This Memorial Day, Viv and I walked up to the least-known military cemetery in central Seattle, the Grand Army of the Republic cemetery just beyond the north end of Lakeview Cemetery, to the north of Volunteer Park, overlooking Montlake and Portage Bay.

The small cemetery went through a period of extreme neglect, which it's recovering from. RootsWeb offers a database of the interred, although it's noted to be a work in progress. A community group, the Friends of the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery Park, has spearheaded the restoration effort.

The first time we stumbled into the park, several years ago, walking among the graves was a deeply puzzling experience. Many stones were practically illegible, and many bore severe scars from hurried, clumsy power mowing, blades lopping off large chunks of blackened, acidified marble. The gaping scars revealed the original beauty of the stones, gleaming white contrasting with the dark, mottled greys and blacks of the aged and neglected monuments. Walking along the rows of closely spaced graves was unsettling in many ways, because it was apparent that the coffins below the soil had largely rotted away, and as one stepped upon a grave, it was quite spooky to feel the soil shift and collapse downward.

Most of the stones were obscured though weathering and overgrowth. Today, the overgrowth is gone, and there are clear signs of regular visitors. The inscriptions remain difficult to make out. There are four clear periods of design visible among the stones. The earliest are elaborate monuments now laid into the soil, often obelisks in form. The next period is represented by low, marble stones carrying a shield embossing dating between 1880 and 1920, more or less. Following that are small, simple concrete stones carrying a name below the letters G. A. R., generally dating between 1920 and 1950. After that time, a mix of flat stones, some in a contemporary military style and some in the style of flat family headstones from any contemporary cemetery are apparent.

When we first wandered into the cemetery, I was quite puzzled. This was clearly a military cemetery that had nearly been abandoned, something which surprised me. What war did it commemorate? Perhaps the Spanish American War, given the provenance of Volunteer Park's name?

The dominant obelisk in the small cemetery answered my question. GAR Cemetery Park is a Civil War veterans cemetery.

Among the flat, contemporary headstones is that of a Medal of Honor winner (page search that link for Frank E. Bois). Interestingly, Bois was an emigrant from Canada. His grave was rededicated in late May, 2001.

On this Memorial Day, I found two other interred who had served in Indiana companies. While we were there, a woman was intensively gardening near the large obelisk. Three other people came and wandered around as we were there, one leaving several freshly cut roses on many graves throughout the cemetery.

We'd brought no flowers, but the cemetery is shaded by towering white oaks, the golden leaves of which have been used as garlands to symbolize honor, wisdom and valor in both American military decorations and elsewhere. I found one or two stems of these leaves and placed them on graves. In other parts of the cemetery, the stones are partially covered with crushed acorns and acorn caps. The tree was widely planted in the parts of Indiana I lived in as a child and being near them, smelling them, is a deep-seated sensory experience for me which increases the reflective experience of visiting a cemetery.

The time has come at last to snap on the dog-collar and leash and join the rest of you cell-phone toters out there. I have a list of features that I know I need, and this MeFi thread includes links to a number of resources. I think I recall seeing a more recent AskMe thread recently too.

Features wanted:

Single number, multiple phones, covers my land line as well as my and Viv's phone. Ideally, the land line phone number rings the land line as well as the cells.

Palm OS, desktop synching. Mac-friendly. I don't care about bluetooth because I don't have a bluetooth adapter. I suppose I don't mind if the phone has it but it's not a big deal, and I would resist paying more.

Audio recording: ideally up to an hour and a half, but forty-five minutes is acceptable. Needs to be able to operate to record conversations directly and as a note recorder for interview situations. High-quality music recording is not a requirement, but again it would be pretty nice.

A camera, I guess. I don't really care about this but I know that I have been leaving my camera at home because it's too big, so it may make more sense to put the camera into the phone.

The ability to communicate to Viv's phone even if we share the same number.

Handsfree features. Headset adapter with standard eighth-inch plugs.

I know that PDAs are holding back on implementing WiFi as a feature-segmenting marketing device, and assume that will be the case in phone land as well. But that would surely be an excellent feature.

Research links:

Phone Scoop.

Howard Forums.

Wireless Advisor.

MyRatePlan.com.

I call upon a certain gadgeteer to set me up the bomb.

Viv and I attended the soiree for Donnie Darko at Consolidated Works on Saturday night. Free drinks, nibbles, etcetera. We ran into Karla and her husband Diego, and Gillian and Kristopher. I saw Brad go by but didn't run into him again, which is too bad. At any rate I had gallons to drink.

At one point I overheard two people, possibly writers, discussing the coverage of the festival they were doing. I'll describe it in greater detail at the Siffblog, but the highlight of the conversation was when one described Gillian's "great gig." As he understood it this constituted of writing about the SIFF-related parties on "some blog for Tablet."

I hadn't considered the blog a 'gig,' exactly, but I suppose that'll work.

We adjourned from the party to close down the Lobo in the company of a batch of punk rockers who were singing drunkenly along to what I think was Iron Maiden, and noticed a rave in a back yard across the street. They wanted money to get in though, so we skipped it. Walking down the hill to Kris's house, we went by yet another loud party, this one filled with eary twenties yutes sporting all the variety of pot smoking fashion this year. Kris adamantly desired that we should not go into the party, even though a band was just getting set up to play.

Naturally, Karla dives right in to the scrum, Diego close behind. In the kitchen, Diego saw a refigerator sporting the charming sign "Do not even think of opening this unless you own it, bee-yotch." Naturally, he grabbed the last can of Pabst and we split.

I spent today recuperating.

Greg and I spent an amusing afternoon perusuing Folklife, as threatened.

As expected, it was lackluster. However, there was a lack of the previous year's antagonistic air between the street performers and the officious priss personell, definitely improving things.

Some notes:

1. I was disappointed in the Crown Hill Billies, a band I've long wanted to see. Energy, good. Playing, enthusiastic but, um, uncertain. Board mix, awful. They remind me of the place we were at in the Boxers after about 18 months, really wanting to cross rock and traditional songs but not certain how to move beyond that desire. The band is self-described as 'bluegrass,' but that's not the music I heard them playing. I wish them well.

2. We only found two beer gardens, both serving only Henry Weinhard beers. Now, Henry's is OK. But it's just OK, and if I have to drink a cheap beer, I'd rather go with Oly (RIP) or Pabst. Alas, it was middlebrow only to drink, certainly a fair problem for the festival to face, summing up as it does everything that is wrong with folk and traditional music in America today.

