Bullets returned

• New years calls at midnight always generate some massive friend points (hint), plus I'll be taking them on my brand-new iPhone :-)
• I have a new number so be sure to get it, but the old one will forward for a few days.
• Saw the following movies at the cinema: Alien Versus Predator 2, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and I Am Legend. I would recommend them in that order. Seriously. Massive posts about AVP and ST to come if I have time (read, get bored).
• Christmas was great.
• I'm so over 2007 its not even funny, but there was a fair bit of really good in it too (I'll spare everyone from the list.)
• 2008 looks to be a very promising year, and it's end will bring me a few short months away from the big LA relocation in 2009!
• My computer still needs fixed.
• The Mazda3 got 15,000 mile service today and she's driving like the day she was born-- ready for my trek cross country to San Francisco.

Much more to come now that my holiday sabbatical is over, stay tuned!

It's Official

Well, its official, I'll be in San Francisco, California for 3-6 months interning at Lightswitch-- a lighting design firm. While I'm there I'll be working on a number of projects including on-site Assistant LD for a corporate show in New Orleans.

In other news "Semester Reviews" AKA "Crits" are tomorrow for me and most of my friends. Hopefully everyone makes it through alive :-/

Bad Science

Ok, stay with me here. The following is the beginning of an article that was linked from the Yahoo! main page:

"Do Diet Sodas Make You Fat?

The short answer(s) to this question is no and, maybe, yes. One recent study has shown that people who drink diet soda still have a 41 percent chance of being overweight."


There are more problems with this than I could point out. But they range from scientific mispractice, to the state of "press release" journalism, to unfortunate cultural underpinnings.

Suffice it to say, the first day of any science class one hears a famous mantra that should be in every functioning human being's lexicon: CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

Example. Students who take Latin do better on the SAT. This is actually true and lead to a spat of "have your kids take Latin!" newspaper articles. The problem is that with correlation A can cause B, B can cause A, or an unknown factor C can be the cause of both A and B. That's the case here. Schools that can afford Latin classes are not inner city ghettos, and they provide a better educational experience overall, not simply in the Latin class. The same could likely be said for kids who play Lacrosse.

I'm surprisingly unsurprised

Young chimp beats college students

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

NEW YORK - Never mind that TV show that asks if you're smarter than a fifth-grader. Is your memory better than a young chimp's?

Maybe not.

Japanese researchers pitted young chimps against human adults in two tests of short-term memory, and overall, the chimps won.

That challenges the belief of many people, including many scientists, that "humans are superior to chimpanzees in all cognitive functions," said researcher Tetsuro Matsuzawa of Kyoto University.

"No one can imagine that chimpanzees — young chimpanzees at the age of 5 — have a better performance in a memory task than humans," he said in a statement.

Matsuzawa, a pioneer in studying the mental abilities of chimps, said even he was surprised. He and colleague Sana Inoue report the results in Tuesday's issue of the journal Current Biology.
One memory test included three 5-year-old chimps who'd been taught the order of Arabic numerals 1 through 9, and a dozen human volunteers.

They saw nine numbers displayed on a computer screen. When they touched the first number, the other eight turned into white squares. The test was to touch all these squares in the order of the numbers that used to be there.

Results showed that the chimps, while no more accurate than the people, could do this faster.
One chimp, Ayumu, did the best. Researchers included him and nine college students in a second test.

This time, five numbers flashed on the screen only briefly before they were replaced by white squares. The challenge, again, was to touch these squares in the proper sequence. When the numbers were displayed for about seven-tenths of a second, Ayumu and the college students were both able to do this correctly about 80 percent of the time.

But when the numbers were displayed for just four-tenths or two-tenths of a second, the chimp was the champ. The briefer of those times is too short to allow a look around the screen, and in those tests Ayumu still scored about 80 percent, while humans plunged to 40 percent.

That indicates Ayumu was better at taking in the whole pattern of numbers at a glance, the researchers wrote.

A good day

May be headed to the west coast for an exciting opportunity... more soon.

Keep you fingers crossed!

Bullets

• LDI was great, thanks ETC!
• Speaking of which, sending a special package out on Monday.
• There's a chance one of the best shows I've ever worked on is getting revived... cross fingers.
• I'm a little over Cirque's hiring practices right now. Also quite underwhelmed by the people I've met that work for them, save Jeanette.
• Turkey = awesome.
• Just saw Lions for Lambs -- I think I liked it though it was basically a film version of Accidental Death of an Anarchist
• Super Mario Galaxy is out, I can't wait until I have time to play it.
• Inching closer to 800 visits!

26,999 plus Me

Screamscape.com:

"IAAPA - (11/21/07) IAAPA reports that this year’s tradeshow in Orlando drew in 27,000 people from 98 different nations, with attendance up a huge 30% over last year’s show in Atlanta. While I know I skipped out the last two years in Atlanta, whenever the subject of how this year’s show was compared to Atlanta came up in conversations, everyone said they were glad to be out of Atlanta and hoped IAAPA would never return there. IAAPA will be back in Orlando once again in November 2008 and move the show to Las Vegas for the first time ever in 2009. "

I went on Friday because a) I'm addicted to theme parks and b) my LDI pass got me in for free! Good thing too, if I hadn't gone they wouldn't have that nice, round 27,000 number to throw around ;-)

I ran into a good friend-- Lenny Larsen who's doing amazing for himself as a show designer with Landmark Entertainment Group. It was great to see the amazing things he's up to and he's always good for some life and career advice.

Only in Texas... I wish

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer

"SAN MARCOS, Texas - Mike Guzman and thousands of other students say the best way to prevent campus bloodshed is more guns.

Guzman, an economics major at Texas State University-San Marcos, is among 8,000 students nationwide who have joined the nonpartisan Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, arguing that students and faculty already licensed to carry concealed weapons should be allowed to pack heat along with their textbooks."

For anyone who is actually willing to click this link, I'll be happy to NOT have you on my blog:

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus: http://concealedcampus.org

Buddy B-day

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOSH!



Even though you don't read my blog... asshole.

WYSI-what?

Today's schedule was dominated by a full day of WYSIWYG class. It was decent-- definitely picked up some new tricks.

Some surprising things that WYSIWYG can't do:

• Draw an ellipse
• Create multi-line text
• Save workspace set-ups

I've currently just come from happy hour at my hotel which includes, wait for it, free beer and wine and a selection of appetizers. Awesome.

My brother's showing up with his new beau around 9pm for dinner and activities. Life is good.



Tomorrow's Itinerary:
Backstage tour of SeaWorld Orlando courtesy of ETC

Arrival

Just arrived in my room in Orlando. Wait, do over...

Just arrived in my Suite in Orlando.

ETC has hooked my up with a room larger than the upper floor of my house in Pittsburgh. Free Wi-Fi, 3 televisions, 2 bathrooms. Awesome. Date/Time of partay to be hosted here TBD.



Tomorrow's Itinerary:
9am-5pm WYSIWYG Class

Separation of Church and State

Just when you think the Church has the most fucked up news of the day, a government (this time the British one) decides not to be outdone:

"How would you feel about this: Tracking chips in kids' school clothing so that school officials can know their whereabouts during the school day?

Oh, it's happening. Ten students in a secondary school in the United Kingdom are being tracked through RFID implants in their school uniforms in a pilot program. Information Week reports that the kids attend Hungerhill School for ages 11-16 in Edenthorpe, England.

Add the RFID chips to increased video surveillance and fingerprinting of kids, and this is a heavily tracked generation—for safety's sake. That extra peace of mind for adults comes with a heavy loss of privacy for kids."

Buddy Christ

Just when you thought all lawyers were jewish...

"On questions relating to the Bible's treatment of family and morals, one might expect assurance, if not rigidity, from Evangelical Christianity. So, it may surprise many to learn how "live" the topic of divorce remains in Evangelical circles. Last month, the cover story of the monthly Christianity Today was titled "When to Separate What God has Joined: A Closer Reading on the Bible on Divorce." The heated controversy provoked by the story showed how Biblically flexible some Evangelicals can be - especially when God's word seems at odds not just with modern American behavior, but also with simple human kindness.

