AudioMo - Just One More Thing...

A few more words about detective resources:

The Thrilling Detective - excellent for all things sleuthing in literary or media form.

Murder, She Watched - deep in the whozit and whatsit for Jessica Flecture fans and also has a lot of info about television detectives.

The Columbophile Blog - lots of folks hugging their inner raincoated detective. 

 

AudioMo Day 27 McCloud

Continuing on the theme of a detective out of his or her element, 

McCloud was part of the NBC Mystery Movie of the Week along with McMillian and Wife and Columbo.

   

 This is #AudioMo, an 30-day international challenge of sound and community. This is my captioned audio about the TV detectives before Columbo. 

 For more info about AudioMo, please visit https://audiomo.vivaldi.net/2024/03/11/what-is-audiomo/

AudioMo Day 26 The Two Mark Sabers

There is a bit of transatlantic confusion. There is the Mark Saber from the UK that work with a U.S. police department. 

Then there is the Mark Saber from London who is an independent private investigator who takes on hard to solve cases. 

In this version, he has a Canadian fellow doing a lot of the leg work. 

   

 This is #AudioMo, an 30-day international challenge of sound and community. This is my captioned audio about the TV detectives before Columbo. 

 For more info about AudioMo, please visit https://audiomo.vivaldi.net/2024/03/11/what-is-audiomo/

AudioMo - Day 4 The Edge of Night

Not all soap operas were about love and pains of the heart.

   

The Edge of Night was a daily mystery soap that covered the crimes in the fictional city of Montecello. 

Who says organized crime and love don't mix?

AudioMo Day 3 - Jason King

There is a history of the dandy as a secret hero. 

Or as an author who dabbles in investigation. 

This is a quick mention of the ITV television series, Jason King. 

#AudioMo is a 30-Day  international challenge of sound and community. This is my captioned audio about the detectives before Columbo. 

 For more info about #AudioMo, please visit https://audiomo.vivaldi.net/2024/03/11/what-is-audiomo/

AudioMo Day 2 - The Warner Brothers Detectives

On Day 2 a look at the Warner Brothers Television detectives, with a side trip to the amount of westerns that were on broadcast TV between 1957-1959.

 

For more information about AudioMo you can visit https://audiomo.vivaldi.net/2024/03/11/what-is-audiomo/

 

AudioMo Day 1 - Anna Mae Wong

Day 1 is a look at actress Anna May Wong, her history and her detective series, The Gallery of Madame

Liu-Tsong.

    

 

For more info about Anna May Wong there is a page on both the Smithsonian and the Women History websites. https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/anna-may-wong https://www.vulture.com/2017/09/the-search-for-the-gallery-of-madame-liu-tsong.html

AudioMo for 2024

Hi. It has been awhile. 

I'm participating in #AudioMo which is a 30-day challenge of using sound and audio. 

I wanted to create something for deaf, hard of hearing and speakers of other languages. So I have something that I call captioned audio.

Last year I did comic books.

This year it is television detectives before Columbo.

This is the explainer I did to hopefully make it clear to folks what I am doing. Not a lot of people watched it but you do what you can.

AudioMo and a Single Picture Audio Text Video

I was pleased with the audio text video. But I wanted more. Not much more. Because some of the things to share really need an image. 

Or maybe me taking the time to figure out how to descript a very visual image.

That time thing is tough.

Yes, you can talk about comic book in a purely audio format. You can talk about the history, the cultural force that affect them and much more.

But what if the comic book character in question was not popular?

Almost everyone has their vision of Batman, even if they have never touched or seen the comic book.

But what about the being known as Fantomah? I can describe her literally being two faced but taking a look at a bit of a cover image saves a lot of time.

This version was created using a service called Headliner. You can upload the audio and image. They will do the transcription and then combine all into a audio-Text video with an image.

I know there are spelling mistakes. I made a poor choice of background and text color. On Twitter it is much smaller so it is hard to read.

Conceptually, it work.

But it doesn't.

But it does.

Figuring Out AudioMo and Audio Text Recordings.

