It’s Officially Over
Saturday, April 05, 2008 - 10:51 AM
Well, it’s officially over. Call it Karma is no more.
Laura, Paul and I met the other night to determine the fate of the group. If you haven’t been paying attention, I’ll bring you up to speed. First, our original vocalist (Erin) left last year. After some auditions, we replaced her with Laura. Then, earlier this year, Jeremy took a job out in California. So, now we needed to replace him.
During the time it took to try to schedule something to work out a possible percussionist/drummer replacement, Dan took a job in Toronto, so he’ll be leaving soon, too.
Well, that just left Paul, Laura and myself. With only two of those people being original members of the group, we decided to call it quits.
We’re going to put together a new group. That’ll take some time. Not only do we have to find a new bassist and drummer/percussionist, but we plan on expanding the lineup with a pianist/keyboardist.
I’ll update our progress as it happens here, so keep an eye out. In the mean time, if you haven’t already, make sure to stop by CDbaby.com to pick up copy of our CD or EP. Once they’re all sold, that’s it! This may be your last chance to own this little piece of music history.
Oh, and we haven’t decided on a new name yet. However, Laura and I spent a good portion of the past two days exchanging Ghostbusters quotes via email. (If you haven’t figured it out, or didn’t already know, “Call it Karma” was a reference to Ghostbusters, and not a reference to a bad song by some crappy Emo band.)
What, Me Worry?
Tuesday, April 01, 2008 - 11:31 AM
If you were like me when you were younger, you couldn’t wait to get to the fold-in on the back of Mad. It seemed to top anything else in the magazine. The New York Times has a feature on Al Jaffee, who has been doing the fold-in since it’s inception in 1964. Who knew it was originally supposed to be a one-off joke?
Playboy, Life and other magazines had their lavish color fold-outs, so Mad, he thought, should parody them with a cheap black-and-white fold-in.
“That was the one-time gag,” he said. But he was sure Al Feldstein, the editor, and William M. Gaines, the publisher, wouldn’t go for it.
It’s great that he’s still doing it after all these years, and it’s still done by hand.
And Sam Viviano, the art director, seems in awe of Mr. Jaffee’s old-school technique. “I think part of the brilliance of the fold-in is lost on younger generations who are so used to Photoshop and being able to do stuff like that on the computer,” he said. “It’s matching the colors and keeping the sense of what exists at two levels, the original image and the folded-in image. We’ve never actually known anyone else who could do that.”
The article features an interactive fold-in "side bar" with examples from throughout the years. Go check it out.
Money Ruins Art
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 - 12:11 PM
It’s really too bad what is going on with the film Fanboys. If you’re not familiar with the controversy, Wired has the details. (Make sure you also read their account of how Ernie Cline got the film made in the first place.)
You gotta love this, though:
Steven Brill, director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor was brought in to do several days of reshoots to erase any reference to terminal illness… "Have you seen the cancer version of this movie?" writes Brill in an email to an angry fan. "I have. It is unreleaseable. It would be irresponsible to release it."
Let me get this straight: The studio had the director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor come in to "fix" the movie? I guess he is a pretty good authority on what constitutes bad film making. Too bad he didn’t deem Little Nicky "unreleaseable".
The problem is, basically, that this really should be an independent film, but it’s (unfortunately) being financed by a large company. Large companies (in any industry) have a tendency to want to homogenize things for the masses. The thing is, this really isn’t a film for the masses. This is a film aimed specifically at a select group of people. Since the Weinstein company has severely angered their target audience with this move, it’s hard to see how this move won’t back-fire on them. If they don’t reconsider their actions, this movie will certainly flop. (At least until the "director’s cut" comes out on DVD.)
The article ends with this last bit of irony, from Cline himself:
"Unless you’re putting up all the money yourself, making a movie seems to be an endless series of compromises," [Cline] says. "It’s hard to know what that means until you actually go through it. The Weinstein Company can do whatever they want. They put up the money. But it is against our wishes and it’s done purely for monetary reasons."
It was exactly this sort of interference that caused George Lucas to start his own company and start financing his own films.
Now it’s Time
Thursday, March 06, 2008 - 12:54 PM
Now it’s time to get an iPhone. (Okay, I may wait until it’s 3G, but still...)
Today Apple announced full Exchange support & push email on the iPhone. Full Exchange support.
Of course, this is one of those things that many people predicted way back when the iPhone was first announced (seems so long ago, doesn’t it?), but that didn’t stop the tech news pundits from decrying the iPhone for not having these features.
Just like the SDK. The tech pundits decried the lack of an "official" way to bring 3rd party apps (non-web apps) to the iPhone, completely ignore the fact that it was pretty much a given from the start that Apple would do this.
Of course Apple intended to add these features, but it was more important to bring the thing to market in the first place.
(Oh, and on the whole no "Flash" issue? Flash sucks! It always has and always will. Just because so many websites rely on it now, doesn’t make it suck any less. Hell, I had some bad Flash on a website lock my whole computer just yesterday. I had to hard boot to recover. Do you really want that crap on your phone?)
Tim Burton’s Alice
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 - 02:25 PM
I just found out that Tim Burton is going to be directing the new Alice in Wonderland, which will be done in a combination live action and stop motion animation. That should be really cool.
Let me make a couple of predictions:
Chistina Ricci as Alice
Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter
Too obvious? We’ll see…