Archive for the ‘Hussein’ tag

Everyone’s favorite Hussein

So… anyone on Facebook recently might have noticed something different about my name. I’ve decided to take a different middle name for the time being. I know what you’re thinking… “but David, you can’t do that!?” Well, I just did.
It’s amazing the sort of stigma a name can have, I got three or four different messages from friends literally within twenty minutes of changing my name. While that’s quite nerdy, it’s also alarming to think of how people’s thoughts can be manipulated by simply using the “H word”. A friend asked if I had become Muslim, another if I hated America and my roommate said that I should probably move out if I was going to blow anything up.
All the comments were jokes, but there is something wrong with our wold view if one of the most common names on the planet gives us nothing but terrible thoughts.
So until further notice, on the internet, I’ll be DHH. If you do a simple Facebook search you’ll see I’m not the only one. There is a certain person in the spotlight who was blessed with this name and if I can do anything to help remove the stigma associated with it I’m in.

A friend and I finished work on a local commercial last week, it’s for a sister station of The EDGE, and turned out pretty good if I do say so myself. If you don’t know who MC Magic is then you’re probably not the target demo of this spot. It’s slated to air on MTV Tr3s… which I only recently found out existed.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

There is an interesting story about how I came to work on this spot, but that is for another day. Some people who read this may not think it’s an interesting story as much as they think it’s an aggravating one :|

I saw a few movies since I posted last. The first is The Bicycle Thief, a classic Italian film that focuses on how a small action can impact someone in ways one can only imagine. It’s age shows but there is a very powerful plot in there if you’re ok with classic cinema. Another is Hearts and Minds, it’s a documentary on Vietnam… sort of a 70s version of Fahrenheit 911, only much better. It does have a bias but I didn’t find it heavy handed, a lot of the material in there applies to today just as it did then. It does a good job of reminding people how the Vietnam War started and that colonialism is just as terrible as it ever was. The last is Rattle and Hum, an amazing rockumentary (yes, it’s a word) about U2′s Joshua Tree tour. I loved Coldplay: Live 2003 and it definitely owes a lot to this film. It follows U2 around the US and has stunning performances from two different concerts. Both, interestingly enough, are in places I’ve been: Denver’s old McNichols Area and Tempe’s Sun Devil Stadium. OK, maybe that’s not interesting but I thought it was cool.
I highly recommend all three films, the first two are in the Criterion Collection and the third runs on MHD quite a bit.

I’m out for now, take it easy
David Hussein Hildreth

P.S. Tomorrow I will have lived in Arizona 2 years.