This'll Keep You Busy

Museum of Animal Perspectives.

Cameras mounted on animals. Just wow.

h/t to The Daily Dish

My Week #19 (August 24-30)

My Week #19 (August 24-30) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Denver & Roosevelt National Forest, back home to Nebraska, hanging out with UUVVWWZ, seeing Food, Inc., alleycat round two, delicious bread & cup followed by dancing at Brent's, Hall & Oates at the Nebraska State Fair, and a ride to the farm to loosen up the muscles after a runner cut me off and made me crash.

PRAIRIE HILL Elementary Documentary

I've spent the last year and a half gathering footage and assembling this documentary/promo for Prairie Hill. Another project in the can!

PRAIRIE HILL Elementary from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

PRAIRIE HILL Learning Center is a Montessori school located in a unique farm setting 7 miles south of Lincoln just off Highway 77, with a tradition of bringing children and nature together since 1981. Each weekday, PRAIRIE HILL serves nearly 80 children age 18 months through eighth grade, and during the summer offers three sessions of NATUREWORKS, a popular summer camp. PRAIRIE HILL is Nebraska’s first wind and solar powered energy education center. For more information, call 402-438-6668 or visit www.prairiehill.com.

BFF Bikes

Really?

Really?

Reporter Todd Meany. Yeah.

Sexy

This week's cover of The New Yorker is really sexy. "No Trespassing," by Istvan Banyai.

My Week #18 (August 17-23)

My Week #18 (August 17-23) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

I spend lots of time finishing the Prairie Hill documentary; Anders & Sally book their tickets; Alex and I have a sibling sushi dinner; Walgreen's builds a Billy Mays Memorial Endcap; Becca celebrates leaving with friends, then we drive to Ft. Collins and settle in; I meet D'Count and see Jules & Mathias in Denver.

Poets in Denver

After helping Becca move to Ft. Collins, I headed down to Denver to visit Jules & Mathias and D'Count in their new home. This is their dog park.


Not satisfied to be so close to the mountains without venturing up a bit, Jules & I headed up into Rocky Mountain National Park this morning before I came back to the flatlands. This stream had wonderfully cold water to walk in.


Even D'Count tried it out, albeit puppy-hesitantly. Smart puppy! Water is fun! It was his first trip out of the city.

US Mail on the SF-NJ haul. Oh, Nebraskus.

Joke

Mom took me to lunch at Maggie's yesterday before she headed to the Community Blood Bank. Ah, the retired life. Above, a delicious seasonal/local roasted veggie wrap. Below, gazpacho, also deliciously local.


When she dropped me off back at my office, I wished her luck with the vampires.

Elisabeth: Have fun with the vampires.
Jane: You know, it's something good I can do that doesn't require brains.
Elisabeth: Yeah, that's the zombies.
Jane: (pausing for a moment) (laughter) Good one!

My Week #17 (August 10-16)

My Week #17 (August 10-16) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Lots of music being listened to, drawings from Jake, Ribfest happens outside my office, I race my first alleycat, Felice and I spend a whole Saturday together, and I ride with a 5-strong Rumbletime crew.

One of the better ones

The trope of photographing oneself every day for a year (or two, or more) and turning it into a stop-motion video is pretty well worn at this point, but the effect is doubtless still cool. This video, however, is by far the most visually interesting of them that I've seen.

The Longest Way 1.0 - one year walk/beard grow time lapse from Christoph Rehage on Vimeo.

Most of these self-documentarians choose the same plain background, focussing the viewer's attention solely on changes in the facial characteristics of the subject. In this video, however, it is the background that is dynamic -- in addition to the subject's facial hair transformation. Titles in the lower third heighten the piece's storytelling power as well, meriting multiple views to piece things together. Well done.

Death Panel

Aside from being a funny name for a prescient agit-punk band, what amazes me about this whole death panel nonsense going around is that they are already in place! They're called YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY (if you're lucky enough to have one). I mean, at least a government-run death panel would have to have some semblance of fairness and regulation...

Social Media

Powerful bit of short-form documentary work from the NYT on suicide among returning Iraq veterans, including self-documentation from the victim, showing just how saturated we all are in recording technology.

This Recording

Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with this list.

Photography

I took a walk with the work 40D to test out various settings and experiment with a cracked filter.



A few shots viewable here.

My Week #16 (August 3-9)

My Week #16 (August 3-9) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Finishing out my week with Baxter, Brent returns from Cuba, I keep up with Conrad on a ride, Becca makes me an amazing breakfast, Dottie explores the new trellis on my back deck, GBN gets superheroine'd, Ande and I go to the zoo, and I'm in love with the Snowblink album.

Summertime

It's HOT! Time to bump Darin's '90's hip hop mix on the 'box.

1. Going Back to Cali -- LL Cool J
2. Poison -- Bel Biv DeVoe
3. Humpin' Around -- Bobby Brown
4. Push It -- Salt N Pepa
5. Bust A Move -- Young MC
6. I Got A Man -- Positive K
7. I Wish (1995) -- Skee-Lo
8. Summertime -- Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
9. Hip Hop Hooray -- Naughty By Nature
10. Lucas With The Lid Off -- Lucas
11. Knockin' Boots -- Candy Man
12. Wild Thang -- Tone Loc
13. Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) -- Digable Planets
14. Scenario -- A Tribe Called Quest
15. Method Man -- Wu-Tang Clan
16. Don't Believe the Hype -- Public Enemy
17. Fuck Tha Police -- NWA
18. Lil' Ghetto Boy -- Dr. Dre

Why Not?

Let's put it on YouTube, too...

TMI

TMI Commercial from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

Brent and I decided it needed to be done.

Two different sessions with Big C

This evening, Conrad and I headed out for some roadie miles. We surveyed the windstorm damage in Denton, where lots of trees were down. We also saw lots of hailed-on and wind-damaged cornfields. Bummer.


After we capped the ride with a margarita, we caught the moonrise at the 27th & Hwy 2 bridge. A little perspectival fun with that...


Sunday, however, we had a different sort of session. I've been riding the fixie for 4 months now, and need to improve upon my trackstanding skills. We palped our ironic urban under the overpasses for that one.

We checked this scrapyard while we were at it, too.

On Language

Ben Schott has a nice little tidbit in the NYT on language -- as has been much lamented by many as Twitter increases its presence -- as it changes when limited. Rather than abbreviating with acronyms, maybe we should return to this code of telegraphy, no?

Manufacturing Dreams

Manufacturing Dreams from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

“No other art-medium–neither painting nor poetry–can communicate the specific quality of the dream as well as the film can. When the lights go down in the cinema and this white shining point opens up for us, our gaze stops flitting hither and thither, settles and becomes quite steady. We just sit there, letting the images flow out over us. Our will ceases to function. We lose our ability to sort things out and fix them in their proper places. We’re drawn into a course of events–we’re participants in a dream. And manufacturing dreams, that’s a juicy business.” -Ingmar Bergman (Bergman on Bergman, 1973)

My Week #15 (July 27-August 2)

My Week #15 (July 27-August 2) from nocoastfilms on Vimeo.

On the road for work, hanging out with Baxter, and celebrating Ande's birthday with a sushi party.