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Sunday, September 30, 2007

TNT this morning is running THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

So I'm watching it again - 'cuz it's one of my all-time favorite movies - and I'm wondering...

Dare I post a video on YouTube of myself doing my extremely disturbing yet hysterically funny impersonation of Buffalo Bill?

It seemed to be a rather popular trick when I was in high school. So much so that during a swim meet my senior year my teammates asked me to do it while I was standing up on one of the diving blocks. Of course, I obliged them.

So I'm thinking of videotaping it and sticking it on YouTube. Might become a sensation. And then again it might get me arrested.

What do you think? :-P

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Biggest sporting event in Elon history?

I just got back from Burlington a little while ago. On the return trip I decided to stop by Sandy's Subs, located near the campus of my alma mater Elon University, to get a sandwich to take home.

I had totally forgotten about how Elon is playing Appalachian State today in football. Bear in mind that a few weeks ago Appalachian State pulled off an amazing victory against Michigan, one of the top-ranked teams in the nation. And then factor in that this is Family Weekend at Elon.

When Lisa and I were dating, she was a student at University of Georgia. Whenever I visited her on Saturdays in the fall, if Georgia had a home game going on the whole place was pandemonium. I'd never seen people go so positively bonkers for football as I did whenever it was a game day at Sanford Stadium.

What I saw today, driving through Elon, was in some ways crazier than anything that I saw at Georgia! The number of Appalachian State fans that I saw tailgating alone is something that still has my senses reeling.

I have never seen that many people around Elon before. And Elon is certainly not as big a campus as Georgia.

I wish that I'd had my camera with me, 'cuz mere words can do it no justice. But take my word for it: if you're familiar at all with Elon University, today might be the biggest sporting event in the school's history. It's already well known that this is the first-ever sellout game for Elon's footballl program (at least since the school had a stadium to call its own).

Look at what Lisa surprised me with last week!

Star Wars: The Complete Visual Dictionary. She got it through some special book-order thing at her school. 272 full-color pages that put together all the previous Star Wars Visual Dictionaries, with the addition of some new material. A very neat tome that's a fine addition to my Star Wars bookshelf. Or on the coffee table to be oggled by guests.

Do I have the greatest wife ever, or what? :-)

Friday, September 28, 2007

"Granny" Roberts was born 100 years ago today

Granny and me,
just before my high school graduation in 1992.

One hundred years ago today, on September 28th, 1907, in a tiny house amid the hills and valleys of Patrick Springs in south-central Virginia, Elsie Wimbish was born.

She was my grandmother.

She was, to me and to countless people who weren't even related to her, always "Granny".

Few people have played as big a role in my life, and who I wound up becoming - and am still becoming - as did Granny. I learned so much from her. How to laugh. How to love. And if need be, how to fight and more importantly why to fight.

In other words, she taught me a lot about how to live.

Elsie Wimbish, almost from the beginning, came from a humble background but had a colorful life in spite of it. One thing I didn't know until toward the end of her life was that when she was a young girl she met R.J. Reynolds several times (Reynolds' wife Mary Katherine was a close relative of the Wimbish family). When Elsie got a little older she moved to Rockingham County and worked at the American Tobacco Company in Reidsville. And it wasn't long afterward that she met and married Arthur Stiers. Together, Elsie and Arthur would have three children: Glendora, Michael, and Frank.

A few years later however, Arthur Stiers died. Elsie did her best to provide for her three children. Then she met a fellow named James "Duck" Roberts: my grandfather. They married and had five children: Kenneth (alias "Nub"), Robert (better known as "Snooks"), Jesse James (named after the gunfighter? I've heard stories...) AKA "Jack", Ruby (my mom) and Wayne. There was also one baby boy who died in infancy.

All told, there wound up being ten people - Elsie and James and the children - living in the small house on Pecan Road just outside of Reidsville (now inside the city, no thanks to the treacherous annexing of 1989). And from all accounts it was a pretty raucous affair. From the time that Frank was arrested in Reidsville driving a car with no lights, no horn, barely any brakes (the headline in the next day's Reidsville Review screamed "Franklin Stiers: Caught Driving Nothing But Motor and Tires") to the night that my mom almost killed Nub with a shotgun after he forgot his key to the front door and tried to come in through her bedroom window, to Jack's stunt at Lake Reidsville when he mounted a rocking-chair on a pair of water-skis, stories about life at the Roberts house have come to be pretty legendary in our family.

