Thursday I flew back to Portland (and here's an interesting statistic: the pilot on one plane announced that we were expending fuel at the rate of $30 per minute!). It's pretty strange, a sort of culture shock thing, to be back in the thick of things happening and seeing friends, after having been isolated in rural Iowa for 2 months. But I'm happy to be back. It's also great to be biking again - I had not been on a bike since late February, in Austin during the Indyconference! You might think 'so what'? but when I'm in Portland I am biking somewhere pretty much every single day.

Last night I even went on this month's Midnight Mystery Ride. Usually I can't stay up that late, and the starting point is incoveniently far, but this time it was just a few blocks away, and my biological clock has shifted slightly forward.
We ended up by the Columbia Slough.

I'm staying, for now, in northeast at the house of Laurel, Seamus, Matt, and Kristin. They make their own beer, and have chickens and a hops trellis.

I just uploaded to Flickr a few photos from the last few days, including a couple from the mystery ride last night.

A San Antonio TV station published a story about how there are a few different films, dramas, being produced about the Juarez situation. It's really quite incredible when something you've been following, a story so underreported in the media, suddenly seems to have piqued the interest of Hollywood.

I suppose a bright side is that when there's more than one movie coming out into the public eye it will signal to viewers that the situation is real. The fact that there are all these movies about the same thing will make people think, "hmm, it can't be a coincidence, this must be a real problem."

The thing I always wonder, though, even with documentaries, and even those that get huge exposure, like Michael Moore's work, is how much they actually influence anyone to do anything? Of course the reason I do what I do, that I'm involved with videoactivism at all, is that I definitely do think exposing more people to facts about things going on like this DO make a difference. I'm just not sure exactly how much of a difference.

Well, I am really close to being done with the Juarez documentary, but I think it's just not going to possible, or even advisable, to finish it, or even call it finished, by the time I head back to Portland this Thursday. I think tommorrow is going to basically be the last day I can work on it, and then I have to relax a little, then prepare to travel back to Portland.

I still don't quite have all the spanish bits translated. Very close, though, actually only 3 clips that I really need help with. It's been so amazing and gratifying to receive all the help that I did, something like 8 people pitched in, and some of them completely out of the blue. It's a great example of the power of the internet for collaboration, as well as tools like Backpack (though Backpack isn't quite perfect for the job, but it did help, and it was easier than setting up my own wiki or something).

As I work on final touches, like the intro sequence, I've been wracking my brains for a better title, a final title. The working title for the last 4 months was "The Multi-layered Enemy: femicides in Juarez." Now I guess I've decided, for now at least, to go with "On the Edge: The femicide in Ciudad Ju&aacuterez." I'm not super super excited about it, but I like it all right. What do you think about it? Got a better idea? Let me know in a comment. What I like about "On the Edge" is that the metaphor of "edge" works in a lot of ways, the border, the economics, the violence, but also the hope for improvement as we see more and more activism around this issue. So, it works, but I am definitely open to other suggestions.

My other problem is the film is still just a little too long. I would so love it to be 57 minutes, but it's 64. That's one reason I need to wait and really finish it back in Portland, because I need some other people to give me advice on what can be cut so I can get it down to that 58 or 57 minute mark. Why that lenght, you ask? Because I want to get it on television. I want this to be seen by as many people as possible, and fitting it into an hour broadcast television slot is one way to do that.

In his blog Jim Shultz describes the man who is ahead in the polls for Bolivia's December 4 presidential election. A disturbing excerpt:

More troubling, during his brief year as President (Banzer resigned in 2001 with fatal cancer) the young Texan-Bolivian outdid his mentor in a chilling category

So, I had noticed Current TV online last week but I wasn't chomping at the bit for it to launch. I've been too busy to pay attention to when new cable channels are firing up. But then last night I was taking a break and briefly channel surfing and saw Current TV right there on the channel guide for Direct TV. So I checked it out.

It's an interesting experiment. The basic idea is: short videos submitted by anyone. This concept is a double-edged sword. They call these shorts "pods." Possibly the coolest thing is the progress bar in the lower left corner, so if you don't like something, you can tell how long you have to wait before it's over.

