Hello Seller.

Thanks and hope to hear from you soon.

It is a pretty scary world out there right now, a few months ago my entire banking account was hijacked and wire transferred to a bank in Jakarta, Indonesia. But that story will have to be on another post. Don’t worry, it is a good one!

I am working on a movie and someone brought in speakers for the camera truck. The speakers were not working very well, so I started a project with my co-worker Tim, of trying to fix them using the “if you disassemble and re-assemble almost anything it will fix the problem.” That lead to the complete destruction of the speakers, with the total permission from the owner.

Then we decided to make a small film about “fixing the problem” of the speakers, which can be seen here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was such a hit with the camera crew that Tim decided to play up the speaker repair a little more, so we started a message board here.

OK, but that was not enough. So I did what any concerned, over zealous, in need of a project, “B” camera operator would do, I listed them on eBay

with the description as follows:

This sound system is complete and was the principle camera truck sound system on such mega motion pictures as:

Gulliver’s Travels 2010
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
The Dark Knight

May or may not have been shit kicked by Michael Bay himself…lots of history here.

Sold as-is, this is a highly collectible item for anyone who wants to own a piece of Hollywood history. Good luck to all, bidding could go crazy!

Here is a movie that shows some of the hard work that went into restoring these speakers: JBL Speaker Movie

Tim and I waited for the bids to roll in, but they did not and the auction ended, but it was free to re-list so I figured what the heck and re-listed.

And then the most amazing thing happened, I got an email:

Dear silsurf,

is there shipping on this and is there any proof that it was in the movies thanks! other than the vid

To which I replied:

These speakers have been around the world and back. To be honest with you there isn’t much left of them. They have rocked camera crews in Africa and Glendale, CA all the same. Sadly there aren’t too many pictures of them in action. I will round up some set pictures from the Dark Knight, Transformers, and a present day picture of the speakers in their current state with professional actor and music lover Luke Wilson. Hope this helps.

shipping is free

His reply:

Dear silsurf,

ok all bid on them then if you could include the pictures somehow when you ship so i could say hey see etc, otherwise would be my word against theres know what i mean and yea it said local pickup on your add so was thinking you wouldnt ship them thanks for clarifying the free ship!

and another:

Dear silsurf,

oh and is there any way possible i could get the sub signed by luke wilson, if i win prolly asking to much but thanks if you can appreciated!

So, there we were with an active bidder on the completely broken dissembled useless JBL speakers and free shipping to boot. It was glorious and better than anything we could have expected. Then we came up with the idea of filling the box with as much camera truck stuff we could lay our hands on. We asked everyone to bring in any old discarded movie schwag or other miscellaneous boo-yah that they wanted to off. It was enough to fill the box for sure and included hats, tee shirts, Panavision tags, etc.

Then the item sold and I got this message from the buyer:

Dear silsurf,

Hi, I paid through paypal but its saying you are unregistered or something what would you like to do
Thanks

The speakers went off for .99 cents, but due to some transaction fee I could only collect .66 of it. Then it got busy at work and Tim and I were unable to get the box shipped out as soon as I had hoped, but Joel was all over it and this message soon came in:

Dear silsurf,

Hi, Just lettin you know I havent got it yet but im not to worried im sure it will be here soon enuf I only paid .99 so will leave a 5 star feedback when received:)

Joel

I sent Joel a reply, letting him know the box would go out this last weekend and even gave him a tracking number. I look forward to hear Joel’s response. We kind of got cold feet on the whole Luke Wilson photo thing as we had heard he may not be the most approachable guy on the set. But then we upped the anti by having Timm Sharp autograph the speaker case and then grabbed a picture of him to toss in the mix. It is a heck of a box for .99 and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

Coda:

About a week later I received news from Joel:

Hi, Havent got it yet just lettin you know

To which I replied with a tracking number, and as if by pure magic about two hours later:

Got it:) thanks a bunch particularly like the wild hogs hat i normally dont wear hats but it might be an exception!

I could not help myself and went for it:

Great, love to see some photos of you in the wild hogs cap.

Take care

Possibly my last email from Joel:

no problem would be cool just need an email address to send a pic to and will do! thanks lot better than you made them out to be i can use the smaller ones as well for computer speakers so im way happy bout the deal

And perhaps 30 minutes later a photo that could not demonstrate more perfectly and capture more descriptively the man I have been dealing with with the last two weeks.

for more eBay Robin Hood stories, check this out

I have been driving cars for more than thirty years.

I have owned a ’67 VW Squareback, a ’79 Honda Prelude (to what?), a ’65 Ford Galaxie 500, a ’73 Beetle, a ’89 Honda Civic (first new car), a ’95 VW Passat (best car ever made), 2004 Honda Passat (totaled by a drunk driver, scroll down link to “near death”) and currently a 2006 Honda Civic.

For all those vehicles and all the years, driving across country, up and down each coast, I would say one thing was pretty consistent. About 5-10 times a year I pull into a gas station on the wrong side of the pump hoping that the pump in question has one of those expendable hoses that can actually reach the far side of the vehicle without physically straining the hose and threatening to spew caustic, flammable, expensive gasoline all over the side of my car.

The other day I pulled onto the wrong side, but this time something different happened, my genius girl friend Jessica very nicely and simply stated “aren’t you on the wrong side?” I said “I don’t know, but I think so, how did you know?”

She said the little arrow on your gas gauge, reminds you what side your gas receptacle is on.

I had a brief moment of pure euphoria and then got out of the car singing and dancing and forever believing that this would indeed be the last time I ever pull into the wrong side of a gas pump in my life.

Of Happy Day

I was wrong.

It was lame.

I have the photos to prove it.

The place was Freeport, Maine, the home of LL Bean!! The best part of the parade was the Bean Boot in front of the LL Bean flagship store open 24 hours, 7 days, 365 days a year. Too bad I did not set foot inside, and too bad this is as good as the parade got.

Crazy vehicle honoring all kinds of stuff from the Korean War to the destruction of the Twin Towers.

My personal favorite, the saddest GOP elephant in the world.

They had that wave thing down better than any Maine teen USA ever, really!

I just liked this shot, but the clown was really lame.

Pretty much of the end of the parade was a really sad girl in the back of a non-descript convertible who clearly had not practiced the wave action nearly as much as the Maine Teen USA gals had.

That is pretty much it. Maine is awsome adn I loved my visit adn I cannot wait to go back next year, but I think I might just have to skip the July 4th parade in Freeport.

On Monday morning February 18th at around 3am I woke up in my tent at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park where I was camping with my son and friends. I stoop up from what felt like an unearthly slumber. I had not slept all the well the night before and decided to use some ear plugs to minimize the late night campers, coyotes and I hate to say it, the proximity of my sons snoring.

I got out of my sleeping bag and went out side. I stood there getting ready to urinate. As I looked up to the sky I was surprised to see that it was slightly overcast and hazy, barely a star to be seen. Then I lost the ability to breath. Not for a moment, or for a second, but for many seconds. I tried to gulp air into my lungs, but it was a no go. I felt a severe deepening pain in my chest, a thousand pound buddha was sitting below my chin. I collapsed to my left knee and then had a slow motion experience of falling directly to my face. I had lost the ability to use my arms and legs and knew I could not break my fall. I saw the ground come up to me as if I had welcomed it. I fell straight to my face amongst all the shaley broken rocks, my left eyebrow and cheek finding the perfect resting place amongst sharp objects.

I never lost consciousness.

I was lying face down in the rocks, eyes wide open and I could not move any part of my body, It was an image taken directly from a horror film, immobile, yet very awake. The sewing shut of an eyelid from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly come to mind. I Wondering what was going to happen next?

At some point I started breathing again and regained the ability to move my limbs. I righted my body, spent about two minutes on my knees (for many reasons), got up and went back to the tent.

I spent 45 minutes assessing how I felt and what to do about it. The truth is I felt perfectly fine, well, under the circumstances I felt perfectly fine. I decided to go back to sleep.

A few weeks have passed and I have had the following procedures done:

Full blood work

EKG

Chest X-Ray

MRI of the head

Cardiac Stress Test

24 hour portable ECG

Another EKG

Echo Cardiogram

EEG

MRI of the Neck

X-Ray of the neck (pictured)

And guess what? Everything is perfectly normal. Of course this is a great relief, but what happened? Well the least suspecting Dr. encounter I had was with my Neurologist and he turns out to be the one with the answers. There is a unusual and discomforting chain of events that can lead to momentary loss of blood to the brain called:

Micturition syncope: The temporary loss of consciousness upon urinating. (Syncope is the temporary loss of consciousness or, in plain English, fainting). The situations that trigger this reaction are diverse and include having blood drawn, straining while urinating (micturition syncope) or defecating or coughing or swallowing). The reaction also can be due to the emotional stress of fear or pain. Situational syncope is caused by a reflex of the involuntary nervous system called the vasovagal reaction. The vasovagal reaction leads the heart to slow down (bradycardia) and, at the same time, it leads the nerves to the blood vessels in the legs to permit those vessels to dilate (widen). The result is that the heart puts out less blood, the blood pressure drops, and what blood is circulating tends to go into the legs rather than to the head. The brain is then deprived of oxygen, and the fainting episode occurs.

