Yow!
First off, thank you to everyone who helped out with Kickstarter. We didn’t quite make it, but almost 2/3 of you discovered an alternative donation method - our little “Donate” button at http://EarthboundMoon.com. You have no idea how much it means to us that you offer your support in this way.

Carson and I are 17 days (02010, September 3) from rolling out of the Bay Area in the truck of the world’s most adorable yet frightening patron, Nightmare City’s own Mrs Carruthers!
We will be loaded down with tents, sleeping bags, tools, a 6′ x 2′ x 2′ steel sign, a bowel-squinching load of solar electricity supplies, 15′ feet of steel tubing sign post, a 6′ x 3′ diorama, and his frightening collection of sci-fi audio books.
That evening we will pick up the mind-altering goodness of Amy Sampson.
The next day we hit PLAND to visit Nancy Zastudil, and then Bledsoe, Texas!
On Sept 6 we install our dioramatic exhibition in the cutest and teeniest gallery at Texas Tech!
On Sept 7th we pick up Heidi and Ben, flying in from Copenhagen.
Alex Clausen joins us on Sept 10.
Heidi (and briefly, EbM) lectures at TTU on Sept 16.

Woohoo! Can you say exciting! Yup, I’m simply squirming in my skin with gleeful anticipation, as if I were crawling inside with psychic pleasure maggots!

Here’s the sign as of a couple days ago.

It was built by Terry Mason. We will soon install the solar powered bulbs and batteries. Then plexi behind the letters. Then red paint, just as our artist requested!
No seriously, I do need to use all these exclamation points because I am just that excited!

And here’s the diorama in different states.

Oh, heavenly sexy wood and paint and grit. Most reading this will not live to see the world terraformed to our vision, but our wealthier followers, you will get to watch across the centuries as we transform Earth and human consciousness, the grandest work of art ever attempted!

Meanwhile, 2011 and 2012 are shaping up nicely. It looks like we’ll have three to four installs each year, with one each year outside the U.S.

(the garoffice during SPP4 mixing. I’m finishing the mix on the machine I started it on, my laptop. To facilitate multi-tasking, and avoid moving my crappy speakers from machine to machine, the laptop is setup in front of the desktop. I right hand mouse the desktop and left hand mouse the laptop. I keep notes on the desktop, as well. It’s kind of ludicrous. For my upcoming mixes on other records [oRSo9 and orso9rmx, MSP, MD8ME, SleepWalks, Kenton Camerata, Brother X, My Special Porpoise, ect] I am sticking with the desktop. To that end I just re-installed Live on it. I am abandoning ProTools for mixing. I can’t see launching it unless I need Pitch n Time, at this point. Mixing with Ableton is faboo.)

I’m pleased to say that we’re closing in on the final mixes of the fourth Stowe-Pembleton Project record. A few more good days, like I’ve had this past week, will get it in the can. And then it’s off to Soul Note. We’re pretty confident they’ll pick it up for release as our third release on their label.
But the third SPP record, embarrassingly, is still not mixed. D’oh! Heaven only knows if the label it was originally recorded for will still be interested. Rest assured getting SPP3 mixed is high on my spreadsheet of things to do. Well, item 13 of ~59, anyway. But since some activities exist in overlapping states, it’s higher than 13 might seem to suggest.

Research for Vile Dead continues. Which is to say I’m watching zombie related tv and film, as well as horror and supernatural flicks. I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. This weekend I watched The Hunger (the first 2/3 is awesome. Then it’s downhill into complete, “quick, wrap it up, we’ve used our allotted 70 minutes! Screw linearity, comprehensibility, plot, characters and everything that’s happened in the film thus far, we need a quick ending. Oh hey, could you throw in a twist! Don’t worry about it making sense, this a vampire movie with David Bowie and lesbians, we can’t lose!”) and Hellboy II (Lots of fun to watch with absolutely no promise or pretension to being anything else.) I must admit, I always love the research phase of projects, but VD is particularly enjoyable.

