2010 March » One Off

Auto-play Video Ads = Automatic Ban Hammer

Mar 252010

Auto-Play = Auto-Ban

I have an acquaintance who is a very funny and talented film reviewer and columnist writing for a variety of different papers and websites, and who appears regularly on radio shows and podcasts to talk about film. I’ve been following him since I was in college, and enjoy his writing immensely. Today, he posted another column in his “Eric’s Bad Movies” series, where he purposely watches horrid movies and then reviews them in a funny, informal fashion. They’re great columns and remind me of the bad movie nights I used to have with my friends in high school.

Film.com however, the site that he writes for, has decided that they don’t care at all about the visitors that come to their site and have started putting video ads all over the side bars of the pages. These ads launch automatically on page load, and begin playing–with full audio. Usually, these ads are hidden 2/3rds of the way down the page, are impossible to find, and sometimes, they can’t even be turned off.

I find this completely unacceptable.

We live in a world where we are constantly assaulted by advertising. It’s in our television programs, along our highways, in our reading material, on our websites, in our email inboxes, in our regular mail boxes, on the radio, in our workplaces, in every store, and even stitched into our clothing. One of the richest and most powerful companies in the world has exploded onto the scene based entirely upon the strength of its advertising platform. (That company would be Google for those keeping track.) Advertisements are everywhere. I get that. But advertising has gotten out of control. Companies have taken the ad from the level of nuisance to an entirely new level of intrusion and I, for one, am fed up.

Take, for instance, commercials at the movie theater. I pay $12 to buy a movie ticket to a film that, statistically speaking, is probably going to be mediocre–if not downright awful. I spend $7 for a tub of popcorn which I could make at home for about $0.50. I buy a small soda which costs me $5 and which probably only cost the theatre about $0.15. And despite the fact that I’ve just spent $24 for a single person to see a first-run movie, I still have to watch advertisements. In the best-case scenario, the theater just displays Coca-cola sponsored slides full of trivia so, well, trivial that a mentally challenged sea slug could figure them out. In many theaters, the theater will display triviads for 20 minutes and will then dim the lights and play 20 minutes of commercials. THEN they’ll get to the trailers. By the time the movie has started, it’s often 30-40 minutes past the start time of the film as advertised by the theater. In my world, time is a very valuable commodity, and I should be reimbursed for my time forced to watch these ads, not charged for it.

Or, for another example, look at the recent DVDs and Blu-Rays that have come out in the last year or so: I recently spent $30 for a Blu-Ray disc, and not only did it contain 8 movie trailers, a commercial for the studio, and an MPAA Piracy commercial, but there is no way to skip these commercials in order to get to the main menu of the disc. I had to sit through 15 minutes of trailers and advertisements on a disc I purchased. It’s no wonder why people pirate movies.

The recent influx of auto-play advertisement on websites, however, has really raised the bar on intrusiveness. Websites and their advertisers have made the assumption (or more likely the decision) that any activity engaged in by the person browsing the internet is less important than the advertisement. Such hubris is disrespectful and shows a patent disregard for a company’s customers and website visitors.

When I browse the web, it is rarely done in silence. I’m often watching television, listening to music, playing a podcast, or enjoying an audiobook. I multi-task. I may be streaming a YouTube video on one screen while typing a document on another. Occasionally, I will be browsing a website in silence at work. Then, regardless of what I’m doing, I will click onto a website and be assaulted with an auto-play video ad. These ads are usually mastered at an extremely loud volume, and come blaring out of the speakers with no warning. Often, these ads are hidden half-way down the page and can’t be easily found. Some of these video ads don’t even allow you to turn them off.

Recently, I was working on an audiobook on my recording studio PC. I was in the process of bouncing a track down (playing it back in real time and recording it into a single file.) The track was about an hour long, and I was about 2/3rd of the way through, when I realized I may have made a mistake on the pronunciation of a word. I popped open my browser, typed in the word, and went to a dictionary site that had an IPA pronunciation. This page had an auto-play advert that took over the computer’s sound system without permission, crashed my recording software, and managed to cost me an hour and twenty minutes of time.

Massively intrusive advertising is not new. In the ‘net age, it started with the pop-up ads, which I block because of their annoyance factor and the possibility of malware infection. Then websites started using ads that are overlaid on the page and on which you have to click in order see the website beneath. There was a shortly-lived time when auto-play audio ads were tried. But the massive influx of auto-start video ads is getting unconscionable.

