this lossy codec

Currently writing this at Starbucks, using the ATTWifi that ATT graciously allows iphone owners to use for free. It is unfortunate they don’t allow ATT subscribers to use their computers as well. Yet here I am, typing away. Sure, it took about 30 minutes but now that I have it setup I’ll be good to go next time (fingers crossed). It’s pretty simple although the command line coding will probably scare off most people. Still, for the record, here is the link to where I found it:

Hack for Free Starbucks wi-fi on your laptop (if you have an iPhone

I was a little confused by the digits that look like “ones” (11) but are actually supposed to be “elle’s” (ll). so, it would look like this:

sudo ifconfig en1 down lladdr 00:11:22:33:44:55
where the digits are replaced w/ the MAC address of your iphone.

Pretty sweet that this works. hope it continues to.

In all the hullabaloo of catching you up on my recent activities I totally neglected to wax on about stuff unrelated to me (or maybe not!.  On Wednesday I got an email from a friend alerting me to the sad passing of television superstar Patrick McGoohan.  Unless you grew up in the 60′s and had a fascination for british conspiracy shows you might not know him.  McGoohan was the creator, director, producer, writer and star of one of the strangest and coolest shows of all time, The Prisoner. Now, to be fair, he didn’t write and direct all 17 episodes but he did the original 7 and is credited with conceiving of the concept for the show.

Basically, he plays a retired ex-spy who is kidnaped and taken to a resort community and given the title “Number 6″ (to preserve anonymity everyone is given a number).  The president of the Village (as it is called) is Number 2 and the series shuffles through a new number 2 pretty much every episode (as 6 thwarts their ability to crack him).  Meanwhile 6 is continually asking “Who is Number 1?”.  The whole show is considered a mythic psychodrama and often the action takes place inside 6′s head while doctors use drugs and technology to manipulate his dreams and ego.  The final 2 episodes are arguably the strangest thing I’ve ever seen on tv (although Lost & Fringe are getting pretty close). The show was shot during 67-68 so you can imagine the cultural forces at play that were influencing the storyline. 

So, then later on I got another email from a friend alerting me that Ricardo Montalban diedthe same day.  Now, I didn’t notice anything particular odd at first about 2 television stars dying.  A follow up email pointed out that it was a “bad day for guys whose shows took place on imaginary islands” (Now, unless you are muchyounger than me you will recall Montalban as “Mr. Rourke” from Fantasy Island.  Now, ok ok ok. Thats not that weird  right?  Except that Lost (another show about a disappearing island that has taken  obvious inspiration from The Prisoner) is  premiering its 5th season next week! Now I’m starting to think those guys on Lost are starting to jack with the  space-time televisual cortex.  

I’m even starting to notice other connections…like the similarities of the map of where we’re moving to & this map from the Prisoner….

Finally some down time so I can write for a while. And considering the amount of coffee I have ingested this should be a doozy. Let’s reflect on what’s new:

For one, I have finally published my Top 100 Photos from the Winter Holiday. Narrowing them down was a tough job and I apologize to those who didn’t make the cut. Just remember, there is always next year (and pay attention here, you can learn a lot about cuteness from these kids). I just noticed many of these are already posted via by other folks…oh well.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, yeah, we have decided to move from our little oasis in the desert to a location closer in to town (Santa Fe). You can see some pix of the inside (w/o our furnishings) here. The neighborhood is called Rancho Viejo. Follow the link to read about the area if interested. Needless to say, it will be quite a shift from our current lifestyle. You see, it has what is called a low environmental impact which means the houses are crammed in together. Also, I guess there are some restrictions about decorating the outside of your house or something because all of them looked very similar when we were there. In the past I have always shied away from environments that enforce uniformity suggest a cookie cutter existence. Perhaps it is the herald of a life shift as the imminent return of baby-dom crests on the horizon. Regardless, there are enough amenities to make the place inviting (like radiant floor heating, curbside trash pickup & potable water out of the tap).

