text:
|Going round in circles - trying to download to no avail
I've become a big fan of digital downloads of books and magazines - but while iTunes and Amazon work fine for me (and sync between my Mac and iPad beautifully) it is possible to encounter difficulties when trying to buy/download from suppliers who are less well attuned to digital downloads.
Art Magazines from North Light Shop
I used to subscribe to various American Art Magazines but gradually got fed up by the time they took to arrive and the cost relative to the content - given the amount of content available for free online which was of comparable quality.
The other major problem was the massive postage cost for international customers which made a journal which is available for a reasonable cost in the USA a very expensive proposition when buying as an overseas customer.
It's a challenge that a lot of publishers of journals and magazines face. It's also a challenge which must be losing them custom and customers.
One of the delights of the Internet is that it is now possible to order individual copies of magazines as digital downloads. That means I can get a copy as soon as the magazine is published. It's all very fast - see/buy/download/receive. The admin process is extremely speedy on other sites. The only time I have to wait is the time to receive the download.
This is why some of the publishers of art magazines now make digital downloads available from their website stores.
Which is fine - so long as they work!
This is the story of trying to buy the April 2011 copy of the Pastel Journal which has the Pastel 100 winners in it.
It was always a copy I looked forward to getting and I'm very happy to try and download a digital copy for $7.99 (although I would expect the publishers to realise at some point that they will achieve a lot more sales when they start relating the digital file to cost ie there are no paper or printing costs involved with a digital file)
This is the process I followed - which ended up in this blog post.
- Read Pastel Journal Blog - see article about the Pastel Journal 100 edition and click the link to the 12th annual Pastel 100 competition
- Arrive at North Light Store
- Bonus: I note the following This item does not have shipping or handling fees, but does count toward your order total to receive free shipping on other products.
- Realise I need to set up an account and do so. Get rather irritated by an antiquated American ecommerce system which assumes all international addresses work in exactly the same way as American ones. It's something I've seen a lot of in the past but much less so nowadays hence the irritation at having to make "England" a province. It's a country!
- Click through the North Light website menu to get to the Pastel Journal and choose the digital download option for the Pastel Journal 100 issue (April 2011)
- Next I click the link and.......
- Billing information has been automatically inserted
- Just the payment information to complete (what a pity they don't offer Paypal which is used by soooooooo many people these days for international payments)
- see the shipping information but do not complete this as they don't need it, the digital download is coming to my computer. It's not a CD coming to my B&M address
- HOWEVER I do note that there is no option for "digital download" in the shipping information! Which seems very odd to say the least
- Odd that is until I press "continue"
- The next thing I get is a screen demanding that I complete a shipping address. This states the following
Invalid First Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Last Name For Shipping Address
Invalid Shipping Address 1
Invalid City For Shipping Address
Invalid Postal Code for Shipping Address
Invalid Ship Country
- So now I wonder what to do - which is never a situation I like to be in when in the middle of a transaction on a secure website
- I try choosing default and that loads my home address and announces that it's going to send me my digital download as "international printed matter"
- I try the same process twice more with identical result. Nope I didn't do anything wrong. The system running on the North Light Store does not appear to be one which can cope with digital downloads of files! Either that or somebody forgot to ask the webmaster to include instructions specifically for digital download customers.
- This is the point at which I begin to "lose it" and......
- Start this blog post instead. I give up!
So - a question for you
Has anybody SUCCESSFULLY downloaded a digital file to an international address from the North Light Store?
- If so, what did you do? Did it arrive as a digital download?
- If not, why not? Plus what did you next?


text:
01 March 2010
One Ancestral Village-Region in Latvia
My choices were a toss-up between Kastran or Lade in Latvia—the closest villages to my two ancestral farms. When briefly in Riga on a restricted schedule, I had enough sense to pick up a copy of Arvīds Plaudis' A Trip Around Latvia (Riga? Jumava, 2002). I decided to go with Kastran, home of the Freibergs, because I have a relative still living there whom I've never met. And because according to Plaudis, Lade has no historical, architectural, cultural, or otherwise significant redeeming feature to rate a mention. I wonder if that's why the Jurikas family all moved on elsewhere (... oh please, you know my Canadian humour conflicts with my Latvian sensibility!).
Now, to pad out stuff about my village I could have googled it. But I wasn't willing to wade through a hundred pages of dubious portals and the usual social networking sites that always offer "everything you need to know" or the occasional carpet manufacturer. Yes indeed, there are people with the surname Kastran. If one uses the proper spelling of Kastrāne it might be darn near the only place in the world without a Wikipedia entry. On the other hand, the place definitely has a lot of hotels and real estate entries so it must be a going concern ... I'd say one of those spots favoured by the rich and famous, undefiled by peasants.
Google Earth was worth a try. What I see looks like a farm bordering a small river with perhaps two dozen buildings scattered around. Although I have photographs of the family farmhouse, I can't recognize the shape of its roof! Then again, this is supposed to be about history. Fortunately I have good maps, so I know where Kastrāne is—about 40 miles northeast of Riga—and how to get there.
A Trip Around Latvia gives one specific reference, and I quote: "Kastrāne Castle Hill: On the left bank of the Mazā Jugla, near 'Grunduļi', similar to 'Lielā vīra gulta' with its two ramparts bordering the property on both ends." I am grateful that Kastrāne has some kind of notable monument on a river but close perusal of the pages before and aft do not reveal the mysterious Grunduļi. One notices that although Mr. Plaudis provides excellent small map segments, he omitted the North sign on them. Therefore, on a tour "On foot, By bicycle, By car" as his sub-title reads, one would be juggling a series of maps.
So far, not much progress with this village yet ... but surrounding place names begin to resonate. A couple of miles away, Suntaži was where my gt-grandparents married in 1881. Mālpils, a few miles on the other side of Kastrāne, is where Grandpa Freibergs and all his siblings were baptized in a church built in 1766. Vatrāne is a village named for the vast estate upon which great-grandfather Otto Freibergs held his farm, pre-First World War. Nearby Ķeipene was the origin of some family postcards mailed to Canada; a hill called Jaunķeipene was "a popular gathering place of ancient Latvians in times of trouble." Trouble, indeed. Centuries of it. The church at Madliena, where I expect (hope) to find earlier Freibergs, dates back to the 13th century (now we're talkin'!) and was renovated in 1730. It was Madliena where Otto was taken in 1906 and summarily shot for his part in the short-lived reform movement. Several manor houses in the area had been torched in 1905 by Latvian freedom fighters and the large estate owners used police to execute all suspects.
Photograph, Madliena Evangelical Lutheran Church, Wikimapia.
Google is useful, after all. Now that I'm getting to know the neighbourhood, surely Grunduļi will reveal itself. I have a few lats coins left over from my first visit, probably not enough to rent a car.
5 comments:
- Antra said...
Lāde has a lake! That's about all I've got though. I've been there - my half-uncle's property (which has belonged to the family for at least 120 years) is on the lakefront of Lādes ezers (Lāde lake). Google Images tells me that by the lake you can also find the ruins of the old manor house.
- Monday, 01 March, 2010
- BDM said...
Uh oh ... looks like I might have to do a sequel :-)
- Tuesday, 02 March, 2010
- J.M. said...
Great posts. For a village 'without history' you've managed to dig up a lot of information!
- Monday, 29 March, 2010
- Unknown said...
I am a new owner of Kastrane Manor. Now i have opened Beer Brewery here. If You want to know something more about this place email email@example.com
- Monday, 31 July, 2017
- BDM said...
Thank you, Janis Rudzitis, for your comment. I will be in touch. Since that post I visited and learned more about my family home: http://brendadougallmerriman.blogspot.ca/2013/05/hands-on-latvia-kalna-koneni.html
- Saturday, 05 August, 2017

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Maybe you rocked out for the first time at The Summit. Or perhaps your first live music experience (like many in this area) took place at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo.
We're asking readers to share stories of their first concerts, and a few Chronicle staffers are also joining in the fun.
Tell us about your first concert in the comment section, and if you have a photo to share, send it to email@example.com.
