Entropy is my homeboy.

So I've taken one big step closer towards becoming the kind of old man I'm planning to be and I figured it'd be worth writing something here. 

I'm tempted to do a kind of overall appraisal but that's really what my annual End of the Year entries are for! 

I will say that I'm increasingly excited about Vidcon in July. If all I do is have fun then I won't think it a failure, but I am of course hoping to promote the heck out of the show. I'm perfectly aware that while my traffic has been increasing and my subscriber base has doubled since the start of the year...I still have a significantly smaller footprint than your average photogenic teenager talking into a $50 webcam about their hobbies. 


I say that without any bitterness or resentment! I'm very happy with what 2010 has done for the show so far, I'm just aware that in order to even make a part-time living I will need to increase my subscriber base to at least ten times it's current amount. 

I've been experimenting, of course. The "Radio" show christmas special, some Project Wonderful advertising, taking a break in January to build an episode buffer, getting more out-of-studio footage, A Very Special Surprise I'll begin putting up at the start of August, taking a topic from a viewer's suggestion and generally busting my butt to keep improving the Basic Product (I've finally gotten Adobe CS5 so I can learn how to clean up my greenscreening and perhaps do some effects that won't be as cheesy as any number of Dragonball Z fireballs or their ilk). 

The big thing is to try and escape a trap I've built myself. 


By trying to stand out from the crowd in what I talk about, framing episodes as reviews to help make things (ideally) more interesting then a straight up rant, I've ironically made it much more unlikely for people to find me. It's no secret that there are far more people searching for popstars, movies, video games, bands and Sexy Things than anything I talk about. While I do think there is something to the idea of the Internet as a meritocracy, I think that the nature of search engines, Youtube and just plain ol' people do a lot to prevent it from being a "pure" one. It makes sense and hell, it's not like I'm some superior being who never looks up any of that stuff! 

I bet I could do some could even do a pretty good show about that subject matter, but it's not where my strongest passions lay (for now, at least) and I have to wonder if becoming one of So Many wouldn't obscure me just as much. 

My best boosts have always come from someone with a larger audience being kind enough to point them in my general direction and what's encouraging is that when I do get a big influx of eyeballs, the vast majority of them choose to hang around. But that sort of thing comes about almost entirely by chance and I know that one of the first things to happen to anybody with some decent success is for them to become, understandably, chronically irritated by requests for a link or a mention in a video or whatever. 

Of course, I could just suck! Land sakes alive, I don't want to be one of those guys who constructs an elaborate theory for why they aren't having the sucess they'd like to have when the answer is plain to see for anyone who isn't him. But this conflicts with my natural desire to problem-solve, which means trying to come up with an explanation as well as a plan of action.


In non-Handful related news...
Though I've been thinking about it for a couple of months, I am now seriously looking at a trip to the Ukraine and Russia (the eastern bit) in fall of 2011. It should come as little surprise to most that my goal would be to traipse through the ruins of the Soviet Empire and that while this would certainly include Chernboyl & Pripyat, the Disneyland & Orlando of this kind of journey, I'd also be trying to get to a variety of other curious locations. I reckon I need to start planning now if only because I haven't figured out precisely where a lot of those things are! When I get closer to the date I think I shall see what I can do about contacting Russian urban explorers and maybe even seeing if I have any Russian fans who'd be willing and able to help me out in one way or another.

I figure that it's all very well and good to talk about Perfectly Wonderful & Horrible things but I also would like to see more of them up close. Plus, although I certainly did enjoy a lot about my trip to Athens I'd have to say the most valuable thing I took from that trip was a lesson in what kind of travel actually appeals to me. After seeing most of the classic ruins up close I found myself basically killing time until my flight back to England. Places to eat foreign (to you) food, places to swim, drink, dance and go for nice walks can all generally be found where you live - I'm not pissing on anybody elses parade but Athens taught me that doing those things in another country doesn't stimulate me enough to feel the expense is worth it. Maybe in time my mind will change or if I have the right company...but that's where I'm at now.

