Neil Fein's Blog

Progress on Audio Drama:

• Script:
  • Pursue an original script idea, until the end of November
  • If no original script is forthcoming by 30 Nov, adapt an out-of-copyright story.


• Director:
  • Unknown.


• Actors:
  • A great, big, unknown. Casting after there's a script. (2w Dec2006?)


• Hardware:
  • The proof-of-concept is direct-to-hard-drive location recording. Need to use an older G3 Mac. Are any available for use?
  • BTF has a G3 iMac, but it needs more RAM.
  • Would Audacity work with the current RAM on the G3 iMac?
  • If no Macs are available, use my G5 iMac, although it's not exactly portable.


• Mics:
  • Use the MXL2001 if all else fails
  • C1 if it shows up on time (on order)

Tags: audio

Labels: audio, notbike

I present: The latest WordsPicturesMovies production, Have Gun Will Murder.

I worked location sound on this, and I'm quite pleased with the final result. There were bits I never, ever thought would work, but now... I'll trust Eric, Adam and Bruce to make anything look good.

Wow. Even the scene that we lost the sound for sounds pretty good. (Some camcorder sound in the mix?)

The director wanted me as an extra in this, "for luck". (I'm the bum sitting against the tree in the opening.) This after playing a guy stabbed to death, then a guy at a party with vomit all over me. Fun!

Tags: movies

Labels: audio

Great fun playing at Wicked Good Time! Did a nice warming-up-the-crowd set, about 40 minutes long, and premiered a new song of mine.

There's That Song
Coming Into Los Angeles
She Told It To Me Twice
From the Beginning
Hold Up the Wall
Good Company (First time live)
Never Had a Brother
When I Was a Monkey
Eyes Up Front
Midtown (New song debut)
Minorly Disconcerted
Welcome Home

I was also running the live sound for one of the event's two stages. Special thanks to Sara, and Grazina, whose help was invaluable tonight. And to Bruce for working the board during my set. And of course to Martha, my lovely wife and business manager.

Larissa's body paint designs were quite striking, will get a few pictures up soon.

Tags: music

Labels: music

Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City, by Will Eisner

After the amazing collection The Contract With God Trilogy with the classic novel of the same name, more New York stories seemed like overkill. Little did I realize, New York was Will Eisner's home, and his muse.

While not connected to the Dropsie avenue stories per se (there's only one mention of it), this book collects many stories that just didn't fit anywhere else. Some are mediocre, but iffy Will Eisner is like bad sex: Even when it's bad, it's good.

And there are gems here! The Treasure of Avenue C shows the life of a grate. A would-be courter fumbles an engagement ring, a murder weapon is disposed of... all hidden treasure casually divided up by a pair of young boys. The Building features the prototypical Gilda Green, who falls for an unpublished poet.

Mostly vignettes a few pages long: Illicit sex; the illusion of privacy in city living; and above all, butterfly-effect-style stories, where one small event opens a chain of events ending in tragedy, litter these pages.

Easily the most disturbing story in the book, the slightly longer story Sanctum deserves special mention. Pincus Pleatnik stays away from others, leading a solitary life. When a newspaper mistakenly and stubbornly reports him dead, his life falls apart in disturbing ways.

Mr. Eisner's trademark casual visual style is at its most ecelectic and beautiful. A few of the stories are a little out of voice for the author, but these were obviously testing grounds for longer works. a few out-takes at the end reinforce this feeling.

Tags: books

Labels: books

The Hemingway Hoax, by Joe Haldeman

I read A Farewell to Arms in high school, and quite hated it. Hemmingway's style never engaged my teenager's eye. But it's impossible to escape Papa's influence.

John Baird, a professor specializing in Hemmingway, in a conversation with shifty man named Castle, speculates that the "lost" Hemmingway writings could bring in a fortune if forged. Castle senses money, and the two of them hash out a way to legally forge a "found" Hemmingway novel. Never mind that some academics' reputations could be ruined.

The story takes a left turn with a shadowy figure who might or might not be the ghost of Ernest Hemmingway (never mind which one the author has said). John's world is rewritten over and over, in an attempt to stop the "Hemmingway pastiche", for no good reason I can find.

Hemmingway's spectre seems to have no good reason for interfering, despite doubletalk about how the novel could "profoundly affect the future". Possibly I'm missing something by not having worshipped the master.

Nevertheless, Joe Haldeman manages to pull this off. With a style not unlike a magician sawing a lady in half, then in half again, and so on into infinity -- for some reason I cared about the idiot professor, his nasty, self-centered lover, and the alternately pathetic, scary, then just plain dangerous Castle.

An excellent short novel, The Hemmingway Hoax is different from anything Mr. Haldeman has written, since or to date.


books

Labels: books

My Secret, compiled by Frank Warren

Imagine the most crushing, disturbing secret you have about your life. Maybe something terrible you did in the past, it could be something someone did to you and you're now keeping secret.

Now imagine you could write your secret on a postcard, and send it anonymously to someone who'd put it on their website, their art exhibit, maybe in one of their books. That's exactly what Frank Warren has been doing with the PostSecret project.

My Secret is the second PostSecret, and like its predecessor, it's a gorgeous book that's disturbing and uplifting at the same time. The folks who sent these in were very brave.

Take a look at some of the postcards up on the website to get a taste for the project. Buy the book.

Third and fourth PS books, The Secret Lives of Men and Women and A Lifetime of Secrets, are due out next year.


Tags: books

Labels: books