watching her training and thought she portrayed her experience as well as she could in those half-hour episodes. Thus, as you’d expect, when I had a chance to screen her latest episode, I was eager to join in for it to find out what she did next.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the most recent challenge she tackled was to get a taekwondo black belt in 90 days. I’ve trained martial arts and combat sports on-and-off for two and a half decades now, and my very first black belt was awarded to me in taekwondo by Kukkiwon, the South Korean government’s taekwondo governing organization, when I was 8 years old. It took me two years to earn it, and even that was considered to be pretty quick, so I was looking forward to seeing whether she was able to do it in three months.

I didn’t publish this blog post right away after the event because I didn’t want to leak anything too early, but the episode is out now on Michelle Khare’s YouTube channel as of this morning. I’m going to share some of my thoughts about it, so if you don’t want me to spoil anything, don’t scroll past the five photographs until you’ve watched the episode.

Here are some red carpet photos together with Michelle, as well as with my friend Aidan, who runs the Skip the Tutorial channel on YouTube:

Here are some photos I took from the theater—of Michelle doing her introduction before the premiere, and a Q&A session after the viewing:

I ended up liking the show more than I expected. I thought the editing was done well, the story was told in a captivating manner, and the build-up to the final result made me get invested in her success.

From the beginning, I was wondering if her master would actually assess her ability seriously, or if he had gone into this knowing that it was “impossible” but just wanted to entertain her for the challenge. A lot of martial arts schools like to “gatekeep” black belts in a sense because they don’t want to make it seem like it is achievable in such a short period of time, and I wondered if Michelle would be victimized by that notion. And sure, that is gatekeeping is reasonable for a majority of people—most taekwondo students start as true beginners and are only able to attend a few classes a week, so requiring a few years to achieve any level close to mastery makes sense. However, it seems like, not only did Michelle have a strong fitness and combat sport background already, but she was fairly dedicated and spent far more time training than the average new student.

In exchange for giving her the opportunity to take promotion tests in such rapid succession, it seems like her master ramped up the difficulty of the exams to ensure that she absolutely did deserve it every time she passed. Her color belt tests were noticeably more intensive than what I remember from my own taekwondo journey, and her black belt test was orders of magnitude more difficult than what I had to do for my black belt.

I think the way she failed her black belt test was very gimmicky. Yes, I too had to break a brick to earn my black belt, and yes, there is validity in requiring that as a component of the exam—it demonstrates strength, but there is also a material mental aspect of it where you are overcoming the hurdle of using your body to break an extremely hard object. However, there is far too much variability in brick-breaking to be able to consider it as any sort of reliable indicator of any metric.

There are different kinds of bricks, and for taekwondo, you often use cement slabs of controlled density—these are the rectangular gray blocks that you’ll see if you search online for taekwondo breaking demonstrations. The thickness of these slabs can also be controlled, and they are usually made in half-inch increments, with lighter-mass testers (like Michelle) getting thinner slabs, while higher-mass testers would either get two-inch-thick slabs or have to break multiple thinner slabs at once.

Note that I said earlier that a big aspect about brick breaking is the mental component of it. Your body will naturally not go full-force if you are about to throw your hand into an object that it knows is extremely hard, and part of the brick-breaking test is to determine whether you are able to overcome that obstacle in your mind. Having the strength to actually break the brick in half is of secondary importance, so when you have custom-made cement slabs designed for taekwondo usage, they’re not going to be as strong as landscaping bricks you buy from the hardware store. I used to coach martial arts and have handled many of these cement slabs before, and on more than one occasion, I have accidentally broken them in half because I wasn’t gentle enough with them.

I’m going to put on my tin foil hat here, and this is obviously entering conspiracy levels of speculation, but I wonder whether Michelle ended up with the thickest possible landscaping brick because they wanted her to fail. She was clearly extremely good at everything else, but I think there would have still been a lot of backlash from the taekwondo community if she had actually been awarded a black belt, especially from those who spent years working on their own black belts but are unable to view things from a more neutral and objective perspective for others in different circumstances. So, although it is unlikely, I think it is technically not impossible that her training school did this to her to have an excuse to fail her and save their reputation.