As the article's author, the British Evangelical scholar David Instone-Brewer, points out, for most of 2,000 years Christians have viewed divorce through two scriptural citations. In Matthew, the pharisees ask Christ, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?" Jesus refers to the Old Testament and then replies, "Whoever divorces a wife, except for sexual indecency, commits adultery." The apostle Paul adds in the book First Corinthians that a Christian is "not bound" to a non-Christian spouse who abandons him. Simple, right?

Instone-Brewer radically reinterprets the first passage using, of all things, quotation marks. The Greek of the New Testament didn't always contain them, and scholars agree that sometimes they must be added in to make sense of it. Instone-Brewer, an expert in Jewish thought during Jesus's era, writes that Christ's interlocutors were not asking him whether there was any cause at all for divorce, but whether he supported something called "any-cause" divorce, a term a little bit like "no-fault" that allowed husbands to divorce wives for any reason at all. Instone-Brewer claims Jesus's "no" was a response to this idea, and that his "except for sexual indecency" condition was not a statement of the sole exemption from God's blanket prohibition, but merely Christ's reiteration of one of several divorce permissions in the Old Testament - one he felt the "any-time" advocates had exaggerated. Finally, Instone-Brewer tallies four grounds for divorce he finds affirmed in both Old and New Testaments: adultery, emotional and sexual neglect, abandonment (by anyone) and abuse."


What a religion.

Countdowns

• T- 33 hours until Accidental Death of an Anarchist opens
• T- 7 days, 4 hours until LDI
• T- 3 weeks until Thanksgiving
• T- 5 weeks, 6 days until Christmas break

Signs

Today I had either a crazy coincidence which "gestalt" is wanting me to consider more important than it really is. Or, as more people would say, had a "sign" that I should do something.

Vague? Yes.

The Broodwich

So I ventured down the dark path yesterday, and that path was the hot dog and grilled cheese sandwich.

I'll cut to the chase. Ultimately, not all that bad, and, in a pinch, (wow thats a lot of commas) its definitely doable. I'm sure its designed for such a purpose. Actually, with some Sterling Vinter's Collection Coastal Shiraz (preferably '02) it would have been classic 1021 Madison Jason*. Those days are over, probably for the best, but its fun to revisit them.

Also last night I made it through the end of LOST Season 1.... for the 4th time in its entirety. Still an amazing series to watch. The Red Sox, yawn, won game 4 to sweep the series, but its been over since they flew out of Logan. More exciting was the 52-7 beat down the Pats layed on the Redskins. Mwahahahaha.

*1021 = J's house junior and senior year at SU, along with some crazies by the names of Erin, Kristie, Christy, and occasionally Katie.

Bruegers

One would think that a bagel with cream cheese and a medium coffee would represent at least half of all sales at Brueger's-- a breakfast place I've gone to since sophomore year at Syracuse. You would think they would not charge $4.04 for it. Four cents? Really? I can't count the number of times I've been handed 96 cents in change. Infuriating.

Also, there was a man in line this morning who just looked tired and defeated by life. I hope for all of us that we never become that guy...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
Revolving at 900 miles and hour...

Bullets

• Red Sox up 3-0. Could tonight be the night I add another Pennant to the victory wall?
• Kennywood again last night. Fun, but a bit crowded and rainy.
• Huge amount of work to get done this week... the next three weeks actually. But I can't complain... its worse for some.
• Turned on the TV to Jerry Springer accidentally the other day to a highlights show of white trash fights, the teaser for tomorrow: "Thank you for the kids but now I'm gay." Awesome. I'm amazed the human race ever made it past the discovery of fire.
• Load-in for Accidental Death of an Anarchist starts tomorrow. Tech next weekend (speaking of business and accidents).

Obstacle Calendar

In the last two days several people have asked if I'm on Oracle Calendar-- that way we could have it tell us when we were mutually available to meet. I'm sorry, I refuse to have my life scheduled by a machine-- I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself thank you. It reminds me of the song "In the Year 2525," Oracle Calendar being the first step.

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lie
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms hangin' limp at your sides
Your legs got nothin' to do
Some machine's doin' that for you

In the year 6565
You won't need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God's a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
"Guess it's time for the judgement day"

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say "I'm pleased where man has been"
Or tear it down, and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew

Now man's reign is through
But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away

Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah

Got your starbucks? This is gonna be a long one and worth taking the time to actually read, at least, I think it is.

It's amazing, we get older and forget the lessons of our youth-- tiny drops in an ocean of knowledge. But as the tired out saying goes, "everything I ever needed to learn in life I learned in kindergarten." Well, on my recent trip to Disneyland I discovered some lessons-- now, I was going to say rediscovered, but the lessons never hit me until this point in my life-- from a surprising source. And so, I offer this version of the saying: "everything I ever needed to learn in life I learned on Splash Mountain." Okay, maybe not everything, but some things that the post-college me is finally able to hear.

Speaking of hearing, if you're not familiar with the songs you can listen along while you read the lyrics here: http://www.disneythemes.com/splash_mountain_music_video.htm Just select your browser (IE or Netscape / Firefox).

Let's start with a step by step journey of the ride, seen through 23-year-old eyes. The queue is themed to the old south, aged timber and such, with old wooden signs that say things like:

"Everybody has a laughing place-- trouble is, most don't bother to find it."

and just below it another sign: "...and where it is for one it mightn't be for another."

Later in the line, you meet our protagonist, Brer Rabbit, sitting in his home singing a song to himself. Shortly there after you load onto the "log" and begin the ride. It starts off as a merry journey through picturesque hills, and after a short flume you're presented with many animatronic figures singing the first of three main themes:

How do you do?
Mighty pleasant greetin'
How do you do?
Say it when you're meetin'
How do you do?
With every one repeatin'
Pretty good sure as you're born.

What goes up is sure to come down.
A penny lost is a penny found.
How do you do? And here's a hearty back
A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

How do you do? Fine.
How are you? How you come on?
Pretty good sure as you're born.

Stop jumpin' around,
You'll run out of breath!
Why don't you sit back
And calm yourself?

You can hurry on now if you must.
We'll do what we like, 'cause...
That suits us.

Its then that we round the corner to see Brer Rabbit, getting ready to leave home with a friend, singing his own version of the song:

I'm lookin for a little more adventure.
I'm headed for a little bit of fun
I'm hopin for a little more excitement.
Time to be movin' along.

This is where I first realized that there is much more to this ride than a jolly romp through gentile south. Our hero is content, but not excited, and is searching out for something bigger. The identification I currently have with that-- or maybe had with that not all that long ago-- is stifling. But, as with real life, danger lurks around the corner.

Next we meet Brer Bear and Brer Fox who want to eat our lovable little friend (that books title is "How to Catch a Rabbit"). Through several failed attempts to catch him we see the oblivious Brer Rabbit having a great time, not knowing the danger that lies stalking him:

Everybody's got a Laughing Place
A Laughing Place to go-ho-ho.
Take your frown
Turn it upside-down
And you'll find yours
We know-ho-ho!
Honey and rainbows on our way.
We laugh because our work is play.
Boy are we in luck!
We're visiting our Laughing Place
Yuk Yuk Yuk Yuk Yuk! Ho Ho Ho,

Everybody's got a Laughing Place
A Laughing Place to go-ho-ho.
Take a smile there
For a while and
You'll find yours we know-ho-ho!

But eventually the Fox and the Bear through sheer force overtake our bunny friend. Two vultures inform us that the laughing times are over:

Time to be turning around,
If only you could,
If you finally found your laughing place,
How come you aren't laughing?
So your looking for a laughing place, eh?
We'll show you a laughing place.