So, there you have it. Don’t get up quickly to go pee (really badly) in the middle of the night and raise your head to look at something.

My sister thinks it would be a great name for a band.

(thought it might be a good place to put this info, since of course at some point I thought I might have had some sort of a heart attack or stroke)

Stroke vs Heart Attack. Which is it & what to do:
Is it a Stroke? This might be a lifesaver if we can remember the three questions!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster for the stroke victim. A stroke victim may suffer brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke. Now doctors say any bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:

1 . Ask the individual to smile.
2. Ask him or her to raise both arms.
3. Ask the person to speak a simple sentence.

If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher. After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions.

They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association’s annual meeting last February. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.

Is It A Heart Attack?

Let’s say it’s 6:15 PM. and you’re driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset, and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw.

You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself.

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.

A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.

A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

The first items are pretty amazing. EMI made them and released them on to their website awhile back. A friend of mine happened to snag ‘em. They are 360 degree panorama’s from each of the fab fours mic position inside EMI’s legendary studio two.

John

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(thanks Doc!)

The next two clips are from the same period. The late stages of work done at Abbey Road. The are both high quality and contain footage that I love seeing because it is as close as the Beatles got to being grownups while still playing music together. Gone is the wide eyed mugging for camera falsetto innocence of the sixties, these are Beatles I can somehow relate to. You see the wear and tear on their faces and all the stories you have ever heard become true, still the music is rock solid. One clip I assume from the Let it Be! Documentary, the intro says this version of the song is unreleased. I love it for two reasons. Billy Preston (the only non-Bealte ever credited on an official Beatles release) sashaying across the studio floor to his own internal funky beat and a shot of Mick Jagger in the control room with the most dead pan look of “how do they do it” on his face. The other is from a documentary entitled ‘Music!’, made by Britain’s National Music Council.

Get Back

Beatles at EMI

If you are into the tech side of the Be-Atles and want two wonderful resources, One is a first hand memoir of what it was like to be the lead engineer at EMI from Revolver through to the end, Geoff Emerik’s Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles (you can even get it wireless delivered to your Kindle, should you own a Kindle). The other book, which I have not seen first hand, but hope to some day, is this gorgeous looking tome entitled Recording The Beatles. Pretty much everything there is to know about HOW they did what they did from mechanical perspective with lots of picture and diagrams and circles and arrows.

(thanks Phil)

Speaking of technique, if you have any interest in knowing more about the ground swell of Beatle remixing and mash up mania that sprouted a few years back on the heels of DJ Danger Mouse’s Grey Album, I can add the following:

Another very well done, wholly available online mash-up is entitled Mutation, a third, not so easy to find online, is called Tuned to a natural E. I had a heck of a time tracking that one down. It is actually available for download at the moment (2/2008), but who knows for how long. If you want a copy let me know and I send mail you one.

Of course the Grey Album itself is virtually impossible to download these days. Every time it appears, another cease and desist letter is generated. I have a copy of that as well if you are interested, but in the meantime there is a Grey Album music video that seems to have stabilized on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And then, almost by magic, or certainly in some sort of a response to, the Beatles legacy themselves released an incredibly listenable remix of there own music for the Circe Du Soleil production Love! A good friend and Beatle devotee recently went to Vegas to see the show and says it is really worth checking out. (thanks again Doc!)

A few months ago I stumbled onto this thing on YouTube that had the four tracks from Sgt. Pepper title track separated. You could hear all four tracks separately. The theory is that these tracks found there way into the hands of bootleggers as the Love! sessions were the first time since creation the original separated tracks of any Beatle music had been strung up on a tape machine. Regardless of the source, I had to find out what I could. The complete set is a bootleg entitled Sgt. Peppers Deluxe Edition and includes six cd’s of separated studio tracks, like original individual tracks. This is nirvana for anyone that has wanted to play “home recording engineer” with one of the most important rock and roll albums ever produced. Coupled with software like Garageband you can remix the entire album for your own enjoyment.

The most poplar tracks from this set are the ones from track one, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. THESE REALLY do not stay online very long and thus I decided to put just one of the tracks up to get a taste of what it is like. Best to listen to with ear phones as you can hear all kinds of background sound and mic bleed that really feel like you are there in the studio. Note that since Sgt. Peppers was recorded with only FOUR tracks, they had to drop in layer upon layer to build the incredibly full sound of recording, so on the lead guitar track also has the horn section as they did not overlap.

Sgt. Pepper’s Guitar Track

And to finish, here are two piece’s of wacky Beatle related fun. One is a group entitled “Beatnix” singing “Stairway to Heaven” to the tune of “I Want to hold your hand“completely in the guise of a 60′s TV broadcast such as American Bandstand. It is brilliant to say the least. The other is indeed some strange British TV show about Beatles music with folks singing and dancing and acting crazy, like we all should.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(thanks Scott)

BBC Beatles Doc

I like making my own tee shirts. Currently I have a back log of

1. My own Silver Surfer design
2. Jesus Tee Shirt
2. Jack Kirby artwork from “Mechano”
3. Gossamer the Monster in a can

But the one I am currently putting into production may be the most important to me. It is a graphic devoted to my favorite automobile in the world, the Peugeot 403.

As far as I know, it was the only car my father ever owned. He drove two during my life, and I remember them both vividly. Many hours were spent in the back and front seat of that ride, the smell of the straw filled seats, the little pointer ends that emerged from those seats and pricked you. The rear center retractable divider that was the LAST WORD when my sister and I were fighting in the car. the stains on the headliner, the hand crank windows that needed a little extra oomph to get going. It is all a part of my permanent automotive consciousness.

My sister in the back seat

I learned to drive in this car, “three on the tree” no less! Along the road where it spent the last decade of it dormancy in East Hampton, NY. It is a road that leads to a cul de sac with a spit of beach at it’s end. It was the early 70′s, there was virtually no traffic. I must have been no older than 11-12 years old. I sat in that car for hours training, pretending to shift gears, working the floor pedals like my dad had shown me, adjusting the mirrors, getting everything ready for my first attempts at driving. Then it was just up and down the driveway, which might be about 25 feet long, yet felt like speedway. Finally out onto the road, the slow process of getting past first gear. (I thought I would never get the hang of clutching), getting to the first turn where the road forked and then handing it over to my dad because that was as far as I could go. Then I remember going all the way, three gears and all. It felt magical and fast and wonderful it was all happening inside of a Edward Hopper painting. One thing is for sure, my dad was a good teacher.

Springs Fireplace Road

I also have this strange and mangled memory of my dad leaving his first 403 parked on the street in Brooklyn Heights forever. I guess he was done with it and it was cheaper to just let it sit there until something or someone disposed of it. I remember walking by it hundreds of times over the months (years) and wondering what would ever happen to it. Then one day I was walking by it and I saw it being hooked up to some type of hauling machine, but here is where it gets weird. What I remember seeing is that a cable was drawn over the top of the car and connected to the back and then a winch proceeded to draw the car in, basically folding it in half the long way like a bow tie pasta. It is such a real memory, but I have to admit it sounds unlikely. I imagine what I saw was just a car being towed, but what I thought I saw was my beloved 403 sliced in half.

There was a brief period where there was no 403, I don’t imagine that they fall off trees, especially in the later 70′s. But of course my dad found another one, almost exactly like the first. This is the car that I learned to drive on, this is the car the I now own and this is the car I will some day see again.

At some point my dad acquired a VW Dasher (diesel) and the 403 went from being the “beach” car to just being an over sized rust bucket white elephant destined to live its last days in a darkened, mildewed garage out there in in East Hampton. I had always said that I would keep that car if it was within my power and when my step mom called me to say it was now or never, I firmly stepped up to the plate.

The last glimpse of my car

It was the early days of the internet and I remember doing text searches for antique Peugeot restoration places on the East Coast. I found one in Connecticut, but after speaking with them on the phone I just did not get a good feeling. I then stumbled onto a guy named Mike Aube, cloistered in the far off reaches of Quebec.

It was the first phone call with Mike that convinced me he was the man to take my dad’s 403 into the 21st (or) 22nd century. His quiet, reserved delivery, the long awkward silences on the phone and of course his clear love of the body type. As far as I know all Mike does is restore 403′s, I cannot swear to it, but at least that is what I want to believe.

