Genuine, un-Photoshop-ed photograph of the Dec. 31, 2007 sunset as taken somewhere in the Bay Area by my olde friende, Jen. May 2008 prove the old adage true: “Red sky at night, a sailor’s delight.” Blessings, peace, and smoothest sailings to all.
The always worthwhile blog The Bioscope recently posted about The Amina Lodge, “a British freemasonry lodge for those in the film business” which was established in 1912 and lasted, it seems, until at least 1962. Needless to say, this is unexplored history.
The post sports an extensive list of members (founding and subscribing), a number of whom were some of the biggest names in early British cinema, including no less than American transplant Charles Urban (whose unfinished memoirs, A Yank in Britain, are available from bookseller The Projection Box in the UK — said bookseller’s catalog you are commended to explore at length forthwith, crappy exchange rate notwithstanding.)
Those with any additional information — or interested access to the Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London — are encouraged to communicate.
“Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.”
– George Bernard Shaw
(Photo courtesy of Steve M.)
Avant music fans take note! Legendary improviser Keith Rowe will perform live on Monday, October 15 at Seattle’s Chapel Performance Space at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford. Show time is 8:00 PM, and admission is $5 -$15 sliding scale.
Rowe will perform the score Treatise, composed by his friend Cornelius Cardew between 1963 and 1967. Rowe will be playing solo, as well as with an ensemble of Seattle avant music all-stars including Mike Shannon, Stuart Dempster, Esther Sugai, Dean Moore, Rob Millis, Carl Lierman, Dave Knott, Robert Kirkpatrick, David Stanford and Eric Lanzillotta. Coincidentally, Stuart Dempster was one of the performers in the US premiere of Treatise in 1967.
To learn more about Keith Rowe, read this 2001 interview in Paris Transatlantic Magazine by Dan Warburton.
Chapel Performance Space
Good Shepherd Center, 4th floor
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, Seattle
(in Wallingford, west of I-5, just south of 50th St.)
One of the sites I helped build has won a 2007 WebAward from the Web Marketing Association.
The site for San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts won an Outstanding Website award, recognizing “work above and beyond the standard of excellence.” WebAwards were also won by six other sites created by POP.
Here is the team from POP that worked on the site:
Account Director: Jennifer Showe
Designer: Brad Holst
Information Architect: Minoru Uchida
Flash Designer: Dave Curry
Flash Designer: Aaron Hedquist
Web Developer: Spencer Sundell
Software Developer: Keith Richardson
My own work included interface integration with the online ticketing application, creation of page templates (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, images) and related documentation used by YBCA’s internal web staff for migrating their content to the new site, a fair amount of content migration of our own, and related tasks. The site also uses a little sIFR dynamic font replacement.
It’s a beautiful design and I’m pretty proud to have worked on it, though I do wish I could have optimized a few things a little further (like the olde school legacy markup on the event calendar).
Congratulations to the team at POP, and to the folks at YBCA.
The other POP sites that won 2007 WebAwards are listed below — mad props to everyone who worked on those:
A friend of mine arrived at home tonight in the University District, when someone flew close over their head and landed on a nearby fence.
American Media Inc. (AMI) quietly announced on July 23, 2007, that The Weekly World News will no longer be published. The final issue of “The World’s Only Reliable Newspaper” is hitting news stands and subscribers’ mailboxes this week. The tabloid was 28.
“Due to the challenges in the retail and wholesale magazine marketplace that have impacted the newsstand, American Media, Inc. today announced it will close the print version of the Weekly World News, effective with the August 27 issue. Weekly World News was AMI’s smallest weekly publication,” the company said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.
AMI, which also publishes The National Enquirer, has been struggling. According to Reuters, the company reported a $160 million net loss for 2006 and is struggling with $1 billion of debt and plummeting circulation. Sales of the Weekly World News dropped to 83,000 in 2006 from 153,000 in 2004.
Bob Greenberger, a writer for Weekly World News, wrote about the sudden closing on his blog.
Wednesday [July 18] we got word at work that management has some ideas for the paper and the next two weeks will be reprints as we begin to retool. For weeks now, we’ve been hearing some changes are in the wind that were likely to amend the game plan that went into action on April 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year….
Friday morning, Jeff Rovin comes in for a meeting and then the staff was to be called in. He’s looking harried, not at all relaxed. At 11:30, we’re finally shown into an office where we are told the Board of Directors has chosen to close Weekly World News. The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked. We’re to stay on through August 3, finishing the reprint issues and then we’re done. A glorious, funny, odd publication, born in 1979, will go out with a whimper and all I can think is that something’s going on that they’re not telling us because it just doesn’t make sense.
Subscribers (one of which is Mugu Brainpan) received little more warning in the following days. The only advance notice they got was the cover of the Aug. 20, 2007 issue, which had a blurb on the cover that announced “Weekly World News to Close: Details Inside.” In a tiny box at the bottom of page 31 was the following:
A Notice From Weekly World News
While we had every intention of sending the winning ‘Alien Ambassador Essay’ contestant off to the stars, the aliens have insisted that the staff of Weekly World News spearhead this historic mission! As a result, until further notice, the print edition of the paper will be shutting down. Details next week.
The final issue — volume 28, number 51, Aug. 27, 2007 (which arrived at the Mugu Brainpan offices today) — announced on the cover that it was indeed the “Final Issue of Weekly World News!” However, no “details” about the closure were included.
Related Links:
For years now, Ray Healy in New Jersey been one of the last. He has been selling new 16mm prints of a choice list of titles from the old Blackhawk Films home/educational distribution catalogs, salted with some goodies of his own. For the last some years he’s been reliably found online at FilmClassic.com. I’ve bought from Ray, and he’s top notch.
Unfortunately, the duplication lab used by Ray for his offerings from the Blackhawk titles is closing up shop and he will not be able to offer them any longer. August 15, 2007 is the very last day for orders. Like, in just a few days.
So if you have any interest at all in collecting 16mm prints of silent comedies, go immediately to the Blackhawk offerings at FilmClassic.com and send in an order right away. He doesn’t do credit cards or PayPal, so you’ll have to overnight a check or money order. The clock is ticking now stopped.
Meanwhile, Mr. Healy does inform me that he will continue to offer his “Exclusives” listing of films for the foreseeable future. Which is at least some good news.