Ha! Little does she know, my alien leaders have given me an EXCELLENT disguise for tonight’s Meet the Geek dinner from Social Media Club Vancouver. I may even get my tentacles did! We don’t have dessert on the menu for tonight (because nobody I know eats it anymore!) but I was thinking of bringing some of these:
In case you're wondering: yes, THEY ARE BAD FOR YOU
Or perhaps one of these:
Or this one?
octopus cake, what does it look like?
Brian Atene didn't turn out so bad after all
Someday I’ll go through and edit all my old Brian Atene posts (I used to be THE source for Brian Atene information online, having once gotten a shout-out from Atene himself on a video), but that day is not today.
For today, I was awoken at about 6am after falling asleep at 4, and awoken in my least favorite way at that: by someone else’s cat galloping across my face and, specifically, over my eyelid, with its claws out, a fact which anyone nearby can determine by looking at the five long scratch marks on my face right now. They’re extra-super-visible because of the glossy antibiotic cream I’ve spread over them in a layer thick enough to double as an air bag, in case of car crash. And as yesterday I was awoken at 6am by galloping cats as well, after falling asleep again at 4 like any decent, normal, non-cat-owning person, this does not take me to my happy place. It takes me to that place where I can stare at people, listening intently to what they’re saying to me, and actually comprehend not one syllable; nay, not even so much as to be able to identify the language except after careful reverse-thought-engineering.
“Well, it was Doug who was talking to me, and Doug only speaks English, therefore it must have been English!” I think with a great deal of relief once I finally work it out. “Now, I wonder what in hell he was talking about?”
But enough about me (can you ever get enough?). It’s time to talk about Brian Atene, Superman Vodka, Trigger, Google, AOL, and me (again).
Longtime readers of the ol’ raincoaster blog will be familiar with our longtime Ateniac status, dating all the way back since 2006, when the vintage Good Day Mister Kubrick audition tape hit the internet, and hit it hard. I’ve posted his more contemporary videos on this blog and virtually any other blog I could get my hands on even so much as the comments section. So far, so what, right? You either love Atene or you identify with him so strongly you can’t stand the sight of him because all those things about yourself that you’d change if you were a better, stronger, richer, younger person? He is all about those things, three cheers and pass the Nembutal.
And, about once every two years, he signs in to YouTube, finds a camel’s-back-breaking-straw comment and deletes all his videos, leaving me with vast holes in whatever of my blogs I’ve put them into, obviously. BUT I’M SO OVER THAT. Anyway, the one with the shout-out to me is no more, and has not been re-uploaded to the new account.
Cognitive dissociative moment (been having a lot of those recently). Change of subject, slightly.
So I’m looking at the stats for my professional website, raincoaster media, and it appears the blog has suddenly gone from a respectable 100 daily hits to 350, all courtesy of this post on, yes, Brian Atene on the subjects of personal, thespianal, and alcoholic marketing, which outranks every other Brian Atene post on Earth except the one on BoingBoing, even though there are about a dozen Atene posts on THIS blog, as opposed to a simple two on that one. Referrers? I can see three clicks from an AOL search for “Brian Atene” but nothing else. No Google, no Yahoo, nothing else shows up on the referrers. Are people pulling this out of thin air, or is it a hidden link of some sort?Why this post? And why now?
Did he marry a Kardashian today? Get a tv show? Carry a full hot water bottle onto an airplane?
Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
For now, we have this. We have, instead of The Atene Button, Atene Talks Trigger.
Long, long ago, on June 25, 2006 in fact, I uploaded my first video to YouTube. Then what happened? Then, I basically ignored it for four years.
That video has now had 824,393 views.
I’m impressed, to say the least: my other videos average less than 100 views, and that’s even if I put them in my blogs. And god knows, I can’t take credit for how well this has done Mind you, I got this one while it was very fresh (it’s not original, by any means, but it is public domain). I was cruising around Fark, as I have been wont to do whenever I wont for diversion and there it was. “P47 guncamera footage from WWII, recently declassified” and I clicked, saw that it was just what it claimed to be and amazing footage, saw additionally that only a few people had watched the video so far, downloaded that puppy without hesitation, and uploaded it to YouTube.
So, basically: it was fresh, it was fascinating, and it was named what it was about: WWII Dogfights in Colour. I put it in: Category: News & Politics. Tags: War, Planes, WWII, Dogfight.
Since then, I’ve had a Brazilian television show ask me if they could use it (I passed along the contact deets for the original uploading and if I still had them I’d add them to the Notes) and just got an offer from an LA music company of cash money to add their music as a soundtrack. Very cool, and actually quite smart of them. As long as the song they want to add isn’t all “Go Nazis” or whatever, I see no reason not to say yes.
You’re no doubt curious to see the video, so I shall not make you wait any longer. It’s silent, but it’s deadly.
