The Master Switch

During a conversation with Christina Stojanova two weeks ago (actually during her successful interview for the tenure track position in film studies) I got interested in a book she mentioned called "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu. I ordered in a copy and have been glued to it for the past couple of days. It chronicles the rise and fall of various media based monopolies such as the telephone, the Hollywood studies, the radio and television broadcasters, and of course is leading up to discussing the internet. It is a very good read, smart but clear and very entertaining. Margaret just came home from a art performance by Erin Gee where she dressed herself as an Ipod. Tim Wu describes vertical integration, an economic model where a company owns all stages of production such as the Hollywood studies that made movies as well as the distribution and theaters that showed them. Macintosh is a vertically integrated company.

Mother's Day

William picked out a couple of nice things for Margaret for Mother's Day today including a replacement chain for the locket he got her a years or two ago. The chain was broken a couple months ago when Margaret tried washing the cat or something else the put her off and her claws went into overdrive. For the grandmas, we had everyone over for homemade pies and homemade vanilla gelato.

Boy and Dad Saturday

William and I ran errands today, preparing in part for Mothers Day. Margaret worked half the day and later on went to a walking tour of the cemetery. I wasn't into it, my left knee and left foot were really sore all day. William and I finally picked up "Simpsons Movie" and watched it, having seen only 30 minutes of it a couple weeks ago.

Thor

Due to the  teachers strike yesterday, my tour of new students from Saskatoon who were supposed to come in yesterday and see our department today was postponed. We picked up William right from the schoolyard at 3:30 and made it to the 4:00 premiere of Thor in 3D. We had fun. I did wonder where all the people were (in the movie, there were plenty in the theatre). The earth scenes were set in New Mexico (for no good reason except to make reference to the gamma scientist who disappeared) so it seemed rational that we could only ever see 10 people at a time in this town of 2000. However, Asgard seemed to have a population even lower; a huge vacant golden city.

getting high

I spent all day watching experimental films with Trevor. We looked at some Brakage, the entire "Man with a Movie Camera" by Vetov, and "Ghosts Before Breakfast".


My cat didn't.

no holiday in sight

Yesterday we relaunched our work on Sock-Vile with a meeting between me and the three designers who will be putting together material for the background and foregrounds and the town scenes for second unit. Today I did other committee work. I did make a run to OTV and got a new card reader and a $30 16 Gb class 10 SD memory card to shoot video with the Canon 3T1 DSLR cameras we just got in. It should hold 44 minutes of HD video. Otherwise most of today was committee work and meetings.

NDP

William got very excited about the election this evening, even though Noah, the NDP candidate in our riding, wasn't elected. He wanted party hats and cocktails to celebrate the NDP opposition status.

Graduate symposium

Today the Fine Arts graduate students ran a symposium where each of them presented for 15 minutes about their current research. I caught about half of them. Here is Brett Bell.

William dressed up

William is purposely dour for some reason. I think it supposed to reflect the time period he is dressed for.

Day off.... finally

William and I took the day off and mostly stayed home watching tv. The only trip out was to renew my license, stop at the comic store for the new "Fables" and to check out the Dr. Who toys and to pick up some lobster meat for supper.

Manga-palooza

Yet again I had meetings all day and the evening filled with film screenings. Margaret and William went to the Manga-palooza thing and met comic artists and did some drawings of their own.

Student films

This evening the first half of the fourth year films were screened at the Rainbow Cinema. They got a great crowd. I arrived late so a few seats had opened up but initially it was beyond the 150 capacity. The last film of the night was Erik Sirke's film which I acted in back in January. It turned out quite good anyway. Lots of fun.

Artesian

Margaret went to the open house concert at the Artesian today. I had meetings all day so couldn't go.

What's up doc?

I cleavered the bunny into bits and we had a chocolate feeding frenzy today. Probably at least ten pounds still remaining.

rerun rerun

I can't recall if I wrote about this, but my SSHRC proposal for my "Rerun" research program was turned down (actually, it received what they call a 4A which means it was approved but didn't have a high enough rating to get money). It was suggested that I could apply for some university money to help develop the project further. The deadline is next week so I was thinking that I would write this application between other duties this week. Late last night I realized that the application will require signatures from the department head and the dean and they both want it a week in advance. Therefore, I spent most of today drafting it.

Easter

We had two Easter gathers today, one at my parent's house, which included my second cousin Julie and her brother and sister in law who are doctors in Sudbury. They have a new baby and my cousin has a 1.5 year old so talk was mostly about babies.The second event was and Richard and Gerda's and included many people such as Fred Clipsham (Regina city council, running for NDP in current election). The talk was mostly politics.