'The Ring' mirror prop

When I'm not driving cross-country to pick up obscure organs or working in the corporate machine, one side hobby I have is collecting movie props. 'The Ring' was a 2002 remake of the Japanese mystery/horror movie 'Ringu'. The gist of the story is that watching a certain video tape will cause you to expire seven days later; the video is watched in the beginning, and the rest of the movie is spent unraveling its meaning (and unfortunately some of the viewers' interest). Anyway, the tape is still the stuff of nightmares and can be found all over the internet.

One of the creepier / more memorable images in the video is the reflection of a woman (who is nowhere to be seen) brushing her hair in an oval-shaped wall mirror. This mirror is seen several times throughout the movie (incl. when the real mirror is discovered), and is sort of a main symbol for the spooky goings-on in 'The Ring'.

After the movie was released, many of the screen-used props were auctioned off on eBay. At the time I decided I would bid on the mirror, since it was creepy and I needed a mirror in the bathroom anyway. Alas, the cheapskate in me took over and I backed out of the bidding once it hit a few hundred bucks. I got a second chance when someone (presumably the guy who won it the first time) decided to auction the mirror again. This time I won it, and it hung in my bathroom for several years (much hair was brushed in that mirror with horrific results).

The picture above is the mirror as it hangs on the gameroom wall today. Below are a couple screen captures from the movie for comparison (note: since I don't have a special effects crew to edit me out, I had to take the picture from the side .. so that's why it looks slightly narrower than the screencaps):


One final note - I think there were two mirrors auctioned off originally. Not sure where each one was used (hero and backup?), but they did some work to make the mirror look old and creepy (e.g. "aging" the silver around the perimeter behind the glass). At one point I compared some of the characteristics of my mirror with the screencaps and they all seemed to match (incl. the silver patterns, which I presumed would be somewhat unique). So I believe mine is atleast the mirror in the second screencap, and possibly even in both.

Anyone out there have the second mirror and some more details?

Crawfish boil '07

One of the joys of living in the South (besides our outrageous accent) is eating pound after pound of crawfish when spring rolls around. For lazy Thibadeauxs, this is usually achieved by going to crawfish festivals or dropping by one of the many local cajun restaurants. But in an effort to christen the new house, we decided to do a good old-fashioned boil on the back porch (also doubling as a bribe to get weekend visitors).

To start things off, we took the appropriate first step of going to Chuy's for chips and creamy jalapeno dip. We then dropped by Quality Seafood and picked up a ~20 lb sack of live crawfish and a few boxes of Zatarain's seafood boil seasoning. Final stop was at the grocery store for salt, potatoes, corn cobs, onions, lemons, garlic, and whatever else we wanted to throw in .

Once we get home, the crawfish are put in a salt-water bath to purge them of "mud" (you don't want to know why those quotes are there). At the same time, the chefs begin slicing up everything while the cooker gets a rolling boil of water going. When the boil is ready, everything is dumped in with the seasoning bags and allowed to stew for awhile (note: a brief euphoria can be had by cracking the lid to smell this boiling mixture). Here are a few pics of the tormented crawfish and the chefs at work:


Much like the rest of the country, our beagles are wondering what the heck we are up to:


After the goodies have boiled for a little while, the crawfish are ready to take their turn. Here they are going in, coming out, and getting seasoned:


At this point we got completely swarmed by flies (they apparently have good taste, despite the whole fecal fetish). We tried a few tricks to get rid of them, including the hanging water bag, with minimal success. After a couple hours we had demolished most of the crawfish, diverting some portion of the flies to our trash box. To wrap things up, we peeled and saved a couple pounds of leftovers and had them later that night in poboys and etouffee (with sides of hush puppies and fried garlic).

Lie-La-Lie .. POW!

There comes a time in one's life when you start asking the questions that really matter - like how did they do that giant gunshot of a drum fill on "The Boxer"? Hal Blaine, session drum player for everything under the sun back then (and part of Phil Spector's "Wrecking Crew"), answers this in a Spectropop interview:

"Roy Halee would walk around clapping his hands looking for kind of an echo effect. And we were at Columbia in New York on the sixth floor I believe it was, and from the studio you kind of walked out and down and it went around almost like a ramp to the elevator. And he found a spot right in front of the elevator that had a tremendous echo and he loved it! This was a Sunday and we were doing 'The Boxer' and they had me set up... I set up two giant tom-toms right in front of the elevator where Ray had found the great echo. And of course there was a line coming out for my headset, so I was obviously the only one who could hear the music... (singing) lie la lie POW! lie la lie la lie la lie lie la lie POW! And at one point my hands came down to hit that smack and the elevator door opened and there was an elderly gentleman in a security guard uniform. And I guess he thought that he just got shot! It was like a shotgun, POW!"

Here are a couple similar stories about their improvised percussion sounds:

"We were mostly doing live tracks, maybe overdub a few things, and then put vocals on. But we'd experiment, too. Like on “Summer in the City” that explosion is from putting a mic in a garbage can that we had in the studio and banging it." - Roy Halee interview

This is presumably the faux-snare crash at the beginning of the song.

"That was just a matter of percussion sounds, coming up with different sounds. I remember playing my snow tire chains on "Bridge Over Troubled Water."" - Hal Blaine interview

It remains to be seen how one plays drums with snow tire chains, but other interviews describe them being beaten onto the floor of a storage closet. In any case, the result comes in towards the end of the song, and sounds like cannon fire.