And don’t neglect the comments; there’s an interesting and quite intelligent discussion of air strategy. I’m proud that my video has broken the trend for YouTube comments of unspeakable stupidity.
or look just like one…
Oh god, not ANOTHER one!
No, it’s true: this is a plan to enable you to put “movie producer” on your business card, which will come in handy on a Friday at the clubs, if no-where else. Actually, it will count for something with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who will allow any actual credited producer to purchase a ticket to the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars.
Come to think of it, I’ve got a friend who’s always wanted to go. Hmmmm…
Allow me to introduce With Glowing Hearts, the motion picture:
So far, so awww, right? Yes, it’s an inspirational documentary, perhaps the least likely to be commercially successful genre of film in filmdom. How can you become a producer of this acclaimed-but-so-far-unreleased soon-to-be-classic? Easy; everybody knows there’s one way to become a producer.
You come up with the money.
In this case, you can come up with amounts as small as a Toonie:
Making a film costs money, and although we’ve done a great job at keeping our costs down there are certain expenses which are unavoidable. That’s why from now, until the middle of August, we’re running our Toonie and Tweet Torch Relay to help get us to the finish line and to get your name in the credits. Starting with a minimum contribution of $2, “producers” can have their name published in a word cloud that will appear in the film’s credit roll and on this site. Increasing your contribution will increase the size of your name in the cloud.
All money collected will go directly towards costs related to finishing and distributing the film like insurance, music rights, and salaries for the great people who have been working on the film with us. Just click on the Chip-In widget to the right and follow the instructions to use either your PayPal account or credit card, note that transactions are conducted in US dollars but will be converted to your local currency on your bill. The name that is associated with your PayPal account is the same that will be used for the credits, if you would like a different name to appear in the credits please indicate that under “special instructions for vendor” on the “Review your payment” page.
Sure, it says mid-August, but if you ask nicely you’ll probably find there’s always room for more money (though perhaps it will need more zeros after the 2). Go on, haven’t you always wanted to be a Hollywood big shot? I hear Clooney is breaking up with his latest bimbette, so if you’re a brunette and you can get him good and drunk at the Vanity Fair afterparty, you’ve probably got a shot.
that door had to be carted away and burnt later, for public safety reasons
Remember that old-timey singer Amy Winehouse, back when she was still alive?
Studio performance of Love is a Losing Game by Amy Winehouse
For you I was a flame
Love is a losing game
Five story fire as you came
Love is a losing game
While I wish I’d never played
Oh what a mess we made
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game
Played out by the band
Love is a losing hand
More than I could stand
Love is a losing hand
Self professed… profound
Till the chips were down
…know you’re a gambling man
Love is a losing hand
Though I’d bet on blind
Love is a faith resign
Memories mar my mind
Love is a faith resign
Over futile odds
And laughed at by the gods
And now the final frame
Love is a losing game
You know what else is a losing game? Trying to clean up the code in a popular page you copied bodily from Facebook because you are dutiful and political and committed to freedom of speech and think the world NEEDS an archive of the now-deleted Everybody Draw Mohammad Day page, and furthermore, you are doing it on a beautiful Friday Saturday (I have lost track of time GOD HAVE I BEEN HERE THAT LONG???) night while reading the posts and tweets of all my friends who are a block or two away, having a great time NOT editing Facebook code. And further to furthermore, not doing the workout I was supposed to get done four hours ago either, because I am here, madly editing this stupid, extraneous-div-filled code to appease the Google Gods, who have thrown this blog into the Ninth Circle of Google Hell since the start of May. I even pulled my best string, who yanked Matt Cutt‘s personal chain and got nothing better than When I search for ‘raincoaster’ that blog is the first hit, which proves it’s being indexed properly which is bullshit.
Don’t believe me? Here is my stats graph:
Is it any wonder I'm so fucking CRANKY?????
Now, having gone through ismyblogworking.com and Quantcast and the W3 Validator, Feed Validator, Google Webmaster Tools and (the much more decipherable) Yahoo Site Explorer, I have found my blog is riddled with a metric snotload of code errors and, since I, myself, don’t write in code unless someone is holding a gun to my head AND there are sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads circling my desk, I didn’t put there. Right?
Anyhoodle, it appeared to even my inexperienced eye that code that looked like div /div div /div /form div div div div /h5 and so on was somewhat problematic, and so I sat down to eliminate said code, line by painful line. For two point seven five hours I sifted code, exercising my Delete button and my Backspace ruthlessly (have you seen Ruth lately, by the way? I’ve been Ruthless for months now) and when I looked at the sidebar I saw that I had successfully cleansed less than one-tenth of the code.
At that point I ruthlessly (seriously, where IS that bitch?) exercised the Move To Trash key, and I hope Lindsay Lohan is happy with the present I sent her.
Now I’m off to sacrifice a unicorn to the Google Gods.
Who knew Lady Gaga = Voldemort?
Wish me luck. On the plus side, I think this may be a good omen:
raincoaster 