I am coming to Los Angeles next week.

Anybody want to go for a pint?


Drive the Future...Today!

Imagine the most wasteful, decadent, pretentious pageant of excess you can, and then double it. This will give you a useful scale by which to measure the madness I've signed up for.

It's a very modern work called Spectacular Spectacular.

Actually it isn't. It's a private, corporate show in which the brass of a global automobile manufacting concern are introduced to the next year's line of vehicles. (Presumably they have some foreknowledge of the vehicles at least in concept, but this is "official" unveiling for what it's worth...which is not much.)

This takes place before the Detroit Auto Show, and before the press kits go out. Everyone acts like the new incarnations of the cars represents profound and magical change, sweet smelling virgin bait to industrial spies and Internet spoiler-whores. There is a lot of pretentious extra security, and everyone feels very important about having secrets.

(So the new Swoosh McCoupe has a sun-roof. Big fucking deal.)

It all comes down to a stage spectacular that opens up a day of monotonous speeches by ancient, muttering Japenese men in expensive suits. Contrary to the advice of the good people at Toast Masters, they will not open with a joke.

The spectacular is the heart of the show. It goes a little something like this:

Dancers carrying tall poles hanging with dozens of glowing paper lanterns sweep across the dark stage as drums beat a tattoo that mounts from droplets of water to a torrent of bombastic sound. People in coloured leotards pinwheel through the dancers, flipping deftly between the stacks of flying lanterns as showers of white spark blossoms burst from upstage.

Travelling sections of stage slide in from opposite directions, with each of the six slabs carrying a car or truck. Fast cut imagery of nature is projected on a semi-transprent scrim downstage of the vehicles, as footage of the vehicles driving through rugged and/or beautiful landscapes is projected thirty feet high behind them.

In time to the next crashing sections of the music each of the sliding stage sections in turn rises on hydraulics, tilting several degrees and pulling back into a flower-like arrangement. Fire-breathing clowns pirouette in the new, secondary stage under the raised cars, laser patterns flashing across them. The music builds to a crescendo.

The cars are retracted and the dancers vanish as a fifty foot wide high-definition LED screen is lowered. The lasers describe the Japanese characters for PUT ON YOUR 3-D GLASSES and then the music ceases and the first of three videos begins to play...

Vehicles fly through datascapes, swooping sickening into the foreground as features are highlighted. A scene of scuba diving vixens transforms into a man and his dog in the forest -- beautiful people in beautiful places, accompanied by their faithful cars. We fly inside the cockpit and through the dashboard, inside the engine to witness its perfection in startling layers of polarized pseudo-depth.

And on and on.

This continues through several more iterations of dancers, clowns, lighting effects, multi-layered projected video panels and two more high-def 3-D adventures. (Is there any fog, you ask? Oh my, yes there is fog!) Then they break for lunch. The spread is sumptuous. In the afternoon, the muttering old men mumble their mantras accompanied by 3-D PowerPoint presentations.

This goes on for three days.

It's like Woodstock for plutocrats.

My job is to create two of the 3-D videos, and do post-production and visual effects on the third one. The upstream production company is flying me out to L.A. so that I can pick the brains of some experienced stereoscopic cinematographers and engineers. I've been researching my ass off so that I don't look like a complete baffoon.

I've never been to California before. I don't travel well. I lose my appetite and crave cigarettes.

I don't know if any of you folk out there in my friendly neighbourhood Scooposphere live in Los Angeles, but if you do, maybe we could meet up for a drink. I haven't received the final iternerary yet, but I do expect to have some time to collect my wits (or lose them, as the situation warrants).

I welcome both Bloods and Crips.


Crackle Pop Snaps

The field of our old schoolhouse is being slowly revealed as we slash and burn, slash and burn. The wild thatch is cut and thrown on the pile of rubble and trash and woodscrap we've collected from the field, trash the Newfies left behind. My father-in-law Old Oak cut a couple of the tires in half and buried them throughout the pile to keep the fires hot. We burn them through the day and night.

My world smells like burning wood, which is not at all unpleasant. At times the smoke has become a bit alarming, and I'm frankly surprised that nobody from the fire department has stopped by to see what it's all about. Anyway, the pile has burned for a week and it's now a shadow of its former self.

Today, it looked like this. A strip of the reclaimed land can be seen in the foreground of this photograph. In the midground is the fire-watchin' chair, for a-watchin' the fire.

While I'm at it, this is the land beyond our yard. And this view showcases the blank north face of the schoolhouse where we shall have built the so-called "Mega-Deck" -- the model of which I am still building on the virtual schoolhouse. Ultimately, it will replace/connect the upper floor balcony, and wrap around the blank north wall. (We won't be starting the Mega-Deck this season, though...and probably not the season after, either. But it will come, money willing.) Near the centre of the photograph is where my maple tree is going to be, after we get some bills paid.

I am also compelled by some horrible force inside of me to release the following photographs to the general public: Image 1 - Image 2


Music and Flesh

Listen, since I'm tricking it out like Linky McMultimedia anyway I figure I should service all orifaces equally. How about some music? Failing that, how about some music-like "ambient" electronica? I'll sweeten the deal by offering some skin.

My brother's band is called Syntax Error and they have a new album called 2's Complement. This is an MP3 of a track featuring my adorable wife LittleStar, who impressed the hell out of me by laying down the harmony layer without hearing the main vocal track played back. (That's cool. Singining is nifty.) And this is LittleStar's naked body smooshed into smeary album-cover artwork.

I am still working on the inside art. It will be a similar photo-illustration, like the cover but bluer. Though LittleStar has approved my first attempt, I have judged it too luridly pornographic for mass consumption. (She probably thinks I'm a prude and maybe I am.)


Lone Cheeseburger

LittleStar and Popsicle have gone to the cottage. It will probably be their last visit. We are liquidating the cottage. It's stupid to have a cottage when there's a lake at the end of your street. I plan to invest the money in my small business thingy. I want better and cooler toys. I want a digital camcorder. I want to build a green-screen studio in the garage. (Um...I also want a garage.)

No baby and no wife means several things.

I have been watching movies about outer space really FUCKING LOUD, for one thing. I eat popcorn and drink Creemores. (I also smoke a few cigarettes. Don't tell.) I watched Contact and 2001: A Space Odyssey back to back...they're essentially the same movie, anyway.

I slept in my clothes, with the TV on.

I was too lazy to clean out the litter-box so the dog ate all the cat shit. I can't say I'm entirely unhappy with the arrangement.

(The government called today. They want their money. Bastards.

I voted today. I brought them my Temporary Suspected Terrorist Passport and a telephone bill, to prove I'm a member of the district. Naturally, I voted for the only clear choice.)

I have typed no new stories.

I wrote an article about urination, but I'm not quite sure what to do with it. It seems like an invitation to endless potty threads on K5, and perhaps too dorky to besmirch the noble front page of HuSi. Satanosphere, maybe?

I'm feeling very Mac-positive lately. I've been spending some time in the trenches downtown, and Macs just keep saving everybody asses while lesser systems let us down. My battered old PowerBook is the coolest tool I own. Maybe I should start a flame-war or something, to work it out of my system. Mac advocacy is square.


Also

See poll.