During her post-screening Q&A, Michelle said that it’s been over three months since filming concluded and she still had not earned her black belt yet. I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in her brick-breaking technique. During her black belt test, she was trying to break the brick with just her arm, as opposed to angling her body in a way that the mass of her torso drives her hand into the brick. That kind of adjustment can make a huge difference simply due to the basic laws of physics, so if she refines her strategy in that way, I have faith that she’ll pass her black belt re-test.

 

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Photo dump from TwitchCon San Diego 2024

by   •   Conventions, Face
 

For the past week, I’ve been in San Diego, California for TwitchCon 2024, a convention hosted by Twitch Interactive. If you remember my miserable experience from TwitchCon San Diego 2022, you might be surprised that I decided to attend again, but this year, I had actual “obligations” at the convention itself.

I still like to add an extra buffer day before and after my travel days to mitigate any delays and allow me to have additional flexibility in my schedule, so I arrived in town the evening of Wednesday and checked into my hotel room at the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina next door to the San Diego Convention Center.

I’m still on a very unusual sleep schedule, so I went to the hotel gym at 4 AM to have a nice, peaceful, solitary workout session.

Because of my Ambassador Elite status with Marriott, I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade to a room with a nice view of the San Diego Bay, even though I booked the cheapest rate available.

I also have access to the lounge, where they serve complementary small bites, snacks, and desserts. I usually forget to take photos of my free food nowadays because it’s become a fairly routine part of my travel experience, but I did remember to take these three:

Apparently Honda was one of the sponsors of TwitchCon, and I officially present to them the “Most Boring Sponsor” award. I was told that they originally had the Twitch community design the car, but instead of going with the popular vote, they overrode the decision and basically designed it themselves anyway.

My automobile knowledge is fairly limited to within the world of pickup trucks, and the only thing I really know Honda for is that their pickup truck, the Honda Ridgeline, isn’t actually a real body-on-frame pickup truck and is basically just a minivan with a developmental disorder. With that being said, I’m not sure how they could’ve picked a more boring car than a Honda Civic to feature (and it’s not even a Type R).

This car looks like a kid designed it in Grand Theft Auto and then tried to convert it into a real-life car. The racing stripes look tacky. The vinyl wrap looks like someone wanted a nice satin black wrap but ran out of the proper color so went with a weird graphite instead. I can’t even tell what the design is on the rear passenger door, and the glossiness of it makes it look like someone just ripped a chunk out of the vinyl wrap.

I wasn’t interested in watching any of the shows, but this is what the stage looked like.

That night, we went to Meze Greek Fusion where they had a performer swing fire around everywhere. As you can see from the bottom-right corner, my friend Dan was very impressed.

I didn’t have an opportunity to walk through Artist’s Alley, but I did randomly take a picture of it from outside after the hall was closed.

On Saturday, my friend Doug Wreden and I held a Twitch-sponsored meet-and-greet session with convention attendees.

A photographer from Getty Images came over to our booth and asked to take a picture. Not only do I broadly hate paparazzi and the nature of their work, but I also strongly disagree with copyright law surrounding the likeness of public figures captured in photographs, so I will never intentionally pose for or make a paparazzo’s job easier. However, Doug was fine with it and specifically wanted to have the most ridiculous picture on Getty Images, so we ended up with this shot. (I did not realize I was in the frame because I assumed she would just be zooming in on Doug, so that is my genuine and unposed “…” expression.)

(Disclaimer: The following photograph from the Getty Images Entertainment collection, taken by Robin L. Marshall of Getty Images North America, is being used pursuant to the Embedded Viewer clause of the Getty Images Site Terms of Use as accessed on September 24, 2024. All rights belong to their respective owners.)

On Sunday, Doug hosted a show called “Just Figure It Out” where contestants had to… just figure it out. Each pair of the bracket had to come up with how they would determine the winner, and failing to do so after ten minutes would result in both players getting eliminated.

Edit (October 20, 2024): It was recently brought to my attention that a political extremist was in attendance at this show, as a competitor’s guest. During the show, I did not know who this individual was and I did not directly interact with her. Fortunately, she was also not at any point mentioned or shown in my blog post. Please note that being on the same broadcast as another person does not mean I share their beliefs or endorse their opinions.

My friend Abby and I were on standby as fill-ins in case any pairs got eliminated. Comically, one pair bet on the results of a second pair, and that second pair ended up getting disqualified for not being able to come up with a winner, so that resulted in a double-elimination, bringing both Abby and me into the tournament at the same time.