The Jamerson Bass Rig

James Jamerson was the session acoustic/electric bass player for most of the Motown hits during their peak years. He started out primarily an upright bass player, but eventually switched to a 1962 Fender Precision bass (dubbed "The Funk Machine"). This was played sometimes into an Ampeg B-15N Portaflex amp, and other times directly into the mixer. Regardless of the instrument, his technique was pretty much always the same - index finger only ("The Hook"). Give this a try next time you're air bassing to "I Was Made to Love Her" or "Reach Out"; after you fail miserably, go rent a copy of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" to learn more about James and the Funk Brothers.

Being a fan of Motown, a gearhog, and a bass player, it was just a matter of time before I acquired the same rig for myself. Here's a pic of my Ampeg B-15N and '62 reissue Precision bass:

The original basses came with a foamy strip that adhered under the bridge plate to prevent excessive ringing/sustain. This is probably the most important thing you can do if you want the Jamerson sound; I just cut a piece off my Sobakawa foam pillow and stuffed it under the plate. After this, adjust the amp to minimal treble, trim your nails to the quick (gross but worth it), put on flatwound strings, and be in awe with your new 60s/70s bass sound*.

* This assumes you're not going for the west coast / Carol Kaye bass sound, which requires a pick and funny eyeglasses.

Noodling on the Roland CR-78

A few years back I got into another analog synth/drum machine phase and decided to pick up a CR-78. This is a drum machine released by Roland in 1978 with all analog voices (read: perfect recipe for cheese). A more thorough description can be found at the Wikipedia article here.

Surprisingly, a number of late 70s / early 80s artists made use of the CR-78. The main survivor of these is Phil Collins with "In the Air Tonight" (also featuring smooth Prophet 5 synth pads and those gated reverb drums at the climax). Hall and Oates had a few hits using the CR-78 as well, like "Kiss On My List" (for some reason they decided this would make a great opener for the song before the real drums enter .. I guess that works in 80s rationale).

In an effort to start using this roomful of gear I've collected, I uploaded a video of me noodling around on the CR-78 (note to self: shell out the bucks for a camcorder interface cable). This includes a brief tour of the rhythms, automatic fills, voice cancelling, etc; as well as programming up the rhythms for the songs mentioned above. In case anyone's interested (yeah right!), "In the Air Tonight" uses the "Disco-2" (A) rhythm with snare cancelled out; "Kiss On My List" uses "Rock-1" (A) with automatic fill 7.



If you listen to the original version of "In the Air Tonight", the bass drum is doing its own thing on every other repeat. You can select multiple rhythms at once on the CR-78, but I haven't found any permutation that gives this bass drum pattern. The only way I could replicate this (and maybe it's the way Phil did it as well) was to program a custom bass drum rhythm and have this play on top of the preset rhythm. This is clearly an important matter that warrants further investigation ..

Update: I decided to splurge for a $7.99 Firewire cable so I could re-record this video in a little higher quality. Who can argue with high quality analog Bossa Nova beats?

Garage epoxy paint

In our old house I had wanted to put down epoxy flooring in the garage for awhile. My '66 Beetle likes to mark its territory (as they all do), so we were getting a good oil spot collection going. Epoxy also looks more inviting, thus encouraging you to waste time in the garage instead of other rooms. Alas, this is a difficult task when you have a garage full of crap and nowhere to stash it for a couple weeks. So once we decided to move to Round Rock, we made sure to do this before moving said crap over.

Once I priced professional epoxy jobs (and picked my jaw up off the floor), the cheapskate in me decided we would use the do-it-yourself Rustoleum epoxy kits instead. It was clear after reading misc garage forums (note: the Latin language is rolling in its grave) that the most important step in this job is the preparation. So we decided to do the following as part of our preparation:

• Initial cleaning with stiff broom and gas blower
• Use crack filler on a few minor spots
• Scrape off old paint and other crud
  
• Power wash with concrete detergent
• Acid wash, scrub, squeegee
• Let concrete air dry for a week (naturally it was raining and super humid at this point .. you should only need a few days)
  
• Final cleaning with stiff broom

This picture shows the garage after all this had been completed (fyi - shelling out for the rubber boots was a great ROI). Each kit can handle around 250 sq ft, so we picked up three kits for our 700 sq ft garage. Per normal painting conventions, we mixed the three base cans together to avoid color mismatches.

After mixing the first kit thoroughly, Kelly began doing the actual painting whilst I took on the more difficult task of spreading the chips. Besides nerding out and dividing up the chips in equal parts, I just imitated the old lady from the instructional tape. In hindsight I've decided the old lady's technique is a sham, and that spreading the chips evenly is impossible (BTW - Kelly nerded out as well by marking off the entire garage in 4' x 4' sections).

Here are a few pics of our work along the way:

Overall this turned out well and was an inexpensive ($250 vs $3000) way to get a floor that looks nice and cleans easily. Four months later, we haven't had any issues with tire peeling or streaking. The only complaint so far is with the color chips. Besides almost running out at the end, they didn't all stick well to the paint. So for awhile after application, your feet and driveway are covered with chips that have blown off. In any case, it's still better than having plain concrete.

Signing on

Hello world! This post represents my first foray into blogging. The whole idea of using a blog to post my personal thoughts and feelings still seems a little silly (esp. considering the possbility that no one may even read this). So instead I'm planning to focus on things I find interesting, such as ..

• Music - How to use grandma's Lowrey organ to play "Baba O'Riley" and "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"
• Clothes - Mostly limited to discussions about the decline of monocles, and at what station in life one should begin wearing vests
• Electronics - Nothing comes between a girl and her multivibrator circuit
  
• Food - Jambalaya, crawfish pie, and a file gumbo

To start things off, here is a pic of our QA inspectors at the last crawfish boil: