Everywhere you look people are streaming live video. TV news programs, late night talk shows, online classes, grandmothers Zooming with their grandkids. It has never been easier to “video chat” with someone. But it wasn’t always this way. Here are a few of my memories from the early days. (6 min)
Turbo Encabulator
YouTube notes: “This is the first time Turbo Encabulator was recorded with picture. I shot this in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. He wrote the script because he rarely understood the technical copy he was asked to read and felt he shouldn’t be alone. We had just finished a production for GMC Trucks and Bud asked since this was the perfect setting could we film his Turbo Encabulator script. He was using an audio prompter referred to as “the ear”. He was actually the pioneer of the ear. He was to deliver a live speech without a prompter. After struggling in his hotel room trying to commit to memory he went to plan B. He recorded it to a large Wollensak reel to reel recorder and placed it in the bottom of the podium. With a wired earplug he used it for the speech and the “ear” was invented. Today every on-camera spokesperson uses a variation of Bud’s innovation. Dave Rondot (me) was the director and John Choate was the DP on this production. The first laugh at the end is mine. My hat’s off to Bud a true talent.”
Cardio isn’t enough
A couple of years ago I added some resistance training to my workout (30 minutes a day on the treadmill). Started with little (5 pound) barbells working mostly on my upper body. Just trying to keep some muscle tone as I age. After a while I moved up to 10 pound weights and that seems about right. I had no idea if the weights were doing me any good but a piece in The Washington Post argues that cardio isn’t enough, you need resistance training, too.
The piece sites a couple of studies including research that shows weight training reduces your risk of diabetes, stroke ad heart disease. Similarly, “a 2019 study, which included nearly 13,000 people, performing resistance training for less than an hour per week was associated with roughly 40 to 70 percent decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality — independent of any aerobic exercise.” The article explains how resistance training yields these benefits.
So I’ll keep my little weight bench and my baby barbells and keep pumping till I can’t pump no more.
Liquid Life
New filters for iMovie
I’ve played with filters over the years but gather they’ve become far more popular in a social media world.
Wildlife: From the kitchen window
Barb took this shot from the kitchen window. Seems like all of the critters are coming closer to the house these days. Hattie and Riley go nuts until Barb lets them out. The deer bound away but not in a panic. We think they know where the “invisible fence” line is and the dogs don’t go beyond.
Day-tight Compartment
Journalist and novelist Molly Jong-Fast calls herself “a pandemic-shutdown champion.”
I sit in my apartment day after day, week after week, focused on getting through the next few hours and not allowing myself to worry too much about, or even think too much about, the future. For this superpower, I have to thank Alcoholics Anonymous.
An older fellow in one of her AA meetings used to say he lived “in a day-tight compartment.” He only concerned himself with the activities in the current 24 hours. Back in March the author had to quarantine for two weeks but didn’t think of it as two weeks:
I thought of it as one day and then another day and another. The two weeks passed, but the pandemic did not. So I continued to live “in a day-tight compartment.” I still do. Every night at 8 p.m., I attend my Zoom AA meeting. Every morning, I think, Today I won’t drink and Today I’ll stay home and not contract the coronavirus.
Ms. Jong-Fast says she’s as obsessed with getting back to normal as everyone else is…
“…but I try not to worry about when that will be possible. I’ll lose it if I think in terms of hanging on until there’s a vaccine. Some people may find it helpful to tell themselves, It’s not forever. It’s just a few months. In my experience, though, when there’s no firm deadline for the end of an ordeal—and no one really knows when the pandemic will end—it’s better to focus on getting through the day. Life isn’t lived two weeks from now, or two months from now. Life exists in the moment and nowhere else.”
She knows this winter will be “one of the hardest, saddest winters of (her) lifetime. We all know it.”
“But it’s not winter 2020; we don’t live in winter 2020 until we do. All any of us have is right now. The only time we can possibly occupy is this moment of this day, and today I can drink my coffee, not my vodka, try to get my teenagers to talk to me, and do the next right thing.”
The wrong things
“When I think of all the things I’ve worried about and been afraid of in my life—and now it’s plain that I’ve been scared of the wrong things.”
— Anathem
Bubbles
I’m sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon, my feet hanging over the rim. I’m facing the setting sun and the light is painting the canyon walls. Somewhere far below, out of site, someone or some thing is blowing soap bubbles and I’m watching them drift slowly up and out of sight. Sometimes the bubbles are few and far between, other times a continuous stream, too many to count. But they never seem to stop completely.
From a distance, they’re just empty soap bubbles but if I bring my attention to particular bubble, I see it is filled with people, places and things. A tiny world that I recognize. My world.
If I look closely enough and long enough, I’m drawn into the bubble. I’m no long sitting on the canyon rim but part of the story unfolding in the bubble. Unlike most of the bubbles I’ve observed, this one doesn’t pop or float away. The canyon and the other bubbles no longer exist or, perhaps, I am just unaware of them.
Eventually, this bubble bumps into another bubble and the two merge, as bubbles often do. Sometimes these new bubbles are filled with a future world, sometimes the past. The worlds can be wonderful or awful but they’re always completely “real.”
I can spend hours moving from bubble to bubble, having completely forgotten about the view from the canyon rim. Every bubble is small and fragile and can be popped with the slightest touch but, from within, it’s difficult to remember this. Or the Me sitting on the canyon rim.
Ah! There I am. I’m back, watching the bubbles. How long, I wonder, was I trapped inside these shiny little things, drifting up and out of the canyon? How much of the spectacular sunset did I miss?
AirPods vs. “cans”
Seems like only yesterday wearing a Blue Tooth earbud/mic made you the subject of derision. A techno-hipster intent on impressing everyone with his hands-free phone calls.
Fast-forward to the Apple AirPods, which also got you some snickers. A lot for snickers. But it turns out AirPods work pretty well and I started seeing them everywhere. The FedEx guy. The crew chief that oversaw our new roof. The guy that mows our yard (yeah, yeah).
The plague hits and Zoom becomes a generic term (“I was zooming all day”). And those TV “at home” interviews? Lots of AirPods. So many that when I see someone wear a big old set of cans I think, poor dweeb.
Like these two guys being interviewed by Bill Maher. I know, I know… superior audio quality!