I understand that most websites make money through advertising. I get that, and I don’t begrudge them the fact. That’s why I don’t use ad-blocker software (other than pop-ups) and why, whenever possible, I click on the ads that interest me on sites that I like. It’s my little way of showing support to the people who make the websites that I use. They give me the choice to decide what’s important to me and what isn’t, and they don’t force me to click on the ads.

But I’m not interested in a video ad for a gay dating site to auto-play when I’m sitting in a meeting at work and looking something up to add into the discussion. I don’t want an auto-play ad to interrupt my music listening or audiobooks. I don’t want my eardrums and my expensive recording studio speakers blown out because an ad that was mastered so loudly that even Metallica would turn down the volume decides to start playing while I’m looking up the pronunciation of a French word or trying to read a column written by a friend.

If you have to put video ads on your page, fine. Turn the volume OFF by default. Or let me decide if I want to play the video at all. Don’t assume that I want nothing more than to listen to some breathy-voiced woman talking about online dating sites, or listening to a bunch of menopausal women talking about feminine products. Don’t force me to search all over a page to find a miniscule button to turn off an ad for some scam program to buy gold through the mail.

The assumption that my aural attention isn’t already directed elsewhere and that, even more seriously, your inconsiderate ad could disrupt important meetings or damage expensive and delicate audio equipment, is unforgiveable. And the instant you install an auto-play video ad on your website is the instant that I will no longer visit that website.

So, to the five readers of this blog: If you come across a website with auto-play ads, please list them in the comments below. Maybe if we call them out, these sites will stop assaulting us with inappropriate, intrusive, and insulting advertisements.

I’ll start off the list: http:\\www.film.com – you just got the ban hammer.

So, am I Ouiser?

Pictures 1 Response »

Mar 242010

This picture just makes me want to go watch Steel Magnolias again.

I snapped this a few minutes ago while I was waiting for the bread I’ve got in the oven to finish baking. That’s right. I’m baking bread at 12:33 AM and taking nighttime pictures of Magnolias. My masculinity fled a LONG time ago. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a loaf of artisan bread to take from the oven. Good day, sir.

Health Care: A Few Random Thoughts

Philosophizing, Rants 3 Responses »

Mar 222010

So, surprise of all surprises, congress actually managed to get something accomplished. As usual, they piddled around for half the time, lost focus so often that the entire organization could be test subjects for Ritalin, and managed to get their ethics and morals dictated to them by corporate America once again proving that most legislators care more about getting re-elected than they do for enacting what they honestly feel is best for the American people. The healthcare bill is a giant mess…but at least congress managed to pass something. A ringing endorsement if ever I heard it.

Unlike most Americans, I don’t any strong feelings about health care reform one way or the other. I believe, for many reasons, that we desperately need some health care reform in this country. I also believe that forcing people to get insurance that they may not be able to afford (and penalizing them for not getting it) is ludicrous. Throughout this whole process, I’ve stayed uninvolved, because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about what’s going on or where I stand. It’s not that I don’t care about the outcome, I just haven’t figured out how I feel about the various methods proposed to get us to the various outcomes. I do have, nonetheless, some random thoughts about the whole thing.

I want to preface my random thoughts with an anecdote: I have a beautiful little niece who has some special needs. She is the sweetest, most loving little girl in the world, and I love her to death. But mere months after her birth, Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Utah cancelled this beautiful child’s health insurance policy for a ludicrous (and in my opinion, fraudulent, reason). They left a young couple, with one parent still in school, with tens of thousands of dollars in debt because, essentially, Blue Cross saw the bills start to pile up with no diagnosis. They found some way to simply cancel the insurance that her parents were paying for because they realized they were never going to make any money from a kid with health issue. (And according to my nieces pediatricians, Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield did this exact same offensive behavior with alarming regularity.) They left her parents with no recourse, no money, no way to care for one of the most wonderful children you would ever meet. And worst of all, they left the burden for caring for this child with an undiagnosed pre-existing condition on the state. When they cancelled her insurance, they basically ensured that my niece would never again be able to get insurance for the rest of her life, despite the fact that neither she nor her parents had done anything wrong. This, obviously, shapes my opinion on the state of health care a great deal.

Now, my random thoughts.

Random Thought #1 – None of this hoopla about rules and regulations, new laws, and death panels would be necessary if the insurance companies, malpractice lawyers, and health care providers of this country were a little less interested in lining their wallets and a little more interested in helping people. I’m not saying that companies and people shouldn’t be adequately compensated, but when you’re more concerned about improving profits over last quarter in order to keep your stock price high for your shareholders than you are about covering a 6-month-old baby with unknown developmental disabilities, then we have a problem. SHAME ON YOU Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield. FOR SHAME.