3. I saw the actress who starred in a movie I saw for SIFF review, and spoke to her.

4. There were no mandolins for sale.

5. There was a pasty-white 'Brazilian' ensemble.

6. The layout around the Fisher pavilion which forces absurd, unexpected navigational choices to climb or not to the top or bottom of the new building is reminiscent of a Microsoft setup wizard. Enjoy!

7. East Africa makes some damn tasty food!

Chris has posted the sound of the cicadas signing about his house.

Greg and I will hit Folklife today, the increasingly listless summer-kickoff festival at Seattle Center that was once my favorite of the local festivals. The demise of the instrument auction, without a doubt the coolest tradition associated with the festival, along with the (now-revised) rules and restrictions governing ad-hoc performers and their CD sales, leaves me with low expectations.

On the other hand, this email arrived this morning in my inbox:

Funhouse presents:
NORTHWEST PUNKLIFE FESTIVAL 2004
May 29-31, 2004

Join fellow misfits around a BBQ and listen to the drum circles and fifteen minute "jam" sessions of the Northwest Folklife festival get drowned out by an arsenal of guitars and loud, snotty vocals. Enjoy the subtle scent of patchouli getting overpowered by the stench of stale beer and cigarettes.

Three days of music and debaquchery. The Northwest Punklife Festival welcomes over 30 punk bands from across the Northwest, representing the diversity of our regionís punk community, including street punk, hardcore, cow-punk , garage, pop and more. Additional entertainment and mayhem includes performances by the Burning Hearts Burlesque babes, blood-thirsty backyard wrestling by the SSP, magicians and clowns, Jimmy Flame's BBQ'd sweetness, the sexy and outrageous ladies of the Naughty Nurse Brigade, and the black-eyed, bruised-knee-ed beauties of the Rat City Rollergirls.

Doors open each day at 12pm, music begins at 2pm, and the night doesnít end until the bartender kicks you out!

Only 6 bucks each day!

Saturday

Johnny Skolfuk, The Gropers, The Neins, The Diskords, Cootie Platoon, the Hot Rollers, Rabid Dogs, The Daryls, Jodie Watts, Go Like Hell, Ronson Family Switchblade, The Earaches

Sunday

Woody, Drag Strip Riot, Quick 66, Jackson and the Lowlifes, The Axes of Evil, Blood Hag, Big Bubba Punx, The Goddamn Gentlemen, SK & the Punk Ass Bitches, The Royal Pains, Amazombies, The Hollowpoints

Monday

A very special Pissdrunks tribute show all day long, featuring several infamous Northwest old schoolers. Consider today the ultimate Lake Union Pub/Storeroom Tavern/Zak's reunion, this will truly be a day of punk and mayhem!

The Funhouse
206 5th Ave, Seattle WA  
(206) 291-8588 or www.funhouse.com

Sponsored : Proudly brought to you by Pabst Blue Ribbon, Tablet Magazine, Runcatrun.com, The Naughty Nurse Brigade and The Rat City Roller Girls.

All of which, I must say, sounds like a good time. I'm proud to report that I've played all three of those infamous gutterpunk venues, Lake Union Pub, the Storeroom Tavern, and Zak's. At least I think I played the Storeroom.

My favorite venue was unquestionably the late lamented Lake Union Pub, which set new standards in trashed-out-ness.

MetaTalk notes that you should look here, if you likey the MetaFiltie.

Could this be the work of a certain soon-to-be Left Coast emigrant?

I spent much of the day to day viciously malleting slot-and-stem industrial shelving together, only to find that I had done so, for all six shelving units, upside down and backwards.

My arm is quite sore. It's heavy work for a keyboard jockey, I assure you.

Yesterday was a record day for rainfall in the region, and we discovered that our 2000-square-foot basement warehouse space is unsealed. My friend Dave, who works for the city in environmental affairs and consequently has an encyclopedic knowledge of City of Seattle watersheds and flow patterns, tells me that there is an underground stream that runs parallel to Airport Way, in the shadow of I-5 as it runs south of downtown.

That stream was once a surface tributary of the Duwamish, but when the mudflats were raised to create today's near south Seattle industrial district, the stream was filled and covered. In certain residential sections of Georgetown, houses that were originally built along the banks of the river can be identified by their considerably lower floor lines. In some locations, I have seen side-by-side houses with a lawn elevation difference of about seven feet.

What we found yesterday was that that stream runs close enough to our warehouse that a trickle of water entered the room in one corner, and pooled before running down the very slight slope of the floor to the rest room. Careful inspection revealed salt-like stains around every crack in the floor of the entire space - meaning that the floor level is probably only inches above the water table.

So, you know, the shelving is important. Eventually, we'll have to build a rasied floor for the work area as well. Thankfully, one thing that exists in abundance just north of Georgetown is pallets. Fourteen pallets will fill a bay; we can build a work floor with little expense. Does plywood come sized in multiples of four feet?

D2X for MacOS X [via Michael].

Oh lordy. Descent v.1 was the first POV shooter I played in a networked environment, about ten years ago. I remember the first games after we figured out how to get it to operate successfully over the work LAN; we were there until the sun rose. For some reason, most later, more evolved multiplayer FPS games never entertained me as strongly as Descent and Doom.

Music Theory Online, by Dr. Brian Blood. [via MoFi's, er, best-known guitarist.]

The site also has a nice little list of free sheet music sites.

Eric highlights this nifty chart of Unix development history. I'm not sure why Eric implies it to be covering future events, as it appears to be up-to-date (yesterday, to be specific).

As predicted, I spent a major portion of my day at Boeing Surplus, which is having a sale this week. We came away with about five simple slab-style desks, a round break table, two quite nice task chairs, and four nice conference chairs. The task chairs are fully ergonomic, solidly built, and cost $10. The conference chairs cost $2.

Each desk was $13.50.

We also picked up some metal inboxes and a ton of hanging file folders ($1 for 40). I picked up a BNC-to-oldstyle Mac video cable and a very nice black laptop bag for myself. I deliberately did not investigate the coputer and printer offerings, but I did notice at least two wrapped pallets od SGI hardware, acres of laser printers, and paused to consider the potentially disastrous relationship implications of a sign which read "20-inch or larger monitors $5; smaller $10."

There was no wrapped white letter size paper by the ream, but there are boxes and boxes of fanfold. I did not get any of the 15-cent pressboard magazine holders, to my regret.

The other items that I gazed on with lust but left behind were the incredible variety of wooden flightcases, in many sizes, all with interesting stencils, silvery hardware, and convenient metal handles. Purses? Gig case for musicians? Mic case for bands?

We arrived before they opened and joined the small crowd clustered under the awning, seeking shelter from the day's rain. When the doors opened, the portly men who entered first ran-slash-waddled to their destination, somewhere in the copious technology-related material arryed on the tables.