What absolutely feels worth it for me is not to take a vacation so much as to have an adventure. Meeting all sorts of Internet folk I've only emailed before, trying to promote the show and getting around a major American city that I may have to spend more time in if my career takes certain paths is a little adventure to me. Digging my way through the still standing bones of Reagan's beloved "Evil Empire", an entity whose imagery & culture have flooded so much fiction & non-fiction I've seen for my entire life, that strikes me as a big adventure the likes of which I may still be talking about when I reach that point I mentioned earlier. 

Coping with the Big Lever

"Hey humanity, what did you do today? " 

"Oh, I killed the gulf of Mexico". 

"Ah...good lad. Run along and play now." 

So how do you make peace with this? 

I actually had to call my mum this morning and ask her how she coped when the Cold War was at it's height. When it felt like a button might be pressed and that'd be the end of that. 

The thing the Cold War had over our War on the Environment is that, thanks to MAD, it was a very binary thing. Either somebody presed a button and launched nukes that started a chain reaction of retaliation which wiped out the species or they didn't. If they did then you'd have so little time to think about it before you died that you might as well not worry. Although you may very well end up living in a horrible blend of medieval technology and fascist government I suppose, though I always thought Threads was a tad optimistic. 

This isn't to trivialize the Cold War or provide a launching pad for a big fat, spittle spraying We Are Doomed rant. 

I just want to point out that the War on the Environment AKA Operation: Piss in Your Own Pool AKA Russian Roulette with an Automatic Pistol...is not a big red button to be pushed or not pushed. It's like a bloody great big lever that can be pulled or pushed closer to armageddon and it is very, very difficult to pull back. I could batter you over the head with statistics and links and flowery prose but that's not what I'm writing about here. 

I'm wrestling with how to cope and if you're paying any attention at all then I imagine there are moments where you struggle as well. So how do we do? 

With the Cold War it seems the most sensible thing was to remember that all you could do was try to vote in leaders who wouldn't press the damn button and otherwise remember that you were just one person with incredibly limited influence so you may as well accept your relative powerlessness and try to fucking relax. It'll happen or it won't. Though I'm not a fan of feeling powerless, I think I would have coped with the height of the Cold War reasonably well - not because I'm Batman but just because of how my mind works. I'm good at accepting things I have no power over, when that's truly the case. 

Operation: Shit in Your Own Mouth is different. I very much have an influence on it, we all do. Clearly world leaders and corporate CEO's have much, much more influence...but nobody can abandon responsibility like you could with the Cold War. Leaving your computer on overnight for no good reason? Driving any damn vehicle for any damn distance? Having a kid? Thanks buddy, you just helped lean a little more on that lever. That's good that you're recycling and please don't stop, but you could certainly do more. 

You could always do more. It's pretty overwhelming and a great way to become so neurotic it'd make Woody Allen say "Hey, slow down buddy" followed by "Anyways, it's totally less creepy I married my adopted daughter now that she's thirty-five".

In the same short period of time I read the thing that sent my head spiralling harder then it had done since I watched a certain film, this floated up to the surface as well. It's not like it's the first time I've thought or read about the idea that we should be the last generation. It's not like I didn't think "Well maybe I should off myself...or at least get a vasectomy". 

But it reeks of giving up. 

I hate giving up. 

It's clawing for an excuse to treat this like the Cold War, of wanting the lever we're all leaning on to be that big old red button. 

You don't need me to tell you how to live or vote more environmentally and like I said, that's not what this is about. It's about how do you cope? 

Well there's always denial, but you'll know what you're doing. If you have any conscience it'll eat at you and just cause a different kind of stress. So no, denial isn't the way to go for anybody except the kind of person who wasn't bothered by all this in the first place. 

I know the best thing for someone like me, someone who hates to give up, is to try and work things through in your head - perhaps sharing via writing or video - and then seeing what more you can do. I realize I won't be singlehandedly saving the world, but I'm starting the road towards becoming a vegetarian or at least cutting down to meat only once a week because I know that that will help. 


This won't be easy as I love meat, have been crap about vegetables my whole life, don't have any dietary need to stop eating it and certainly have no moral qualms with eating animals...but I know if I don't want to go crazy then I need to do more for the environment and, unlike having the CEO of British Petroleum forced to swim in the mess his company made, vegetarianism is within my reach. 

