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

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.

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.

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.

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.]

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.