There is an almost bewildering variety of "pods," from weird fluff pieces to heavy investigative reporting. (examples: There's one 2-part piece about suicide in Japan that's really great. There's a disturbing quick look at an African model bragging about her ass. There's a boring pod about how to buy real estate.) They divide things into categories and show pods from each category on a regular rotation, but they don't have a lot of content so there's a lot of repetition. All this is punctuated by young cute hosts and hostesses who say dorky things about each piece and stand there looking cute and dorky, in varying proportions of the 2.

I'm not sure what to think yet. There's a lot of other blogging about it going on, including one blogger that basically described the whole first day at the Broadcast and Cable blog. It will be interested to see how things develop. One observation and suggestion I would make is this: despite the variety of subject matter, all the pods seem to have a really similar narrative voice and videography style and production value. It's almost like all the producers went to the same film school at the same time, or something. I wonder if a lot of these first pods were produced in-house, or maybe they "finish" submissions with their own graphics and color correcting and stuff so everything looks the same. But that seems to defeat the purpose... If Current wants to be about everyone sending in stuff, about the multiplicity of media creators out there, then production values should reflect that variety. It shouldn't all look so slick and isotropic. However, maybe as they get more submissions their content will start to be more varied in look and form.

Last night I saw an M&Ms commercial on TV that used a song by the Postal Service. It wasn't the original recording, it was someone else performing it, in a slower, dreamier style, but the words were definitely Ben Gibbard's, the song about the freckles on our faces being aligned when we kiss, etc. All accompanied by those cartoon M&M guys floating around in kaliedescopic, mandalic patterns. Ugh. I groaned and yelled "NOOOO!" when I saw that. How disappointing. I've seen a lot of musicians sell out like this but none ever that I was this fond of.

Suspira.

I heard on NPR last night that the Surgeon General says that 30% of troops returning from Iraq have some sort of mental problems as a result of their experiences there. I'm sure that's an understated figure, but it's amazing the White House let that be said at all. Anyway, even if it's only 30% that's a staggering figure. The speculation that went along with this number was that it might be one reason why the administration is starting to shift its direction toward an exit strategy out of Iraq.

My favorite mixed drink is the Mojito. A friend just emailed me asking for a reminder on certain details of the construction of a Mojito, and after answering her, I realized I should share this knowledge and more with the world here.

The Mojito is a hot weather drink, originating in Cuba, so it is prime mojito season right now, and hence the urgency of writing this blog entry, although here in Iowa for the last week it's been unusually cool, not the kind of heat where you have a desperate yearning for a mojito, like July and August usually provide.

Relatives of the Mojito include the brazilian Caipirinha and the mint julep from the Southern U.S. (In fact, I once committed the embarrassing faux pas of telling the parents of a cuban friend that the mojito is like a cuban version of a mint julep). All these drinks have the same goal of beating the heat but accomplish them according to local culture and with local ingredients, whether it be cachaca, whiskey, or rum. (speaking of Cuba, I just heard an interesting historical factoid on the radio: back in the late 60s, early 70s, there was NO security on U.S. airlines. you could bring a gun on board, whatever. There were so many hijackings of planes to Cuba that the Cuban government started cashing in on it - they started giving Cuban sandwhiches to the hungry passengers who'd made an unexpected trip to Havana. Then they'd send a bill to the U.S. State Department for $30 per sandwhich. The U.S. didn't start increasing security till some hijackers almost flew a plane into the Oak Ridge nuclear facility in 1972.)

I discovered the mojito accidentally in 1999 or 2000, hanging out with the video artists known as Animal Charm. They were visiting from Chicago and I was showing them a good time at one of my favorite neighborhood bars in San Francisco called The Skylark (16th and Valencia, the Mission), Suddenly a woman behind me put her hand on my shoulder and said, hey how's it going, you gotta have Pete make you his special. I turned around and didn't recognize this person, and she realized she'd made a mistake and had thought I was someone else, but by this time we were curious what Pete's special was. Pete was the bartender, and it turned out his special was the mojito. We were in love with it immediately and were so enthusiastic that Pete gave us his recipe, and even drew a little diagram on a napkin. (I scanned in the napkin years ago but I don't have the file handy, sadly.)

Anyway, that was the beginning of my apprenticeship and then mastery of the mojito. Since then the drink got really trendy, then a little less trendy. Most bars don't make them right if they make them at all, and charge too much, and the reason for all of this is that the mojito is very labor intensive to make. In fact Pete that night at the Skylark told us that after 9 he won't even make them because it's too busy and it takes too long. That's the sign of a true mojito purist. Rather than make a sloppy, substandard mojito, he just refuses to do it when he doesn't have the time. At the Skylark, a mojito is worth $5, but at most other places it is not. It's better and more fun to makek them yourself.