We then go up the lift hill and see Brer Rabbit on a skewer with the shadow of Brer Fox's teeth about to clamp down on him, when in a moment of cleverness Brer Rabbit, in the finest tradition of Huck Finn, says "You can eat me Brer Fox, but whatever you do PLEASE don't throw me into that briar patch." Which of course, he does, as we in the log take the plummet down. Once we round the corner and re-enter the show building, we, as Brer Rabbit's POV are welcomed back with a huge celebration, and the classic Zip-A-Dee-Do-Dah song.

Zip-Ah-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-Ah-Dee-Ay
My oh my what a wonderful day
Welcoming back Brer Rabbit today
We always knew that he'd get away
He's had enough of moving on now
It's where he's gone and regretted
The briar patch is where he's headed

Brer Fox and Bear get whats comin to them in the form of an alligator, and we are reintroduced to Brer Rabbit, now singing a different tune:

Zip-Ah-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-Ah-Dee-Ay
Home Sweet Home is the Lesson Today
Zip-Ah-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-Ah-Dee-Ay
I'm glad to be here and I'm sure gonna stay
I'm through with moving on now...

So, at 23, I learned that Splash Mountain is a ride about contentment, and whether you really do need to always be looking for the next adventure.

The final sign, not prominent but not hidden, at the exit reads:

"You can't run away from trouble.... ain't no place that far."

Wow. Words could not be spoken that relate more to me right now. I don't even yet know how to emotionally resolve all this. Seriously. I've lost a lot to hopefully gain something in the future which may never materialize and may suck once I get there. The people closest to me are also on their own trek, so its not like I'm the one who 'went away,' but it still makes me miss them a lot. It gets tougher and tougher each time through to find a place, settle there, and then just when you get to know it pull the plug and start all over again. Oh, in a related note, we never discover what happens to Brer Rabbits friend Brer Turtle... the one who started the journey with him. Sigh.

Last year this was a 'non-place' for me that I simply wanted to get out of. That's much less true now, but ultimately there's nothing for me in Pittsburgh. So at least one more "adventure" remains... and I'm certainly going to think a lot harder about the coming one than I did the current one.

In our tale Brer Rabbit makes it out, and I will to, both of us a little older, wiser, and maybe wearier for the experience but hopefully a little more prepared for the future.

Lock, Stock, and Barrel

By special request...

Top Amusement/Theme Park Halloween Overlays:

1) Kennywood
2) Disneyland
3) Cedar Point
4) Disney's California Adventure

Theme Park Rankings

Every theme park I've ever been to, in order of awesomeness:


1) Disneyland

---- huge seperation ----

2) Disney's Animal Kingdom
3) Islands of Adventure
4) Magic Kingdom
5) Epcot
6) Busch Gardens Tampa
7t) Disney's California Adventure
7t) Disney's Hollywood Studios (AKA Disney-MGM Studios)
9) Universal Studios Florida
10) Universal Studios Hollywood

W...T...F...

J.K. Rowling Outs Hogwarts CharacterSaturday October 20 6:41 AM ET

"Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay. J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall.

After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause. "


Ummmm, ok... sure. So we're obsessing about a fictional character in concluded childrens series' sexual orientation now? I'm so over it.

It Never Rains in Southern California

So here I am in Chicago, no... wait, I take that back. Do over.


So here I am in fucking O-Hare. I hate O-Hare. I italics then bold hate it... that's right. The only thing that makes it particularly special today, other than my connection actually being within 2 miles of my arrival concourse, is that on the cover of the USA TODAY I just purchased O-Hare is prominently depicted. Let me see if the article is online, it is, awesome:

Most fake bombs missed by screeners

Subtitle: 75% not detected at LAX; 60% at O-Hare. LINK

I fucking hate O-Hare. BUT, my connection, knock on wood, is on time and by the time you're probably reading this I should be in Disneyland. Thank God for some R'nR, I need it. I especially need it after a day yesterday that felt like a week. At least it ended with some LOST.

Whole New Tank

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fish might not have eyelids, but they do sleep, and some suffer from insomnia, scientists reported on Monday.

California scientists studying sleep disorders in humans found that some zebrafish, a common aquarium pet, have a mutant gene that disrupts their sleep patterns in a way similar to insomnia in humans.

Zebrafish with the mutant gene slept 30 percent less than fish without the mutation. When they finally drifted off they remained asleep half as long as the normal fish, the researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine said.

Bullets (Stream of Consciousness)

• TV Workshop went great
• The first 4 episodes of LOST are amazing
• LA in 4 days
• Making a mix for the flight
• Listening to music more lately
• Song right now: Josh music, track 6

We'll Fix it in Post

Today begins the TV Workshop-- an interesting but weekend absorbing master class in television lighting. I'm looking forward to learning something of the craft... and craft services (I know, awesome segue).

More signifigantly this officially begins my month of hell, as far as scheduling goes anyway. There's some fun in there-- California and LDI, but the hecticness will not end until then. Add to that extraneous stressors (people paying close attention know what I'm talking about here) and life's a little crazy for a bit. Partly because of this, and partly because I'm retarded, yesterday I dropped the first class I've ever dropped... seriously, ever. It does NOT make me happy to have done this, but the subject matter is far from what I excel in and I do not want to deal with the ramifications of struggling to get my grade up to where it needs to be right now. Its funny that the first "C" I ever would have gotten would come in the only place where that's a failing grade.

Robbie Williams

I had originally intended this to be a theme park review of Cedar Point. However, Cedar Point was so unusually packed that I think I'll hold off on that review until I can more properly evaluate it. We averaged 90 minutes of waiting per ride because there were over 40,000 people in the park by 2pm and it only got busier as the day wore on. The one slight disappointment is that its not a theme park-- its an amusement park. Amazing coasters, but next to no themeing to speak of.

But one thing really knocked my socks off-- the world famous Millennium Force coaster. That initial 310' drop gets you moving at 93 miles and hour. Woah. It was absolutely exhilarating... beyond words. Despite my heights wimpiness I was able to go hands up after the initial drop. Part of this was because the ride was so smooth you felt like you were flying. This was all heightened by the fact that I was riding it in the dark-- right after midnight to be exact. So the new Top-5 roller coaster list looks like this:

1) Millennium Force (Cedar Point)

2) Dueling Dragons - Ice (Islands of Adventure)

3) Sheikra (Busch Gardens Tampa)

4) Hulk (Islands of Adventure)

5) Superman Ride of Steel (Six Flags New England)

Score One

First perfect day in a long time... check.

Schedule

• Last day at the Public today.
• Phantom Fright Night at Kennywood tonight.
• Cedar Point tomorrow.
• LOTS of work on Sunday morning.
• Patriots rout--errr-- play the Browns on Sunday
• Some more work Sunday night.
• Monday-- phone call with awesome job offer, J leaves building screaming "See you all in Hell!"
• Tuesday-- J checks caller ID, realizes it was a prank.

GOOOOOOOAL!

Patriots had an amazing game last night, next week is another cupcake before we get a real match in Dallas. Anyway, here's a non-career based list of things I need to do before I die:

• See a Patriots game in Foxboro (see, not a complete nonsequitor)
• Ski in the Rockies (Josh, I'm looking in your direction)
• Ski in the Alps
• Drive across the US East-West (North-South is already checked off)
• Go wine tasting in Napa
• Go to the following places, in no particular order: Norway, Italy, Paris, New Zealand, Australia, Japan. Currently my passport has el-zero stamps in it... sad.
• SCUBA dive
• See at least one major league baseball game in every ballpark in the country
• Go on one of those jungle zip-line things
• See "perpetual twilight" on the cusp of the Artic circle in winter

I'll take suggestions on things that need to be added to the list.

Bullets

• Why are microphones with a really narrow pickup pattern called "Shotgun" mics? Shouldn't they be rifle mics? The NRA has a lot of work to do in the sound design community.
• Yay! 500 hits
• For those of you keeping score at home-- the appliation is no longer online. Now the truly painful waiting begins.

and...

• HAPPY BIRTHDAY DANA!!!