Alas, though, for the old-"Boeing"-logo mouse-pads available in quantity were uniformly stained and schmutz ridden. And alas alack, for the lightweight metal storage cabinetry on offer was uniformly gunky and banged up, as well.

We did not pick up low, single-person filing pedestals, however, something I think I may regret.

Boeing Surplus will occupy much of my day tomorrow. $2 chairs! Half-price tables! We are camping out in the morning, like ardent fans of a washed-up rockstar.

Alas that they do not allow customers to bring cameras.

Monkeywire: the #1 source for news about monkeys and apes.

I doubt very much I can add anything to this succint description. Here's this month's pickins.

THE ERRANT APPRENTICE

I happened to hear this performed by Andy Stewart on PHC this Sunday and was spellbound by the rhyming gymnastics. Sadly, it was not credited or titled on the air. Happily, I was able to unearth it. The link above includes audio, and now I have the song lodged firmly in my ear again.

The Viola Joke as Musician's Folklore was uncovered whilst idly Googling. I sought research on the tradition of genre-specific ostracism-based musician jokes. These jokes are directed at a specific instrument, and are told within a community of musicians who participate in ensembles including the instrument being mocked.

The best known of these are banjo jokes, viola jokes, and drummer jokes. The banjo mockery is associated with traditionally-oriented pickers; the viola jokes are for consumption by a classical consort, and drummers take shit from rockers.

One article appeared tantalizingly beyond the web, however. Knowing the Score: The Transmission of Musician Jokes among Professional and Semi-Professional Musicians, by Nancy Groce, was published in the New York Folklore Journal Vol. 22 in 1996, but appears online only in the list of contents.

To judge a book by its' cover, however, the title appears to propose a function for the jokery: it establishes that the joker has been exposed to the culture of working musicians. If that's the thesis, I'd love to read more.

Are there similar categories of writer's jokes?

Evil toxic awful stinky floor sealant next door that the damn floor refinishers didn't think to inform anyone in the building about is FLAVORING MY FOOD LIKE SHARPIES.

I went into the apartment to tell them to stop it and get a floor sealant that won't KILL BABIES and this tiny Vietnamese teenager who spoke no English was applying it by hand to the floors wearing a cloth dust mask and no gloves that I recall.

I read the label on the giant multi-gallon drums cheerfully decorating our courtyard. Over half the label space was occupied with warnings about such topics as permanent neural damage and the necessty to wear rubber gloves and full-on respirators wile in use.

My eyes are burning and I am hearing some high-pitched sounds in my ears. I'm sure it's just me wanting to slap whoever hired the refinishers silly.

UPDTAE: I blaim all mispleeings on nerve damaj.

I could reload my website all day long, just watching my spiffy new randomizing header reload and change. I loves me summa dat ol' woodtype, yers I do.

Alas, though, for Photoshop's v.7 lack of the excellent Illustrator filters that so beautifully allow random shifts of baseline and edge to be gently inflected 'pon the bodies of the glyphs, in earnest pursuit of the organickally worn type our forefathers knew and endured.

Did you know, as far as I can tell, that it is simply not possible to order the fine letterpress tchotschkes produced in the lovely type shop of Ye Olde Colonial Williamsburg online? Will no-one make an appeal to King George, that ye internette may be mayde availabbule to the fine & industryous colonials?

Alas, too, that there is no third dimension avalilable to provide texture in the context of ye webbe payge. Were it so, I would marke this to be nubbly and stiffe, with a ridged embossing, like the book it imitates.

Oo-er! Looka this! Some luverly mud o'er 'ere!

DUDE, WHERE ARE MY FRIENDS? is Karla's anecdote of SIFF's opening night party. Gillian and Kristopher also narrate their way through the crowd.

I rather baffled Karla and my playing partners Greg and Karel when I opted to ply music with them at home instead of hitting up the not one, but two SIFF opening events I was invited to. What can I say? I'm a misanthrope.

New-minted PhD Michael Lane dropped a line noting his blog. Mike's a pal from undergrad days and recently took the sheepskin from the University of Sheffield. He's, um, real bright. Real bright. At IU I always thoroughly enjoyed provoking him into passionate discourse on any given topic I knew nothing about. If timed correctly, hopefully after a beer or two, I would sit back and enjoy the hurricane of ideas and facts that would come spilling out at high velocity.

Mike's been marinating in the mists of Airstrip One since shortly after finishing school in Indiana, and we've kept in touch via email. I look forward to following his rants and essays on his blog.

Basecamp, Mr. Flanagan informs me, is cool. It certainly looks neat. Added as an adjunct to the previous post.

My old drummer Sean has asked me to help him get a shipping center set up for his Amazon-hosted store. There are a raft of items to deal with. This is a link dump for research.

Shipping and inventory software

I posted to AskMe on a busy day and only got one reply, from me old chum Mr. Lope. He noted that the software offered by HarveySoft fit the bill for a former company of his.

Despite the horrible, price-hiding design of the website (Now with useless java-enabled navigation buttons!!) I was able to observe that the pricing page appears to provide initial confirmation of Mr. Lope's judgement.

More options need to be identified.

• HarveySoft

• AirFrame - web-based CRM suite. Interesting idea. Subscription-based pricing, $65/user. No hardware requirement. Definitely work looking into.
  

Amazon store builder - a bit off topic, but worth remembering. Automates access to Amazon-listed products to be wrapped in a non-Amazon website.

Guidelines for Managing Large Inventories for Marketplace sellers.

Amazon discussion board for zShops users.

Amazon tips for Pro Merchants.

Telephone management

Another poster recommended an open-source telephone tree package, Asterisk, which does look interesting from a features perspective. But I suspect that phone systems will be close to the bottom of my priority list; I haven't really started working through my feature needs there yet. I like the idea of a no-hardware solution, though; Having the phone company offer the features, perform the maintenance, etc., for a messaging tree system is attractive to me from a desire to provide simplicity and to minimize the physical infrastructure needed.

I have a strong suspicion that the physical location we are moving into will prove unsuitable within a year and until I know that idea is wrong will likely want to avoid hefty setup.

Workspace setup; office supplies

Sean is getting shelving; we'll need chairs and office supplies and so forth. A trip to Ducky's and to other local used furniture suppliers is a necessity.

• Ducky's

• Boeing Surplus - Big sale starts May 26, this Wednesday.

• Dixon's Used Furniture (no website) - residentially focused, rarely has good office furniture.

• Seattle University Surplus (no resources, looking into it.)

• University of Washington Surplus (very limited hours, only open 2 days a month. Next scheduled opening, June 1. Looking into a possiblity of looking at the materiel earlier.)