By the by, nobody will singlehandedly save the world by doing any single thing. Accepting that is certainly a good thing to help you cope. You're not giving up, you're removing a popular obstacle people often place between themselves and doing any damn thing. 


"Recycling these cans won't magically save the world and give me a ten hour solid gold erection so why bother?". 

Naturally I'm curious to hear anybody else's suggestions for how to cope wtih this thing. Like it or not, we're all in this together... 

MAH TOOF

AUGH!

Though I realize they'd have done nothing for my tooth, I think I might start wearing gloves and maybe even elbow pads when I longboard now. Both would have helped my forearms take more of the impact and potentially reduced the damage or even kept my face out of the equation all together. I just count myself lucky that I didn't go under a car (or that my board did the same, though that's a distant second as my concerns go!

FINALLY

After almost two years, I'm finally selling I GOT OPINIONS shirts. Pass it on!

High Fives - The Movie

Vidcon, Satire, Vlogging and Crudbump!

VIDCON!
http://www.vidcon2010.com/
http://tinyurl.com/yhpejbb

DREW N' CRUDBUMP
http://crudbump.com/
http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/drewtoothpaste (less info)

Baaaaaaack

So later today I'm putting up the first episode of what you could call "Season Three" of the show. I said I'd be working hard to improve the show and I have, but some of the improvements won't kick in until a little further down the road GOSH DARN IT.

But whatever man!

It was tempting to try and turn the show completely upside down with different fonts, a new intro and all the rest but in the end I figured it's best to be consistent with the general look. What will be new is (eventually) background music, which has proven a stickier wicket than expected, some new effects and better green screening thanks to Adobe After Effects CS4 (goal #1: obliterate the fine teal line around my body that I can never quite remove) and for every four or five "standard" episodes of the show I am going to try to do something irregular.

Now this doesn't mean that I'll be doing a completely different kind of show, I still want it to feel like In a Handful of Minutes. But I want to do more interviews with folk connected to past or upcoming episodes (one got filmed yesterday with which I'm very happy), try presenting the odd thing in a more anecdotal fashion (filmed one of those a couple weeks back) provided that thing is something that fits into the show's loose theme of "Perfectly Wonderful and Horrible Things" and...well I'll keep the third thing a secret for now.

Meanwhile, I've signed up for Vidcon 2010 and hope to use my time there to promote the show as well as meet in person some of the folk I've had the pleasure of getting to know via Youtube. Plus it'll be the first time I've been to the states since I was nine? I SURE HOPE AIR TRAVEL HASN'T CHANGED, FOR SOME REASON.

Entertaining Ghosts

It's always a little bit of a shame when you come across a website or a youtube channel or the like which has marvelous content on it, but clearly hasn't been updated in some time and likely has been abandoned by it's creator.

This video for Radiohead's "All I Need" comes from just such a youtube channel. It hasn't been updated for two years but the person who put it together made a respectable quantity of beautiful, meaningful music videos for several Radiohead songs by mashing up old footage.

I'm guessing he was a film or art student...or at least someone passionate about stuff other than good ol' mainstream fare, given that he used some Marcel Duchamp footage. Then there's Standish Lawder footage in this chilling video for "I Will".

Entertainment, something different, something that teaches and something that inspires: A cocktail I'll be aspiring to with this year's Handful, that's for sure.

KAMERA UND TOONES

Dang, I finally got my own decent camera for use with the show. Amongst other benefits....now when I think of a shot I'd like to grab, I can just go out and grab it! That alone has me very excited!

Meanwhile, a fan of the show linked me to some of his music and I rather enjoyed this little tune. MAYBE YOU WILL TOO?

d_Verge - Brain Infection  by  d_Verge


I'm not the boss of you

2010 - will it be an unsatisfactory sequel to 2001?

Well, will it? I hope not, since that'd mean we'd be getting a crop duster slamming into the side of the Seattle Space Needle, thus giving America the reason their current administration has been dying to have so they can invade...French Guiana? Bah, I'll leave the futurism to more talented folk.

So it's New Years eve and small wonder what a man's mind wanders towards...

But hoo boy, I could have used a bit more space between Christmas holidays and New Years this year. So many things to do, so many things done. In fact, I would like to take this moment to dub 2009 The Year Which Went Too Quickly but also The Year in Which Shit Got Done.