Wine Snob

Fun fact for today:

AP - Paris "Critics who praise the "complexity" of red Burgundy and Champagne are on target.

A team of French and Italian researchers has mapped the genome of the pinot noir grape, used to make bubbly and many red wines from France's Burgundy region and around the world — and it has about 30,000 genes in its DNA. That's more than the human genome, which contains some 20,000 to 25,000 genes."

The Boys from Syracuse

Today I start assisting at the Public on Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. It's a play about a guy from Syracuse lost in a strange place...... hmmmm, fitting.

In other news, last night there was some enjoyable craziness. Tequila and Wii were involved... okay-- Tequila, Wii, and one REALLLLLY drunk friend. It was spectacular.

Long Distance Dedication

I wonder if it makes me extremely odd that I can look back on certain events, some seemingly minor, and note that they were a major turning point for a part of me.

Case in point-- the last day of my freshmen year at college Chris Rummel (shout-out) gave me his sound design mix-CD for the show The Shape of Things along with another CD, simply titled The Inspiration. Tonight I shared some of my favorites from those CDs with a friend and realized that those CDs changed my taste in music. It didn't happen all at once, or even noticeibly, but that's clearly where the inflection point lies in what I listen to. Another small change happend a couple years after that when Talene (shout-out) less then subtley began a music education program for me.

It probably has something to do with my unique blend of nostalgia, snap-shot memory, and overly cognitive personality. What I do know is this, there's something special to me about music I've gained through my friends. From "New Music Delivery" in the middle of a Syracuse winter to "SU Mix" on the long journey back from UMass Amherst, I have a photo-album of music and the memories of the close friends I first heard it with.

Bullets

• Fortune Cookie yesterday: "Be prepared to be spontaneous tomorrow." Now, I ordered the food at 10PM but didn't open the cookie until 12:30AM, so does that apply to today or Monday?
• Does anyone else find it really strange when people 'come out' via the Interested In line item on facebook? What kind of society are we living in?
• I finally got to re-watch Gattaca. Great movie.
• Immediately after Gattaca, to get in the Halloween mood, we tried to watch Open Water 2 on FEARnet (Comcast's free horror movies on demand). Needless to say it was horrible, we ended up watching the majority of it in fast-forward, only stopping long enough to watch the hecklible parts. If you've never seen anything on FEARnet it's truly incredible how much of the screen is taken up by gigantic branding graphics every 7 minutes.
• I reread part of a book I have, Modern British Playwrights, which includes the sentence: "Both playwrights are indebted to the groundbreaking contribution to world drama that the Irish playwright and Nobel Prize-winning Samuel Beckett made in combining existential philosophy-- an ontological vision of life as solitary, random, and absurd-- and an antinaturalistic concept of dramaturgy, the prime example of which is Waiting for Godot (1953)." Which clocks in at 51 words. Damn.
• Google's spell-checker doesn't recognize the word dramaturgy . Sad.

Salvation lies within

Great quotes from Shawshank Redeption

"Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side."

"Same old shit, different day "

"I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it."

"You could argue he'd done it to curry favor with the guards. Or, maybe make a few friends among us cons. Me, I think he did it just to feel normal again, if only for a short while. "

"I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright and when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice, but still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend. "



Shout-out to Goose (even though you don't read my blog)-- I miss ya buddy.

AutoCAD Audio

So I'm sure someone who knows more about sound than me will tell me that either a) this is a completely rediculous idea or b) they thought of this 15 years ago... but until then I want to believe that I've stumbled upon something mildly brilliant.

Today in Sound 1 we were going over sampling and bit rates, and how they're basically the x and the y, respectively, of a plotted line graph of a waveform. Having gone over this before my mind drifted to the work I have left for my AutoCAD class. At a certain point I was thinking about a 3D extrusion path I have yet to draw and the spline I would have to make for it.

It was at this moment that I realized the way we currently capture digital audio is no longer efficient. Imagine a spline in AutoCAD, the spline is constucted by certain specific points and a "curve of best fit" between them. So-- what if instead of a matrix of positional values (x,y) to replicate a sound wave we use vectors instead? Gone would be hard, articifial caps on frequency response as well as the course jumps between values because now a true unbroken linear waveform has been created based on a mathmatical model. Better still, we can enhance the model based on decades of work in calculus, which for those of you (ok, all of you) who aren't as dorky as me is the study of the rates of change of curves.

Okay, let the flamming begin. In a related story, the "J.Read is a huge nerd" t-shirts go on sale soon.

For the Record

Just for the record, for those of you who made fun of my, uhhhhhh, bachelor-lery eating habits at SU (especially you folks from back at 1021 Madison)........

Last night a friend of mine made himself a grilled cheese AND hot dog sandwich.

That is all.

LOTR Marathon

I finally got around to rewatching the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I've seen the first two enough that I didn't pick up on a lot of new things, though I did change my opinion on what a few small things might mean. I did discover a lot in the third film, however, and though it continues to be my least favorite, it grew on me a little.

One Step at a Time

I grew up a little bit today.



I applied to the job of my dreams and found out that my best friend since I was 15 years old won't make it home for Thanksgiving this year. Said job application included lots of much appreciated help from some new close friends here. Now I try to not think about it at all for a month.


Sigh. Whoever said the early twenties are really stressful was NOT bullshitting.

He Had Everything Except Desire

Great Quotes from the Movie GATTACA:

"I was never more certain of how far away I was from my goal than when I was standing right beside it. "

"You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back."

"There's no gene for fate."

"It's funny, you work so hard, you do everything you can to get away from a place, and when you finally get your chance to leave, you find a reason to stay."

Vincent: "A year is a long time."
Irene: "Not so long. Just once around the sun."

Fortune Cookie

The fortune cookie I got today at Lulu's (thanks ETC) read:

Now is a good time to expand your repetoire of skills and knowledge.


I've been on a run of good fortune cookies lately, the last one I got was:

Step away from the power position for one day.

Good advice for a lighting designer don't you think?

Weird Science

Today's little post is about something I've been really interested in for a while now, and decided its time to share this interesting combination of human behavior, collectivism, and the stock market. They're called prediction markets:

Prediction markets are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. Assets are created whose final cash value is tied to a particular event (e.g., will the next US president be a Republican) or parameter (e.g., total sales next quarter). The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. Other names for prediction markets include information markets, decision markets, idea futures, event derivatives, and virtual markets. (Wikipedia)

Okay interesting right? Trading stocks in future events. But here's the thing, the little fuckers are painfully accurate. Ever watch a school of fish? Notive how at a given time many of them are darting in different directions. But once in a while enough of them will dart them same direction until that hit some behavioral critical mass and the entire group will turn. Computers are very good at distributed processing, but here we have evidence that organic behavior can use that same principal. A little more from Popular Science:

The first and most famous prediction market, established at the University of Iowa business school in 1988, was designed to forecast the outcome of that year's presidential election—which it did, with remarkable precision. Anyone could join the market and buy or sell propositions such as "What percent of the popular vote will George H.W. Bush receive in the presidential election?" Traders who thought Bush would get 60 percent or more of the vote would buy the shares if they were less than $60. Traders who disagreed would sell. The market price reflected the consensus view, which turned out to be more accurate than any of the six polls released in the week before the election. But if predicting a landslide Bush I victory over Michael Dukakis seems like fish-in-a-barrel stuff, consider that the Iowa Electronic Markets have correctly predicted the winner of the popular vote in every national election since then, and with greater accuracy than the Gallup poll in all but one of those years. It achieved this success by relying not on the oracle-like knowledge of a single "expert" or small group of pundits, but on the power of the market to efficiently gather the intelligence of traders and agglomerate them into collective wisdom.

So much for the "great unwashed." I've been reflecting a lot on this concept lately and considering what it means for us as social creatures and, in the micro, our own individual behavior and how that's effected by larger systems. If you'd like to read a little more on this phenonmemon, including more examples of its accuracy surf over to Popular Science's website. They've got their own predictions market, the PPX, and a great article about the science behind it (link).

