Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Conservatives do not like Woodstock. Perhaps it bothers them that the large gathering of people was not under their control, and so it must be a threat of some kind. But get over it small minded ones, you who see positives in our marvelous invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Surely you can see the good that came out of the 3 Days of Peace and Music also known as Woodstock, 37 years ago.

• Outdoor rock concert venue testing ground
• Now Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
• Charles Schultz character
• Documentary film enabled Steve Ross to launch Warner Communications, later Time-Warner.
• Peace Sign Pendants

Half a century ago, on August 11, 1956, an Oldsmobile convertible driven by Jackson Pollock, who was drunk, hit a tree in the Springs, killing the artist and a passenger.

– Peter Schjeldahl, “American Abstract”, The New Yorker

This is an excellent write up on the power of Pollock and the film by Ed Harris is also mentioned. Pollock, the movie is enough to make any drinker swear off the bottle… at least for a few days.

Liquids can be dangerous, as yesterday was a red terror alert day, for fear liquids and gels might be used to assemble terrorist bombs on trans Atlantic air travel.

Everyone in Tinseltown is buzzing about the war Israel is waging against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrians, Iranians, Moslems, and perhaps Scottish Highlanders. Hollywood news sources report that a single malted Mel “Braveheart” Gibson declared, “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world, and Jews have just invaded Scotland! That’s it! I’ve had it!”

Could Braveheart 2 be far behind?

More blog news on malty Mel: Huffington, Markoe.

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.

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.

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.

Viewing activity on TheBroth.com is sort of like watching a bunch of ants moving grains of sand… are they intelligent ants who will next create a Tibetan sand painting? Check it out and see what they are up to. The site appears to be new as of around May 2006, so you can get involved and make an early impact. I just “wasted” about 30 minutes there… must get away!

Later that day…