I’m one of the storytellers this evening at Fireside Storytelling where the theme is Gastronomic Adventures. I’m telling the surreal tale of my dining adventure at The Deutschlander, a restaurant experience Nifer and i had way back in 1998 that was straight out of a David Lynch movie.

GASTRONOMIC ADVENTURES
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Doors 7:30 p.m. Show at 8 p.m.
The Jellyfish Gallery, 1286 Folsom St., in SF
Admission is $10

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This month’s theme explores the wonderful world of food … aaand things that maybe shouldn’t be food, but somehow find their way to the dinner table. Whether it’s fantastic gastronomic experiences or the eating of things that one really shouldn’t, we’re leaving this theme open to interpretation. This will certainly make for an entertaining night of storytelling. Come hungry, or … not.

For posterity’s sake and because it makes me laugh, here’s my bio that I submitted to Fireside for the evening:

Colin is a designer, developer, medical illustrator, artist, lover of tomfoolery, and aficionado of anything brewing with mirth trouble. He is known for promoting the joy of diminutive creativity and 1/16th scale pyrotechnic destruction. Also, he gets great pleasure in having convinced people that wearing heavy scratchy dapper wool attire while cycling is both fashionable and sane. In the main, all his creative output is dedicated toward continuing the Fahrion family tradition of being kinda sorta famous with little monetary rewards to show for it like his wonderful and talented mother, the inventor of Strawberry Shortcake.

Mother Mother new album “Eureka” sees a shift more towards rock, shedding most of their country flair and some of their eccentricity. Musically it’s still rich, with songs straddling the line between catchy and complex. If anything they’ve gotten better at their trademark intra-song shifts from head bopping fist in the air rock to grooving melodic three part harmonies. While I personally miss the eccentric country flair from their prior albums, it’s still varied and good.

Still something felt missing for me that I couldn’t put my finger on at first. Few if any of the songs off of “Eureka” pulled me in as some of their prior songs have. One of my favorite aspects of Mother Mother has always been their visually rich lyrics full of metaphors and stories and it wasn’t until my second listen that I realized “Eureka” was missing this. Their older songs like “Hay Loft” and “Neighbour” plainly lay out a story, and songs like “Train of Thought” and “Wrecking Ball” very effectively use visual metaphors to suck you in. The “Eureka” album has a few songs that still have this quality, namely “Carve a Name,” “Baby Don’t Dance,” and “In The Wings.” However, if you are like me and like your music to tickle your visual cortex and also occasionally engage you with a story then you may find this album somewhat disappointing.

Also, overall I feel the album is too studio. There are a number of songs that could use an injection of the raw energy they put into their live shows. The album version of “The Stand” is emotionally flaccid in comparison to when I heard it live during their recent appearance at the Rickshaw Stop. Live you could really hear the frustration and disgust in the chorus line: “I can hardly stand the sight of it all.” Whereas, on the album it just sounds cute and a little funny. The track “Aspiring Fires” is especially bad in this regard. For a song about being so crazy that people “run for their life” it feels rather tame without even a hint of malice hiding in the nooks and crannies. There are exceptions to this such as the song “Problems” where all three singers belt out the chorus line like a fist: “I’ve got problems! Not just ones that are little.”

That said it can be hard to capture that energy in the studio and many of their older songs are also better live. They put on a great show as the band has an excellent charisma that really shines through on stage and they are rock’n booty shaking fun.

But don’t take my word for it. You can listen to the album in it’s entirety streamed below via Soundcloud. Or just buy it. The digital version of “Eureka” is currently only $7.99 on iTunes (while Amazon has it only for $5.99, their version is missing  the bonus tracks which I think are some the best songs). I may be critical of the album but there are enough fun rocking catchy songs on there that it’s worth having and they are a great group that I feel are worth your hard earned cash — especially at that price.

Mother Mother – Eureka by RS MARKETING

Bacon wrapped hotdogs under the Doggie Diner Head. Cops, lots of cops. “It is illegal to burn trees on Ocean Beach. Those who do so may be cited or arrested,” the loudspeaker spoke up and said.*

What’s the plan? What’s the plan? Just go! Grab a tree and attempt to make it through—everyone at once and everyone for themselves. Some went straight, others zigzaged through the darkened streets. Left here, a right there, a few more blocks north hauling our post yule sacrifices avoiding the flashing lights. Then when the coast was clear hurriedly crossing the street and down to the beach.

