Bill Cammack

This is the end
Beautiful Friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never, look into your eyes, again…

Can you picture what will be?
So limitless and free
Desperately in need
Of some… Stranger’s hand
In a… Desperate land…

Michael Jackson died today.
Thank You for everything.

Comedian & actor Bernie Mac died this morning, reportedly from complications due to Pneumonia. He was 50 years old. Very talented and entertaining guy.

There’s a nice writeup about him on ChicagoTribune.com -> [Bernie Mac dies at 50]

I’m sitting here right now, in Manhattan, in my house, able to type this on my computer right now because of the dedication of my friend, homie, brother, etc… Lou.

We went for a ride this morning, and the mechanic had assured me a couple of weeks ago that they checked out the electronics on my old-ass 1993 GSXR sportbike. I don’t doubt that they did. I think today was a NEW problem. It was so hot today, and my engine was running so hot, I’m pretty sure it burned through my cable leading to my ignition fuse. When I took the tank off so I could check my cables, they were different from when I had sent them to the mechanic, so I’m sure they did SOMETHING, and I don’t doubt it was proper. However, the location of my wires is conducive to them getting burnt and essentially “shorting out”.

I had had this happen quite a while ago, and my good friend MK got me out of that jam. This time Lou made it happen, and I just plain wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for Lou helping me out. I’d still be in Chester, NY, or wherever we were when my bike shut off.

I had offered to Lou to continue on his trip and just pass back that way when he was done. I didn’t want to ruin his day, but he wouldn’t break out. I was really more upset that I had messed up his plans for the day than that I was stranded out in the sticks without enough bike-mechanic knowledge to get ANYWHERE NEAR my house, where I am right now.

Eventually, we got back on the road and came back home. Thanks, Lou.

……….

There really isn’t any more to say, but it’s still not enough. I’ve had people go the “well, I’ve done all I can for ya… now I have to go” route under similar circumstances, and it doesn’t feel good. That’s an incredible understatement. Similarly, “Thanks, Lou” doesn’t even begin to amount to anything near how appreciative I am that he stuck with me and helped me out of that situation. Not that I *EXPECTED* any less of him, because I met Lou more than half my life ago… But, it’s still nice to receive that gift of friendship…. of dedication. While I wasn’t thinking properly and couldn’t bring myself to find the proper solution, either because I was so upset or because I just didn’t possess the technical, mechanical knowledge to get myself out of that situation, Lou was on-point, and I’m getting to type this right now because of him. :D

I didn’t realize how blessed I was when I first got my bike a few years ago…. I mean, I did, but I never documented it. Another life-long friend, Jay, walked me through learning to ride and then rode with me for VERY VERY MANY of the 20,000-plus miles I put on my bike in two years. Fortunately for Jay, he met the woman of his dreams and got married! :D I hadn’t realized how much of what I considered to be fun in “riding” was actually the fun of “riding WITH Jay”. On top of that, I hadn’t realized how much I was ‘dependent’ on Jay’s technical knowledge of biking. I was *N.E.V.E.R*, *EVER*, ONCE… NEVER worried that I wasn’t going to make it home tonight if I went riding with Jay. NEVER. I knew that Jay took bikes (and cars) apart and put them back together again. This was in the back of my mind… along with his dedication to me as a friend, and my dedication to him. Again, though it doesn’t come close to expressing my heartfelt gratitude… Thanks, Jay. :D

Going riding is like going campaigning or going to war. You go out with a certain number of guys/gals, and you return with that same number. Similar to what’s said about war… It’s EXTREMELY IMPORTANT to trust whomever’s next to you in the bunker. That BELIEF carries you to your greatest potential in riding. This guy Todd went off what I consider to be a short cliff one time when we went on a group ride. We went back to find him and five of us literally LIFTED his bike out of the woods he fell into, maybe 30 feet below. His front rim was jacked, so I suggested that someone remove his front brakes, and he was able to ride with us all the way back to NYC, and to his home in either Queens or Long Island. The point is that we were going to FIGURE OUT how to get him home and get his bike squared away. PERIOD. Even though that was my first time meeting him, he was rolling with US, so MY goal was to get him home. PERIOD. That was the goal of the others too, and we made it happen, hoisting his bike with one hand each and grabbing onto trees with our other hands while digging our boots in to the soft dirt of the ledge we were climbing with Todd’s bike in tow. Todd got home. Mission accomplished.