• EntreStart used to have a warehouse of old furniture and computers in SoDo but it's gone now, I think.
  

I need to make a list of smaller materials needed, and another one about services needed such as recycling, etc.

Computers etc.

Sean has two workstations we'll begin with. I am sure we'll need more (they are from an inexpensive supplier that is identified with manufacturing problems). I'll need to identify and wrangle licensing for a standard suite, as well.

I know I'll want to add wireless to the LAN as soon as we're set up, and suspect that notebooks will be desired within a month of getting rolling. I was able to find a hub for my cousin Eric in LA at Fry's for $30.00 with a $30.00 rebate, so this should not be a problem.

We'll need a laser printer for invoicing and so forth.

(posted in an incomplete state, will be revised.)

Opening 13 Cans of Whoop [blogerated NYT link]

Pounding Punch tastes like a nonalcoholic version of the Pagan Pink Ripple, a budget wine with tropical flavors that was a landmark beverage for me. Its distinctive hangover, a sneak preview of a cheap and tawdry death, made me realize while still in college why it is very important to drink in moderation. Sinful Citrus combines an insipid, vaguely lemon flavor with a shocking blue-green color. It looks like a product intended to be poured in the toilet. That's where it went in my house, at any rate.

William Grimes writes amusingly of taste-testing a batch of energy drinks. With the exception of the unfortunately bowdlerized headline - obviously intended to read "Opening 13 Cans of Whoop-Ass," and the exclusion of the Jones Soda Co. energy drink of the same name, the article is a funny bit.

Six Log: How are you using the tool?, Mena wants to know. So here's my census.

Active blogs and authors: four and fourteen (with up to twelve more in the wings), respectively. Inactive blogs and authors: eight blogs and four additional authors. Planned blog-based sites: five. Possible additional authors: fourteen.

That means I need to plan for a total of up to seventeen blog sites and forty-four authors with some non-sustaining revenue potential.

ACTIVE BLOGS:

One blog to debug a problem with another author's MT plugin. Three authors, including me. Headed for inactivity.

One blog to stash notes on an event that I am covering. Not directly revenue producing but directly related to professional, revnue-producig activity.

A group blog under the rubric of one of the publications I write for, provided as a favor. Nine authors, I think. No revenue, but clearly professional development.

A documentary blog providing discography and ephemera information on a long-defunct band. Intended as a collaborative blog. Two active authors, up to fifteen potential authors, some small possibility of supporting music sales through the site but with revenues projected in the tens of dollars per year. Not what I would consider commercial, but probably revenue producing.

INACTIVE BLOGS:

One for each close family member, totaling three in addition to mine. All are totally inactive.

One blog to support Viv's jewelry business. A placeholder. Non-revenue producing, but clearly commercial use.

One blog providing a backup for another blogger. Never used. One author.

One stillborn comics review and journalism blog. Eventually, I will migrate all my comics-related writing to this site. Non-revenue producing professional development but specifically intended to qualify for AdWords.

A placeholder for my portfolio, intended to be integrated with my Gallery install. Non-revenue producing professional development.

A placeholder for the blog-ization of my resume. about 70% done, but stalled. Non-revenue producing professional development.

PLANNED BLOGS:

A migration of another defunct band site. Up to five authors.

A migration of a special-interest website. One author.

A migration of a defunct post-nuke based special interest website. Up to seven authors.

A memorial website. Up to four authors.

A migration of an archive website for a defunct punk zine.

Visual Filters and Transitions Reference provides the tools needed to do inline image filtering for IE. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do this, or if it's worth the effort.

I think in this incarnation of the blog, it would be pretty cool to make any embedded image display in the browser in a manner similar to the rotating headshots up in the masthead, in a high-contrast maroon-and-manila version. I am not very interested in creating a duplicate image base that has that style enforced, although I can see that a one-time duping process might be the best route for the legacy material. I don't much want to have to do image processing when I post, and that tack would set a need for dual images, one in true color, for when I move to a new design, and one for the pseudo-printed look.

I suppose in theory I could rig up something that would enforce a reprocessed image at display time using Apache and something like ImageMagick on the back end. However, I'd prefer to have the browser do the work; and I'd also like to have it happen on a case-by-case basis (so I can turn it off if I want).

My instinct says that I'm only gonna find this feature in IE, because it's a fairly obscure need. Anyone out there have a grasp of this?

I very recently read A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, and I heartily recommend it. This general-interest survey of the current state of scientific knowledge concerning, well, nearly everything, is lucid and highly entertaining.

Bryson's interested-observer role is well played; as I read the book, I have to admit I wondered how long it would be until he hosts the inevitable TV series based upon it, on the model of The Shock of the New and Cosmos (which appears to have been a primary inspiration for the book).

(An aside: What is up with the weak sites for Sagan and Shock of the New? I mean, sure, they're old media material, but geez.)

The most-commonly used technique that Bryson employs to add human interest to what amounts to very informed speculation on events that happened before there were humans is dishing. He dwells with amusing panache on the personal foibles and peculiarities of the individual scholars involved in the development and discovery of this leap of knowledge and that fossil bed.

A clear pattern emerges in these sections too: it seems, in general, that the individuals we recognize as a discoverer or primary source of an idea are generally not the actual source, but instead the individual who most successfully promoted themselves as the source. Monkeys steal food from one another, too, so this should not be terribly surprising.

I saw a headline zap by the other day noting that Bryson's book had been nominated for some prize or other, but alas, the title of the book creates a very noisy result set chez Google, and thus I was unable to dig up a link.

Speaking of dedsign synchronicities, The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata pleases me greatly today.

Ragnarok Press makes demo fonts with full letter-sets, but no punctuation or extended characters. Two are made available every month, and they archive them here. Many, many nicely done versions of seventeeth-century calligraphic fonts.

Wood type - someone's wood type resource list.

I'm looking for a hand-lettery version of Walbaum medium italic, which I think I have, but can't find as I don't recall the name.

Click the closeup to see the whole map. Scanning this, I noticed some killer engraved illustrations in the book. But I really must move on today.

UPDATE: Hmm, I had noticed this as I was working on the prior entry, but there's an odd chiming between this new look of mine and the recent redesig over at Josh's Communications from Elsewhere. I know I was not thinking of his design as I assembled this skin, but the similarity of the name of News from Nowhere and the even more unsettling visual echo that occurs with the addition of a map element in this entry is downright weird.

Jason says to draw him a map, send him a postcard. I like the idea of relabeling the Treasure Island map with refferences to his songs. Hm. that suggests an interactive project, does it not?

