Here’s another good link from tastewar. The New York Times has put together an interactive Adobe Flash player with 20 years of movie revenue. This is box office money, and doesn’t include video rentals and sales, yet I think the influence of video on the movie industry is apparent. Get a feeling for how it works, spend some time with it, and see what conclusions you come to. Here’s the link.
Year: 2008
Garfield-less
Previously on DogRat, I featured the Garfield parody Lasagna Cat. Now I would like to draw your attention to a site that was pointed out by my friend tastewar, Garfield Minus Garfield.
As the English like to say, “brilliant.”
Walter Cronkite and The Beatles
A few weeks ago I posted a picture of two sisters, backstage with The Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Show. Who at CBS, I asked, would have had enough clout to arrange such a meeting? I received several e-mail requests for the answer. Here are the girls, Nancy and Kathy Cronkite, with their father.
Walter Cronkite takes credit for having shown a news clip about The Beatles that caught the attention of Ed Sullivan. And the rest is, of course, history. I extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to CBS News for providing this video.
© 2007 CBS Worldwide Inc.[media id=229 width=440 height=350]
Curvebender’s Kaleidoscope Eyes
One of the most impressive and praiseworthy objects I have ever beheld, held, and owned, is the RTB Book: Recording The Beatles, by Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew, published under their Curvebender Publishing imprint. As I said a year or so ago, at $100 this book is a bargain.
Curvebender has a new Beatles book coming out, called Kaleidoscope Eyes: A Day In The Life of Sgt. Pepper. It’s a collection of photographs, taken during the day in 1967 when recording began for “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.”
Limited to 1967 copies, it costs a whopping $495, and at that price I would consider this book to be an extravagent indulgence, so I won’t be buying it. Nevertheless, I hope it sells out and goes up in value.
Over at one of the Wired blogs is this item about a Beatles exhibit at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, CA. The show is curated by Kehew and Ryan, and features original recording and playback equipment that the Beatles used at Abbey Road Studio 2.
You can hear the classic songs coming out of the same speakers used in the sessions, and gawp at the original technology, some never before seen in public.
Gawp indeed! This is almost irresistibly tantalizing. If the exhibit were in New York, I would go.
In other Beatles related doings, we watched Across The Universe with Eric, who commented that The Beatles are “eternally cool.” That’s good to know. Our enjoyment of the movie benefited greatly from watching it with the Panasonic PT-AX200U video projector.
JetBlue’s Great $1 Headphones
Our trip to Arizona was our first flying on JetBlue. Their claim of extra leg room compared to other airlines is absolutely true. There is no first class or business class section. Only coach, and no full meals, only snacks. Does this approach work? Yes, I think so.
Each seat has its own LCD television, with DirectTV, and some of the flights also have XM Radio. I found various technical problems, including one seat with a dead audio channel and another with TV audio coming through on the radio channel, full volume, with no control over the loudness. But in the seats where everything is working correctly, it’s good stuff.
The free headphones JetBlue provides are worthless. Even if you get a working set, don’t bother. For a measly $1 JetBlue sells a much bigger, better, and more comfortable pair of headphones. These things are stunning for the money, easily besting the sound of the $20 Sony headphones I use for long distance running. They’re sold on the honor system, and some of the headphone boxes we saw at JFK are well out of view, making it easy to get away without paying. But why would anybody except a kid or a jerk even consider doing that?
The high end is rolled off a bit, and the detail is slightly veiled, but the bass is pretty good. Overall, the sound is balanced, smooth and easy on the ears. Are these the best $1 headphones in the world? Undoubtedly!
MA AZ MA
Well, we’re back. We’ve been back for a couple of days, but I’ve been clearing snow and decompressing.
We were in Phoenix with my younger sister’s family, seeing our father and one of our older sisters. We drove down to Tucson to see the Pima Air Museum and Biosphere 2, and we had a wonderful dinner with some old friends, DogRat comment writer Cactus Lizzie and her husband.
The running conditions in Arizona this time of year are ideal! Back home they’re anything but.
Our travels were greatly eased and assisted by a Garmin Nuvi 200. It has a few quirks, but this thing is a tremendously useful tool. The freedom from plotting out a route on a map and the elimination of the stress of searching for signs and exits is worth way more than what it cost — $170 with free shipping from Amazon.com. In fact, it’s on sale right now at Amazon for $177.20.
Eric caught a few seconds of video of the Nuvi 200 from the back seat, when we pulling into a shopping center between Tucson and Phoenix to get lunch. This was taken with another nifty new gadget, a Canon Elph SD-1000.
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