the things we think but do not say

Over a tasty, toasted sub, I watched one of the strangest movie to date. I call it a movie since it features a series of still images, played consecutively such that it appears as though the pictures are “moving” and the people are “talking”. Other than that, it’s a movie in the weakest sense as it doesn’t feature a discernable plot, cast is basically made up of Kelly’s mates and the dialogue is sung instead of spoken. In R Kelly’s own words, this movie is in fact a “hip-hopera”.

I had only heard of “Trapped in the Closet” in hushed tones to this point. Hushed tones that quickly develop into giggles once some of the gems of the story get described. (And don’t worry the link at the bottom will take you to a nice collection of clips.) I am only left wondering why it’s so strangely watchable?

Is it the way that R Kelly sings every line of every character with just continuous melody?
Is it that he can manage to make ‘bitch please you must be trippin’ into a softly sung verse?
Is it the way that each chapter comes to a nail biting teeth clenching crecendo?
Or is it perhaps that a character called Bridget is used as a cheap rhyming device to introduce a midget?

But after today I am only left wondering why did he make this film? Why didn’t someone long into the production of this say, “What the fuck is going on? This story makes no sense! Please tell me this is meant to be a comedy!”

All this and more might get answered after the jump.

Like an large pot hole in the middle of a narrow road, my 30th birthday is upon me. There nothing I can do about it except accept that I’m going to slightly fuck up my suspension. There’s a profound thought. Life is a series of bumps in the road and it’s about how good your suspension is at dealing with those bumps.

But I’m waffling. After a fantastic birthday party with my friends in town where I celebrated my face off with some ribs and wings, I settled on two presents for myself; one adult, one juvenile.

The first is a short weekend away (in a few days) to Sedona, Arizona with my lovely girlfriend. It’ll be the perfect quiet, picturesque, getaway with photo opportunities in abundence. We’ll have time to walk, hike, take photos, eat, relax and make fun of hippies.

The other is an Xbox 360. And it’s really, really great. Surprisingly great. And I spent an inordinate amount of time debating whether to get one. But in the end, I realised that I still enjoy childish persuits and will so for a very long time. (I’d like to make a proper write up of my xbox experience soon.)

Being 30 is just like being 20. Except you’re more tired afterwards.

Apologies for my terrible lack of correspondence of late. I’m getting into the last week of my current project (designing the patient experience for an ambulatory sugical centre of course) and it’s getting hard to keep track of all the plates I’m spinning.

I have had in the last six weeks, design team members in three times zones (and three cities, thankfully all in the US) all working together. Organising a voice over recording in Boston, while timing it with an animatic here in Chicago is an interesting challenge. The team is sketching, scanning, animating in Flash, modeling in Rhino3d, rendering in 3ds MAX, editing in After Effects… you name it.Thankfully the work is meaningful and easy to understand such that everyone “gets” it.

What’s interesting to me about this project is that the story and language you create and use is often as important to get right as the work itself. I only wish I could be more explicit about what I’m working on right now, but with any luck this project will get a public announcement at some point.

So with this project wrapping up soon, I might be able to get back to Skymall and find you all some new gems. It’s been too long hasn’t it?

Flickr is one of the reasons I think that the internet is getting past it’s awkward teenage years. From the internet’s infancy when all pages read, ‘Welcome to My Home Page’ with a repeating graphic of cat paws, or ‘The significance of crystaline deposits in Northumbria’, the internet has come a long way. Now a days, you can’t gesturally browse your mouse without bumping into some NSFW* material. But things are really starting to shape up here as the back end technology is starting to talk to each other. And as the writing is getting funnier.

30 Boxes, Wordpress, , Google maps (double true!), Bleep, Audioscrobbler, Google Mail, Engadget, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Skype, Lifehacker, ARS Technica, Product Dose, Gapersblock, Craiglist, Anonymous Lawyer, DP Review, Maddox, The Framley Examiner, Myspace, Hub, are just a few of the things that makes the wonder what used to do before I had easy access to the internet?

While I know that it’s not a big deal to anyone else, but today I broke through 10,000 views on my Flickr page and I think that’s great. Thanks to everyone that’s gone to view my photos.

What are the reasons, sites or people that make the internet significant to you?

*(Not Safe For Work)

“A great weekend was had by all!”

I sat with rapt attention on Friday night to watch the ‘Found Footage Festival’ at the Chicago Cultural Centre downtown. Hosted by two genuinely funny guys, they took us through some of the most excruciatingly bad TV I’ve ever seen. The high brow concept with extremely low brow content came from trawling through hundreds of thrift stores, second hand shops and estate sales to find lots and lots of old VHS tapes. After watching thousands of hours of public access TV, commercials, promotional videos, and music videos, they spliced together two hours of pure TV hell. The result was one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in years. Genius.

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When I heard that the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” (illustrated by David Lloyd) was made into a movie and going to be directed by the Wachowski Brothers (of The Matrix crapology) I had my reservations. I did hear that Alan Moore was advising on set and everything was kosher. But I also later heard a rumour that he stormed off the set. Not so kosher. So when I went to see it this weekend I was pleasantly surprised that the Matrix brothers managed to keep in line with the original material. All was looking good until the end when a terrible, misplaced love story got tacked on the end.

But the real anomaly appeared when the credits came at the end. After the director and production company credits rolled, the story was said to have been created from a graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd. And then the rest of the cast rolled by. Hold up, what?!

Saying that V for Vendetta was created by David Lloyd (with no mention of Moore the writer) is saying that A Brave New World is published by Harper Classics (with no mention of Aldous Huxley). Did Alan Moore feel so strongly that he had to remove all association with this film? Maybe Moore was a total nightmare to work with on set, but it can’t be a good sign when the original writer of the source material wants nothing to do with the reinterpretation.

For further info about Moore, try Wikipedia.

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Finally, an interesting post about shopping. Ever shopped around town for that special cut of meat, or that particular ball of yarn? Shopping in an item specific manner was the likely way many of us shopped before the rise of mega convenience stores. While it’s certainly convenient to find a pharmacy next to your optometrist and next to your Brussel sprouts, it can make for a less that unique shopping experience.

Read the Curious Shopper’s thoughts about multi-stop shopping vs all-in-one shopping here.