Random Thought #2 – When it was announced that health care legislation was passed, Twitter and Facebook lit up with indignation like I’ve never seen before. I don’t mind people having strong opinions…even strong opinions that disagree with my own. I don’t need to live my life in a world where everyone agrees with me. But I can’t help but wonder how many of those people who bemoaned the fact that this law passed ever bothered to research the bill beyond what they heard on Fox News or NPR. How many of them wrote an email or a letter to their congressman or senator? How many of them marched in a rally or attended a town hall meeting? If you hate the law so much, then why didn’t you try to do anything to stop it? If you didn’t try, then you need to shut up about it. You had your chance to make your voice heard.

For instance, I find the anti-gay marriage laws (like prop 8) to be absolutely infuriating, discriminatory, and offensive. And, for understandable reasons, these feelings are deeply held. But I didn’t write any law-makers. I didn’t march in any parades. So until I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is and make my voice heard, then I have no room to speak. Even though the US is a Republic (i.e., we elect people to represent us), we are a republic founded upon democratic ideals. If you don’t like something, make your voice heard to the people who represent you. It’s your responsibility as a citizen. If you don’t make your voice heard, then you have no right to complain when laws get passed that you don’t like. If you did make your voice heard, good for you…even if we disagree on the outcome. YOU can keep complaining.

Random Thought #3 – While I believe that reforming health care is important, I’m not a fan of any legislation that "forces" people to get health care that they may not be able to afford. The problem is that you can’t apply a specific formula to all people. Can I afford to spend 10% of my income on health care? Yeah…it would be tight, but I could do it. Could I spent 15%? Barely. How about 20%? Not a chance. But I’m a single man with no children in good health. I make pretty good money. I’m already paying about 5% of my income for health insurance and you know what I get from that? I get a policy that has a $1,850 deductible, and after that, I still have to pay 20% co-pay on most of my doctor’s visits. I do not have dental insurance. I don’t have vision insurance. If I get sick, I generally don’t go to the doctor, because I really don’t have an extra $2,000 a year to spend on top of the 5% of my income that I’m already spending. If I were to spent 10%, I’d get a policy with a $1250 deductible and 15% co-pay. In all honesty, I’d be better off with nothing but catastrophic coverage and just paying for it out of pocket. I basically have to pay all my medical care out of pocket anyway since I never reach my deductible. The 5% I’m paying now isn’t even worth it. I might as well be paying nothing and saving that extra 5%.

Moreover, I’m just not a fan of the Government telling me what to do. I pay my taxes. I don’t break the laws. I don’t want to be forced to spend money I don’t have on insurance I can’t afford in order to have a piece of paper that says I’m covered when, in reality, I’m only covered if I’m sick or injured enough that I’m probably going to die anyway.

Random Thought #4 – I saw a tweet earlier today that summed up my feelings pretty well. It needed to be translated because it was written in text speak, but the gist of the quote was, "If we are forced to pay for health care reform, the beneficiaries should be forced to face drug tests, and penalties should be applied to those unwilling to quit cigarettes, drugs, or drinking." As a 31-year-old man who is only VERY slightly overweight, walks at least two miles every single day, eats relatively healthily, has never smokes, drinks, or does drugs, how can I ensure that my money isn’t going to subsidize those people who make stupid decisions. If my insurance rates are going to go up (and I’m not saying that they are…I don’t know) I want to make sure that the money I’m paying in that isn’t going to help me is at least going to help those like my little niece, not some dumbass drunk driver who gets in an accident or some life-long chain smoker who gets lung cancer. Where’s the stupid tax in this system?

Random Thought #5 – The death of centrism in politics is one of the most tragic things that can be evidenced in this whole process. Once again, government proved that they can’t get past party lines to compromise. It’s not the fault of the Democrats or Republicans, it’s the fault of the system. Those in seats of power have proven once again that they are only interested in doing what’s going to keep them in office…and unfortunately, what keeps people in office is extremism. Despite our constant cries for bipartisanship, the American people haven’t proven with their votes that they value people who can compromise in order to accomplish something. As long as politicians think that the only way to get elected is to pander to those on the extremes of the political spectrum, we’ll never be able to pass the kinds of laws we really should pass.

