Now's the time on Sprockets when we dance

There you have it -- we dressed as Sprockets this year. And there's our 3rd annual "mimic the pumpkin" photo too. In case it's not obvious, we carved a :-) smiley face into it. I guess the nose should have been skinnier. Anyway, the Halloween loop was a lot of fun last Saturday night. A few random people at the bar were able to identify our costumes without any hints, but most just didn't have the knowledge of past pop culture to figure it out. I mean, who doesn't know who Dieter is? My favorite costumes of the night: Teen Wolf and Dwight Schrute.

Gotta run. I'd like to watch a scary movie tonight, but I'm not sure if it's going to happen. Time is running short. Happy Halloween, everybody!

Spoon, man

R and I went into Philly last Friday night to eat dinner at a great neighborhood Italian restaurant and to see the band Spoon in concert. It may have been due to the opening act getting stuck in traffic and not showing up to perform, but the show started off a bit stiff and cold. However, by the time Spoon's font man, Britt Daniel, unraveled a freaked out, distorted guitar solo in "My Mathematical Mind," I believe the crowd was officially won over. The guy can wail, both on guitar and vocally. He can't be accused of lacking passion either. I never really took the time to get into Elvis Costello, but I have a feeling this is what he was like at the height of his powers. Spoon's timing was spot on. They have a way of performing such tight, punchy pop songs that each seem like more of a feat than some overly long, "epic" jam that another band might pull to waste 10 minutes of concert time. Spoon are masters of restraint and minimalism. Never heard of this band? I suggest starting with Girls Can Tell or Kill the Moonlight, but you really can't go wrong with any of their albums (with the possible exception of the less polished Telephono).

The other band I'm really digging right now is The National. I've only heard their latest album, Boxer, but it is currently blowing me away. I'm quite sure this is going to be my favorite album of 2007. Each song on it is chill-inducing and absolutely gripping. By the time a song is done I'm anxious listen to it again, yet I'm too thrilled by the next song to actually go back until I'm through the whole album. The lead singer's vivid descriptions, enhanced by the haunting textures and moods of the music make for a very visual listen. In fact this is the first set of new music I've heard in a while that makes me want to take out the camera and shoot a music video, probably one that takes place in the middle of the night. It's very inspiring like that.

More about the weekend: On Saturday night we attended a Halloween party thrown by a coworker of R's. Do you want to know what we dressed up as? If you can wait until next week, I'll post a photo. On Sunday afternoon we took a fun bike ride. R and I usually try to find paved trails to bike on, but it didn't happen this time. We were with two other couples and they took us biking on what was essentially a hiking trail. It was pretty rough riding, but we didn't mind the challenge for a change.

I'm in Madison once again this week for work. My first two times out here I was so hyped up on adrenaline that I barely slept. This time the work isn't as demanding and the newness and excitement of business travel is wearing off. So now it just feels more like work--work without the promise of going back to the comfort of home and eating dinner with my wife. It's also torture to not be able to edit the latest Bud Light video while I'm here. I still need to put a lot of time into it before the month ends. So far the highlight of this week has been our dinner out at Ruth's Chris Steak House (a national chain, but a good one) last night. I had the filet, and it was cooked to absolute perfection -- totally worth the two hour wait to get our food. Wow, it was good.

Commercial break, Lynch-style

I thought you might like to see this new commercial directed by David Lynch. It's only airing in Europe, but thanks to YouTube we can all enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOGNyV9ngMk

While we're at it, here's another favorite from a few years ago. It congures up Eraserhead imagery while advertising for the Playstation 2. Well done, if I do say so myself. And I do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msMehuZo3x8

And here's an oldie -- a public service annoucement from the talented Mr. Lynch. They don't make 'em like this anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSWv90msTUc

Finally, check out the trailer for the new Twin Peaks DVD collection coming out soon. This must be where pies go when they die.
http://www.movieweb.com/dvd/news/86/23686.php

Wilmington weekend

On Friday I received an annual review at work and it turned out to be the most positive of my career so far. I'm glad they seem to appreciate the effort I have been putting in. They gave me a raise too, which felt well deserved under the circumstances. I don't think they could ever pay me enough to make it worth missing out on time with my wife and my hobbies, but a little extra money doesn’t hurt anything either. We celebrated on Friday night with drinks and sushi. Afterwards we watched Ordinary People on DVD, which I liked quite a bit.

On Saturday morning, R went to her weekly Lego League session and I played some Ultimate Frisbee at Rockford Park. I'm hoping to make the game a fixture in my Saturday schedule, at least on weekends when we are in town. There’s nothing quite like running until you drop to make you feel better about being alive.