As a part of my ill-advised development of a virtual book look for this site, I dug out some of the older books I have here and there about the house. The pages that made it into the final product came from an 1894 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island published by Charles Scribner's Sons as pat of a multivolume compendium of the man's work. I didn't notice as I scanned the book, but there is a two-color facsimile of young Jim's map just prior to the frontmatter. Maybe I'll share that here too.

One of the other books I found is an intriguing edition of William Morris' unreadable utopian fantasy, News from Nowhere. As I flipped through it, I didn't see a page or type worth cribbing from, but then I remembered that I'd purchased it because of the very faded, illegible reproductions of four agitprop drawings, presumably by Morris, probably from the 1880s. The drawings are intriguingly hard to see in the book, when held in the hand and peered at. They appear to have been printed in yellow ink on what may have been at one time faintly lavender paper. The inexpensive stock has faded to the familiar manila of old paper, nearly exactly the same shade as the yellow ink. I recall thinking as I bought the book that it would be an interesting challenge to work on scans of the endpapers.

Well, I've done so, and you may view the results by clicking on the banner at the top of his entry. The drawings are interesting because Morris is such a gifted draftsman; they are also somewhat odd to our post-Soviet eyes in the manner in which they idealize and fuss over images familiar from both later patriotic art and socialist poster design.

[crosspost from the Siffblog]

This is the first year that I had the opportunity to take as full an advantage of my SIFF press pass as I have wanted to, and for the first two weeks of screenings, I was very diligent about seeing every film shown, about three a day for two weeks.

I had been warned by others that when one is viewing films for review in volume, it becomes crucial to take extensive notes, something that I try to avoid when viewing films one at a time for review. I've found that If I'm taking notes as the film screens, I'm much less likely to experience the film like a casual viewer and therefore may miss the quality of emotional involvement in the film which is part of he aim of many commercial films.

The reason it's important to take good notes in viewing lots of films for review is that after a couple of days, your memory breaks down, and you'll inadvertently find yourself mixing up characters, scenes, and situations. The notes help ensure that what you turn in represents what you saw.

Despite this, not only do the films blend together in one's mind, to a certain extent the memories become dissociated: you may find yourself recalling how nice it was to sit by the river with James Garner, or what a pretty girl that French chick is that you met the other day, or how good that food looked in that Chinese family's roadside lunch counter. The films' depictions of experiences begin to occupy the places that are normally used to store personal experience.

This effect renders everything slightly dreamlike, because you learn to distrust your memory.

Adding to the strangeness is the emotional effect of being absorbed by the narratives that you're being presented with. Generally, filmmakers aim for the maximum emotional and visual persuasiveness that they can accomplish. They'll do anything to involve you in the emotional rhythm of the story, and that means there are certain tricks that are used over and over again. Over swelling strings, the actor's eyes widen as her head tilts back, mouth opening, and a gentle rain spatters her face. The camera pulls back, swooping away, and the rain becomes a torrential downpour as brasses enter the soundtrack.

Despite the recognizable and mechanical nature of many of these tricks, they remain effective rhetorical tropes, even after sitting through many movies. It's possible that they become even more effective over time through repetition. As audience members, we're conditioned to respond to these gestures, slavering when the bell sounds.

This operant-conditioning effect (the reward is produced within our bodies as endorphins are released in response to the emotive cues) has a cumulative effect. After achieving that critical mass of film-viewing where one's memories break down, the emotional pummeling has a stronger effect, rendering even hack films capable of carrying a wallop. It's like being slightly drunk all the time, off balance and easily swayed.

typo_dylan, via EB. Let it run through the song several times for maximum effect.

Tativille is le site officiel of Jacques Tati's films. SIFF will be screening a new 70mm (!) print of Playtime, Tati's amazing 1967 look at city life.

At least one film screening at the festival, The Python, appears to have been partially inspired by Tati's cinematography and environmental sense of humor.

[a cross-posting from the Siffblog. No, I still don't have the cross-blog tool implemented.]

Yeesh. Well, I didn't expect this layout to happen when I woke up yesterday morning.

I disregarded no-tables, so it's quite inelegant; and I have yet to finesse the repeating edges that make up the book's borders. But it's in the neighborhood.

Siffblog 2004 is Tablet's Seattle International Film Festival blog for this year. So far there's a few contributor bios and some reflections on covering the festival from me, Tablet staffer Kristopher Monroe, and Gillian Gaar. I'm sure Karla will weigh in shortly as well - she's got her bio up.

In a classic bit of timing, this blog was promised and in development when MT announced the new multiple-author pricing. Hacking the look-and-feel together this weekend has me itching to work on this blog too. I suppose I need to look into the multi-blog posting plugin thingy as well.

I just reformatted my primary audio storage drive by accident. I have a 12gb backup from last August, but the collection was nearing 20gb. Crappe, and sundry florid Elizabethan oathes.

The New York Times > Books > The Curious Incident of the Boxes: An auction of a lost cache of Conan Doyle memorabilia may have led to the grisly grottong* garotting death of Lancelyn Green, a collector of Holmesiana.

The Grey Lady takes a look. I recall this being mentioned by none other than the eagle-eyed oldtimey at the time of the unfortunate incident with the kitchen implement.

*Thanks, Anita!

Man ill after gorging on sauteed cicadas

Associated Press
May 15, 2004
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A man who cooked and ate nearly 30 cicadas sought medical treatment after suffering a strong allergic reaction to the sauteed insects.

The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and ate the cicadas after sauteing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil.

Makes a man proud of his hometown, yes it does.

[via Hollyism, who also has a heck of a windstorm yarn up about now.]

On Loneliest Road, a Unique Tree Thrives [blogerated NYT link].

I always wondered why one refers to shoes over a wire in an urban setting as a shoe tree. Perhaps this is the root cause.

Ever-vigilant Roadside America offers further examples.

Impact Analysis of the Watergate Scandal on Nixon's Gallup Poll Presidential Approval Rating, an academic study by Robert Yafee of NYU. [via this AskMe thread.]

Matt and Bart both have the, you know, online thingys with the posting and stuff. Which is purty neat.

Bellerophon is making the repeating grindy hard drive noise that means directory-structure problems. My site farm may be up and down over the next few days. Dammit, I just launched a date-and-event tied collaborative blog, too. Oh well.

Berg, Al Qaeda linked before, reports the New York Daily News.

There is some seriously weird stuff going on here.

Comm badges are set to be deployed at Seattle's nearly-open Starfleet Headquarters main public library.

You know, the other day I happened to notice, driving by, that the administrative offices visible from the street were fully stocked with what appeared to be Aerons.

