I read yesterday on Feministing about how Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls was told that shots of her belly had to be edited from a video of hers because she was too fat. What sexist assholes. Even if she was "fat" (click the link, watch the video, and see that she's not, anyway), no record label or employer of any kind has the right to do that. She dropped them and her fans are enraged and posting photos of all their varied bellies to a new site, and rightly so. No woman should ever tolerate such bullshit. Fuck You, Roadrunner Records!

Great politically-charged hiphop video that mentions war taxes in one verse about 2/3 of the way through. It's also a great image collage.

I finally got around to editing some video I shot at this year's All Souls Procession here in Tucson (link):

The video features many friends of Sali Eiler, who was murdered recently in Oaxaca. She was a tireless volunteer and organizer who was involved with No More Deaths here in southern Arizona and had spent many months in Oaxaca working with CIPO-RFM and women's groups there. On November 9, her friends and family came together in Tucson, had a memorial at Dry River Radical Resource Center, and participated together in the All Souls Procession. This video documents their presence in the procession and some footage of the spectacular performance spectacle after the procession. [More info about Sali and her work: http://arizona.indymedia.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=509&category_... ]

I like how it turned out and I'm glad I was able to document it.

• 08:47 looking @ VC2 pods that CurrentTV wants but i'm so disillusioned with Current. They've let me down so mny times. some1 give me a reason2care #
• 08:58 glad i finally edited latest tucson roller derby trailer tinyurl.com/5ceggc #
• 11:30 typing a long complicated email about an incident at a memorial service. sigh. #
• 14:10 oh wow what a day for listserv drama... #
• 16:58 wow. looks like Current is cancelling their collective journalism program. amazing. #
• 21:05 thinking about 67 Ramona... #

The radio show I do every week (err, I mean, that my good friend Esteban Caliente does), The Difficult Listening Hour, is still going strong. I've discovered that the shows that are pre-taped seem to be the best, probably because of various technical problems and discomforts at the Free Radio Chukshon studio. So Esteban will probably continue to pre-tape in my studio and then bring in and play the show at its air time (fridays, 4-6pm).

Every week is a different theme around which floats a cloud of songs, noises, field recordings, and often interviews and conversations - so far the show has covered noise, technology, education, bicycles, elections/voting, and more.
The 8th installment, focused on religion, just aired last week and is now archived on the site. So go have a listen.

You can even subscribe to the show as a podcast at http://freeradiochukshon.org/station/archives/2/feed.

In the last 2 or 3 weeks Greta and I have had 4 sets of houseguests. It's been kind of insane. And they have ramped up steadily in terms of how stressful they've been. First our friend Peter from Bisbee, then Greta's friend from Prescott and her friend. Then our photographer friend from Germany. And now, for the past 5 days, 3 bicycle pornographers from Oregon.

I like having guests but it's hard to stay focused and to get work done and to stay sane when our small home is so disrupted over and over. Especially because as a filmmaker I have a lot of requirements in terms of equipment and space and concentration, especially when I'm editing. Hopefully things are going to turn around by tomorrow.

Meanwhile I'm still psyched about my experience last week working on Video The Vote on election day including footage of a little episode with an off-duty Border Patrol agent that evening. And of course I'm psyched about how the election went. It's interesting that now everyone and their brother, especially in the progressive non-profit world, is speculating about what Obama will mean for their work, and they're sharing that speculation with all their mailing lists. I've never seen such a heady atmosphere of anticipation. It seems anticlimactic with over 2 months to go before he's actually president.

• 06:27 big day today. polls already opened here at 6, half an hour ago. the sun is just starting to rise. #vtv #
• 06:34 need to finish getting ready, charging batteries, breakfast, and then meet rest of crew in half an hour or so. then it's out to film. #vtv #
• 09:24 Saw 2 guys w guns frm az state attny ofc hanging out @ s. Tucson pollng place. #Vtv - got footage. #
• 11:06 back at studio taking a break & catching up on news. looks like my last from phone tweet didn't make it. it's quiet in tucson. #vtv #
• 12:23 Couple of friends said lines were long wher thy votd right at opening but now no lines. #vtv #tucson #
• 12:48 ok this is weird. txt tweets are coming in way slow. #
• 12:48 back in studio to upload footage from 2 polling places in south tucson. #vtv #tucson #
• 13:05 Just checkd @ Grijalva?s hq and they say no reports of prblms - all quiet in tucson! #
• 13:24 messing with Compressor to get it to compress video the way Video The Vote wants it. #vtv #
• 13:52 watching mary capturing footage she and francesca shot of a polling place (church) with a yes on 102 sign on their main sign. #vtv #tucson #
• 16:55 taking a break and waiting for more reports of poll place troubles. things have been pretty quiet this afternoon. #tvt #tucson #
• 17:06 mccain "holding out from the bunker" acccording to CBS pundit just now. is that a reference to Hitler? #
• 17:12 only 11% of kentucky results in and they're already calling it mccain's? wtf? #
• 17:18 amazed at the blurring of the line between prediction and fact on TV coverage of the election. especially with onscreen graphics. #
• 17:23 looks like we're getting another video the vote assignment from our dispatcher... #vtv #tucson #
• 17:25 Retweet: #jennyholzer POLITICS IS USED FOR PERSONAL GAIN #
• 17:26 border patrol parked outside polling place on tangerine road! we're going out to get footage!! #vtv #tucson #immigration #intimidation #
• 18:14 I guess tucson not as quiet as we thot. Heading out 2 3 dif trouble sites! #Vtv #tucson #

For the first time in my life I'm proud of my country.

• 09:36 my damn powerbook ac adapter is fried... #
• 10:48 whew. managed to locate a spare power adapter from friends.. #
• 18:22 reading email instructions from Video The Vote. #
• 18:48 #vtv lots of people and orgs seem to be planning to depend on twitter tomorrow. wondering how many times we'll see the fail whale... #

So I've lately been following this great blog/portal site called The Workbook Project. It's all about DIY filmmaking and actually mostly about DIY distribution and marketing of films, going around the middlemen of big distributors, festivals, etc. It's great. But today an entry came up that rubbed me the wrong way. It's about these 6 men (boys?) who are all filmmakers, made 4 films under some indie "company" or group called "New Breed" I guess, and now are on a tour around the country in a van, screening their films.

Ok, great. That's cool. But they're video-blogging the trip and the first video is kind of stupid. First of all it introduces it as "6 dudes and 4 films in a van" or something like that, and nowhere in this video does it talk about what the films are about. Instead it's full of dumb little "dude" moments where they're standing outside of the van cracking dumb jokes and making fun of each other about totally irrelevant shit. Is that supposed to make me want to go see these films? Why?

Interestingly enough, a glance at their tour schedule reveals that they were already in Tucson for a few days last week, but I never heard about the screenings nor do any of the film titles ring a bell at all. I probably saw them listed in the Loft's calendar and had no interest in them at all. Maybe they're trying to cover up the fact that these are mediocre films by surrounding them with ridiculous buzz. But c'mon, this is just the kind of buzz that would drive me screaming in the opposite direction from wherever these "dudes" are heading. If they wanted me to learn, or re-learn once again, that most males, even most indie filmmaker males, are obnoxious dorks who spend most of their time just trying to prove how cool they are, well, they've succeeded, but that's about all I've learned from their vlog so far.

It just disappoints me given the level of material usually posted on The Workbook Project.