Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

Here’s a quick snibbet of audio from some work I was doing at an elementary school in Oakland, California. It is of two 9-year old kids telling us who Barack Obama is…very cute!

http://www.hellasolutions.com/stuff/090120_obama_is.mp3

Yesterday we picked up a couple of fresh dungeness crabs at the market and I found the following guide very helpful and easy to follow. You might, too.

If you are a horror movie fan or just wanting to know what horror film to watch on any given day I just got the perfect book as a gift for Christmas (yeah, I know it’s January but apparently there was a hold up). Anyway, the book is Bryan Senn’s, A Year of Fear: A Day-by-day Guide to 366 Horror Films. It’s a fun read but what makes it especially valuable to me is that it helps narrow down my choice of what to watch and give a historical reason to back it up. For example, for today (January 17th) Senn recommends the 1963 schlock-fest “The Slime People“. The reason? It’s the anniversary of the death of Thomas Crapper – inventor of the flush toilet. I don’t know about you but that’s all the reason I need. Happy Friday! [okay, so it's Saturday...lets not get nit-picky]

I just got back from two amazing daze relaxing in mud, hot water and bed up in Calistoga, CA. More on that at another time…unfortunately we came back to some very sad news…

You see, I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and as a kid in the 1970s every Saturday night my friends and I would watch our local horror host, Bob Wilkins, on channel 2. He’d play films like “Night of the Living Dead” (George Romero’s original zombie flick) to ‘cheese-factor 11′ flicks like “Attack of the Mushroom People.” However at the ripe old age of 8 much of the cheesy films were scary to us. Bob would also have local crazies on his show as well as Hollywood stars. One such “crazy” was a friend’s mom who had actually knitted a sweater for King Kong. No joke! This thing was huge. Anyway, that’s the kind of out of the ordinary, regular folk, Bob would feature on his show. He did things with a straight, dry wit, a strong sense of humor and even though he wasn’t a horror fan himself he did everything with the utmost respect for the genre. It was a very unique mix among horror hosts and one that has lived in the memories of all of us who grew up watching him.

During the past decade Bob would show up at horror and comic conventions and special movie screenings. It was a treat to actually meet him after all this time. Bob started suffering from Alzheimer’s and it got progressively worse (as it does). Anyway, he passed away yesterday…while I am glad he is no longer suffering it is very sad to know that he is no longer physically on this earth. Rest in peace, Bob. Even though we didn’t personally know each other you have always had a special place in my heart and were the one who kept me a horror fan. Cheers, buddy…

There is a very interesting sound installation coming to San Francisco in February (2/12-5/8 to be specific). It is by S.F.-based sound artist Bill Fontana and it will be housed at the S.F. City Hall building.

Fontana’s sound installation, Spiraling Echoes, will employ an acoustic phenomenon common to bats, dolphins and whales known as echolocation, in which high-frequency sounds produce an acute directional beam of ultrasound. Eight transducers will be mounted in City Hall high above the floor around the circular colonnade within the Rotunda’s dome. These transducers will send out ultrasonic beams that function as carrier waves for this project’s original soundtrack. The soundtrack, which will include a range of sounds from music to spoken word to wildlife, will bring the sounds of San Francisco past and present into the building. When the transducers are moving, the sound beams will travel downward in space, playing off of and moving through the various surfaces of the rotunda.

You can find the full description at sfacgallery.org