Photo: Paul Natkin / WireImage


text:
The Loss and the Future
by Gary Jason | Posted November 18, 2012
Obama won reelection, and the Left is utterly jubilant. Obama — jubilant himself — obviously views this as a mandate for four more years of bigger government, higher taxes, more Fed money-printing, more regulation, more war on fossil fuels, more socialization of industry, and more welfare programs.
He made this clear in his characteristically arrogant "my way or the highway" talk regarding the looming fiscal cliff, where he said that the voters have made it clear they want to soak the rich with more taxes. In his hubris, he reminds me strongly of Nixon after his reelection. And I suspect he is headed for the same fall.
Leftist "pundits" are full of advice for Republicans about how to grow beyond their "prejudices" — and embrace leftist ones! This would be convenient for the Democrats, one would think.
I want to sketch, briefly but more accurately, the reasons for the Republican loss, what it portends for the future, and some suggestions (from one on the inside) on how to fix it.
First, I am not as impressed with Obama's victory as most of the leftist pundits are. The Electoral College totals typically overstate matters, of course. Obama won, but with fewer votes than he received last time, and there were 2 million fewer votes cast in this election than in 2008. As Michael Barone points out, every president reelected since Andrew Jackson won reelection with a greater popular vote percentage than he received in his first run, except Obama. Last time he won 53% to 46%, as opposed to 50% to 48% now. As Jim Geraghty notes, had Romney received about 407,000 more votes in as few as four of the battleground states, he could have won the Electoral College vote. Gallup and other accurate polls showed that just before the handy hurricane Sandy, Romney had a slight edge, but it was eroded by the photo ops of Obama conspicuously "caring" about the victims. It was an ill wind that blew Obama a lot of good. Considering the huge advantage any incumbent president has, the wealth of financial resources available to Obama, and the lock he had on his key voting blocks — in 59 black precincts of Philadelphia, Romney got zero votes! — Obama hardly waltzed to victory.
The markets were similarly unimpressed. They dropped 2% to 3% on the following few days. And now with the certainty that Obamacare will be fully inflicted upon the country, businesses are doing exactly what it was predicted they would: cutting their full-time workforces to avoid the costs of giving full-time workers government-mandated insurance or pay the fines, as well as the taxes that Obamacare will bring. Companies large and small are accelerating the shedding of full-time jobs in favor of part-time workers and contractors. These include: Abbot Labs; Applebee's; Boston Scientific; Covidien; Dana Holding; Darden Restaurants; Kinetic Concepts; Kroger; Lockheed-Martin; Medtronic; New Energy; Papa John's Pizza; Smith & Nephew; Stryker; TANCOA Janitorial Services; and Welch Allyn. As person put it, "We own a small business and we have 100 employees, we will lay off many and put many on part time status due to [Obamacare]. Ironically, many of our employees voted for the man who will put them out of a job."
That will only accelerate in the new year, as the mandates loom.
Obama won and Romney lost for a variety of reasons, some of which the Republicans can overcome, and some of which they will have to figure out how to circumvent — if they have the will and skill. These include:
1. Obama's massive negative campaign — really, classic negative associative propaganda. The strategist behind it was formulated by Jim Messina. He bet six months before the election that Romney would win the primary, and followed the strategy enunciated by Dick Morris: if the public doesn't know a candidate, run massively negative ads to create an initial impression which later positive ads will not overcome. While Romney was still forced to battle primary opponents during an unreasonably long primary period, getting attacked in a seemingly endless series of debates (typically moderated by leftist Democratic "journalists"), Obama was free to start running hundreds of millions in attack ads against Romney. The ad that alleged that Romney was responsible for some guy's wife dying of cancer, for example, was a Goebbels-like pearl of vicious mendacity. The ads bashed Romney for exporting jobs, wanting to enslave women, put blacks in chains, and so on. This wasn't so much a Chicago-style attack campaign as a Berlin-style one. Only a man of Obama's metastasized narcissism could gloat over such a low victory.
Every president reelected since Andrew Jackson won reelection with a greater popular vote percentage than he received in his first run — except Obama.
2. There was a concomitant campaign by the Obama-worshipping mainstream media of deliberately arousing the anti-Mormon hatred long endemic in American culture, a campaign involving dozens of articles in major publications, including Newsweek just before the election. (Romney chose not to allow his surrogates to explore Obama's own controversial church, something I suspect Obama counted on.) Obama could have ended the deliberate enflaming of anti-Mormon prejudice with just one utterance, but he cheerfully let it proceed.
3. Romney failed to hammer home more powerfully the massive corruption of this regime. I would have run hard-hitting ads naming names and showing pictures of each of the legion of wealthy Obama campaign bundlers whose useless green energy companies received tax dollars.
4. Romney didn't do a good job of rebutting the bogus narrative put forward ceaselessly by Obama and his media courtesans about how bad the economy was when he took office. The recession ended in 2009, and the recovery was the weakest in recent memory, not because the recession was so severe, but precisely because of Obama's policies. The Romney campaign just took it for granted that everybody remembered the Reagan recovery, not realizing that most young people don't. He needed to connect those dots to counter the media's clear mission to push their false narrative.
5. True to his Chicago roots, Obama used OPM (Other People's Money) liberally to buy votes to an unprecedented degree. Despite the recovery, Obama added 15 million new people to the food stamp program alone (hitting 47 million, or 14% of the total population). You can bet the vast majority of those became his loving supporters. And by 2011, 70.4 million people were on Medicaid — a record 22%, or one out of every five Americans. Hell, even the government-subsidized cellphone program for the poor (the "Lifeline" program) was turned into an effective vote-buying scheme. The number of people getting "free" phones rose from 7.1 million in 2008 to 12.5 million in 2012 — a 76% jump!
This is public choice lumpen theory in action. Give a cellphone — and maybe a bottle of Gallo wine! — to the voters, and then truck them to the polls. The Chicago way, indeed!
In fact, it was a thoroughly public choice theory election: give the voters enough "free" health care, "free" food, "free" cell phones, "free" storm assistance, "free" contraceptives, "free" student loans, and they will vote for you, even if it costs them long-term in lost jobs, prosperity and freedom itself.
It would appear that we are all Greeks now.
6. Obama's campaign of changing the subject was a classic of successful misdirection. He was able to convince many voters that Romney hated women. Here Obama was helped by the primary win of one Todd Akin, a wingnut with some loopy theories on rape. Really, this was a wonderful example of a dirty trick: Akin's opponent, Claire McCaskill, had run ads attacking Akin's primary opponents and building him up as a strong conservative, cleverly ensuring that the sane (and stronger) candidates would lose out to the nutjob. Romney and the Republican establishment tried in vain to get this bastard to drop out, and distanced themselves from him when he wouldn't, but they were all bashed for being closet Akinites. McCaskill coasted to victory, never having to defend her awful record in Congress.
The Romney campaign just took it for granted that everybody remembered the Reagan recovery, not realizing that most young people don't.
It was hard to decide who was more reprehensible: Mr. Akin, because after making his ignorant remarks, he refused to do the honorable thing and resign, or "Senator" McCaskill, for her filthy trick in pushing the wingnut to become her opponent out of fear of explaining to the voters why she deserved their votes.
7. There is no way in hell that Romney or any other candidate could have won any appreciable number of black voters in this election, obviously. But he really hurt himself with Hispanics by positioning himself to the right of Gingrich and Perry on immigration (and not choosing Rubio for VP candidate). He should have thought through the issue more carefully, and articulated a more pro-immigration policy that does justice to the real, genuine concerns of immigration opponents, but one more in keeping with our national history. (I have a rather lengthy and detailed piece on this subject coming in these pages soon.)
8. Romney failed to pound home the failed policy of Obama in Libya. Bush had settled with Gaddafi, obtaining his mustard gas and nuclear weapons technology, in exchange for his not invading Libya (this was in the first week or so of the Iraq war). Obama helped overthrow the admittedly evil Gaddafi, and recently denied extra protection for our ambassador in Benghazi, while boasting of his own killing of bin Laden. The result was a successful al Qaeda attack, which Obama had the audacity to blame on some obscure video.
Can future Republicans prevail? Certainly. The Democrats recovered very rapidly after massive defeats by Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984, landslides next to which this election was as nothing. But it would help things if Republicans did some reasonable things.