So, we made a deal, part one of which was Mike driving down from Quebec with a flat bead trailer and picked up the long dormant jalopy. He stated it was convenient time to call because he had to drop off a vehicle somewhere in Pennsylvania, thus our pact was made. That was in October of 2001. This car had no been sitting without a whisper for years and when I spoke to Mike after he got back he was like, “Oh yeah, I had that up and running n about 15 minutes, turned right over. Great shape you know, only 30,000 miles on it!” My heart sang, it was true. The long lost Peugeot was destined to live again.

Shortly after the pick up Mike called me to authorize an eBay purchase for some parts he really needed for my 403. I said sure and after that I felt fully invested. You see Mike and I did not really figure on a solid number, you gotta let an artist have a little freedom.

All I know is that someday I will have my father’s last car, the 403 traipsed across the continent from Quebec to California, stored somewhere where the gremlins cannot touch it, and when the time comes, teach my son to drive in it.

But until then, I am making this tee shirt. If you want one let me know, should be about $20 including shipping. I emailed a Peugeot Fan Club in France and immediately got this response:

We sure could be interested in such a T-Shirt.
Have you already some pictures to show?
We, Club 403, have done 18 T-Shirt, by 100 each, about our beloved car.
Best regards, we are waiting for more.

I was really happy to see the other day a great clip on TED from a guy that runs a camp for small children to do the five dangerous things that society no longer really likes allowing children to do. 1. Play with fire, 2. Own a pocket knife, 3. Throw a spear, 4. De-construct appliances, and 5. Drive a car.

(8.3.2008 update)

The tee shirt is done! Came out great and very limited supply. If you want one email me asap!

Just wanted to update the fact that after ten years of complete non-operation, I have finally started the ball rolling on the full restoration of my 403.  As December, 2009 this is what it looks like:

Keep a close watch here for the transformation to its new inner beauty. Will it take one, two, five, ten or more years? Only close watchers will ever know.

]]> http://www.interactivehank.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=133 0 http://www.interactivehank.com/blog/?p=117 http://www.interactivehank.com/blog/?p=117#comments Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:51:22 +0000 admin http://www.interactivehank.com/blog/?p=117

Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.
Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

William Shakespeare
Romeo And Juliet Act 2, scene 2, 176–185

Where shall I begin? What can one say about such a beautiful, long-lasting relationship?

A brief google search brings up such accolades as:

“The PowerBook G3 “Pismo” was the best PowerBook ever. I think if there was a poll taken from Macheads worldwide for the best PowerBook, the majority would second my nomination.”

The Apple Powerbook G3 Firewire 2000 AKA “Pismo” was possibly the greatest computer ever brought forth from Cupertino. Announced in February 2000 at MacWorld Tokyo If Apple had stopped making computers all together at that time, it would have been all right with me, sort of.

Up until very recently I felt quite confident about my Pismo’s abilities to carry forward. There was a a certain awe inspiring cache in whipping that puppy out at a local wireless hotspot and jacking in. Was it the 14.1″ screen or the two firewire ports or the two USB ports or the S-Video input or the monitor output or the sleek design or the two module bays that afforded a dizzying array of add-ons or the built in Airport card or the two PCMCIA card slots, no it was no one thing in particular, It was all of it, and oh so much more.

I have so much love for this model I am not even sure where to start. It feels like no matter what I say I cannot convey the profound enjoyment this sweet unit has brought me. It has been my contention that up until very recently, this little sweetie could hold its own against any entry level Apple laptop. You see, I have always been a firm believer in trailing edge technology. Perhaps it is enough just to look at the the raw facts.

I buy virtually all refurbished computers at a time when they are just becoming obsolete. My current Macbook was one of the first two models offered from Apple and I snapped up that dude from Apple itself for a mere $699!, Actually I don’t think I have purchased a new, current model Apple Product since my Powerbook 180 (with trackball) for like $4000!!! but clearly I digress.

Regarding my Pismo, I made a clear decision early on to take this bundle of joy to the limit. This was accomplished by maxing the ram to 1gig, installing a reasonably (at the time) sized hard drive of 40 gigs, installing an internal Airport card and of course sending the beloved unit in for the only hardware processor upgrade I have ever felt was worth while, kickin’ it to a whopping 500 Mghz on a G4 chip. I also threw in a replacement CDRW and an after market battery that cruised along for as much as three hours.

WOW!

Of course this journey was wrought with peril, the Pismo It is a very difficult laptop to disassemble, made long before the days of 30 seconds hard drive upgrades. So I learned the hard way how to:

(my first complete dis-assembly)

Replace the hard drive
Install RAM
Fix that stinky old LCD ribbon cable
Replace the trackpad

(my last complete dis-assembly)

So, with all that power, the Piz was pretty much an unbeatable road warrior. It ran everything from Stickies to Photoshop with aplomb. But that is just the innards, the real reason the Pismo was such an important model is that Apple just happened to hit a such a sweet design and functionality spot. Coming out after a couple of ill fated laptop designs (remember the Lombard) the Pismo had a huge screen, an awesome port configuration was light by the days standard.

And now here I am at the end of my beloved Apple Powerbook Pismo’s life with Hank. I put the cherished one up on eBay with a reserve of $275 and within 24 hours I had someone drooling over it and requested that I delist it so he could pay me more than my reserve, what am I supposed to say. So the lucky human from Mechanicsville, PA bought my firestarter for a mere $325. The whole thing happend so quickly I don’ know what to say. One day I am replacing the trackpad and the next I am placing the Pizzerator back into it’s original shipping box and heading for the USPO. Perfect!

The time has come for her to go. I just need to pass this amazing computer onto some other lucky soul for years and years of unbeatable high octane computer enjoyment. The man from Mechanicsville says he is buying it for his daughter. Can you imagine the decades of shear lightning fast terror this pupply is destined for. I feel my baby is in good hands.
Just had to get it off my chest.

I realized while looking through some photos that truly that last hurrah of my baby was a trip I made from Wellfleet, Cape Cod, to western Massachusetts last summer. I had plenty of prime Pismo moments in the never ending stream of picture perfeect organic coffee joints that dot the Berkshires. There was one particular town, Amherst I believe, that had this incredible used typewriter store. I went in and had a nice talk with the proprietor, about the novelty of using an actual ribbon typewriter and the untold merits there of. Then I asked if I could take some photos for my life file. He flatly refused, says he gets way too many people looking to just take pictures of all the old typewriters and it was not all right. OK I thought, except when I left I had one last look in the window and what I saw defied description. I had to blast off a shot and then run for the hills.

I received this note from a fine friend who has been along for the ride, had to post it:

Dear Hank,

I have just completed a full three minutes of silence, which I
believe may be close to the restart time on your Piz.

I was with you two every step of the way, watching your
relationship grow with each new install and upgrade. As God
is my witness, you did the work, you put in the time, and I watched
you both grow together.

News of your sale was met with shock
and dismay, but then, the good times are what come to mind.
“Marathon” and emerging from the darkness after two years. Only Piz took that journey with
you around each unknown alien-laden corner . Only Piz was with you when you made it
to Macworld and closed the convention center to eek out your podcast of
the day’s events.

You saw the highs, you experienced the lows, and through it all,
the love is what remains.

To better days.

Chris

oh, and btw, you cannot install Leopard on a Pismo

( December 10, 2009 update: I just sold my last Pismo related item on eBay. A 12v auto apadter power plug to a gentleman in England. He sent me this email after he safely received the package)

Dear Henry

The adapter, which looks great,  arrived speedily and safely today – remarkable. I enjoyed your website – many thanks for that also.
Attached is a photo of the boat ( a “Tumlare” – built in Gothenburg in 1936 ) on the Beaulieu River ( just upstream from Bucklers Hard ) where the adapter will spend its new life refreshing a Pismo.
Thanks again

Best Wishes

Ian H

The other night I had an unbelievable experience concerning some stuffed animals I have gotten close to over the last few months. You see, my son Jack and I have an ongoing relationship with whichever group of characters currently pops up into our lives. This group of friends, playmates, confidantes, groupies are always referred to as “The Guys” no matter what the current iteration happens to be. And have been many changes of the guard over the last few years ranging from Looney Tune Pez dispensers to the current and formidable collection of exquisitely adorable and lifelike “Audubon Birds With Real bird Calls!”

There are way too many of these guys to count, the website lists 15 collections and each collection has like 24 birds in it. That is a LOT of guys! Our introduction came through a free standing display at Wild Oats Market, but I have subsequently found them for sale at REI and of course on the ubiquitous sales megla-market, the internet.

Over the last few months we have had many adventures with “The Guys”. They are often packed into a backpack or toted in a shopping bag or even hurriedly stuffed into an available pocket for any and all trips.

“The Guys” have been to the LA Zoo, many finer LA restaurants, parks, the beach and most recently on an ever increasingly complex ritual of treasure hunts that my son and I have been designing for them. You can see an extended review of our latest and greatest “Guys” treasure hunt here.