The way that Abby and I decided to figure it out was that we were going to go out onto the convention floor, find three random people who stream on Twitch, and bring them back into the room. We would then add together our three representatives’ follower counts on Twitch, and whomever had the team with the higher follower count would win.

Right as I explained this, I noticed some of Abby’s popular streamer friends (who were there as part of the show) sneak out onto the convention floor, so under the assumption that they might try to cheat and be Abby’s representatives, I slid in a last-second stipulation that the people we bring into the room have to be people who do not know us.

After getting all the rules locked in, Abby and I sprinted out into the convention.

I ran around searching for streamers and ended up finding three of them, but on my way back, I ran into Ludwig Ahgren, who has over 3 million followers on Twitch. I successfully convinced him to come join my team, and I returned to the room assuming I had just secured my victory.

I forgot about one thing. The one thing I forgot… was my own rule that I created to protect myself. Ludwig knows who I am. He was disqualified from being on my team. Abby somehow found someone with over one and a half million followers. I suffered a tragic defeat.

Here are some photos from the show that I took. I feel like these work better without any context or commentary.

For our final TwitchCon dinner together on Sunday night, we went to Zama San Diego.

As our first appetizer, we ordered pan-seared crab cake with red beet truffle aioli and avocado.

Our second appetizer was New Zealand lamb chop lollipops with chimichurri and pomegranate seeds.

For my main entrée, I ordered a sushi roll and wagyu beef nigiri.

Although TwitchCon still isn’t really my thing, this year went way better than previous years. The meet-and-greet went reasonably well. I’ve had some issues during previous conventions with Doug’s fans being invasive and acting childishly towards me, but that didn’t seem to be as bad of a problem this time around, compared to before.

Doug’s show was fantastic, and even though I’m not really in streamer friend groups and I actively try to avoid association with streamer culture, I still enjoyed my time participating in the show. It also helped that the person I competed against was Abby, who I see as an intelligent and business-minded professional, even though she works with live streamers.

I don’t know for sure whether or not I’m attending TwitchCon again next year, but if I’m invited to host a meet-and-greet and make an appearance on a show again, then I’d say the chances are decent.

 

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Hello Bee Wizard

by   •   Cats, Face
 

If you know me, you know I adore cats, so when my friend Billie-Rae asked me to accompany her as she went to pick up her new kitten, of course I said yes. She already has a cat named Goblin, and this new kitten would be the second feline addition to her family. She decided to name him Bee Wizard, or Bee Wee for short.

When we went to the foster family’s apartment to pick up Bee Wee, I also had an opportunity to meet some of the other kittens that were up for a­dop­tion.

I made quick friends with this one after it emerged from under the dresser and greeted me.

After bidding farewell to his siblings, Bee Wee made his way into the cat carrier and sat peacefully on Billie-Rae’s lap in my pickup truck as we drove to his new home.

After we went indoors, Gobby noticed Bee Wee’s presence and went up to him to investigate.

Moments after arrival, Bee Wee got to enjoy the addictive Inaba Churu.

Time for a quick Gobby intermission.

Bee Wee found the water fountain and made sure to stay hydrated.

After filling up his small belly, Bee Wee went on an adventure and did a great job exploring Billie-Rae’s home, making sure to check out all the corners and edges. Whenever he encountered something new, I tried to go over and teach him how to interact with it—like how to swat at a feather toy, or how to scratch corrugated cardboard panels.

Hello Gobby.

After getting Bee Wee set up in his new room with some food, water, a litter box, a bed, and plenty of toys, Billie-Rae and I went to grab a quick dinner. Upon our return, we discovered that Bee Wee seemed to have tired himself out with all of the toys and eventually fell asleep inside a ring torus tunnel.

Before heading out, I grabbed him for a quick picture.

Bee Wee and I are glowing purple here because Billie-Rae had some purple mood lighting on. Alternatively, we are glowing purple because Bee Wizard is an actual wizard and he cast a spell on us.

 

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Hello Open Sauce 2024

by   •   Conventions, Face, Highlights
 

FTC Disclosure: Open Sauce, Inc. did not ask me to write this blog post, did not pay me cash for this review, and did not have an opportunity to review or request changes to this piece prior to its publication. However, I did receive material financial incentive to attend Open Sauce 2024 by way of free VIP admission and free lodging. The public retail value of such incentives amounts to a VIP ticket worth US$1,499.00 and a hotel stay worth approximately US$600.00. All other expenses beyond the aforementioned items were self-funded.