What shit got done? Well I...

• Finally took a writing retreat, something I've wanted to do since I was in England and reading about the Cotswolds. While there I...
• Made a serious stab at finishing a new feature length script. Unless a miracle happens, it won't be done before year's end but with a finished treatment and 37 pages written (as well as piles of notes) I know it's reached a crucial point that makes it a lot easier for me to return to the work and polish her off.
• Organized funding for shooting a small pilot I wrote, which my pal Mark then filmed. That was part of a lot of other writing and groundwork which was laid in preparation for pitching what I can only refer to right now as "A Science Fiction Series" early in the New Year (ideally late February).
• Busted my balls on Handful, of course, raising the quality of the show significantly and building a suitably large archive of episodes so as to achieve escape velocity from planet "Something I did for a little while and then got distracted". That...that is a terrible planet whose gravity is often much stronger then you might expect!
• This included another interview, which I actually managed to keep to a reasonable length! I'd like to do more, but it's tricky since my topics keep changing and I rarely know somebody relevant to, say, Seasteading.
• Got my first fan video!
• Broke both the one year and fifty episode marks.
• Through the show I attended my first TIFF event and learned more about Roller Derby, something I'd been curious about for a good while.
• Became a fan of The Pillow Fight League via the episode I did. When I went to another match in July I was actually approached by Olivia Neutron Bomb, who told me she enjoyed it!
• Pulled together the big special and thus introduced the world to SHAWN MACLEAN.
• Made some buttons, even if I am now deciding to give this batch away and do a fresh one with a new design to replace the "Lake Karachy Rowing Club" button. These and the business cards helped make it all feel less like a hobby and more like A Thing.
• Did some other fun little videos, mainly as a way to force myself to continue on with my bit of self-education & writing practive via Stephen Fry.
• This included another Urban Exploration adventure to Toronto's not-so-secret ballroom.
• Got my own dang longboard!
• Which made the 2009 board meet that much more awesome.
• Worked with my roommate Christina to decorate and otherwise set up what is easily my favorite place that I've lived in since leaving my parents after graduating High School.
• Did some more painting, though not quite as much as I would have liked.
• Went to my first North American webcomic convention and got to briefly meet & chat with Paul Pope!
• Got piles of proper use and enjoyment out of my membership at the AGO, which meant a lot to me as I didn't get as much use out of my membership at London's ICA as I would have liked.

I may have done some other shit, but those are the big things. True, Handful isn't making me money yet...but I think I was being a little naive. From what I've learned of other folk with webshows or webcomics, 18 months   seems to be about half the amount of time it's taken most folk to be able to make any kind of living from their online efforts. I guess I should just quit! OH NO WAIT...

My other big goal for the year, to try and finally host a Handsome Boy Modelling School party may just have to go on the pile of broken dreams...but I think I can live with that regret!

So what of 2010? Well, I feel very excited to build upon what I've done this year and (especially after reviewing some of my pictures from London) I know I'd really like to get in a trip to somewhere other than Ottawa. It's been far too long since I've seen a concert in Montreal, but I'm also curious about New York since fully half the people I know visited there in the time since I moved to Toronto!

And then, there's this. Anybody want to sponsor a webshow hosts trip to L.A.?

Dang, I gotta get on with the day! So I think I'll close here for now and get into more depth about next year sometime in it's first few days.

I feel like I just gave birth to ten whales

Long story short, Wordpress and Vodpod are ridiculous, so I'm putting this here for now! Anyways, this is a custom player that will automatically cycle from one video to the next so you can listen to the whole special without interruption or having to attend to it every few minutes. Please enjoy!