Now, what in the world could any of this have to do with my favorite music band that is currently bringing some of the freshest and most intriguing music to our collective ears, Wilco? Well, I will tell you what the connection is. Last weekend my girlfriend and I went to Santa Barbara for the weekend, culminating Sunday night with seeing Wilco live at the Santa Barbara Bowl. At the last minute I had decided to bring two of the guys (actually one of them is an official “Guy”, the other is a very respectable Tyco plush toy bird named “Walky Talky Hawky“). During the weekend I decided to take pictures of the guys in different places and them send those pictures via email back to my son as a way to stay connected to him. I had the guys at the Hotel, by the pool and at the seashore.

Sunday night we go to the show and it was not more than a few songs into set when Jeff Tweedy encourages the audience to get closer and comedown to the stage front. We were lucky enough to have seats in the pit and therefore went right ahead to within fifteen feet of of the stage.

It could not have been more than a minute that I had this unbelievable out of body experience. I looked up at one point and what I saw was “Commie” (The Common Loon) sitting atop a Marshall stack center stage. I blinked, rubbed my eyes and looked up to see “Cardy”, (The Northern Cardinal) sitting all alone on another amplifier. Then “Blue”, then “Pecky”, all of the sudden I had the distinct feeling that Wilco was playing this concert in my son Jack’s bedroom. I was in a state of complete disbelief. I mean my favorite the band in the world had “The Guys” on stage, and not one or two, but four of them distinctly and securely place around the stage.

Now, I Have no idea what the deal is and all I know is that at one point about mid-way through the show, Jeff Tweedy went and picked up “Blue” and briefly and gave him an affectionate hug, he made nothing of it, just like “The Guys” in my life, these guys seemed to be a part of the fabric of his life.

After the show I struggled on how to make some kind of connection with Mr. Tweedy on this hard to comprehend fact. I clumsily showed the head roadie some pictures I of course had with me of the guys, hoping to elicit a “hey come on back stage and show Jeff” response, they thought it was interesting, no offer came.

So, my plan is this. Saturday August 25th was Jeff Tweedy’s birthday. I am going to see the group again this Wednesday the 29th. I will bring a gift of a “Guy” along with a note and a photo of me and my son with the guys and try to deliver it to him as a belated birthday gift.

Update:

The Greek show was great, it did not feel as special as the show we had seen a few nights earlier in Santa Barbara, but the group was spot on and they seemed to be enjoying themselves quite a bit, which to be honest I was concerned about as I know that there can be a certain amount of animosity towards LA audiences, and for good reason. The guy next to me was txt’ing his pal the entire time and the girls in front of and behind us talked and smoked pot when the song was not to there liking. Not that these are uniquely “LA” behaviors, but the whole thing felt a bit less personal than the Santa Barbara show. Even though we had very good seats, I spent a much of the night trying to see if I could sneak into the pit area in order to give Jeff his Black Capped Chickadee. As time went on it became clear that it really was not going to happen and I certainly felt confident that would have some way of getting it to him at a later date (subsequently I got an email from his management saying that I could send the gift to them for assured delivery), but that I was determined to deliver it that night, especially when during the last encore Jeff Tweedy’s son came out and asked his dad something. The final image was of Jeff carrying his kid offstage in his arms. Perhaps he had come out to say that it was getting late and the “birds” needed to get to bed. In any event it was such a wonderful way to end a concert I approached the stage and waited for some opportunity to speak with and explain my situation to someone who looked liked they might get it. After a few aborted attempts with Nels Cline‘s guitar roadie who is either stone deaf or trained in the art of ignoring all advances from post show fans, I finally found a very nice looking gentleman wearing a tour badge. I gave him the bird, a brief reason of why I had such a bird and he nodded and said he would make sure it got to the right place.

Only time will tell, but the next time I see Wilco I am hoping that there will indeed be a fifth “Guy”.

1.31.2008 Update and major feeling of accomplishment!!

So last night in preparation to see Ryan Adams at UCLA I decided to finally watch the Wilco Podcast which contains a selection from there performance on Austin City Limits of Impossible Germany.

I am sitting there so enjoying a fantastic performance of the song when Jessica, my girlfriend, blurts out: “Hey, is YOUR guy there!”. OK , so we both really excitedly are watching the last few moments of the clip with Nels Cline hammerin’ out a gorgeous penultimate moment (that guy has got some massive paws) and they cut to a close up of Nels’ guitar and I see something out of the corner of the frame. I then go into Blade Runner mode and, freeze, zoom in, enhance (in my mind) and yup, bingo. There it is The Black-capped Chickadee is right there on stage with Wilco and the rest of the Guys. I was so happy. Jessica was not sure, so I went to Wild Republic to download a picture of the boid to do a side by side. There is no question. My gift made it onstage and now a little bit of me and Jess and Jack are traveling around with my favorite rick band forever. That is a good feeling!

Now my only thought is that perhaps there is a monet at some show where Jeff acknowledges the newest member of the group and since Wilco allows distrobution of there concerts via bittorrent and thus every show is availalbe to listen to, I may have to just find that moment to include in this post.

But I am going to need some time to do that.

I love the Guys, I love Wilco, but mostly I love my son Jack for figuring it all out.

Introducing the Canon TX-1. Oh, and get this, it shoots HD video as well!

I am not going to go into any detailed review of this camera, let’s just say that I love it a lot, but have been very unhappy with the apparent color depth or pixel depth compared to my old S45. So much so that I have written a letter to Canon and there is currently a message on my voice mail from the office of the President asking me to call back and discuss my dissatisfaction with the camera. You can here the message here if you want.

Meet Brad from the Office of the President of Canon

Click here to view the embedded video.

I decided I would do a very informal test of friends camera and see what gives.

What I noticed is that as soon as I start enlarging my TX-1 photos, taken at full resolution, they start to get blotchy and chunky and digitized looking. This was not the case with my S45 and with the TX-1 being almost twice the supposed pixel depth, I am thinking, That is not right at all.

What follows is a selection of test shots taken by friends with their respective cameras. All I asked for was a shot of blue sky taken at max resolution for that particular camera model.

I then opened up all the images and made a patchwork of samples for each camera at three levels of enlargement: 100%, 300% and 800%. I then placed the three strips side by side, keeping the compression to the lowest setting possible and posted the results here.

Now, I understand that pixel depth is not necessarily a great camera make, the quality of the sensor, the actual kind of sensor, the lens as well as many other things contribute to the overall image quality of any given image capturing device. But I thought it would be a good place to start and, well, I just felt like doing it. If you want to add your camera to the list below, just email me a full resolution image of a blue sky with the camera model number and I will take care of the rest.

I am placing my TX-1 at the top of the list, after that it is in descending order of theoretical pixel depth. But make sure you take a look at the sweet old S45 weighing in at the bottom with only 4 megapixels. I mean come on, it looks really good. By the way, I reset my camera to factory settings before I created the test image, this was recommended by Canon in order to try and troubleshoot the problem. I thought I would wind up with a better looking image making the whole issue just another matter of me messing too much with the controls of any device I get my hands on, but as it turns out, it is not the case. The image looks terrible, see for yourself.

The more cameras I add to this list, the more interesting the results become. You can clearly see how most of the time the higher resolution cameras retain color depth, the colors remain constant as I blow up the image. The other interesting note is that sometimes the quality is apparently due to the way the brain of the camera records the pixels, the ones that are smoother and softer always look better than the hard edged blothcy captures, regardless of the megapixels.

7.31.07 Update:

I just got off the phone with Brad at Canon CSR. He tells me that the preliminary information from the secret technicians is that past cameras used a pixel smoothing algorithym in order to take away some of the edgey blotchyness of the images. This resulted in a perceputally better image, though maybe not technically a better image. He says new cameras do not apply this pixel smoothing technique and that may account for the inferior look of my TX-1. Now, you can imagine my frustration  and disbelief when Canon admits that they are making cameras that take lousy pictures, but on the other had I do indeed understand what the concept is, though it feels a lot like technology having the better of us. These pictures are SUPPPOSED top be better than past models, then certainly the ARE better. OK, well, he is still waiting to hear from the tech staff and is going to call me when they pipe in with the offical results. I will let you know them for sure.

He also suggested that there may be a software tweek that can be done to “smooth” the pixels out a little bit, this internal software alteration is available on some of the higher end SLR’s, he is not sure if it is possible with the TX-1. He also thinks there may be a link between the lack of pixel smoothing that was built into the TX-1 due to the fact that it captures HD content.

Canon TX-1
7.1 megapixels

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2
10 megapixels

Sony DSC-W100
8 megapixels

Sony DSC-F828
8 megapixels

Canon EOS 30D
8 megapixels

Canon EOS 10D
6 megapixels

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01
6 megapixels

Canon PowerShot SD630
6 megapixels

Fujifilm FinePix A500
5 megapixels

Canon S45
4 megapixels

It was from a woman who announced right off the bat that she was calling from New Orleans and if I wanted some sort of verification of who she was she could supply me with it. Needless to say I was taken off guard from the git go.