In spite of it all, Elsie (who was being called "Granny" by a lot of people not long after the birth of her first grandchild) kept the place in order, and maintained a house built around love for each other.

Central to everything in Granny's life was her fierce - and very sincere - faith. In fact, I would say that "mystic" wouldn't be too inappropriate a term to describe her relationship with God. She was always a churchgoer (she was one of the founding members of Evangelical Methodist Church in Reidsville) but seeking after God wasn't something that was a once-a-week affair with Granny. It was a constant, never-ending chasing after God and His will. It wasn't until years later, after she had died, that I really started to understand the kind of intimacy she had with God. It was a moment-by-moment thing that freed her to live as full a life as anyone on this Earth could possibly have. Some people, I hate to say, go through the motions of "worshiping God" and end up embittered because of it. That was never Granny. I don't know if she was ever bitter with anyone.

As I said, she was full of life. Part of that was that Granny was a notorious practical joker. I've heard dozens of stories about her wild youth and crazy pranks she would pull: usually on guys who were trying to woo her. Even after I was born, she went for the laugh. And sometimes her jokes would last for years... like how she had me convinced that she used to be a lawyer. It wasn't until I was sixteen that she came clean about that one.

Granny was a cook. Was perhaps famous even for her skills in the kitchen. That was her domain and she was the absolute mistress. There was nothing that she couldn't come up with. Her homemade biscuits: delicious beyond belief. Fried or barbecue chicken? She was amazing at both. Green beans and fried okra and baked potatoes and whatever else you can think of that's "country cooking". She was also adept at hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza on occasion.

But don't think that Granny was somehow all "old-fashioned" either. She had a peculiar grasp of culture and new trends. And new technology even. I mean, my cousin Frankie could explain something to her that they were doing at NASA with the space shuttle, and she would listen with rapt attention and even ask questions about it. Whenever we all got together for dinner on Christmas night at her place, she always marveled at the new toys that the kiddies had got from Santa.

And then about a year before she died, I found her watching a movie on television via the recently-installed cable and it turned out that she was looking at - and enjoying - Fargo.

Yes, Granny was watching Fargo! And she thought it was hilarious!

Who you were, or where you came from, didn't matter to Granny. One of my cousins said on the night of visitation for her at the funeral home that "there was no telling how many people here put their feet under her table." He was right, too. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the entire "rainbow coalition" wound up in Granny's house at some point or another. Every color. Every creed. Even some who practice what are called "other lifestyles" that many Christians would readily condemn.

But that wasn't Granny's way. She knew that every person was loved by God, and that meant that she was going to love them also.

There is so much that I could say about Granny, that I would probably have to be here until nightfall to write it all. She really was one of those rare "larger than life" figures that you meet during your time in this world.

And then on a Saturday morning in March of 2000, Granny had a heart attack. She was rushed to the hospital in Greensboro. She held on strong for a few days.

The following Tuesday morning, Mom was in her room and Granny looked up at her and smiled and said "I love everybody."

Mom was summoned by one of the doctors and had to step out of the room.

Two minutes later, on March 28th, 2000, Elsie Wimbish Stiers Roberts passed away.

I've never doubted that she wasn't alone in those final moments. There was a reason why Mom was made to leave the room, right just then.

Don't ask me how I know this. But I believe, as much as I am sitting here writing these words, that something happened in Granny's room in the last minute of her life... and she was the only one with earthly eyes who was allowed to see it. It was something meant for her, not for us. Something that Granny had earned during her long life of faith in God and love of others.

I can't begin to imagine what happened in that room in those fleeting last moments of Granny's life. But it was something made manifest as beautiful as her kind and loving spirit.

A few nights later we had the wake and visitation with the family at the original Wilkerson's Funeral Home in Reidsville. Someone told me that it was extremely rare to have as many people stretch around the block to pay their last respects to a person, as had come to see Granny one last time. I'm hard-pressed to remember anything like it myself: maybe two other people that I knew had lines anywhere near that long going out the door and down the sidewalk.

The next day was Granny's funeral. It was also my birthday. And I spent part of it as pallbearer for her casket: for the person that I had come to love more than anyone else in this world. And there's a lot more about that which I could probably talk about, but not here.

