My Beloved Hamer Sunburst

Tuesday morning I took my beloved 1978 Hamer Sunburst (s/n 08 0346 one of the early ones!) to Southeast Guitar Repair to get it checked out. I’ve rarely picked this guitar up over recent years, but when I have there has been a certain feel of dissatisfaction when playing it. It doesn’t have the ring that it used to have.

When I arrived at the shop, luthier Fazal Syed took a look and determined that I needed a new nut, made of bone to prevent the binding of strings while tuning and a fret dress, where they file down the suface of the frets so that they are even. After more discussion we determined that a full fret job would be in order. He assured me that I would be very happy with the results. I hope so – this is a kick ass guitar, and Hamer doesn’t get the credit they deserve for the quality of their USA made instruments.

I’ve also been curious about Luthery – the building of stringed instruments. I’m thinking a good hobby project might be to assemble my own guitar. I’ve never had a Strat type guitar and I’ve always been curious about the diference between that and my Les Paul type Sunburst. Don’t know if it’ll ever happen, but I think first I’ll buy parts to assemble my one, and then if this works I’ll look into fabricating my own from a “blank” body piece.

The Return of Dany Heatley

Last night Dany Heatley marked his return with the Thrashers in a game against the St. Louis Blues. We managed a tie, but overall the game was pretty exciting. I forgot what it’s like to see The Heater and and Kovalchuk work together. Pretty amazing.

Chavez and Two Very Lucky Documentarians

I forgot to mention a documentary we saw last week at Midtown Art Cinema.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is about the coup of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. Talk about being in the right place at the right time – an Irish film crew were filming a documentary about the controversial President and they just happened to be there when a coup occurred! It was a very fascinating look at what went on on the inside during this event. In general if paints a very sympathetic portrait of Chavez, so if you see it please be aware of that. The problems in Venezuela are much more complex than the one-sided story told here, but I think this movie is definitely worth a look.

The Return of The Muffs!

Did I mention that The Muffs have a new album out next month and that they have always ruled? I ordered Hamburger from singer/guitarist Kim Shattuck on Ebay and mentioned how the time they played at the EARL on my birthday it was loud in a flabergasting way. I asked her to autograph the disc for me and she got a little creative.

I really want to play guitar again.

Simple Minds or Pity Sing – You Make the Call

So there’s some band they keep on playing on XMU. Pitty Sing. Blatant Simple Minds rip-off? With a touch of ABC? Dunno, but they seem to pull it off with a bit of passion which makes me feel like in 1981-82 when I first heard Simple Minds, ABC, Japan, Tears for Fears, and XTC (who were/are still way beyond any of the bands mentioned). Makes my arm hairs bristle. It’s like the more inspired moments of Interpol such as Obstacle 1 (She Can Read), where the drum and bass come together in a HUGE stadium sized glue which makes me crumble. XM must be pretty impressed, because I really don’t think Pitty Sing even have a single out yet. I think they’re from NYC, Brooklyn? Listening to some of the tunes on their site www.pittysing.com, I don’t know whether to be thrilled or appalled. I think I’m thrilled.

Hey! I’m not some kind of New Romantic, New Wave geek! All of the music above was balanced out in the day by Gang of Four, Sex Pistols, PiL, Ramones, Pretenders, Killing Joke, X, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc.

Reliable and Not So Reliable Clients

In the spirit of “If ya’ don’t ask ya’ don’t get,” I was forced to beg for early payment from some of my more reliable clients and they have come through with enough to get me through the next week. You guys rule!

Today I’ll be checking out Steven’s show on www.radioindierock.com, while working on some ASP.NET techniques to tie databases into Flash.

I think that O’Reilly’s Safari subscription service is the best idea for the web since Django Music’s “Notify Me” feature for buying used CDs. Check it out. It’s probably saved me hundreds of dollars in the past year on programming books.

Hockey and My Dentist

Russell Marson, everyone’s favorite dentist, took me to the Atlanta vs. Montreal game tonight. It was great fun. Finally Atlanta has a decent team. We are sooo lucky to have Bob Hartley as a coach.

It was amazing to run into you today Maggie! I never thought I’d run into any of the good people from Caribiner ever again. There were plenty of bad people.

It’s been a rough day. Thank God for Hockey.

House Cleaning Music

Tonight was house cleaning night. On a whim I put on the first English Beat album. That album is so inspired. It captured a snapshot of the time that is vivid today. I could have cleaned all night. Well, maybe not, but it made it a lot of fun. I hope that Saxa is still around and playing.

