Doctor No and Frankenstein Castle.

Posted: April 27, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Today I found out that there actually is a real Frankenstein Castle. Really! It’s in Germany.

That info about the castle comes from author John Scalzi, who also recently wrote about why, after being on it for a year, Bluesky is his favorite social media platform. I haven’t been on Bluesky for a year yet, but it is easily my favorite social media platform. (I like it because: no ads, no algorithm, and it’s simpler than Mastodon.)

Via Andrew… who played the greatest guitar solo ever? Was it Prince? It was probably Prince.

From 2016 but new to me, writer/director Shane Black talks about some classic Shane Black scenes with Screencrush.

From CBR.com, the first time Garfield hated on Mondays.

There’s a comic shop called Dr. No’s, and it’s only a couple hours east of me, so I am obviously going to have to visit at some point.

And finally, this is a deep cut even for Gen X-ers…

Back in the 1970s there used to be a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew TV show. It was based on the classic YA detective novels, and at-the-time teen heartthrob Shaun Cassidy played one of the Hardy brothers.

Since it was the 1970s, the TV show would find reasons to have Cassidy’s character sing on the show. (Aside from being an aspiring sleuth, Cassidy’s Hardy boy was also an aspiring rock singer, so in-show singing opportunities were plentiful.)

Anyway, while watching old episodes of the show (thanks, local library!) I noticed that Cassidy sang one song in at least two different episodes, a song called “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll.” Today I was listening to satellite radio and heard what I had assumed was just a Hardy Boys song. But this version was by Eric Carmen (who got his start with the Raspberries before he went solo). Turns out Carmen did the original version of “That’s Rock ’n’ Roll,” Cassidy covered it, and it was a hit for Cassidy.

To make this anecdote even more 1970s, Cassidy’s cover of the song took dethroned the theme from Star Wars when it took the top spot on the Canadian music charts.

Here’s a clip from one of the times Cassidy performed the song on the Hardy Boys TV show.

Frankenstein Castle in Germany

The Best BOB’S BURGERS Song

Posted: April 14, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Stacey and I love watching Bob’s Burgers reruns after work. It’s a fun show that generally works an original song (or two or three) into each episode. We saw the episode the other night with the song “Bad Stuff Happens in the Bathroom.” Stacey instantly decreed it the best Bob’s Burgers song.

I think she’s right, and that reminded me that my pal (and Hide and Creep actor) John Walker recorded a terrific cover of the song.

My pal Chris Mitchell has been taking all kinds of cool photos lately, both digital and old-school analog. Now he has a portfolio website where you can see a lot of his work.

My pal Benjamin Stark’s second feature film, Don’t Die, is making the festival rounds. (It was written by another pal, Jeremy Burgess.) Ben wrote about making the film over on No Film School.

My internet pal Al Creed does really cool pixel art, and he has a store on Redbubble where you can get that art on shirts and stickers and stuff. Fun!

I love learning about obscure visual effects technologies from the past. Like Disney’s sodium vapor process, which was kind of like green screen but different. Bonus: the YouTube video in the link shows how a guy managed to recreate this long lost technique digitally.

I also love clocks and space exploration, so I love this article about how NASA is working on a way to more accurately tell time on the moon. (Because time moves slightly faster on the moon because science!)

National treasure “Weird Al” Yankovic discusses his most iconic songs.

Getting paid for doing nothing? Good work if you can get it.

Garage drums.

Posted: March 19, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

I’ve been playing music with Eric McGinty for two decades now. Our band the Exhibit(s) has recorded a couple of albums, and Eric worked on the music for several of my film projects. (You can listen to our albums on Bandcamp here and here, and you can check out Hide and Creep if you’d like to hear some of Eric’s film scoring work.)

Eric and I have been talking about recording another (very overdue) Exhibit(s) album, plus maybe a side project album, so I’ve been thinking about recording drums. The obvious way to record drums is to go to a professional studio and pay a professional engineer to record the drums. But that kind of stresses me out. Drums are generally the foundation of rock music recordings, which means the drums need to be recorded first. And given that I am not the most consistent drummer, I worry about wasting everybody’s time and money while they wait for me to get my parts recorded correctly.

