Moonshot

Now here’s a pleasant surprise: Amazon Instant has a copy of the Georges Méliès 1902 classic film “A Trip to the Moon” fully restored with special soundtrack by the French electronic music duo Air.

This 16-minute film was shot in black and white in Méliès’ studio with practical effects, intricately detailed sets, doubled film exposure, and cutting during the scenes, really pushing the envelope of creative cinema for its era. Before distribution, some of the film strips were hand-colored; only a few of those copies survive to today. The restoration uses modern film technologies to clean up the ancient print and restore lost frames from B&W film stock. The result is a lot better than before, and the Air soundtrack adds to the ambiance of this ancient piece of pre-space-age science fiction.

Work was performed by the Technicolor Foundation.

Decade of Breath

I am ten years old.

A decade ago this month, I set out to quit smoking for the second and final time. My first attempt in October of 2003 failed miserably when I tried to go cold turkey. To soften the blow of being completely off of nicotine during that attempt, I gave myself congratulatory cigarettes. That, as you can expect, was a dumb move. After two weeks, I gave in and started smoking again.

Finally, in February 2004, after another case of chronic bronchitis that became part and parcel of my life here in Austin with all the mold and pollen, I decided that I really, really needed to quit smoking again. So I went on the patch. Since the drugstore didn’t have the high-dose patches in stock, I used the mid-dose patches and continued smoking for the first week, but with light puffs and low intake — down from 25 smokes a day to about 3 or 4 with plenty of guilt. By the time a week or so had passed, I continued the mid-dose patches without smoking, stepping down to the low-dose patches later. By the end of March, after six weeks, I removed my final patch and adapted to my new lifestyle.

I look back on parts of the habit fondly, but overall I regret ever starting. It was a self-destructive act that I began in ’95; when I was 23, I was obviously immortal and didn’t care. By 33, I started caring greatly. By and large, the only way I’ve stayed quit for 10 years is by following this dictum: I can’t start smoking again if I don’t put another cigarette in my mouth. This teetotaler attitude has served me well.

Stuffed

Do you know what I miss? I miss the headspace I could afford without a screen constantly in front of my face. Sometimes i remember my early 20’s before always-on communications, when I could sit in my room for hours and write, read, build, craft, think, dream the big dreams. The world outside was just over the horizon, calling to me to consider it. I felt it in my soul. Made plans to go out to it (instead of having it barge in on me). I’d visualize it like radio waves reflecting off the ionosphere, like a dome of light from a nearby town at night. Thoughts as deep as clouds are high.

Now, shallow thoughts, distracted thoughts. In my opinion, less a factor of age and more a factor of scattered attention. There’s a red flag on my screen with a number inside. There’s a tab with “(2)” on it. There’s a notification on my phone. There’s always something to answer.

It’s getting awfully crowded in this headspace. Not enough room for this addiction to confirmation, for this empty stand-in for real connection and friendship. When I turn face from the screen to do something with my time, the world moves on and I feel lost in a game of Catch-Up when I finally come back to the screen. That desperate emptiness kills me. So what is the solution?

Detect Traps

As useful as it is, it is a slightly hazardous thing to post a catalog of my music collection or to have my playlist tracked while I listen to music. Several times in the past — most recently this weekend — I’ve gotten requests from complete strangers to send them a copy of something in my collection. Case in point is this weekend’s request from another user of Last.fm:

Hi,

I’m very sorry to bother you, but as I see you’ve been listening to lo-bat quite a lot a thought you might be able to help me. So, the thing is, my hard drive crashed a while ago, resulting in a total loss of all my music, including all of lo-bat’s music. However, I have been able to retrieve some of it from various sources, but as his website is down, not all of it. Specifically it’s two tracks that i’m missing: Barbara listen to this and Kinderkopkes. Which leads me to my question: I see that you’ve been scroobling these two tracks before; do you still have them? And if yes, would you be so kind to consider sending them to me in some way?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers
[redacted]

See, as an occasional fellow listener of Lo-Bat. and his frantic 8-bit chiptunes, I have also noticed that his website has had problems in the past, and I’ve made a good job of finding what collection I have. I understand this stranger’s pain, I do. But here is the problem: who is this guy?

If I provide him with the two tracks he’s requested, do you know what I will have done? I would’ve broken US federal law, and potentially international law. Giving him these songs goes against the “Making Available” clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and would incur all manner of penalties and/or incarceration if I am found guilty. In all likelihood, it is a trap. I just can’t give this stranger the benefit of the doubt.

Before I can even consider sending these two files, I would have to do my own due diligence to track down the copyright of each song and determine if Lo-Bat himself is under signed contract with a record label or if copyright has been assigned to ASCAP, BMI, SESAC or any other agency to be enforced. That’s just too much work. Sorry, pal.

My advice in these situations is to decline the request. Protect yourself; there are entrapment trolls about, private companies who are paid by the copyright holders (usually the major labels) to go out onto the Internet, ferret out lawbreakers, and bring them to justice. With enough gullible suckers on the Net, it is a very profitable business. Believe it. So don’t be an RIAA show case; you can’t afford the help they’re demanding.

Disinterest

My resolution for 2013 was to make myself more interesting. Vague, I know. But I did endeavor with something concrete: I wanted to make myself more interesting by learning how to juggle. Seriously, yes. I’d been wanting to learn for years, but never got over that whole dropping-things fear.

Well, this year, I actually executed on it: purchased the Klutz juggling manual and beanbag juggling ball set, went through the tutorial, step by step. For about two weeks, I was half-assedly at it, throwing these three little beanbags around my apartment, having them hit the couch, the bed, the walls, the floor, thud-thud-thud. Turns out I have the physical grace and skill of a three-year-old, and after enough times dropping those damned bags on the floor, I began to worry about my status with the downstairs neighbor and I stopped. I just can’t handle more than two beanbags without losing my concentration.

Those three bags are still sitting on my shelf collecting dust. I see them every day taunting me, but I just don’t have it in me to get over myself and not care about pissing off the neighbors.

But isn’t that the purpose of being interesting?