Clever Publicity

London's Harrods hires cobra to guard $120,000 shoes

"LONDON (AFP) - To their high society owners, a pair of haute couture shoes can be a precious thing.

But to guard a 62,000 pound (120,000 dollar) pair of ruby- sapphire- and diamond-encrusted Rene Caovilla sandals at their London launch, retailer Harrods went to extreme lengths: bringing in a live Egyptian cobra to patrol the shoe counter.

Whether hiring a poisonous snake is, strictly speaking, the most effective means of guarding precious footwear might be a moot point with security experts.
But it makes for a pretty effective photo opportunity.

A spokeswoman for Harrods admitted that the cobra had been hired strictly for Monday's launch of the shoe collection.

"The snake has now been returned to its owner," she said.
So no need to fear snake bites at the shoe counter, then.

"Not unless you're a burglar," the spokeswoman said."

Bullets

• Yes, this is a knowing knock on a certain professors blog series titled "ellipses"... if I like this format it may contine.
• In related news I no longer link to said professor's blog, but I decline to comment on why.
• Another weekend another $2500 software program to learn. This time its ESP Vision, its just like wysiwyg except its totally different.
• Should I put WYSIWYG in ALL CAPS in my resume to acknowledge its acronymical state? Or should I call it wysiwyg as their marking department does? Note that all caps is much easier to see. Thoughts?
• I lit the seniors class's convocation show on Saturday, it was fun, plus now I can say I've lit naked people.
• After said convocation there was mucho drinko. How much drinking you ask? Let's just say that I ended the night at Dale's watching The Neverending Story at 3AM. Yeah.
• The NFL Season has officially started and the Brady-Moss combination is already paying huge dividends. It's gonna be a great season. LET'S GO PATS!!!

Back in the Saddle

First week has come and gone, went very well overall. We're having a memorial day BBQ tomorrow, partly to celebrate Joel's new 40" HDTV. This has brought in turn the purchase of a component video cable for the Wii along with 2new Wiimotes and Mario Party 8. Yep... gonna be some good times. Also on the horizon is a Pittsburgh Pirates game this Friday vs. the Cubs and lighting design for the CMU convocation festivities on Saturday. Quick shout-out to mom and dad who are at a Jimmy Buffet concert at Foxboro Stadium right now!

Latest WYG renderings:

Superbad

SUPERBAD: Go see this movie. If possible, see it with a buzz on, but by all means go see this movie. This is especially true for anyone who was mildly to extremely dorky in high school (yes, that's most of you). It is consistently funny throughout while maintaining storyline and provides a nice mix of juvenile and self-referential humor.

I went to see it with a group of other CMU grad students after our first day of class, and school couldn't have started better. I'm especially looking forward to the major project in lighting class. After a morning and early afternoon filled with classes I went home and continued teaching myself WYSIWYG until the "Welcome back BBQ" at school. From there it was a short design-grads meeting and some more WYSIWYG training before heading out to SouthSide Works' Irish pub for some drinks before the free Popcorn and $5 admission ticket special at the cinema there. Both 10:05 Superbads sold out and seeing the movie in a crowded theater definitely adds to the laughter.

In the News

Thanks to the ETC LDI Scholarship I'm on most of the major lighting magazines' websites:

* Live Design
* Light and Sound America
* Projection, Lights, and Staging News

Pretty cool.

Trip Report Days 2-5

Highlights:




* Portofino Bay Hotel at Universal Studios -- this hotel is absolutely gorgeous with several small alleyways and piazzas to explore. It features several restaurants on the main piazza with a wine bar that we ate at one evening during sunset, breathtaking.

* Blue Man Group -- this production has very much the same content as their other shows, but a lot of the material has been tightened. It was the first time my parents and brother saw BMG and I always have a lot more fun when I bring new people to see their shows.




* Mythos Restaurant at Islands of Adventure -- I was drawn to a sign that said "Theme Park Insider's Best Theme Park Restaurant 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007" otherwise I would have missed it, but after looking at the menu on Monday my family decided to make reservations and give it a go on Tuesday. The restaurant has different executive chefs seasonally and August through September featured a "Celebration of Mushrooms" which was right up my alley. I had the wild mushroom soup appetizer, filet mignon with wild mushroom mashed potatoes, and "desert shots" of tiramisu and chocolate cake. OUTSTANDING all around.

* The Mummy Ride -- great combination dark ride/ roller coaster well conceived, executed, and (most importantly) lit.


I obviously had a great time at both parks, though Islands of Adventure needs the Harry Potter upgrade, nothing has been added since the park opened back in 1999. I hope they don't touch the Mythos Restaurant as its in the section of the park that will become Potterland since I've only just discovered it. The older park will do well to have its new Simpsons ride as the far end of the park is wanting as well. The other places we ate of note are the Thisty Fish Wine Bar at the Portofino, Margaritaville, and Pat O'Brians, very different from each other but all very enjoyable.

I also saw Jonathan Lester and the Boston Red Sox vs. the Tampa Bay Devil Rays last night and we won by the skin of our teeth but the lead on the Yankees is back up to 6. Tonight we go back and see Dice-K before I head home tomorrow morning.

Trip Report Day 1

Highlights:

* J bats a thousand at TF Green Airport amoung other things finding a hiding ticket kiosk so we could skip an hour line to check in.
* Smooth Flight to Tampa
* Pirate Ship Booze Cruise! (damn straight)
* Hangin at the beach


People Drunk Dialed Today:
* J.Cro
* Goose

J Gets a New Toy

I decided to use some of my saved fun money on a new toy:

That's a 24 inch 1920x1200 monitor / television (by way of its native res and HDMI inputs). Let me just say that CAD and WYSIWYG are never gonna be the same. I can view an entire plot in a legible size without any zooming at all.

WHYB?... WYSIWYG

Where Have You Been? Why, spending all my free time learning the massive program that is WYSIWYG. Sorry to any blog faithful who have been deeply saddened by the recent dearth of entries (I know, who am I kidding right?). But I am happy o report that it's been worth it to get my head around this program and get a jump on school as we're learning a different lighting pre-vis program this semester (ESP Vision for the light geeks out there) and I've gained an important job skill. Here are some quick renderings I've done (note that because I'm using a demo copy, they're not as photo realistic as they would normally be).

PS> No one tell Alex Koziara or the Thematics people that the lightbox is now totally and unquestionable antiquated. It's like someone invented the typewriter 2 years before Windows came out.










In other news I had a great year at camp... almost certainly my last. I announced my retirement before the last performance of the Shakespeare camp and got a big hug from all the kids. I, of course, was a big friggin girl about the whole thing, but it's sad to know I have to move on from a job that's been so much fun and so rewarding for the last four years.

Modern Journalism

"I cry because I will laugh if I do not..."

Itinerary

Yesteray was my dad's birthday (Happy Birthday dad!) and we got to talking about the trips we're each slated to take in the coming months. My mom mentioned that she'd like me to come to California with her and dad when she presents at a conference. So it looks like I'll probably be going on the following trips in the next six months:

August: Tampa / Universal Orlando for a week to visit Shaneo.

October: Disneyland in Anaheim, CA for 3 days. Mom is presenting at a conference out there, so it only costs the airfare.

November: LDI in Orlando courtesy of ETC.

January: Caribbean-- the crazy cheap cruise I mentioned earlier (4 days/ 220 bucks). I can email the link if anyone's interested, the more the merrier!


In other news since the last update: Washed Away theater camp's pirate musical turned out really well, we've started production on Much Ado About Nothing which opens next Friday. Hard to believe the summer is winding down. I still haven't seen the Simpsons Movie, grrr. So far WYSISYG is fairly easy to pick up already knowing CAD, Vectorworks, Lightwright, and 3ds Max.

Cruel Intentions

WARNING: Harry Potter fans should skip today's post.

