Wal-Mart? SRSLY?

I still peruse my stats every day, just to see what postings are being hit and what search terms are leading people here.

Today, I saw my all-time favorite search term that led someone to this blog:

"play boys de wal mart"

Now, in reality, I'm sure they're looking for the Playboy "Women of WalMart" video from 2004.  But this image to the right from the "People of WalMart" website is what the phrase conjures up in my mind.  Or worse, something like this one.

Oh, dear.  Now that I've used the words, "Women of WalMart" in this posting, I'm sure that I'll now start getting hits for people searching that term.....

Heavens forbid that I should ever put onto this blog some phrase like "naked street people."  (Real search terms have come close to this -- today, I got a hit from someone searching on the term, "naked street guys.")

A few shots from New York

While I'm on the subject of Flickr and stuff, here are my favorite photos that I took in New York (between June 11 and June 16).  Taken with my little pocket Nikon point-'n'-shoot and my iPhone.  

Too bad the Bethesda fountain was being cleaned that day.  And too bad the cellist was out of tune, too.

Before you click on either of the last two pictures, you should know that they are actually large-ish files.  They're panoramas spliced together from several separate photos.

Flickr quirk

This has happened to me several times. 

Today was the AIDS Walk 2010 in Golden Gate Park. As has happened for at least ten years if not fifteen, the band played at Checkpoint 1 (the first stop for walkers to get water, food and bathroom breaks).  Our director refers to it as a reverse parade -- we sit on the sidelines and play music while people walk past us.

I took a handful of photos, which I uploaded to Flickr this evening.

Before all 12 photos were finished uploading, one photo had been viewed twice, and another had been viewed once by someone who commented, "Nice image."

This has happened several times, as I said.  When I uploaded some camera toss photos, someone viewed and commented "Cool" on one of the photos before I had a chance to view the photo myself.  And a couple of weeks ago when I was uploading photos from New York, someone from Brasil viewed and favorited two of the photos before all the photos had uploaded.

I know how this happens.  People hang out on the Flickr page that shows the most recent uploads and on the page that shows recent uploads by their Creative Commons licensing, looking for something that looks interesting to them.

But it still kind of weirds me out when someone from Brasil gets to my Flickr photos faster than I can reach them when I've just uploaded them a few seconds before.

The Little Mermaid gives advice to young girls

Advice from the Little Mermaid

Okay, a bit of a kvetch.

I'm posting this here because I don't think I should post it to Facebook.

On Facebook, I have friends who are 12-year-old girls (my cousins children) who might not appreciate the humor of this video.  More importantly, I really doubt that their mothers would see the humor of this video or of their daughters watching this video.  Not that the video is horribly dirty or even risque, really, but I can easily see it pissing off my cousins.

So Facebook really should consider providing some kind of filter that let's you restrict individual postings to be visible to only a specified subset of your friends.

Yes, I could start a second profile for grown-ups only, but that would take a lot of time and a lot of explaining.  And, besides, I believe that FB frowns on people having multiple accounts.  So until they lighten up on the multiple accounts front, they should come up with some filters.

Oh, yeah.  And the video's pretty funny, too....

Flashback: Boo!

I originally posted this on April 1, 2009, as my April Fool's prank.  Seeing as "To Kill a Mockingbird" has reached the 50th anniversary of its original release, I thought I'd repost this.

Before you ask, yes, this is intended as a parody of the current state of musical theater, not as a parody of "To Kill a Mockingbird."

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Via Musicals Bay Area:

First-time theatrical producer Charles Hewitt has announced his plans to mount an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," with the tentative title, "Boo!"

Hewitt says, "I was supposed to read the book back in high school, but I just watched the movie instead and still got a C on my book report that way. But from what I remember about seeing the movie when I was 16, I always thought that it would make a great musical. It has everything: human drama, and intense . . . human drama and lovable, cuddly characters and funny stuff and drama and, and, and action and mystery and, really, when you get down to it, when all is said and done, just good old human drama. And with the current trends in musical theater, I figured the time was right. The time was right to sell this as a high-concept kind of 'Tom Sawyer meets Spring Awakening' kind of thing. You know?"

First-time composer Marisela Eisenstein is excited about being attached to the project. Eisenstein, 22, says, "This is, like, mad cool. I've never actually written a song before? But my friend Julie has 'Songsmith' installed on her laptop, she says it's, like, really easy to use, and she'll teach me how to use it. She said I could totally borrow it from her."

The book and the lyrics are being written by Christopher St. Clair, whose most recent play, "I Once Killed a Man Just to Watch Him Die," was a lighthearted comic romp based loosely on "Crime and Punishment." The play was reviewed by several critics.

St. Clair says that he has written several songs already, including "He Done It! He Hit Me!", "Reading to Mrs. Dubose," "Rabid Dog Tango" and the show-stopping eleven o' clock number, "Bob Ewell's Lying Up There Under a Tree with a Knife Stuck Up Under His Ribs."

St. Clair spoke about the challenges of adapting the Pulitzer Prize winning novel. "It's an okay book, I guess. But it really needs some zazzing up. So we're expanding Calpurnia's role so that she's secretly a gospel singing star at night, and we're going to make Atticus more of a lovable goof, a kind of Gomer-Pyle-type character. And regarding Boo Radley, let me just give you this little hint: Think 'Shrek meets Mel Brooks.'

"And, while I don't want to give away any of the major plot points, let's just say I always thought it was kind of a downer that Tom Robinson was found guilty. I mean, it's such a blatant miscarriage of justice, and it just, like, totally brought me down, and that's just not what musicals are for, you know? And rape is such an ugly subject, we might just have to tone that down and make it, like, Tom Robinson borrowed the Ewell's lawn mower and forgot to give it back or something a little more family friendly like that. So we're fixing some little things like that."

Tickets go on sale today, April 1st.

Take Off Your Riot Suit

Take Off Your Riot Suit  

This is the music that Doctor Popular was remixing at the picnic (the music that I used for the background of my picnic video).  The voices are a crowd of G20 Summit protesters chanting to the police, "You're sexy!  You're cute!  Take off your riot suit!"

Doctor Popular has made the track available as a free download on his website.

BB Picnic: Aerial video

Aerial video of Boing Boing Picnic 

I had heard that someone attached a phone to the balloon, but I wasn't over on that side of the field when it happened.  But I have found the video on YouTube.

The balloon was a field test by the Airship Victoria.  They are building a steampunk dirigible for future exhibition ("To create an audio visual experience within the theme of lighter than air vehicles"), and at the picnic, they inflated this balloon to test its behavior in high winds and near trees.  I heard someone say that they actually had expected it to be windier in Golden Gate Park.

Don't get dizzy watching the video.

Boing Boing Picnic: The Video

Boing Boing Picnic 

I'm not going to add anything to what I said earlier about the picnic.  I'm just going to provide my video evidence that what I said is true.  Doctor Popular was kind enough to allow me to use his music.

Boing Boing Picnic

This afternoon, Boing Boing had its first ever readers' picnic, open to the public, at Doughboy Field in Golden Gate Park.

The good people of Airship Victoria performed tests of a hot helium balloon for a planned Steampunk Dirigible project.

There were balloons (the regular-sized kind), bubbles, gophers, music, magic, a drawing corner, lots of kids, lots of grown-ups, an analog version of Twitter, lots of animated conversations and, best of all, free T-shirts.

My full set of 40 photos can be found in a Flickr set.  

[UPDATE: I have posted my 1-1/2-minute video here on my blog  and here on YouTube.  Also, I found this video taken by attaching a phone to the balloon.]