It has been a while since my last post. Pandemics. Social and political upheavals. Embedded stupidity.

Parts of me want to zoom and go. Other parts just need a refrigerator and a blanked and let the world go by.

For the past twelve years in June, audio blogging aka AudioMo has been happening on Twitter. I've enjoyed listing and every once in a while plunk a recording up.

This year I wanted to participate. It had been such a long time since I've done any group participation type stuff. And I can talk about what I want.

That is usually stuff nobody else in their right or left mind wants to talk about.

Sooo, I'm mindful that audio recording shuts a lot of people out of voice communication. People have been taking about it for years.  Problem is that on the consumer level, software and technology did not make it easy to do open or closed captions to audio. 

Still hasn't really.

So this is a work around is to use audio with open captions in a video. Not a talking head video with captions.

An audio recording with text transcribed on the screen.

For example: a brief take on the 1938 Superman and the need for heroes and superheroes.

I created the video using a company called Descript. It is a service that provides transcription services, some light audio editing and the ability to take two minutes of audio and create a podcast text video clip aka an audiogram.

It does a lot more but I am still learning how to use it.

It works well. But the standard plan only allows for two minutes of text video.

This is both a good and bad thing

I can upload to Twitter and Bob's your uncle, I have an accessible audio recording.

It maintains the spirit of an audio recording. Those that can't turn on the volume or are not native English speakers a way to check out the action.

Work in progress but it is a start.

American in the Nexus of Race and Guns Part 6

I don't remember if I saw Cat Ballou in the theater or on television. The second run movie house could have had it as a feature for a Saturday afternoon matinee.

It isn't impossible for me to have seen it on the big screen.






I would not have known about Nat King Cole's music career. I probably was trying to figure out why Sidney Poitier was not in the movie.

Sidney was in dang almost every movie I could think of in the 1960s.

I did like my westerns with the shooting and and killing of bad people. I was heavily invested in the killing of bad people.

But change came. New ideas were seeping into the general consciousness. I remember being in the audience with John Wayne type movie.

There comes a point when the Union army general or scout refereed to Native Americans as savages.

The audience, 99.5% black responded with jokes and booing. When the indigenous land owners were killing up said Union army there was cheering.

So that is probably why there was a whole lot of Clint Eastwood movies at my local cinema. Less wear and tear and not so much popcorn boxes chucked at the screen.

I digress.

Kat Ballou wasn't that kind of movie. It was a western comedy.

Plucky young woman returns home with her dad only to find out that a bad man is causing trouble.

Still got your Native American in service and white guys doing pretty much what they want.

And if you think about it the movie does kind of carry the meme that the only power anyone has it is the power of the gun to invoke change.

You want justice, do it yourself.

You want wealth, take it.

You want self-respect in an unfair land, fight for it.

Cuz real good so-called G-d fearing/loving citizens don't give a damn about anything other than their own self interests.

Yeah, yeah. I'm putting too much into it. Just a comedy movie.

American In the Nexus of Race and Guns Part 3

Now if you want to really get down to it we'd have to talk about Spaghetti westerns. Sorry about the ads, the other versions are getting yanked down. Because cultural memories are DCMA protected.





One man as hero/anti-hero.

Dark skinned people as bad guys or poor preyed upon town folk.

Good and evil.

Law and Disorder.

The gun is used as a tool for respect compensation.

And in-between the JuJu Beans and 25 cent Coca Cola I learned that a man and a gun were all you needed to get by.

That messaged is ingrained in our fiction, history and cultural expression.

So maybe when we attempt to talk about gun control what we might be doing is talking about changing our belief systems.

And Americans are a loath to do that as they are to admit that there might be some structural problems that require more than sound bites to solve.

Books as Conduits of Thought

It has been a awhile since my last post. I might get kicked out the the blogging union if there was such as thing. Wait, I think somebody tried to start one years ago but I haven't heard anything about it so maybe it isn't a thing.

I type at people I know that are on FB but I miss this. There doesn't seem to be time for thought or reflection. It is all "tell me now, feel it now, now, now, now"

Sometimes you need to shut up.

