Ah, KDHX. We’ve got history.

Over the next week, I’ll be a pretty regular contributor to the membership drive. Five different slots, more than that many shows (with a longer stint on the talk show lineup) and one really early morning; at least for these old bones, getting up at 6 a.m. is an act seldom, if ever, attempted.

If you can rub some coins together for your boy, any of these times would be wonderful places to kick in a buck/two. Thanks for your consideration.

In the summer of 2010, a well-regarded local video producer asked if I wanted to work on a web series with him. Familiar with the term, but not the form, we spent the better part of an afternoon watching Apple TV and talking about what “works” for web-based, episodic programming. For various reasons, the project never came into being. Oh, well. If you’ve worked in independent media circles for any length of time, it’s more surprising to see a project come into being than it is to see it fizzle.

A few months back, I met with two trusted folks at O’Connell’s. The place had meaning because I’m (to this point, more theoretically than actually) working on a book about O’Connell’s, to celebrate the pub’s 50th anniversary. I needed to talk so someone else about making sense of creative progress, as I’ve recently started getting bogged down in every phase of project creation, from prepping to execution. The advice gleaned at that meeting was that I should focus on the O’Connell’s book and not the web-based web series, now known in my head as Half Order Fried Rice. I agreed with the advice, then did the exact opposite of the plan. Good intentions didn’t carry the day vs. inspiration.

To get Half Order out of my head and into reality, I needed some major elements to come into being. Either a producer who could execute the video components, or a sudden uptick in even the most basic skills of web video on my own part. After annoyingly striking out on the former, I borrowed some money and bought a solid camera, then a MacBook Pro. And those things sat underutilized for another good while, until I figured out how to finally use the kid-and-elderly-friendly iMovie. When you’re psyched out, it’s sometimes hard to get past the first, big push needed to learn a new skill. And, for me, it wasn’t until artist Kevin Belford sat down with me one afternoon at Kaldi’s that the fog started to lift. In the span of a couple hours, I dumped down some video from old SD cards, cut together some clips and generally left feeling as if the project might actually happen. Which was important, because…

By this point, I’d already shaken the digital beggar’s cup on the Indiegogo corner stoop. Not sure how much money to ask for, I chose $1,001, figuring that the amount would give me enough to buy any additional, needed equipment, plus could spot me some cash for lunches and drinks for the cast, plus other unknown add-ons during the shooting process. Unlike Kickstarter, Indiegogo accepts any project, but with different pricing gradations; to get the full percentage, I needed to raise at least the $1,001 and the final push to that number didn’t really come until the literal last few hours, when the day prior’s $600 became, magically and exactly, $1,001. Everyone that kicked in to that fund is thanked on the site and in my brain, whether they potted $200 or $5, the range that came in. (And, in the interests of disclosure, one of the cooks at The Royale handed me a $5 bill, an old-fashioned twist on the whole process.)

With the Indiegogo cuts taken out, I had $931 in my bank account about two weeks after the campaign ended, monies that were already being spent on the show. Turns out that the SD cards I had been using were too slow; I had no idea that SD cards had speed capabilities, but this is the kind of thing you learn at the camera shop. So that was about $80. And the cabbage for the Food Trunks episode cost $17… cabbage for cabbage. The virtually-unseen rodents of the Mouse Racing episode were another $17. Various lunches for cast members nipped a few bucks here and there. And a cast/contributor party at the house ran a modest $49, for snacks and drinks. This wasn’t the no-budget production that many people claim, but it was pretty close.

Several of the actual shooting days will go down as my favorite moments of 2012, with people generously saying “yes” to a project that was mostly improvisational and with the bulk of the content in my head, as opposed to the page. But people kept agreeing and shoots came about at a crisp regularity. Virtually every shoot took place the day prior to posting, so there was a steady production schedule at work, even with actors falling out and with my forgetting to turn on the audio on a couple occasions. An early attempt to use a Flip camera was quickly abandoned when that camera proved unsteady and unreliable, forcing me to re-choose the better looking/sounding Canon.