At the same time, it should be noted, this is a library system which shuts down entirely, web site included, for two weeks every year due to insufficient funding. No local library branch provides wireless internet access yet, either - I guess the installation cost of $35 to $50 in hardware is just too damn steep.

Finally, I was not surprised to learn that the central library will employ that wonder of technology, an automated book-sorting system.

In the early seventies, the newly constructed Monroe County Public Library opted to install just such a system, the "Randtreiver," which promptly broke down and was eventually removed and replaced with that advanced functional book sorting technology known as shelving.

The New York Times > Washington > Campaign 2004 > John Kerry's Journey | The Early Years: Prep School Peers Found Kerry Talented, Ambitious and Apart: the NYT opens their big fat JFK bio.

The Gray Zone: Seymour Hersh's third chapter in the ongoing torture mess. It should come as no shock that the soldiers being prosecuted right now are fall guys.

My folks were in town a bit unexpectedly this week for a couple days. While there, my dad and I finally went on the biplane that offers quick little hops out of Boeing Field at the Museum of Flight. My dad's first degree is in aeronautical engineering and he passed his love of planes directly on to me.

To my surprise, this was not only my first flight in an open-cockpit plane, but his too. It was a total blast.

Michael and Jeff have similar isues with the MT upgrade, based on the number of blogs and authors they are currently hosting.

Auto Icon FAQ, from the Bentham Project.

The 'Auto-Icon of Jeremy Bentham at University College London, a linked paper on the history of said curiosity.

I was led to this page by the rumor that the auto-icon was available for viewing via webcam, something that appears to have been too good to be true today, although traces appear to remain.

No panopticon for Jeremy, alas.

According to the new licensing structure that Six Apart announced today, I'll need to pay them $600 to operate under a license for the new release that grants me the freedom to create unlimited numbers of weblogs with unlimited numbers of authors if any of the blogs is a commercial blog - which, arguably, mine is. As is a resume or portfolio.

Scuttlebutt is that one could still employ the application as needed without an honest license, but I strongly prefer to treat Six Apart aboveboard.

Bummer. I guess the thing to do is wait a month to see if they revise anything - but if they've done their homework, they certainly should not.

The Infinite Cat Project.

"It all began innocently enough when a user on a Mac help forum posted a picture of his cat, Frankie, contemplating the beauty of a flower. Shortly afterwards another user posted a picture of his cat, Sammy, bristling at the picture of the cat on the monitor."

Following Dent's Power Law, this must therefore be the most powerful site on the internet. [via MoFi.]

Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey - Table of Contents

This one translated by a team comprised of messrs. Leaf, Lang, Myers, and Butcher.

I'm looking for a rundown of all English translations, and keep coming up with new online versions.

Last week, and this week, I am numbing my butt at nearly every single press screening for the Seattle International Film Festival out of some masochistic curiosity.

I have learned that there are clearly more bad and so-so films made than good or great ones, so far. I have also learned that watching three movies in a day in a theater environment tends to produce very strange, dreamlike memory effects.

I had been warned about this by other toilers in the critical trenches and have been seeking to stave off the dreaded mental movie mashup by taking copious notes.

Of course, the notes are taken in the dark.

How Much Does a Grecian Urn?, by the inimitable, and back in action, K-G, at the ID.

I urge you to peruse this prime slice of poesie. How this man remains unemployed is a mystery to me. But then, if I understood how it worked, I'd probably have a gig by now too, instead of spending my days soaking in SIFF press screenings.

Cincinnati's premier Cicada information source:

From the FAQ:

What do Cicadas eat?  Human children are the primary source of nutrition for Cicadas. 

Are Cicadas poisonous?  Yes, Cicadas have a deadly venom that is injected through a small bone like tube known as the "Cicada deadly venom tube".  The venom can kill a human being instantly.  In 1987, the last time the Cicadas emerged in Cincinnati, over 7 million people died from Cicada injections.  Many people escaped but most perished. 

Lots more helpful tips!

[via this MeFi thread]

Virtual Panopticon

In 1791, English philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed an architectural innovation designed to lead to safe, humane prisons. He envisioned a prison space constructed as a circular array of inward-pointing cells. Solid walls between the cells would prevent any communication between prisoners, and a small window in the back of the cell would let in light to illuminate the contents. At the center of the ring of cells, Bentham placed an observation tower with special shutters to prevent the prisoners from seeing the guards. This "all-seeing place," or panopticon, was designed to provide complete observation of every prisoner.

Who is the new number two?

Who is the new number two?

Be seeing you.

MetaFilter notes that Blogger has relaunched. Single entry archives!

Does this mean that Ken is going to mess up his template again and come around looking for help?

Let's consult the Mystical Smoking Head of Bob.

US powerless to halt Iraq net images - or is it?

I found this striking image as the front cover of a circular for the History Book Club, I believe in a magazine.

It appears to show an epic but forgotten battle. On the desert plains of Egypt, the Civil War-era forces of Texas and the Ohio Volunteers are facing off. The ten-gallon boys look to be in for a pasting, given that a fleet of Flying Fortresses is providing close air support to the muzzle-loading sons of the Buckeye State.

Those scions of the green and rolling hills are accompanied by what detailed historic-ish sleuthing* has determined to be either a giant robot cunningly fashioned in the likeness of one Geo. Washington, or possibly a large sculpture of that same man. If it's a sculpture, internal, structural cues lead me to believe that the Ohioans aim to install the sculpture in the bosom of the ozymandian cliffs the doughty Texians seek to hold.

Naturally, I scoured the circular for the book that would bring news of such a wonderment, never before seen on book nor History Channel. Alas, it never turned up.

The image sorta reminded me of Komar and Melamid.

*Historic-ish sleuthing, in this case, constituted leaning back in my char and rolling my eyes around in my head for about five seconds.

The Illuminated Donkey is back in action with a throwdown!

As it happens, I have been watching Asian cinema by the yard, and have recently corresponded with Mr. Frank concerning such matters as

• the importability via standard airmail of thousand year old eggs from the Pearl on the shores of the South China Sea
• layers of meaning in contemporary mainland chinese cinema
• food in general
• the ongoing torture scandal

I hasten to point out that I did not enquire as to the nature of Mr. Frank's sainted grandparents' family business. I can confirm, however, that Mr. Frank exhibited a thorough grasp of Hong Kong's import and export laws regarding poultry products.

Girl + Boy - Chris Doyle

Chris Doyle, LA Times

Chris Doyle Yahoo! Movies bio

Chris Doyle on shooting Hero.

soup du jour of the day: On self-censorship.

O. T. publishes a blog rejection letter from her private correspondence. Seems like others be suffering similar problems.