Now for the last few years my reputation amongst friends regarding the mojito has been such that at a party I'm usually cajoled into the kitchen to make them until the ingredients are exhausted. I enjoy it, usually, mostly because it's fun to show people how to make them, and people typically gather around watching and asking questions.

And I'm still learning. The thing i recently realized about the mojito with my newly increased spanish skills is that its name means "little wet one." i think that's cool.

Anyway, finally, on to the recipe:
1. squeeze 4 lime quarters into a pint glass. leave 2 of the quarters in. add mint.
2. muddle (mash up with a blunt instrument, preferably a muddler)
   It's important to muddle thoroughly. the idea is to bring out the oils from the lime rinds and mint leaves.

3. add simple syrup (see below) and light rum (2 shots for a pint glass)
4. fill with ice
5. top off with soda water
6. shake, preferably with cocktail shaker cupped over the glass, or if you don't have one, just by pouring back and forth between glass and another container.

Now simple syrup (don't buy it, it's easy to make, but you have to take time before hand) is just a supersaturated sugar solution. to make it i kind of just eyeball it. i take about 2 or 3 cups
of water, boil it and then start adding powdered sugar, a few spoonfulls at a time, stirring. just keep adding until you can't disolve any more into the water, till it starts taking a long time for the sugar to dissolve. then, let it heat lightly a maybe 10 more minutes, or more, if you want to make it more concentrated you can boil off more water. then put it in a squeeze bottle or whatever and refrigerate. preferably you want to refigerate it till it's chilled as far
as it'll get, like overnight, but if you're in a hurry, you can use it after a few hours, whatever. the thing about this recipe for simple syrup is it's going to be variable strength, so the first mojito you make with that batch of simple syrup will be an experiment where you figure outhow much of the solution you use to mamke it sweet enough. i like mojitos that are not too sweet, but sweet enough to just exactly balance the tartness of the limes and barely cover the
taste of the rum. it shouldnt be like drinking a mountain dew or something.

Or if you're in a real hurry and you want a substandard mojito, skip all that and just mix powdered sugar right into the drink, but it'll be hard to dissolve it. Once when some friends and I were toiling away over editing a video one hot summer, we were slugging down lots of mojitos and ran out of simple syrup, and then out of sugar, and we tried using honey. This is not advised! Using honey means risking the dreaded "honey clumps" as honey has even more of a problem than sugar dissolving into ice cold liquid.

Oh, and how much mint? well, i usually put 3 or 4 large leaves, more if they're smaller leaves. And the fresher the mint, the better. Grow some in your back yard, it's easy.

Well, there you have it, everything you need to know about the Mojito. Enjoy!

Well, the film is really coming along. Translations are slowly trickling in from various people helping out, thankfully, though there are still several clips left to do. Now I'm busy making subtitles from the translations I do have, and as I go, tightening up the editing. Hopefully I can still reduce the total length, but I've decided not to be so worried about that anymore. It's about 72 minutes, and I wanted it to be more like 57, but we'll just have to see. I thought it might be interesting to list here the different sections of the doc, not neccesarily in order:

Participatroy Culture's video publishing software, Broadcast Machine is a free and open source content management system that handles publishing of video content and even acts as an automated bittorrent seeder. Pretty cool. I've been looking for something like this. ibiblio also has something called Osprey that is simliar, it looks like.

There's a lot of exciting "participatory" or "independent" web video projects sprouting up all over. Blogging was a first wave, then the podcasting wave, and that seems to have touched off a still-embryonic video casting/bloggin phenomenon. The interesting and scary thing is that the power of Hollywood and television is so great that some of these internet video sharing ventures are hybrid or not so hybrid tv networks, and some are closer to traditional distribution and business models than others. It's a weird time where it's hard to tell what will happen.

Will "vcasting" make television irrelevant? Or will the television industry taint vcasting? hard to say, but it reminds me of when I worked for ZDTV during it's launch (later TechTV, and now I think it's called G4?) - I and some other idealistic employees thought it would make TV more like the Web, but it ended up helping to make the Web more like TV. Disillusioned again.