Dynamic Camerawork

Tuesday, 8.5.2008

WARNING: Do not watch if you suffer from motion sickness, vertigo, are pregnant or nursing or dislike uncomfortable closeups. I swear I'll get the hang of that camera one day.

This is our rock. I sit at the top and Mike's at the bottom. He's the champion of the Safety Dance and I'm the maestro belayer. Most of the campers know me as the guy who sits up on the rock and screams "Belay on!" "Climb on!" or "ROPE!" all day.

The reason I can say that this is the safest climbing program (possibly ever) is almost completely due to Mike's hard work. Where any serious climber not affiliated with the BSA could look at us and write us off as a bunch of neurotic, paranoid, chumps who don't know the strength and security of our equipment, Mike takes every measure to meet the standards of the BSA with unwavering attention to detail. We have a four inch thick binder with records of all our equipment, its purchase dates, receipts and individual uses as well as a novel's worth of pages relating how our program meets each one of the hundreds of mandatory standards the program requires for it to be certified and not shut down. 

The camp as a whole is inspected every year, but the climbing program gets its own inspector. Each year we're told something different and no one is on the same page back at the council or regional level. This year they had a problem with our bolts. Each climb has three bolts to anchor it to the rock. In the past there have only been two, but when we couldn't verify their date of installation, we drilled in a third, which we could document. Previously we were told this was ok, but this year it wasn't. We were instructed to sling natural anchors (giant boulders) instead because it wasn't safe. Nevermind that climbing societies in the Alps have been climbing on the same bolts for the past 90 years, because we couldn't verify the date of the installation of these bolts besides "mid-nineties," installed by people who ran the climbing program at camp before there were hoops to jump through, we couldn't use them.

Thankfully institutional knowledge at this camp runs deep; people flock to this place like swallows and we were able to track down who put the bolts in and get a date. After the inspectors left, of course.

A three year old photo album of our program is available here

Musicos de la Calle

Warning: This post is even more Media Heavy

[Which means the video will come later when I'm on a hard line and have lots of time to waste]

I’m aware that every major cosmopolitan city has amazing street musicians, but I’m taking a course in which we’re studying the music and culture of Latin America so it’s hard not to go out and look for music to capture. This music however, is relatively easy to find. Because we’re in Buenos Aires, there’s always someone singing tango in the streets where they think they can find tourists. There are entire street Orchestras, rather Orquestras Típicas. The biggest I found was comprised of a (string) cuartetto, 4 bandoneones, double bass and a piano; one they roll down the cobblestone streets and tune on the spot. There’s a huge reggae movement down here, I’ve seen dreadlocks in every color of hair. But as far as music: Sunday walking down Defensa street in San Telmo, we caught a whole bunch of different groups, all playing something different. An amazing Klezmer Trio, a small mestizo group, including a charango, that Tango Orchestra, a jazz combo, and even a drunken Samba Parade bright and early on Sunday morning.

Tango y Rock Chabón

I’ve seen three live performances in actual venues in the last two weeks. The first was a band called ¡Los Fabulosos Cadillacs! A Latin rock group that does whatever it wants and doesn’t really fit into a single genre. They had horns, Latin percussion, electric guitars… you know, the same old stuff. The concert was free, in the giant park in Palermo. It was a teaser for a “comeback tour” that would return to Buenos Aires in December. The second group I saw was called the Babasonicos, a group which was further out there than I could appreciate. They had the standard garage band set-up lead, rhythm, bass, keys, drums, and a singer who pranced around and didn’t do his job all that well. What was more exciting was the venue, Luna Park. It was an indoor stadium with “Prohibido Fumar” written all over the walls, but the smoke was so thick inside you’d think we were at a Tom Petty concert. Pablo, who got his doctorate at Columbia and spent a good chunk of his life in New York, told us it was the equivalent to Madison Square Garden but I couldn’t make the comparison. I didn’t bother recording the Babsonicos, but here’s a bit of Los Cadillacs. You can’t see it but their tenor player has the most amazing crazy hair ever. I thought it’d be important to mention that.