What danced through my mind was that I was about to be lead into some bizarre take on the Nigerian Money Scam, only this time originating from a woman in New Orleans with a slight Irish accent.

As her story went on I became more and more intrigued, confused and yes suspicious as to what the heck was going on. She had spoken for a good five minutes before I finally said, “Excuse me, what is it you want from me?”

She was very nervous and then told me the reason for her call.

She had gotten my number for the white pages, aol.com to be precise, and she is trying to find out if a relative of hers that lives in the same building was still, well, alive I guess. She described an elderly gentleman, about 68 years old. I immediately knew exactly who she was talking about. I said, yes, I do know who your talking about. She told me that her family recently moved from Ireland to New Orleans, that she is married to a man who is the son of the elderly gentleman who live sin my apartment building, that his son now has kids and they just want to let him know that the family is doing great, that he has grand children and that they would love to hear from him.

Oh, yeah, and that his kids had not heard or seen him in over twenty five years!

That is when my curiosity and slight bit of apprehension fell to the floor and a complete sense of compassion and sadness fell over me. I was shocked. You see, this fellow that lives in my building, he is such a kind, quiet, friendly person. In the two years that I have lived here, I see him periodically in the hall, slowing making his way down the stairs or checking his mailbox. There is always a smile and a hello and usually some sort of jocular quip such as “Another day in paradise.” in response to the ever present sunshine here in Southern California. I liked him, I liked him a lot.

So now, here is his extended family on the phone trying in any way possible to re-connect with him. She told me that they had sent a certified letter a few weeks ago, but that there was no reply. So, that is why they tried contacting someone else who lives in the same building and thus how they found me.

When I told her that I had seen him, she was so happy and all she wanted to hear was whether he was all right or not. I told her he seemed really good and that I always enjoy seeing him in the hallway.

I then told her I would slip a note under his door with her phone number and how she had found me and perhaps that will elicit a call or a message or something.

She thanked me profusely for me time and kindness and we got off the phone.

I wrote the note and slipped it number his door at apartment number nine. The next day I received this letter in return. As far as I can remember, it is the saddest letter I have ever seen, and certainly the saddest I have ever received from a virtual stranger.

Henry,

Thank you for the courtesy of relaying the recent message. I certainly hope you were not inconvenienced in any way.

A few weeks ago I received a certified letter from a person claiming to be my eldest son’s current wife. Hence, I have a phone number, web sites etc.

I did not respond and do not intend to do so. Next month my son will become fifty years of age.

I have maintained no personal contact with family members since 1959 and see no reason to do so now. A lifetime has passed without us having ever known each other.

Sorry you were bothered and I don’t know why. They knew I resided here because a return receipt was requested when I signed for the certified letter.

Thank you again,

“The man in apt nine”

All I can think of is what horrible circumstances could create such division within a family, that this man would have no interest in hearing, seeing, or knowing about his own children and grandchildren.

It is incomprehensible to me, but there it is.

I recently started a new category here on blog of Hank entitled “Fifteen Minutes”., based on the famous Andy Warhol quote: “Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”.

So, with each episode I that I yield a bit more coverage in this new wide world of crazy Promethian Media Revolutionary information I get a little bit closer to my own personal fifteen minutes. Right now, July 16th’s chunk o’ minutes is an interview that I did for the current episode of KCRW‘s “The Business” on the subject of pirated movie dvd’s.

The Business: Sidewalk DVD’s; Protecting Ideas in Hollywood

I was in Brooklyn, NY a little while back and happened by this AT&T office of some kind or another.

It struck me that AT&T’s byzantine history of acquisitions, dissolutions, name changes and other ownership vagaries is about as good it gets when trying to display the crazy corporate world of mega mergers. I happened to have owned some AT&T stock since about 1983, not enough to make much of a difference in my life, but enough to keep track of how insane their dissolve and miraculous re-assimilations have been during that time.

I thought the sign said it all.

My broker told me after reading this post: “On AT&T, the investment bakers and merger & acquisition guys should thank the gov’t for breaking up Ma Bell.   The fees generated as a result have been herculean…”

• 1983: Plans for the breakup of AT&T are approved, leading to the creation of independent, regional telephone companies and freeing AT&T to enter non-telecommunications businesses.
• 1984: AT&T is organized into two divisions, AT&T Communications and AT&T Technologies.
• 1991: AT&T acquires NCR Corporation, a computer maker, in a $7.4 billion transaction.
• 1993: AT&T enters the cellular telephone business with the $12.8 billion acquisition of McCaw Cellular Communications.
• 1995: AT&T announces it is splitting into three companies, AT&T Corporation, Lucent Technologies, and NCR Corporation.
• 1999: AT&T acquires cable television giant, Tele-Communications Inc., in a $53.5 billion deal.
• 1999: AT&T outbids Comcast and Microsoft to acquire MediaOne Inc., making the company the nation’s largest operator of cable television. AT&T logo disappears.
• 2001: Comcast acquires AT&T Broadband for $72 billion. AT&T spins off its cellphone business into AT&T Wireless.
• 2004: AT&T Wireless is sold for $41 billion to Cingular Wireless.
• 2005: AT&T merged with SBC, itself a merger of some of the original AT&T operating companies. AT&T also regained the cellphone business it spun off a few years earlier because Cingular was owned by SBC.
• 2007: Guess what? AT&T basically buys itself back from Cingular and thus is back to where it started, kinda, sorta.

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Who is “silsurf”?

With the recently released Fantastic Four 2 ad campaign emblazoned everywhere in Los Angeles with just the word “Rise” and an ominous comin’ at ya image of the glorious Silver Surfer, I thought it was about time I did some talkin’. You see, the Silver Surfer has been my alter ego, namesake, my guy in the closet, etc, since I first laid eyes on his gleaming exterior about 35 years ago.

And after going out to see said movie: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer flick, alone, mid-week, at a matinée, and realizing that though the movie is pretty bad (atrocious), the long awaited big screen appearance of the Silver Surfer was handled quite well and I collectively breath a sigh of relief over the cosmos.

There has been talk of a Silver Surfer movie since about 1971. As the story goes, Paramount Pictures started a project at the time and due to the inability to create a believable Silver humanoid riding on a surfboard at near the speed of light who embodies the power cosmic, it was shelved, fell into turn around and all but forgotten.

There was a resurgence of interest around the time that T2 came out and the whole “liquid-metal” CGI came into being, I even saw a USC short at Sundance in 1994 (below courtesy of YouTube) that used that technology solely for the purpose of giving the Silver Surfer a few minutes of screen time. Again, nothing happened.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Even little old me had a brain storm and started a folder on my Mac SE, of optioning the title from Paramount and making a Silver Surfer animated feature. My concept was: Artwork in the style of the original Kirby comics, Widescreen animated feature 1.235:1 aspect ratio, Music by REM and starring the voices of Jeff Goldblum as the Surfer and Geena Davis as his inamorata Shalla Bal. (They were a couple at the time)

Again, nada.

I shall digress…

I grew up in Brooklyn Heights, a small town in the middle of New York City. I remember so well walking to the Hotel St. George (where they shot the scene from The Godfather where they guy puts the knife through the other guys hand at the bar) and checking the newsstand to see if there were any new Silver Surfer comics available. On a recent trip to NY I was passing through that same old St. George Hotel and noticed that the news racks are still there, still beautiful floor to ceiling oak book racks, and I remembered exactly where those Surfers once lay.

As a child I bought and collected other marvel comics, some Spider-Man, Sub Mariner and Thor were my faves, (all weirdos) but from the very start the Surfer attracted me like no other, in retrospect it seems as plain as day.The Silver Surfer was one of the shortest lived Marvel comics series that I know of. Lasting only 18 precious issues somewhere in the 1968 zone. Given that I was only seven years old at the time, it is hard to know why I was drawn to the Surfer, but to this day he remains with me as my alter ego, my id, my lost self.

I was recently re-reading all the surfers, in the conveniently readable Marvel Masterworks series and I realized how little I remember and how much I had changed my conception of the Surfer to suit my own existential seven year old needs.

You see, the Surfer is a real mixed bag, on the one hand he is a tormented soul, forever lost and basking in the ignorance of mankind for whom he is forever beholden. On the other hand he is a short tempered egomaniac, with little belief there exists any beauty or love or compassion on this feeble planet earth.

The Surfer was this guy named Norrin Rad (you will constantly see surfing references while reading the comics. whether they were all intended or not. “rad, dude”) who lived on a fully developed peaceful plant called Zenn-La. There everything was hunky dory, no war or strife or hatred, etc, jut the good stuff. But one day this cosmic ogre named Galactus came storming over to Zenn-La with the sole purpose of sucking the planet’s live force and consequently leaving everything and everyone deader than a door nail. That is what Galactus did, that is how he stayed afloat, just cruising the cosmos sucking down planet juice. Norrin Radd would have none of it and he struck a deal with Galactus. He said if I become your herald I will search out planets that have all the energy you need, but contain no living organisms and you can suck down all you want.