Friday at camp we were playing "It's Tuesday" a game in which everyone gets in a circle, the person to your left looks at you, says a true statement (like, "it's Tuesday" or "There's a 'B' on your cap") and you have to ridiculously overreact to it. Being near the end of the line I had a long time to decide what I would say. I mulled over saying "Harry Potter dies at the end of the book" or some other revealing tidbit of information I gleaned from picking up a friend's copy of the last Harry Potter turning to the epilogue and reading the last 5 pages. In the end I decided against it, the Potter fans would freak for real-- whether what I told them was true or not. However, I did see this shirt online today and despite it's cruelty, it's witty yet cavalier indifference more than makes up for it.

Summer Slowdown

So the true dog days of summer are here and I'm trying to milk the most of out them before I go back to the death camp... I MEAN grad school. I promise a true update soon, but for now just enjoy my geekiness by knowing I just took the Which Cirque du Soleil Vegas Production Are You? quiz and apparently I'm KA.

What's Important

Today Jon Lester pitches for the Boston Red Sox against the Cleveland Indians, his second season pitching in the major leagues. What's not important is that a 20-something year old is making millions and has the job of a lifetime. What is important is that little over a year ago, after a minor car accident Lester went to the hospital complaining of what he thought was related chest pain. Days later the tests came back... cancer. Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma to be exact. On top of the world, in the middle of his rookie season for one of the greatest baseball teams in the country he was cut down by the fragility of our mortality. One year later he has battled through the chemo, the tiredness, the pain and has gone back to doing what he loves to do, the only thing he knows. And for that bravery and perseverance I salute him. Sometimes sports, with all the bullshit about Balco, and Barry Bonds, and steroids, and scandal can still inspire us all. We should all use this occasion to stop, enjoy everything, and appreciate everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't.


I love you dad.

... Is What You Get

Today I began reading the 400+ page manual for Cast Lighting's WYSIWYG software (What You See Is What You Get) to have a chance at a job I probably have a .7% chance of getting. Sigh. For those of you not in the lighting world, it's a very large program that allows you to create an entire lighting design in a computer. It creates accurate renderings based on any light board that you attach to your computer. In a related note, one of my the professors at CMU may be working on the next Cirque show.

Camp is going well. Living in Newport is cool, its a little like being on vacation all the time. THe only bad part is that I'm spending a fortune on food. Josh is off for the weekend for his girlfriend's birthday.

Movies and Plays

I don't have time to write a full review but Transformers is a perfect summer movie. If you're in the mood for something fun and loud you should definitely check it out. I'm hoping to catch Harry Potter (shut up) sometime this week, and after that the only movie I'm looking forward to it The Simpsons. I'm pretty ready for the fall movie season to start, bringing with it the inevitable Oscar-buzz-generating artistic films.

The first theater camp production, The Taming of the Shrew, opened last night. There were a few minor technical glitches, but those are par for the course given that we're letting campers run audio and atmospherics and our timetable allows for only two run-throughs before open. Overall it went extremely well and seemed to be well recieved. Afterwards some of us headed out for a few drinks and finally got to catch up.

If anyway wants to come chill in sunny Newport (and its actually nice here, not like what I usually mean when I say that) give me a hollar.

Theatre Camp

The dog days of summer and the increased business of working at camp have resulted in the blog entry slowdown. First show opens tomorrow, Teen Shakespeare camp is performing The Taming of the Shrew. Lighting is relatively simple but it's set in Italy so there's some fun Italian sunset templatey goodness. There are practicals on the two rotating scenic pieces, which I'm also excited about.

Extremely exciting, however, is the musical camp. They started on Monday and have already picked the theme of their show-- pirates. This of course led to "Counselor Dress Like A Pirate Day" yesterday, pictures were taken, if I get my hands on them I'll add them to the post.

Finally, anyone want to take a cruise in January? I found a $250 4-day Carnival Cruise to the Bahamas and I'm looking for a friends. Anyhoo, that's all for now.

Intentionally Vague

For those of you keeping score at home, the phone call finally happend last night. The only apprenticeship available for "that show" is in the automations department. So I'm obviously extremely disappointed. Bummer.

Happy 4th of July

Happy (belated) 4th of July! In the true spirit of the holiday, here is a powerful, moving political commentary on the state of the American government, that I implore you all to watch.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Okay, in the "you've got to be fricken kidding me" department...

Livescience.com: "Do you have a really bad memory, or past heartache, that you would prefer to forget? Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled. In a new study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with therapy to "dampen" memories of trauma victims. "

http://news.yahoo.com

The memory I'd most like to forget is from last night when I celebrated out independence just a little too much.

Goodnight, and good luck (?)

Ten Little Indians opens tomorrow. It looks fantastic, its the happiest I've been with a piece since A Little Night Music opened at SU a little over a year ago. There are fireworks here in Cortland tonight and I'm looking forward to those, especally since it may be my last night here. If all goes well with "preview" this afternoon I'll be looking to drive off into that big yellow sunrise tomorrow morning. Of course, this is all tentative since my master electrician unfortunately fell off a ladder and sprained her ankle pretty badly yesterday. She'll be okay, but hang and focus for the next show will be tough.

But either tomorrow morning or late evening I'm off to summer job #2, at theater camp in Newport, Rhode Island. I'm living right on the beach with my best friend 1/2 mile from work and 1 1/2 miles from downtown Newport. So, obviously, I'm thrilled. I will actually miss Cortland a bit, I've had a good time with the folks here.

It may be a few days until the next entry, Ive got a busy couple of days ahead, and I'm not sure what my internet situation will be in Newport. Speaking of the blog, this morning, my counter had 148 unique visitors and 420 "hits"... tee-hee. Yes, I'm actually twelve years old.

Ain't It Cool?

Random cool things from the interweb:

Flash Cartoon: Animator vs. Animation
http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/34244097/

Bizarre News: Law requires New Mexico to grow its own pot (Associated Press)
http://www.newsone.ca/hinesbergjournal/stories/index.php?action=fullnews&id=22351

Fun Fact: Saturday's Full Moon Offers Strange Illusion
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070629/sc_space/saturdaysfullmoonoffersstrangeillusion

Change-over for my last Cortland Rep show tonight. Newport, RI in only a few days :-)

Ratatouille Review

Disney-Pixar's Ratatouille

Ratatouille (rat-a-too-ie) is a very strong entry into the stellar Pixar lineup and delivers on the promises made in the trailer. I'll avoid the recap, there are enough of those all over the net, and you are probably familiar with the premise of a rat living in Paris who longs to be a chef. The picture focuses heavily on this main character, Remy the Rat, and this is refreshing for a Pixar film. There are a number of great action sequences, you can almost set your watch to them, as they appear every 7 minutes or so, and though they are clearly there to keep the kiddies awake through all the "book" scenes, are integrated well-enough into the story to be successful. Particularly successful is the water pipe sequence early in the film. There is a great payoff when the camera slowly raises to reveal Paris on a beautiful summer evening.

Another item in the film that was clearly a "problem-solver" is the narrative between Remy, the protagonist, and the famous chef that is the figment of his imagination. Its a tad awkward, but its better than having the main character be silent for 80% if the film. There are a few strange "acting" moments, when things are made overly broad to communicate them more clearly, but not enough to spoil the picture by any means. As always in a Pixar film, the characters are very well developed, believable, and certainly have you rooting for them.

Ultimately, the story is strong, there are many beautiful sequences, and the characters are memorable, but it never achieves the epic of Finding Nemo or The Lion King. Feel free to post what y'all think if you see it.

Odds & Ends: the end credits stylistically look remarkably like the drawings done for Monsters, Inc.; the opening short is like a slapstick version of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs... very entertaining; the original director of Ratatoille was replaced, and some of the "fixes" I refer to above seem like they stem from this change; the title is not that name of the main character, as I thought, but does play an important role in the film; the preview for Pixar's next adventure WALL*E looks great, and even further from the mold then this one.