And in case I had any doubts about it, the ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office) settled it all by arranging that the owners of the house actually met 30 years ago at Daniél I my alma mater (FairhavenCollege). Pretty wild. So, anyway, it’s like I said to Daniél, “at least when you follow the suggestions of Fate then what happens is fated and not just by chance.”

Also, I been hired for another movie gig that starts the first week of February. It’s called B.O.E.(click link to see real name). It is being billed as a “post apocalyptic western” and it has a pretty big budget. I’m expecting some explosions and such. Just found out yesterday we’ll be recording analogue (as in tape) so that sounds exciting. Expect lots of news from the field posted soon.

One last note, if anyone has been putting off coming to visit our ghost town existence you’d better come soon. I’ll be filming all through Feb. and we’ll move at the beginning of March. Come visit soon!

Back in ‘the Q’ after a lovely break visiting the fam back in ‘the K’. I put aside the blog while there to focus on the beingness rather than being the observer. This is an experience I am well familiar with and I suppose I have developed an awareness of when to withdraw behind the veil of my perceptive mechanism and make conscious commentary on events around me and when to surrender myself unto the waters of life and allow them to wash over me. To this point it has pretty much been an either or situation. Perhaps someday I’ll develop the ability to exist in the world while simultaneously scripting a narrative about it. Unfortunately, my time has grown short and now I must dive back in.

As I sit here on the cusp of what (historically anyway) will be viewed as “the late naughts” it is customary to put to rest that which is left behind. Arbitrary, really. Still, for whatever reason humans find habit in mapping development, movement and “progress” with markers in the outside world. Hence, the New Year’s Resolution. Generally, I tend to resist making this kind of momentous gesture in fear that a failure to actualize it might gradually chip away at my ‘wholeness’ (As Master Yoda says, “Do or Do Not, there is no try”). Furthermore, the assertion of an “I” at point “Now” making a decision to be “Not this” but “This” challenges a perspective I have intentionally been developing and experimenting with for some time – that all things merge into other things and attempts to divide “this” from “that” or maintain “beingness” against “unbeingness” (or vice versa”) will only succeed as a momentary blip against the eternal flux and flow of constantly shifting uncertainties. There is no “there” there. The building of the castle continues even as the oscillating waves gradually deteriorate the foundation.

Oh well, maybe next year.

Currently cruising down HW-54 in southeastern Kansas en route to KC for the holidaze. WordPress (& it’s companion iPhone app) is awesomely handy. Now, I’m not driving, mind you. That was last night for the first leg if the journey. Our start was later than hoped (a noonish departure turned out to be 6:30pm). Around midnight, eyelids heavy, we pulled into the El Rancho Motel in Elkhart, KS. At least we made it out of NM. The El Rancho Allowed pets and was decently cheap ($60). Looked like a popular place for hunters.

Another 6 hours over gradually rolling hills and plowing (ha) through golden colored fields and the sun sets behind us. The landscape of Kansas has a calming (some might say somnombaliatic) quality. So much open land, like a boat on the ocean. Of course, the land is very different from the water. For one, while the land can be built upon the surface of the water is more tenuous. The give and take relationship of a sailor with the sea is an everpresent necessity. Not so with those who walk the plains.

“Plains”. What of this word? A cursery glance at etymonline.com reveals that the history of this word is long and mysterious. Simple, undecorated?

After selling a couple older mac notebooks I just scored 17″ 2.5ghz for 1500! Shawing!

Ok, ok, ok already. Like a telltale heart beating under the floorboards, as is the constant refreshing of the browsers of my audience, haunting me with questions and uncertainty – “did the movie finish?” “did he die before it’s completion?” “what of it you jerk, don’t leave us hanging here” and so on and so on. So here you have it. Though some time has now veiled my memory I’ll try to recollect.

The truth is that we were moving so fast on that final day in a rush to get through and it may have been the coldest day for us yet so that I rarely had a chance to pull off my gloves to get my fingertips close enough to exchange electrons with the screen of my iPhone (that’s how this happens you know). As for specifics, I did feel like I had one of my consistently best booming days. Pulled off some tricky maneuvers and captured some quality sound. Felt good. After lunch the production handed out our wrap gifts; doc west shirt, hat, belt & buckle(!), crew picture and a letter from Julio (the director). We shot until way after dark and it got colder and colder. The final scene was of Terence (doc west) getting hit on the head by a falling beam. It was kind if odd because due to the nature of the beam gag eveyone had to be out of the barn and film and sound had to be operated remotely. Strange end to the shoot.