RecipeSource: Preserved Duck Eggs (thousand Year Old Eggs)

PRESERVED DUCK EGGS (THOUSAND YEAR OLD EGGS) Yield: 12 servings

• 2 c Tea, very strong black
• 1/3 c Salt
• 2 c Ashes of pine wood
• 2 c Ashes of charcoal
• 2 c Fireplace ashes
• 1 c Lime*
• 12 Duck egg, fresh

*Available in garden stores and nurseries.

Combine tea, salt, ashes and lime. Using about 1/2 cupper egg, thickly coat each egg completely with thisclay-like mixture. Line a large crock with garden soiland carefully lay coated eggs on top. Cover with moresoil and place crock in a cool dark place. Allow tocure for 100 days. To remove coating, scrape eggs andrinse under running water to clean thoroughly. Cracklightly and remove shells. The white of the egg willappear a grayish, translucent color and have agelatinous texture. The yolk, when sliced, will be agrayish-green color.

To serve, cut into wedges and serve with:

Sweet pickled scallions or any sweet pickled vegetable

Sauce of 2 tablespoons each vinegar, soy sauce andrice wine and 1 tablespoon minced ginger root.

Preserved Ancient Eggs

These are often called thousand-year eggs, eventhough the preserving process lasts only 100 days.They may be purchased individually in Oriental markets.

The description of the whites turning grayishisn't quite accurate from the ones I've seen. They'remore a dark blackish amber color-- quite attractiveactually.

From "The Regional Cooking of China" by MargretGin and Alfred E. Castle, 101 Productions, SanFrancisco, 1975.

For Paul in Hong Kong. I am beginning a Seattle quest for these delicacies of my youth. Note to Culver descendants: DUCK eggs.

Barring a server outage or interweb fiasco, tomorrow will show me my one-hundred-thousandth guest. Get a screenshot if it's you!

Hergé's Syldavian documents the language of Syldavia, as seen in Tintin. [via the non-stop Cartoonist.]

Handy for the traveler that seeks to visit Molvania, a neighboring state, recently discuted at MeFi.

badgerphone.

What's better than a dancing banana?

A dancing bananaphone with badger badger badgers! Happily, happily, happily via MonkeyFilter.

Giant Squid, Tall Tales and Truth [NYT]

Fourth graf:

... and reports of its depth may be greatly exaggerated.

Oh my.

On Sunday afternoon, at Dixon's Used Furniture, we found a fully-ergonomic office chair for Viv's home office.

The chair is a Teknion Adovcate, and it's very comfy. I have a significantly older Herman Miller fancypants chair (pre-Aeron, but still the cush), and I'm slightly jealous.

Word to the wise: it was $40, an outrageous bargain, and they have two left, one without a back and another high on an inaccessible shelf.

I'm not sayin' nothin, I'm just sayin', is all.

On Sunday, after some appropriate dawdlesomeness (regrettably including bowing out of a sketched-in plan to visit the celebrated Kubota Gardens, bummer) Viv and I ran a furniture errand (about which more later) and ended up at Costco.

It was a the usual monthly weekend visit, part of the fabric of Northwestern (and, increasingly, the nation's) as long as I have lived here, and it was uneventful as usual.

While walking slowly through the aisles, one of the other people who appeared to be on the same general schedule as us was an older black woman, dressed sharply in a matching blouse-and-miniskirt ensemble, but, I hasten to assure you, not in a lapse of judgment. It looked good on her. She was apparently alone, but appeared jaunty and energetic.

We finished our shopping list at about 4:30, and faced the huge lines that accumulate in the cavernous front at the end of the weekend day. I was happy to stand in line and shuffle slowly forward. Lately, I've developed a recurrent sciatic nerve pain that at least affords me the pleasure of amazing jolts of endorphins, which is a nice consolation for the blue-and-white spots that dance in front of my eyes as I walk.

I was vegging in line, vaguely wondering what to make for dinner when an exclamation from my wife followed a quiet thunking sound and a rising susurrus of exclamations prompted me to turn around.

The older woman was cradled in the arms of a young Asian man, in obvious physical distress. He'd quickly placed his small selection of goods on the ground, and caught her before she could completely lose consciousness or drop to the floor. I believe when her legs gave way, she slumped forward onto her cart, affording him the opportunity to catch her.

She was speaking to him but he clearly was not following what she had to say, leaning in close and admonishing her to stay with him. As he did so, she began to collapse completely. He turned as he accepted more of her weight and told a nearby helpful person with a cellphone to call 911. As he did so he began to lay her on the floor.

As he lay her down, her chest heaved dramatically as she apparently began to hyperventilate. A tall, dark-skinned man dressed in the open shoes, sweater and corduroy that I associate with East African emigrants in the Puget Sound region stepped forward, and tenderly tugged the lower hem of her small skirt as low as it would go before rejoining his family, seeking to preserve her modesty. I was struck by the simplicity and complexity of his gesture - he acted with tenderness and compassion, but in response to a set of values that might very well be somewhat at odds with those of a woman who chooses to wear a miniskirt in her sixties. Did he disapprove of her wardrobe choices as they passed in the aisles, under the crushing weight of all that Costco abundance?

Not that it matters very much; it was a gesture of respect and tenderness in the context of the moment. Shortly after he'd straightened her clothing, a growing puddle of urine on the shiny concrete floor raised new questions of dignity and propriety.

By now everyone in the lines near the stricken woman had begun to watch in concern; calls for assistance from the store's staff were answered by non-checking-lane personnel hurrying forward. The checkout lines themselves continued to move, effectively unslackened by the mortal drama. Checkers and boxers called instructions and warnings to one another:

"They better not move her."

"...fired..."

"...sue everyone who was working..."

Clearly not well trained for the event, they focused on what they did know how to do, which was to check people out. I suppose that that may be what they had been trained to do in such an event. This is not to say that they did not experience and exhibit feelings of compassion and a desire to help; they did. But in the absence of training for a situation like this, fear of losing their jobs predominated in their reactions.

A young Costco worker moved the woman's cart, her purse in the basket away from both the woman lying on the floor and the line she had been standing in. Someone had produced a pair of towels for her. One draped along her legs, the other was under her head. More managerial Costco people showed up, one confirming the address with a 911 dispatcher on his cellphone.

The woman had rolled on her side, out of the puddle of urine, and the young Asian man was now holding her in a half-hug, half-cradle that conveyed a desperate compassion. I suppose that in one way he was demonstrating what it is to hold on for dear life.

As I began to unload our cart onto the checkout conveyor belt, the young worker who had moved the woman's cart out of the way began to wheel the cart farther away still. Viv suggested to me, "They should check her ID."