 
I’m not really the biggest fan of the San Francisco Bay Area in California (which should be unsurprising to you if you’ve read my blog post about how I got ~US$3,000.00 of stuff burglarized from me the last time I was here), but my friend Billie-Rae invited me to attend Open Sauce, a science and tech­nol­o­gy convention taking place at the Cow Palace in Daly City. Billie-Rae is a full-time employee at the company that runs the convention, so I de­cid­ed that was enough of a reason to support her work and check it out last week between June 14-16.

I’ve been to a lot of events and conventions of all different kinds over the past decade. I’ve attended as various roles, including an organizer, staff mem­ber, host, tournament competitor, exhibitor, media, broadcast talent, and plain old con-goer. Many conventions and brands have compensated me (or have tried to compensate me) in the past with high-end luxury accommodations worth several thousands of dollars, as well as hefty cash payments.

With all that being said, I can confidently say that Open Sauce 2024 was my favorite convention of all time.

Yes, I understand that people probably think my opinion doesn’t mean much because I got a special invite from my friend who works there. However, long-time readers know that I take my reputation very seriously and would never write an intentionally inflated or exaggerated review just to help out a friend. I have been very honest and transparent about disclosing everything up to this point, and I feel that I am being objective and unbiased with every­thing else in this blog post as well.

 
Open Sauce had a very different feel to it than any other convention I’ve ever been to, which made me enjoy it a lot more; upon some thought, I’ve con­clud­ed that that can be attributed to a handful of factors:

  • It does not feel commercialized.

    Revenue from ticket sales are pretty much never enough to run a large-scale convention. A convention center will have limited space for attendees, and consequently, there will be a limited number of tickets available for sale. If the ticket price is scaled to cover all expenses, it would be pro­hib­i­tive­ly high and cause fewer people to attend, thus reducing revenue. There is a sweet spot of balancing ticket price with attendance, and that sweet spot is usually nowhere close enough to cover expenses associated with venue rental, attractions, experiences, staffing, utilities, equip­ment, dec­o­ra­tions, marketing, etc.

    For this reason, conventions will sell space in their exhibition hall to sponsors, and these sponsors will promote their brand and products at their booth. Every other convention I’ve been to has had its exhibition hall feel like a gigantic three-dimensional billboard of endless advertisements with logos plastered everywhere. Companies furnish their booths with plush carpeting and nice fake walls to attract con-goers and incentivize them to get ex­po­sure to their brand.

    Open Sauce did not feel like this whatsoever. There were four exhibition halls, and all of them looked like massive empty warehouses with no love or care given to their presentation… which fit the convention perfectly, because it made it feel more genuine and authentic. All the focus of Open Sauce was on the science and technology of the cre­a­tions that people brought to the convention. Each booth was run by passionate scientists and inventors, not salespeople. There was nothing fancy in any of the booths—it was just the creator and the creation, and nothing else there to distract you from taking in their work.

    This doesn’t mean there were no sponsors at Open Sauce. However, the sponsors they did have were extremely well-integrated. For example, PCBWay sponsored the admission credentials for the convention, so everyone’s badge was a thin metallic circuit board (as opposed to just a flimsy piece of laminated paper like every other convention does). At their booth, you could finish soldering the connection with a battery and LED and make it light up. Formlabs also appeared to be a sponsor, and they brought high-end 3D printers that people could experiment with and try out. Both of these were directly relevant to the theme of the con­ven­tion and were actual interesting interactive things, as opposed to just ads.

    I diligently went up and down every aisle in all the exhibition halls, and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. This is the one and only con­ven­tion where I regularly stopped at many booths to try out their activity because of how inherently fun all the creations looked. I heard from a mu­tu­al friend that Michael Reeves (who was also in attendance) calls it a “science fair” instead of a convention, and I think that is a pretty accurate de­scrip­tion.

  • The special guests were pleasant people.

    Due to the nature of my work at Tempo during our prior esports and influencer marketing era, I’m used to interacting with stereotypical content cre­a­tors and broadcasters, especially those related and adjacent to Twitch live streaming. I’m fairly outspoken about my dislike of most of these peo­ple due to how disconnected they are with reality—many of them have a false and egregiously inflated sense of ego and self-importance com­pared to the rest of the world, which manifests in them coming off as extremely vain, arrogant, ignorant, lazy, and irresponsible.