1. Get clear on the purpose of your party, as opposed to the purpose of your faction. In contemporary politics, the Democratic Party is the big-government party; the Republicans should be the smaller government party. Be transcendentally clear on what that means. Democrats are not (usually) communists, they just want an ever-larger government — they are neosocialists, rather than socialists. This is because the party is primarily a coalition of groups that get money from government or progressive government policies. The key constituents of the party are public employees, especially teachers; people on welfare or other forms of public assistance; attorneys who sue businesses for a living; unionized workers in private industry; and young people who get government benefits but pay little for them (in taxes).
Republicans aren't (as Obama so often insinuates) anarchists; they just want government restrained to its most effective and indispensable core functions: defense; internal security; a fair judicial system; only such regulation as stops significant negative externalities and other market failures. And Republicans are also aware of the everpresent risk of government failures.
2. The Republicans, again, need to understand with transcendent clarity that people don't vote their interests, but their perceived interests. People can be mistaken about these interests, and often are. In public choice parlance, this gives rise to democracy failure, or as I term it, voter failure. Indeed, in my view, this election involved a huge amount of voter failure.
So it is that many poor people vote for weakened welfare requirements, unable to see that it is their communities that will suffer the most from the expanded cycle of poverty. Many elderly people support the federal government's taking control of healthcare, unable to see that in countries with national healthcare systems, the elderly are put at the bottom of the list for scarce procedures.
For that reason, Republicans need to hammer home cases of government failure, not just here, but elsewhere as well. That means that in the coming two years, Republicans at all levels need to keep pressing this administration about its failures, both in the past and as they mount rapidly over the next two years. Remember, the costs of Obamacare were carefully structured to occur after the 2012 election. Every Republican politician should point out every case where a business lays off workers, cuts back hours, or charges customers more, to pay for Obamacare — as an owner of a large chain of Denny's just announced he is doing (raising prices and cutting hours to 28 per week per worker). Keep pointing out the costs of each and every new tax imposed by that law. Since the Republicans still control the House, they should run hearings on these costs, as well as (for that matter) on each crony capitalist deal from the past and going forward.
The Republicans need to understand with transcendent clarity that people don't vote their interests, but their perceived interests.
In particular, Republicans in Congress need to resist the temptation to say of Obamacare, "Oh, well — it's now the law of the land. Let's try to make it better." No — make Obama, Pelosi, and Reid own it. And do so with loud publicity.
3. The Republicans need a much shorter primary season. Romney ran short of money early in the race — right after winning the primaries — because he had to spend so much on campaigning so long. While he spent his campaign cash against Gingrich and Santorum, Obama spent his attacking Romney. When Romney finally clinched the nomination, he was virtually out of cash, and could not answer the vicious onslaught of attacks.
4. Republicans should not allow mainstream media commentators to moderate during the Republican primary debates. Pick only conservative and libertarian journalists to do that job. In the primary debate "moderated" by ex-Clinton aide and partisan Democratic hack George Stephanopoulos, he introduced the phony "war on women" meme (as he was no doubt instructed to do by the Obama team) by out of the blue bringing up birth control — the legitimacy of which none of the candidates had ever denied.
And in the general debates, eliminate the single media moderator format. In the debate that Candy Crowley moderated, she shamelessly took the side of Obama, interrupting Romney dozens of times (and Obama fewer than ten times), and at one point actually told the audience that Romney was "wrong" on the facts about whether Obama had called the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism. In fact, while Obama used that phrase in his earlier news conference, it did not clearly apply to the attack, and for the following two weeks he and his spokespeople advanced the false narrative that the assault was a spontaneous demonstration aroused by a video.
Going forward, insist on having true balance by having panels of moderators, panels that are themselves well balanced between left and right.
One final observation is worth making here. It will be hard for half of this country to watch the insufferable arrogance of the president as he continues his quest to push the country to the left. But as John Steele Gordon recently noted, most presidential second terms have been cursed by scandal, war, and battles with Congress. Obama, who has already seen all of those during his first term, will likely find things even worse in his second term.
Why? First, even his own estimates show him running the national debt up to $20 trillion — an estimate based on rosy projections. The final tab may well hit $22 trillion. Sooner or later, this will trigger inflation or increases in the interest the country must pay to service the debt. This will hurt his popularity.
Second, he will not be able to sweep the problem of Iran's nuclear weapons program under the carpet much longer. He has claimed that his rather weak sanctions program will prevent Iran from developing nuclear capability, and that his Republican critics are warmongers. This is rich, considering that he used our military to overthrow Gaddafi, bragged openly about killing bin Laden (a boast that likely motivated the killing of the four Americans in Benghazi by the resurgent al Qaeda), and has himself said he will not permit Iran to go nuclear.
Most presidential second terms have been cursed by scandal, war, and battles with Congress. Obama, who has already seen all of those during his first term, will likely find things even worse in his second.
We'll see. I suspect that the sanctions won't work — without the support of Russia and China, how could they? And have they worked at all so far? Either Iran will go nuclear — in which case Obama will be revealed as having made a truly Carteresque blunder, and in the same country, allowing our bitterest enemy to achieve game-changing power which will surely lead it to expand its terrorist operations against us — or else he will use force, which will make the anti-American Left and isolationist Right bitterly angry.
Third, the effects of Obamacare will hit. If the death panels start ruling out heart valve surgery for Grandpa, there will be heat. If millions of people lose their preferred health insurance (because their employers find it cheaper to pay the fine instead of furnishing the more expensive federally mandated insurance), there will be heat. And if millions of Americans lose their jobs (or get knocked down to part-time status), there will be profound disappointment.
Finally, Obama is now pushing for $1.6 trillion in tax increases. If he shoves them through Congress, and this further chokes off economic growth, swelling the numbers of the unemployed and perhaps pushing us back into outright recession, there will be fury.
Obama, in running one of the dirtiest campaigns in history, made a deal with the Devil to cling to power. We will see what price the Devil will exact in return.
Gary Jason is a lecturer in Philosophy and a senior editor at Liberty. His books can be found on Amazon.com.
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Jon Harrison
Jason has apparently taken Romney's defeat very much to heart . . .
Mon, 2012-11-19 19:52
Gary Jason
Thanks for the snark, Harrison.
Wed, 2012-11-21 21:53
Steven C.
While I really like solution point #2, I heartily disagree with #1, that the Republican Party is the party of smaller government. What evidence do you show to prove that statement? I can show you dozens of things to prove that, while Republicans may want a smaller government than Democrats, they still want a large government. We can start with George Bush & the Medicare prescription coverage, not to mention the Patriot Act.
If Republicans wanted smaller government, Ron Paul would have been the nominee, not "health care for everyone in Massachusetts, and an individual mandate to boot, Romney." Romney didn't articulate much in the way of making government smaller that I saw. He agreed way too much with Obama on policy.
Just like Democrats, the only coin of realm for Repubulicans is power, not individual liberty.
Mon, 2012-11-19 16:51
Just one quibble with an otherwise excellent article: Republicans certainly should be the party of smaller government but they have not been for at least a dozen years. They are the party of bigger government for the purposes of helping businesses and of creating (in the common use of the term) a fascist state. I had hopes in the past that small-government philosophy would gain traction in the Republican party but so far it does not seem to have done so. In my opinion it's time for small-government voters to migrate out away from the Republicans and band together. We seem to have lost the Republican party to those who think we can steal votes from the opposition by being just like them.
Mon, 2012-11-19 11:23
Gary Jason
Dear Tom: thank you for reading my piece. As I have responded to this line of criticism in these pages a lot, I will keep my reply brief.
When I say that the Republicans are the party that represents smaller government, I don't mean that they have favored minimal government (which I favor) or no governemnt (which I think is silly--anarchism, like communism, sounds great in a philosophy book, but is horrific in real life). Certainly Romney in this election did: he would have lowered taxes, cut spending, and most importantly, he would have stopped the greatest expansion of government power in the last 75 years, Obamacare. That alone should have won him the election.
Yes, Bush enacted a small expansion to Medicare (a senior drug program)--which I opposed. But we often forget that the man he ran against, Al Gore, favored Hillarycare and had a vastly more costly (and therefore intrusive) senior prescription drug program. This was what economists call "democracy failure": the voters simply would not elect anyone at that time (the 2000 election) who would not give them "free" drug prescriptions.
