Lone Locust Productions

Some 15 years ago we used to have a little thing called “Public Access TV”, now largely defunct.

For those not familiar with the concept, Public Access was supposed to be a way that local community members could use the medium of television to reach out to their community. In one of the brighter, more lucid moments of government regulation, someone figured out that television vastly shapes and informs the opinions of the public. They also realized that television was a medium that requires large sums of money to participate in.

The mechanism was that, as a city granted a monopoly contract to a cable TV contractor to come build out the infrastructure, they were were required to maintain a channel that any citizen could air video on, without censorship (within certain generally loose restrictions: No pornography as defined by community standards, no sales, no gambling and no solicitations for money.)

Further, the cable companies were required to supply equipment and studio space for these programs to be produced.

This all seems quaint in this age of internet video, dirt-cheap camcorders and home computers with sufficient power to do video editing, but back then, this was a significant investment.

I always thought it was a grand idea. There was just one flaw. As with so many other grand ideas, the people fail to live up to them. What had been conceived as an outlet for artistic express and community-building became a wallowing ground for crackpots, fringe radicals, churches (big ones trying to skit the no solicitations for money rules and little ones trying to build their flock) and teenagers (and post-adolescent wannabe teenagers) who thought it was cool (and/or funny) to swear on TV.

After watching enough Public Access, one day I just had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s perfectly acceptable to gripe about things, but eventually you have to put your money where you mouth is and do something about it. For me, Fusion Patrol was that something.

One day, while watching a show on Public Access, hoping against futile hope that the program, which was a bunch of teenagers standing around reciting Metallica lyrics (although you couldn’t tell because the sound was inaudible) would actually do something, I snapped. I could stand the crap no more and Fusion Patrol was born.

Over the course of a several years, a band of intrepid volunteers and I put on a TV show. Honestly, it sucked. Well, OK, it started of technically sucky, but with time and practice and a desire to improve which seemed lacking in the other Public Access producers, the show got better. Technically better, anyway. You either like the content or you don’t. Although, one of the proudest moments in my stint at Fusion Patrol is when one of the popular local morning radio DJ teams saw the show and talked about it on the air. They called us a “…local, Pythonesque comedy troupe.”

How cool is that?! Compared to Monty Python! And not even in a negative way! (Admittedly, they did, by coincidence, happen to see our most Pythonesque episode and even still we’re not a patch on the Pythons’ collective asses.)

With the program getting better (again, I stress, technically better) it took more and more time to produce, and as each of us progressed in our lives, we had less and less time to devote to the production. Fusion Patrol died not in fire, but with a whimper of missed deadlines and conflicting priorities.

Nowadays, I see the YouTube phenomena as the ultimate liberation of television from the hands of the vested corporate interests. Web video has finally created the environment that Public Access dreamed of creating.

…and yet, when I look at YouTube videos, more often than not, I get that same feeling I had watching those damn teenagers all those years ago.

I shall produce more Fusion Patrol.

Of the original crew of ten, two are dead, two are missing without trace, one has not been available and three others have been added, making the “new” Fusion Patrol a team of eight.

Keep watching this spot. We’re in pre-production meetings now. I’m working on revamping the Fusion Patrol Website soon to accommodate video podcasting and hopefully soon I’ll have more information and details about the production.

A lot has been said about the problem with illegal immigrants coming up from Mexico and there’s a lot of mindless polemic on both sides, which I shall not address here.

If you live somewhere like Phoenix where the numbers of immigrants (both legal and illegal) is high, you may have noticed that the recent economic downturn, combined with tougher enforcement seems to have turned parts of town into virtual ghost towns.

But I want to talk about how this inconveniences me.

I went to Kentucky Fried Chicken today and, for the first time in ages, everybody working there appeared to be… um… ethnically and linguistically of a background which would commonly be considered European-descended caucasion US citizens.

The problem is, now that the Mexicans are gone, they’ve had to hire the moron population to take their jobs.

It took 19 minutes to fill our order, of which they had plenty ready food on hand.

It took one of the staffers a full minute to put 2 pieces of chicken and 2 scoups of macaroni on a plate.

We’re all going to starve!

Yes… I think that is fair to say.

I suppose enough time has passed and the story is funny enough - once I could distance myself from the pain - that I should at least blog it as a warning to my future self.

It may not have escaped regular readers of the blog’s attention that I like a lot of things about Taiwan but the standard of cleanliness in food handling leaves quite a lot to be desired… And that standard, to some degree, is continued when they come to this country and open restaurants.

As a side note, my Japanese teacher once commented about the California law that requires restaurants to prominently display their “letter grade” health department rating on the door.

She commented on it because, if you visit California you could be forgiven for thinking “C” stood for Chinese.

