Someone once told me that those of us who live in beautiful Northern California are super-lucky because we have the distinct privilege of living within 45 minutes of any sort of climate anybody would ever want to live in. We’ve got the cool and breezy coast. We’ve got sunny valleys, temperate forests, and chilly mountains. It’s like, the Great Valley or some shit.

And you know, I don’t totally disagree. Granted, the whole state is a bankrupt parking lot filled with dirty diapers and rave fliers, but, well, yeah. It’s nice here. I suppose that’s easy to forget when you’re paying $5.19 for a gallon of gas and—I don’t know—$36 for a pack of cigarettes. But all in all, it seems worth it.

Even more so up in the beautiful Shasta Forest, where I had delightful and bliss opportunity to drag my little seedling family to a few weeks ago. My dad—mountain grandpa (we’re hoping this sticks in lieu of ‘pot pop’)—has a few acres that my buddies and I migrate to each summer for a work/drink weekend (have I talked about that here?), and the Mrs. and I decided that we should take a little trip. With the kid. While there was still snow on the ground.

Granted, it’s more than 45 minutes away from our humble abode, but, aside from the screaming banshee strapped into the backseat of our very sensible SUV, it’s not the WORST drive in the world.

But wait a minute. Aside from my subtle and alluring tourism pitch for sunny California, why—in the world—should I think that you want to hear about all this? Why do you care about my family trees? You shouldn’t. BUT! I was able to smuggle some toys up. The good kind. And while there, I was able to sneak away for a very brief amount of time and take some shots. Some videos. Some…well, shots.

Let’s be honest—way real—: you can fucking TASTE the HASTE with this clip. It’s certainly a sketch of a sketch. But I had fun, and I finally got to use this quirky little They Might Be Giants tune in one of my projects. A bonus.

The shrewd and avid Hateball fan will also notice that I’m broadening my horizons—to questionable gain, but still—with this one. My strict-ish rule of ‘no transitions or titles’ that I’ve maintained since the first couple is being broken here. I even got down with some advanced cutaway titles, which was neat for the first few. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but, well, I guess I feel OK enough about them to share with you all.

It’s a pretty random clip, now that I think about it, but, sometimes random is so ugly as to be enchanting. Like life. And iTunes DJ.

With that, please enjoy my latest. Briefly:

Briefly… from Justin Hateball on Vimeo.

TTFN.

- Hateball