Random Thought #6 – I’m appalled at the number of people who make up their mind on important issues based on what they hear in a YouTube video, on a 60-second commercials during the morning news, or on a 2-minute segment on NPR. Nobody does any research on their own. I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but I make it a habit not to establish my political views based on Tweets and Facebook status updates. The days of participative governance are apparently over, and that’s sad. When a talking head on Fox News can tell you what to believe, and you believe them without doing any research on your own, shame on YOU.

Random Thought #7 – Many of the people who complain about how expensive this health care bill is going to be are the same people who doggedly support our involvement in the "wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan for the last nine years. If you’re so worried about cost, maybe we should stop sacrificing our citizens’ lives and throwing money away in the desert, and start using some of those hundreds of billions of dollars we’re throwing into a war against an ideal that we will never be able to win and instead refocus those countless billions into reforming the world at home. (Wow, that’s quite the run-on sentence).

Random Thought #8 – No matter how bleak things seem, the fact of the matter is that the world will not come to an end because Health Care Reform was signed into law. Nor will the second coming of Christ be ushered in on the wings on Health Care Reform. Chances are that this law will make next to no impact in the lives of pretty much everyone. There are literally thousands of bad laws on the books now–some enforced, some not. Some businesses will fail, others will succeed. Insurance companies will still find ways to screw the little guy, lawyers will still find ways to line their pockets by suing anything that moves, and people will still get by with our without insurance. The world will still go on turning. Children will still starve to death every day in the third world. People will still meet, fall in love, and get married. And who knows, maybe ten or fifteen years down the road, we will have worked out the kinks in this new system that NOBODY truly understands, and we’ll find that this was a good thing in the long run. We may find out that it was one of the biggest blunders in all of political history. But I think we’ll find out that, like most things, this law had some good and some bad and probably didn’t make much difference one way or the other. Because, in the end, it all balances out.

Boots Made for Walking

Philosophizing, Pictures 2 Responses »

Mar 212010

Thursday, I purchased the first piece of equipment that I’m going to need for my big Wyoming backpacking trip this summer…perhaps the most important piece of equipment: my boots. I did a lot of research, asked my father, and settled on getting a pair of Hi-Tec Altitude IV boots. (I almost didn’t buy them because part of me can’t abide a company that spells its name "Hi-Tec" but I figured that a 50-60 mile hike at 10,000 feet is not really a time to be sitting on my high horse about spelling and grammar.

I want to break them in a little bit, so this weekend, I did a fair bit of walking. Saturday, I drove about 2 hours, and also spent about an hour walking around taking pictures. (See yesterday’s post.) Today, I woke up and took the dog for a 3-mile walk. Then I got home, climbed back into bed, and was just about to drift off to sleep when I got a call from my friend Bill, reminding me that we had planned on going on a hike to Cougar mountain in Bellevue. So, I got up, strapped my boots back on, and we went for a, shall we say, invigorating six mile hike through the forest taking pictures. Afterward, we decided to head over to Bellevue Botanical Gardens and, you guessed it, take some pictures, so we walked around for another mile or so.

Suffice it to say, my feet are a little sore. It’s been a long time (i.e. never) since I’ve walked 10 miles in a single day. I’m exhausted.

But, I was able to snap a few pictures that I didn’t hate. About 3/4 of the way through our hike out in the middle of the woods, we came across the corpse of an old car. I have absolutely no idea how this car got there, because there is nothing resembling a road anywhere near here. Most of the time, the path was only a 2-3 feet across. The only way I could think that the car might have made it there was if it had been dropped by plane from the sky or something. In any case, it was a pretty cool little chunk of metal in the middle of a very ferny and mossy forest, so, of course, we took lots of pictures.

One of the things that my hiking companions mentioned was the color of the green in the forest. For those who aren’t familiar with Seattle’s greenery, it’s a different shade of green than almost anywhere else I’ve ever lived. It’s almost electric. And moss grows on EVERYTHING. (I didn’t adjust the color on the photo below at all…this is exactly how it looks.) Even in Michigan, I never saw green like this. I guess they call it the Emerald City for a reason.

When I go hiking, I have a tendency to notice very small things on the ground since I’m watching where I’m going in order to prevent eating it in a giant mud puddle. One of the more interesting finds (besides a boatload of snails and slugs) was this fungus. I’d tell you to taste the rainbow, but something about this tells me that the rainbow might just kill you.

