A Scanner Darkly
The place to be in Austin tonight was the premiere screening of this film at the Paramount. Director Richard Linklater founded the Austin Film Society back in the 80s, and I thought it was pretty impressive when they said 700 of the 1,200 people at the theatre tonight were members. Twenty-three days to shoot, and 18 months of animation work, using the same technique as for his film Waking Life. At times I found myself missing dialogue because I was so focused on the images. Robert Downey Jr is very good as a conspiracy minded backstabber. Now I want to read the book, to see if I can find out what was going on. It was shot Austin-for-Anaheim style, with palm trees superimposed over scrappy Texas suburbs.

Accessories: There's a rich official website to go with the film, which has a portal where you can post artwork, as in the kind you might do in drug rehab. And the film's producer started a blog with some interesting details on the animation process.

  posted by John : 8:26 PM

 
Where Are They Now? - part 2

From FredToucher.com: Here he is playing with the band "Cousin Navarro's Piano" in December 2000, and with another band, "The Andersons" in January 2003.

In my mental-map, Paul Williams is right next to Cousin Oliver, from The Brady Bunch. Interestingly, a name that became synonymous with the syndrome that created this character.

This type of fascinating research is the result of a lot of long, boring conference calls today.


  posted by John : 10:50 AM

 
Relegated to the Where Are They Now? file


I just heard Willie Nelson on the radio, singing Rainbow Connection. Who could have grown up in this part of the world in the 1970s and not been familiar with Paul Williams... "that impish, erudite purveyor of melodious '70s middle-of-the-road pop fare". Apparently he left the spotlight and moved to England, and has returned narrowly by writing the music to a production of Happy Days for the stage . Which will actually be playing at the little theatre on the corner where Josh lives (no surprise that the Falcon Theatre was built by Garry Marshall). If Williams' music has already had a comeback, I missed it. If not, he may be due to resurface anytime now.

  posted by John : 8:50 AM

 
Sing and Like It
I had this vague recollection of having seen this film once. Knew it had a frequent rendition of a sickly sweet song "Your Mother", but couldn't remember much more. Once I recalled that Zasu Pitts was the singer in the movie, finding the title was easy enough. But it wasn't available on video. Then just yesterday I thought about this again for some reason, and did a search on the TCM website. Sure enough its on tomorrow morning at 6AM EST. This is the film Woody Allen lifted the plot from to write Bullets over Broadway - with no credit or mention of having paid this 'homage'.

Brief Synopsis:
   A gangster tries to turn his tone-deaf girlfriend into a singing star.

  posted by John : 7:53 AM

 
Escher crafts


  posted by John : 5:55 AM

 
Ski Bums
Hey all you Mark Ludbrook fans out there. Our athletic friend from days of Stouffville was featured in this documentary a few years ago. The 10mins of the film with Mark in it are great!

  posted by John : 10:16 AM

 
Death of a Producer
Best known recently for having produced crappy shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place, it's amazing how much TV content from our formative years Aaron Spelling produced. Such as:

Daniel Boone (1964)
The Mod Squad (1968)
Satan's School for Girls (1973)
Starsky & Hutch (1975)
S.W.A.T. (1975)
Family (1976)
Charlie's Angels (1976)
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976)
Fantasy Island (1977)
The Love Boat (1977)

Much of what he created was hugely popular, though of course there's several shows that didn't fare so well (did I ever see "The San Pedro Beach Bums" in 1978 ?).

And I noticed a couple of rather interesting looking films under his belt:

My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy (1962) Dir: John Cassavettes (try finding THAT one on DVD)

California Split (1974) Dir: Robert Altman (never saw it, but will rent this next)

Separated at birth?...


And his obit says his first wife was Carolyn Jones, fellow Texan and best known for playing Morticia Addams. She was not Tori's mom.

  posted by John : 7:40 AM

 
Dog Swap




We've got Stanley over for the week - he's Victor's dog-swap buddy. Since they spent last weekend together, they didn't need any reintroduction, and quickly got in to wrestling in the living room. I sent them out to play outside a few times today, but they're both as accustomed to air-conditioning as I am so that never lasted very long. They're both on about the same level energy-wise and dominance-wise, so its been very interesting watching them interact. Victor actually abides by not eating Stanley's dry food, which is pretty amazing to me. Stanley has to be watched when Victor is eating more apetizing his wet food.

It would be great fun for Victor if we had another dog, full time. But we're not willing to take on the extra responsibility. So this swap works out great for us, and will let us get away without having to worry about care for Victor. You people with human children ought to give it a try!

  posted by John : 7:33 PM

 
Free 411
Cell phone customer service was actually helpful today. She told me about this service for free directory assistance: 1-800-FREE-411. I've been sending a text message to GOOGL to get phone numbers (and movie showtimes, weather, etc) - but most times just this would be easier.

  posted by John : 10:11 AM

 
KUT docs
Listen here.

Woke up this morning to a short piece on the radio about Ray Wylie Hubbard, a well known Austin-based musician, probably best known for having written the song "Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother" in the very early '70s. That song was a novelty item, a hippie's retort to Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee", and it plagued Ray that he might be doomed to playing it over and over for the rest of his years.

I've heard him quote this line many times:

   Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure. (Rainier Maria Rilke)

I like to think about slaying some dragons one day.

Also on that page is a nice piece by Jimmie Dale Gilmore about his father, which I missed hearing by 5 mins when I went to the airport last week. A good reminder for me to buy that album. Trivia: Jimmie was the guy who stepped over the line in The Big Lebowski.

And there's also a decent one on the Kerrville Folk Festival -- listen if only to hear Stuart Vexler's voice.

  posted by John : 7:09 AM

 
Festival
Watched the film Festival tonight (by Murray Lerner), which is bits of the Newport Folk Festivals of the early '60s. The array of bluesmen shown was incredible - Son House, Howlin' Wolf, both Mississippis (Fred and John), Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, ...

I also got a kick out of Peter Yarrow's frequent fumbling of microphones trying to do sound checks while the performer's mock onstage. We got to see him do a soundcheck for a full 45 mins a few years ago, dictating commands to the guy back in the sound booth. Halfway through it he realized one of the onstage monitors had been on, so he started over from scratch. I found that highly entertaining - and wished I'd been able to film it.

What did I learn from this film? One thing: I've been wrong about the words to Mr. Tambourine Man all these years... not "cast your dancin' spell my way, I promise to go wandering" -- but "...to go under it". That makes much more sense.

  posted by John : 8:38 PM

 
10th annual Samndan fest
Back from fun times at the Westwold homestead in B.C. My first time, but hopefully not last time, at the annual solstice party / Sam's B-day bash. Here's a few fresh pics:



  posted by John : 10:46 PM

 
Rocky Mtns


Today I got to see some sky views of Colorado -- nothing quite as spectacular as what Leslie get's to see on a regular basis, but still a huge expanse of sky with storms brewing to one side, and otherplaces with clear blue sky. I spent part of the extra-long layover here that I was hoping to avoid by taking the bus to a mall in East Denver to get a haircut and a nice cup of coffee.

Mountains of the Denver airport ...



  posted by John : 5:16 PM

 
Craigslist comes through
Victor will have Stanley to play with this weekend. Stanley's keepers answered an ad I put out for a dog-swap arrangement. I'd been trying to find someone for about a year now, with no luck. Thought there would be alot of people trying to save money spent on kennels, and find more upscale accomodations for our buddies at the same time. We went to visit tonight and think its going to be a great match. Victor will stay with them this weekend (saving us well over a hundred bucks), then Stanley will stay with us for a week at the end of the month. Hope this is the beginning of a long friendship.

  posted by John : 6:24 PM

 
Well, good thing we have a well
All the pumps at the local water station burned out today... About 6,000 homeowners should boil water for several days, LCRA says

  posted by John : 3:09 PM

 
Morning Walk

We try to take a walk every morning around our neighborhood. I've been wanting to share a picture of this huge century plant that sprouted up a few weeks ago a few doors down. Normally just the base plant is there, but then this center stem shot up to twenty feet tall in about a week.

Later on the walk, Sharon had an unfortunate wipe-out on the pavement/gravel when Victor ran in front of her. Ouch! He hasn't learned that he shouldn't do that. I need to keep him on a shorter leash. She is patched up and on the road to recovery.

  posted by John : 6:13 AM

 
Latest Paris Hilton video
"Driving While Paris"

  posted by John : 10:18 PM

 
Happy Anniversary


My parents were married on June 9th, 1948.

They shared the day with my Mom's grandfather's birthday - pictured here with his wife. Thanks to my brother Eigil for pointing me to the family tree he put together, where I found our great-grandparent's names (and also realized that he wasn't actually AT the wedding, as he'd died three years earlier when my mom was sixteen).

Hans Peter Petersen	Kristine Petrea Nielsen
9 Jun 1861 - 16 Jun 1945	1 Aug 1869 - 6 Jul 1941

  posted by John : 9:48 PM

 
My inner geek is unfulfilled
...because I don't have one of these:



  posted by John : 5:00 PM

 
Driveable Drive-in

From: Engadget

  posted by John : 6:00 AM