There are some who will read this and discount my claim that riding is like going to war because nobody’s shooting at us. Well… When you go riding, you’re not SURE you’re going to make it back. I’m NEVER sure I’m going to make it back when I go performance-riding. Anything can happen, from mechanical failure to someone running you off the road to oil slicks or construction to someone rear-ending you. I always thank God when I make it back, because I know I didn’t have to. There are quite a few riding deaths every year. One of them was my friend “Avo”. I didn’t know him for a long time, relative to many other riders, but he was a great guy and a solid rider. When Avo died on the West Side Highway, that was REALLY the first time that I honestly felt like “if it happened to him, it could happen to me”.

Anyway… I wanted to get this stuff down while I’m still feeling the immense *GRATITUDE* to Lou for sticking with me and changing his plan for the day from “having a good time” to “getting Bill back home”. I realize this is all my fault, and even though I completely LOVE my bike, I may very well need to sell it, because I’ve allowed it to become unreliable. It’s my fault that the bike’s unreliable. I bought it @ 22,000 miles and put another 20,000 on it in the span of two years. I allowed the ignition electronics to get jacked up. Nobody else. I’m either going to commit to getting it fixed PROPERLY or selling it and getting another bike. I’ve had enough of people saving me from the DEPRESSION of being WAY out of town with NO WAY to get home. :(

The bottom line is that riding isn’t about the bike you’re on… It’s about the people you share your experiences with.

Beleedat! :D

–
billcammack

WOWWWWW!!!

OK… So I just spent an hour recording my lines for my first episode of “The Lab”. I’m an editor, not an actor. I had the incorrect notion that what I was about to do was more like talking than acting. It was really something I’ve never experienced before……

That was an amazing trip. I wanted to blog it now, while I’m still feeling it.

There’s a journey that you take when you try to record something quasi-theatrical. I’m even more sensitive to it since I’m an editor. I’m more aware of what I can and can’t use.

What I mean by record is when YOU’RE the on-air talent. There’s so much to think about, but then you can’t actually afford to think about it because you have to deliver the lines… that is… IF you scripted your lines ahead of time, and preferably studied them. I did neither, since I’m not an actor. I had no idea it was going to be so hard to pull at least three directions together and then do the right thing with what you receive to deliver the goods. I have no idea whether I have a show or not. If I don’t, that’s fine. I’ve slated my release of episode 1 of “The Lab” for Friday. I still have tonight and all of tomorrow to do it over if I don’t have what I need.

The first thing I noticed was that I had to stop myself from wanting to deliver the lines in a stoic fashion, just to get them out. Then, I realized things would have been way better if I had scripted the lines and practiced them instead of trying to make stuff up on the fly. I had a couple of cues that I had figured out, but the problem was that by the time I was on the spot, doing the do… I had seen the scenes so many times that I wasn’t naturally affected anymore by watching them, and there was no natural launch into what I wanted to say about the section. I had to fake the launch and then make sure I wasn’t stiff delivering the actual lines that I had just decided upon and hadn’t practiced, ever. :/

The obvious question is why not pause the process until I made something up? :D The problem with that is that I needed to shoot the whole thing in one session so there was no chance of the camera moving from where it was. I decided to run the video from the monitors live instead of greenscreening them or matting out the screens and shrinking and distorting the video. I knew I was in it for the long haul as soon as I pressed the button, so I went for it and now I have whatever I have… if anything! :D

I can’t really feel the effects from the journey at this point, but I remember hearing the click that indicated that the camera had shut off and that there wasn’t anything more I could do about getting the show on tape. I remember this feeling of… ?relief? and a return to ?reality?… I’ll definitely be doing way more pre-production for my next episode, but this time, I was so glad to get the set done that I just had to try to make it happen. Actually, when I was completely ready, I wasn’t INTERESTED in filming the show right then. That was the first battle… actually getting myself to start in the first place. It was only after I was in the process that I realized how important a script is that you’ve practiced over and over.

There’s more to being on-air-talent than meets the eye… I mean if you’re going to do a decent job at it… and I’m not saying that *I* did a decent job! :D It’s that there are things you have to remember, and while you’re remembering them, you have to forget them so you can seem authentic or natural. You have to internalize them and then live with them and “act as if”. I guess this is why some actors *coughnicholascagecough* always seem to be portraying the exact same character. Their expression is the same in different movies, so you get the same effect when you watch the actor’s performance.

