Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Caught Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at Concord Pavilion on the last night of the 9 day heat wave in California. They held up well for a bunch old time troopers, playing two great sets and an encore of Woodstock. Neil Young is a force of Nature, balanced by the rest of the band. I especially enjoyed David Crosby's acoustic playing on Helplessly Hoping and Guinnevere, and it's not too often you hear a song like Let's Impeach The President at a concert, complete with sing-along lyrics on a video screen. Protest karaoke! The U.S. politicians have done a great job of pissing a lot of people off! Meanwhile CSNY are doing a great carrying on their music and message on this 2006 tour. Keep On Rockin' In The Free World!

For more info check out the CSNY web site. They are scheduled to perform at the former Woodstock Music Festival site later this summer. More Woodstock.

Neil Young's web site Living With War Today has his entire album Living With War online.

Newspaper Reviews: San Francisco Chronicle, Contra Costa Times

CSNY: Deja Vu, Neil Young: Living With War

Children of all ages, now it's fun time! Monkey Vortex is avant-garde Internet Radio Theater. Above is a Flash animation recently completed to provide visual shine to the Monkey Vortex chant. Need a new perspective? You'll find one in the Monkey Vortex.

Imagine you are writing a screenplay, let’s say for an animated feature film, such as Madagascar 2, or the next Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. What are the chances the creative writer would guide their sailing ships to land upon the shores of Israel or Lebanon? Or here’s another far out script idea, how about a Palestinian enters Jerusalem and many Jews worship him as a prophet and savior of humankind? What’s wrong with those pictures?

Crazy ideas, about as insane as the current wars and skirmishes going on in the fantasy Holy Land within the Middle East between vengeful factions, tribes, and sects. But what do I know? There are far better journalists and scholars following the new blockuster release, “ Operation Summer Rains .” Here are some of the top stories:

Ted Koppel Analyzes US Already at War with Iran

James Zogby: Willful Fantasies and Reality in Today’s Mideast Conflict

Robert Fisk in Beruit: Mass Punishment

Taking Newt Seriously – Newt Gingrich Pushes for World War 3

Ralph Nader: U.S. Carries “Inescapable Responsibility” for “Israeli Government’s Escalating War Crimes”

Tom Hayden: Things Come ‘Round in Mideast

Israel Set Up Current War Plan Over One Year Ago – S.F. Chronicle

Stop This Shit – Music Video quoting President Bush at G8

Link TV – Mosaic: World News Video Footage from the Middle East

A sane mind would think that this would be enough for now, but as we see… many of us standing by in shock similar to witnessing a train wreck… the pain and suffering of warfare continues.

In today’s news, Norman Pearlstine, a long time top manager at Time Inc., the magazine division of Time-Warner, will be joining The Carlyle Group a Washington, D.C. based global private equity investment firm with more than USD$40 billion of equity capital under management, as a senior advisor.

I briefly met Mr. Pearlstine while at Time Warner, when hired to work on their experimental “Full Service Network” interactive television effort in the early 90’s. When introduced as a technical lead for the New York office, he half jokingly asked me, “Are you the one who is going to save us?” I good naturedly replied that I’d try my best. We knew we were in over our heads.

The Time Warner Cable FSN project was a technical boondoggle in deep trouble and would not be able to launch their tests at Celebration, FL for the scheduled date 4 months away. From what I gather, something was launched over 2 years after our meeting, but by that time broadband internet was all the rage, and TW was eying AOL as their path to interactivity. Back in those days, I advised TW to use the Internet as a channel on their interactive cable TV service, but the idea was dismissed, although not by Pearlstine himself.

In the days leading up to the FSN’s proposed Spring 1993 launch date, I had a longer discussion with Walter Isaacson, who was then the Managing Editor of Time magazine. In order to protect my immediate superiors at Time Warner Interactive, I was not able to disclose to him how feeble the FSN effort actually was. How would that look in a Time magazine article!? Even if I had told Isaacson of the many flaws in the system, I’m not sure what good it would have done, but I regret not having a deeper, more honest discussion. So much for office politics and paranoia.

Today I continue to work as the consultant behind the consultants, advisor to the advisors. I spend more time in the real world, hands on in leading edge places, from which many of the upper echelon are insulated and unaware.

“You may leave here for four days in space,
But when you return, it’s same old place.”
– by P.F. Sloan, sung by Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction

Welcome back to planet Earth NASA space shuttle Discovery STS-121. Mission accomplished!

Meanwhile, here at home, despite the fact that every day is a gift that Earth gracefully gives us, foolish humans cannot help themselves from their selfish goals of destruction.

P.S.  NPR ran a radio story about PF SLoan’s new CD and tour on August 20, 2006.  Link here.

More my style this oddball surrealist painter John Wotipka is. I might go to the upcoming opening, but then do I really want to meet the weirdo who did these paintings? He could be onto something: rendering the mystery of insect thoughts, with the nanotechnologists studying how their tiny brains operate.

Web sightings found while admiring the fine paintings by Yoon Lee. One link took me to a calendar at Fecal Face.

Who would name a web site Fecal Face? Probably some wise guys in San Francisco, and this is an very unique and fun web experience indeed.

Fecal links you to further weirdness, such as humus which is an edgy online magazine composed in Flash. “Humus is a territory where images, creativity, thoughts and expressions have no border line or demarcation line. Feel free to contribute with: Graphic design, Motion design, Photography, Drawings, Illustrations, Poems.”

Back to Yoon Lee. I like the way she uses 3D software to simulate giant brush strokes. If only one could actually control that kind of gestural painting by hand. I’d have to see these up close and in person to further understand these, but they remind me of a controlled Jackson Pollock travelling through hyperspace.

On the subject of blending computer graphics and painterly techniques, I blogged about the tedious rotoscoping of A Scanner Darkly which has finally reached theatrical release, and not surprisingly received numerous “style over substance” reviews.

This Mister Borat dude is one crazy TV reporter man from Kazakhstan in this fall’s movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. See the funny video trailer online here.

It’s hard to know Sacha Baron Cohen‘s true identity: Borat, Ali G, or what? He also is the voice of King Julien in Madagascar and the upcoming Madagascar 2.