    Open Sauce also had content creators in attendance, but the attitudes of these content cre­a­tors were very different. They all acted like normal people, and they all treated me like a normal person. I have had my fair share of encounters with meeting Twitch streamers during which they acted genuinely insulted that I didn’t already know who they were, but all the content creators at Open Sauce introduced themselves to me with a clear intent to meet new people and make new friends. I imagine there was a fairly thorough vetting process to decide who was and was not invited as a special guest, and this vetting process was well done, because I felt comfortable around everyone who was there.

  • I personally liked how the panels were scheduled.

    Most conventions have many panels scheduled and happening at once, and attendees have to pick which ones they want to go to, oftentimes hav­ing to miss out on some panels they want to watch in lieu of others. Open Sauce seemed to have a fairly limited number of panels, and there were only two places where panels were taking place—the main stage and secondary stage.

    This had two interesting effects. First, the panels that it did have were higher-impact panels that appealed to a broader audience, as opposed to having a lot of more specialized or niche topics. Second, because there were limited options of panels to watch, the audience was naturally bigger for each of the panels. Because the main stage was in a sporting arena and the massive amount of arena seating was used for the panel audience, it actually felt nice enjoying panels together with a large group of people.

    In a similar vein, I think Open Sauce realized that, although some people attend panels to listen to the topic, many of them go just to watch their fa­vor­ite content creators and broadcast personalities speak. I heard that most panelists held small meet-and-greets after speaking, so what the pan­els functionally ended up being was an opportunity for fans to know when and where to find their favorite creator, so they can meet them af­ter­wards.

    I heard that some people didn’t like this format, but I personally think this was a very efficient and practical way to run the schedule.

  • The activities for special guests were fun and relevant.

    When I am invited as a special guest or otherwise receive VIP treatment during conventions, the “exclusive access” usually just ends up being a lounge and a networking party. Although Open Sauce also did that, they further scheduled two fun activities that really stood out to me.

    The first was a visit to “The Cave,” Adam Savage’s workshop. The second was a visit to CrunchLabs, Mark Rober’s facility. Considering that both Adam and Mark are well-known personalities in the science field, being able to see their offices was very meaningful and interesting. I didn’t watch MythBusters when it was on TV, but I do watch all of Mark Rober’s YouTube videos, so I loved being able to see in-person the things he built for his channel.

    In a not identical but still similar vein, I enjoyed the fact that there was a hotel fully booked out exclusively for special guests. At first, the staff por­trayed this as being done for “security” reasons, which made me chuckle—I’m from Las Vegas where even A-list celebrities walk the casino and ho­tel floors alongside everyone else, so the fact that YouTubers would need that level of security was funny to me. However, I realized that having this kind of hotel was a good idea for a different reason.

    What was nice about the booked-out hotel was that everyone knew everyone else there was a science-related or science-adjacent person. In a reg­u­lar hotel, if you saw a stranger, you wouldn’t know if they were there for the same convention as you, or for something else entirely unrelated. How­ever, for Open Sauce, you knew that, if someone was inside that hotel, they were definitely there for Open Sauce. This encouraged people to be much more social and approach and initiate conversation with strangers because they are going into the interaction knowing that they share some degree of interests.

The second and fourth points obviously will not be relevant if you are just a general admission attendee, but for the sake of thoroughly sharing an an­ec­dote of my own experience, I decided to still include them.

 
So, if it wasn’t blatantly clear by now… if you are interested in science and technology and want a fun and high-value convention to attend, I highly rec­om­mend Open Sauce based on my experience that I had this year. The general admission ticket for 2024 was US$200.00, which I think is a very rea­son­a­ble price for a two-day convention that has so much to do that you’ll probably fill both days from open to close with interactive experiences. Their web­site currently shows early bird purchases for 2025 coming soon at US$99.69, which I find to be insanely cheap for what you get.

Below are some photos I took (and some that others took of me) during the convention:

 

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Hello, Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, California

by   •   Face, Food
 

Last week, I joined a group of six friends and acquaintances at Grand Central Market in Los Angeles, California for a food challenge: to eat a dish from every single restaurant at the market.

