general

Muse Reseach is offering a new music product called the Receptor, a hardware module that stores and activates plugins--softsynths, samplers, effects, etc. Native Instruments has its entire product line bundled on one model. It's a general purpose computer as well as a sound card and you can hook a monitor, mouse and keyboard to it, but it also can be "slaved" to a musical keyboard or a software sequencer such as Cubase, located on, say, a laptop.
You make the choice whether the Receptor or your computer is the "center" of your work environment.
If the computer is the center, it will stream audio and MIDI to and from the Receptor using the Ethernet (!) connection. You can run a bunch of softsynths simultaneously and the Receptor takes the CPU hit.
On the one hand, this seems really retrograde, a way for keyboard players to go on the road without a computer.
Also, it's a way to sell another piece of gear when the software revolution was about using your computer to multitask.
But it's up to date in that the Receptor has a Linux operating system that plays the plugins more efficiently than they will ever be heard in Gates World (so they say). It also mixes plugins in ways that would bog down your computer even with the most efficient system (again, so they say). Something to think about--the site has massive documentation including very clear Quicktime tutorials.

Ghoulardi, the '60s TV beatnik horror movie host from Cleveland who happens also to be the father of film director P.T. Anderson (Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love), died in the '90s but lives on on YouTube. The screenshots are from his afternoon show, a segment where he showed fan art. Great stuff--the middle panel is the purest Gary Panter.

Count Gore de Vol, a mainstay of '70s UHF programming in Washington DC, also enjoys an undead life on the web, with his own site and various YouTube clips. In this one he takes us on a tour of his horror memorabilia. He looks and talks much like Brent Spiner, and in fact also played "Captain 20"--a Vulcan kid's show host.

Yet no trip down local TV memory lane would be complete without mentioning Petey Greene's Washington. Greene is the subject of a new Don Cheadle movie but there is no way an actor in a typical '00s Hollywood blandathon could be anything like the real Greene, an ex-con and civil rights activist who lorded it over his eponymous show from a throne-like rattan chair. "Characters" like this aren't allowed on the open airwaves today--he's too honest and real--but he lives on this clip, at least until it is removed for the inevitable terms of use violation.

Update: This GIF was reposted.

This is my blog-away-from-home, where I’ll be posting music and video files and probably images, and who knows, maybe some text, too. The blog I’ve maintained since Feb. ‘01 is here.