why we fight

I just finally got around to seeing Eugene Jarecki's documentary Why We Fight. It's a film I'd been wanting to see ever since I heard about it, but various circumstances demotivated me from seeing it until this very day. However, this is a movie I believe will survive for a long time so I suppose there's no real rush.

Why We Fight is, in my opinion, as successful a contemporary document of the reality of being an American as any that has ever been made. It's the movie I think a lot of people hoped Fahrenheit 9/11 could be.



I realized recently that I had been deliberately avoiding watching anything containing footage from September 11, 2001. I, like many people, got so sick of not being able to turn around without seeing the World Trade Center towers crumbling into dust that watching it deliberately seemed ridiculous. It reads as silly to me to state that Why We Fight presents the event in a "tasteful" manner, but it's an accurate statement. But it's also a dry assessment and the truth is that Jarecki's facility with the power of the material moved me greatly. This is not to detract from Michael Moore's elegant solution to the problem which was, in fact, probably the most skillfully cinematic moment in his entire film. I have my hopes that Christopher Seward, an editor I briefly met recently, had a large part in creating that sequence. The point of the exceedingly long paragraph above was to say that if you have had a similar aversion in the past, I suggest not only that you should overcome it for this film but you will be greatly rewarded for doing so.

So thank you very much to Eugene Jarecki.

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Also, hilarity on tonight's The Daily Show's dissection of Fox News' coverage of the Daytona Beach Serial Killer story.

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Also also, I feel compelled to toss a large neon WTF? at Sharon Stone for being so gung ho for Basic Instinct 2. If I recall correctly she complained loudly and widely about how her trust and genitalia were exploited in the original Basic Instinct.

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Lastly, holy awesome to the hundreds-of-thousands-strong marches across the United States in support of undocumented immigrants.

euro zero zero on flickr

One more step... stepped.
After many hours of prep work I have uploaded the Euro Zero Zero pictures to flickr.
Enjoy.

dick dick dick dick dick is a killer

Okay, this is totally awesome. The folks at Graffiti Research Laboratories have created an excellent video HOWTO explaining the process of embedding LEDs into works of graffiti. If nothing else the sountrack to video alone is worth hearing.

Thanks to BoingBoing and YouTube.

solar powered rock n' roll revolution

First of all, Classy Dames & Able Gents has updated, this time translating everyone's favorite game, Mornington Crescent, into comic form.

I'm happy to see, via the Foresight Nanotechnology Institute's email newsletter, that OrionSolar has been given one million dollars in venture capital to assist them in producing their totally awesome nanodot-dye-based flexible solar power sheets which may wind up producing solar power for about $.70 per peak watt. That, friends, is CHEAP solar power these days. I want these guys to succeed for many reasons, not the least of which is my dream to travel the world making a documentary about how to make communities sustainable while charging my various media electronics with a light, cheap, flexible solar power source. I actually wrote to OrionSolar back when I first heard of them to see if they'd be interested in sponsoring such a venture by kicking me some product, but they informed me that, regrettably, they did not have anything in production just yet.

Met up with 2/3 of Boss Tweed to discuss their upcoming european tour and how the video footage I shot might help them in that endeavor. We also tossed some talk around about doing a music video, so we'll see what might go forward with that. Man, it'd be fun. After the "meeting" I checked out Warren Malone, a very good singer-songwriter, at a small gig he was playing at the grandiosely named yet tiny Allen Street club the Rockwood Music Hall. Excellent stuff. Interesting encounter with a waitress, too. She brought me my $5 bottle of beer and then, when I paid her, informed me that her "livelihood was based on tips so anything I could spare would be great". I hesitated and then handed her the dollar I'd been planning on leaving on the table like a typical tipper would. I'm pleased she enlightened me about this arcane practice of... tipping, is it called? and I'll endeavor to help out the city's waitstaff in future.

