by Gremlin on Wednesday, 27th January 2010 at 12.23 am, under News with no comments
It's probably a little late to mention it [especially since this is to my knowledge the first time an upcoming show has ever been mentioned; usually, shows get mentioned here after they've occurred], but the film's playing again at the Esquire in a couple days. Still, you've got a bit of time left to go grab your tickets.
But, enough about the future; let's talk about the past....
Given that I just discovered a total lack of links to the Esquire, it lends nicely to my next point. And that goes like this.
Once upon a time, someone invented the internet; it wasn't Al Gore. At the time, it was actually the arpanet, and it was kinda boring. Then it went more internetty in the late seventies and, in 1990, a guy you've never heard of [there are those who call him Tim] wrote a tiny subsystem acronyming various terms he was pulling out of his ass, like HyperText Transfer Protocol and World Wide Web into initials like HTTP and WWW. This is the boring part of the story.
Ten years later, the 'net was vastly enough known that everyone had a site somewhere. Including CEI. It was a freesite, at a lesser competitor to geocities.com [to put this into perspective, geocities.com died out last year], but it was a site. And thus, people in darkest if WiFied Africa were able to keep up with the antics of Colorado's Elusive Ingredient.
CEI going through managers faster than SpinalTap go through drummers, a regime shift occurred, and the new manager hated the freesite. So the new manager brought me in to design a massive flashsite everyone absolutely loved...everyone being, you know, the manager, who neither cared whether anyone else loved it, nor fully grokked that a site doing a fair impression of a DVD doesn't work too well late in the twentieth century when most people are slugging about at 28.8kbps.
More regimeshifts; more sites; rinse; repeat.
Which brings us to...like, 2008. Ish. The the new SpinalTap PR Manager—who at least gets the concept of bitrates and downloads and that, by 2008, most people who have heard of dialup merely remember it in a sort of diseased lament—directs toward pretty much what you're looking at right now, in January of 2010. Unless you're not; in which case you're either blind and using text2speech, or you're seeing this later in the future [which we're not talking about right now], once the site's likely changed. Again.
Technically, the current design is pretty cool, if a bit old and outdated and uglyish and lacking in a bunch of newly available neatness. So it's not that he had the wrong idea; it's that he had this idea a couple years ago, and has since quit the cast. Which means we could probably talk about redesigning the site a little. Again.
Because things have changed since 2008. We closed Gitmo and bugged out of Iraq and Afghan—okay: nothing's changed. But: new systems and technologies have emerged, none of which are factored into this prehistoric site. CEI have moved from Lannie's to the Esquire, as evidenced only by the newly missing link to lannies.com. The links we have got are all at the bottom, where no one apaprently ever looks for them. A website essentially about a film made in 1975, itself made in 2008, has become more antiquated and ridiculous than the film itself. In about a week and a half, Plan 9 from Outer Space is gonna become younger; and I'm not talking about the remake.
So. Still reading this? Suckers.... But also: so I'm kindasorta plotting out a major revision to this thing. Of course: that's necessarily something of a freetime activity, so it's not happening real rapidly; but it's technically underway. One trick has been that the blogueware is just a heavily modified WordPress port, heavily modified enough that modifying much more without deleting everything has been something of a problem. That said, I just modified the same baseware at my own site, using the latest version, like Lucas going after Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Retcon, and it magically let me do some things it used to puke over. So this clever plan might actually work. Without deleting everything. That would be good.
I don't really have an ETA yet. Technically, I don't even have a real plan. The 'net being fastish now, we've talked about everything from a glorified twitterfeed to a full, cinematic site with goofy flashgames and timers counting down to the next showing; I'm thinking things'll end up somewhere in the middle of those.
So: watch for that, whenever it happens.
On a loosely related note: I got the board locked down to prevent spambots from getting in. It kinda prevents meatbots Our Valued Fanbase from getting in too, so you'll need an access code available in the throwbags at the show itself or online through the messageboard before you can post anything; it's a couple bucks because the scriptkiddies throwing spambots at messageboards won't pay a couple bucks to throw spambots at messageboards, and not because I'm saving up to buy the island I've picked out in the South Pacific. Probably.
I think that's it for now. See you at the show....
by Gremlin on Monday, 30th November 2009 at 6.01 am, under News with no comments
Kinda late getting to this; wound up with a headache during the show on Friday, and took a couple days to get over it.
Naturally, there's a bit of news which probably coulda been written to the site earlier, just for those making plans.