I can’t record drums at home because I live in an apartment, and I am sure my neighbors would rightfully complain about the noise. But my parents live in rural central Alabama, and they have a garage. Which isn’t acoustically treated or whatever, but it’s a big room where I can play drums. And I have Logic Pro software for the Mac, which (as the name implies) is a professional audio recording app.

One thing I don’t have is a bunch of expensive microphones. But! Logic Pro has a cool feature where you can replace drum sounds with professional drum samples. Basically your real drum tracks serve as triggers, and Logic Pro replaces them with professionally-recorded drum sounds. This works for the bass drum, the snare drum, and the tom-toms. So the only thing I have to actually record well in-the-room is the cymbals.

Shure makes a microphone called the SM-57 that is an industry-standard all-around instrument mic. But those are about $100 a piece, and I didn’t want to spend that kind of money when I don’t need super high-quality sound, since I’m planning to replace the sounds anyway. I found these “WM57” microphones that are… well, they’re basically bootleg SM-57 mics. And they’re like $15 each. Which is an insanely low price for a functional mic.

I went down to my folks’ garage and did some test recordings, and I was pleased to find out that, at least for tom-toms and snare, these not-SM-57s sound pretty good. I mean, for the price they sound amazing. But I honestly don’t know if I could tell the difference between them and the real thing. Obviously I need to borrow a real SM-57 and do a side-by-side recording comparison, but that’s a project for another day.

Here’s a short snippet of what I recorded on my first day of drum recording tests in the garage. Sloppy playing aside, the sound is pretty good. My main gripe with this test is I only had a single mic to record the cymbals. So the cymbals are in mono with a fake stereo effect added. Based on positive reviews, I ordered a pair of cymbal mics for $60 (that’s $30 per mic), so I can record my cymbals in stereo next time. If these $30 mics work as good for cymbals as the $15 mics do for drums, I’ll be thrilled. Hopefully I’ll get back to the garage sooner rather than later and take the cymbal mics for a test drive.

UPDATE: To answer a few very good questions from my pal Andrew Bellware over on Mastodon… in the snippet below, I used Logic Pro to replace the kick and snare sounds. The overhead (cymbals) mic is an Audio Technica large-diaphragm condenser. The (few) tom-tom sounds are the originals, from those WM-57 mics. My pre-amp is an old Focusrite eight-input FireWire (!) interface.

Chance Shirley · Drum Test (for Blog)

Doc Bellware.

Posted: February 21, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment

Congrats to my pal Andrew Bellware on getting his PhD! His doctoral thesis is about how music works in movies. Apparently in his thesis he mentioned that a friend rescored 2001: A Space Odyssey using 1980s pop songs. I am that friend! That friend is me!

I wish I could show you my “remixed” 2001. But it obviously breaks several copyright laws, so I assume if I put it on YouTube it’d get immediately pulled. That said, I did make a trailer for it, and the trailer is somehow still on YouTube. So who knows.

As 2011 winds down…

Posted: December 23, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Good on ya, Louis.

HitFix.com interview with Louis CK from a couple of years ago.

Philip Bloom has posted a nice movie lighting tutorial.

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy Does the Morning Weather.

Aaron Gustafson’s Smart Markup for Smarter Websites presentation (late-night edition).

There’s still time to buy the Humble Indie Bundle. You get some games, and a couple of charities get some money. (via Chris)

Find out if and where that movie is available at GoWatchIt.com. (via Ebert)

iWebInspector is (apparently) a free tool to debug, profile and inspect web applications running on iOS Simulator.

Lastly, but not leastly, Happy Christmas! And I hope you have a terrific 2012!

Watched on Dec. 14…

Green Lantern is not a good movie, but it isn’t terrible enough to get worked up about. Nobody seems to be trying except for the actors, but those actors don’t have anything of substance to work with.