Shut up. Not in the pejorative meaning.

Shut your soul up and contemplate the universe.
Shut up with a book and be transported to another place.
Shut up and establish yourself within yourself so you don't have to run to someone else for affirmation.

Books and old, smelly wonderful books stores can help you do that; if you let them. We might have run out of time. Old smelly bookstores are going away or have gone.

This is a closing book store in New York. It is a video from the New Yorker Magazine.






Places like this nurtured me. Raised me up and helped me to survive.

What do we have now but sound bite literacy. And now we get sound bite hatred as political actions and racism, sexism and all kinds of phobias as a violent reaction to change.

Change is coming; for good or for evil. Evil is doing well and it is profitable. Good might have to stop wondering how evil is making bank and work on actually doing something away from the keyboard.

Ha, ha, ha....ha.

Maybe I should go find a book and cry on the pages.

Say the Name and Accept Who We Are

I'm grinding down to a halt but I wanted to get this posted. There is a web site called Teaching Books.net. As I understand it it is a way to find authors for children and young adult books.

The site seems to support the people that make reading magical.

I say hook that rascals by any means necessary so it is all good to me. One of the items on the site is how to say an author's name.

I learned about the origin of Karen Finnyfrock's name. Hint: Chow Chow!

I think I'm going to have to practice Geert Spillebeen's name because there is more to it than it looks on a page.

And author Chieri Uegaki name is a lesson in respect, flexibility and good friends wanting to call you by your name.



Speaking of names the latest episode of the podcastis up. Not as many problems as before but I have to learn not to hit the desk when I am trying to make a point. I get kinda involved with my hands.

The Man Says Show Your Work

I have been reading a book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. It is a encouragement to put your fanny on the line and show what you can do. Austin implores you to not to worry if the work it is good enough or top draw just do it, do it, and make it so.




Now, I just got back from a video storytelling workshop. I know the above video is handheld choppy and the lighting is not great. It is not the greatest story in the world. That is my hyper-critical side talking.  I'll do better the next time I record a video about bringing take-out Indian food back to the hotel.

Which isn't going to happen anytime soon. So what I need to do and remember is that it is a balance of being in the moment and respecting the moment by rendering it as best you can at the time.

In hindsight, I looked at that food and the ice cream and remembered the night before when I saw my body in a full length mirror and was shocked. I'm not the person I thought I was in my head.

Some kind of deception is going on.

And yet here I am.

Did I eat all of that food at one time? No, some of it was for breakfast.  Did I enjoy eating that mango ice cream?

Yes, absolutely.

Who am I? How did I get lost and why is the road getting back so long?

Always the dad gummed questions.

Cold Duck, Hillbillies and Plantations

Some days I think I've lost my voice. Maybe it is the wisdom of letting some things go. Then again some things you can't let go of even if you want to because the thing is stinking up the room. So I need to let this go free because I'm trying to practice self-compassion. Some of my friends are locked into the stench so I want to offer a way out.

But first, a history lesson. Cold Duck is an alcoholic beverage made up of the dregs of other wines. Way back in the day, the barkeeps would collect the un-drunk wines of their patrons and mix them together for an after hours drink.

Time marches on and a merchant take a more sanitary approach by mixing champagne and other wine stocks into a bottle of Cold Duck. That brew was sold under the Henri Marchant Cold Duck label.

This is a commercial from the 1970s promoting the beverage.


It isn't a toxic brew; more along the lines of Boone's Farm or Asti Spumante. About three shelf's up from Night Train and Mad Dog 20/20.

It is an illusion wine.

You drink it because you can afford it. You drink it because you want the verniers of class; of belonging.  You drink it because you know what you are going get and you are okay with it. Familiar. Comforting.

The buzz you will derive from it isn't a million cell killer. You might even get laid. It will not cause internal system damage like you would from Thunderbird.

You know what you are going to get. You can't kick about not knowing. You have to embrace the bottle to pick it up and take it out of the store. It is a conscious decision. 

