Beautiful Stills From My Sony V1U Camcorder

I was experimenting with making some changes to the screws on the bridge saddles of my Fender Telecaster the other day and videotaped the process in case my brainstorm actually worked (it didn't) so I could post pics of the process. There are some tele saddles out there that use smaller screws for the saddle height adjustment in order to accommodate grooves for the stings to sit in or to make more room for slanted/intonated saddles. The smaller screws make for a bit of a thinner sound though, I suppose because the tiny screws don't sit as solidly on the bridge-plate as the larger screws do. (The fourth photo here shows one of the original saddles sitting in front of one of the experimental ones with the smaller screws so you can see the difference in size). Anyhow, my idea was to try some regular pan-head screws mounted from underneath so that the big head of the screws would sit against the bridge-plate, giving a larger surface area for the saddles to sit on. Unfortunately, this resulted in a rather dull, thuddy sound, so I'm back to the original Fender saddles.

Well, anyhow the video is just breathtaking from this camcorder, so I thought I'd post a few stills from this experiment. The only lighting used was the regular overhead lights above my kitchen table and what sunlight came through the window (quite a bit actually).

Everything was shot in 60i with cinematones turned-on and the shutter speed at 60. No gain was used. You have to click on these photos to enlarge them and see how great they really are at 1920x1080. (Actually, Blogspot resizes them to 1600x900, but that's still pretty big).

Through a Glass Darkly (1961)

Questions Without Answers

Bergman always does this—asks tons of questions about life and God but never even attempts to answer them. What's his point? None really. His photographic style of cinematography is interesting, and his very sparse use of music as well. He tends to use rooms to great advantage by leaving them sparsely furnished with wooden floors so that the sound is very lively in them. Every movement is heard, and this almost negates the need for musical enhancement in his films. Bergman has great style, and his questions about the world are substantive, but if a man has no answers and goes through life with no opinions, he best stay out of filmmaking.

There are some people of the low-brow liberal variety who won't like me stating the obvious, but Bergman is a highly overrated director/writer. His movies are very cold and lifeless.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Bryan Forbes' Best Film

Forbes also wrote this one (as he often did). It's hard to find any fault with this movie. You can't get much better than a film, not only written and directed by Forbes, but starring an unforgettable pairing in Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. Ms. Stanley didn't make too many movies, but this one is enough to show why she's often thought of as the best stage actress of the 20th century.

Just to tell a small bit of the story, it's about a woman and her husband who earn some money giving séances for people. It's unclear whether the husband, played by Attenborough, actually believes anything supernatural is going on, because as the story progresses, what does become clear is that his wife, played by Stanley, is having, or has already had, a serious break with reality.

A word of warning to those thinking this is a movie about the supernatural given the film's title—it is not, although some may see something of the supernatural in the wife's delusional mode of existence. The film is actually about something entirely different—the kidnapping of a young girl. Very suspensefully done from beginning to end.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Your Television Set

Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. Who are we? Why, we're the Nielsen Ratings of course! Let the news be heralded on every corner. Shout it from every mountaintop. It is I, the pure one, whom the Nielsen Ratings people in their great wisdom have chosen to be representative for television viewing in my neighborhood. You heareth correctly knaves. I will decide what's fit to watch and what isn't. I will control the viewing destiny of man. You will hide in caves and holes in the Earth. You will pray for death, but no reprieve for your sentence shall be granted. I will smite thee with my mighty remote control. Be afraid, ye of mortal birth, for he who hath tasted the honey dew of the electron gods sitteth among you, and yea, his arm is not weak. The flipper doth tremble at his touch.

Just saying....

World's Goofiest Water Tower

Nuff said.

Tal Wilkenfeld

You don't see many female bass players to begin with, but there are few, male or female, that play with as much enthusiasm, skill, and technique as Australian born Tal Wilkenfeld. She was so certain of pursuing a music career that she dropped out of school to come to America and study jazz when she was 16. I watched her become a world-wide phenom playing with Jeff Beck a few years ago at around 20 or so years of age. (I believe she's 24 now). Here she is with Beck at the Crossroads Music Festival-2007. Her solo starts less than a minute and a half in:



Here they are at The Fillmore in New York a couple of years later playing a rather unusual bass duet:

Rally 7471 Portable Hand Generator

People are going to think I'm starting a sales blog or something if I keep posting stuff like this, but I thought this was really a neat little item. This is a generator made by Rally. Its internal battery can be charged up by plugging it into a wall outlet, or it actually has a hand crank on it which will charge it too. Why you can't find other hand crank generators for sale is beyond me because the technology is very old for doing this. They had hand crank generators in use during WWII. The unit has a 140 Watt power inverter and a regular 110 plug outlet, so you can power virtually any 110 appliance with it. It also has a USB port for charging things like cell-phones or camcorder batteries.

And it has a built-in air compressor for inflating flat tires or rubber rafts, a 12 volt outlet and jumper cables for jump starting your car, and an LED flashlight (LEDs are easy on power). This would of course be a Godsend on camping trips among other things. It takes three minutes of pulling the handle to charge the battery enough to jumpstart a car. It will run a typical laptop for an hour and a half on a full charge. (I imagine you'd probably have to crank it all day for that though). What more could you ask for? Let's hope the battery is replaceable (unlike most electric generators). It cost a hundred bucks. I haven't seen it for sale in stores, so you'll probably have to order it from Amazon etc.