On initial count, we thought there were 30 spots, so with seven of us total, we would each have to down about four dishes. However, after we got started, we realized we miscounted and the number was somehow closer to 40. We also wanted to go for a more comprehensive degree of challenge completion, so we also got food items from fruit stands and grocery stores in addition to restaurants.

A lot of the food was actually surprisingly good. However, I had a difficult time fully enjoying it because of the mechanics of how food sharing worked. During the “I’ll have what he’s having” fast food challenge, we split up separate food items from the fast food orders and rarely had to split individual entrées. How­ever, for this Grand Central Market challenge, everyone wanted to try a little bit of everything, but because we were only ordering one item per store, people would just dig in with their hands/forks or bite directly into things.

I’m not “anti-mixing-saliva” or anything. In fact, I have a particular optimized system in place when I go to restaurants with my friends that proves this. I’m personally not very picky with what I eat, so I will let my friend pick two dishes she wants to try; we will begin eating, and once she’s had a satisfying portion of the first dish, we will trade plates and finish the other dish.

With that being said, when there are six other people grabbing at and just slobbering all over the food, especially when some of them are not really peo­ple I know that well, it becomes extremely unappetizing for me. For this challenge, we tried to create a priority flow where I would take the first bite of everything so I wouldn’t be grossed out, but near the end of the challenge, it didn’t really work out.

Because of this, I didn’t contribute anywhere close to how much I could have contributed, but we still managed to complete the challenge. Below are some of the nicer photos I managed to capture.

After emerging victorious, we decided to memorialize the day by taking pictures in a photo booth. There were seven of us and three shots, so we split into groups of 2-2-3 and rotated in and out between each shot so all of us would be on the same strip.

My group was with Doug and Billie-Rae. I seem incredibly confused in the photo as to why Billie-Rae is headbutting me, but I later found out that it was my own fault because, I thought Billie-Rae was going to walk in front of me and squeeze in the middle, but in fact, I was supposed to be the one in the middle, so I was blocking her way into the booth.

 

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Hello, Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California

by   •   Face, Travel
 

Yesterday, I was invited to Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California for a tour by an acquaintance who works as a software engineer in the an­i­ma­tion department of the company. Unfortunately, a lot of it was private so I wasn’t able to take my photographs, but I was able to capture some of the more public areas.

Our tour started in the museum area. I don’t really watch movies or television shows, so a lot of this didn’t really have much meaning to me.

The tour continued outdoors.

These large tan buildings are where movie sets are created and scenes are filmed.

These facilities used to be on-site housing for actors, but now they’re just offices. Apparently that golf cart is manufactured by Cadillac and is owned by someone famous, but I didn’t really recognize the name so I don’t remember whose it is.

Apparently there’s a new Ghostbusters movie coming out. They had the Ghostbusters car parked outside.

We were then led through an outdoor set.

I don’t remember the significance of this building, but there were some awards sitting inside (which I was not permitted to photograph).

After a tour of that campus, I met up with my acquaintance, who had finished working, and we got a tour of her work area. An overwhelming majority of it was confidential, so the only photograph I have of it is this Spider-Man mural.

As part of our tour, there was a photo opportunity where my friend Doug Wreden and I were supposed to stand in front of a green screen and we would be chromakeyed into an episode of Jeopardy. The prompt was to act like we had won, but while I was thinking about how I would react if I won Jeop­ard­y, the photographer already captured the shot.

As someone who is not really a fan of movies, this wasn’t really the best tour for me. Sony also has a music division, and I discovered throughout the tour by way of random posters that some of my favorite artists are signed to Sony Music, but the tour itself focused almost entirely on film and not on music. I am a lot more interested in music than film and television, so if there was a more music-oriented tour, I think I would have enjoyed that a lot more.

The highlight of my visit was, by sheer luck and coincidence because that was just the walking route we happened to take, overhearing Olivia Rodrigo in one of those tan buildings rehearsing for her performance at Coachella 2024. My second favorite part of the visit was eating a free Rice Krispy Treat. I think that might put into perspective how disinterested I am in movies and movie stars.

With that being said, if you are a big movie nut, this could potentially be a good tour for you to take. You don’t need a special invitation to go on it like I did—apparently you can just go on Sony’s website and purchase tickets (at least for the first portion on the main campus, though it wouldn’t grant access to the animations building). If you like celebrities, you might even see some famous people during the tour.

 

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