Which is why there should be a wine education class for all adults. People don't know about the far superior $2 Buck Chuck. Passable drinking wine and good in spaghetti sauces and chill. There is no class associated with $2 Buck Chuck so all come to the table and can get toasty.

Faith is a lot like drinking Cold Duck. 

You buy into the illusion. You think you have a certain amount of class and you get to tell others that your reality is far superior than their reality because this is what you know to be true. Your book of truth tells you so. And although your book does preach about love, agape love, and love of all even your enemies you have issues.

There is something about it. If asked, you would kill to cleans the world of the unbelievers. So that you can have that illusion of a perfect, classy, loving world.

If a rich hillbilly tells you he is a man of God and he finds queer sexuality repugnant why are you shocked? If he then says that Negros were so much better when they were being cheated out of the rightful sharecropping fees, not having the right to vote, not being free from the company store and still subject to any white person who wanted them to do something and may or may not have paid them for their labor then why are you surprised?

When a singer wants to have a $1,009 meet-up with other creatives at a plantation that presents slavery as a troublesome marketing challenge to be overcome why y'all got you panty's in a bunch?

What, you thought certain forms of feminism was inclusive?

No, my sweeties, no. When you agree to go to a non-educational plantation; in this case, an entertainment plantation,  you are buying into an illusion of Gone With the Wind.

You really won't see the darkies but you fall in love with the house servants. A place where men married their first cousins and keeps dipping their wicks into the slave stock for sexual relief. Where offspring of involuntary or voluntary unions were sold to keep the household peace.

They tell me that the place is so pretty and architecturally commanding that you want to be artistically connected to Tarra and damn the women of color who point out that this might be inconsistent with your formerly announced social beliefs and activities?

Many folks are squeezing on the Cold Duck. What is shocking is who is doing it.

The Hate on Hate Is Opening The Gate

I'm not going to catalog the rampant stupidity passing for justification. I can put up screenshots of people communicating badly in defense of being Christian and racists and how that might not be compatible but, by jingy, they are bound and determined to make it so.

Friends, I will not tell you to be silent.  Do what you gotta do. If you want to go up into the hills and converse with people so that they know you and your kind, go forth. If you want to go to an entertainment plantation then so be it.

Just be real clear on the reason why you are doing it. Cuz you might be tapping into ancestral or advertising memes of illusion. It goes down tolerable. Still, at some point you will have to wake up. You will have to decide how much you want to embrace the matrix of truth, illusion and reality.

The rest of us want to move to the other side of the gate and build a new path of truth and understanding. This requires hard, conscious work.

If certain feminists groups want no part of this type of discussion then I understand. If some hillbillies would like to sit at the table and talk about sexuality, faith and inclusiveness I got some greens in the fridge.

We'll leave the light on for you but will offer you only water. It is cleansing. Leaves no after tastes.

Memory, Haiku Deck and Being the Rabbit

If I can get my fanny in gear I'm about to participate in a worldwide viewing event. Means nothing to those not invested but a Whovian gotta do what she has got to do. I also have to study, do household tasks and be in three places at the same time.

Some days I feel like Alice's rabbit. So I'll read as I ride. I'll check out the doings and beings who are tapping into memory and connections.

In the past museums and libraries were the gathering places that allowed people to connect to histories and cultures. It was a restrictive and curated experience. That can be a good or bad thing.

It could be argued that there needs to be a filtering process to catalog the collection. There had to be because of space and content limitations.



Created with Haiku Deck
One of the ways it was bad was that cultures and populations of people, skills, education and experiences were ignored or devalued.

What I am excited about is that more people or those that have access can tell their stories by all kinds of applications and tools. Some are complex and some are simple. The presentation software above is called Haiku Deck. It is an iPad app and they are accepting Beta invites for the web app.

I kinda like the fact that it is simple to set up a presentation. You don't have to go hunting for legal images. They got 35 million of them. And of course you can use your own.

Use what you got but tell the tale. And yes, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.