The best show I’ve seen yet was this last Friday; a sextet of Tango musicians playing in a discreet club, hiding deep in San Telmo. The place looked like it just ignored the rest of the world since the forties. From the outside it looked like another brick building, but inside the doors were two sets of purple velvet curtains, between which sat a ticket booth. Yeah, a ticket booth. We were worried because we were told that without reservations they couldn’t seat 11 of us, but it turned out they couldn’t turn down 550 pesos. We got dropped at the bar in the back, looking around aimlessly until someone marched us upstairs to our own private balcony. The place wasn’t a restaurant with a show, it was a club with a kitchen. Art decorated the grey blue walls, each painting with its own lighting that dimmed just enough when the house lights went down. Each table had candles and all faced the stage. The club was about the size of your standard elementary school cafeteria cut in half lengthwise, or I guess in this context it would be safe to return to your memories of fourth grade and say “hot dog style.” We were seated at a long table with high-backed armchairs and had an unobstructed view of the show. Granted, a few of us were shorted chairs and had to sit on the floor. When Ryan ordered some food though, the waiter placed a candle right next to him so he could eat his meal seated on the concrete in style. The table was meant for the performers to sit at before the show, we figured this out because we were separated from the “green room” by only a curtain.

I can’t describe the music and do it justice, but I have plenty of it stored on my computer when I get back (a few of us bought Cds). Until I do, here’s something to hold you over:

Unusually Over-stressful Problems

A Day in the Life... Part Deux

I've decided that I need to work on my attempts at subtlety. I also decided that I need to take a break from all the socio-political commentary that I'm not quite qualified to do (Then again, who out there is?). So, here's a look at what it's like to be the other part of the Awesome Route Supervisor Duo so important to the smooth, cool runnings of Unitrans.

I'm using a nifty little hand-held camera about the size of a regular digital camera, but I can't see what I'm filming when I'm filming it (hence the close ups, sorry) and it gets a little shaky sometimes. Also, I still have that problem with the word "Exciting."

70 hours of shadowing condensed into 8 minutes

A Day in the Life...

I got to work for 10.4 hours today. During finals service. With nothing going on. At all. Nothing.

I knew this was coming, so I brought my computer and decided to record my day, as it was my last string of DS shifts ever. I work as a Route Supervisor for Unitrans, when I'm not working at the high school, that is. There's a lot of jargon in the video, sorry, comes with the territory. I certainly entertained myself with this project, hopefully it's a little more entertaining to watch than the life sized portion of it. Also, I apologize for my vocabulary, apparently my available adjectives are reduced to "exciting," "fun," and "awesome," whenever the damned camera is on.

With special appearances by:

Zach Padilla - RS

Shane Park   - Shane

City Map - My best friend

Bob Snyder - Column 28

Nick Werner - Column 22

Feliz Esguerra - Column 4

Kayla Krause - Column 5

Cynthia Tolentino - Col 37

J. Gardenhoser - Col 23

Doanne Nguyen - Col 25

Tape Measurer - Life Saving Distraction

Stephanie Bush   - Steph

Nova Maldonado - Human contact

You can't drink beer from a gold watch...

Sunday, I received a longevity award for putting 6000 hours in at Unitrans.

6000 hours is 8.5 months of straight 24 hour days.

It's also just over 3 years working full time (40 hours a week).

6000 hours @ $8.75 -my base driving wage in 2006, without any longevity increases, and not including any of the other supervisory positions- is about $52,500 (most likely it's closer to 60k, and I don't know where it all went)

It's also about 1/10th of all my life since coming to Davis,

10% of all my time since Fall, 2002; eating, sleeping, playing with the band, goofing off, going to class... 10% is on the books at Unitrans.

To recognize this, they gave me a 6 pint pitcher with a Uni Logo on it.

Cheers!