Director MX 2004

So Macromedia is finally introducing Director MX 2004. The bastard step-child soldiers on. Regardless of the popularity of Flash, I think that Director is definitely better to deal with for certain tasks, especially CD-ROM.

Here are the new features that are worth the price of admission:

• ECMAScript (JavaScript/ActionScript) coding. Hopefully this will gain Director a new level of acceptance with a more modern language. I was actually talking about this in December.
• Sprite and channel naming. Yay. No more global lists of sprite to send direct commands to, no more SendAllSprites() commands to affect just one sprite.
• You can create both Mac and Windows projectors on a single platform. Handy, but I don’t think this eliminates the need for thorough testing on the “other” platform. There are some differences (bugs?) in the way a projector runs on Mac and Windows.

I see no mention of this anywhere in the hype but A MULTI-LEVEL UNDO FUNCTION would be nice. It’s ridiculous that this wasn’t implemented several years ago.

I was working in Flash over the weekend and there are three things that would make Flash a Director killer for me:

1. The ability to manage/preload assets for from CD-ROM. Currently, (in windows anyway) a Flash projector likes to load itself into a temp directory before allowing anything to run. This can lead to long, awkward load times for larger files.
2. The ability for real time preview within Flash, rather than having to publish a swf file every time.
3. The ability to use third-party projector scripting commands with in Flash like a scripting Xtra in Director (think Northcode’s SWF Studio working like the BuddyAPI Xtra works in Director), without having to do a number 2 (haha) every time.

The tons of projects I’ve had since November have finally pretty much wrapped. This feels really good. Production The Doll Squad and Dentition websites begin this week.

Midtown Art Cinema!

We went to see Monster last night. It’s that movie about Aileen Wuornos starring Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci.

First off, I don’t know what’s up, but the strip mall Midtown Promenade that houses the theater and several bars and restaurants was PACKED. After 20 minutes of a madness trying to find a parking spot in both mall parking lots, we ended up around the corner and down the street on Virginia Avenue. Not that this is bad, but ig anyone needs a sign that the economy and discretionary spending is picking up this is one. I was very happy to see the theater so busy, since they are concentrating on indie and documentary films – my cup of tea.

Throughout the first half of the movie, I was thinking that this would rate as good or better than Lost in Translation. By the end of the movie, it would rate closely behind. Theron’s transformation was incredible, and I certainly couldn’t pick her out of that disguise. Her character was very believable as Wuornos and she show characteristics that you would expect of that sort of southern Florida (and Atlanta for that matter) street urchin.

The thing about Christina Ricci is that she used her early child star status to carve an interesting career doing mostly indie projects. In Monster, I was surprised about how young she looked. Of course she only 23 so….

After the movie we went to get a drink at Apre Diem, but it was packed so we went to The Highlander. It’s definitely a neighborhood pub with an edge. We ran into new daddy Mike Stone. We’ve known him for several years (met at The Stein Club – RIP). It’s funny what a baby will do to you. He looks like the old Mike, but slightly cleaned up. He seemed really happy. We also ran into Abraham, another longtime acquaintance from The Stein Club.

Regarding Lost in Translation, I have been feeling the urge to see it again for some reason. The thought of seeing it again kind of calms me. Strange.

Over the holidays we also saw Tim Burton’s Big Fish, also at the Midtown Art Cinema. I really liked this one as well, but I felt it was a bit long. The effects, especially with the Giant character, Karl, were very impressive (I found on IMDB that Matthew McGrory, who played Karl, is actually 7′ 6″ and has the worlds largest feet – 29 1/2.). I was funny how the tall tales told by Ewan McGregor/Albert Finney’s character ended up truer than anyone could have expected. Jessica Lange was incredible. The scene with her and Finney in the bathtub blew me away. Both actors portrayed the characters’ confrontation with death very well. In the end I actually had trouble choking back the tears. Of course, my Mom and my Niece sat there stone faced, no doubt, wondering when the film would end. I think it’s good to expose people to this sort of film.

In other pub news…one of my favorite places over the years, Gecko Lounge, has closed. We were both shocked and a bit pissed at first, but after a trip to 97 Estoria in Cabbagetown where we spoke with former manager Anton, we realize that it was probably time for a change. If you look at all of the restaurant/pubs owned by these guys – Moe’s and Joe’s, 97 Estoria, Universal Joint, Flatiron, and maybe others I don’t know about – Gecko was the only one that had a specific theme – tequila. I’m sure their thinking is that something with a more of a pub feel would do better. It’s also possible that with the pressure being put on by the city they want to be able to sell more food. I suspect that the fabulously sassy Paula will still be involved, and I wish Dave, Gabby and the rest of crew good luck. I’ve had a great time there over the years.