Not Able to Write the Ballad of Duan Huego

I wish I could write satire. I can see Duan Huego galloping into the village; his steely eyes talking in the droopy draw-ed teenagers as he smiles at the peasant women who light up when they see him. Old spice in the noon day sun.

Yes, indeed, it could be a laugh riot. Cept I don't know how to write satire. And I don't do humor well. Still, I would kinda start out with something like:

The Ballad of Duan Huego

Imaging, if you will, the sound of a galloping horse, a mighty steed with a manly man in touch with himself. So in touch with the wisdom of the ages he is all knowing, all seeing.

Cue out of tune guitar, belching and 1/3 hand clapping.

In the little dusty brown town there are people. Some that wear belts and others that have droopy draws. Some that wear skirts and some that wear over sized peddle pushers.

I probably shouldn't pinch a bit of narrative structure from all those Saturday afternoons watching movies like A Fistful of Dollars. I probably can't do that without some attorney drooling over possible infringement.

To appropriate a saying from my UK friends, "bugger off " if any attorney is in litigation mode. I'm not writing it. 

Anyway, back to the non-story story:

I imagine that Duan Huego has come to fix the town. Not that anybody actually asked him to. The man has his public and private agendas and feels duty bound to express one or the other at the barrel of a gun.

First, he caps all the droopy draw-ed young men because, well, it is easier to dispose of young men than to deal with structural and environmental conditions that caused their pants to droop.

Sure, he could have allowed them to continue wandering around trying to find some way to support themselves but that would involve actual contact and conversation.

Duan Huego ain't got time for that. He just wipes them all out and tell the town to start again. Yes, there will be wailing and many of the town members would be upset. As Duan Huego clamps down on the Twinkie half hanging out of his mouth, he knows that sartorial appearances trump indigenous rights of existence. 

And speaking of rights, he....

Hmm. Perhaps Duan Huego doesn't have a Twinkie half hanging out his mouth. It could be a  Chocodile.  Yeah, I like Chocodiles.

Anyway, I can see him rolling and sucking on that Chocodile like a god possessed.

Duan Huego looks on as the town re-allocates money from the schools to the new sports stadium. Not sure who is gonna play in the big game seeing as how he whacked most of the local teams.

But he does support Title IX. In his wisdom, he settles in to coach the ladies basketball team.

One of the women in the town approaches him and ask if he can do anything about those laddie magazines in the supermarket. The ones that have all kind of nakedness and booblification on display at the checkout counter.

Duan Huego looks softly into the woman's eyes and tells her he feels her pain, her anguish and her frustrations of being surrounded by uncaring men in shark-skinned suits. At that very moment, Duan Huego central nervous system shifts to his inner femme.

You know, I don't think they had shark-skinned suits back in the day. Need more research on male fashions in dusty brown towns.

Other women start to approach Duan Huego and they like what they hear. They invite him to dinner, the Sunday lunch and the Fish Fry. Duan Huego doesn't do a dang thing about getting the laddie mags out of the supermarket but he talks so convincingly about the need to do so. Many of the women forget the harm that has been done by eliminating other women's male children.

They decide he is their voice; even though they have voices of their own.

One day, a woman came to town. She recognized the horse. The trail of Chocodile wrappers all up and down the street. The weeping widow whose husband ain't dead but might as well have been since she took up with Duan Huego.

The woman with no name talks to other women about what she knows about Duan Huego. They don't believe her. Some of the members of the basketball team also share that Duan Huego has been coaching a little too much in his after school workout. An elder testifies she has seen Duan Huego with a copy of T--ts and Bits while standing in the checkout.

Hang on, maybe Duan Huego is an asset dude instead of a rack man? Then again, the way he uses his tongue to get what he wants he could be orally fixated. Need to research names of straight male magazines that denigrate women but aren't violently disgusting.

The women on team Duan Huego fight for their man. Who still talks a good game but doesn't do jack. He does put the feel on Maria behind the bleachers as the game is in progress.

Maria has that kind of voice that carries so when the ref called "Foul" Maria followed up with "Oh, God, mmm, Good God Owwwwwww with the ow rhyming with foul.

