Lonely Listening Room
Hey all Listening Room fans ... give us a song, wouldya? Yes, I'm talking to all 3 of you :) "Covers" is still the latest playlist, but the theme is wide open.

Wish I had a few days off to come up with Listening Room 2 (which would let you upload music of any bitrate, add graphics easily, allow comments, etc). But until then, upload a 128k mp3, if you're moved to do so.

Speaking of multi-media collaboration on the 'net, be sure to check out James' wonderful eSt.

Happy 'mercan Thanksgivin'

  posted by John : 1:20 PM

 
Knud's 50th Party

photo gallery

Only a month late - here's pictures from Knud's birthday party last month. Yep, he was surprised.

  posted by John : 3:45 PM

 
Floodin' down in Texas

photo

What it looked like from our porch this afternoon. I think this is the worst we've seen it on our property. Its rained so much lately that the ground won't let anything soak in, so it floods immediately. We don't mind it too much, because we're not in danger of it coming up to the house, and means our spring and creek will be running for a while. But it would be nice to see the sun come out. When it does, I'll take another picture of the same spot to show the difference.

  posted by John : 3:26 PM

 
Documentary film pioneers

William C. Jersey	Albert Maysles	Richard Leacock	the panel

Click pictures for larger images. Links go to other sites.

These are a few of the filmmakers who were part of a Cinema Verite day at the Hot Springs Documentary Film festival a few weeks ago. Some of the greats. They each showed a film and spoke about it afterwards. Or in the case of Richard Leacock, he put together a special collection on DVD and talked about some of his early films in between clips. He worked with Robert Flaherty (who made Nanook of the North in 1922), as cameraman. Albert Maysles is well known for films like Salesman and Gimme Shelter. Had this event happened at the Toronto festival it would have been sold out for sure. In Hot Springs, the theater was maybe 1/4 full. That's part of the reason why we like going there - its a high quality festival, but very down to earth and accessible.

  posted by John : 2:57 PM

 
Melissa sent me this great picture from a 1954 Popular Mechanics.
  posted by John : 7:04 AM

 
France 2004

video

Take a quick trip to the North of France. Here is a slideshow of photos from Sharon's trip to France in Sept, with her friend Ginette. Its about 26 minutes in total, and has a soundtrack. It should start playing right away while it continues to load in the background.

  posted by John : 2:23 PM

 
Last night we went to see John Hammond at the Cactus Cafe. He is such an amazing performer. Blues-man to the core. We picked him over trying to get tickets to the sold-out David Sedaris show. Tough choice, but it was the right one. The Cactus is a student pub on the UT campus, and its a great listening room. Only at the very end of the show did he mention frustration about the election, adding a comment something like "the Heartland's going to find a smoking gun, and its going to be pointed right in their face". Hope he works that into a song someday.
  posted by John : 9:51 AM

 
Our neighborhood has many democrat supporters. At least more than you might imagine given the the post-election view of how Texas voted. I think the red and blue map we've all seen on the news are really quite damaging. Sure, they represent the electoral votes used to decide the contest. And the map does go to the degree of coloring the near-tie states as light-red and light-blue. Still I don't think this image portrays the distribution of the popular vote in the right way. Today the view is that the red states are staunchly republican, when really alot of those were close - and some very very close. I sense that the divisions among the population will only run deeper now, with more of the either-you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us rhetoric. Okay, not because of the map, but that's just a representation of what's happening. Its all so twisted. Now it feels like we're heading into the 1950's. I believe that era would have extended if Nixon was elected in 1960.
  posted by John : 9:27 AM

 
I have allowed myself to be buried in work lately. Probably going to be that way for awhile, but I do want to keep up with this. We arrived home from a great 3 month stint in Toronto last Sunday. Went straight to a Halloween party -- the kind where the kids are in costume. Our house is on a loop of about 35 houses, each with a fair bit of land - 2 to 10 acres. So on Halloween they organize a Halloweeen Hayride around the loop for all the kids. Candy is left at the ends of the driveways, self-serve. Most of the adults hang back at the party and drink beer.
  posted by John : 9:19 AM