Yesterday 23E Studios hosted a little tea party in the front courtyard of the garoffice. Our overlords, the Nightmare City City Council, were in town and wanted to check up on us. I think we passed the spot inspection. They declared the garoffice very nice, and expressed a strong faith in our ability to be productive in the 23E complex. While here they picked up their tribute for the year, the Nightmare City arcade from the Disembody installation/set. And their outfits from that film for use in future NC ventures.

(This is the courtyard. In the pic it is setup for mixing SPP4. It looked much nicer for the NC3: no computer paraphernalia, just my blue teapot and white cups and saucers.)

You’ll note from this post that the rebuilt desktop is performing fine thus far. I yanked out two internal drives, and hope to replace them soon with much larger drives for the logging and editing of Disembody. That’s one of the first things that came up in my logging strategy session with my father. The other big thing at this stage is establishing the best possible naming system for the clips. And defining parameters based on future uses of the footage. To that end I’ve begun a catalogue and timeline for the footage.

In other Disembody news, the NC3 think they spotted the dumpster from Disembody still residing in an alley in Chinatown where we filled it. The dumpster company has still not carried it away. Why not?
In sad Disembody news, 20th Century Props, where 23E rented theater seats for the Morgellon, is selling off its props and closing its doors. Oh, if only we could buy those seats for future projects! They’re being auctioned off, but A) I’ll be on tour and B) I have no money. So…

Above is some of the messy Copy Lake/My Daddy Ate My Eyes setup for our coming shows (and hopefully tour) in July. I’m mixing a MD8ME demo today. And rehearsing for the shows every day for the next many weeks. Also working on new material for Forever What?. We hope to rehearse in August in preparation for shows in Fall. With luck we’ll start gigging out semi-reguarly here in LA starting in September.

(music for this failed transcode is courtesy of audio swap on youtube. It’s The Institute of Contemporary Music performing Triangulum Galaxy.)

Over the last few days I’ve been trying, with the help of Jonny, to find a way to transcode the initial edit of Disembody. So far no luck. The feature file is almost ten gigabytes. So far we’re having trouble uploading it (our host rejects files that big, as did our library at the internet archive). VLC, Movie Player and Transcode all failed to successfully transcode it as a smaller file. It’s too big to put on DVD as is.

Etcetera

I would really like to have it available online. And Skye would really like it for his reel, as he is looking for video editing jobs.
The next thing we’ll try is putting it on an external drive and taking it to Amy’s Mac to see if the program that spat it out (Final Cut Pro) can recognize it, load it, and export it as a .mpg or .mov.

Elsewise, I’ve updated the 23E site again. And I’ve torn through every page of Vime, updating them all. Disembody and the next two MVM projects (tentatively titled Portal 7: A Mild Informality and Portal 8: Expansion) all have improved pages and info available. And the third SPP record is now represented and available online in a rough mix.

If you are in SF between September 26 and November 6 you should check out The Colony Room. It is curated by 23E friend Anne Colvin. And our own Marcella Faustini curated a jukebox for the space featuring original music and video from 23E members Alex Lukas and Skye Thorstenson. And, yours truly.
I put up a page and info about The MVM’s work (ten songs on three thumb drives, setting the Pentateuch to music) for the show.

Gads, it took awhile, but as of Friday last week, I can confidently say, production is over. Post-production is now all that lies ahead.

What a relief, too. Getting the Morgellon de-installed was far more demanding than anticipated. Actually, only the painting and the return of Carson’s tools presented unexpected challenges. But, what challenges they were.

Fringe is big. The ceiling is high. And we needed to paint the entire space. The ceiling, fortunately, only needed one coat (after patching and sanding the hundreds of little holes we put in it with our brad gun.)
Most of the walls, on the other hand, needed seven: five of Kilz and two of the considerably more expensive cover paint.
We also needed to paint the office, parts of the basement, and the staircases to both of those places. The stairs only needed two coats. The office only got one (we ran out of paint) and the basement three or four, I think.

Whatever, it took longer than anticipated.
Susan, however, as always, was a dream, and allowed us the extra few days we needed. The next artist in, Jody, was also incredibly understanding of our tardiness.

The tools Skye and I dropped off with Carson last Thursday. The truck I returned the next day. Carson was a king amongst souls, letting us keep his tools as long as he did.

Now post-production begins!