Yes, at the end of his term, Bush--in response to the mortgage crisis, enacted bail-outs, but those funds (way in excess of what I would have favored) were eventually paid back, unlike Obama's simulus programs. Prior to that, Bush's deficits were not particulary high. However, let me remind you that while the mortgage crisis is presented by everyone on the left as a case of market failure,it was (like the Great Depression, as Milton Friedman won his Nobel Prize for showing) in fact a case of government failure. The cause was the corrupt Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, both of which programs Bush had tried to restrain, and both of which were Democratic party creatures.
I think that the Republican party needs a new fusionism, meaning, a rethinking and representation of the ideals of smaller government in a way that keeps key elements of the coalition together. Romney touched one a few elements--such as getting Catholics to see that Obamacare would require Catholic intitutions to do things that violated their priciples (such as offer contraception and abortion), but he needed to make that case more loudly and in a way that even those of us who have no problem with contraception and abortion would agree. Start by making the point that Thomas Jefferson made, that it is a violation of liberty to compel a man to support something he considers immoral, even if you don't agree with him. So, to those who favor abortion, say, make the point that they have a right to favor it, but compelling Catholics to fund it is immoral.
The reason I don't favor voting for third parties (which is what I think you are advocating), is that they almost always serve to divide the opposition to the big government party, and enable it to win, and create even more of a welfare state.
So, in this election, there were two U. S. Senate races, and a Governorship, that would have gone to the more fiscally restrained Republican, but instead went to the big government Democrat, because the Libertarian took enough of the vote away. Look, for the millionth time, I favor ranked (or instant run-off) voting, but until it is instituted, there is nothing practical to be done other than work within an admittedly flawed coalition, to move it more steadfastly towards small government, while keeping its chances of winning elections alive.
I hope to sketch out this new fusionism in articles to come, starting with my upcoming piece on immigration.
Tue, 2012-11-20 14:05
Fred Mora
Zero vote for the challenger in 59 precincts? That's vote fraud on a scale even Stalin didn't dare attempt. The Party never got 100% of the votes because it would look suspicious.
Mon, 2012-11-19 01:34
Gary Jason
Fred, thanks for reading my piece. No doubt there was voter fraud--there always is, alas!--but I think this wasn't the major factor in Romney's defeat...
Mon, 2012-11-19 14:01
Correction for the first #6: Todd Akin, not Aiken.
Sun, 2012-11-18 23:16
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text:
Friday October 16th 2009
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Prospero, William Shakespeare's The Tempest
This is meant to be the last day of the shoot. The coast of Pembrokeshire is 250 miles west of us and I miss it already. We are at an industrial estate in Essex at a specialised diving tank trying to get the shots of what happens below the surface with Benedict Cumberbatch and JJ Feild. The tank is 7m deep (easily deep enough to drown a face-puller or two). It's also surprisingly warm and VERY chlorinated. The little old guy that runs it is sort of an East End Jacques Cousteau – bobbing about the place helping our underwater Camera team. The first thing we do is try to match the colour of the water in the tank to the colour of the water in the sea off Barafundle Bay.
One cold blustery day, way back before the beginning of the shoot, our chief underwater cameraman came on a recce with us to Barafundle Bay. While I was counting the steps up the cliff with very little glee, he took a stroll with his DVcam. When we watched his footage later it was quite startling. The grey sky and grey surface of the water quiet suddenly switched to an almost fluorescent PEA GREEN as the lens dipped under the surface – it was hard to believe. This colour change was extant while filming the boys at sea, right through the shoot.
So here we are, back in the tank, and I'm watching as the divers pour in large cans of food colouring (used in the manufacture mushy peas and baked beans) in just the right amount, stirring it by swimming with their large flippers, to try and match the colour of the tank to picture on a monitor.
[This turns out to be a TOTAL waste of time. In the edit we discover that making the colours so real just didn't look… well … REAL. Every time we cut to an underwater shot the difference in colour looked more like it was shot in a tank than the tank actually did in the first place. Luckily we use very little of the underwater footage and end up digitally greying the water to match it closer to the look of the surface. Inaccurate, but better. This is one of those great little lessons in filmmaking that I tuck away in my mind for the future.]
While Benedict and JJ get ready, we watch the assembled rushes of the scenes above the water in the Atlantic to try and match performance too. All our minds went back to those days shooting…
Sunday 27th September 2009
Today we're going to get in boats, take our four stars out into the bay and film them as they try to give their best friend the ultimate gift they can. His freedom. Today we are going to drown Benedict Cumberbatch.
Usually the days I liked best are those where something else (like a stunt, or special effect) takes the pressure to be the ball-breaker out of my hands. But even though the divers will be in charge of how safe the boys are, and therefore what we can or can't shoot and for how long, I have a knot in my stomach. This is my first film in charge and my stars are about to float around freely in the Atlantic Ocean. It's cold. It's bound to be time consuming. Too much can go wrong… And yet it is perhaps the most important sequence of the film.
So, with wetsuits under their costumes, and wearing flippers to make treading water easier, the boys (Adam Robertson, JJ Field, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Burke) head off. They look nervous for the first time.
The dive cameraman has told me that our actors will not be able to last more than fifteen minutes in the ocean before being plucked out to dry off and warm up. This is the Atlantic and we are nearly in October. Then they'll then need at least an hour before they can go in again. We light a fire on the beach and have tents and soup and towels and clothes ready for this process revolving. But he also tells me that as the day goes on the fifteen minutes shooting-time will get shorter and shorter. When he thinks they are too cold he is pulling them out though. No argument.
This is why there is a knot in my stomach. Though there isn't much dialogue, filming on and in water is incredibly difficult. Basically EVERYTHING is moving. All the normal stuff like changing a lens, even moving to another angle, just eats away at the time. Fifteen minutes can vanish in a blink – and suddenly the boys will be too cold and have to come out.
The boats are loaded and gun their engines to get around the headland into the deep water off Barafundle Bay. The sea is whipping up into the faces of the actors. I am wondering if we have bitten off more than we can chew. What if one can't take it and the others can? What if one gets sick? What if we can't get the right shots to tell the story anyway? This is the ending of the film? It's possibly the end of my career. Why didn't I write a film set in a car park? With their usual humour the boys take off their coats. Adam leads them – and jumps into the sea. They follow one by one.
Back in the tank in Essex we are looking at the rushes from that day, roughly assembled into the above surface drowning sequence. The shots really do speak for themselves. We're all remembering that is really was a remarkable day. Treading water in that kind of cold, in the currents of sea, while concentrating on what they are trying to do was exhausting. And of course that exhaustion worked so well to convey the truth of what the characters had come through to get there. Even some of the hardened crew found it quite effecting to film.
[With all four boys still alive and kicking – I hope it's ok to reveal that in fact they stayed in for longer than 15 minutes every time they got in the water. In one shot they stayed in the water for over 40 minutes. They never complained. They just wanted to get it done and get it done right. Though they lost quite a few pairs of flippers that I had to pay for… ]
Seeing them drag Benedict back to shore, forming the end tableau, the result of the journey was every bit as striking as I had hoped it would be.
The tank is a different challenge for JJ and Benedict. The temperature of the water being the biggest different of course. The tank has windows at the bottom so I can watch the boys as they take breaths from the diver's aqualung to stay underwater as Miles (JJ) holds James (Benedict) until he gives up the fight for a life he no longer wants.
By the end of the day the chlorine has taken its toll on them. Their eyes are red and burning. They look like rabbits that have had makeup tested on them. After surviving the Atlantic without a mutter of discontent, they are now whimpering in agony.
With some time left on the clock though, we decide to capture some scenes of the boys swimming on the surface from beneath the water. Except we only have two of them. Luckily, we do have the costumes and the young, rather bemused, diving tank assistant agrees to don Davy's outfit as a swimming double. We just need someone to be Bill.
It is fitting as a final addition to my CV of jobs on this film that it is me. I delight in telling the 'making of' camera that the waist on Adam's trousers is way too roomy for me and I dive in. As I swim across the tank with Benedict and JJ I'm thrilled to be one of them for a moment. They are laughing and endlessly willing, but they really do look pretty fucked.
Finally it's a WRAP. "Barafundle Bay" is in the can.
