Blogocentric Formulations

Flathead Lake (Polson, Montana). For most of my childhood, my grandparents owned a home right on Flathead Lake in Montana. We'd go up to visit for a couple weeks every summer, usually staying in the boathouse right next to their dock which allowed them to launch their motorboat directly into the water. We had a lot of small-scale family reunions at that house, and a lot of memories of fishing, water-skiing, jumping off the dock, and family game nights around the dining room table. Unfortunately, both of my grandparents have passed away and they sold the place long before that when they realized they were getting older and couldn't keep the place up. On a whim, I looked it up a few months ago and the subsequent owners have completely changed the place; from the photos I saw online, there are very few original touches that remind me of the house that I spent so many summers at while I was growing up.


Zuma Beach (Malibu, California). This is where my wife and I got married, at a restaurant right on the sand. And obviously the day itself is a special memory, but in the years since it's also where we spent our first anniversary (where I had them recreate a table from our reception down to the floral arrangements and table decor), and it survived a very scary fire season where it was truly a miracle the place survived because literally everything around it burned in a wildfire a few years back.


Gare du Nord (Paris, France). The first international trip my wife and I ever took was to Spain, but we were traveling with my cousins who had traveled internationally before, and we stayed with my cousin-in-laws parents who were teaching abroad in Spain, so we kind of had travel guides the entire time. The following year, we traveled on our own to the United Kingdom and, on a whim, I booked a night away in Paris. We took the train from London and I distinctly remember stepping off the train in Paris, our first foreign country on our own that didn't speak English. Getting to our hotel and around was an adventure, but we both still remember the excitement and newness of the experience.


Edmund D. Edelman Children's Courthouse (Los Angeles, California). Our family spent almost three years coming and going to this courthouse month after month while we were fostering and eventually petitioning to adopt our kids. I still vividly remember all of the drives up to the city, the days spent sitting waiting to get your case called in front of the judge, the meetings conferring with our kids' attorney asking them to explain what happened during the hearing to us in plain English. Ultimately we ended up adopting our kids so the memories are a little less painful than if we hadn't gotten to adopt them, but this place is such a vivid memory for me.


The Walt Disney Studios Lot (Burbank, California). This is where my office is currently located, so it's definitely still around. Before I started my job at Marvel Studios, I had worked for various entertainment companies, but they were always in general office buildings. If there weren't movie posters on the walls, those offices could have just as easily been confused with those of the law firm on the floor above us, the medical billing company on the floor below us, etc. But when I started a job on Disney's studio lot in Burbank, it felt like I was working for a movie company. On my lunch breaks, I could walk by soundstages and the prop warehouse. All around the lot are monuments to the content that made Disney famous: the senior executive office building has all seven of Snow White's dwarves holding up the roof; our office building has the Disney Archives located on the ground floor and they always have some kind of memorabilia on display; our post facilities with edit bays and screening rooms are everywhere; and, every once in a while, they'll actually shoot something on the lot and will park all the trailers and supply trucks nearby. Every time I go into the office, it's a reminder that I get to make movies for a living, and it's really special.