And thus a deal was made.

Of course to be the herald of Galactus he had to undergo a physical transformation in order to withstand the harsh atmosphere of the cosmos, so Galactus enveloped him in an impermeable silvery skin. He also needed a tremendously fast vehicle in order to stay well ahead of the insatiable Galactus, thus the Silver Surfer’s board was born. And that pretty much sums up “The Big Premiere Issue #1″

Everything went on hunky dory between the big guy and his herald until one day Galactus got sick of waiting for the Silver Surfer to find a lifeless hunk of planet because he wanted some planet juice NOW! As luck would have it, there happened to be a very juicy, conveniently placed planet, three planets from the the nearest star. Ooops, that earth!

When the Surfer saw exactly how much life his boss was bout to ingest he could not stand it on moral grounds and made a stand with the old man, they battled over the life of every being on the planet earth. Needless to say, it was quite a battle.

Surfer didn’t really win, but he pissed off his boss enough so that Galactus said sina-nara, but before I go I am placing an impenetrable barrier around this planet you love so much so you can stay here for eternity bitching and moaning about those earth creatures you fought so gallantly to save. So there you have it. The Silver Surfer is trapped inside an invisible barrier tethered to the planet earth for eternity, (oh yeah, Galactus also had to make his herald live forever) His board and the power cosmic his only companions. Oh, did I forget to explain the power cosmic? I am not sure why the Surfer got the power cosmic to begin with, but without it the series would have been pretty drab. The power cosmic is very hard to explain and to understand, I am not sure if the Surfer ever really understood the unlimited power that the power cosmic contained. It seems the power cosmic enabled him to will almost limitless energy into a physical reality. His power cosmic successfully beat every conceivable enemies power, and there were some doozies. One of the charms of the surfers legacy is the complete inability to define the power cosmic. No one understood what it was or how it worked, yet everyone (bad guys) coveted it. Here starts a long list of parallels one can draw between the surfer and existential beliefs. He had a power so great it could solve every problem, so powerful that it was god like, yet so mysterious that it defied interpretation. All I know is that ROCKED!

So, there lies the surfer, forever chained to the confines of the planet earth, forever separated form his one and only love (a broad he was going to marry on Zenn-La named Shalla-Bal) and his only duty is to monitor a race of animals called humans that never understand what he is trying to do. This is how the rest of the original series goes. The surfer seeing some horrible atrocity against humanity about to unfold and in his efforts to stop the impending attack, he is mistakenly taken as the very source of evil that is gonna do away with all the kin folk on planet earth. As the stories go on the Surfer becomes more and more impatient with humankind’s lack of compassion and on more than one occasion he gives up and says, forget it, let them all die, only at the very last moment he cannot deal with the crushing reality (re: guilt) and swoops in with the power cosmic to save the day.

It is one heck of a lonely life the Surfer is committed to, spending most of his time (eternity is very long) floating around in his bubble of space, a purgatory, waxing hilariously on the foibles of humankind and how useless it all is. Oh, and much endless anecdotes of love for Shalla-Bal.

Re-reading these episodes it is amazing how much less connection I feel for the Surfer in his plight to save humanity. This time around he only seems to become more and more internalized, resentful, angry and depressed as time goes on. Sure, I am not saying I blame him, but the truth be told, he is not the most likable a super hero and in 1968 it is no wonder Marvel pulled the plug.

But on the other hand it is very interesting for me to look at why I was drawn to the Surfer in the first place. I mean I have made him my nom de plume ever since. When I first signed on to the internet it was sometime around 198-something. The internet was still text based and AOL (which wasn’t even a bad word yet) was at verion 1.7, the modems ran at 9600 baud which meant that you had to WAIT just for text to load. I signed onto AOL at that time and believe it or not Silver Surfer was taken (like minds were out there on the fringe of interactivity at that time) and I decided to settle for my own contraction, silsurf.

From that moment on, I became silsurf, that was my username, and it still is. I have had dozens of emails accounts over the years, all starting with the prefix silsurf. I have registered at hundreds of forums, logins, anywhere else that desires a username on the internet, silsurf is always me. I have so conerned the market of silsurf that I have never once been refused it as a username on a website.

Yes, I felt a kinship to him, his outcast nature, his inability to see the goodness outside himself, his distrusting arrogance. All elements of myself that I can see as part of my past and that I am glad I have some perspective over now. The surfer was one heck of a lonely cat. Pissed off, lugubriousness that would rival the ranks of Rodion Romanovitch Raskolnikov.

So, perhaps I am not the “silsurf” I once was, and we can all be thankful for that, but will I remain “silsurf” just for the sake of it?

I just don’t know.

Just a majot freakin’ note.

I was at one of my favorite places, the United States Post Office, when after I asked to see the selection of 41 cent stamps, my jaw hit the floor when she slapped this sheet down in front of me. I spent 82 dollars on Silver Surfer stamps and it might be the best purchase I have made in a lifetime.

The reverse of the sheet has little info blocks on the characters, let’s see what the United States Government has to say about silsurf:

Silver Surfer

Desperate to save his home planet from destruction, Norrin Radd struck a deal with the force known as Galactus: As the world devourer’s herald he would search the galaxy for his master’s susteneance. The Silver Surfer now rides the cosmic waves unshackled!

Pretty good!

For more technical data on the Surfer, visit Marvel comics Silver Surfer page

I recently was telling a good friend about my many great experiences driving across this amazing country of ours eating almost exclusively out of the exhaustive archives of Jane and Michael Stern’s travel books, Good Food (long out of print), Road Food and Eat Your Way Across The USA. The retelling of these wonderful tales, forever entrained in my mind and stomach made me crave some good old road food. So, it was with great satisfaction that found myself having a true Road Food experience coming from Cape Cod and heading East into Massachusetts on July 1st, 2007. I just happen to have been traveling with my trusty Road Food AAA highway maps that were pre-highlighted with every Good Food, Road Food and Eat Your Way Across the USA eating establishment, so with a easy glance I knew that I had a choice between something in Bellingham and Woonsocket.

As it turns out the Bellingham was a more on a direct route with the Mass pike, so I opted for that.

When I got off 495 I had that immediate and unmistakable feeling of, Holy crap, what if I cannot find something that looks like a Road Food establishment, unique, interesting, old school, etc. You see it was Sunday and Bellingham looked like a pit and even though my AAA maps are marked with all the road food spots, the exact names and locations are not on the maps, that information is to be cross referenced from the books themselves, none of which I had with me.

I drove through town, saw a few, (two exactly), candidates for what might be a road food spot, both were closed. I was dejected, but not giving up. In my back pocket I had the knowledge that before entering town there had been a sign saying “Ma Glockner’s” with an arrow. It was my last hope, and off I went in search of this fascinating sounding place. Well, it perfect Road Food fashion with the sun getting lower and my blood sugar rising rapidly I came around a country bend and entered the large, handsome, old school world of Ma’s.

The silhouettes of people inside were quite the welcome site. I parked and entered in the side door. At first I sad, Oh, no, it is Sunday and only the bar is open or, business is so bad that nothing but the bar was open at all because I waled through room after room dark empty booths.

I came around a corner and sighed a sigh of relief, there was indeed yet another room (there were a total of at least five that I counted, Good Food, which is the only Jane and Michael Stern book I could find Ma’s in states it can seat 500!) that was more than half full of diners. I had found the right place.

After giving the menu a cursory glance, there was only one clear choice. Ma Glockner’s famous “Berched Chicken”. I ordered from the smiling, attentive and amusing waitress who answered each and every order with the question: “What kind of potato do you want: baked, roasted, sweet, fried or pasta?

While I waited for my “Berched Chicken” I listened to another waitress give endless shit to a table occupied by a man with his family. She was saying things to the Dad like, “Do you even know what you want yet, I can see in your eyes you have no idea, I’ll come back later” and brusquely walk away form the order. When she returned she said, “Any idea yet?, you have no idea do you?” He was stoically silent during the whole encounter.

As I waited I also noticed beautiful old brass tacked vinyl booths, the wooden detailing that was orange from years of varnish and the odd other world feeling as there was very little natural light in the room. It was transforming, relaxing and other worldly.

The first thing to arrive here cinnamon buns, yup, “Ma Glockner’s” does not serve bread, but home made cinnamon buns as there bread source, there is nothing more to say about that.

The “Berched Chicken” was a sight to behold. Clearly one of those regional secrets that stemmed form some sort of a mistake in the kitchen. It looked as though it had been run over by a truck many, many times. The entire half chicken was flattened onto the plate and pressed into a crispy, crunchy splat of meat of juice. My guess is that they heavily brined a bird, partially cooked it in the oven and then finish it in some sort of heated press like an industrial panini machine. The results? unreal, somewhere between friend chicken and chicken stew. So soft and juicy you can cut it with a fork!