This is the time of year in Seattle where EVERYTHING is in bloom. A couple of weeks ago it was just starting, but now it’s really starting to go haywire. The Camellia, Rhododendron, Tulips, Daffodils, Jonquils, Hyacinth, Cherry Trees, Magnolias, Dogwoods–they’re all in full splendor right now. If you can combine those flowers with a sunny day and a blue sky, the flowers just sparkle.

So, all in all, I liked the way these photos came out far more than the ones from yesterday. Just goes to show, I guess, that even when you have a bad day, you just keep on keeping on, and eventually you begin to find what you’re looking for. Or something like that. I don’t want to start crafting life-lessons from a simple hike through the woods. If I start doing that now, imagine what a tome I’ll have to write when I get home from my Wyoming Trip in August. And I don’t have time to write a tome.

Picture This…

Philosophizing, Pictures, Ramblings 2 Responses »

Mar 202010

When I was about 16 years old, my father let me use (and eventually gave me) an old Minolta X500 SLR camera and a few lenses. It was completely manual…manual focus, manual aperture, shutter speed. I loved using that thing. I would trek it over to the Albion nature center or schlep it along on some drives through the back roads around Michigan. While my classmates were taking disposable cameras with them on school trips to Toronto or Band Festivals, I was lugging around this heavy SLR, a 28mm, a 50mm, and a 135mm lens. I was buying (and occasionally stealing…since I was a klepto back in those days) all KINDS of film, both color and black and white. I spent tons of money on getting my film developed. I just loved taking pictures.

Part of the problem, however, is that I just wasn’t very good at it. I read books, and practiced, but I never seemed to be able to get the hang of lighting and composition. As with many things that I have tried to do in my lifetime, I understand the technical aspect of what it is I was trying to do, but I never managed to grasp the artistry.

My love of photography has never really abated. I got my first modern SLR camera as a sophomore in college (Canon Rebel 2000). As a senior, I got my first digital camera (Minolta DIMAGE 7HI). My first Digital SLR came less than a year later when I got my Canon Digital Rebel. A year and a half ago, I got the Canon Rebel XTi. Then, just before Christmas, I traded up to what I hope will be the last digital camera I buy for a good long while: The Canon 7D. The 7D is a fantastic camera that does 18 Megapixel images, and 1080p Hi-Def video.

I also, over the last several years, have managed to cobble together a few fairly decent lenses…which supposedly are the main different in the quality of the photos. My favorite lenses are my 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 wide angle lens, my 50mm f/1.8 lens, and my 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. (Sorry for the geek speak for those who don’t know or care what those numbers mean.) (And, as another parenthetical, when I type the word lens, my fingers want to type it in as "lense." Not sure why.)

All in all, I’ve managed to cobble together a pretty good little set of gear for an amateur. I did some actor’s headshots and a few portrait sessions when I was in college and afterwards, some of which I’m pretty proud of.

But I’ve never seemed to be able to move my photography past the point of "workmanlike" to "artistic," and I’ve been struggling to figure out why that is. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I believe I’ve developed some insight:

1. I think that, overall, my frustration stems from the fact that I seem to be unable to capture the scene in front of me as I’m seeing it through my own eyes. I see things around me all the time that look absolutely beautiful to me. However, the instant I start trying to see it through the lens of my camera, I lose that vision. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’ve not yet mastered the technical aspects of my photography, and so I can’t translate what I see in my mind onto what I’m looking at on film, or whether I simply haven’t learned that translation layer yet. The camera can’t see things the same way that I can, and I’ve not been able to see things in the way that the camera does.

2. I think that, overall, I just struggle when it comes to visual creativity. (In reality, I feel like I struggle with creativity in general.) I’m really good a copying people or stealing ideas, but sometimes I have a hard time coming up with material on my own. For instance, I was looking through the Flickr stream of my friend Jamelah, and came across this photo and this photo. Jamelah does this "365 days" project where she takes a self portrait every day, and posts it online. And a lot of them are really, really good. They’re just so creative. And so well executed. I saw her photos and instead of using that as a springboard, all I could thing of were ways that I could copy or tweak her idea. I just struggle coming up with original ideas.

3. I rarely go off the beaten trail…both literally and figuratively. My drive for photography, like so much of what I do in my day-to-day life seems to come from proving that I can make a pictures that is just as beautiful or just as ______________ as someone else’s. I want to take portraits like Rachel Thurston. I want to take nature photography like Scott Bourne. I want to take landscapes like Chris Gin. I haven’t figured out what kind of photographer I want to be or what kind of photographs I want to take. So, as a result, I skim across the surface of several types of photography, never really getting good at any of them. I also don’t leave my comfortable world that often. So, it’s hard for me to find those sweeping panoramas or glorious vistas or unusual animals because if it’s not within a 10-minute drive of my house, I haven’t been there. So, I drive along the well-worn highways, take pictures of the same waterfalls, the same rusty old tractors, the same ferry boat ride panoramas that everyone else has photographed. As a result, much of my photography feels like snapshots instead of photos.

