Posts Tagged by Watching
Fire and hailstones
| May 18, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Video |
I’ve been obsessed with watching weather videos on Youtube lately. Metafilter is partly to blame, as is The Awl, but the real culprit is El Nino*, which is responsible for the worst winter Houston had in the past 30 years and also the fact that we’re probably gonna have one helluva hurrican’ season.
I also had this thing, when I was a kid, where I felt a kind of strong kinship to any object or event that I could remotely relate to my own personal history. For example, I loved to read stories about The Pilgrims’ Mayflower because my birthday was in May, and in some way felt that made me connected to it. It’s weird, I know. I have also always been fascinated by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens — it happened two days after I was born. I even have a Mt. St. Helens “emerald”, as the true emerald is the birthstone for May.
Best comment in the hailstorm thread: Our planet is fucking awesome.
*Which in Spanish means “the Nino”.
Piano with Wind and Trains
| May 11, 2010 | Filled under Video |
Trailer: Piano with Wind and Trains from Andrew Laker on Vimeo.
I just found out my friend Butch, whom I’ve written about before, has had his first feature-length doc, PIano with Wind and Trains, accepted to the Chagrin Falls International Documentary Film Festival.
Butch and I met while working at a small suburban newspaper — he was a photojournalist and I was in my first real job as a reporter. We had the most evil of editors, but fun coworkers who made the job tolerable and a margin of creative freedom. Later Butch found a job that would let him experiment with video, though he still does a lot of photography work too.
I am excited about this film fest not just because I am credited in the doc as a creative consultant but also because it’s a friggin’ good movie, a heartwarming story, and because I am proud of my friend.
Category 5
| May 9, 2010 | Filled under Blog, Video |
Rick Mitchell + Jeff Corwin = Hank Schyma, my new crush. We bonded over tornadoes at the Art Car Ball.
This one makes me miss Oklahoma.
Minsk meets Cub meets Vespa
| April 26, 2010 | Filled under Video |
In the middle of watching the Top Gear: Vietnam Special. But don’t read the link like I did, because spoilers abound.
The entire episode is available on Youtube.
What is tiki?
| April 20, 2010 | Filled under Video |
It was CLH who turned me on to the Polynesia Pop craze, but it fits in perfectly with my love of all things Midcentury. Most people don’t understand the Hawaiian shirts, cocktail culture and exotica music. The DVD of Tiki looks like a good primer to explain how Polynesia went from culture to kitsch in the 1930s and ’40s.
At Hukilau 2010 in June (our annual pilgrimage to Florida) I’ll be volunteering at the door for the world premier of this documentary. There’s a sneak peek below. At around 9:34 you can see brief footage of CLH and I sailing on the Tikki Beach at Hukilau 2004, the “Hurricane Hukilau”. There’s also footage of many of the places we visited during our month in French Polynesia, including the tallest tiki in the world.
Inspiration
| November 23, 2009 | Filled under Blog, Video |
Obsessed with Spalding Gray lately. I bought a used copy of Impossible Vacation to read… well, to read while on vacation — I leave for Los Angeles tomorrow. I’ve been thinking of ways to take my writing to another level, my creative writing, not my writing for work, and there is something inside of me that has been telling me for a while that I need to start performing my work. Which is weird because I am not, nor have I ever been, a performer.
Thursday I went to this event called Pecha Kucha, the first of what I hope will be several in Houston. And there was the feeling again, the voice in the back of my head saying You can do this. I went up front after the presentations to talk to the organizer for the story I was writing and when I introduced myself he said “You know, we don’t have any writers, but I’d like to have some for the next event.” The universe is telling me something.