Despite earlier—if slightly unofficial—reports that there'd be a show on the twenty-fifth, that's been cancelled before it could be fully confirmed. On the other hand, the show's been picked up for 2010, starting on [I think] the fourth Friday of January: the twenty-ninth. So we've got a couple months off, but we've got an idea what the future looks like now.
What the past looks like is of course recorded in HD. Which is immense. So, instead, here's the HD smashed down to 640*360:
Filming inside the cinema never works well. I'm still working on a way to make that viable.
In other news, the messageboard is getting choked by bots again. Because some products suck so much that no one will advertise them, even for money. Therefore, bots are built to spam them to any interactive element on the 'net, including the messageboard here at the site. Just ignore the bots if you see them.
Meanwhile, we're making some changes to the system. First and foremost, in the coming days [whenever I get around to it], I'm locking down the board, preventing new users from registering. How, you ask, am I supposed to register on the board if it's locked down? Kinda working that out too; but part of the solution will be adding little cards to the throwbags with a code to punch in at registry, allowing your account to be authorised.
Independently, I'm working on setting up a similar system online, allowing people to register by throwing a couple bucks at PayPal.com.
In any case, there'll be no need to register before reading anything on the board; you'll just require an account in order to respond to extant threads or start new ones. I'd say it's fairly simple; but I'd say that punctuated equilibrium is fairly simple. Others would disagree that spelling it is fairly simple; then they'd say something like lawl.
Until I get the board locked down, of course, you're still able to register for free. Once it's locked down, anyone [apart from bots] already registered will remain active. So you've got until I've got nothing better to do than to lock the board up, if you're trying to save a couple bucks. Hurry, hurry.
I'll probably mention it here once things have changed.
by Gremlin on Monday, 02nd November 2009 at 10.45 pm, under News with no comments
As much as it seems like there should be something on the server already, no one can guess where the hell the Application Form disappeared to. So I got this other clever idea about just rewriting the damned thing.
To apply, print out This Form, fill it out, scan it in, and EMail it back to CEI@DenverRockyHorror.com. If you lack a printer and/or a scanner: go shopping. But, meanwhile, Just send us an EMail with the information itself, and we'll get back to you.
Otherwise, the next scheduled show is Friday 27th November 2009, starting out front at the Esquire around 11pm. As always, it's safer to buy tickets online before they sell out; that show on Halloween Night ran out of all but three tickets before the doors opened.
by Gremlin on Saturday, 31st October 2009 at 2.19 pm, under News with no comments
I'm kinda still working on some things here, from last night. There's a process to this, and it sorta sucks: cutpaste gigabytes of .mp4 video from a FlipMinoHD to the computer, hoping the Mino doesn't overheat before that's done; convert gigabytes of .mp4 to .avi to make it useful in the first place, slaughtering the CPU for two or three hours; upload gigabytes of .avi to the server to convert it remotely to encapsulated .flv—also smashed down to 640*360 from HD and [hopefully] smashed down into megabytes from gigabytes—hoping the router doesn't get uppity enough to puke after the first nine hundred megs, which has happened a couple times now; write an entry meant to contain the encapsulated .flv flashtoon itself, and post that.
Figuring that things can be a little nonlinear, I've moved the footage to the computer, converted it to .avi, and uploaded it and uploaded it again and got angry at it; and now I'm writing the post, even though the video's not entirely on the server yet; I'll add that in later.
Meaning really that, probably, if it doesn't puke yet the hell again, it'll be done uploading by the time I get back here around dawn, in November. Then I can finish this entry and look into—you know—sleeping.
EDIT: Got it uploaded and converted, finally. The buildup before the show:
And, the preshow:
Meanwhile. Video aside, there are some things to have a website for. One's mentioning that: CEI ARE HIRING. Dreamed of hearing the roar of the greasepaint and smelling the stench of the crowd, all amidst endless appreciation and large bags of cash? Well, that's not the gig. But: over the years, the cast have been shrinking steadily as various members have gone off to college or whatever a little more quickly than they've been replaced. Technically, at the moment, there remain enough people to get the job done, but only by stacking up roles and duties and praying to hell that no one gets sick.
Primarily, CEI are looking for guys over chicks at the moment, though anyone can apply for consideration. Bonus points for being selfaware, living in Denver, and being reasonably capable of getting to the Esquire at least once a week. At present, the show still occurs only on the final Friday of the month; but that's being discussed since that monthly show invariably sells out, largely online days or weeks before the doors open. Which we can't really talk about until a few decisions have been made, so I didn't just tell you all that.