4. The digital toolbox. I may know my way around F-stops and shutter speeds, but when it comes to what to do with the final product, everything I’ve ever learned has been experimental. Some things I’ve gotten pretty good at (like retouching headshots) while other things (color correction, for instance) are troublesome for me. Plus, I’ve tended to use Photoshop to hack my way through fixing mistakes that never should have been made in the first place.

5. Some of it just my old self-doubt. I’ve always been one of those people who feels like, if his creativity isn’t the best and greatest, there’s no value in it. Why continue to create mediocre "art" when there are those out there who can do it so much better than you can. As I’ve started taking more photos again, I haven’t just enjoyed the process. The whole point of the process for me is to get a quality final product. And I think it’s that focus on the final product that prevents me from really learning and experimenting and creating in a way that I haven’t done before.

Today, I woke up early, threw the dog in the car, and drove down highway 202, east out of Redmond. I’ve never been that way, so I just drove to see where I’d end up. I ended up in a little tiny town called Fall City (population: 5000) not to far from the Snoqualmie water fall. I walked around, took a ton of photographs, and spent about two hours just meandering around the area. When I got home, I popped my memory card into the computer, and I was just disappointed with the results. I want to take that one picture, that one shot that just screams "AMAZING!" The one that you would want to use for your computer desktop, or even print up and hang on the wall. But out of the thousands of pictures that I’ve taken over the last couple of years, I can’t think of a single picture that I would want to hang on my wall. In fact, with all the photos that I’ve taken, the only thing of mine hanging up right now is 5 4×6 photos of tulips in a frame…and none of those are particularly good pictures on their own. They just happen to match my shower curtain.

It’s become painfully obvious to me that I’m not going to be one of those people who picks up a camera and starts making beautiful, amazing, life-altering photographs right away. I mean, come on, I’ve been taking photos on and off for over 15 years now. If I haven’t turned into the next Ansel Adams by now, I’m not going to. So, I think the real challenge for me to learn how to enjoy the process of photography, not fixating on the end result. The fact of the matter is that, I’ll probably continue to take pictures for the rest of my life because it’s one of the only ways that I’ve found to be even remotely creative in a visual space. And I have enjoyed it in the past, even when my photos were never that good.

I also need to really work on finding my way off the well-worn paths. I need to get out of my car and walk through the mud a little more. I need to experience things from a vantage point of someone other than a tourist. I need to be a little braver in asking people if I can photograph them or their pets or their flowers.

And I just need to keep taking pictures. Because, while my photos aren’t great, taking pictures is sure a whole lot cheaper than buying more equipment to take pictures that still aren’t great.

Beautiful Blogs

Links, MeMes 3 Responses »

Mar 182010

I’m generally not one for the internet meme thing, but after a really rough day, I was awarded this by my amazing sister:

[beautiful-blogger-award.jpg]

Of course, with all great honors come great responsibilities, and the Beautiful Blogger award is no exception:

1. Thank the person giving you this award.
2. Copy the award to your blog
3. Place a link to their blog
4. Name 7 tidbits people don’t know about you from reading your blog.
5. Nominate 7 Bloggers.
6. Place a link to those Bloggers.
7. Leave a comment letting those Bloggers know about the award.

So let me commence:

Thanks, Megan. You are one of the most honest, courageous, and giving people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m constantly astounded at your strength and character, your openness and ability to love others. On more than one occasion, you’ve made me feel important when I was alone. I hope both your husband and your daughter (and even your dog) recognize how lucky they are to have you as a part of their lives. And I’m so grateful you’re a part of mine.

http://nelsfamily.blogspot.com. It’s mommy blogging done right. Check it out.