So here’s our big special for 2009! There are piles of links below for each artist, listed in alphabetical order, so you can find more of their stuff if you like what you hear.
If you enjoy our “radio” show format then PLEASE COMMENT or otherwise let us know and perhaps we’ll do it again!
CHAMELEON CIRCUIT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAi4izfvXo4
www.youtube.com/user/charlieissocoollike
http://twitter.com/coollike
http://www.youtube.com/user/nerimon
DANIELLE ATE THE SANDWICH
http://www.danielleatethesandwich.net/
http://www.youtube.com/user/daniellesmagic
http://www.myspace.com/danielleatethesandwich
JOSEPH THIBODEAU
http://www.youtube.com/user/HandsomeNarrator
PAPA JULES
http://www.myspace.com/papajulestheband
http://www.youtube.com/user/marlonminty
PAULA VARJACK
http://www.myspace.com/paulavarjack
http://www.youtube.com/user/mochachild
http://twitter.com/paulavarjack
http://paulavarjack.bandcamp.com/
POMPLAMOOSE
http://www.youtube.com/user/PomplamooseMusic
http://www.myspace.com/pomplamoosemusic
http://twitter.com/pomplamoose
TOM MILSOM
http://tommilsom.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/hexachordal
http://www.myspace.com/tomandhisuke
http://twitter.com/Hexachordal
ZAYNA DAZE
http://www.youtube.com/user/zainabadam
www.myspace.com/zaynadaze
http://zaynadaze.bandcamp.com/
http://zaynadaze.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/ZaynaDaze
—-
MORE EPISODES -  RELATED LINKS -  FACEBOOK -  PODCASTS -  TWITTER
GOT AN OPINION? DROP US A LINE AT HANDFULOFMINUTES @ GMAIL . COM

And then life gets crazy busy again

Ah well! Can't do much about that.

So, other than fighting crime I've been working hard on the show and trying to plan all the right moves for at least the first few months of next year.

You can expect me to elaborate on such things in my fourth annual End of a Year post, if not sooner! but for now I have piles of running around to do before heading to my folks for the holidays.

(Great Batman photo by Posterchild)

TERRIBLE TEEN TUNES

A nice find

How much is it to ride that mustache in the window?

Stephen Fry Poetry Challenge: Round Four

SAXX LAWS

Saxx Laws from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.


This is a pretty specific thing, but if you know where it's from then you'll likely love it!

Flapper Lady

I did this a little while ago but I just realized that I never put it up here! Dang but it has been hard to find time to draw and paint lately. Part of that is wrestling with exciting and terrifying distractions, a post upon one of which may follow later today!

Abandoned Ballroom

I've been sitting on this since February and I wasn't going to post it....but I checked out the ballroom last week only to discover that basically...

1) Everybody knows about it anyways, now. I ran into a pack of photographers this time around, who had been told of the place by further friends and when I ad in all the people I know who know about it and how it's been posted on various UE forums then....eh.

2) The hotel has installed some working lights that are left on in the evening, which is a pretty strong sign that if they aren't at least finally fixing up the joint then they too are WELL AWARE of people coming on up. I also ran into a polite security guard who, fortunately, got distracted by the photographers.

Anywho, for a number of reasons it looks like I shan't be filming here but I'm glad I got to visit before those lights were installed. It's really something else when the only lighting is provided by the faint glow of moonlight and the surrounding buildings.

ALSO

I should mention that I met someone a couple of weeks ago who claimed to have been there eight years ago and that then it was full of mannequins. Whether or not that's true, the idea is pretty sweet!

And now I've filmed fifty...

Right then, I just survived the final filming of Handful of the year!

I had to take a liberty or two, but I'm now covered for the rest of 2009. There's still some work to do for the year end special that Joe and I have been planning for....six months? But whatever man! It feels good.

Also? I know anybody could just google my name anyways...but I still find it a little creepy that I got a google alert today letting me know that this website has assembled a kind of profile on me?

EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME

I seem to be writing here less and less, which runs somewhat counter to this interesting article on the ol' "Forum/chat room problem" and how it relates to Facebook vs Twitter vs Blogs. What's funny, is I want to be writing here more and more...partly out of inspiration by the quality of this blog.

Once thing that definitely has me wanting to get back on the blog-o-horse-o is that when I used this more regularly, it was pretty much all I used. For example, when I was in London and taking some neat pictures with my digital camera then I knew there were only really two possibilities for sharing - printing a copy for my photo albums and tossing it up on el bloggo for friends and family.