Mystery Light Revealed

The Mystery Light first reported on two weeks ago has been officially announced. Welcome the High End Systems Showgun:
Not a diminutive light to be sure. Without having the sense of scale of the thing before, I didn't realize that this light is clearly to compete with Martin's newly acquired Big Light range and of course, Syncrolite. The light claims to use a "proprietary, optically accurate polymer microfresnel lens allowing SHOWGUN to produce a true focused hard-edge or a brilliant soft-edge combination." The LEDs can either be custom mixed, mimic the color of the light, or automatically mix its contrasting color. See more at the product's website.


In a personal news, this morning something I thought I'd never see again came to be.
That's right, a completely empty inbox. Those of you who aren't at Carnegie Mellon probably don't truly appreciate what a feat this is, I'm sure once September hits I'll go back to averaging 20 new emails a day. Sigh. But for now, we celebrate!

LDI via ETC for JSR

I've just been informed that I'll be attending LDI this year courtesy of Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc. For those of you who aren't lighting dorks, LDI is the largest convention the lighting industry has and is held every year in Las Vegas or Orlando (it's an Orlando year this time around). I applied for the scholarship way back in March and had completely forgotten about it, so it was certainly a pleasant surprise to find out I had received it yesterday. It includes airfare, meals, hotel, passes, and of course, SWAG. Also really cool is that ETC heavily promotes the scholarship winners online and in national media (Live Design, PLSN, etc...), so just maybe I'll get my name in one of those :-) Also, everyone be sure to support ETC for their generosity, perhaps by purchasing a lovely new Eos:


Trust me, it's way more fun than the BMW you were gonna purchase with that $40k you had lying around. Random thought of the day: while Broadway is busy gushing over a musical about Puberty (Spring Awakening Box Office Ignites Post-Tonys). Here in upstate New York everyone is standing in line to get tickets to a show about the other change, as Menopause: The Musical returns for another smash engagement at Syracuse Stage. What a difference a couple hundred miles can make.

Don't Hassle the HOF

Yesterday, I went to the Baseball Hall of Fame (HOF) with Ellen from the costume shop. First let me say that as a New Englander/New Yorker/Pittsburghhher I couldn't stand being so far from civilization on the two hour drive-- and its only 80 miles away, yeah, THAT rural. Cortland is tha largest town on the trip, we went through towns that in their center had one restaurant and a church.

Anyway, back to the Hall. For the most part it was very well put together. The only weak parts were the "The Art of Baseball" and the multi-media presentation which could be described as "Disney's Epcot presents the Wonder and History of Baseball," the best line from the movie was, I shit you not, "There will always be baseball, because baseball celebrates life." Wow.

The best exhibit, by far, was the collection of materials from the Negro Leagues and the integration of African Americans into baseball. And I say that with no intent to seem politically correct. The exhibit itself was very well set up, with a timeline showing US history above a line showing baseball history, and appropraite artifacts on the wall above the timelines. It had several multimedia kiosks where you could learn more about specific items in the exhibit as well.

Not nearly as groundbreaking, but also interesting were the Babe Ruth section (I never knew that he only ever pitched 5 games for the NY Yankees) and the section on the ballparks and the fans. I didn't get to see Curt Schilling's bloody sock from the 2004 ALCS, don't know if I missed it or if it's no longer there. I would encourage anyone near the area to check it out, even if it means a few hour drive. Next on the agenda is the Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH-- only 2 short hours away once I get back to Pittsburgh.

I Dream of Genie

So, I don't know if it was all the wine and cheese I consumed last night at "Dip Night" (which was amazing by the way). But I had quite the collection of odd dreams, including being questioned by police for haning outside a house the didn't belong to me, and being the architect of a luxy home.

But the prizewinner was about driving around in a fully extended (~35ft.) Genie Lift at night. The dream was a repetition of the same path three times, some of which included roads from my hometown in Somerset, MA, while others were from the dream "backlot" I've developed-- that's right, I've got a whole cache of falsefronts and flats available just for use in crazy dreams. Other highlights from this dream were forgetting to turn the lights on while driving the Genie (yep, it had headlights) and at the finale crashing into a large tree.

Off to Cooperstown later today to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame, full report tomorrow!

Wine Country

Yesterday I went along the Cayuga Wine Trail (in the Finger Lakes region of central New York) with my Mom, up to visit and see one of my shows at Cortand Rep, and her best friend Sue. Most of the vineyards are solid and the scenery is gorgeous.... Speaking of gorges (nice segue, hunh?) we also took some time out for the short hike to Taughannock Falls. First of all, Taughannock has to be my absolute favorite word... Taw-gaaan-ook. If I ever direct a Cirque du Soleil show, this is what it will be called. Not only is it a beautiful waterfall, but it also reminded me of being there with my Syracuse pals just before we graduated, almost exactly a year ago, and all the things that have happened to me since then. I got a little nostalgic/sad at the thought of it, but there've been some really great times since then, and with luck there'll be some great stuff just over the horizon. It was a beautiful day for it, cool without a breeze so walking was fun. Overall it was a great day.

As for the vineyards, in order from worst to best, they were Thirsty Owl (1 star), Lucas Vineyards (1 star), Bellweather Hard Cider (2 stars), Six Mile Creek (2.5 stars), Goose Watch (2.5 stars), Hosmer Winery (3 stars), Americana (4 stars), and the absolute favorite, Buttonwood Grove (5 stars).

The region definitely does best with white wines and wines that are very sweet or very dry. I found the desert wines and chardonnays to be particularly good throughout the day, with honorable mention going to the "Cayuga Whites" which are made by a special grape bred at Cornell University, specifically for the region. With that said, drum roll please, and the 2007 Wine Tour picks are (fumbles around with envelope)...........

Buttonwood Miss Kassie
Buttonwood Reserve Chardonney
Goose Watch Classic Cream Sherry
Six Mile Creek Reserve Chardonnay

Honorable Mention:
Americana Sweet Rosie and Americana Cayuga White

Industry News

Color Kinetics, innovator in the LED products market, has been purchased by Philips. I am not surprised at all by the transaction, I fully expected it to happen, but I am surprised by the timing... I thought we were still two years away from seeing this company swallowed up. My guess is that the recent legislation in Europe and Australia to eliminate the use of incandescent fixtures helped push the time frame on this one. It also makes sense that Philips wanted to get a jump on this before the industry heavyweight General Electric got into the mix (for the record, GE's market capitalization is $400 Billion... yep, that's a B).

MORE: http://livedesignonline.com/news/color_kinetics_acuisition_philips/

There Goes the Neighborhood

The Tony's are going to the dogs. That's right, those slovenly half-wit technicians commonly referred to as "Sound Designers" are now eligible for not one, but two Tony Awards (best play and best musical). Clearly we simply need to placate the poor folks' inferiority complex by making them feel equal to the big boys. I guess I can stomache Sound Design as a category, I have seen a solid half-dozen productions where it actually felt like design (KA, LOVE, and Lestat come to mind). I do think it would have been better to have one Tony for Sound Design (musical/ non-musical together) and the other for Music Composition for a Straight Play, but that's splitting hairs. Let's just pray that Projections Design and Hair/Make-up Design aren't next-- it's getting crowded in the TONY row at tech meetings.

Live Design Article on the Inclusion of Sound Design

In all seriousness, here's hoping that recognition of sounds helps further the area, much as it did for lighting design which also started being recognized (1970) before it fully found itself.

1 out of 3 Ain't Bad

I get to recue How the Other Half Loves todaybecause of the electrical storm we had yesterday. For most of the day we were down to one phase of our three phase power. We got the rest back just in time to run the preview, only to discover that two of the four dimmers are seriously pissed off. After some repatching we at least had a show with frontlight. I'm more over than I can tell you. And that's before we lost a phase again during a second lightning storm at the end of the show.

To make it worse the important phone call I alluded to earlier got pushed back some indefinite length of time... sad. Starting to wonder if it might not actually happen. Today's agenda includes bringing the two cranky dimmers in for diagnostics/repair and recueing the show collapsed into two dimmers. Where's the booze?

