March 2009 Archives

So a few weeks ago I picked up a Canon handheld miniDV camera for some reason. Found it on Woot and got a pretty good deal on it. But now I've got a video camera, and no idea what to do with it really other than trying to learn some video apps to add to my portfolio.

So here's the first movie I threw together, just a pass with iMovie for now. Tossed the camera onto the dashboard of my car on bright sunny Saturday afternoon and went for a ride. It's really good with Thomas Newman's theme to "Road to Perdition" (appropriate?), but in the spirit of being in compliance with copyright laws the version I uploaded to YouTube is silent.


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So last night I was at Metro catching old favorites The Tossers. 'Tis the season, with St. Patrick's Day coming up soon after all. Something a bit frightening occured to me over the course of the evening.

The ticket stub says "15th Anniversary Show". How about that? Fifteen years these guys have been playing... I remember the first time I saw them, I was a junior in college out in DeKalb and they were playing at Otto's one night. Back then it was just four dudes up on stage, occasionally joined by the lady 5th Tosser for a song or two. They'd play for hours, and with only one album they had to improvise with a lot of Pogues, Shane MacGowan, trad, even some Dexy's Midnight Runners or an occasional AC/DC tune.


And here they are, 15 years later and with a half dozen or so albums to their credit. Cheers to them.

But what kills me is looking at the stub, it also says "18 and over" show. So those kids who are 18 now, were only THREE YEARS OLD when the band started playing, and not much older than that when I started listening. And there we all were, gathered in the same room taking in the sounds of the Tossers.

Fun night. But damn, I'm getting old.

UPDATE!

So today, on a cold & rainy Saturday morning in March, I found out another casualty of this damn economy: no more weekend matinee series at the Music Box Theatre. I'm not sure how long this had been going on, but when I checked to see what was playing this week I noticed there was no Matinee series on the Music Box Web site. The Midnight Series was still there, but no matinees. The early shows were the same shows they'd play throughout the rest of the day.

But as is the fashion of the times on the web, I noticed the Music Box had jumped on the social media bandwagon and had their own Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter pages, which I found this sad news about the matinees:

Unfortunately, attendance for the matinee series has been declining for some time. Because now more than ever we need to carefully monitor our expenses, and have more flexibility in scheduling our main features, the decision was made to discontinue the matinee series.

I've often thought that my favorite time of day is the brief moment at the very end of it. It's the time that starts with the moment the lights are turned off and lasts through when my head hits the pillow and finishes up right to the second I lose consciousness for the day. It's when my mind is at it's most calm and peaceful, thanks to the absence of light and sound and any other influences of sensory media and the outside world. I'm at the mercy of my subconcious and my imagination; free from the inhibitions and laws of nature that dog me throughout my waking hours.

Here's a map. I could be somewhere between Point A & Point B.

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