That night was the wrap party which for me went until about 3 and required such an amour of recovery that I’m still not sure if I’m recovering from the shoot of the party.

So that’s it (oh yeah, ‘check the gate’ is what the director says to signal that the last shot was good and we should move on. It refers to the film gate and making sure it is clean(no hairs or gunk). Idea being that if the gate is not clean then there may be a problem with the last shot and we would have to ‘go again’).

Now I am in the midst of selling a few different older macs in hopes of buying a new MacBook. This had better happen soon. As of today my phone is my computer.

Thanks for following the blog folks. I will probably slack off for a while as I only tend to get fervent about this when I have some interesting project going on. Until then…the photo is from yesterday, driving down hw14. The clouds were really wild and at one point this materialized.

Well the final few days are going smooth. The weather has been holding off and the crews’ spirits are high. Every shot, every hour and every minute bring us that much closer to wrapping. To top it all off, on Tuesday we were surprised to be visited by a contingency of Tibetan Buddhist monks (oddly enough, I dined at the table next to them the day before). After lunch the crew entertained them with soccer tricks, juggling, accordian and animal tricks. Then, the whole crew gathered together and the monks chanted a blessing for us. I’m certain that to many their low gutteral tones were strange but I was grinning from ear to ear (this branch of Buddhism is close to my heart). After that, purified by blessing, we finished the day.
Today, we burnt down the barn.

Getting down to the leftover scraps. No more thanksgiving sandwiches. Maybe enough for a thanksgiving shake.

Ahhh. 4 whole says off in a row. Refreshed. Back on set today but in a novel environment. ‘Inside.’ Specifically, inside the Masonic Hall in downtown Santa Fe. Very comfortable (ie. Not freezing). That, combined with the fact that the script for the day seems to reflect a complete lack of any dialogue whatsoever and the fact that only 4 more days of this picture remain, takes the edge off of the whole “waking up at 4am on the Monday following a holiday weekend” thing. As today will, most likely, be uneventful, I’ll unload my Thanksgiving for you.
The Playlist
What defines Thanksgiving music? To some it never goes further than ‘Alice’s Resaraunt’. To me it is some kind of Amercana aesthetic combined with the autumnal folk vibe of those gathered around the fire. The basic progression was something like this:
1. Incredible String Band – ‘Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter’. What can I say about ISB? Everything sounds too trite. Let me just say that I will play the song ‘A Very Cellular Song’ on occasions that warrant an uplifting of the spiritual in the tones of youthful, innocent, worldly folk songs.
2. John Fahey – ‘the Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death’
3. ‘Last Kind Words’ – various artists. A collection of blues songs from the 20s & 30s.
4. Pentangle – self titled first record. Folk rock at it’s best.
5. Sandy Bull – ‘Phantasies for Guitar & Banjo’. While possibly classifiable as a ‘folk guitarist’ in the most broad sense, Bull’s ‘Blend’ (as well as ‘Blend 2′ & ‘Electric Blend’) takes the style of folk guitar and applies it to the driving tempo of the middle eastern oud. The piece is long and meditative, stretching to the entire length of an albumside. Not sure how it applies to the theme, aside from being an American playing a guitar. Just an excuse to play one if my favorites I suppose.
6. Harry Partch – ‘The World of…’. A shift into the avant garde. Still, Partch’s independent thinking, whether in inventing homemade instruments or his passion for hobo life exemplify the american pioneering archetype. Plus, for avant garde music it is pretty ‘folky’.
7. David Hykes ‘Hearing Solar Wind’. In case you missed my blog about it, I met Hykes a couple weeks ago and so he has been on my mind. Solar Wind is a masterpiece of acapella chant. Indescribable in it’s novelty. An amazing, moving and inspiring work of sound.
8. Nick Drake ‘Pink Moon’. Brooding but beautiful songs by a guy who makes the soundtrack to sadness, loss an lonliness so beautiful its almost appealing.
9. Vashti Bunyan ‘Just Another Diamond Day’. Whispering, breathy psych folk from the late 60s. Like Drake, Bunyan was also missed in her own time, leaving her records to be rediscovered in 2000. Nowadays we can listen back to and be glad we never had these songs drilled into our heads by popular radio.
10. Terry Riley ‘Shri Camel’. Like icing on the cake or a night cap to settle the mind, Riley’s rolling reputations of ‘just intoned’ organ are a kind of massage on the brain, bringing about a meditative state convulsively.

