Journal

May 18, 2012

Seattle, Washington

My panel got posted on YouTube. Judson and Liam were fantastic and it’s worth a look if you’re interested in the subject matter — that being YouTube’s shift away from “viral” video and toward more profitable content.

But if you’re not interested in all that, I just want to share this anecdote that I very much enjoyed telling. It’s a good story and it reminds me how lucky I am to get to do this.

It is now officially ridiculous that I haven’t got the new video done. The music has taken much longer than anticipated (and being a stay-at-home dad hasn’t exactly enhanced my productivity), but the delay has given me a chance to clean the place up a bit and get things in order.

I’ve got a new site design launching soon with a new logo. I should have the outtakes video and some other ancillary material ready to go shortly after release. Things will start to change around here in the coming weeks, and the video is most definitely on its way.

Right now we’ve got a recording scheduled for May 29th, and if it goes well I can lock the video down within days. I want to show it around for a week or two before I roll it out online, so…I don’t know, it’s looking like June…ish. But there was a time when I was telling people October of last year, so what the hell do I know?

As I’ve said, I’ll announce a hard date as soon as I can do so with confidence.

May 6, 2012

Cambridge, Massachusetts

After my ROFLCon panel yesterday, I was approached by a recent Cornell alumnus named Ashley Kirsner. She told me she'd spent a year writing an honors thesis to test whether feelings of connectedness "increase altruism toward outgroup members," and she used the 2008 dancing video to induce those feelings.

According to her data, watching my video makes people a little bit nicer to each other, and a little bit less racist. That is just about the best news I can possibly imagine. Thanks, science!

Her methods involved layers of deceit toward her test subjects, as I'm told psych experiments so often do. I won't describe the experiment or pretend to grasp the details, but you're welcome to try. Anyway, she says the results were favorably conclusive, but maybe she's lying to me too. For all I know, this is part of the experiment. No way to be sure.

May 5, 2012

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Double meme-bow! What does this mean?!

April 30, 2012

Seattle, Washington

No video for May 1st. The music is taking us longer than we'd planned, but I haven't got a gun to my head, so we're taking our time and getting it right.

If you've signed up on my site or contacted me, you should hear when it's up. I'll be sending out a discreet little non-spammy notification email. And I'll announce a hard date of release all nice and official-like once I know for sure I can hit it.

April 11, 2012

Tarzana, California

My goodness, sir, that is a cartoonishly enormous drum you're banging.

Recording percussions with MB Gordy in his backyard studio.

Currently aiming to release the video on May 1st if everything goes smoothly.

It is entirely likely that things will not go smoothly.

March 25, 2012

Seattle, Washington

Today we shot the last clip for the new dancing video in our yard. After 2 years, 4 months, 12 days, I-have-no-idea-how-many countries, one kid, and enough air miles to fly to Neptune, we are wrapped. Now, the music.

For those worried about making the cut, I'll be putting a separate video out soon after with all the group shots I couldn't squeeze in. So if you're not in the main video, you'll be in there.

March 23, 2012

Seattle, Washington

With two months of editing and many painful cuts behind us, here's where we're at.

The goal is to pack in as much as we can without making it feel rushed and still somehow clock in under 5 minutes.

The music is coming along. We have a melody and a tempo and a structure, but we haven't started recording any live musicians yet.

I'm hoping to be able to upload the finished video in about a month. There's still so much to do, though.

March 5, 2012

Cairo, Egypt

Stirring up peaceful trouble in Tahrir Square yesterday.

This was my last big dance event for the new video and a fitting way to wrap up.

It was clear many of the participants were nervous about things going smoothly, and it did get a bit heated once we started shouting and clapping.

Rumors spread quickly in Tahrir. First some of the onlookers decided I must be celebrating the release of the American aid workers who'd been held by the government. That soon evolved into a story that I was an Israeli spy gathering intelligence about the protestors. And within minutes someone decided I must be a Freemason — which is, apparently, a really dangerous thing to get accused of in Egypt.

This is Alex.

Someone told Alex I'd be there filming, and since he lives a block away, he stopped by on his way home from work. When people started getting angry at us for dancing, Alex stepped in to calm things down. And when it got out of hand, he told me it was time to leave. I asked where we should go. He said, "Anywhere, just pick a direction and start walking."

I owe Alex, big.

We hung out the next day. I learned Alex is a doctor, and when the protests happened last year, he helped treat injured protestors in an ad hoc clinic set up behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

I asked Alex for the strangest thing he ever saw while driving in Egypt. He sent me these four photos, three of which he took himself with one hand on the steering wheel.