I will see the lads again of course, when we get in to the sound studio at the latest, with a finished cut of the film. But – there's a whole lot of editing to do first. It's an emotional farewell.
I get home at last. I have some beers. I feel empty.
Every film maker I know says that a schedule must include getting ill after a shoot, as the body is allowed to shut down. But, having become a challenge-junkie I decide not to give in to this and and go out and play rugby the next day. And break my collar bone.
Only after this does it all hit me. The morning after, I can't get out of bed. I lie there letting the whole film wash over me. Dozing, I let myself drown in it all.
I get up at 2pm. At 2.30pm I realise that I have been upright for 30 minutes without people asking me questions, without the need for decisions – I seem to be in slow motion.
Perhaps it is just to do something, or perhaps it's some weird subconscious metaphysical need to cleanse, but I decide that I should get the Land Rover cleaned. The mud and manure are not right for North London. I drive to the local car jet-wash place where the nice Greek bloke walks slowly around my vehicle with total astonishment.
"My God! Where you been?!"
I sigh.
"Wales. I've been in Wales. West… As far as you can go. "
As I wait for him and FOUR other Greeks to find my car under the allotment on wheels, Kelly calls me.
"OK, the insurance claim came through for the damaged footage. We can re-shoot the beach scenes on Barafundle Bay. When do you want to do it?"
"Um… "
Thursday October 15th 2009
Brody: What day is this?
Hooper: It's Wednesday… eh, it's Tuesday, I think.
Brody: Think the tide's with us?
Hooper: Keep kicking.
Brody: I used to hate the water…
Hooper: I can't imagine why.
Today is the last day of the shoot in West Wales. (There's one more day's filming, at a special underwater tank in East London ). It's an irony fitting of the finale to such an "incident" filled shoot that around mid morning Kelly Broad comes on set to whisper in my ear that she'd had the call we've been waiting for. We have now finally 'closed the finance'. In other words we can now go ahead and shoot the film. Kelly and I laugh
Luckily the crew have only needed to concentrate on the job in hand. But while we are all fitter, stronger, very tanned (unbelievably) and have found a great rhythm, I can also see that everyone is tired.
The cast in particular have been amazing, uncomplaining and have lead the effort with their talent and resolve. But being together as these four characters in EVERY shot has taken its toll. A couple of nights ago, in a scene where they discuss the after-life while stoned, we all politely waited as Tom Burke gave a particularly long dramatic pause before saying his next line. The camera rolled on and on before JJ finally looked round at him and realised he had fallen asleep in the middle of a take. He awoke at the sound of our laughter and calmly said "Oh. Is it me?"
Last night we shot the last scenes on beach itself. Benedict crying out in pain was truly disturbing. The chilling sound echoed out into the night across the bay.
Not since I finished writing it have I been really alone. I love being part of a crew. But the day after Wales Wrap it's just Kelly Broad and I left to clean 'the Manor House' at Stackpole – our unit base. I found it nearly four years earlier and now while packing it up the sadness really hits me. We dismantle the phones and pack up our numbered mugs. We empty the costume rooms, the make-up rooms, the Greenroom where the boys ate so many odd breakfasts and empty the fridge in the kitchen where we ended so many long, hot days with cold beers. The rare horseshoe bats that live in the attic will have it to themselves again.
Every so often one of the crew stops by to pick up something or leave something with us before they head back east and to their next job. We thank them for all their hard work and hope I'll have them on a film-set again soon.
I hand the keys back to the guys from the National Trust. "Well, you were lucky with the weather anyway…" Yes. Yes. Yes. We were.
At last – I take down the banner that hangs over the door. I roll it up and toss in the back of my mud and manure-caked Land Rover. It reads "Welcome to Barafundle Bay".
I pick up Benedict from his cottage and we leave the green and blue of the West behind us. As we drive I start to face the battles ahead – to turn our footage into a film and then get that film released… Fuck. There is so far to go. Then my phone rings.
One of our assistants, back in London already, tells me that Tom Burke was dropped at a train station in Carmarthen and then found that he'd lost his wallet. He has no ticket and therefore no way home. (Over the next two years I will discover on my travels with Tom that this not an unusual event.) Forty-five minutes later I pull off the road and collect him from the roadside. Another companion for my return to the Big Smoke.
"So Tom, we didn't get to talk much during filming. I'm sorry. I was so busy. How was it for you? …Tom? "
Benedict looks into the back. "He's asleep…"
"Oh… So what about you, mate? You got anything else lined up?… Hm… Well, lets chat about it. We have plenty of time now…"
Wednesday March 7th 2012
"Having ideas is like having chessmen moving forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Some people have asked "why Mug 7?"
In setting up Western Edge Pictures (and producing Third Star) I wanted us to be as environmentally friendly as possible. I have always hated the waste on film sets. I think we are a particularly wasteful industry, because of the speed at which we have to produce our product. One tiny way to do this, and try and make a difference, was to ban polystyrene cups. You may think it's filmstock, light and electricity that make films, but I'm fairly sure it's caffeine. Millions of cups a day – made one second before a cast or crewmember is called to do his duty and so disgarded, or else drunk out of sheer boredom, the cup tossed away, and a fresh one taken to replace it. In over a decade on sets I never saw a polystyrene cup refilled.
In the week before shooting I sent the runners out into the locality to buy 50 mugs from charity shops. I told them to buy a few base-white mugs in each one. Spread the word that a local had come back to make a film, WITHOUT the money that Harry Potter and Robin Hood had had to throw at every problem… maybe they'll cut us some slack when we ask them to wait with a hoard of other walkers while Benedict, JJ, Tom and Adam trudge past a seemingly empty vista.
Back at our production office in Stackpole, the runners painted numbers on them all, so each crewmember could choose a lucky number, or shape, or picture they liked. We took photos of them to archive our lovely crew with 'Mugshots'. One attempt at cutting our waste. And NO chance of our endless coffee cups blowing along the shore into baby dolphins… blow holes… anyway you get the picture. Did it work?
We were so rushed, so understaffed, and so busy. Caring for the mugs went by the way side. Most ended up in unit base (still loved – but not on set) and recycled paper cups found their way on to the shoot. BUT – heartbroken though I was – many of the crew took their mugs home with their crew t-shirts. I learned what I needed to do next time to make this work, AND I have so many more ideas of how to make our film making credibly friendlier for the planet, whichever bit of it we're shooting in. We'd love to hear from anyone out there who has ideas to do that. If we can – we'll try them.
So – Mug 7, was mine. The 7th is my birthday. And there's a rather blurred photo of someone's much loved Jack Russell on the other side. I love making films, but it IS hard, and you have to be a bit of a terrier to try and get things done RIGHT. You just have to stay focused.
Friday October 9th 2009
"Can't we just light the fuckers here? " Miles
For nearly the whole shoot we have had the four guys together (as the script requires). This has been nice in one way – but early on we became aware of the problems of constantly shooting a 'dinner party' in terms of angles and coverage. On many occasions, with things happening so slowly, I wished the idiot writer, had foreseen this and written a few more scenes with just two guys talking…
Today however, we're on Freshwater West and JJ Feild and Benedict Cumberbatch have a moment alone together. So, I go off with Adam Robertson and Tom Burke to film some stuff. Our second camera/B crew have been totally amazing throughout – great characters who created their own infectious team-spirit. As well as being the second camera for the scenes of the four stars, they have also captured so many great shots of the doubles enjoying the miraculously warm weather. (In fact earlier on they nicknamed themselves "28 Sunsets" as they set out in a 4×4 to capture the "magic hour" of every evening in the schedule.)
So we've run both cameras pretty much all day, every day. Our camera department budget, and most alarmingly our film stock budget, has doubled. With my producer-hat on I had to explain this to our financiers, but when they saw just some of those sunsets they seemed happy… No that's a lie. Not happy. They just didn't shut us down. "They seem happy! Let's move on…" is just what I told anyone who asked about it.
Today I get to muck around a bit though, getting some stuff of Burke dropping little pebbles in a rock pool contemplatively – only to have Robertson drop a boulder into it from behind him. In doing his shock response Tom makes the most hilarious roaring noise – once again proving his comic genius.