(In the midst of these were brief cameos of Neil Young’s ‘Tonights the Night’ & an obscure Folkways lp of songs by Allen Ginsburg (recorded by Harry Smith!).

What else? Hmmm. Thanksgiving sandwiches the day after. Mmm good. Thanksgiving shake anyone? Anyway, it was good. And today wasn’t too bad either. Ended up wrapped by 2:30! An 8 hour day? Whoa! Apparently, the next 3 days won’t be so easy…

Yesterday was spent booming in the sheriff’s office (and ultimately a picture wrap on the sheriff, Paul Sorvino). His presence will be missed by many as he was always telling stories and playing characters and (of course) singing Italian opera or old cowboy songs.
This morning, as my alarm stirred me, I had a dream vision that getting out of bed would require me to do so without making any shadows (this is a major part of booming). It’s a good thing this show is almost finished. It’s beginning to haunt my time off.
If you want to check out a trailer for the movie it is already available here. It looks pretty good. I think the sound needs a little finishing. Sounds a little over tweaked (not my fault).
Anyway, we ended the day (& a short week for thanksgiving) waiting for the sunset to get a shot of Doc riding out of it. All in all a pretty mellow day. Almost no dialogue, just the ambience of horse hooves.

Charles Fort once wrote, “reality is indistinguishable from dream existence.” The implications of this line of thought are at once profound and unsettling. I mention it because the ‘doc west’ set has been leaking into the dream matrix. It is probably no surprise that I have had a few dreams about life on the set. Perhaps more interesting is an email I got from someone who follows the blog. I’ll preserve their anonymity here but give you the gist.
Basically, s/he was asking the people at the saloon and general store if they were hiring. They replied that there weren’t any openings because they were “just actors.” Sometimes dream logic just stops my brain in it’s tracks. My brain is still grappling with that one.

The pic here is a good example of what my perspective has been all week. It’s the ‘poker tournament’ and that means shot after shot of disqualification rounds of bit part characters with no dialogue in a room constantly being pumped full of ‘safe’ but irritating fx smoke. On the upside, we are shielded from the wind and, actually, it can get pretty warm up on my post on the balcony, due to the several thousand watt lights around. Somehow I make it through another day without knocking something over or getting the pole tangled in the morass of wire and rope suspended from the ceiling.

Ok, well nothing really that exciting. Coming back to the grind after 3 days off incrases my sense of lethargy and makes time drag. Not that it hasn’t been exciting. Monday we dragged (drug?) a guy down mainstreet from horse. That was actually pretty cool. I was too bored to take a pic though. Today we have been shooting in the saloon, pumping it full of smoke and shooting people playing cards. Woop-DEE-doo. At lunch Will, one of the prop guys, juggles some bowling pins so Lenny grabbed his accordian and joined in. A pleasant break, lifting our spirits for a brief release. Still, shooting indoors means we won’t be constrained by the sunlight so who knows when we’ll get out of here. Btw, did I mention there a 3 Bretts on this crew? 1 each for camera, grip & sound. As there are several more members of the other crews than sound, people rarely speak to me directly yet I hear my name all day long. A few people refer to me as “boom” as in “hey boom get out of the shot” or “hey boom getout of the light.”. I don’t mind. There is safety in this kind of anonimity.

