A Very Interesting Talk About Education And The Educational System

some random thoughts

It's nice to get the website out. I'm pretty happy with it. Hope I get some help ID'ing some of the uncaptioned Bad Actors' pictures.

Of course, we had a couple problems with the site's debut. It seems the Palms Movie page won't load properly in at least two versions of Internet Exploder. The 64-bit version of IE 7, and the 32-bit version of IE 8 can't cut it. If anyone is having a problem viewing the page, by all means get a good browser like Firefox available here: Firefox Download. We will attempt to fix the page to render properly with the wayward IE's, but don't know if we can; and if we can, I have no idea how long it will take. Anyway, Firefox is a great browser, so you could do worse and if you can't currently see the page, you probably are.

close to website, far from premiere

Ah, the good news. The website will be up and running within a week. We'll do an email blast when it goes live to let everyone know. The trailer for the film will not be immediately available on the website as the reasons discussed below apply to the trailer as well. If you're not on our email list for the Palms movie, contact us with your name and email address. Your address will only be used for Palms movie-related emails.

...no website yet, but getting closer

Here it is May 29th and no website yet. We are really just waiting for date confirmation from Varsity management. All the rest of the site is coming together nicely.

We are extremely excited that we will be able to offer for sale Gerald Haslam's luminous homage to California country music, "Workin' Man Blues". This book won Rolling Stone Magazine's Ralph J. Gleason Award as the best American non-fiction music book of 2002.

(The book) "delivers lively, gripping history, archival photos, and an ambitious taxonomical chart of California-based country rock that features seven versions of the Byrds, six of Poco, and four and a half of the Flying Burrito Brothers. The best stuff here is about exactly who it should be about--Bob Wills, Buck Owens, and Spade Cooley. Haslam's take on coast country from Autry to Yoakam should please both historic and alternative country fans." -- Mike Tribby.

And not only that, but Dr. Haslam has promised to sign any copy sold on the website at a signing party the day of the film premiere. All the book owner has to do is bring it to the signing in downtown Davis, and the author will autograph it.

The photo gallery has been enriched with contributions from photographers Howard Bruensteiner and Paul Luscher and photos from the collection of Bruce Guelden. Some 169 photos span the Palms' history from early theatrical plays to final musical performances.

Also, we are adding a "Community" page where Palms patrons can share fond memories of great music and magical nights. Thirty years of history at the old barn -- there must be a lot of stories. Our hope is the stories in this section will become part of the ribbon of the rich history of Davis California.

As far as the film itself goes, well... you'll see the first trailer when the website goes live. That's all I'm going to say for now.

So, as you can see, we have not been idle -- we just don't blog that often. We'll try to do better...

N.A.B.

...if I was really into blogging I would have posted this a week ago. I went to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas from April 20-23 to see what's new in the toolset for digital content acquisition. It was impressive, even though, in this down economy this year's show drew only 80,000 people. I needed to go. I most likely will have need of a new video camera and related production gear in the fourth calendar quarter this year. I went to see, get hands-on and evalutae the latest Panasonic, Sony, Canon & JVC cameras. Likewise, lighting, grip, monitoring, sound, post-production and storage vendors were quizzed and offerings viewed and evaluated. It was a well-spent three and a half days as I firmed up several decisions regarding tools for my next documentary project. I also discovered PhotoMotion, a nice post tool for my current project - a Final Cut Pro plug-in that does a great job and does it easily. And the Final Cut Supermeet Tuesday night at the Rio, just off the Strip, was good fun too -- even though I didn't win anything in the "World Famous Raffle".

Small World Principle Affirmed: At the beginning of the second half of the Supermeet, after the break, I walked down the center aisle to get within the first 10 rows from stage. Looking for a vacant seat in the dim lighting, I spotted one on the right, slid in past three or four people, and took a seat. The person to my left greeted me by name. I looked at the person I had just passed by in the dark and recognized Antonio Rego -- from Davis -- sitting there. What are the odds? Small world!

website for documentary

Just got through with a meeting with web designer Gary Kim. He had some great ideas for the documentary film site and I am enthused. The site should be "live" around May 15th.

my first blog entry

Well, here goes. My first blog entry. I'm preparing to meet this afternoon in another hour with a web developer to get some sort of website up to host a trailer for my documentary "The Closing of The Palms Playhouse". So I'm looking at other filmmakers' sites and many of them are blogs and at the bottom of one there's a button inviting one to create your own blog. OK! This is hosted by Google it seems, and in less than 3 minutes I'm typing my first blog entry - 'Easy!' is very much an understatement. I have no idea how the finished page will look even though I selected a 'theme' or look as instructed a couple minutes ago. So now I will stop typing and click on the Publish-Post button and I will be the first to see what you are looking at right now.