These scenes are nearer the end than the beginning of the journey and over the next few days we will shoot some of the saddest, as the shoot draws towards a close. But tonight we film a firework display and the comedy of the camp catching fire. It's a long night. The hours I spent in the script wondering how we will manage to shoot this mishap are about to be answered.
We are now well into October. The temperature drops. We huddle in the dunes as the last flocks of birds leave for sunnier climbs. Darkness descends and the props guys send a rocket down a wire into the tent, treated with fire retardant to make it burn slow enough to catch on camera. (It still goes up in seconds)
Then we shot the actual fireworks. JJ, Tom and Adam are brilliant fools on and off camera and, as he watches the ill-judged display above them (a section of the script I titled "My Firmament Falling Down" in a very early version) the look on Benedict's face pretty much says it all…
By midnight it's freezing and as we pack up for the day and hurry to warm cottages, I'm aware that the gracious welcome of this coast may be about to run out.
Thursday October 8th 2009
"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless
Despite nearing the end of the shoot it seems I am still the only one who can draw out cash for the film's daily expenses. With alarming regularity the production office tell me to go and withdraw about seven grand… sometimes ten!
This is annoying as it forces me to leave the set for half an hour or so, which I dare not do, or it means I race off during lunch – which means I don't get to check-in with people and our daily problems… and I don't get to eat! (Our caterers are amazing and I love and NEED lunch.)
Today the call for cash was urgent so I raced into the nearest town to get the money. The first time I did this, a few weeks ago I learned that withdrawing seven thousand pounds on a normal Wednesday afternoon from the Barclays Bank in Pembroke is not possible.
The teller laughed and called other staff over to laugh at me as well. I stood there, dusty and tired, missing lunch, holding open a cotton sack and glancing furtively at my watch.
"Seven thousand!? Here?! We don't have that, Love!"
"Oh… I assumed, being a bank and all… Uh, how much CAN I have… ?"
At this point it was starting to sound more like a hold up than a legal withdrawal, but with less satisfactory results. After much debate they worked out that if I raided another two branches I would be able to make up the seven grand. They phoned ahead to warn them of my arrival… from another world. Film world.
Anyway – we have learned to order cash in advance, but it still annoys me that I have to leave set today to go into the bank.
While on my way there I suddenly come over the brow of a hill and a rare sounds echoes through the Land Rover. My phone is ringing. I have barely had a signal for nearly five weeks so this is an event. But it's not good news.
"Vaughan – you need to come on set. The council have turned up and shut us down."
We are filming at Freshwater West today. A stunning beach where filming for Robin Hood and Harry Potter also occurred. But to be exact – at the moment we are doubling up the location and using the interior of the toilets in the car park (where JJ Feild is meant to have his Rolex stolen by the Angel Boy). Apparently a cleaner arrived. Didn't know anything about us and called his boss, who called his boss, who sent a man in a van with an order to cease and desist or the police would be called.
I won't bore you again with the 'time vs money' problems of this shoot but suffice to say THIS. CANNOT. HAPPEN.
I skid to a halt. The crew are sunbathing around the dunes besides the car park above the beach. Benedict is in costume playing frisbee with some of them. In the centre of the car park is a Pembrokeshire County Council van. A tall man who is "just doing his job" is leaning against it.
My arrival causes some stirring in the crew. Whatever I am about to do I'd rather it didn't have the audience, but it can't be helped.
I walk towards the man, let's call him Steve… I actually think he was called Steve… So let's call him Dave, and as I do I try to work out something, if possible, about him, to help formulate a plan for my approach. I am no Sherlock it seems – and I'm getting closer – so, for some reason, with tone that suggests I've missed him terribly – I say "Hi there! How are you?"
Though as a desperate producer I am prepared to bend my morals in this encounter I decide the moral high ground is one I'll try first and I begin with the most abject apology for wasting his valuable time. His expression softens, but I realise he is also now considering how valuable his time that morning actually is, and that perhaps, hanging about in this car park is… well… a fairly normal use of it.
Nevertheless – that I value it more highly than Pembrokeshire District Council intrigues him if not endears me to him.
I shepherd him to our catering truck and soon a coffee is in his hand. I have made the necessary call to our location manager Tom from the car on the way and Tom assured me the suitable permissions will be in place asap. The problem is that there is no evidence at all of this and this 'Dave' – not only the guardian of the toilet, but currently holds the completion of the entire film in his hands.
I can't recall exactly what I said, but I know it was in the vain of Ford Prefect in the beginning of The Hitchhikers Guide' convincing the council Rep' to lie down in front of his own bulldozer so Arthur Dent could take a break from protecting his house.
I basically managed to confuse the timing of the necessary phone call he would get with the message that we can recommence filming, with the act of our actually recommencing the filming. I was verbally back-dating the former with the latter to make the latter possible immediately, as the former was of course 'a forgone conclusion', which therefore made his staying here only a further waste of his time, as we would be already be filming anyway, 'though of course he is welcome to stay and watch! Love to have him there!" – but it would of course mean that he was unable to drive away to get a signal that would definitely mean he could receive the phone message that gave us permission to recommence the filming, which we were already doing…
He scratched his head. I made fast circling motions with my hand behind his back – the signal to the crew to recommence filming.
A short while later, as Dave drove away with some cake, our breathless location manager (dear Tom Jenkins) turned up with news that we now had the permission to use the toilet and explained how the error had occurred (not his fault at all for the record.) It didn't matter. We had dropped a few minutes, no more. And the scene was being completed.
As the First called lunch I sighed and got back in my car. Co-Producer Kelly stroked my head. "Well done. Where are you going? "
"The fucking bank!"
"Oh… I'll save you some lunch."
As I drove out of the car park again I remembered the words of Douglas Adams, one of my favourite writers; "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
October 3rd 2009
"It's not your fault. It's just really, really, really, really, really, really, really unlucky" The Beachcomber
Hugh Bonneville is here to help us do the impossible.
In the film James, Miles, Davy and Bill stop for coffee at a cove littered with flotsam and jetsam. Amongst it they are surprised to meet 'The Beachchomber'. This eccentric man is one of the characters that make the trip something of an odyssey. He tells the boys a strange story about how he spends his days looking for a lost consignment of faulty, brown Darth Vader action figures. They were swept off a container ship nearby some years earlier and he believes this cove will eventually be the place that they are all washed ashore by the rolling tides. It's a nod towards the part in so many of us that are searching for something that we may never find.
It's been a favourite part of the story for most people who have been involved in the development. I love that The Beachcomber gets interpreted in so many different ways. It is meant to throw up questions about what makes life worthwhile. And it's lovely that the Beachcomber instinctively sees the gentle kindness of Davy, having spent too many years alone with his thoughts, suddenly remembering the value of community, and friendship; in needing people, and in being needed… But OH MY GOD… this little episode is running at well over ten pages and we only have a day with Hugh to shoot it. I brace myself for a day of fighting to get things shooting faster than ever. (The bit of my job that I hate.)
It's 6am. I've been running around a while already trying to sort out the day's fresh load of compromise when I'm told that Hugh has asked to talk to me. Immediately I think something must have gone wrong. I know his hotel is nice and we haven't forgotten his breakfast – he can't have been here long enough for us to fail him in any other way surely? I look around the morning mayhem – maybe he has.
I knock on the door of the green room where he is changing and preparing.
I'm thrilled that he has taken time out to come do this roll. I have been a fan of Hugh for so long. He seems the most 'natural' sort of actor on stage and screen with a gift for gravitas and exquisite comic timing – and here he is – staring seriously at the pages of the script. He looks up with an equally stern expression and I am ready for the complaint, in fact I almost apologise involuntarily. Of course the complaint never comes. He breaks into a broad smile, assures me that he is comfortable, happy to be here and looking forward to hanging out with Benedict, JJ, Tom and Adam. Then his stern expression flicks on again and he tells me he wants to talk about the script.
"Oh!" I exclaim. Rather taken aback. I have sort of forgotten that's my job as well.
I sit down opposite him as he launches in to a detailed question about the meaning of one of his early speeches. Only now do I notice that he is wearing alarmingly small, denim hotpants.