In the afternoon we attended the wedding of local filmmaker Gordon D. and his bride Cindy. I worked with the two of them during Gordon's movie shoot last summer, and the four of us have subsequently become occasional dinner partners and decent friends. The wedding was a good time. I was able to reunite with some of the film crew and hear of the some recent success stories (e.g. our key grip is now working behind the scenes of HBO's The Wire). We met some interesting new people too. It was an artistic, creative crowd. I tend to get along better with people like that -- people who think about things other than baseball or the ever-so-popular football -- so it worked out pretty well.

Sunday was relaxing, yet productive around the house. There's not much else to say about Sunday other than it capped a nice weekend. It's the normal, well balanced weekends like this one that I like best.

Man overboard!

As a reward for the extra work my team has been putting into a recent project, my company gave nine of us the afternoon off last Thursday to take a boat ride down to Chesapeake City, MD (via the Delaware River and C&D canal). We got there around mid-afternoon and proceeded to eat fresh crabs and drink beer at The Tap Room for 3 hours. It was a little before sunset when we pushed off for the ride home. That's when the day got interesting -- our boat stalled when we were about a third of the way back, and it didn't start again. A thick fog rolled in just as the sun sank, completely engulfing us. The next thing we knew we were surrounded on three sides by blackness. On the fourth was a river dredger the length of a cruise ship that was slowly swinging back and forth, to deepen the canal. It provided hazy light as we drifted dangerously closer to it before our anchor finally took effect in the 50-feet deep water. Once secure, we tried to arrange for a tow, hoping for one that would bring us all the way back to the landing from which we left. Over two hours of bobbing in place later the Coast Guard found us, with a little help from their GPS. They had called off our towboat because of the extremely poor visibility and brought us to the nearest landing themselves with only a computer screen to show them where to go. On the dock, as were waving good-bye and thanking the Coast Guard, one still-intoxicated member from our group started flailing his arms and reaching out to nothing as he fell backward into the water. "Man overboard!" yelled someone from the Coast Guard crew. Don't worry, folks, it turned out to be only three feet of water into which he was submerged. But that didn't stop everybody from panicking at first. The ex-lifeguard (current software quality assurance analyst) with us was ready to jump into the water to save the guy. Instead he dropped to his stomach and reached an arm out with a shout of "DOUG, I GOT YOU!!" Yes, it was easily the most hilarious moment of the day.

A crowded mini-van ride later we were returned to our cars in Port of Wilmington. We all managed to survive the reward trip. The technical problems and tardiness of our delivery were actually well representative of the project for which we were being rewarded. I didn't expect anything less.

Bud Light Film Crew #10

I was in Madison for work again last week, which kept me from posting a blog entry (sorry, diehard readers) and made it more difficult to finish this month's video in time. But it did get done and posted: http://www.budlightfilmcrew.com/

This one is notable for bringing Kim back as a host. You may remember her as the extremely intoxicated girl from our St. Patrick's day video, who showed up again briefly, and even more funnily, in last month's outtakes reel. I hardly recognized her when we met for the latest shoot. She was completely sober this time and determined to redeem herself in the eyes of the friends who discovered video #4 online and gave her a hard time about it. In all honesty, the drunk Kim brought more humor and playfulness to the job than the sober one. But no offense to her; she did some fine, if more conventional, work here.

It's funny--the film "crew" seems to be shrinking. For this video, it consisted of me and the two hosts. Don't get me wrong, I like having the freedom to do what I want with the video, but I do miss having somebody there to help line up interviews, corral our very social hosts, and generate ideas for questions and lines. I usually keep my eye in the camera's viewfinder the whole time, and that takes up enough of my attention to not be able to prepare the content, especially since we make it up as we go. The raw footage for this month's video was lacking in both content and technical accomplishment as a result of trying to focus on both (or neither). Some months we have a surplus of good stuff to use in the final cut; this time I had to stretch what we had and hide some of the problems behind the editing. In the end, the video turned out better than I expected, but it's not our finest work.

I've been questioning the future of the BLFC lately. We'll definitely finish out the year, but is the magazine going to want to continue these into 2008? In some ways it would be a relief to be done with them. I would appreciate the extra time to work on my own personal projects (I still want to make that one web video that changes the world of web video forever). But I also hate to close the door on such a fun gig, especially when I'm on the verge of buying a new video camera and will want the chance to show off what it can do. Maybe I should lobby to replace the Bud Light work with CityLife News Team videos. I put one of those together earlier this year but was unable to commit to doing them regularly. Agreeing to a year of these videos would be a good opportunity to gain more professional experience. Then there's always the possibility of me giving full-time videography a shot, in which case I would want all the work I could get. I'd probably need a video gig for every day of the month. We'll have to see what transpires in the coming months.