A delightful meal and a delightful place that reminded me of the beauty of traveling out of ones way to eat some real, slow food.

Ma Glockners
151 Maple St.
Bellingham, MA 02019
508-966-1085

My fifteen minutes are adding up quite rapidly in the past few months, thanks more than partially due to my new found favorite, everything interesting on the internet start off page Coudal Partners.

I created a flickr set of as many Santa Monica apartment complex logos as I could find. Secretly I was doing it because I knew that Coudal would approve.

About ten minutes after I sent them the link, it was up on there front page, adding a few more precious minutes to my cyber popularity.

Unemployment Rules!

addendum:

Two things happened within a few hours of posting this worth reporting. One was a fellow flickr’r who has a similar situation and happened to notice my post. He’s got some pretty cool photos outside of Santa Monica apartment logos to boot. Meet: Feaverish

The other was my pal Sean who passed along a book that pretty much tidies up the issue of who has the difinitive collection of Los Angeles wall acne: Pretty Vacant

Stanley Kubrick has influenced me more than any other director. For some reason his intensely detailed and seemingly accurate portrayals of life appealed to me long before I could understand what the heck was going on. I slept through the my first screening of 2001 at the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan (I mean I was seven at the time), but preceded to watch the film at least a dozen times and even wrote a paper on it for no one, like a 13 page type written commentary just for me (I wish I still had that thing). I was also riveted by A Clockwork Orange in its sinister, naughty look at things unsaid, I was ten years old when it came out and it was the first racy film, (given an X rating at the time) that my mom would not take me to see. Lucky for me my pal’s parents owned the arty Heights Cinema in Brooklyn Heights where I grew up. We snuck in and watched it anyway, multiple times. I even fall into the severe minority of folk who believe “Eyes Wide Shut” is Kubrick’s greatest work and the darkest most compelling look at a human being slide into the abyss that has ever danced across the silver screen. All the while I read, re-read, saved and made scrapbooks of news clippings and photos of Kubrick’s oeuvre. If I am not mistaken it was through an article about his working relationship with the camera operation that led me to say at a ripe old age of ten, “That’s what I want to do for a living”. So Stanley has remained my most cherished filmmaker.

And it is with great fallderall that I place a blog entry on the man Stan. As it turns out there has been a flurry of Kubrick in my recent internet wanderings, giving added excitement to this particular post as it is the first time I am blogging to something that would have previously been posted to my website Interactivehank.com as one of my “current obsessions”. Here it becomes just another blog entry, as I have always envisioned it to be. A freaky chance to explore what fun it is to be inside the mind of Hank. Right now that mind is telling me: “Write about Stanley Kubrick”.

The items in question are: (in order of appearance, but not necessarily in interest)

1. A movie entitled “Color Me Kubrick” in which John Malkavich plays someone pretending to be Stanley Kubrick. I did not see it, just the trailer. From what I have been told, it may be enough.

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2. An amazing documentary, or fakeumentary, or mockumentary, or whatever they are called entitled “Dark Side of the Moon“, that over the course of an hour makes a very good case for Stanley Kubrick staging and directing NASA’s first moon landing in exchange for the camera lens he “had to have” in order to shoot certain scenes of Barry Lyndon using only candlelight. It is worth watching the first 5-10 minutes if you think I am kidding. (alas, after much searching, I cannot find a copy of this film anywhere, and the site that was hosting it has had it removed as well as from Google Video, both quite recently??
Webiste Exclusive!
I posted on a website called “Conspiracy Theory” and within a day I had someone uploading a fresh copy of this fakeumentary. If you click on the image above a new browser window will load and the film will play. It is 195 megs and the whole thing has to load before it start, sorry. I will fix that when I get home from a vacation on 7/5/07.)

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Click here to view the embedded video.

3. A very inventive and surprising re-make of a Shining trailer, guaranteed to warm the cockles of your heart

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4. One of the great mysteries Kubrick is what his working methods were like. He was considered tyrannical, obsessive, paranoid, a perfectionist, all the great attributes of a truly gifted film director. There is so little about how he worked because he kept it that way. I even know people that worked on his last two films and they really don’t like to talk about it much. That is why I loved watching this documentary, made by his daughter Vivian when she was seventeen years old during the making of “The Shining”, it is the only footage I have ever seen of Kubrick at work. The documentary appeared as one of the extra’s on the relatively recent box set of DVD’s of Kubrick’s work. It is currently available on Youtube in four nine minute segments:

part one
part two
part three
part four

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5. And last, but not least. Here is a gem of untold wonder. The meeting of two of the greatest minds in my own personal persona, Stanley Kubrick and Jack Kirby. From a comic book fan site: “In 1976 Kirby adapted one of the greatest SF films of all time – 2001: A Space Odyssey (in a magazine-sized Marvel Treasury Edition). This was followed by a ten-issue comic series which went well beyond the movie. Now nearly forgotten by all but Kirby aficionados, his 2001 comics are among the weirdest and most controversial aspects of the 2001 franchise”. The comics themselves are available for very cheap on eBay if interested, but what brought this item to my attention were some nice high quality scans I came across from the first issue, basically tracking the storyline of the film. I put them in a .pdf file and , well , here ya go.

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Of course within minutes of finishing the first draft of this post I discovered a much more robust and ultimately hipper version of Kubrick listing on my very own favorite uber arty design website that I love going to to find incredibly entertaining content, Coudel Partners. Here is their Kubrick list and here are two times I just had to share right up front:

A book by the guy named Kristan Horton who re-constructed frames from Dr. Strangelove after watching the film more than 700 times out of household objects. There is an interview and an excerpt from the book here. I ordered it immediately (not available on Amazon). Oh, here is an even cooler way to look at excerpts online.

I was one of the millions (billions?) of people who watched the last episode of “The Sopranos“, why? Not because I am a fan, I don’t even subscribe to HBO at the moment. It was merely because I was invited to a dinner party that entailed watching the episode, in complete silence.

I could say, ho hum, but that is not why I am posting. I am posting because I just love that song: “Don’t Stop Believen’“, don’t you? I mean it is a classic, right?

Well, I am not alone in my beliefs and today I noticed a piece in the New York Times that states:

The day after the last episode aired, downloads of the song on iTunes went from 1000 a day to 6,531.
Journey’s Greatest Hits marched into the top 20 on iTunes as well.
On the radio, ariplay of DSB increased 192 percent.
In 2005 DSB was featured on the season premiere of MTV’s “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County” (sounds awesome!), the song went in to the top ten on iTunes.
The song also enjoyed a 150 percent increase in downloads after it was featured on an episode of “The Family Guy” in 2005.
In 2003, before downloads were being tracked, DSB was featured on an episode of “Scrubs” as well and overall retail sales of Journey’s Great Hits increased 51 percent in the first week following the show.

So, if that is not enough to convince you that this is truly a legendary, one of a kind mega block-busting anthem to all things we must not stop believein’, then maybe this fan based film that has been kicking around in my “fun internet movies” for the last few years will do it. Thanks goodness I save EVERYTHING!

Don’t Stop Believin’
(clicking on the above title will open this wonderful and heartfelt tribute in a new browser window, go get some popcorn and a bud lite first)

I almost signed up in those e early days of hearing about the TED conferences, but 7K was a lot of dough back then, so I waited. I waited and wondered what the heck they were all talking about?

The TED website now has many, many of these unbelievably brilliant presentations available to view, and all for FREE. Every time I take an opportunity to watch one I am blown away, from marine biology to a hyper linked meta universe of photographs called Photosynth, which believe it or not is brought to us from Microsfot. (the presenter even makes a back sided apology on that matter).

I may never have the chance to go to TED, but now I can bring TED to me.

PhotoSynth Presentation:

Most notable of the wide range of visual styles used include an opening sequence that looks like it was shot on high contrast black and white titling film stock, then there are the glimmers of the disco that the henchmen are always wandering through to get to the big cheeses. This crazed, psychadelically inspired Tokyo dance room always keep me wanting more, more, more. Of course I would not want to forget the full on Western bar room brawl where everything and everyone gets demolished. Then there are the multiple moments when the lead dude, a reformed Yakuza drifter named Tetsu, breaks into full song while meandering the wastelands of Japan singing and re-signing a song that sounds almost exactly like “A Town Without Pity” by Gene Pitney:

When you’re young and so in love as we
And bewildered by the world we see
Why do people hurt us so
Only those in love would know
What a town without pity can do
If we stop to gaze upon a star
People talk about how bad we are
Ours is not an easy age
We’re like tigers in a cage
What a town without pity can do
The young have problems, many problems
We need an understanding heart
Why don’t they help us, try and help us
Before this clay and granite planet falls apart
Take these eager lips and hold me fast
I’m afraid this kind of joy can’t last
How can we keep love alive
How can anything survive
When these little minds tear you in two
What a town without pity can do
How can we keep love alive
How can anything survive
When these little minds tear you in two
What a town without pity can do
No, it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity

But it was not until this sequence came along that I realized I had to share this film. Out of nowhere, there is a scene that looks like a camera test for a new set of graduated filters. Graduated filters are a common cinemagraphic tool for controlling lights levels without changing color. There is a great description on the Wiki page. Trail and error has helped cameramen worldwide learn that there are a number off rules, or no-nos, when using grad filters. Most are designed to not give away the fact that you are indeed doing anything to enhance or alter the shot. Things like zooming, which forces the grad filter line to move unaturally within the frame, or tilting the camera thus altering the area that has been graduated and again giving away the gag. Probably the most common no-no is using too much graduation, where the viewer clearly sees the line of the filter and the element of reality is crossed.