Thankfully the shock subsides when I realise these are half of his ludicrous costume. But I don't have the time or inclination to over-examine this as Hugh rattles through the ten pages asking if he can move the odd line. Cut a bit here. Add a bit there… He even says that he remembers a line from an EARLIER DRAFT that had a phrase he thinks was important. He's so right. It IS important. I tell him that he should put it back if he'd like to. A few minutes later, he's done and I leave him pawing over the words. I walk down the stairs with a spring in my step. It lasted five minutes, but it was the an insight into the incredible talent, skill and knowledge of a REAL PRO. A no-nonsense, business-like, approach to the job of bringing the Beachchomer to life the very best way he knows how. I am so proud to have been the writer (and producer) that will benefit from it and it is again proof that actors are horribly underused in the development of films.
I am determined that any film that Western Edge Pictures makes will have this input from as early as possible and that the writer is always in the room to hear it. And we'll make damn sure that this all happens long before the actor in question is wearing his denim hotpants.
I tell a runner to "take more tea to Mr. Bonneville straight away!" – she looks at me confused as it's only been a few minutes since she did exactly that – I just want to give him SOMETHING – and it's all we have. "And make it hot… or strong or something!"
A while later. We are on the rocky cove. Hugh looks hilarious but the women on set seem suitably pleased to gaze at him. His performance is breathtakingly good. He makes catchphrases of some the smallest lines – wistfully opening the door to the pain and confusion in the soul of this lost man with just the subtlest of gestures and intonation. It's a masterclass.
But as ever I'm worried about the time. We cannot waste a second today. And Hugh is getting progressively colder and more uncomfortable as a light rain starts to fall and dampen his hotpants. Then something rather wonderful occurs to me. Today nature is on my side and in a way that couldn't be more apt, she is on the side of our Beachcomber. We CAN'T run over time and it isn't ME that has to hurry the proceedings at all today – because the tide is coming in.
I notice that the sea is now lapping at the feet of Moritz, our young lighting apprentice, who is holding a reflector at the edge of our 'set'. He is Bavarian and made of too stout a stuff to even acknowledge it, but nevertheless the Atlantic has decided we should move on and it won't take no for an answer. I sit back and watch Hugh. He must be tired, but doesn't complain.
'Time and tide wait for no man' and at last we are done. Hugh is taken to meet a train. I won't get to see quite how good his scene is for some weeks yet. His day on set seems like it's been at least two.
At this point I'm told that we don't have a night security guard and someone has to stay there all night to watch the vehicles, make sure the pig is roasting properly for the next day's carnival scene, then turn on the kitchen truck at 3 am to power the freezers and heat everything in time for the crew's breakfast. I sigh.
The last of the crew leave. I sit alone with a beer in one hand and my 'Night Security Torch' in the other. I sit on the bonnet of the Land Rover looking at the cove. The pig is rotating slowly on the spit – looking at me every 37 seconds as if to say "You think you've got problems!", the seagulls are settling on the cliffs and the tide is starting its endless turn again.
On Adam Robertson
Adam and I met while playing teenage school boys in a 'Taggart' feature – his first job out of drama school. I was the good guy, he was the bad guy… our roles in real life soon reversed. Adam is a moral compass. (You just have to know how to hit it when it gets stuck.)
After years of friendship, during which we had both made the mistakes in life that most of the people I find I like best seem to have similarly made, we went for a long walk. On our walk I told him I had been thinking that he should join me in a new kind of film and theatre company. By that time Adam was about to start running a vegetarian food business out of Borough Market with his lovely new wife Anna, but acting and producing had always called him away from the various other businesses and sensible jobs he had done so successfully.
A week later he'd read all the stuff I'd written so far and agreed that he wanted 'in' on the company, which we then named Western Edge Pictures. We sat on the South Bank and decided pretty quickly that we wouldn't make a 'short', as so many industry insiders in the UK feel is necessary. We wanted to go straight to a feature.
"Any ideas?" he asked, as we watched the grey Thames oozing towards the sea in front of The National Theatre.
"Well, I have this idea about some boys on a camping trip in west Wales…"
One of the first things I did in writing the story was cast Adam in my head, as Bill.
Adam is a good man. He cares about people and the world equally. His goodness is infectious to most people, and hilarious to me. His goodness has a bluntness. A straight, heavy, indelicate absurdity that no matter how sincerely expressed – I just can't take it seriously. (Of course my seat in Hell is already paid for, but recognising the humour in his finest quality is at least what makes the character of Bill so watchable in Third Star I think.) You can totally see in Adam's role, even though their views are poles apart, exactly why the other boys – indeed why we ALL – would love to have a Bill in our lives – and why I need Adam Robertson in my own.
So, skip forward to pre-production. It becomes obvious that Third Star is going to be a bit 'bigger' than we first imagined and the producing is going to need both of us full time. Adam immediately stepped aside from acting. He didn't NEED to be a movie star. The film was more important. But a strange thing happened. The more we auditioned guys, with Adam reading Bill for guys trying out to be James, Davy and Miles, the more obvious it became that no one – no matter how good – was going to replace him as Bill. It seems crazy now to imagine we wouldn't have cast him.
(It also seems crazy to imagine that we would have made the film without Kelly Broad who we brought in at this point to replace Adam in production. Another lasting friendship and partnership was created there – but that's for another day.)
Over the coming months the cast was solidified around Adam. And he was unwittingly still providing me with dialogue for the film.
"Biscuits… they're great on their own – but dip them in tea – it's a whole other journey."
A direct quote from Adam in the office that he would repeat as Bill on camera a year later.
That's not to say there is no divergence between the character and the man. The complications of real life are after all inevitably greater than those of any invention. Adam is also considerably brighter than Bill (no matter how well he hides it.)
He is sensitive and passionate and for all his confidence and bombastic Alsatian pup-exuberance, arriving on set threw him a little. After all our hard work on bringing our first Western Edge picture to production, exactly as we planned to, I noticed a rare uneasiness about him in the first few days. Eventually I was able to ask him how he was doing and he admitted to being a little in awe of what we had achieved, and a little humbled by the opportunity to shoot in that location, with such a great crew, and with such a heavyweight cast. I was amazed. No one could deserve it more. No one could understand how we had got there more clearly than he and I – but where I, thrilled though I was by all of it, had begun already to be frustrated by the small scale, his humility was touching. Where so many men about to star in a film would find their ego taking over – he experienced a fleeting moment of doubt in his otherwise sure-footed stride though life.
Within days of course he was well into the groove. He went up a gear in fact. There are still so many 'Bill moments' that make me laugh. And his delivery of the line "Why can't you take an overdose like normal people?" that he so effortlessly imbues with the innate humour and the gut wrenching tragedy simultaneously, as only great actors can, is just one example of his huge talent.
Any actor will tell you that playing close to yourself is the hardest gig you'll get. Adam had to get his version of Bill spot on and all the while receiving less care than I gave to the other cast. He triumphed.
We opened the film in his native Scotland, at the Edinburgh Festival. Adam had won one of the festival's Trailblazer awards fro exciting newcomers and was determined to enjoy the experience "to the max". I realised, in a rare moment of warmth, that seeing that big-hearted freak on the red carpet in his kilt was pretty much all the reward I needed for the journey he and I had shared. His joy was typically unfettered, uninhibited and honest. Somewhere between an overgrown Hobbit on his way to a rave, and a young Sean Connery – as if shouldering the mantle of being the next King of Scotland would be as easy as breathing.
Long live Adam Robertson.


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Man gets 20 years in prison in Milford killing
MILFORD (AP) -- A New Haven man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for kidnapping in connection with the 2009 killing of another man in Milford over the alleged theft of more than 17 pounds of cocaine.
The New Haven Register reports (http://bit.ly/Xclczc ) that 38-year-old Javier Cruz-Falcon was sentenced Thursday in Milford Superior Court.
A jury convicted him in January of kidnapping 28-year-old Jose Chevere of New Haven, but was deadlocked on murder and capital felony charges. Cruz-Falcon's first trial last year ended with a hung jury.
Prosecutors say Cruz-Falcon and two other men were involved Chevere's killing. Authorities say the men believed Chevere stole more than 17 pounds of cocaine worth more than $500,000 from them.
The two other defendants pleaded guilty to kidnapping charges and await sentencing.


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Crazy Uncle Joe is out.