But of course I eventually got into Facebook and, a whiles after that, Handful has led to my reviving the Twitter account I originally put down as quickly as I picked it up and even a brief dabbling with the utterly forgettable Dailybooth. I don't much care for feeling redundant when I want to post a link-or-picture on Facebook for pals and then the same link-or-picture on Twitter for some other friends plus Handful fans and then OH YEAH DIDN'T I USED TO DO ALL THIS ON MY DANG BLOG, WHICH I LINK TO ON THE ABOUT PAGE FOR HANDFULOFMINUTES.COM?

Also? It kind of makes me feel young again to be using this sucker as if it's a brand new toy - so apparently my threshold for nostalgia is about three years. NOW. It's tempting to be all "anyways guys, get ready for the exciting retro-nipple-clamping future past of blogging to begin....soon". But that is The Shittiest Thing with blogs and so I am going to follow up this "Oh hey I like my blog again (and apparently I have made peace with that word)" stream of gobbledefuck with something akin to what I hope to be putting up here on a semi-regular basis again!

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE/WHAT IS GOING TO BE DONE

I am often struggling with the desire between what I know is sensible & rewarding (waiting until you have done something worth talking about, then talking about it) and what is very exciting & sugar-high gratifying but also potentially unwise (talking about what I'm gonna do). If I was a perfect man then I'd stick entirely to the former...but, surprisingly, it would seem that I am not a perfect man.

So here is what is going in with me in the former:

The sci-fi project for which many glamorous folk donated money to earlier in the year has had it's series outline finished, it's pilot filmed and the first cut of the editing on that pilot also finished. Wheels continue to turn and I hope to have more to report before year's end.

Handful proceeds apace and, I'm told by some, continues to improve. "Introducing Shawn MacLean" has been generally well received. I'm wondering if it'd not be a bit much to try and do something special for the fast approaching fiftieth episode, given that I already did something special for the one year anniversary episode AND I have something diabolical planned for a year end special. Better to let it pass with quiet dignity, I think...

The feature script I started in June during my writing sabbatical has been picked up again. With 36 pages of script and a 99% finished outline, I might make my goal of finishing the sucker before year's end. What's that? I didn't write about the sabbatical at the time? Well basically, my pal Joe and I were fortunate enough to be able to borrow a cottage where we could Get Away From It All to just focus on makin' things which we were having a hell of a time makin' during out regular routines in the city.

From this was birthed the slightly-less-than-halfway written feature script, spawned by almost two years of tossing notes in a bucket labelled "try to do a new take on post-apocalyptic-film"...and many, many improvised "Introducing Shawn MacLean" audio clips. It was grand and I'd love to do it again next year.

Organization of all the crap I'm juggling has gotten better since I nabbed a beautiful beast of a magnetic dry-wipe board and stuck it on my wall. I can't believe it took me this long since University to get another organizer, given that my last one repeatedly saved my bacon while I was earning my degree. This has led to my plotting out basically everything I'm doing for the rest of the year, which produced the alarming sensation that that time had already passed.

It's an annoying choice to have to make, but given that the time is going to pass anyways...I'd rather choose to feel a bit like I'm pressing the fast-forward button on my life and have accomplishments to look back on then to kind of drag my heels and stretch out my perception of time passing but then have a very disappointing life to look back on.

Now, the latter:

Going to Russia to Wade Through the Ruins of the Soviet Empire is an idea that has seized me by the sensitive bits rather firmly over the past year. I think I may even have gotten a pair of pals interested. This is something that will take a lot of prep and probably won't happen until I'm thirty, but dangit I want an adventure and I want to do more than look at crazy old ruins on the Internet. I'd like to think that if I lived twenty years after the fall of the Roman Empire that I'd want to go crawl through that, as well.

It's something I'd definitely want to film and document, but there'd be good reason to try and work out some contacts before arriving. I don't believe that Russia is filled with nothing but starving pseudo-serfs and fat, violent mobsters...but I am also hardly under the impression that I could just show up with a bunch of AV equipment, some cash and a smile.

The Handful End of the Year Special: I can't tell you anything except that the "Introducing Shawn MacLean" bits I've started tacking on the end of episodes are, in fact, building to this. Also, if all goes according to plan, it should go up on Sunday, December 27th.

But for now: I gotta go do exciting things like laundry. I shall return (promptly)!