Anyway, I’m a little fastidious about food handling and always wary of Chinese food both here and abroad.

Last weekend, the local Taiwanese association held a mid-autumn festival gathering in South Mountain park. It’s still quite warm and prepared food, in the form of bien dan (boxed meal) was being served from a local restaurant that I know to “authentically Taiwanese”.

Rather than risk it, I opted instead to pick up a sandwich at Fresh & Easy on the way.

I alone got salmonella poisoning that night.

I lost 9 lbs. in 24 hours. I was completely incapacitated for 2 days and under-the-weather, at best, for 3 more. It’s only today that I feel “normal” again.

Fresh & Easy’s “fresh” sandwiches are now firmly removed from my menu.

…for the Center For Inquiry, and may I just say these are the people who put out Skeptical Inquirer magazines, one of my favorite reads.

OK, so the theme from Daniel Craig’s first Bond film wasn’t the most memorable Bond film of all time, but it had the habit of growing on you a bit. Quantum of Solace’s theme song was debuted on the BBC yesterday and I can only hope they follow the trend started in the last film of not including the theme song on the soundtrack album.

Either that or change their minds and run silence over the opening credits.

Hear it here

Yesterday, on the 9th anniversary of the moon being blasted out of Earth’s orbit, we celebrated by attending Walking with Dinosaurs, the Live Experience.

This is a multi-million dollar extravaganza (the production, not - quite - the ticket price) to bring life-sized dinosaurs from the Walking with Dinosaurs series to life, on stage.

No matter how many books you read, the scale of these creatures is difficult to imagine. Even the fossilized bones and reconstructions in natural history museums don’t fully convey their scale because they are hollow frameworks.

And so I’ve been eagerly anticipating this show since I first heard of it.

It didn’t disappoint.

Seeing a full-sized brachiasaur walk onto stage is humbling. That we were 14 rows back in a steep sports arena and that it’s head still towered over us really drive home how magnificent these beasts must have been.

Of course the technology could not completely make these “real”. The monstrous beasts were supported on sled-like mechansms that allowed them to be driven without interfereing with the simulated motion of the legs.

The smaller, more agile creatures were performers in suits. This presents an interesting problem as human legs articulate in a reverse fashion from theropod dinosaurs.

Clearly this was a stage production, but an impressive one.

I even shed a tear when the tyrannosaur family was wiped out by the commet.

Driving south on 19th Ave today, I saw this amusing situation. I wasn’t in a position to take a picture except through my mirror as I reached the first stop light. What you can kind of see in the blow up is that the white car has managed to beach itself on the curb that prevents you from driving onto the train tracks. The curb is so high that the car’s tires cannot reach the ground.

It’s a little fun to try to figure out how he managed this stunt. If you look in the main photo, you’ll see on the left the where it is painted yellow. This is the nearest point where it would have been low enough for this guy to get over it. My guess is that he attempted to drive with one wheel on the curb and failed. Otherwise, I’d think his wheels would be showing damage. If he did that, he made about 50 feet before stranding himself.

Seems little likelihood that there’s any way he could be in this predicament without a certain modicum of stupidity being involved.

Once again, the comedy duo of Gates and Seinfeld are at it again.

This time, the explain what the commercial is about and the message isn’t good: “Connecting” with people is like an awkward pairing of dysfunctional people trying to live together, which ends with Gates and Seinfeld being kicked out of the house.

Yep, “dysfunctional”, that’s a word we use a lot to describe Microsoft software!

Let’s just pick on a couple things: Gates and Seinfeld are terrible guests (complaining about food, etc) and crooks (essentially stealing the Chinese food rather than paying for it. Who’d be dumb enough to try a dine-and-dash with delivery food? Bill and Jerry. Ace criminals.)

And I love the bit where Bill apparently gives them some fantastic program and reveals that it’s never going to be released. Does that sum up Microsoft, too? No, because I don’t believe they really have any great software in the wings, but it does speak to their business philosophy, doesn’t it? Whatever it is about it is not about quality software.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s “Imagine No Religion” billboards have gone up in a few places around the Phoenix. One of them is near Indian School and 23rd Street - which I happen to drive past each and every day - and had never seen it. My friend, John, and I were even in the area a couple times for lunch and didn’t see it.

We saw every other billboard in the area, but not that one. We were beginning to suspect that the whole controversy was a clever ploy to get atheists to pay more attention to billboard advertising.

Finally, however, this week we went searching until we found it. (See John here doing his very best Jimmy Olsen imitation with the camera.)

This morning, quite by accident on my way back from a meeting down at the State Capital, I passed another on 19th Ave, near the I-10.

When you’re looking for one, you can’t find one. When you don’t need one, they’re everywhere.