So, yeah: there's really no money in it; being a part of CEI is more of a structured hobby with various deadlines; but those with IQs above room temperature tend to have fun with it and come back for more; those with IQs lower than that are still staring at the screen, wondering how I got all these words to show magically up—maybe there are little people in there, making it happen.
Here's where I'm probably supposed to link to some sort of clever online application form. But, since I just run the server, I can't guess where in hell that would be, if it currently exists at all. So, instead, just EMail CEI@DenverRockyHorror.com, mentioning that you're interested in joining the cast; someone'll get back to you to talk about it.
Beyond that—or before it—or somewhere in the nonlinear middle—it's currently four in the afternoon, counting down to tonight's show, starting around eleven [the film's meant to begin at midnight, but people tend to collect out front around eleven to flash unsuspecting cars driving by for about an hour]; last I heard, a good percentage of tickets had been grabbed online over the last couple weeks, but a few seats remained open. If you'd hoped to get in on that, you may have time to hit the Esquire's site and grab a ticket or two; or, if there are any left after dark [really, really doubtful; keep praying to hell], just walk up to the window at Sixth and Downing to trade cash for the lolocaust. So, pretty much, seriously: get the tickets online; it's kinda sad to watch a couple hundred people turn dejectedly back and wander off to their cars around eleven every time this thing sells out in advance.
Also: remember that this is Denver. There's a couple feet of snow on the ground, despite a promised warming trend and clear skies; dress for torrential oobleck, at least in terms of outerwear; inside, where it's warm, feel free to wear colourcoordinated dentalfloss for Halloween....
by Gremlin on Saturday, 26th September 2009 at 3.13 pm, under News with 2 comments
EDIT: Rewrote a few things; got the gallery back online; last night's snaps are up now, at http://denverrockyhorror.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=467.
Got the Esquire's main screen back. It's actually the second largest cinematic screen in, like, the state; so that worked out pretty well. Of course, the film was digital, so there were pixels the size of cats up there; not everything about the twenty-first century is exactly perfect.
I guess I'm not sure, now that I think about it, whether the show technically sold out. I do know that around three hundred people were there [last month, around 250 showed up to fight over roughly a hundred seats, 150 losing and going home], so things are looking a little better: CEI are confirmed for two shows next month—both on the thirtieth and on the thirty-first—and again in November; stick around for more details on those shows, which'll probably show up first on the messageboard.
Anyway: I got some video again....
I seriously need to bring along a torch if I'm gonna film things once the lights are off.
Other technical problems included the CD Player; here's the Razormaid mix of Buy My CD:
See you next month....
by Gremlin on Saturday, 29th August 2009 at 6.08 am, under News with 1 comment
Traditionally—meaning up until eight years ago, for the fifteen years preceding that—The Rocky Horror Picture Show has shown [and typically sold out] at The Esquire, downtownish at Sixth and Downing. Then, one night, in 2001, for myriad and uninteresting reasons, that came to an end, and Colorado's Elusive Ingredient took the film from cinema to cinema to arcade to nightclub to the occasional carpark for the next decade.
Now, finally, CEI's transient status seems to be a thing of the past. Last night, with little advertising beyond word of mouth [including a crippling number of posts to facebook.com], The Esquire went beyond selling out—half their seats presold online—and had to turn away well over 100 people at the door.
On the bright side, there's no law against collecting out front on the pavement. Or, probably there is; but—pfft—call a cop. I missed the first few seconds of this while climbing up above the crowd in order to remain alive, but here's a good example:
Inside: as usual, it was functionally too dark to film much of anything; next time I'll try to remember to bring an infrared camera. But everyone who'd managed to get a ticket found a seat and the show played out without a hitch. Historically, hitches have included fun moments in which we learned—by starting the film—that the sound wasn't actually connected to anything; as if the film isn't bad enough in its standard state, watch it sometime as a silent picture, with mimes in front of it. Or, on second thought: don't.
The show being an inarguable success [technically, this was a trial run to see whether there'd been a real reason to suspend the film in 2001], mutterings have begun regarding the rest of 2009. As of now, we're confirmed to return monthly, every fourth Friday at midnight, through November [the fourth Friday in December being the twenty-fifth, whether to show the film that night remains as of now open to debate]; pending some creative shuffling of schedules [they have other midnight films slated to play through the end of the year, as well], there's potentially some room for expansion. Meanwhile, the film will be playing again in September, on Friday the twenty-fifth; grabbing a ticket online before they sell out again might be a good idea.
See you then....