Another thing that’s tough is that you’re not talking to anybody! :D I mean, you know the audience is “inside” that little lens, but there’s really nobody there, so you have to pretend you’re talking to someone. Depending on the person or people that you imagine yourself talking to, you’re going to deliver differently. You’re going to sound different. You’re going to use different words. I’m sure my performance suffered from “identity crisis”, but I’ll just fix that in the edit. :D

Just about the only thing that I learned along the way that helped me was in order to get over the fact that I was no longer highly amused by the scenes, having seen them multiple times while I was selecting them, what I DID find amusing was how ‘lost’ I was and unable to recreate my surprise and interest in the shot. Fortunately… I found that realization so funny, that I ended up laughing at how ridiculous it was and realize that that was my out. Whenever I needed a laugh, I got a laugh off of the fact that I couldn’t laugh because the scene wasn’t funny to me anymore. :D WHAT LUCK! :D

So, yes… More scripting… More practicing (more like ANY practicing, since I didn’t practice at all, having no script, just some outline notes). I didn’t want to script it, but that’s because I didn’t know there were so many other things to worry about when you’re trying to make it happen from in front of the camera instead of behind it. About 1/3 of the way through, I decided to get over the fact that I was talking to a lens. :D It wasn’t so tough after that, but that was only one of several ‘issues’ that I was having.

I decided I was going to play some music to see if I wanted to use any of it to get me in or out of the piece. Unfortunately, the way the camera was set up, I had the choices of holding the guitar at a ridiculous angle to play it or play naturally, and the guitar wasn’t in the shot at all. Since I decided on using a single shot for the whole episode, I just had to miss out on the appearance of the guitar. I’ll have to see if anything can be done with that in post.

I was very glad when I heard the click indicating it was all over. It was a weight off, for sure. I learned A LOT about the process, and I’ll be ready for it next time. I’ll also be habituated to certain elements, so those won’t be issues for me. Depending on how it works, I might have to rethink my shooting style as well, or maybe shoot it twice.. once as a practice so I can see how everything works together and then a second time as the real deal. Another issue was that I was sitting in approximately the same place the whole time, so I said approximately the same thing again, closer to the camera…. that is, from what I could remember that I said, since I had no script! :/

Anyway… anyone preparing to do this for the first time, beware! hahahaha :D This is one of those situations where you have to learn by on-the-job training, because you’re not going to feel like this in any normal situation. Even having a normal conversation and having someone tape you isn’t the same as trying to deliver lines that you HOPE are going to connect scene A to scene B, while relating to the audience in an effective and preferably consistent manner. It doesn’t prepare you for talking to a lens and convincing yourself you’re talking to a person or people. It’s not as easy as it looks! :D

Actually, I started doing better (IMO) when I stopped caring if it was good or not. :)

Ah, mortality.

Anna Nicole Smith is dead?

How ridiculous is that? :?

Roxanne Darling of beachwalks.tv was in town today. I had a great time this afternoon. :D

Here’s the “BeachWalk” we did together: Beach Walk #258 OTR

initially, we were going to meet up with Jan… another videoblogger, but it turned out that she had to work alllllllllllll day, so Rox and I decided to meet up @ 3pm. I had had a bunch of ideas where we could have gone to shoot near water, but it was raining AND foggy, so we decided on South Street Seaport, since it’s by the water, but the upper levels provide cover from the rain. Rox ended up taking a cab instead of the subway, so I headed west to meet her @ the West Side Highway. It would have taken her A LONG TIME to get to the east side with mid-day traffic, so I passed the WTC and checked out Battery Park City for potential locations.

When the cab showed up, I noticed that Rox was filming the driver. It turns out that he’s a musician and makes CDs that are right up beachwalks.tv’s alley. From there, we headed west to the Hudson river, but it was really too foggy to see Jersey on the other side, and I thought I could BARELY make out the Statue of Liberty. We found a spot and did our BeachWalks episode.

Since we were running out of daylight, I suggested that we walk the two blocks over to the WTC. We were coming from the west, where there isn’t any public transportation, except cabs, and maybe one bus line if it runs down the W.S.H. Everyone else approaches from the east (unless they live in Battery Park City). Because of that, the tourist-y information booth and photo gallery is set up to accommodate people coming from the east, and it was completely on the other side of the site from where we were. We stopped at a section where you can see in without fanfare, lights, colors, tourists or pictures. I was in NYC on the day-of, but Rox had mentioned that she probably hadn’t been here in eight years, so I figured she hadn’t seen the location with her own eyes… Actually, probably more important than SEEING is BEING so close to where the towers used to stand and seeing how far down it is to the construction from ground level, and seeing how wide the missing area is, compared to the buildings that surround that area…. as well as understanding that so many people died right.over.there. I could tell Rox was having a moment… she decided not to tape…….

From there, we checked out the tourist setup, complete with bright colors, poignant pictures and captions that said something like “time to move on”, which was REALLY funny/interesting, because after experiencing the site, when we started walking, Rox was talking about people’s reactions to things and how people try to say how someone should or should not react. It was as if someone rushed up and painted that AFTER listening to what we were talking about on the way there. :D

After that, we found a cafe and had a really interesting conversation, mostly about videoblogging, with a minor in psychology. Eventually, it was time for Rox to head out, so we hopped on the train and got out of dodge.