And therin lies the whole point of the experience, as far as I’m concerned. Prior to this, my attempts to bring video into stories were mixed, at best. Here, for five weeks, I had to force myself to use a camera for both stills and video on a daily basis. And I had to cut the pieces together, into something marginally viewable. I’ll probably be more critical of my own technical work on the project as time goes by; already, I’ve gone back and added a few things that sit there as obvious glitches. More will get fixed with time. But the show, the experiment, is over for now.

Folks invested dollars in my personal education. And I invested enough hours to feel that an honest effort was given.

Intending to extend the show one additional episode, I ran into the wall. My primary actor, aged 13, got a free ticket to Six-Flags and headed to Eureka. Some added folks couldn’t make a shoot that day; maybe I’d burned out my talent pool completely. Actually, I did do that. But the scene I had in mind can be picked up later, for another project, which I now know is more than just a theoretical. It’s doable. What a good feeling.

There’s also a good feeling in watching this last piece. Starring the one-and-only Thad-Simon McRosenthal. A great way to end things, as it turned outz’ a loose idea and some inspired improv combined into a fun segment.

Thanks to those thankable.

HOFR Tight Shoes from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

The programs have been rolling for the last 22 weekdays.

While the videos below feel a bit naked to me without the supplemental text, here are some that work pretty well on their own.

HOFR: Mumblecore from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

HOFR Mouse Racing from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

HOFR: Educations at Close from Thomas Crone on Vimeo.

The summer’s been good, thanks for askin’. Stayin’ busy. Doin’ projects and stuff. Nothin’ too crazy.

Have to share, though, a continued, personal concern on technology: that it’s passed me by. No matter how often I attempt to buy a new, little item that’ll make working life simpler, the issues just keep cropping up in new, unexpected ways. And video hiccups have more become the rule than the exception of late.

With the Half Order Fried Rice project, a series of short videos were planned and some have been executed. I could talk about how it’s tough to pull non-professional actors into a non-paying project and how there’s a good chance that someone/anyone might not show up on a given day. And that’d be true. It’s also a near-given that I’ll foul up the situation once everyone’s on-site. To wit: two, recent shoots with the microphone turned off. Classic. This is a microphone, incidentally, that cost $100, or the exact trade-in value of a camera once bought at a big box’s going-out-of-business sale, before going essentially unused. (It, too, was supposed to be an answer.) The mic, when turned on, sounds like a $100 mic. Which is to say, kinda crappy.

So there’re poor-sounding videos upcoming. Now you know.

But the Flip! This product’s the one worth scorn. At PrideFest a week back, I met with Ben Phelps, a member of the Westboro Baptist Church. We spoke for four-minutes, with my rolling a borrowed Flip cam, as mine had developed a major battery leak of some sort in the week prior. Getting home, I spot-checked the video, which was there and possessing both video and audio. Progress! But the Flipshare software suggested an upgrade, which began to run… and which then deleted everything on the camera, including the Phelps video and my borrowee’s recent footage from Haiti. Ouch!

A consistent theme in my collegiate classes is that students need to become familiar with (if not completely competent in) all forms of media that might tie-into their primary skill. And journalism these days is apparently incomplete without “a full complement of robust visual information,” or some such BS, ala photos, videos, podcasts the now-passe slide-show, etc. All of them, of course, easily integrated into all formats and platforms of social media.

Recreation of self is painful and awkward enough, even without the machines turning against you. When they do, what’s left to do, but… take to the machines and complain?

Kinda. Sorta. Really. Coming soon.

Please don’t let this out, but I occasionally will have a tart word, or two, for a student of mine. These thoughts are shared in confidence and in passing, over a beer with friends, and with no malice intended, of course. Student X misses six of 16 classes and can’t understand why an “A” isn’t coming. Student Y no-shows the final exam. Student Z spends the entire class period updating status reports. Ayie. There are the ones that cause the conversations.

The ones who simply work, though, sometimes don’t get a nod. In public, or private. Prior to his collegiate graduation last weekend, I had Tyler DePerro in Intro to Media Writing, Intro to Mass Communications and, lastly, an independent study that yielded the first batch of South Side of Luck videos in the summer of 2011. His latest film project, “Spectacles,” thanks me in the bad-ass credit sequence. That’s perhaps a karmic “thanks” as I remember goofing around as he asked me to look over his “Spectacles” script drafts and then I declined to portray a zombie in the film, basically as it was slated for a six-hour shoot on a Saturday. Not very supportive, that.