Otherwise, Seize Them! practice is on a mini-hiatus due to various members being out of town on upcoming weekends, but we'll have to get back at it with a vengeance in April if we want to be totally kickass for the giant party we're throwing in June. Also, WE NEED A BASS PLAYER, people. Please.

V for Vendetta, a story that I have loved for a long time, was actually made into a more than decent film. See it.

dorkery

Here's the equipment list of stuff I used for the recent Boss Tweed shoot:

Cameras - 2 Panasonic AGDVX100s and 1 Sony PD150
Audio Recorder - Apple Macintosh Powerbook, G4 800MHz processor, 1GB of RAM, using Garageband to capture
Audio Interface - Presonus Firepod
Microphones - 2 Shure SM57s

this news is broken

The Boss Tweed shoot was tons o' fun and the footage is pretty decent given that all the stage lights seemed to get turned off for their set. I, personally, didn't do as good a job on the camera work as I did on my previous outing, but my friends Jeff and John more than capably backed me up on the other two cameras so I have plenty to work with. Thanks to Galapagos Art Space for letting us shoot there and to the sound guy, Josh Loar, for letting me plug in to the soundboard.

After the show I went to a party that my upstairs neighbors were throwing and we decided to have a Whole House Party, incorporating all three floors of the building, over the first weekend in June. It will be awesome, with a rock show in the basement and hopefully a succession of DJs spinning for about an hour apiece upstairs. More info as developments warrant.

And now to start cutting the Boss Tweed show. They need a couple of clips to help get a European Tour booked for this summer, so I've gotta get on that.

well, you found him, counter-epithet

RIP Gordon Parks, photographer, filmmaker, novelist, poet, composer. Pioneer for black people in journalism, media and the entertainment industry. He died at 93.

are you ready for some football?

Today was spent recording voiceover for 4th & Goal Films' 2006 Blue Chippers and Hidden Gems DVD preview of the 2006 NFL draft. Voice talent was Brian Baldinger, former offensive lineman for the Cowboys, Colts and Eagles and current football pundit for Fox Sports. Now I'm sure the following revelation will surprise none of you, but... I'm not a huge football fan. However! This process (which continues tomorrow) was quite entertaining. Over the course of editing almost all the footage for this DVD (which you should BUY NOW if you're a football fanatic) I have certainly gained a greater appreciation for football and I think I might actually understand and enjoy a game more. It was also a treat to hear a guy like Baldinger, an incredibly knowledgable expert in his field, hold forth on the players we were profiling and provide some anecdotes from his up-and-coming career as a commentator (the short version: John Madden is a jerk).

Relevant to last night's Oscars, congratulations to my ex-professor (if only for a few days before I dropped his class) John Canemaker for winning the Best Animated Short award. His film is called The Moon and the Son. Kudos also to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show writing staff for their excellent job on the most entertaining Oscars I've ever seen. Daily Show producer Glenn Clements is a friend of mine and I haven't gotten to speak to him about it yet, but if he was involved I say ROCK ON, GLENN.

I've finished a rough cut of the Mr. Brownstone show from NorthSix in December and, I'm happy to say, I've been contracted to shoot the upcoming performance of Boss Tweed at Galapagos (next door to NorthSix) on March 11. Boss Tweed is a great band and if you're in the area you should come out and see the show. I'll be covering the action with three cameras this time (with assistance from John Wiseman and an as-yet-unchosen third cameraperson) so I should have great material. I've wanted to make a concert film for Boss Tweed for a while now, so I'm pretty psyched.

Seize Them! practice over the past few weekends has yielded excellent results. Jeff completed his Herculean labor of culling through all our old DATs to find gems we could work into new songs and he found quite a few. So our catalog of material is poised to expand dramatically. It also seems we're covering Boston's "More Than A Feeling" which is totally frikkin' awesome and if you don't love the hell out of that song I dunno how you get any joy out of life at all.

It looks like ISOTA sticker printing will be delayed 'til May. But no later than May! I will require them for my June vacation to the Roots Music Festival in Amsterdam and the subsequent chillout in Reykjavik.
Th th th that's all.