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San Diego, 1913

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 21:12:45 -0700

I got into San Diego this afternoon and checked into the Se hotel, in the Gaslamp quarter.
I regularly check Shorpy, a website dedicated to displaying old photos, mostly from the turn-of-the-century. For the first time, they had one of San Diego, taken from the U.S. Grant building, two blocks away from the Se. The view was practically identical to the one from my window.

Cracked: Great Movies from the Perspective of Minor Characters

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 11:24:23 -0700

Palm Springs and Joshua Tree Stargazing

Mon, 2 May 2011 21:00:28 -0700

Paul arrives around noon on Friday the 29th from the Bay Area. We leave half an hour later and drive out to Palm Springs, passing that huge wind farm.

We first go to Joshua Tree, and have to drive through the whole area to every campground before we find a spot, in the southernmost area, Cottonwood Springs. We set our tent up, then drive over to the All World's Resort, arriving at about six.

We have room 103, which has a jacuzzi, a glassed in shower next to the jacuzzi facing the bed, and a huge painting over the bed. The resort has four quadrants, each with a pool and jacuzzi in the middle. I went on a run down by what looked like some sort of concrete canal. Came in, showered off, and went to dinner at Blue Coyote. I had ribs and creamed spinach.

Got up around ten, finished the ribs, cleaned up and put our stuff in the car (check out is eleven). Frank, the guy at the front desk (very nice, sort of a pocked face; had just moved up from San Diego about eight months before) said we could hang out by the pool, still, which we need.

Turtle Races: Dot

We left around 2:30, and drove down the ten to Winn-Co to get supplies. Around that time Rami Sirhed texted me---they had arrived (he, David Hawk, Ben Bregman, Kristofer Lowe, and Richard Lavallee) and were at the Motel 6 about half-an-hour or so back.

Paul and I got to the campsite. I figured out how the night vision camera worked, then helped Paul set up.

Joshua Tree Campground

The rest of the guys got there about an hour later. They went out on a hike. Around six, I drove back down towards the 10 to take some pictures, including one of a tree I really liked.

Tree in Infrared

Shortly thereafter, we had a huge feast, centered on hunks of beef tenderloin cooked on the fire that we'd started. Salad, baked potatoes, spinach dip, chips, etc. I stayed away from the carbohydrates.

Eating in Infrared

The Fire in Infrared

The wind was wiping up; it was getting cold. I took a whole bunch of shots with the infrared camera; very cool! Walked down to the amphitheater to see the star show (a slide presentation...kind of interesting). We were going to get to look in the 11-inch telescope, but the computer/GPS was not working. By this time I had a blanket around me it was so cold.

We walked back down the street the way we came, to better see the stars (it turned out not to be as super total dark as I had thought it would be) and ran into a high school teacher who had an 8-in Celestron and let us peer through it. We saw M13 and Saturn!

They left, and I got bundled up and into the tent. Didn't sleep well (Paul came in later, and had his anti-snore device on, but after it ran out of juice he was snoring loudly). Finally did sleep, and had some weird dreams—one about Roseanne Barr being a normal working housewife, and one (again!) about being back in high school but not actually going to classes.

Woke up around 8:50. We broke camp—it was very windy and hard to deconstruct the tent what with all the wind. Went on a short hike, then headed home, just before noon. Traffic was (surprisingly) not too bad.

Cholla Bush

Me in Infrared:

Evil Muppets

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 23:39:59 -0700

According to this website, (and this one, too), in the late 1950s the muppets were up to some strange things:

In 1957, Jim Henson was approached by a Washington, D.C. coffee company to produce ads for Wilkins Coffee. The local stations only had ten seconds for station identification, so the commercials had to be lightning-fast -- essentially, eight seconds for the commercial pitch and a two-second shot of the product.

From 1957 to 1961, Henson made 179 commercials for Wilkins Coffee and other Wilkins products, including Community Coffee and Wilkins Tea. The ads were so successful and well-liked that they sparked a series of remakes for companies in other local markets throughout the 1960s.

The ads starred the cheerful Wilkins, who liked Wilkins Coffee, and the grumpy Wontkins, who hated it. Wilkins would often do serious harm to Wontkins in the ads -- blowing him up, stabbing him with a knife, and smashing him with a club, among many other violent acts.

Wilkins and Wontkins were generally the only characters in the commercials, though on rare occasions, such critters as a Muppet whale or baby birds would appear. Company owner Mr. Wilkins was also invoked more than once.

The characters proved so popular that in October 1958, the company offered vinyl puppets of Wilkins and Wontkins through the mail for $1.00 and a coffee can label. The offer on the can said, "Hey Kids! I'm Wilkins -- he's Wontkins -- you see us on TV!" Obviously, Wilkins Coffee and Henson knew that the Muppet characters had kid appeal, although this doesn't seem to have had any effect on the use of violence and terror in the ads.

On the Psychology of Scarcity and Rivalry

Sun, 3 Apr 2011 15:06:06 -0700

Here's a great quote from Robert Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice, warning us of the psychologically dangerous combination of scarcity and rivalry. In 1973, Barry Diller, then vice president for prime-time programming of the American Broadcasting Company:
agreed to pay $3.3 million for a single television showing of the movie The Poseidon Adventure. The figure is noteworthy in that it greatly exceeded the highest price ever before paid for a one-time movie showing—$2 million for Pat-ton. In fact, the payment was so excessive that ABC figured to lose $1 million on the Poseidon showing. As NBC vice president for special programs, Bill Storke declared at the tune, "There's no way they can get their money back, no way at all"
How could an astute and experienced businessman like Diller go for a deal that would produce an expected loss of $1 million"? The answer may lie in a second noteworthy aspect of the sale: It was the first time that a motion picture had been offered to the networks in an open-bid auction. Never before had the three networks been forced to battle for a scarce resource in quite this way. The novel idea of a competitive auction was the brainchild of the movie's flamboyant showman producer, Irwin Allen, and 20th Century-Fox vice president. William Self, who must have been ecstatic about the outcome. How can we be sure that it was the auction format that generated the spectacular sales price rather than the blockbluster quality of the movie itself?
Some comments from the auction participants provide impressive evidence. First came a statement from the victor, Barry Diller, intended to set future policy for his network. In language sounding like it could have escaped only from between clenched teeth, he said, "ABC has decided regarding its policy for the future that it would never again enter into an auction situation." Even more instructive are the remarks of Diller's rival, Robert Wood, then president of CBS Television, who nearly lost his head and outbid his competitors at ABC and NBC:
We were very rational at the start. We priced the movie out, in terms of what it could bring in for us, then allowed a certain value on top of that for exploitation.
But then the bidding started. ABC opened with $2 million. I came back with $2.4. ABC went $2.8. And the fever of the thing caught us. Like a guy who had lost his mind, I kept bidding. Finally, 1 went to $3.2; and there came a moment when I said to myself, "Good grief, if I get it, what the heck am I going to do with it?" When ABC finally topped me, my main feeling was relief.
It's been very educational. (MacKenzie. June 22, 1974, p. 4, “When sober executives went on a bidding binge,” TV Guide)