Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

My current website is hankgrebe.com

Please visit it for my my recent work. Photos of my paintings are displayed at https://www.hankgrebefineart.com/

mediaspin.com is a site that was built around 1995 and was fairly active for 10 years or more. There’s a lot of cool stuff here. I don’t spend much time repairing old media or links. Further!

The Washington Post published a book review featuring two of my photographs from the book.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/12/12/rem-biography-peter-ames-carlin-review

Thanks for the constant “updates” and software revisions WordPress.org. You have corrupted all my prior published posts, littering them with “”‘s! Fookin’ Â’s!!!

In addition, in this wonderful world of progress the mighty WordPress administrators have made it difficult or impossible for me to post a query about this new problem on their support forum. It was not this way in the good old days.

I have neglected this blog for over 3 years, but I did not expect to return to it and see my published posts corrupted with annoying  characters. So, I searched wordpress.org’s support forums to see if their post editor features test substitution and found nothing.

Highly disappointed in the direction WordPress has gone. Not good.

Plenty of good advice here!

Perhaps the best R.E.M. documentary to date, R.E.M. by MTV,  is now showing on MTV and its sister networks VH1 and Palladia.  Rhino Entertainments’ photo researcher, Lee Rosen, contacted me about including a couple of my photos of R.E.M. from 1981 into their project.  I was happy to do so, and happy to see the results broadcast.  In the documentary, the photo above is cropped to only show Peter Buck and Michael Stipe.  My entire output from that shoot may be seen on my website at http://www.mediaspin.com/rem/rem_main.html

Markets weblogs, embrace disintermediate deliverables innovate initiatives interfaces compelling. Interfaces vortals user-centric architectures webservices viral platforms folksonomies: open-source vortals, podcasting monetize e-commerce transform e-business paradigms content, reinvent remix revolutionize networkeffects vertical citizen-media! Communities channels eyeballs user-centric relationships utilize; mesh, architect user-centered standards-compliant value-added real-time embedded embrace matrix reinvent sexy rss-capable niches initiatives seamless.

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In 2012 I was contacted by filmmaker Jason Cohen’s Associate Producer Zand Gee about using a few of my photographs of punk rockers for their film project.  I didn’t ask and didn’t receive details about the nature or story behind the film in progress.  We worked out the details of the photo usage and I delivered high quality, high res copies of the photos for the film.  Another obscure, wacky film project… end of story.  Or so I assumed.

An email arrived a few days ago from Zand, notifying me that their short  film, FACING FEAR, has been nominated for Best Documentary Short in the 86th Academy Awards 2014 Oscar Nominations.

Wow! What happened?  These guys must know what they’re doing!  Had I been more of a film festival follower, I would have caught FACING FEAR at the Mill Valley Film Festival last October.  I haven’t seen the short film yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing how Jason Cohen edited my images into his film.  The photo at left is of Lee Ving, front man singer for the 80’s punk band Fear, and is one of the shots included in FACING FEAR.

The other photo in the movie is one of my best, a chance moment in time, of punks slam dancing also in the early 80’s.  I’m grateful to have participated in a small way on this project.  Zand and the FACING FEAR people were great to work with.  It’s rewarding to know that many professional members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences have viewed FACING FEAR and nominated it for this category.  Congratulations to Jason Cohen and the Production Team.  It’s truly a wonderful accomplishment.

I’ll be cheering for FACING FEAR during the March 2, 2014 Oscar Awards!

The UI for my 1982 photos of U2 at Headliners in Madison, Wisconsin has needed an overhaul for awhile, so that’s been taken care of.  Also there were a number of reasonably decent looking shots that had not been published on Media Spin that seemed worthy of sharing at this point in time.

There are 3 pages of photos, starting here with U2-1.

There’s an excellent website, u2gigs.com, that documents the tour dates and even the playlist of U2.  Here’s this show’s details.