I never finished. I got close, and I put a lot of time into it (lip-syncing is time-consuming, to say the least), but it’s not quite there yet. There are flat spots. I haven’t got the easter eggs in yet. No credits, and no preloading. It looks like the audio has been shifted a frame. Still, there’s a lot to like about it, too. It’s Shatner, after all, at his psychedelic best.

I’d finish the thing, but I don’t even own a version of Flash that will run on my current hardware, and Flash is expensive. Hard to justify shelling out that kind of cash just to put the final touches on this monster. Still… It would be cool.

Note that this animation is interactive — don’t take your hand off that mouse just yet! Your final score will be displayed at the end. Also, there are a couple of things that happen differently each time, and a lot of things going on you won’t notice the first time through. Not as many as I planned, but the project is stalled.

If someone who has Flash would be interested in helping me get across the finish line, let me know!

Notes: It may look like it’s running, but you need to right-click the animation and select ‘Play” to make it go. (Controls are obviously something that didn’t get put in before the project stalled.) I optimized this animation for slightly larger display; if I could figure out why there’s no full-screen option when you right-click I’d fix that, too.

Enjoy!

Rest assured, Radio World, it is still acceptable to rock. Any assertion that rocking is unacceptable is the work of terrorists or at the very least individuals who wish ill for our nation.

Give me something to listen to on my commute this morning. DO IT FOR AMERICA!

Now I have “10,000 Watts” in my head, too.

While very different in sound, these songs have two things in common: They are both really cool, and they both came from Target. In fact, you’ve probably heard parts of the songs already, along with a bunch of others, in Target ads. It was after watching an ad with a song called “You’ll Never Find My Christmas” that the light of my life encouraged me to go in search of the original music to download.

Well, what do you know? There’s a whole Christmas album for download for free at Target.com, and there’s not a dud in the bunch. Target found a bunch of different up-and-coming bands and gave them a great opportunity, and got themselves some fun advertisements built around the music at the same time. To me, this seems like exploitation done right.

For the Ebenezer Scrooges among you: Yes, Target is a big, giant retail corporation, and I’ve just become a shill for them. Lighten up, would you? It’s Christmas! These are good songs you wouldn’t get to hear otherwise!

So hop on over and give a listen — you just might find your new holiday favorite.

While both songs have their uplifting moments, you have to wonder about associating your car with songs about a man being killed when his vehicle fails.

To call me a fan of Ms. Spears would not be terribly accurate. Her music and schoolgirl-slut image is interchangeable in my mind with that of several other forgettable young women. Presented with a song by one of them, I expect I’d guess the correct singer at a rate only slightly higher than random chance. I’m pretty sure she did one called “Not That Innocent” or something like that.

Recently I learned that she was a Mouseketeer, along with another of the interchangeable popsters, and Justin Timberlake. I didn’t even know they still had Mouseketeers. Maybe now they’ll reconsider. If memory serves Britney and Justin were together for a while, but I might be thinking of some other guy.

I’m not a fan, but I think about Britney every once in a while. Somehow she came to define the whole pop-bimbo image, the platonic ideal of sweaty teenage jizz-bait. Then something went wrong, and I heard even less about her than I had before. A year or two ago she tried to stage a ‘comeback’ (it says something about us that someone in their twenties can come back), and I read that it was a disaster. Recently I saw her face on a perfume commercial, so I’m pretty sure she’s not dead.

The things I read about her comeback meltdown were almost giddy in their celebration of the crash of one of the most famous people of the previous decade. While I was never a fan, I also took no pleasure in her downfall. I could have told her that her comeback was ill-concieved, however, had she taken the time to ask me. Britney the schoolgirl cock-tease won’t work anymore. There’s too much history. Under my sage guidance Britney could come back, however — just not as a recapitulation of what she was before.

This is what occurred to me while listening to crunching electric guitars while driving a curvy road. Britney is now in a position to make an album I would buy, and I suspect a lot of other people would too. The title would be Mea Culpa and it would be about her real experiences, the mistakes she made, her lessons learned and her hope for the future. She would tell us of the fear and insecurity and the agents and handlers and the drugs and all the other stuff that can make anyone’s life go haywire. It would be her taking responsibility for her life, and showing the strength to rise up and move on. That would be a cool album.

It would be Britney evolving from a singer into an artist. Does she have what it takes to make an album like that? The artistic power and the courage to open her soul? I doubt we will ever know. Her people would never stand for it.

One thing

To do

Three words

For you

The first time I heard the rhyme, I thought it was kind of clever. The second time it’s repeated in the song, I thought, “Hallmark”. The third time, I was done with it. By the end of the song, I was pretty sure I never needed to hear it again.

It seems, however, that the tune is question is in heavy rotation right now. As I searched the airwaves for stations as I scuttled actoss the surface of the earth, the song kept coming up. Each time I listened to less of it before changing stations, no matter what I thought of the music that had come before. I was more tolerant of commercials than I was of this song, and I don’t much like commercials.

Rene Trossman and band in an empty room.

I have in the past complained that for all Prague’s charms, the live music scene isn’t that great. I still think this is the case, so much of the music here is from DJ’s, and not very good DJ’s at that. However, over the last few weeks I’ve seen more live music than I would have thought possible, and discovered some pretty cool venues in the process. (My ‘discovery’ of these places is much like Columbus discovering America. There were quite a few folks who already knew about those places before.)

The evening started with hockey (Sparta won in overtime), and after the game we paused at the French Creperie while the crowds dispersed, then headed over to Mala Strana for the show.

Apparently, it’s February. Apparently, February is an unpredictable month when it comes to putting on shows in Prague. Rene Trossman, whose sweet home is Chicago, normally pulls a good crowd but tonight the joint was d-e-a-d dead. There was one person in the place besides fuego and me, meaning the band outnumbered the audience. They put on a good show, but there just wasn’t the energy in the room that leads to a memorable performance.

It’s the blues!

I really liked the band, though. Piano (required for our story), upright bass, and a drummer with a minimalist kit who played tight and clean, with occasional flashes of humor — on one song he provided the punctuation at the end by letting go of his sticks. The bass player has the closest look I have seen for one of the roles in Moonlight, but he’s Ukranian, and his voice won’t be convincing audiences he’s from Detroit.

After the first break a few more people showed up (including some of fuego’s long-lost in-laws), but even though the venue was very small, it felt deserted. A pity, but that’s February for you.

Tomorrow we must decide which musician to recruit, and rope that guy in.

While there we also judged whether U Malého Glena would be a good place to shoot the blues concert, but while it had a lot going for it, it is just too small to give us room for the film crew to work. Nice place to hear a concert, though. Our most likely location for that part of the movie remains Blues Sklep, but we would have to shoot during the day. That’s not a real problem as long as the extras can maintain energy. The alternative is to find a place that is available at night and sponsor an actual show. That would be more fun, except maybe for the editor.

I thought it was going to be my last late night out, and fuego had promised his family that the late-night sessions were coming to a close as well. However, talking to Glen before the show (and echoed by the owner of another blues joint in town), we really should listen to one more guy before making a decision. Luckily he is playing at Glen’s Place tonight. By an interesting coincidence, he is already scheduled to play at Blues Sklep the week we would like to shoot. Could we coopt his gig? An interesting thought…