After months of speculation and drama, the Vice President has decided to sit out this next election and let the Bernie/Hillary match-up continue.
Biden made the announcement that he would not seek the presidency today outside the White House.
A lot of people were wrong about Biden's potential candidacy. The Washington Post even published a story accidentally that said he would run.
I have a very good source close to Joe that tells me VP Biden will run for Prez— US Rep Brendan Boyle (@RepBrendanBoyle) October 19, 2015
Three sources close to @VP telling me he's expected to announce he is running but the sources are all urging caution on 48-hr timeline— Ed Henry (@edhenry) October 19, 2015
But if anyone knows Crazy Uncle Joe, they know that he likes to keep us guessing. And he likes to give us some dank memes.
Never change, Crazy Uncle Joe.


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Posted by Editor on 05/8/99
St Wendel Women's Race - The Story
Philippe Reinaer has just sent in the following information for today's fourth race in the women's cross country World Cup. Chrissy Redden (Ritchey-Yahoo!) has also phoned in a report that we have incorporated into the story.
Alison Sydor (Volvo-Cannondale) got off to her usual fast start, and was leading a group at the top of the first climb. Chrissy was in this group of about 7 and then they hit one of the technical, slippery sections and had to run, and, in Chrissy's words: "four of them just ran away. It was just...wow, they were gone." The foursome were Sydor, Paola Pezzo (Gary Fisher-Saab), Gunn-Rita Dahle (DBS) and Alison Dunlap (GT). This quartet quickly moved into a 30 second lead by the end of the second lap, and to 50 seconds clear by the end of the third. Behind, it was Caroline Alexander (American Eagle) leading the chase, with Annabella Stropparo (Volvo-Cannondale) steadily moving up. Some other favourites, such as Laurence Leboucher (GT) and Chantal Daucourt (Trek-Volkswagen) were having poor days, and eventually dropped out. Chrissy, after feeling good in training all week, ran into stomach problems over the next few laps and started dropping back, eventually going as low as 15th. However, she began to recover on the fourth lap, and started passing people through the final lap. "I was getting ready to go by 9th, and then I flatted with about 2.5 k to go. I decided to ride it in (mainly descending for the last 2 kilometres), and was passed first by Alison Dunlap, and then in the final 500 meters by Lesley (Tomlinson). It was a frustrating day."
Back at the front, Pezzo made her winning move at the end of the 4th lap. She dropped the other three and splintered the group. Sydor was sitting in second, 15 seconds back, as they entered the last lap. Dahle was third, a minute behind Sydor, but Alexander had overtaken Dunlap and was breathing down the Norwegian's neck. Stropparo had also moved up behind Dunlap. At the line it was Pezzo by a minute on Sydor, Dahle outsprinting Alexander for third, and Stropparo in 5th (Dunlap faded badly, finishing in 10th place).
For the other Canadians in the race there was good and bad tidings: Chrissy Redden (Ritchey-Yahoo!) struggled, getting off to a poor start and never cracking the top ten (except at the start). She yo-yoed between 10th and 12th place all race, eventually finishing 12th, just behind Lesley Tomlinson (Polo Sport) - who was having one of her best races of the year. Melanie Dorion (Team Ford-Devinci) rode consistently for a 22nd place finish, with Melanie McQuaid (GM-Rocky Mountain) coming in 40th.
After the race, Alison Sydor said that it was a very tactical race, and that she was disappointed in a last minute change of the course. She (and other riders) had installed tires suitable for a very slippery technical descent. However, the organizer announced on the start line that the section had been changed! Chrissy Redden said "they replaced the downhill with a fire road, but none of us knew anything about it."
The World Cup standings have not changed for the first three places, with Sydor opening up her lead a little further over Dahle. Dunlap sits in third, but Pezzo and Grigson are starting to catch her. Chrissy Redden has slipped just behind Grigson into 5th place in the rankings, and Tomlinson remains 16th. McQuaid moves up one place to 19th and Dorion jumps three, to 25th.
The men had a Qualifier for tomorrow's race, with Canadians Peter Wedge, Mathieu Toulouse and Adam Walker having to qualify. Wedge and Toulouse made it, but Walker didn't. Chrissy says that she thinks he had either a mechanical or crash in the last lap, because up to that point he was doing fine and would have qualified, she believes.
Philippe Reinaer is the head of the European arm of the Alison Sydor Fan Club. His website can be found at: http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/2186/
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A unique series that provides a framework for teaching coding skills.
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In Black Flag – A Coding Club Mission, your problem solving skills are tested as you join Cal on a dangerous adventure into the underground world of the anarchists who are fighting to restore freedom to the citizens of New Edgehill. Explore the companion website to complete the puzzles introduced through the chapters and don't forget to use your rig data for hints and support. If you have completed Python Basics then you will have studied all of the necessary programming skills needed to solve the challenges. Good luck and keep your eyes open!
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The puzzles only require basic knowledge of programming. Completing Python Basics or looking at background informatuion provided online will provide this knowledge. Having a go at the puzzles will consolidate skills.
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Written by an experienced young adult fiction author.
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Waimes, in the Belgian East Cantons, is home to the Signal de Botrange, with its 694 metres the highest point in Belgium. It is the perfect departure point – or arrival point – for some great hikes through the High Fens and the Belgian Ardennes in general. Looking for a lovely city in the area? Then we can wholeheartedly recommend Malmedy, just a few minutes from Waimes.
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Independent RIA practices that have integrated their technology platforms earn approximately 20% more in annual income than their counterparts at independent RIAs with no technology integration, Envestnet | Tamarac said in a white paper released on Tuesday.
The paper also found that registered investment advisors with some level of integration have almost twice the amount of assets under management as RIAs with the same size staff but no integration, totaling an average of $90 million more in client AUM.
"When asked to prioritize technology spending in areas they would like to improve, independent RIAs cite increasing the level of technology integration across their platform as the top item to which they would dedicate part of a proposed technology budget," says the white paper, "RIA Productivity and Profitability: Integration Pays."
The paper was produced for Envestnet | Tamarac by the independent research and advisory firm Aite Group, which conducted its online survey of 201 primary financial advisors at independent RIAs in March 2012.
Practices with integrated technology produce an average of $100,000 more in annual revenue than their counterparts with no integration, according to the paper.
"Since independent RIAs are small shops that have been built from the ground up, there is often a tendency to source technology components from vendors or acquire them from custodians, which often leads to systems that do not integrate well with one another," said Stuart DePina (left), group president of Envestnet | Tamarac. "But advisors that use an integrated solution experience more efficient and profitable practices."
Envestnet | Tamarac is part of Envestnet Inc., a provider of integrated web-based portfolio and client management software for independent advisors and wealth managers.
Staffs of firms with at least some technology integration were found to spend 32% less time on operation processes than the staffs at firms with no integration at all, "freeing up approximately 40 weekdays each year for every employee to engage in more revenue-generating activities, including client management and prospecting," the white paper says.
In one of the case studies mentioned in the paper, Etesian Wealth Advisors said it adopted an integrated solution from Tamarac three years ago, and since then the firm's client assets have grown by close to 400%, with a staff increase of only 20%.
"The fully integrated capabilities of the Tamarac applications have significantly curtailed the effort needed to complete such tasks as portfolio rebalancing and fee billing, and the firm estimates that it would have needed to add three to four full-time equivalents without its implementation of Tamarac," the paper says.
Envestnet's senior management in May kicked off the firm's advisor summit in Chicago with a session on the characteristics of pioneers and visionaries, where Chairman and CEO Jud Bergman said that Envestnet wanted to "be the advisor's outfitter, porter or guide as you blaze your own path."
Watch 2013 SMA Managers of the Year: Envestnet Tamarac's Stuart DePina on CRM Updates—Video at AdvisorOne.


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KG: I think the catching future is still debatable, he's just so huge a sluggish back there. That said, there has been some progress — they've shortened his release a bit, and the results are encouraging.
Nice interview. His reports on Viciedo are disappointing. No plate discipline at all. Goldstein also talks about Dexter Carter, John Shelby, Jon Gilmore, Jared Mitchell, Trayce Thompson, Josh Phegley, Brandon Allen, Tony Pena, and Jordan Danks. He even talks about Roy Halladay.