Beautiful Irony

I know I've been away for a while. I've had life. You know, the basics of laundry and child rearing and summer camp and 1st grade and Pre-K starting... Lest you think I've been all work and no play and thus become a dull girl, I'm going to tell you a tale of two books. They are beauty, they are the beast, but not a Tale of Two Cities.

The first is "Universal Beauty". It's the Miss Universe Guide to looking beautiful. And it's chock full of great advice on skin-care and such. And it's not really that geared towards the Pageant Girl.

The other great book I read was The Photoshop Elements 6 Book For Digital Photographers.

I've always wondered how and wanted to learn about making a good picture GREAT. Well, that book tells all! And how...

The irony of it all? There's not ONE picture in the first book that was NOT manipulated SOMEHOW using the techniques in the second. Take a good look at the cover. I promise it has been enhanced.

12" Vinyl LIVES!!!

So I poster earlier about the new turntable, right? I have to say it is absolutely A-Mazing. I have ripped about 10 albums as WMA files and the quality is superb. I haven't done any digital clean-up of the files either. There's really no need. Most of the albums were in excellent to pristine condition so there was no popping or hissing to be dealt with. The one album that did pop and hiss a bit was "To Sir, With Love" (the original movie soundtrack released in the 60s).

My set-up uses the ion turntable as audio source, Windows Sound Recorder (yeah the basic thing that *comes* with Windows) to record & Roxio Sound Editor to make it all into separate tracks & remove beginning and end silence. Once an album is physically captured - done in real-time - it takes about 1 minute to convert a full side of a platter to separate tracks.

While I'm ripping in real-time, I scan the original album cover art in two pieces since I'm using a mulit-purpose print/scan/etc machine that has a legal size/a-4 size glass. I then take those two files into PhotoShop and edit them together for a pretty decent facsimile of the original cover. I tweak them a bit to get rid of any flaws from storage or what-have-you.

All in all, I'm extremely satisfied.

YouTube Strikes Again

Ok, so if you know YouTube, you know The Mean Kitty Song. The same guy who did Mean Kitty did this video. I've commented the "innuendo" video a couple of times and I can't get it out of my head. Not for the reason that Mr. Safety had in mind, I'm sure.

I've been pondering whether or not it "crosses the line". I guess it really depends on what the definition of "is" is. One one level it doesn't necessarily bother me. It's just frakking stupid. And that's OK, I guess. On another level, though, for someone who wants a career in filmmaking, it seems like an amateurish cheap shot.

For instance, Quentin Tarantino started out as an indy filmmaker. Love him or hate him, he really knows how to make a movie. He understands the medium and knows how to use it to tell a story. I'd class him with any of the great filmmakers from the last 100 years.

I guess I'm worried that sophomoric humour is what we've fallen to as a society. Are we doomed to a Beavis and Butthead lifestyle? Or can upcomer indy filmmakers - many of whom are stretching their fledgling wings at YouTube - create real art that entertains?