I had a great afternoon. Rox is a really fun and intelligent person, and as a ‘hardcore’ New Yorker, I got to enjoy a non-New-Yorker’s reactions to things like the WTC and crowded sidewalks. :D

The Saga Continues……..

In “Beach Walk #175 – People talkin’? Who cares!”, we get to hear about someone so caught up in her own idea of what’s important in life that she tries to project this onto someone else. She’s so busy thinking about what SHE perceives to be the right way to live life that she totally ignores what the leader told the new paddler and gives contradictory instructions.

First of all, she’s not authorized to tell the new paddler what to do. Nobody put her in charge. The leader was IN THE BOAT, giving the orders, so there was no “lack of leadership”.

When asked why she said what she said, her reply was that if the new paddler stopped paddling, the other paddlers would talk about her behind her back, to the effect of “I can’t believe she stopped paddling! :O”. Now we have a reference point to weigh the values of this advice being given. On the one hand, the paddler could keep paddling, though she feels that her body needs a break, and she could avoid being gossiped about over lunch. OTOH, she could stop paddling, NOT risk her physical health, and perhaps be talked about behind her back by people that probably wouldn’t say anything to her face in the first place. If the tree falls in the woods… and you’re in the city, you don’t hear the sound… so… if people are going to gossip behind your back…..

WHO CARES?

What difference does it make? None, because you never hear about it, so, effectively, it doesn’t exist to you. Let’s say you actually hear about this gossip or they tell you to your face that they think less of you as a paddler because you didn’t keep paddling…..

WHO CARES?

What difference does it make? Do they pay your bills? Do they decide whether you get to come out paddling tomorrow morning? :D Do they decide where you sit in the boat?

The ‘advice-giver’ was saying more about herself than she was about the new paddler. She was letting people know what fantasies dictate her actions in life. She won’t do something if she perceives that she might be talked about for it. She won’t do something if she thinks she’ll “look bad”, even perhaps at the cost of her own physical health. That has nothing to do with the new paddler at all. ALSO, the ‘advice-giver’ informs us that she’s willing to attempt to override statements of the person in charge to forward the agenda of her own personal brainwashing. “Don’t do what the leader said, because we’ll talk about you”. What’s that?

Unfortunately, peer pressure is an incredible influence. Without the proper grounding, the new paddler might think the advice is good for her to follow, without having the ability to actually assess it properly, according to what SHE thinks is important in life. Often, people come into a new situation or it could even be a situation they’ve been in for a long time and they don’t have concrete ideas about what’s good for them and what isn’t. Those people are often susceptible to accepting and adapting other people’s ideas. Just because that way of being works for one person doesn’t mean it works for YOU. A lot of people have taken the wrong path following suggestions from people with their own personal agendas.

How about if the advice-giver channeled her energy into STOPPING the other paddlers from talking behind the new paddler’s back? How about THAT? How about praising the new paddler for being a part of keeping their heavier, 5-man boat alongside the lighter 6-man boat? How about THAT? How about if she focuses on what she can do that’s positive instead of “helping the new paddler avoid the negative”… the negative that she’s DEFINITELY going to be a part of if the newjack doesn’t take her advice and get back to work.

Rox says “gossip’s never killed anyone”. While that’s not actually true, :D I see her point. It’s not the ACTUAL gossip that has ever killed anyone. OTOH, people HAVE died from pushing their bodies past limits that they feel they have approached.

What’s it worth to you? What’s it worth to keep people from talking about you? Your health? Your money? Your family? Who ARE these people, anyway?

Who cares?

Yankees’ Cory Lidle Plane Crash on 72nd Street in Manhattan, NYC

NEW YORK — A small plane with New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle aboard crashed into a 50-story condominium tower Wednesday on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, killing two people, authorities said.
There was no immediate confirmation Lidle was among the dead, and earlier reports indicated four had died. A law enforcement official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that Lidle was on the plane. And Federal Aviation Administration records showed the single-engine plane was registered to the athlete, National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Deborah Hersman told reporters.

An instructor and a student pilot were on the plane when it struck the tower at 524 E. 72nd St., New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “The metal parts are basically in the street. The engine was on one of the floors,” he said.

“The initial indication is that there is a terrible accident,” Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said, and Bloomberg said there was “nothing to suggest that anything remotely like terrorism was involved in this.” Nevertheless, fighter jets were scrambled over U.S. cities as a precaution, the Pentagon said.

The crash at the Belaire overlooking the East River struck fear in a city devastated by the attacks of Sept. 11 five years ago. Sirens echoed across the neighborhood as emergency workers and ambulances rushed in with stretchers. Broken glass and debris were strewn around the neighborhood.