A fire could be seen already underway to the south, but it was already thoroughly busted; so a second yule fire was lit where we stood. As it lit, a third fire could be seen sparking up further north on the beach by another rogue band of revelers. Those from the first fire came strolling to our fire looking for more Post Yule Time cheer. A couple more trees made it to the fire and there was brief lovely respite from authority who were too spread thin to even bother.

The fire died down, the last embers being shoveled over silently by a couple officers. The crowd dispersed, walking away from the beach, past the line of police cars. Sad looking lonely unburnt trees lay dropped everywhere, but it did nothing to dampen the cheerful mood. And so ended the 22nd annual Post Yule Pyre.

Post Yule Pyre (image by y3rdua)

* Up until 2006 it was legal to have bonfires on the beach. Since the ban went into place, they have steadily increased the police presence trying to stop the Post Yule Pyre tradition. As a result, Instead of one bonfire to clean up after there are several, not to mention the numerous dropped trees that lay scattered everywhere. The irony is if the authorities even quasi-sanctioned the event and didn’t chase people away, it is the type of crowd that wouldn’t be difficult to get enough volunteers clean it up.

Earlier today, @sfslim sent out the following tweet:

Cannot express how grateful I am to have friends who, when presented with a new project, ignore “why?” and immediately dive into “how?”.

The nature of twitter encourages a certain level of me-too-ism.  The medium actively encourages agreement with quick and easy retweets. Also, it’s brevity makes back and forth debate difficult—if not completely discouraged. As a result, it was unsurprising that SFSlim’s post was responded to by a number of people in a typical “Hear! Hear!” sort of way. The first to respond was @ctpctp‘s who’s response focused on this as a marker for in/out group traits:

That’s been a dividing line I’ve used for a long time now. I’m ever wary of the ones who ask “why would you do that?”

What was interesting about these responses was the fact that SFSlim’s quip could be interpreted in a couple ways:

1. I am grateful that I have friends who understand the “why?” of my ideas implicitly.
2. I am grateful that I have friends who don’t care about the answer to the question “why?”

Also interesting was that most others latched on to the second interpretation. There was @yerdua‘s response:

I wonder how it is that we realized “why?” is often a useless and nihilistic question. “How?” leads to much more action.

And @nelz9999‘s brief reply which was posed as a question to those who ask “why?”:

“Why would you ask that question?”

And then another (who will go nameless due to their account being locked) channeling a slightly more articulate yoda:

There is no “why,” there is only “yay!” Yay yay! “Why” acts like “yay” should be rationed, but we know the spring is eternal. YAY

And from another:

Similar to an old t-shirt slogan “If I had to explain it, you wouldn’t understand”

Call me an old school art fag but I think the “why?” is important. To not care about the “why?” is to not care about meaning which—to directly disagree with @yerdua—is the definition of nihilism. Sometimes the answer to “why?” is something simple as “because it’s fun! yay!” or “because it makes me laugh” or “because it’s beautiful” or “because I wanted to challenge myself.”

I certainly had my hand in a number of projects with simple answers to the question of “why?” that I’ve enjoyed and loved. However, I have a deeper connection with the projects that have complicated answers; often these answers involve both the creator and the audience. Sometimes these answers came during the initial brainstorming and other times they were summoned during observation of the resultant project as it happened. Whether developed pre- or post-hoc, it is this meaning which, to me, makes a project Art with a capital A.

I know that SFSlim and several others grok what I’m saying here and most who responded were only caught up in the me-too-ism of twitter. In fact, many of these same people have created art projects with real depth and with clear answers to the question “why?” However, I also must ask why are these same individuals being disdainful the question “why?” I mean what is wrong about being able to articulate one’s reason for doing something? And more importantly do we only care about connecting with like-minded individuals or do we have something to say to outsiders who are brave enough to step forward and ask “why?”

So to all of you who responded to SFSlim, the next time you have a project that you are passionate about, I challenge you to come up with an answer to “why?”

Over the weekend I made my first movie using my new iPhone 4. All video and photos were shot during the load up of the Dismal art project with my iPhone 4 and then edited on the BART ride home from Oakland into the short video you see below.

My Review of iMovie for the iPhone

It’s obviously a 1.0 product but an amazing one at that. There are a few bugs and a few features that I’d like to see. On top of this the user interface could use a little work as I was left confused a number of times and much of the interface is hidden behind meaningless  icons or non-intuitive touch gestures. Luckily MacWorld has a good Hands on of iMovie for the iPhone.