________

I’m brutally open on my blog, and I feel like the only things I haven’t said here are the things I can’t say because doing so would be detrimental to me in some way. But I’ll try:

When I was young, and our washing machine was broken, I used to offer to go to the Laundromat and do the clothes so my mom could do other things. She’d drop me off, and I’d stay there for two or three hours and do laundry. I was, like, 11 or something. It sounds altruistic, but the only reason I really wanted to go is because I’d take money and buy the junk food in the vending machines my mom would never let me get otherwise. (Hostess Fruit Pies, for instance.) Also, most of that money for the vending machines was stolen from my dad’s junk drawer in the form of loose change.
I don’t like New York City. I went once as a senior in college and had such a bad time I’m not sure I could ever enjoy going there again.
I’m not a live to work kind of person. I’m a work to live kind of person.
And one point or another, I have played the following instruments: Piano, Tin Whistle, Fife, Trumpet, French Horn, Trombone, Baritone/Euphonium, Drums/Percussion, Clarinet, Flute, Organ, Guitar, Bass.
I desperately want to learn how to play the saxophone and the theremin.
If I could pick any instrument to be a master of, it would probably be the Clarinet. There are few instruments more entrancing than a well-played clarinet (Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Daron Bradford, Ray Smith).
My nose hair is growing at an alarming rate. If I didn’t trim it every couple of days, I could probably braid it and put little beads on the end.

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Now 7 Blogs that I love. Let me just pull up the Google Reader here:

Hatrack River – This is the blog and website of writer Orson Scott Card. I’ve always loved his writing, and his OSC Reviews everything columns is wonderfully crotchety.
Jamelah.net – An old friend from high school, Jamelah and I were both in theatre together. She was one of my two or three closest friends during that time in my life. I left Michigan, though, and we lost touch. I still follow her blog religiously, and love her writing style. She’s also a pretty fierce photographer.
NoFo – I just randomly found this blog one day…I don’t even remember how. It’s the blog of Jake, a gay may in Chicago. He’s a fantastic writer, very funny (I’ve stolen several running gags from him) and brutally honest. I don’t often agree with him politically or religiously, but I love his blog. I’ve read the whole thing from beginning to end.
Rachel Thurson Photography – I don’t know Rachel in real life, but I aspire to take the kinds of photos that she does. She often ties in her photos with some personal stories and thoughts. Great blog.
Taylortots, Aprilcots & Meh – April was the receptionist (and I’m sure she did a WHOLE lot more) in the office of the Knight Mangum building at BYU, where most of my classes were held as a musical theatre major. She was also there when I was teaching after I graduated. I barely got to know her when I was in school, which is a shame, because I get the feeling she and I would have gotten on well. I made up for it now by reading her blog…inparticularly this hilariously awful post about a really bad day. Be warned, though. April has committed the one cardinal sin of blogs: she has music player on her blog that starts playing automatically when you visit the page. (Sorry April! ;)
Go Fug Yourself: Because Fugly is the new Pretty – Go Fug Yourself is one of those guilty please type of websites for me. It’s two snarky girls who make fun of celebrities tragic fashion choices. They are really, really funny. Take, for example, this awesome take on the Harry Potter gang. I know it’s not contributing good things to the world, but I still love it.

New Headshot

Pictures 4 Responses »

Mar 172010

And no, I’m not talking about shooting myself in the head…well, at least most of the time. Actually, today I wouldn’t mind shooting a hole in my head. It might drain some of whatever is in my sinus cavity giving me such a painful headache my teeth hurt. Which actually reminds me of the time where Jamelah and I were watching TV, and there was a commercial on for one of those ambulance chaser law firms called Simus, Dramus, and Associates. Which may be the worst name for a law firm ever. Because really, who wants to be represented by Sinus Drainage and associates when you’re suing an insurance company. That would almost be as bad as being represented by Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe.

Anyway, I’m talking about actor’s headshots. I haven’t had mine taken in about 10 years because, hey, why bother. Up until a couple of years ago, I still looked a fair bit like my old headshots, and I’m not really doing much performing anymore. But with the new audiobooks that I’m putting out, I wanted to have a new headshot to stick on the back cover.

Special thanks to Bill Doran (http://www.punishedpixels.com) for taking the headshots for me. It was no easy task. I am a tremendously un-photogenic person. There’s a reason I spend thousands of dollars on photography equipment…it’s so I can take the photos rather than be in them. But I was able to scrounge a couple of good ones from the batch he took. This one was my favorite. It made me look less fat than the other ones.

Because It’s Preshow (Preshooooow!)

Funny, Reminiscing, Videos 4 Responses »

Mar 132010

In 2003, shortly after I graduated from college (for the first time), I was hired to work at a theatre in southern Utah called Tuacahn. I was hired to be a mud person in the production of The Wizard of Oz, and as third half-naked priest from the left in The King and I. Because I’m so very Asian.

