And that’s exactly what the DISH Earth network is. DISH Network stuck a camera on the side of EchoStar 11 22,300 miles up in geosynchronous orbit and pointed it back at the earth. Nothing really changes except cloud patterns and the day/night cycle, but it’s hypnotic enough to check in on it every so often*. Besides, I find it rather cool just to be able to say “hey, what does the Earth look like right now?”

There’s also a twenty-four time lapse movie.

* Full disclosure: I have also sat through a showing of Andy Warhol’s Empire so my viewpoint is markedly skewed.

A month or so back Kristin and I were confronted with the trailer to Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen a month or so back and our feeling was that it was the first completely metatext movie trailer. Ignore everything you know about narrative because the trailer isn’t a convention preview, it’s a list of ingredients: explosions, Egypt, explosions, military hardware, explosions, robots, shouting, explosions, Megan Fox’s butt, explosions, conspiracy mysticism b.s., more explosions.

Anyway, I posted this in an ILX thread and on Twitter and apparently I was right. One long two and a half hour blipvert. I’ll hold off for the eventual RiffTrax version of this. The RiffTrax version of Transformers was actually pretty good.

He certainly seems to be annoyed at the interruption. Though taking into account Chandler’s memo to the studio, he’s probably just annoyed in general.

I ran into a similar effect with recent viewings of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater (thanks dad!) and I can confidently say that I’ve seen it thirty to forty times over the years. However it wasn’t until a couple months ago at a recent Arclight viewing that I noticed that the monolith and the moon formed a pyramid.

More fodder for the “what does it all mean?” pile I suppose, but interesting nonetheless. I suspect a crash course in Zoroastrianism is in my future.

Speaking of hidden items in 2001… Did anyone back in 1968 seriously expect Aeroflot to still be around in the real 2001? Or to put it another way:

It’s 1968. Which brand will be the only one remaining in 2001?

1. Pan Am
2. Bell System
3. Aeroflot

“Complete obstinacy. I can’t think of any other band who’s been around as long as they have who are stubborn enough to not break down and retrace their path back to those two songs that got them here in the first place. Every new album sounds just enough like themselves to be familiar but each has an implicit statement of ‘this is what we’re doing Right Now.’ Never would have figured on a group of fifty year olds, thirty years into a career, going full D.I.Y. into some of the best moody psychedelic Floyd-esque around.”

I took some photos, but since it’s me, they’re mostly of amplifiers and effect pedals so here’s some video from Solana Beach the night before:

and the full session from KCRW:

And yes it was me who sent in the proposal for a 33 1/3 book on Priest=Aura.