Will Hines Dot Net

Here’s a fun/depressing game: Go to YouTube. Notice how they show you five videos that are being watched at that moment. If you refresh the page, you’ll see five different videos being watched at THAT moment. Now notice how many of them are either a) Sarah Palin or b) Tina Fey’s impression of her on Saturday Night Live or c) any other impersonation of Sarah Palin. My highest score is four out of five, and I’ve never gotten lower than one.

So in the middle of the Built to Spill concert last Thursday, I noticed that a lot of the more passionate fans were all holding their arms over their heads and chopping the air along with the chugging backbeat of the song “Velvet Waltz.” It seemed to be unconscious like they were under a spell. The concert was a special performance of their album “Perfect From Now On” which is one of the all time best titles I’ve heard! I had never heard the album and barely knew the band. Tabitha and I were there because Kate Hess, a devoted fan of the album, had invited us. It took a while to get into for me — some people there knew the album so well that I felt left out as if I was watching someone re-read their favorite book. But by the end of that very song, something clicked in my head and I got it, and I loved it. Their songs were beautiful — all slowly charging and building to an epic climax, with the lead singer’s high raspy vocals sort of loose on top of it. It’d been a while since I’d gotten into a new band and once I started feeling it I pushed it. Pretty soon: arms over my head, chopping the beat along.

But the real revelation that night for me was seeing Dinosaur Jr., a band I was supposed to get into 20 years ago when Spin Magazine was essentially ordering those of us who wanted to be hip to like them. But I never did, for the same reason I ignored the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine and Husker Du: I had terrible taste. But they were amazing. I’ve never liked guitar solos, but by the end of their set I saw God. I mean, I might have to go out and re-buy all of rock and roll and re-listen to the guitar parts.

The Meat Puppets also played and they were also great. I had seen them open for Paul Westerberg 10,000 years ago so I feel like I’m cool.

Even though I loved it and it makes me want to go to more concerts I won’t.

Other great titles (any medium, unranked and not-thought-too-much-about)

• The Turn of The Screw
• Everything That Rises Must Converge
• A Confederacy Of Dunces
• Pale Fire
• The Dark Knight Returns
• Night Of The Hunter
• Smells Like Teen Spirit

Charles Pottamous, the Second Fattest Man in the World, was a web pick in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly. Charlie Sanders created the character and the piece. I filmed it the night before I left for the conventions and edited it the day after Obama’s speech. And just like Obama’s speech it’s going to change the world.

And check this out! The sketch group Derrick made a movie and I’m in it! In the trailer! I play “Reasonable Principal.” Doesn’t that movie look amazing? It does.

As I read about an actual commercial bank failing, and wonder if we have truly entered another economic depression — I also have to wonder — is the world economy just reacting to the end of Mother?

Being sentimental about improv always feel lame. But the community has the memory of a fish and if I don’t say it now no one will even know what I’m talking about in six months.  Some bunches of people are going to start their first improv classes next week and they will never see Mother in their regular run, and I sort of can’t believe you’re allowed to study improv in NYC when Mother isn’t doing a show somewhere.

What I think of when I think of Mother:

That you could walk in the back hallway before their show that they’d been doing for 8 years and see them warming up, and having fun at it.

That they are the only team I’ve seen go from merely a good team to an absolutely transcendent team — when they started doing The Sleep Over. They’ve done tons of amazing shows but I declare now that the run of “Wanna Sleep Over” was some of the coolest funniest and most artful comedic acting that any bunch of crazy assholes has ever done for no money. The Soundtrack is also amazing — it’s just ridiculous they’ve made two amazing shows that each ran forever.

If The Swarm were the Beatles of my improv world, then Mother certainly were The Rolling Stones — never QUITE as heralded, but  doing it longer for more people with more joy and probably getting laid a lot more in the process.

Girls loved Mother. A show is really funny if girls like the show, because in improv there’s always a bunch of comedy dude nerds that’ll watch. But if you get girls in your audience, you must be for-real good. Always girls at a Mother show.

I remember at 161 after a Sleepover show seeing Daly and Mantzoukas discussing if the show was good, if they were losing their groove. They turned to me and asked what I thought. At that point I had never been asked my opinion of anything by anyone in the theater and I was flattered to pieces, but looking back I can see now that it was just a matter of course for Mother to work hard at what they were doing.

James Eason was one of my favorite coaches, even before he got ELO hair. St. Clair? I took classes with that girl, and we all knew she was amazing and had no chances of a ) dating her or b) being on a team with her. We threw a party whenever she made it to our practice groups. When Mother got her it was like “Of course, those fuckers.” Same thing when they got Doug Moe.

I remember that when they were already an established powerhouse on Harold Night they rehearsed twice a week — once with Secunda, once with Armando — until they became just unquestionably the best team in the house. They were already funny. Jon Daly alone could make a team funny, right? Once you throw Tara Copeland in the mix it’s getting unfair. But that was never enough! They somehow BOUGHT IT — the idea that they’d be better working at it. And they did. They workshopped Sleepover at Freaks Local — what powerhouse team workshops their improv show like that? Mother does.

Seeing them get better. At an early Harold night at 161, Armstrong said to Mantzoukas “There’s been a crime out by the swamp! My friend is hurt.” And Manztoukas initally responded “So what do you want me to do about it?” Then immediately realizing he’d negating opens an invisible desk drawer “But I am the sherriff. So — okay, fine let’s go see your ‘crime.’”

