Let me tell you, it is fairly rare for me to make some promo at work that I feel really proud of. I mean let’s face it, most of the time promos are "tune in this Friday at 10" and that’s it. We’ve been doing some interstitials recently and that’s a whole ‘nother ball game ‘cuz you get some time to actually tell a story, which is great. And sure, if you get a good budget and time and creative approval, you can make a good promo, but those occasions are few and far between.
Which is why I’m so stoked to have made this last week (let it load fully before playing):
For some reason lately I’ve been thinking about the future and all the things that must be going on now that they will find utterly ridiculous. When I think about this, I start with the easy ones: can you believe that stuff about gay marriage?! Unregulated financial markets? That having a black president was a big deal?!
But then I’ve been reading things that put it in perspective, that there are bound to be countless other cultural assumptions we’re making that they won’t in the future. I read about how it was a big deal that JFK was the first Catholic president. Really? People cared about that? I can barely imagine. I read an account of Columbus setting sail on his historic journey, and how he had to bribe and assuage his sailors because they actually believed that they were going to sail off the map, and that there were monsters there waiting to destroy them. They actually believed in monsters! It’s hard to fit that in my brain, that perfectly ordinary, rational humans believed in the physical actuality of fantastical monsters.
When I worked on Random 1, one of the Executive Producers was David Riordan, the guy who wrote the 70’s hit "Green Eyed Lady". Sometimes we shared an office, and he was a pretty extraordinary person. He would often wax on about these far-out notions of time — some of the stuff I had come across at Burning Man — and gave me a great calendar from the law of time folks who believe that humanity’s sense of time is fundamentally flawed, and that by making 12 months out of what is clearly a 13 month year (due to lunar cycles), we are at odds with a primal part of our nature. I love this stuff.
One of the greatest things he told me was he firmly believed that in the future, society would look back at us now at marvel at the fact that we truly believed that time was money. that we would equate time with money. that we had the phrase "well, time is money." That this would seem so crazy to them, the same way we look back at "colored only" water fountains and can’t quite believe it now. I love this notion, because there does seem to be something wrong with the idea that time can somehow yield money. One is so fundamental and life-connected, the other so base and illusory.
Thinking about it now, equating it with Columbus and the fear that some folks have about gay marriage, I’m realizing this: that the very notion of time = money is a monster itself, as fantastical and unreal as the monsters of 1492 mapmakers.
for some reason this came into my head while we were waiting for de-icing on the runway in Minneapolis (2 and a half hours!)…and then I thought how great it would look if it were written down in blank verse, read in a poetic monotone…and then I thought how great it would be if this were a poem written by God:
I don’t know what I like more — what a hoot this clip is, the fact that my mom(!) sent it to me (with the major point of how proud she is to know how to forward things now), or that the star of this piece is acting like my mom would act if confronted with this situation.
for some reason I love the part where she says "Is this my new TV?"…cracks me up every time…
This is footage I recently came across when I transferred all my digital8 tapes (yes!) to miniDV. It’s from a TLC promo I shot in my living room, for Thanksgiving in the Junkyard — an all-day Thanksgiving marathon of TLC’s show "Junkyard Wars." It was when I was still relatively new at TLC, when it was still fun, still a bit under the radar. We put a film-look effect on it, and cut it up with some clips from the shows, and it went on-air. It was kind of a great feeling to see this crazy stuff that I shot on my living room floor end up on a major cable channel.
(Fun fact: for months after that shoot, whenever I would use my drill it would smell like mashed potatoes.)
(Fun fact 2: I have still have that drill and it still works.)
I can never keep straight the order of the ages, is it Golden then Silver then Heroic then Iron? All I know is that supposedly societies always feel like they always just missed the Golden Age — it’s always in the past — and that they’re living in the Iron Age — the one that’s really really bad and is only going to get worse.
When I started working at TLC, the channel had just started making the move from being The Learning Channel to the more design-y living-y TLC. They were still showing science specials like "Hyperspace" hosted by Sam Neil, they were still showing "Junkyard Wars", and they still ran a block of what they called "Adrenaline Rush Hour", shows about cars and engines and stuff. They had just acquired the American re-make of a British series called "Trading Spaces", but the host — a woman named Alex something-or-other — wasn’t really working out.