Bugs

• Exporting crashes often, especially if you are exporting at HD. Others are also having this problem. Seems it many happens with videos longer than a minute or two that are composed of several photos or video clips. Annoyingly I was able to export the above video at medium size but not at HD.
• Importing photos from your photo library can be laggy.
• Changing the titles can also be laggy.

User Interface Issues

• Most of the interface icons are generic and meaningless. Even after several minutes of working with it I kept forgetting what each icon was. (See example: I mean what the hell is the difference between the down arrow in the box and the one in the folder? The one in the box on the left is import and the one in the folder on the right switches you to the video camera so you can shoot a new clip—shouldn’t that icon be a video camera?!?)
• I kept having issues with accidentally hitting the wrong button or control as there are a lot of too small interface elements and other too elements that are too big for their limited importance.  (See example: not how close the trim icon is to the down arrow folder icon. I accidentally hit that folder icon several times while editing.)
• Trimming the video clips is confusing as you are trimming blindly: trim then move head to where you trimmed; if wrong, try again; repeat. Ideally, to make this easier the head position should lock to where you are trimming so you can see what the hell you are doing.
• The controls for changing the Start/End of the “Ken Burns pan effect” is confusing. I finally figured out that grayed out was the active state but that was counter-intuitive.
• Took me forever to figure out how to delete a clip or photo. Dragging to the video area to delete is counter-intuitive. While you can double tap to delete video clips, when the iphone is horizontal the delete button is hidden—you can scroll to it but there is no indication that it is there.

Feature Lack

• While you can import photos from your photo library and music from your music library, you can annoyingly only import video from the camera roll.
  • This means that if you download the video and delete your camera roll, the video in your project is now missing. So make sure you finish your movie and export before deleting video off your camera roll!
• You can only add one music track even if your video is longer than your music
• There is no control to fade in/out music in added audio track
  • iMovie automatically lowers the music volume of your added audio track if you leave your video audio on so that you can hear the video, but I would like to control fade out when the video is ending.
• Titles only can be added to video clips not photos
• Titles last the entirety of a video clip
• Cannot create a text only titling slide
• Photos are forced to use the “Ken Burns pan effect” (though you do have control over the start/end points of the “Ken Burns” pan)
• Limited number of transitions: One global Cross Dissolve and each theme has it’s own special transition.
• There is no way within the app to split one clip into two or more clips.
  • This can be done in the Camera App before importing into iMovie, but it should be part of iMovie.
• No way to publish directly from the app—you must export to the camera roll and then you can publish from there or download it to your laptop
  • Worse publishing from the Camera Roll (to youtube/MMS/email) automatically compresses the movie into ugly-digital-artifact-landia! You have no option to publish an uncompressed full res video even if you are over wifi!

Conclusion

I still think it was worth the $5 as it’s great for what it is—though I seriously hope they fix the export bug soon. Also, I really dislike the lack of the ability to upload at full res. The fact that I can shot and edit 720p video all on the iPhone but still need a computer to publish online at full resolution is annoying. Secondly, the fact that it only works with video in the Camera Roll seems like an artificial limitation and I hope they fix that soon.

I’m also happy that Apple is charging for this app as it encourages 3rd parties to create their own video editing apps. I’d gladly pay money for a more functional and easier to use app.

One last thought that is a comment on the iOS in general: The fact that this app exports to the camera roll seems kludgey and really underscores the need for some sort of simplified universal file repository.

All you slackers who didn’t make it to Dismal’s Heathen Stomp surely missed out on a rip roaring wooting and hollering good time! One Man Banjo put on an amazing show as did The Mighty Lynch-Pins, and  Creamed Corn Thumb Wrestling has to be the best worst invention in the history of sports! Though that’s not to knock the skills of those who played Jackalope Ringtoss or Pin the Finger on Danger Ranger. For those with patience to sit for a spell there was some high quality portrait art happening—or should I say poor-traits.

All in all it was a fine group of folks who showed up and spend their hard-earned money to support the creative works of The First Church of The Buzzard’s Holy Whiskey Missionary! If you know Dismal than you know the hard work they put into their creative missionary work.

If you would like to show your support for Dismal’s upcoming creative mission, you can donate to Dismal via PayPal.

More photos of Heathen Stomp can be found at JackTrade’s Heathen Stomp Flickr set and Dismal’s Heathen Stomp Flickr set