On the flipside, I do remember sitting with him at O’Connell’s one afternoon, as he and I discussed our independent study options. George Malich came in and I introduced them. George wound up starring in another short film of Tyler’s and they created a 48 Hour Film together. Through the latter, Tyler met Pete Kruchowski and Greer Geczy, who both appear in “Spectacles.” Maybe there is some good karma in this lousy world.

So do Tyler, myself and maybe yourself a favor. Keep the goodwill rolling. Watch “Spectacles.” And don’t forget to keep watching beyond “The End.” Sometimes, that’s where the good stuff happens.

A while back, I got a chance to hang out with some of my music pals from the 1990s, Judge Nothing. Now a five-piece, the band’s playing shows in the St. Louis area through the coming weekend, with an anchor show at Fubar on Saturday, along with a Record Store Day gig at Euclid Records at 2 p.m. It’ll be a great day of music there (JN, Sleepy Kitty, Jans Project, Finns Motel, etc.) and I also get to play some music as a deejay, outside from 2:30 – 3:00, just before the latest Painkillers reunion.

While doing on-scene “reporting” on Judge Nothing, I also ran a bit of video and after multiple, failed attempts at unloosing the video tracks from my SD card, the results are out. Rob Wagoner, who wrangled much of this reunion, recorded the rehearsal sets and placed my video against those live takes. These are what resulted from that AV marriage.

In going through some notebooks in the late summer of 2010, I realized how many odd ideas had been circulating through my head that year, only a few of them meriting, you know, actual follow-up and action. So I started throwing out the possibilities on this site and, lo!, one of them came into being: a re-release of the music of The Painkillers, which saw the group re-form as a result the renewed attention to their career. So, yeah, that was cool.

Today we revisit the Unloading concept. And in doing so, I offer a St. Louis nightclub/restaurant owner the opportunity of a lifetime!

Unlike other ideas, in the summer of ’10, I honest-to-goodness pursued this concept briefly, working with an industry veteran. Buildings were examined, plans were typed up, a lawyer was even summoned for drinks and conversation. And, then, poof! Dead letter office, new addition welcomed.

(This idea, by the by, came back to me just this week, after reading a piece by Stefene Russell on transplanted St. Louisans; you should read it.)

There’s no great reveal to this piece, since the idea’s right there in the lead. If there’s a town that tends to spill over into St. Louis’ population, it’s Chicago. Expats are all over the place, along with attendees of the University of Illinois, who naturally affiliate with Chicago. A bar that appealed to that population would have an obvious, early start on building a regular audience, with TVs consistently tuned to: the Bulls, the Blackhawks, the White Sox, the Cubs, the Bears, the Fire, U of I sports, etc.; and with a kitchen that featured Chicago-style pizza and dogs.

You’d have two flags outside, one for St. Louis, one for Chicago. There’d be Old Style on-tap. Original paintings of the Daleys, MJ 23 and Honest Abe on the walls. Every year, on the anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the whole bar could riot, freaks versus conservatives, and SLMPD forces could squelch them (while beating on the freaks). Really, the hooks are both obvious and many. It would just take a little nerve.

And here’s why: there’s always going to be some sorta local yokel/a-hole/yay-hoo who’d want to put a brick through a Chicago bar’s front window. You can just see the dude, wearing his Blues sweater and KSHE cap, gettin’ off on stickin’ it to the Windy City with a well-timed toss. But that’s the price of business. The radio stations would give the concept so much free advertising at the beginning of operations that a bit of broken glass would be offset by volume sales of Vienna Beef.

You could go a bit upscale with this, locating on Locust or Washington. You could go a bit downscale, with a spot on way South Grand or Morganford. A true bar professional could open the space with real, live money, not even needing to stand on the digital street corner, shaking that Kickstarter cup.

So, here you go. Enjoy building your business. And remember yo’ boy with an deep-dish anchovy pizza on opening night.