this banner is from an event we went to last Saturday called "Underground" at the Eyebeam gallery…Eyebeam is always pretty amazing and this event had some great stuff (Boozbot again!), and some weak stuff, and one mindblowing moment…the best exhibit was called "6 Walls" and was 6 people dressed up as walls (hard to explain) who would move around, sometimes acting as a hall, letting people in, sometimes closing themselves off to be an enclosed room…
at one point one of the singers from the band playing (Judi Chicago, pretty darn great) was inside the walled off room with people dancing around and glitter being thrown in the air and and and — that was a pretty wild part of it…
the banner is me looking closely at one of the video artworks…the pix below are from Maxine’s amazing new camera of the 6 walls installation…look closely & you can see the people’s faces painted to match the wallpaper in the middle of the walls…
people milling around in the walls…
the guy in the green cape (natch!) is one of the singers/instrumentalists for Judi Chicago…so funny that there’s a couple checking out cell phone pix while the walls move around and this singer yells and howls right next to them…
chaos…dig the guy in the back on the right in the orange motorbike helmet…M & I were wearing our camping headlights turned onto the red setting…
sweet close-up…
here, get a 16 second taste of what it was like in the walls from someone’s yt cam record:
in 2006 I went out to Burning Man on my own for a solo experience…it was pretty mind-blowing, and one of my best xp’s was climbing this amazing tower (pictured above, but you can’t tell how tall it really was) that had been built by the Cosmic Cowboy, and had some connection with chakras and 11:11. When I climbed it, he happened to be there and spent some time explaining the thought behind it, which was thorough and deep. When I got back, I did a bit of research into 11:11, and found it interesting. The best advice on it, though, came from Cosmic Cowboy himself who said something to the effect of:
when you see 11:11 on a digital clock, it’s meaningless, you know, but it’s also the only time the clock has the same digit across its face…it only happens twice a day, it’s pretty rare that you happen to look at your watch or a clock and see it. It doesn’t mean anything big, it’s not an omen or anything, it’s just like, hey, you’re on the right path. Or something like that.
If you’ve spent any time with me where I come across it, you’ll know I don’t whoop and holler or anything, but I do think it’s neat…I get a kick out of seeing it…so imagine my feeling today when I looked to see what time it was, and my computer clock, the VCR clock, and the clock on top of the TV all said 11:11…and then I checked the date within that same minute’s timespan, and guess what the date is today?
At its best, voting is a surreal experience. In New York, even more so. Everyone in the enormous lines chatting to each other, everyone seeming to know each other, asking about the other’s kids, husband, soccer team. The huge old metal voting machines with the giant red levers at the bottom and complicated instructions (complicated if you don’t see some of them). The physical turning of a knob to make an "x" appear.
The buzz around this election is buzzier than ever, and from getting up at 5:50am, getting in line in the dark and hearing everyone chatter, I felt a legitimate head-rush as I stepped into the booth. Voting felt so good!
I wonder where the phrase "cast a vote" comes from? I did some googling but couldn’t find anything. Why "cast"? What is being thrown? What physically was cast to get this phrrase? Something as simple as a piece of paper in a hat? But that doesn’t really seem like casting…
Of all the birthday songs in the world, the Russian one is pretty amazing. So what a treat today to receive this gem of a translation found on yt by Mashka! I will take issue with one part of the translation though — while this woman claims it is a "magician" who shows up in the blue helicopter with the ice cream and "gratuitous film", I have always heard that it is a "wizard" who shows up. A subtle distinction, but a critical one I think.
JG & JW are gonna take a massive cross-country trip for their honeymoon, crossing the US of A to check out parks, monuments, and weird stuff. When JG asked if I had any suggestions for them as they traveled, there was one that popped immediately into my mind: Bishop’s Castle.
In the summer of 2002, I was working at TLC and had been there long enough to have a sense of how to game the system a little. I had a shoot that I needed to do in LA that would happen right after the summer solstice in June, and for some reason I wanted to try and find some kind of event to attend for the solstice. From trawling the net I came across something called Psychic Chakra that was taking place south of Denver on the solstice. I got a ticket for the event, arranged my trip to LA so it had a 3 day layover in Denver and off I went.
The event was 4 hours south of Denver, near Colorado Springs, and held at a UFO Watchtower, which I liked a lot. It was a good time — the first time I heard psychedelic trance, the first time I saw fire spinners, people in costumes, VJ’s, the giant Viper lazers…I made friends with the kids camping next to me, and though I also had some weird me-alone-against-the-world stuff, it was pretty fantastic. (two months later I would go to Burning Man for the first time and discover that that culture had a city and life all its own)
After it was over I had a day to kill before my flight the next day. I wanted to check out Colorado Springs, being so close, so I went and bought entry to a hot spring where I relaxed for a while. It felt pretty good and cleansing after the party. While there, I ran into a few people who had obviously been at the Psychic Chakra party. I told them I had a day to kill and asked them what they recommended. They thought for a while and then one said "We should send him to Bishop’s Castle!" They all agreed.
this month’s banner is from a cam phone pic sent to me by my sister…dunno where it is (subway somewheres) but I feel it calling out to me…and yes, I think it is true…
"In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.
They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.
Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane."
As always though, Ellis puts it more succinctly:
"Should all concerns be confirmed, it appears that we’re all going to die from the escape of monstrous planetary farts from beyond history."
I wasn’t sure whether to post this or not but people told me they wanted to see it, so here it is. When we went out to OR last July, I was the best man at Roscoe’s wedding. This is my speech.
In the absence of faith, what stands behind a currency based on faith?
Interesting Op-Ed from the NYT about the financial implications of the fact that the dollar moved off the gold standard ages ago and has never looked back. MattD and I were talking about this just last night (over Frito pie) and using the rhetoric of barstool philosophers to maintain that, as Speed Levitch has said, "this is outrageousness and it cannot last."