Granny Roberts lived to be 92 years old. Among her grandchildren and great-grandchildren there would be: teachers, ministers, a doctor, a renowned golf player, a prolific fashion model, a NASA engineer, armed forces personnel who served in two wars, business executives... and me. But I guess every family has to have a black sheep somewhere, doesn't it? :-)

So today would be her one hundredth birthday. And that seems like a very long time to most people, but is it really? I mean, one hundred years is a mere tenth of a millennium. And there have been only two of those since our Lord walked the Earth. When you think of it in those terms, our time here really is, as the apostle James put it, "a vapor".

But Granny knew how to pack in as much as you can into that time. She understood the things that really mattered and she made the most of them.

Do you think I'm here remembering her death? Certainly not! I'm here to honor her life and how she used it.

And what an amazing life it was.

Happy birthday, Granny. And we still love you.

iPhone bricking is DRM run amock

You've probably heard about how some people are taking their new iPhones and hacking them so that they can use carriers other than AT&T, run "third-party" software not approved by Apple, etc. Many or most (maybe all) of these folks are suddenly lugging around very expensive "bricks", because this week Apple released an update for the iPhone that is disabling such modified phones.

I took a looksee through the licensing agreement for the iPhone. The thing is Digital Rights Management from Hell. From my understanding of the agreement, buying and using an iPhone is lifetime indentured loyalty to AT&T, if you want to keep using it. That's beyond the initial two-year service agreement.

In light of my own recent experience with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it sure looks like Apple saw the rights afforded to people by the DMCA if they attempted to circumvent the software and contract, and tried their damndest to do an end-run around that.

Whatever happened to the days when you bough something, and you were free to use it however you wished, so long as you didn't use it to kill someone or otherwise deprive them of their rights? I mean, if you bought an iPhone you own the physical unit. You should be perfectly free to use another carrier or run your own software, or whatever. But if another private party dictates the terms under which you can use it, then it is not really yours at all. You just paid a hefty licensing fee for the rights to use the iPhone per Apple's conditions... but per the strictest definition of "property", you don't own it.

Some will probably say that people hacking their iPhones is analogous to how twenty years ago, some folks used to tamper with their cable boxes to get extra channels without having to pay for them. But it's not the same thing at all. With cable box tampering, the tangible product in question was the television signal itself: people were stealing something that did not legally belong to them. iPhone hacking involves a physical product that the consumer has fully paid an agreed-upon price for: legally - if it's understood that the iPhone is the property of the consumer - the purchaser would have the right to modify the iPhone.

(And no, it's not even the same as the situation with modified Xbox 360s either, since Microsoft only prevents altered 360s from using the Xbox Live service: a situation paralleling that of tampered cable boxes. So far as I know Microsoft hasn't physically "bricked" any modded Xbox 360s.)

It comes down to this: is the iPhone the property of the one who purchases it, or is it the property of Apple?

Hard to believe that the same Steve Jobs who came up with the idea of selling an Apple 1 made of pieced-together parts is now three decades later discouraging others from playing and hacking around with technology.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Great Delusion: Why evangelicals WILL back Fred Thompson

The Politico today has a story about why evangelical Christians - who are almost entirely registered Republicans - will be opposing Fred Thompson.

Don't believe it.

If Fred Thompson is nominated to be the Republican candidate for President next year, you will not only see most of these so-called "conservative evangelicals" not oppose Fred Thompson, but will see them support him with their wallets and their prayers.

You will hear preachers - as much as they can get away with it - crying out from their pulpits to their congregations that it is their "good Christian duty" to vote for Thompson.

You will witness the supposed "leaders" of Christian virtue in America do an about-face and instruct their followers via websites and radio programs and "voter guides" that they "cannot turn away from their God-given task" by failing to support Fred Thompson... especially if Hillary Clinton is the Democrat nominee.

And if Hillary is the Democrat candidate, you'll hear it preached far and wide that it will practically be a mortal sin not to do everything in our power to defeat her. The raw hatred for Hillary Clinton will blind so many that they won't even want to consider what exactly they will be choosing as the alternative.

You think it won't happen? I'm talking about the same people who still believe that George W. Bush was directly anointed by God to lead America. The ones who still refuse to believe that Bush can do wrong and who adamantly hold that whatever evil is attributed to him is merely "liberal media bias".