That sealed it.  The woman with no name was telling the truth. As was the elder and all other women. Everybody could now see it and there was no denying it happened.

Or could it? Yes, even with evidence Team Duan Huego would not relent. Duan Huego himself did a duck and weave as he promised never to enter the stadium again. He still is gonna diddle his woman but this time in private.

No. Not a laugh riot. Not funny. It really sucks. Just like it does in real life. 

A savior by definition is someone who takes your side. Protects you. Doesn't have to be religious to save you or reflect what you believe in. There are people that groups and communities have anointed flawed people to be their spokesperson/public saviors.

Hell, we are all flawed.

And like a true love it is hard to let go of the person that you projected so much time and effort into making what you needed him or her to be. It is the real life version of Juicy Got 'Em Crazy. 

They can't let go. They won't let go. Saviors are really hard to let go of. Because it is hard to say that you made a mistake in judging a person.

The only way to let go is to be willing to listen. And step out of the comfort zone. Not many people are willing to take that chance. It is hard. There is no progress without it.

And that is where we stand at the moment. 

Cue out of tune violin, knuckle cracking and 1/4 hand clapping. Fade to Black.

Past as It Plays Itself Foward In Time

It wasn't like this. It was gritty. Dirty. There was a smell, sometimes. There was people selling vegetables in boxes on sidewalks or in half stall stores. There were winos and bums and people who had no place to go. People stood around talking all day long. They didn't need talk radio to keep a conversation going.

There were people going to work or to school. The streets were filled with busy people.

It was filled with motion.

There were no tables or chairs outside. No place for them. The sidewalks were narrow then.

There were belching cars and trolleys trying to get some place. Everybody was trying to get some place other than where they were.

Me included.

No, it didn't look like this. I tramped up and down those streets and what I knew is gone. I only have the memory of it.

I remember the good pretzel place where you had to wait for a hot one because they sold out quick. You could have plain with mustard or extra salty. Small, or freaky big. A couple of stores down from the pretzel place was my home away from home bookstore.

The bookstore, I think it was called Robin's, is where they sold alternative comic books. Where I could get a copy of High Times for a quarter. I was more interested in the hydroponics than the weed.

I was a strange person.

I must have been the only person to buy High Times for the articles and to check out Vaughn Bode's comic called Cheech Wizard. Bode was the only cartoonist I knew that celebrated big behind women.

There were days when I'd have just a dollar and have to choose between a photo magazine and three other candidates. If you didn't buy it when you laid eyes on it it could be gone.

One day I found this book called I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Paperback. It was right next to the Ice Berg Slim books . My arms where loaded up but I flipped to a few pages and thought this dude Ellison was on to something.

I fell in love with his writing. I fell in love with how he would talk to you in the fourth wall breaking pages before the start of a story. I didn't care for his gangster books. Gangsters were getting shot up all over town and making the tabloid covers every other day. Fiction couldn't trump that Goombah reality.

I kept my radar out for anything else he wrote. One day when I was able I paid full price cash money for a paperback that had the original script of the City on the Edge of Forever. Then I bought his other books with covers intact.

So when I heard that Harlan Ellison was going to be in Hollywood I thought I could go see him in person. I needed to make amends for buying those first stripped books when I was a teenager.

But meeting inspirations can be tricky.

So this is the past that you need to known to put context to the future that was.

Yes, We Should UFTW Poem

I have been frigidity all day. Rather than stew in my own juices I'm trying out an experiment. I have wanted to try making video poems. There are people that are doing just that; there is a wonderful site called Moving Poems that curates the various ways a video poem can be created.







If you do check out that site you will discover that there is more than just talking head poets on video or film. There can be dance, animation, performance, text sculptures and a bunch more video poem formats than I have time to type.

I've been thinking about doing this for long time. I'm going to try to make my experiments public and use the Create Video Notebook blog to explain the tools and resources on how to create them.

This is a photo text poem. The text and the photo create the actual poem. Take away one element and it is meaningless or weak. There is no narration and it is open captioned.

Anyway, this is #1 with more to come.