It’s a beautiful outdoor amphitheater that seats over 2,000 people. Being set in the southwest, Tuacahn plays up its cowboy old-west heritage. In order to help turn this massive theatre in the middle of nowhere into more of a destination experience, they also offer a chuck wagon dinner each night, where folks who have bought their tickets to see the show can get a meal and enjoy the scenery. One of my other jobs at Tuacahn was to perform in the little Preshow performance that took place on a small stage up in the plaza outside the theatre during the chuck wagon dinner.

The show was extremely hokey, and not a whole lot of fun to do (which could sum up about 80% of my career as a performer, if I’m being honest), and so, after about a month of doing the show, I decided that I wanted to make a Christopher Guest-style mocumentary about the whole preshow experience. Of course, I didn’t have any filmmaking resources, so I bought a small consumer DV camera, and pirated a copy of Adobe Premiere, (which I had never used before in my life) and I started interviewing the cast of the Preshow each night after the Preshow performance, but before the main stage show started.

It wasn’t long before word got around, and folks were clambering to take part. You know how it is with performers. As soon as they get a whiff of attention, they start cycling around overhead like vultures over so much carrion. I was interviewing costumers, stage managers, and friends who were in town to watch the show as audience members. About two weeks before the end of the summer season, during which I would be leaving Tuacahn to drive to Tennessee to work at the Black Bear Jamboree, I took the hours and hours of footage, cut it all together in about three days of work, fitting it in before or after the show.

My biggest challenge is that I had only interviewed the 40 people in the casts. I hadn’t really asked a lot of leading questions, nor had I staged most of what happened. Everyone there knew it wasn’t serious, and they fed me with a lot of great material, but there just wasn’t a unifying thread to the whole thing. I cut together most of what I needed, shot a bit of B-Roll, and asked the "assistant director" who did a lot of the interviewing to do a bit of voiceover work. I was then able to craft a rough story out of the footage I had.

I wasn’t perfect. I didn’t have good audio equipment, so the audio is noisy. It wasn’t a controlled set, so people were always walking into the frame. I wasn’t familiar with the editing software, and there are a couple of continuity errors or incorrect B-Roll, but when it was done, I was pretty proud of it. More surprisingly, someone (not me) convinced the theater management to let us show the finished product during the closing night cast party.

I was one of the proudest moments of my life. There were probably 100 folks at this party who watched it, and the film got a standing ovation at the end. I decided then and there that I wanted to be a filmmaker. And like all of my big, life-changing decisions, I stuck with it for the 20 minutes it took me to drive from the theatre back to the hotel I was staying in for the night. But I’ve always looked back on this little project with fondness. It’s not perfect. It’s full of inside jokes that most folks wouldn’t get. But it was something I accomplished that was well-received. And as an artist, that’s always a great thing.

I decided it was time to put the thing up on the interwebs for posterity. I still have a DVD master of the thing, but the source tapes and files have long since disappeared over the years. I just wanted to make sure that, if I ever had my house burn down, that I wouldn’t forever lose this thing. So, I am proud to present, Preshow: The Mocumentary.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

More Macro Photography – Leaf Skeleton

Pictures 3 Responses »

Mar 072010

So, I never realized this, but when Magnolia leaves decay, they leave behind these absolutely amazing leaf skeletons. I found one sitting by my front door a couple of days ago:

I just thought this was incredible. Nature is cool.

I’m on the Macro-phone

Pictures No Responses »

Mar 072010

I don’t know what the weather’s like where you live right now, but chances are it’s not anywhere near as nice there as it is here right now. (I KNOW that won’t hold true for some you…you don’t need to comment on’t. Thanks.)

Anyway, because of our unseasonably warm winter this year (i.e., we’ve had highs well into the 50′s almost every day since January 1), we are quite far along in terms of our spring bloomage. This morning, I got up at 7:30, and took Luke on a six-mile walk around Redmond, and in order to get myself used to hauling a chunk of extra weight in preparation for my backpacking trip this August, I bought along the whole of my camera gear as well. This turned out to be fortuitous, as 7:30-9:30 on a sunny March morning in Redmond is a perfect time to get macro photos of some of the stunning flowering plants around the area. To start, we open with an establishing shot of one of the streets in my neighborhood:

Pretty, right? That’s what I see pretty much everywhere I go…and believe it or not, I’d say that in terms of the springtime bloom, we’re only about 1/3 complete.

Next, we’ll do a mid-range shot. This is a Magnolia tree immediately outside my front door: