This is a video that I created for The Happiness Treatment. They are a sponsor of the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival. This was a fun red carpet event.

For more information about The Happiness Treatment visit TheHappinessTreatment.com and follow them on Twitter attwitter.com/happinesstreat

For more information about the Seattle International Film Festival please visit SIFF.net

We are honored to be a media partner for the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival. On Thursday May 16th SIFF had their opening night gala at McCaw Hall. It featured Joss Whedon’s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing. What a wonderful film. Prior to the event we had the pleasure of being part of the red carpet festivities which included attendance from director Joss Whedon and the stars of the film: Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Nathan Fillion, and Clark Gregg. This is just a tiny taste of how wonderful and epic this red carpet event was. It was a magical evening.

It was a true pleasure talking with Raphael Sbarge (Once Upon a Time,The Young and the Restless,Independence Day,Prison Break,The Guardian,Star Trek: Voyager,Risky Business) and Ed Begley Jr. (Family Tree,Rizzoli & Isles,Gary Unmarried, Arrested Development ,Six Feet Under, Kingdom Hospital, 7th Heaven, St. Elsewhere, This Is Spinal Tap) about what happiness means to them, simple steps to help the environment, and what Green Wish is all about and how you can help. This interview took place at the building site for Ed’s brand new leed platinum certified home. We hope you enjoy this conversation and please do your part to make our earth a better place.

Follow Raphael Sbarge on Twitter at www.twitter.com/RaphaelSbarge and follow Ed Begley Jr. at www.twitter.com/edbegleyjr

For more information about Green Wish visit www.greenwish.com

Stay connected with The Happiness Treatment by following us at www.twitter.com/happinesstreat

Green Wish is a grassroots, non-profit organization that funds local, green organizations through customers’ small donations at local retailers. Put simply: We’re a charity that helps fund the green projects in your neighborhood!

Green Wish was founded in 2009 by actor/producer Raphael Sbarge, after the birth of his first child, “I was struck by how alive I suddenly felt as a father,” he explained. “Conversely, I also felt remarkably vulnerable and defenseless to protect this little person’s journey in a world as vast and complex as ours. I had to ask, ‘What can we do to contribute in any small way to leave the world a better place than when we found it?’”

The answer: Green Wish — we help people to support a movement — not just one organization, but multiple ones. When you donate to Green Wish, you’re actually helping numerous environmental groups, right in your own community.

Green Wish partners with local retailers, which place our donation cards right at their cash registers. Customers can “buy” and add Green Wish donations on to their purchase at the retailer.

These donations are collected by local Green Wish chapters and distributed regularly to area organizations that have been carefully vetted. The board of directors in each chapter evaluates and selects deserving organizations with track records of good work across the green spectrum, focusing on air, water, earth and environmental education. Ninety cents of every dollar goes to your local green groups.

We started in Los Angeles with a chapter supporting nine organizations in Southern California. We are spreading across the country with the ultimate goal to start Green Wish chapters across the country, all supporting groups in their communities. Join us!

INFORMATION COURTESY OF WWW.GREENWISH.COM

It was such an honor to chat with surfing legend and musician, Tom Curren, during a recent stop in Portland, OR. He performed two wonderful acoustic songs for us and talked about what happiness means to him, how critical he is of his own songwriting, and music that lifts him up. We hope you enjoy this conversation with Tom Curren.

Follow Tom Curren on Twitter at twitter.com/currenspam

Stay connected with The Happiness Treatment by following us at twitter.com/happinesstreat

Tom Curren (born July 3, 1964, in Santa Barbara, California) is an American surfer. He was born to father Pat (big-wave legend and shaper) and mother Jeanine. His brother Joe is also a professional surfer and popular photographer and he also has a sister named Anna.

Curren grew up raised primarily by his mother, and spent much of his free time in the ocean. Taught to surf by his father, who was a big wave rider, Curren drew on his lineage and had a natural affinity for the ocean and the long sectioning point surf of Rincon Point, near his home in Santa Barbara. He progressed quickly and drew the attention of the surf media.

Curren also was a natural competitor and contrary to his introverted personality, reveled in heated competitions in the NSSA, which at the time was California’s premier amateur surfing body. Slowly, he was seeded into professional events and he handily beat all comers. By the time Curren hit the ASP World Tour in 1983, he was taking out veteran pros such as Rabbit Bartholomew, Shaun Tomson, and Cheyne Horan. He really hit his stride in 1985, and took down his first world title.

He was world champion three times - 1985, 1986, 1990, and won 33 championship events in his professional career, a total only bested by Kelly Slater. He achieved near-mythical status both for his competitive drive and for his smooth, powerful surfing style. He made a high-profile decision to retire from competitive surfing in the mid-1990s. He led the surfing revolution in the early ’80s and inspired many of the surfers today, showing them how to surf a wave. Curren is a fascinating study in contradictions; he has a surfing style that at combines smooth, rhythmic, seamlesslesly linked maneuvers with blinding speed,raw power, and unique check turns and body English. He seems to relish victory and the spoils that come with it, and yet he is unassuming, publicity shy, and extremely private. It is these compelling characteristics that endear him to global surfing community.
Curren still surfs in contests on the ASP World Qualifying Series (WQS.) He is also often invited to surf in World Championship Tour (WCT) trials or contests as a wildcard. He has competed in the Annual Switchfoot Bro-Am Surf Contest for 3 years in a row, surfing on the Switchfoot team.

In his five year rise to World Surfing Champion, Curren led the way in cutting edge, perfectly tuned performance. Despite his youth, Curren was acknowledged as one of surfing’s true geniuses and a soulful original. He single handedly challenged the surfing community in almost every area of surfing’s culture and altered the mindset of hundreds of thousands of surfers around the world. Riding under a contract with surfboard company Channel Islands, Tom Curren developed a memorable surfing career co-producing and riding many pro surfboard models such as the Black Beauty and the Red Beauty.

BIO COURTISEY OF WIKIPEDIA

It was truly a pleasure to have the opportunity to chat with Ted Kerasote, author of national bestseller Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog, Out There: In The Wild in a Wired Age, which won the National Outdoor Book Award, and most recently Pukka’s Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs. He shares what happiness means to him, what he learned from Merle and Pukka, stories from readers, and so much more. We hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation.

Follow Ted on Twitter at twitter.com/TedKerasote

Stay connected with The Happiness Treatment by following us at twitter.com/happinesstreat

Ted Kerasote is the author of many books, including the national bestseller Merle’s Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog and Out There: In The Wild in a Wired Age, which won the National Outdoor Book Award. Ted began writing professionally as a teenager, his first nationally published story—about surf fishing for striped bass—bought by Outdoor Life when he was seventeen. Since then, Ted’s writing has often focused on the interrelationship between people, animals, and the natural environment, and during his four-decades-long career, his essays and photographs have appeared in magazines as wide-ranging in their subject matter as Audubon, Geo, Outside, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Afield, and The New York Times. His book Bloodties: Nature, Culture, and The Hunt is considered by many authorities to be the best and most evenhanded work on how both aboriginal and modern people treat wildlife. In addition, Bloodties offered the first comprehensive analysis of the fossil-fuel costs of our diets, and it continues to be a primary text in many university bioethics courses.

A photographer since childhood, Ted was one of the first people to document the caribou migration across the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and his images of wildlife from around the world, as well as those of indigenous people such as Inuit and San, have been displayed in many publications. Since his meeting with Merle in 1991, Ted has turned to photographically documenting how dogs live when they’re free of leashes and fences and have the opportunity to structure their own time.

In his writing, Ted has also tried to bridge the gap between what appears to be seemingly irreconcilable positions, and his awards reflect his success at achieving this goal. His writing has been honored by the animal-rights group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) as well as the pro-hunting organization, the Izaak Walton League of America.

An inveterate traveler and explorer, Ted has climbed, skied, and run rivers from Hong Kong to Helsinki, from the Arctic Ocean to the Straits of Magellan, and from the Alps to the savannas of Africa. His longtime home is in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but he continues to find joy in writing about new places and people, and his most recent trip took him to the Himalaya, where he began to research a book on Tibet.

BIO COURTESY OF WWW.KERASOTE.COM

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It was a honor to spend a morning with Jon Huertas at his home in Venice Beach. Jon is best known for his role as Sergeant Antonio ‘Poke’ Espera in HBO’s Generation Kill, Joe Negroni in the film Why Do Fools Fall in Love, and currently as homicide detective, Javier Esposito, in Castle. Jon talked with us about his current musical projects, how he was burned by the industry before, what songs he loves to belt out in the car, and what makes him happy, but also what big moment made him cry. We hope you enjoy this wonderful conversation with Jon Huertas.

Follow Jon on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Jon_Huertas

Stay connected with The Happiness Treatment by following us at www.twitter.com/happinesstreat

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