Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Here’s the answer to that lyrical old question, “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?”

There’s just something about Paris, that charming birdlike quality.

Forgive me, this is just one of my addictions manifesting itself. My crude Martha Stewart Photoshop collage gets a lot of attention, so I thought I’d play with an equally bad variation. A little ostrich farming might be all the therapy I need.

Long before Paris and Nicky Hilton, there were Daisy and Violet Hilton, San Antonio’s Siamese Twins. According to rattsfreakshow.com the Hilton sisters were pygopagus twins – conjoined at the hips and buttocks. They shared blood circulation and were fused at the pelvis but shared no major organs. In 1932 the twins appeared as themselves in the movie Freaks, which dared to pose the question of whether or not conjoined twins can have a love life. In the case of the Hilton sisters, the answer was yes – they were notorious for their many affairs and allegedly had a strong desire to outdo one another in the area of dating.

If you are a glutton for more Hilton Sisters photos, past and present, go to the jedimaster.

One of my idle forms of amusement is to check the stats on my web server, hosted by the excellent people at bluehost, to learn who is visiting the website, and then look at the referer: the incoming source. Someone from Australia visited this blog, specifically the Madagascar story, because they Googled the phrase “animated smelly bums.” LOL!

Media Spin’s Blog has the honor of Googling #1 on this topic! Sorry, butt my smelly bum animation is still on the back burner.

The Australians and New Zealanders I met while working at PDI/DreamWorks were some of my most favourite people, possessing outstanding wit, humor and well balanced life attitudes. One bloke regularly visited funny web sites such as The Daily Rotten. Perhaps this is a trend that competing 3D feature animation studios need take heed of… people are searching for animated smelly bums.

The talented old Southern country blues man, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown passed away today. In poor health, and losing his home near New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina was too much blues to bear. This was a road trip Gatemouth had not signed up for.

Had the pleasure of watching and photographing Gatemouth perform awhile back. He was a rare character with an infectious smile, mischievious gleaming eyes, and able to make his guitar speak. Can’t help but feel the loss of a lineage going back through T. Bone Walker to Robert Johnson of original African-American musicians. He mixed Cajun zydeco, fluid jazz riffs and country fiddle into his sound. He was a corker.

Just got through to my long time friend Bill Roberts on the phone tonight. He survived Hurricane Katrina! The electrical power just came back in St. Charles Parrish where he lives, and his home survived. Located a bit west of the city of New Orleans, he was fortunate not to be flooded. He just returned after evacuating north, finding the last motel room in a rundown place not listed on the internet.

In the early 70’s Bill moved from Miller Place, L.I., New York to New Orleans, with a head and heart full of ideas to write poetry and literature. He worked at the Brennan family’s Commander’s Palace restaurant and later transitioned into oil and gas related service companies. He invited me to come down and visit, so I did, a number of times.

For a New Yorker, the city is magnetic, possessing many similarities: old world charm, a great coastal seaport, famous food and entertainment, struggles between rich and poor classes, and international flavor attracting tourism and late night partiers.

On a long visit in 1978, I stayed from early January working at Commanders Palace until business slowed down after the Mardis Gras festival. The town is very dependent upon conventioneers and tourism. During that Mardis Gras, which was cold and wet, I shot these black and white photos with a 16mm Minox “spy” camera. Bill was Harpo and I was a Clockwork Orange Clown.

Later on in the 90’s I returned to New Orleans as a SIGGRAPH computer graphics conventioneer twice.

I stayed at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Piano Bar in the French Quarter too late, overslept and missed my flight home the next morning!

The visiter to New Orleans tends to forget about such things as punctuality, while releasing stress, and then not wanting to leave. That is, while the place is enjoying good times, not when under attack of a gigantic storm.

From what Bill told me tonight, this is devastation of Biblical proportions, and large pieces of coastal waterways have been taken away by surging ocean waters. Although he sounded as though things were getting back to normal, he also warned that all kinds of food and materials normally imported through New Orleans will be delayed and in short supply.

I hope this event draws more attention to preparing our own fragile infrastructure at home in the United States. The storm exposed many neglected problems and created more. There is much work to be done. New Orleans and much of the Mississippi coastline will come out better for it.

People’s Photos of Hurricane Katrina on Flickr.

Interesting quotes from the media, asking why our government failed to do more.

As a lower life form, Karl Rove just couldn’t help himself. A vindictive creature defends its territory. When a primary Bush Iraq WMD smokescreen point was debunked by Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador, the rebuttal was to reveal Wilson’s wife as a working CIA agent. Treasonous! This has become a test of Deep Throat style entrusted journalistic sources, and now looks like Rove is the latest deep throat. The Bush Administration is cautiously coping with the case of the squealer.

Current CIA Leak Timeline. My apologies to all good pigs of the world.

Sign here to throw Karl Rove out… or if you LOVE Karl Rove, check this site out.

Busy with more going on and less time to blog. Joined an Internet start up venture which I may not write about at present, which will demand a lot of attention. On my way to the office I felt compelled stop and take this photo, nearly causing an accident by surprising high speed vehicles on a nearly deserted country road. Photography can often interrupt the flow of life. Such are the risks of stopping time.

I will continue to blog here and also contribute to ParMedia.org when able. Stories in the works that I look forward to publishing: DreamWorks’ Madagascar and Marla Ruzicka.

The JELL-O brand history goes back almost 100 years, and there is even a JELL-O Museum Gallery in LeRoy, NY.

JELL-O (hyphenated, not jello moron!) first entered computer graphics in 1987 when Paul Heckbert was looking to stretch the rendering R & D being done on ray tracing. Ten years later Paul put me in touch with an ambitious sculptor, Daniel Wurtzel, who was designing large scale gelatin objects. Daniel had me try 3D renderings of his JELL-O mold ideas, but 2D Photoshop sketches turned out to be better concept renderings. His entire Gelatin Sculpture Proposal is online here at Media Spin.

Daniel tried fabricating the gelatin objects and was confronted with many physical challenges such as temperature, dust, mass versus surface tension. Having outgrown JELL-O kid’s stuff, Daniel has moved on to the phallic and militaristic symbolism with Rubber Bullets. This QuickTime movie shows a young lady in the gallery playfully interacting with the tall, glowing dildo totems. The Sharper Image had better stock up on these babies!

But hold on… JELL-O is no longer kids stuff! Adults once again have perverted a nice innocent dessert, with JELL-O WRESTLING! Sweet green slime! Gory red goop! The new dessert treat is a singles dating ritual in which partiers return to the primordial gelatinous ooze. I guess it’s a fun way to lick your opponent. Make JELL-O, not war.