Day Fifteen: Selfie Photo Manipulation

6/30/15, 11:14 PM PDT

Today, I found out that UCLA Athletics' Student Section had a selfie contest for people who were buying their den passes last minute.

Free hats, hmm?

Luckily for me, I completely put off buying my Den Pass until the very last day, so I got to be one of the few people eligible to compete in this. I saw that one of the criteria was "funniest" selfie. So, using my background in video editing, I took this very strange, cringe-worthy selfie...

Ignore the Post-It note on my webcam or the fact that I have a look of
pure despair in my eyes.

Into this, equally strange, much more cringe-worthy picture.

Jesus Christ.

YES. I KNOW IT'S A HORRIBLE PICTURE. But let me explain my design process. So after I took that selfie, I realized that I had accidentally clipped off the top part of my head. I was too stubborn to retake the picture, so instead I tried to cover it up with something.

I didn't want a repeat of this picture where the hat was so obviously fake, So instead, I opted to cover it with a more reasonable beret. Then, I thought, since I had the beret, might as well put me in France so it makes sense, right? So I slapped the Eiffel Tower right behind me.

Then I thought, that's not a very funny or memorable picture, so I slapped the mustache and the (really crappy) cloud art behind it. And, as the French people say, voila.

Fifteen minutes, and some serious deliberation later, I decided to scrap the Eiffel Tower idea completely and go for something ridiculous to blow the judge's socks off.

This was the result.

Yes, that is USC on fire behind me. Yes, Godzilla is a Bruin.

After posting it on Twitter (and getting a boatload of likes)...

The Den tweeted this out:

It's even better when you can see the gif.

Helllllll yeaaaaaaaah.

Later today, I went to Sam's house to meet some of her family members that were staying for two weeks. One of her cousins drew this picture of us:

BMOM stands for "Batman  or Michael." Because my voice was so deep
they decided to call me Batman when they first met me.

I'd say for the most part, it's pretty accurate. We're both squares, and I'm at least a tiny bit taller than she is. Telling you, this cousin's going places.

Afterwards, we all baked brownies, ate said brownies, and finished off the day with karaoke. One of Sam's cousins decided to sing this song:

Although soon after, the mic got handed to me because I had the deepest voice in the house. So I turned the knob on my throat to the "angry smoker" setting and sang my best Louis Armstrong impression.

They were laughing pretty hard whenever I sang "What a wonderful world" so I don't know whether or not I did a good job on that song.

What I do know is that I got some GREAT footage of Sam singing a certain Taylor Swift song...

RFotD: Samantha actually entered a Taylor Swift lookalike competition. She came in 5th, but she would have ended up in last place had it not been for her stellar moves.