Watched on Dec. 20…

The Descendants seems to be getting a lot of buzz lately. Which is great, because it is a funny, smartly-acted, finely-observed movie for grown-ups. I’m not hearing as much buzz about Young Adult, which is a shame, because it is in the same league as The Descendants. I’m especially impressed with the cast–Charlize Theron delivers a fantastic lead performance, and every other actor, from Theron’s co-stars (Patton Oswalt and Patrick Wilson) to the day players, does a good job keeping up with her.

The Cutters return to Bottletree…

Posted: November 16, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , | Leave a comment

… on December 9.

poster

Ticketmaster fail.

Posted: November 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: | 3 Comments

I turned on the computer this morning to order Radiohead tickets. Stacey and I were excited to hear about their upcoming U.S. tour, especially since they’ll be playing Atlanta, GA, which is driving distance for us.

I opened the Ticketmaster.com website and quickly found the Radiohead tour page. And I immediately noticed a problem. The page informed me that Atlanta tickets were going on sale at 10 a.m. It did not mention a time zone. I guess I was supposed to assume Eastern Time Zone, since Atlanta is on EST.

As I had a few minutes to kill, I started reading some of the fine print and came across this message: “SELECT LOCATIONS are electronic Ticketmaster Paperless Tickets ONLY.” I read some more and found that Ticketmaster Paperless Tickets can’t be re-sold or given away. If you buy two paperless tickets, you must arrive at the show with proper ID and the credit card you used to buy the tickets. But there is no physical ticket–you’ve just paid for admission and a “plus one.” So whoever that person is must enter the venue at the same time as you.

This paperless thing would obviously cut down on scalping. But, wait a minute, what’s this “SELECT LOCATIONS” thing? Is the Atlanta show paperless? If I didn’t get tickets today, would I be able to buy them from a scalper later? The fact that this isn’t specified is a big problem.

I read a little further and found another problem. The ticket price is $69. That might sound like a lot, but, for a large arena concert by a popular band like Radiohead, $69 is quite reasonable. But the total ticket price is $80.65, because Ticketmaster adds $11.65 in “fees.” What exactly are these “fees?” Does they include sales tax or something? I don’t know, as I couldn’t find any additional info. Anyways…

I clicked through to the next page and noticed yet another problem. I was seeing a message that no tickets were available. Understandable, since it was a bit before 9 a.m. (10 a.m. EST). But, as it was almost 9, a more useful message would seem appropriate. Something like “You may purchase tickets for this event in 12 minutes, 53 seconds (click to refresh).”

As it was, I could only assume that Ticketmaster’s server clock was on the same time as my iPhone. So I waited till my iPhone showed 9 a.m. and hit the refresh button on my web browser and… got the same “no tickets” message. Hm. Maybe the Ticketmaster clock was a little slow. So I hit refresh again. And again. Waited. Another refresh. It was 9:02, and I was still getting the same message.

Then I noticed a detail of the message: “Tickets may not be on sale yet.” And I started getting angry. Were the tickets on sale or not? A company with a name like “Ticketmaster” should be able to, at the very least, tell me whether or not tickets are on sale for a particular event.

I called a friend who was also trying to get tickets. He’d gotten through and bought two tickets. And, he informed me, the tickets for the Atlanta show were not paperless. So I had to call somebody unaffiliated with Ticketmaster to find out two pieces of information–tickets are now on sale, the tickets are not paperless–that should have been front and center on the Ticketmaster website.

But, wait, had the show already sold out? At this point, was that what the vague “no tickets available” message meant?

A few more page refreshes later, and I finally got to a “search for tickets” page. All right! I chose three tickets from the little selector box and clicked the “find tickets” button. Then I had to fill out a CAPTCHA to prove that I was a real human being. Then I received this message: “Sorry, no exact matches were found, but other tickets may still be available.”