Your... Ghost Host

Your Cadaverous Palor Betrays and Aura of Foreboding.

Look familiar? All I could think to myself when I walked in to the 1890s house in Cortland, New York was the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. Sadly, the staff had no sense of theatricality and denied up and down that not only was the place not haunted, but they lived on the third floor and nothing creepy ever happens there. What a bummer. All I can say is that with a little flair they could make way more then $3 for students and $5 for adults when their open between 1-4pm on weekdays. So what exactly were we paying for if not a creepy haunted house? A house built by the inventor of screens.... that's right, metal screens. The house did have some intriguing architecture and would be incredibly lavish is built today.
In other news, I've got an extremely important phone call to make soon... Am I Ready?

Mystery Light

Seems High End Systems is trying to generate some buzz factor by slowly leaking out information about their first new moving yoke fixture in years (not counting the "digital lights" they've been creaming themselves over). Showgun is either HES's code name for the light or the actual release name (my guess is the latter). Anyone know more? You can view two impressive videos of the light at: http://www.highend.com/hesdirect/showgun/ and http://creative.highend.com/showgun/

It appears to be a light aimed at creating very bright aerial graphics with the added cool-factor of a ring of LEDs around the main lens. From the video it appears to technically be a wash light, though with a very narrow beam and some simple gobo capabilities. The second video includes shootout between the Showgun and a Studio Spot 575, and quite obviously the Showgun puts its older brother to shame given it's 2kw source.

Welcome to WAL-MART

I again had Dunkin Donuts issues this morning. After waiting in line at the Carousel Center in Syracuse, NY I ordered "A seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese." Now, the cashier had to re-enter this information because, the "ham, egg, and cheese" option must be selected BEFORE the "seasame" option. She asked if I wanted anything else and I responded "Medium French Vanilla regul... (ahemm) cream and sugar" (grumble). And guess what. We get to start from scratch because the "Value Combo #4," which I now had qualified for, has to be ordered first.

So the correct syntax is not the natural, "I would like a seasame bagel with ham, egg, and cheese and a french vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Nope, it's "Value Combo #4, medium, ham, egg, and cheese, on a bagel, seasame. French vanilla coffee with cream and sugar." Okay, not the end of the world. But for all the flack we give minimum wage employees for being incompetent, we've also set them up to fail. It should be spectacularly easy to write a software program that allows options to be selected in any order, and then parses them when the "total" button is pressed. They're screwed from the get go much like the irritating "Welcome to Walmart" people who are required to welcome you even if there is a huge line forming at the only open cash register. Seems the middle-management operations-types making 10x what their underlings do aren't any smarter.

Milestones

With all the mini-milestones lately I've neglected to mention that the Mazda3 turned 10... 10,000 miles that is, on the way down to NYC. It was 1am and I was driving down the highway at 75 miles an hour so I was robbed of the perfect rollover pictures (although it's a digital odometer so it would have left something to be desired anyway). The best I could capture with one free hand was this, but certainly something to commemorate nonetheless.

Also, I finally got my pictures from Almost Heaven photoshoped. Click here for more.

Getting colder

HA! Thanks to the TONY Awards I am now one step closer and am only 2 degrees from Kevin Bacon. This breaks the 3 degrees record set only 6 months ago:
Jason Read lit Incognito starring Michael Fosberg
Michael Fosberg was in The Presidio with Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan was in In The Cut with Kevin Bacon

The new Jason Read-Kevin Bacon seperation is:
Jason Read assisted the Tony awards with Frank Langella
Frank Langella is in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon

8:00:12:01

I was watching from the production truck when at exactly 8PM, 0 minutes, 12 seconds, and 1 frame the video signal from the truck cleared the 12 second censoring delay and my life had changed by just a little bit. At that moment the Tony Awards were live on CBS and for the first time I was part of the lighting design team for a nationally televised event. But let's start from the top.

Production morning definitely came with a different feel from the days before. We were doing last minute notes getting ready for a full dress rehearsal that included all the performances live, all the presenters, and a live audience. When that was over we barely had enough time to distribute notes to the three light board ops before lunch break.

After lunch was another run-through, this time dry-- no live performances or audience, and with stand-ins announcing and receiving the awards. Some point after the second run-through was over it all became a blur. It seamed I barely had time to get into my dress blacks before the red carpet arrivals were coming in. I rushed to get a program for my parents, only to be turned down by some woman who will be a probably be a dung beetle in her next life. I spent some time guarding the moving light board operator's line of sight to the stage from the 12 photographers (the guy from USA TODAY kept unsuccessfully hitting on the production escort for the photographers).

At 6:55 I left the house to go to the production truck. The "Creative Arts Awards" began filming live to tape at 7:10 and we cut it extremely close to clipping the front of the true telecast. First major drama of the night came when the HVAC was sucking all the haze out of the air and the lighting designer had to turn off the air conditioning in the theater to restore it for the "A Chorus Line" opening, which brings us back to where I started. The first shots of the evening were the ones we taped Thursday and Friday nights in front of Radio City. If you looked closely you could tell that the streets were shut down when we showed the dancers, but when we showed Marvin playing the piano there were cars on the street.

I stayed in the truck until the end of the third act when I went out to the moving light console to watch Mary Poppins perform in act four, and stayed for the performanceless act five. Act six had Marg Helgenberger (you know, Catherine Willows from CSI) so I went back stage for that and got to see her (she's about average height). I was back in the truck for acts seven, eight, and nine, before finishing the night backstage and in the process bumping into Zach Braff (surprisingly tall), Fantasia (plus entourage), Matt Cavenaugh (the "Grey Gaah-dens" dude), and Angela Landsbury. Everyone was out of there by 11:15PM. It was an truly incredible night, one of those times that I won't soon forget. I learned a lot, had fun, and got to be a small part of something big. There are tons more stories to tell and I'll probably post some more tomorrow, but feel free to give me a call and chat.

Anything can happen if you let it.

Quickie

Last chance for me to remind everyone to watch the 2007 Tony Awards tomorrow night at 8PM. The morning production meeting starts at 8AM, so it'll be a 16 hour day.

Full details of the craziness when I get back to Cortland on Monday. Oh, and for anyone near there, go check out "Almost Heaven".... it actually ended up being really good (funny how that always happens after god-awful previews).

Almost Hell

Preview went relatively awful last night. Why? Well that's a story for another day.

But here's the schedule for the next two weeks:
Almost Heaven (lighting design) opens today, 6/6
2007 Tony Awards (lighting assistant) telecast Sunday 6/10
How the Other Half Loves (lighting design) opens 6/20

That's right, two shows and a national telecast in the footprint of exactly TWO WEEKS! Needless to say, if you don't hear from me for a while, I'm not dead.... or maybe I will be?

Your Attention Please

It is often said that our collective attention spans are being diminished by the influx of advertising, 30 minutes television programs, hell 12 minute television program (yeah Aqua Teen). I've certainly held and voiced that opinion. Recently in a conversation I witnessed the length of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 came up. On one side, one who felt that the film was boring and too long, on the other, one who felt that the film was great and the other person simply couldn't handle a cinematic masterpiece of such girth. It got me to thinking, Pirates 3 is a dumb summer popcorn flick (see review below), and it runs an ass-numbing 2 hours 45 minutes. How can this be if we're so collectively ADD?

Here's an interesting comparison:
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End -- 165 minutes -- 2007
Citizen Kane -- 119 minutes -- 1941
Casablanca -- 102 minutes -- 1942
Wizard of Oz -- 108 minutes -- 1939

Here we have a dumb, summer, loud-explosions movie clocking in significantly longer than 3 films that rank in the top 10 of the "AFI 100", that is, the American Film Institute's top 100 films of all time. Maybe we're not becoming such sheep after all. Could this possibly be a "when I was a kid we used to walk up hill in the snow... both ways" perceptual bias? I'm starting to think so. What do you guys think?