I repeated the suggestion to the young woman, saying that she should check the woman's ID for medical information. The young woman immediately began to dig through the purse, finding not only the stricken woman's wallet but also a prescription asthma inhaler. She went to inform her coworkers near the huddled figures. I don't know what the response was, but she immediately returned to the cart with the materials, put them in the bag again, and began to wheel the cart away.

The person behind me in line attempted to interrupt the operation, saying it was important to keep the purse with the woman, in case "they need to call someone." The young worker moved the cart, and bag, away anyhow.

As we checked out, our checker mentioned that her husband had epilepsy, and that he would sometimes "let go," as she put it, referring to the urine. By the time our cart was loaded, and I had wheeled it away from the end of the checkout lane while Viv finished paying, two Seattle Fire Department paramedics had arrived. I was not wearing a watch, but I doubt more than three minutes could have elapsed from the time the woman collapsed to their arrival.

We wheeled the cart to our car, somewhat shaken. As we reached it a second Fire Department ambulance parked behind the first. I held Vivian very closely for a long moment before we began to load the groceries into the trunk.

Anita noted Gallimaufry's justifiably peeved blogging of her experience at her Democratic caucus on Saturday. She approaches name-calling in her frustration. Whack 'em with the stick again!

I instigated an other local hothead to favor us with a report (something I doubt he needed much encouraging to do) and the translucent-skinned developer has delivered, in the form of District Cock-ups, a cautionary tale (well actually he sounds practically optimistic). He probably didn't even bother getting drunk first! Kids today, I tell you.

Pleasing to Remember stood up for Howard in the Fightin' Fifth, and veiled4allah stepped up to the plate in the Frugal Forty-Seventh.

I didn't excavate further caucus tales in the limited time I devoted to assembling this mess o' pointers.

Some notes on the new Jason Webley CD, Only Just Beginning.

At the concert at Town Hall Friday night, I sat next to a man I introduced myself to, but whose name I have forgotten. He mentioned that he'd recently interviewed Jason for a San Francisco-based publication, but did not mention it by name.

We briefly discussed the experience of interviewing Jason and I asked him some questions about what he'd learned from Jason in the interview. He told me that yes, this new record is the end of the cycle that began with Viaje; that the songs on Only Just Beginning are about family, and finally, that each song on Only Just Beginning relates direcly to the songs on Viaje.

Curious, as I was ripping Only Just Beginning, I looked at the tracklistings for Viaje. What I noticed was interesting enough that I'll reproduce both side by side here.

The songs are structured as the close of a fugue begun on Viaje, such that Viaje's "Prelude" determines Only Just Beginning's "Coda," and so on. "Halloween" and "May Day." "Old Man Time" and "Icarus."

(Update: oops, I reversed the songtitles titles at first.)

There are musical relationships as well - "Music That Puts Everything Together" echoes both "Halloween" and, obviously, "Music That Tears Itself Apart," but I have, er, only just begun to listen for them.

Finally, I noticed that Jason also studded the concert last night with simiilar puzzles - the only one I really saw and got was at the beginning of the second song, "Balloon Feather Boat Tomato," when he pulled these objects, in that order, from within the grand piano on the stage. As the audience recognized each, cheers rang out, presumably for the roles each symbol hs played over the years at these elaborate shows.

The title of the song, by the way, relates in reverse chronological order, the ways in which Jason's end-of-season Death Day shows transported the performer-character to the Other Side. At the first Death Day show, the Tomato led the procession, where Jason was shorn and placed into a coffin; At the second (my favorite of the ones I saw), he departed in a boat, accompanied by Charon and the Lady of the Lake; at the third, he was cocooned against a tree as feathers rained down on the freezing, silent crowd; and at the most recent, his avatar ascended through the drizzle slung beneath a clot of balloons.

One cannot help but wonder what in the world will happen at the end of this summer.

So I guess IFC was having a Who-athon or something; I remarked to Viv as we flipped by that the band had been very lucky cinematically, with the three films they were involved with that I know of.

It was the closing scenes of Tommy we were looking at. Tommy is a completely ridiculous movie; but at the same time, that is what makes it great. Then the credits informed me, startlingly, that it was directed by Ken Russell, something I guess I had never bothered to even think about before, but which in hindsight should have been obvious to me.

A few hours later, I turned off the DVD player and flipped into the middle of The Kids are Alright, whose soundtrack of largely live performances I strongly prefer to the studio renditions also available. I recall seeing the film around 1982 in a theater in Europe and have seen it a few times since, but I had never really watched it as film critic or as a musician.

I was not prepared to be as impressed as I was. From the clever intercutting of many interviews, a clear picture of the artistic dynamic of the band emerges (there's Pete, and there's them lot), and although I hesitate to say such an obvious thing, Keith Moon's improbable gifts as a drummer are also conveyed cinematically.

Even in the studio-shot segments, or possibly most strongly in them, the filmmakers insist on presenting a direct, pure-verite style that is very successful. We see the band apparently recording "Who Are You," and the filmmakers cut between several tracking sessions, creating a visual analogue of multi-track recording without resorting to dumb effects like multiple exposures.

In that section, and elsewhere in the film, the visual motif of an isolated Pete Townshend crops up again and again, which is clearly a deliberate choice by the filmmakers - and possibly what Mr. Townshend himself would have desired as the film was in production.

The persuasiveness of the film in establishing this illusion of documentary transparency is fantastic. Watching it was a deep pleasure. I wondered, naturally, "Who the heck made this thing, anyway?"

The answer is that Jeff Stein and Ed Rothkowitz are primarily responsible. Rothkowitz was the film's editor and an associate producer who was in charge of garnering the documentary footage, and Stein was the director and driving force behind the film.

A remastered DVD has been released, with information at this noisy flash-based site.

I found a long interview with Jeff Stein at the Hollywood Reporter, which I found fascinating.

Michael and Prairie and Eric and Rose and Adam and Viv and i all sat together at Jason's CD release party.

Michael was trooper enough to stick around for the après shoe, but Eric and Rose and Adam and Viv and I all hit a watering hole and talked about Jason, Jason, Jason all night (As I post, it seems that Jason's site might be down, which is a drag).

An interesting point emerged, which is that Eric and his lovely wife Rose may have met via a shared enthusiasm for Jason's music - they certainly courted during the Against the Night period.

In other news: the songs on the new CD have a high earworm factor, which is promising. Jason finally has teeshirts. The new CD will also be released on 12-inch vinyl, to which I say, woo-hoo! "Features alternate records of songs from the CD," hmmm.

UPDATE: Elsewhere's pix are up.