Wait a minute… the Ticketmaster.com website made me waste time deciphering a CAPTCHA only to tell me “no tickets?” And, then, the “no tickets” message includes the following vague information:

Try the following:

  • Select “Best Available” or “Any Price”.
  • Change the quantity of tickets requested.
  • Double check your promotional code or password, if you used one.
  • At the time of your search, another customer may have been viewing the tickets you want and then decided not to buy them.

Okay. The site knows I had already done the “best available, any price” option, so why bother suggesting that? The site also knows that I didn’t enter a promotional code, so that’s another pointless suggestion. After a few more tries, I deduced that three tickets together were not available.

So why did I have to choose “three tickets” and fill out a CAPTCHA to (sort of) find that out? If three tickets are not available together, why was that option even offered to me?

After more trial and error, CAPTCHAs, and unhelpful messages, I figured out that only single tickets were available. And not particularly good single tickets. I guess Stacey and I will just buy tickets from a scalper. Good thing they weren’t selling those paperless tickets for the Atlanta show.

I’d like to think that somebody from Ticketmaster will read this and make some changes to improve the Ticketmaster website. But that’s not going to happen, because Ticketmaster is a monopoly. If you want to buy a ticket to the Radiohead show in Atlanta, or any event (as far as I know) at Atlanta’s Philips Arena, you have to go through Ticketmaster. With no competition, they don’t have any incentive to offer customers a good web user experience or to explain (or reduce) their fees.

Next time I want tickets to a big show, I think I will save myself the headache and just go straight to the scalpers.

Some random thoughts on music.

Posted: October 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: | 5 Comments

Best-sounding rock album ever: In Utero by Nirvana.

Best rock lyric ever: “We’re gonna come around at twelve with some Puerto Rican girls that’s just dying to meet you.” From “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones.

Best Rolling Stones song: not sure, but it’s either “Rocks Off” or something from Let it Bleed.

Best Beatles song: “She Said She Said.”

Best Keith Moon-less Who song: “Eminence Front.”

Best singer/songwriter you’ve never heard of: Ike Reilly.

Best live album you’ve never heard of: Alive ’05 by Local H.

Great unappreciated concept album: Pack Up the Cats by Local H.

Great unappreciated Wilco album: Sky Blue Sky.

Last good R.E.M. album: Green.

Best Radiohead album: Tough call, but I’m going with OK Computer.

Best totally illegal album: The Grey Album by Danger Mouse, Jay-Z, and the Beatles.

450px-Fender_Jazzmaster

Coolest guitars: Epiphone Casino with Bigsby tremolo, Fender Jazzmaster.

Worst band ever: Creed. (Runners up: Matchbox 20, Sister Hazel, Train.)

Scrambled.

Posted: October 3, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments

Chuck wrote a nice blog post about the Sidewalk Scramble movie we worked on weekend before last. Check the link for all the details. I’ll just say that I, like Chuck, had a great time working with a great cast and crew.

And here’s a still from a shot I’m particularly proud of: Catherine Kinsey, our lead actress, shot from Trap’s jib using only available streetlights.

Catherine Kinsey in "Bait"

Watched on Sept. 30…

I’m not much of a sports fan, but I love a good sports movie. And Moneyball is a good sports movie. I especially like that Moneyball isn’t so much about baseball as it’s about the mechanics of baseball. And the actors, including Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, all turn in solid, confident performances.

Also…

This looks fun: the Gunpoint video game.

Here’s a good interview with my pal and fellow pragmatic indie filmmaker, Andrew Bellware.

These microfiber cloths are the best thing I’ve found for cleaning the screen on my iPad 2 (and iPhone and iMac).

Unsurprisingly, this 2009 interview with Axl Rose is one of the worst I’ve ever read. Rose talks a lot without saying anything and paints himself as petty and paranoid.

Busy, busy, busy.

Posted: August 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General | Tags: , | 4 Comments

Things I’m working on right now…

I could really use a nap.

Here’s a photo of a sleepy African wildcat…

African wildcat

He looks sleepy to me, at least. Maybe I’m just projecting.

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