And you don't think they'll buy into the con that Fred Thompson is a "good Christian man" just like them?

They'll not only buy it, they will insist that he is good and virtuous. In spite of his lobbying for dictators and for the abortion industry, they will accept him. So long as he has that magic "R" stamped next to his name on the ballot come November 2008 and it's the "right" Democrat he's running against, they will gladly cast a vote for Fred Thompson.

I know these people well. Have met far too many of them over the years. For the most part, sincere and earnest Christian men and women. But try to tell them how Bush and other Republicans have been so un-Christlike in their actions, and they tune you out. They turn their heads away. They don't want to hear it. It's almost impossible for them to reconcile whatever you are telling them - however truthful it is - with the perceptions they like to entertain. It would literally hurt them if they tried to contemplate your facts. You want to see Orwell's "doublethink" in action? Find one of these self-proclaimed "evangelical conservatives" and get them to talk about how Bush is right to want to bomb Iran. Look at how much they will seem to want such an attack... and then confront them with Matthew 5:44. Brace yourself if you do such a thing: he or she will probably tell you that you're not being a "good Christian". Or a "good American" anyway.

It's the Great Delusion, happening right before our eyes: people who proclaim to follow Christ, throwing their principles away for sake of worldly power. It's as if Jesus rebuked Satan when He was offered all the kingdoms of the Earth and millions of those who professed to follow Him immediately raised their hands and waved to Satan crying "PICK ME! PICK ME!"

Evangelical Christians are the battered spouses of the Republican Party. They are beaten, exploited, raped, and subjected to indignity. But plenty enough of them to matter will keep crawling back to the GOP. Because as they say: "Who else is gonna take you in? Where else are you gonna go?"

Too many Christians in this country have decided we want the kingdoms of Earth over the Kingdom of Heaven. What does that say about the measure of our faith, indeed? Why should the rest of the world want to look at us and want what we have, if this is our testimony?

This is why I hate so much of what Christianity in America has become. It's turned into a spineless pile of mush that will do whatever the hell it's told to do, so long as the person giving the orders has money or power or picks up a Bible and waves it around and says the right words for itching ears.

No wonder this country is screwed-up. No wonder this world is so screwed up. Because we as Christians, who are supposed to be representing something apart from this earthly realm, keep demonstrating over and over that we don't really want that at all. We are commanded to be "the salt of the earth" but we've lost the saltiness and as Jesus said, we've become worthless. Everything is rotting because of it.

Okay, I'll go ahead and say it: "Americanized" Christianity is, literally, a God-damned piece of crap.

Why do I say "God-damned"? You surely don't think God is going to bless what we've done in His name, do you?

So if Fred Thompson is nominated and is on the ballot a year from now: just watch. The evangelical Christians - at least the ones still locked in this lust for power - will absolutely support and follow the man. They're too inebriated with the Great Delusion to want or know to do otherwise. It won't occur to them that "voting for the lesser of two evils" is still voting for evil.

They will do this, because they do not truly have Christ as the foundation of their lives upon which to stand.

You might could consider this little rant to be "Part 1" of a "diptych" that I am working on. The second part will follow sometime in the next day or so, and will likewise examine Christians in America and how we have let our desire for power overcome us to the detriment of all.

NOT AGAIN! Virgin Mobile humiliates teen with stolen content

Two weeks after my own situation with Viacom was resolved (let us hope, and you can read much more about it here), now comes word that another major corporation is taking a person's material without permission and using it commercially. But this time it's much worse than anything I went through with my own digital copyright battle.

16-year old Alison Chang from Texas was attending a Christian camp in Australia. A camp counselor took her picture and uploaded it to photo-sharing site Flickr. Well, Virgin Mobile found that picture and without asking anyone's permission - including Miss Chang's - they used it in a major (and very expensive) advertising campaign. Suddenly Chang's picture was all over the place with the caption "Dump your pen friend" and the words "Virgin to virgin". Here's the story at The Register and here is a photo of Virgin's vulgar use of Chang's visage (also posted to Flickr) along with Miss Chang's comment upon discovering it...

Well, having her picture being used like this has bothered Chang and her family, as it no doubt would most people. They have now filed a lawsuit against Virgin Mobile. They are also suing Creative Commons, the nonprofit outfit whose licensing is the basis for Flickr and many other so-called "Web 2.0" operations.