A couple days off makes me recall how nice it is to have someone telling me what to do. Without it I just wander. For instance, yesterday I took the dogs for a walk and ended up on the top of the mountain behind our house. It took about 2 hours to get there, over rough terrain. The trip down went much quicker as I had found the road. Beautiful day. Probably about 60 on top.
Btw, the kronos concert was lovely. My favorite piece was the one written by j.g. Thurwell. This is the guy whose stage name was Foetus (with albums like ‘Scraping Foetus off the Wheel’). Pretty intense stuff needless to say.
Pix of mountain top to follow.

Well, I am actually typing on a real keyboard right now. For unknown reasons I have been unable to get my blogs posted from the phone lately. This has lead to a bit of a lull. apologies.

I will now try to catch up:

Mostly, its just the same old rigamarole, with the added adjustment of daylight savings which makes 4:30 that much earlier. Its cold as well but luckily its been warming up to around 50 or so by the afternoon. Night falls early and we are often wrapping by 5ish. Usually I sit down on the couch for about half an hour and pass out. Not much fun for Dani.

Meanwhile, my papa has been aboard Rum Runner, sailing south in the Caribbean 1500. He’s getting to be old hat at this. You can follow his progress here. They’re almost finished so check it while you still can!

Also, of note: I took a couple days off this week to check out David Hykes at the Sound Healing Conference. Though the conference itself is a little foo-foo for my taste they often attract at least a few interesting folks. Experiencing what Hykes can do with his “voice(?)” is pretty phenomenal. I have a couple copies of his groundbreaking vocal album “Hearing Solar Wind” it stands as one the most profound recordings I own. Really unbelievable. Highly recommended. The record, originally released in 1983 has just been reissued on cd (25th Anniversary Remastered edition). Anyway, I went and checked him out. Turns out he considers himself in the lineage of
Terry Riley and Lamont Young which made sense (and shouldn’t have surprised me). Cool guy and with his feet pretty firmly on the ground. Several times he made efforts to separate himself from the many types of sound healing charlatans (my words) and the the “crap” (his word) which they produce. Pretty tough audience to dish this out to. He was threatening to shatter their paradigms. Still, he didn’t do that great of a job explaining his alternate view. Perhaps he was intentionally being cryptic and evasive so that people wouldn’t build him up into a guru. Or else he just knows that “the keys to the kingdom of heaven are within you” and that nothing he can offer will be anything but a novelty.

In the end I did finally feel like I shared some sense of resonance with him when I inquired, “Do you think synchronicity is related to harmonic resonance?” To which he replied with an emphatic YES! And then I told an anecdote about watching the presidential acceptance & succession speeches. I noted that during McCain’s speech I heard an airplane dopplering (you’ll have to imagine an airplane sound going down down down as it flies farther away) and during Obama’s I heard a helicopter going up up up. What does this mean? Even as my fingers fumble at the keyboard in an attempt to explain I now understand why David’s talks seemed so opaque. Language…lacks. I’m not giving up but perhaps its too much for a blog post. I’m going to go eat and then go see Kronos Quartet!

Although I meant to, time and busy-ness kept me from putting together a post for Saturday. Which is too bad as there were indeed some highlights. Some of which have faded from memory but luckily I have some pictures to help me recollect.
We had another fight scene and somehow I was lucky enough to take this picture (while booming – no east act) from my hip, w/o looking. Pretty nice shot I think. The other one hardly captures it but at the end of our lunch break, Lenny, the lighting key, played accordian while Julio (the director) played hacky sack (tennis ball, really) with a bunch of the crew. It was a gem of a moment. Actually recorded some audio of it and I’ll post it if I ever get the time.

Friday (11/7): As the days have gotten colder the times when I can bear to take my gloves off to type a blog post on my iPhone has decreased. Today though, is not so bad. The sun is shining and, after a few shots outside, we have moved into an old farmhouse for the rest of the day. At least something to feel good about (even as the 5th day gloom of a 6 day work week lingers).
Back at home we awoke this morning to an inside temperature of 47′F. YIKES! Ah, winter in Golden.

All the warm fuzziness left over from last night’s presidential election results was lost in the frigid and biting windstorm that enveloped our entire day of shooting today.