step aside, i’m an expert on this stuff

Though, like most bloggers, my posts about digital media and such are largely me talking out of my ass, apparently my two cents on the matter are worth significantly more than just two cents. At least, that seems to be the conclusion of the esteemed Directors Guild of America, people who really should know better, but have none the less asked me to speak at the upcoming DGA Digital Day on digital technology in film production and distribution.

I mean, If I’m the best they can find for insight on the digital future of film, there are some hard, hard times ahead for the movie industry.

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but where to get it?

Though it has already been discussed to death elsewhere, I’d be remiss not to mention Apple’s new online music service, as I suspect it will become the first viable effort in the emerging world of digital music sales.

The basic details: $.99 for a song, $10 for an album, high quality downloads that play on up to three computers, burn to CDs and download onto an unlimited number of portable devices. In other words, reasonably priced downloads not crippled by a draconian digital rights management protocol, all through a fast and easy interface.

Sure, no matter how good the system, some number of people will always choose free p2p file swapping from Napster clones. But as one pundit pointed out, the majority of internet users will eventually head over to legitimate services (once the services get good enough) for the same reason most people buy store liquor, rather than white lightning brewed in someone’s bathtub: it’s easier, more reliable, they know what they’re getting, and it isn’t illegal.

Currently, the service is available only for the Mac, but a Windows version is supposedly rolling out by the end of the year.

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today’s quote

“Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”
– the Buddha

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joyous verbophilia

Throughout my entire life, I have been fascinated with words. By the age of two, my relatives recount, I rejoiced in discovering new ones, such that for days after I would use the word wherever possible, mustering situations in which the new confection might be put to work. As an avid reader, I’ve collected a cornucopia of words in the years since my early toddling start, such that, by now, I rarely discover new ones. Or, at least, rarely discover valuable new ones – words that bear utility while possessing a certain poesy when heard and a tangy mouth-feel when spoken.

Which is why I’ve so far particularly enjoyed Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The first 266 pages, besides being an immensely immersive narrative, have been chock full of excellent new words, and old ones I’d somehow forgotten along the way. Consider the new additions of ‘grampus’, ‘lepidopterist’ and ‘bole’, and the rediscovery of ‘obdurate’, ‘ullage’, ‘trope’ and ‘parbuckle’, all gleaned from a short eight page chapter! Not all of Chabon’s words are to be trusted, however – no definition I’ve found for ‘pappilate’, for example, supports Chabon’s lyrically erroneous use in his description of a Luna Moth: “it rested, pappilating its wings with a certain languor like a lady fanning herself, iridescent green with a yellowish undershimmer, as big as that languid lady’s silk clutch.” Though, perhaps, I should rejoice in, rather than criticize, his reworking of meaning. After all, only by such calculated rule-breaking has language evolved, producing the dizzying abundance of words, sweet words, that we enjoy today.

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floored

Apparently, the combination of vodka, allergy medication, and very low blood pressure isn’t a terribly good one, as I passed out this morning on my way to the bathroom. After which, I proceeded to get up, walk back to my bedroom and pass out a second time there.

Though I’m nursing a number of odd bruises from the two less than graceful crumplings, there was something oddly pleasant about the suddenly cool, clammy and clear feeling that comes with post-feinting fluttering open of eyelids. Something akin to, though certainly milder than, the feelings Dostoevsky described as preceding his epileptic fits:

“For several instants I experience a happiness that is impossible in an ordinary state, and of which other people have no conception. I feel full harmony in myself and in the whole world, and the feeling is so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss one could give up ten years of life, perhaps all of life. All of you healthy people don’t even suspect what happiness is, that happiness that we epileptics experience for a second before an attack.”

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Grumpy, Doc, Bashful, Sleepy, Happy, Dopey and

Special thanks to my roommate Jamie, for pointing out the likely connection between me sneezing all weekend long and the recently appeared blossoms on the trees lining our block. As I only discovered my seasonal allergies a few years back, they still take me by surprise each year; though perhaps they shouldn’t, as they seem to kick in like clockwork, at least judging from my blogging about essentially the same thing almost exactly the same time last year.

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nyc

To paraphrase: Home at last, home at last, God almighty, I’m home at last.

Back in Manhattan, with no trips anywhere on the immediate horizon. I cannot express how happy that makes me.

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holy street-corner confrontation!

Just rescued some lady at the end of my block from a big drunk who was harassing her. Not too happy to be “escorted” away, he left me with a few good welts as souvenirs of the encounter. Still, I’m tempted to stop this movie producing / tech non-profit crap and just become Batman full time.

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transitioning

Despite yesterday’s claim of a return to my previous, feral lifestyle, I’m apparently still not quite back to my old self, having earlier this evening declined an invitation to the home of a rather attractive young blonde with whom I was at an earlier point in my life romantically entangled. Cue British accented Discovery Channel voice over: “After months of domestication, the recently re-released male seems to have somewhat lost the knack for his species’ elaborate courtship ritual…”

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