I also found good coverage of Alison Chang's situation at WebProNews both in this text article and in this video report:

After what I just went through with Viacom, I'm certainly going to keep an eye on what happens with Alison Chang's lawsuit.

Bush declares to students that "childrens do learn"

Absent any loathing I have for his actual policies, I seriously have to question the mental processes of any man who murders grammar to the point that he says "childrens do learn".

That said man is the President of the United States would make it all the more laughable if it didn't have such tragic implications for the rest of us.

Here's the story from Reuters...

"Childrens do learn," Bush tells school kids
Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:46pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76.

During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?"

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush's diction in the official transcript.

Bush is no stranger to verbal gaffes. He often acknowledges he was no more than an average student in school and jokes about his habit of mangling the English language.

Just a day earlier, the White House inadvertently showed how it tries to prevent Bush from making even more slips of the tongue than he already does.

As Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, a marked-up draft of his speech briefly popped up on the U.N. Web site, complete with a phonetic pronunciation guide to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

And just think: his father was "the Education President"!

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

THE DEADLY ART OF DEEP-FRIED TURKEY

While going through some older videotapes I found this, made during the first Christmas that Lisa and I were married. This was at her parents' place in Calhoun, Georgia and is a chronicle of the third turkey that I'd ever fried. Since then I've done many more (and have become much better at it, I think). Lisa was running the camera and the guy you see sitting in the chair with the University of Georgia cap is her dad:

I might make another video about turkey-frying as we get closer to Thanksgiving, this one doing a step-by-step from marinading the bird, to actually frying it. But this one gives a pretty good idea about the process and the extreme danger involved :-)

EDIT 11-18-2007 10:25 a.m. EST: I've decided to stop publicly showing this video, because I'm taking a lot of heat for how "burnt" the turkey looks. And in all honesty... yeah it could look better for the camera. Trust me though: this was much better than how it appears here! I'm going to be frying another one this week, and film it with a new high-definition camcorder, so hopefully it will be a much better show :-)

A Star Wars action figure I never thought we'd see

I guess they really will make an action figure out of everyone in the Star Wars movies. This is one that I never imagined (or even thought to have wanted) would be made: "Han Solo in the torture chamber from The Empire Strikes Back"!

I found this on WizardUniverse.com's list of 20 things that Star Wars fans have to look forward to.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Harry Potter stuff: New blog examines books from Christian perspective, plus AWESOME Potter artwork!

Our dear friend Jenna Olwin out in Washington state has just started a new blog called A Church in Godric's Hollow. It promises to be quite an enlightening read because Jenna is delving into the Christian aspects of the Harry Potter books.

And it was because of Jenna's new blog that I discovered artdungeon.net. This is quite simply the most beautiful art based on the Harry Potter books that I've seen. It's absolutely breathtaking how Marta, the young artist behind the site, has captured the soul and essence of so many scenes and characters from the J.K. Rowling's books. Want an example? Okay, this one is my favorite so far, but do not peek unless you have read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE is 20 years old today


It was on September 25th, 1987 that Rob Reiner's movie The Princess Bride was released.

It was more than 14 years later before I saw it for the first time! I drove out to my sister's place in Sylva (about an hour west of Asheville) on New Years Eve in 2001 to hook up with her and Lisa so we could ring in 2002 together. Well that night while waiting for midnight Anita popped The Princess Bride in her DVD player.

To this day I still can't believe that I went so long without seeing this awesome movie! It's the kind of demented humor that I've always gone for. I don't even have an absolute favorite scene, they're all so good! But for some reason the part where Prince Humperdinck cranks up the torture machine full-blast has always made me giggle in a very wrong way. And then later on when Fezzik is doing the "Dread Pirate Roberts" thing: that always cracks me up. I loved that one so much that a month or so later I turned it into a "Star Wars Captioning" at TheForce.net (I couldn't help it, Andre the Giant looked too much like the Emperor in that scene :-).

Lisa's parents gave me the DVD of The Princess Bride as a gift this past Christmas. I may watch it again today just to celebrate.

Monday, September 24, 2007

TRANSFORMERS 2 has a release date!

Superhero Hype! is reporting that Paramount has set a release date for Transformers 2: June 29, 2009.