That after he became a Bajillionaire Scot Armstrong still trudged down to 26th street and did Superheroes in the back hallway with his old improv classmates and then did a great show. Christine Walters did a show up until the 40th week of pregnancy or something. I mean, I know people who skip shows because they have to pack for a trip.

That they were the last team Armando Diaz really fostered at the UCBT.

Despite working that hard, they were never above doing a scene about Gallagher’s balls. Above it? They went out of their way to make that happen.

They kicked the crap out of Cagematch so hard it was ridiculous! They went to Chicago which for an improviser in NYC is like someone going to Jesus’ bedroom and they won there.

They seemed irritated with each other just enough to stay interested, but not so much that they ever stopped liking each other. I’ve seen dozens of improv teams go through the lifecycle of “everyone hang out all the time” — to “showing up moments before the show starts and being bored” — how the fuck did Mother stay so good for so long? And that show is STILL selling out!

Sometimes Mother would plain ‘ol suck balls, and when the did they seemed to have just as good a time as when they had the whole place under their spell.

The only big mistake they ever made was letting Eason name the team, because now he gets to tell everyone about it.

That they had someone as crazy as Jesse Falcon on their team. I’ve heard better drug stories from him than I’ve read in Hunter S. Thompson books and in addition he also cried during the first Hulk movie.

UCBT-wise, they’re the last of the Big Three: Swarm, Respecto and Mother. It’s sad to me that they’re stopping. But it had to happen! It’s almost enough to convince me I should maybe be thinking of getting a  real job.

A great story about a photographer having his camera equipment returned to him after 30 years. Via kottke.

Fun with a Greenscreen from Eugene Cordero on Vimeo.

Rob Lathan stars as Mark Spitz in “Nightswimming”

9/11/2001 was so crazy and big and scary and world-changing, certainly New-York-City changing, that I would not think to try and explain it.

What I CAN explain is 9/11/2002 — because on that day, when everyone was super-conscious it had been JUST ONE YEAR SINCE 9/11 — the Brooklyn Academy of Music offered free screenings of the movie “Manhattan” as a sort of “let’s just see a movie and feel good about our city” thing. So I went. My life was a mess. The city was a mess. But the opening to this movie really did put me in the best mood. Rhapsody in Blue, great shots of the city and funny narration from Woody Allen, in that order. So here it is.

There’s only one shot of the World Trade Center in this montage — in the fog at about :40 seconds in — but it’s more the spirit of just being amped about the city that matters. If you don’t enjoy this montage I think you should move out of New York City forever and that is fair.

P.S. I can’t find a GREAT copy of this clip. This one has good quality but is the wrong aspect ratio. I found one with the right aspect ratio that was too blurry. I blame yellowjacket bees.

P.P.S It’s also somehow very entertaining watching a scene in another language (Italian? Spanish? I am a rube) with no subtitles.

• For editing, Final Cut Pro.
• For image manipulation, I use GIMP. That requires you to install extra libraries from the Mac install discs. If I don’t have access to those, I install Seashore.
• I pay for and use TextMate for coding. TextWrangler if I need something free.
• Cyberduck for FTP-ing, or Transmit if I feel like paying for a license.
• I used to use Final Draft for writing, but I’ve been giving Celtx a try and like it a lot.
• Quick Time Pro is a cheap license and well worth it to convert video files.
• I like using Spaces on recent Macs — I keep browsers in one space, and text editors in the other.
• I also like Stickies — I’ll call one up and type everything I want to do in that session, and then delete it when I’m shutting down.
• I use Google Docs to keep track of ideas and some first drafts.
• I use Gmail and try to keep my inbox empty. It gives me hives to walk by people’s computer and see their inbox with thousands of messages. How do they live?
• GCal also. I like iGoogle for the to-do list widget. And Google Reader for blog skimming.
• Firefox with Better Gmail and Greasemonkey and Web Developer extensions installed.
• I try to write my to-do lists in terms of “next actions” as suggested by the book Getting Things Done. So instead of “finish video” I’ll write “import footage” or “make rough cut” or “tighten pace” or whatever is next.
• If I’m building a web site, I try to use CakePHP and jQuery. If it’s for someone else to edit later, I usually build a WordPress site, though those are getting so clunky that I find that Tumblr fits a lot of people’s needs better.
• Again, if I’m building a site — I’ll run MAMP on my computer so that I have the whole development environment local. Fast iterations.
• I have my copy of Wordpress email a backup of my database every night. Then I have GMail set to instantly delete that file. But Gmail saves trash for 30 days so at any time I have 30 days of database backups for my website posts.

So here’s how it works: every so often in order to clear out room on my bookshelves I give away books that a) are not gifts and b) I’m not likely to read again. I’m trying to avoid becoming an old man with rooms full of books and newspapers and hair.

This time I’m giving away some comic books! Holy crap! And some really good Alan Moore stuff! Not Watchmen — what do you think, I’m crazy? But good stuff. Click the picture above and see what I’m giving away. Claim what you’d like in the comments (NYC area only) and we’ll work out a way to hand them off.

There are four photos of books to choose from — the one up there plus these three. Click a pic for a list of the books therein.