Well, there is also another long held cinemtagraphic rule of thumb, and that is when you go for an effect or a “look”, don’t pussy foot around it, if you are going to go for it, then go for it.
Well, this sequence really goes for it with gusto, breaking every rule of graduated filtering I can think of and then some. And the coolest thing is that there is not a grad to be see in the rest of the movie, just this sequence.

Click on the frame below and the quicktime will show up in a separate window.

Enjoy.

Here is a related page on everything you ever wanted to know about polarization of lightwaves.

I saw this mentioned in this months MacWorld and had to check it out.

After a few days, all I can say is yikes, this is really a handy piece of free telecom functionality.

I often want to save voice mail to my ever present hard drive, whether it be for fun or to keep track of the ineptitude of any given CSR situation I am currently embroiled in. Up until now I thought it was pretty convenient that all I had to do was boot up some recording software and hold the mic up close to the speakerphone while my message played back. Now, how archaic is that?

Since I spend a significant portion of my day at my computer, it also feels pretty darn convenient that while using CallWave I get instant email notification of all incoming voice mail, that I can listen to those voicemails without moving my hiney or worrying whether or not my phone is on, or in the car, or at the bottom of my man-purse. And even though I hear the forthcoming iPhone is going to have something along the lines of online accessible voice mails, until I decide to actually plonk down 500 beans for it, CallWave is gonna fit the need pretty darn well.

In a nutshell
Callwave is online voicemail
Callwave works with virtually all cell carriers, there was not even a momentary hiccup with my Cingular account.
Using Callwave you have access to your voicemail online and the option of having each and every message emailed to you as a .WAV file
Callwave is free.

What it is doing?
When you sign up, the online widget gives you a multi-digit code that you plug into your cell phone, the code is telling your service provider to forward all calls to the CallWave voicemail phone service.
So, now all you incoming calls go directly to CallWave. Your existing voicemail box will be empty. Yes, you have to set up a new voice prompt, and yes it is very easy to do and yes using CallWave feels exactly like using your existing voicemail system. All the prompts I am used to still work, like 4 to replay, 7 to delete and 9 to save calls.

Why is CallWave doing this?
Like many services I have tried over the years like the free faxing services I used to use (eFax), CallWave is hoping you will want to upgrade to a premium service of some sort. For all I know they will discontinue this free service, since it is really the only thing I could ever imagine wanting from them, so why not take advantage of this little beauty while it lasts?

Up/Down sides?
As with any service, of course there is the feeling of, “why do I have to change anything in order to have what I want.” Well, you don’t, but if you are like me and want a little more flexibility with your voicemail, CallWave might be just for you.
When you forward your incoming calls to CallWave, they are no long accessible through your providers voice mail because they don’t exist there, they have been forward to CallWave, thus there is no notification from your cell provider. That is why you need to turn on “cell phone notification” in your CallWave account, that way you get a very detailed text message each time a call comes in.

UPS:
Instant text message with detailed incoming voicemail info
email notification
savable voicemail.

DOWNS:
Re-recording your OEM
No little “voicemail” icon on your phone
Re-mapping your voicemail speed dial key on your phone.

What do I need to do in order to not miss anything?
1. Go to Callwave and create a “Visual Voicemail” account. Callwave will tell you exactly what to do, punch a bunch of numbers into your cell phone and hit send. If you want to undo the service, they tell you how to do that as well.
2. Log into your Callwave account, go to the settings tab and select the “message alerting and delivery” button. There you will be able to turn on/off both email delivery and cell phone delivery options. I would recommend turning them both on for the following reasons: One, you get a copy of each message sent to your email box in a savable .wav format and two, you get a text message sent to your phone with all the information you could ever want about the incoming voicemail, name, phone number, time, length, etc. Much better that just getting a little blip on your cell to let you know that “some” kind of a voicemail is waiting for you.
3. Call your cell number from your cell or a land line and create a customized OEM, just like you do with all your phone services.
4. Assign your cell number to a speed dial option on your cell phone. Remember, you are no longer using your providers voicemail, so when you press and hold the “1″ key the answer will be “You currently have no messages” (you can re-map your “1″ key as well and Callwave tells you how here)
5. Relax and enjoy listening to your voicemail over and over, dissecting each and every moment for eternity.

7.3.2007 update:

CallWave has updated their free services. Now you get:
Archiving of all calls recieved, forever and ever. Never lose a voicemail!
A thing called vText that sends a slightly misinterpreted computer translation of the contents of your call to you as a text message, so you know what the voicemail is about. I guess the vText is only going to be free during the beta period.

Just to let anyone that wanders in here know that I am not the only person who pays any attention to me. My new friends over at Coudal Partners enjoyed the cover CD I made for HRMC so much, that they put it up on their blog. It is a puff piece for sure, but I will take anything I can get.

Read about it!

The other day, Coudal Partners started an online swap meet. The pitch is that if you make cool stuff, then send them some and they will send you something of equal value in return. Meanwhile they will post the arrivals and hand out some free publicity. Given that I find like-mindedness abounds at their website and they are also going to put my last HRMC issue #38 on their blog, I sent them some of my stuff.

I sent them my TOBOR tee shirt, (plus a few other goodies). It made me revisit TOBOR and even watch an episode or two. It is some crazy stuff that guy. The cheapest, funkiest looking animation that ever came out of Japan. It is also in black and white, which I always forget and makes it even stranger looking. Of course, for the uninitiated, you want to hang in on any episode until TOBOR (robot spelled backwards) has need of his “energy sticks” which he has to put in his mouth and deeply inhale from in order to get that certain something to thwart whatever super evil doings are before him. There are a couple of episode up on YouTube, here is a part of one that includes the his creator explaining all the groovy things he can like run faster than the speed of light!

Yo can also buy the TOBOR tee shirt from my  website, it is a real beaut’ I promise.

In case you were wondering,

Cartoon Laws of Physics
Authorship Unknown

Cartoon Law I
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation. Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.

Cartoon Law II
Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly. Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge’s surcease.

Cartoon Law III
Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter. Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the specialty of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.

Cartoon Law IV
The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.

Cartoon Law V
All principles of gravity are negated by fear. Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth’s surface. A spooky noise or an adversary’s signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.

Cartoon Law VI
As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once. This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character’s head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A `wacky’ character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.

Cartoon Law VII
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l’oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall’s surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.

Cartoon Law VIII
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify. Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.

Cartoon Law IX
Everything falls faster than an anvil.

Cartoon Law X
For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.

Cartoon Law Amendment A
A sharp object will always propel a character upward. When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.

Cartoon Law Amendment B
The laws of object permanence are nullified for “cool” characters. Characters who are intended to be “cool” can make previously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself without speaking.

Cartoon Law Amendment C
Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries. They merely turn characters temporarily black and smoky.

Cartoon Law Amendment D
Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths. Their operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to stretch. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will resume its regular proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.

Cartoon Law Amendment E
Dynamite is spontaneously generated in “C-spaces” (spaces in which cartoon laws hold). The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by feelings of distress in “cool” characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of this law), who are able to use said quanta to their advantage. One may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.

As far back as I can remember going to animation festivals and finding those magical moments in animated shorts long before the abbreviation CGI was even considered, The Big Snit was a standout.

It was made in 1985 by a well known animator Bill Condie. According to Wiki, In 1994 it was voted #25 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. (Wiki “Big Snit” page here.

Animated shorts were big for me many years ago, I was deeply impressed by Chuck Braverman’s Cream of the Beatles, a mostly stop motion and animated short made in 1974 and created in me a longtime desire to watch and make Braverman style shorts. I immediately started collecting and assembling movie images for a project that I never completed, but of course I was only ten years old and don’t want to feel to bad about it at all.

Back to the Big Snit.

It is great, it is very timely and best of all you can watch it right now delivered not from my website becasue I am having a hard time trying to create the code to do that, not from YouTube because they are cracking down on unauthorized content and have removed it, but from the very place that paid for it, The National Film Board of Canada. At 4 minutes and 49 seconds it is well worth your time.

Watch Big Snit Now!