Which is rather fast for a follow-up to a successful blockbuster movie. No doubt the threat of a writers strike this coming spring had something to do with it. I hope they're not rushing things. But then I think of Spider-Man 2 and how that is widely held to have been better than the original, and how it came out 2 years following Spider-Man. Besides, word is that the producers of Transformers have already sketched-out where this story is going for at least two more movies. And Transformers started filming a year before it was released and it turned out okay: with the foundation already set for much of the pre-production work, they'll probably be able to get to work on this fairly quickly.

By the way, the CD of Steve Jablonksy's score from Transformers comes out two weeks from tomorrow. And a week after that is when Transformers comes out on DVD. Take a wild guess which one I'm looking forward to having more :-)

My Show Planet: A site for Christian filmmakers and musicians

Rory McIlvain, a filmmaker in California, sent me word tonight about My Show Planet, a YouTube-ish site for Christian independent filmmakers and musicians to showcase their work. The site is still in its very early stages, but I think it shows quite a lot of promise. Here's wishing Rory all the best in this new endeavor and I'll definitely be visiting on a regular basis (and will try to contribute something too :-).

Halo 3 comes out at midnight tonight

Unfortunately I don't have an Xbox 360 to play it on even if I bought it. Might be getting one come Christmas though (now that it's been out for about 2 years I guess I can trust the technology :-) and then I'll play Halo 3. And the Xbox 360 version of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. And maybe Gears of War which a lot of people tell me is a very good game.

In the meantime I'm gonna replay the original Halo and Halo 2. Especially Halo 2. I'm still confused as heck about the ending to that game.

What's brewing at KWerky Productions?

It's been awhile since anything's been reported here regarding KWerky Productions, the filmmaking outfit started by "Weird" Ed and me. Unfortunately events during most of the past year really took away from a lot of productive time and energy. Now that all of that is over with, it's time to turn our attention to more creative efforts.

It's funny: for over a year now I've been involved in fighting one battle after another. The thing with Viacom/YouTube was just the most recent of those. With all of them having been fought (and amazingly enough won for the most part) I'm finally looking forward to struggling for things I want to do, not necessarily because I have to do them...

Keys, our feature-length project, is still on. Obviously we weren't able to film it in the timeframe that I was hoping for. Oddly enough that may have helped things when it came time to shoot it. And it's given me time to do more research, tighten-down some elements, etc.

By the way, it turns out that there's another movie called Keys. Interestingly enough, like ours this one seems to involve a lot of music too. Here's the website for that Keys and after visiting it and seeing the trailer, I am really interested in seeing it because it looks very good.

In light of knowing that there's another movie sharing the same title as ours, I'd considered changing the title of the one we're doing. But I think it's going to be okay. The word "Keys" is something that's quite important to the story and there's really nothing else appropriate that would work. Besides, lots of different movies share the same title (no not remakes!) and that's okay. In the end there will be one Keys made by Christopher Babers and another Keys made by Christopher Knight and his will be excellent and mine will be... strange :-)

Seriously though, we wish Babers well and we look forward to seeing his Keys!

Apart from that, there are no less than two projects we're working on. One of them is already shot and all that needs to be done is to put it together. And there's an interesting idea that I'm playing around with for a short film, that in some ways would be like Schrodinger's Bedroom, although it would be much more serious and I would have plenty of time to work on it (compared to Schrodinger's Bedroom which was rushed from conception to completion in less than a month).

And then there is another project. Chad Austin is the one who came up with the idea for it and when he told me about it on Friday night (after we saw Transformers in IMAX) my brain started reeling with possibilities. This is something that we're going to be working on over the next few months and it's not only going to involve filmmaking, but some other stuff too that I think will turn out to be good for personal growth. This one is going to be absolutely hilarious!

So that's what's happening right now on the KWerky Productions front. And that's probably the last time for awhile that I'll be able to say anything about what we're doing. Because I'm seriously thinking of blogging for another few weeks and then take some time off from The Knight Shift, so that I can focus on those efforts... and other things also. But now ya know what's sorta in the pot :-)

Music from Doom on a piano

Another awesome YouTube find (actually Doomworld gets credit for the discovery). It's a video of a guy playing a lot of the theme music from Doom on his piano! This was worth posting just for his rendition of E1M1 (to this day the most pounding/driven theme from a video game I've ever heard).