Tinselman

Interviewing Me

  

A few days ago, Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing interviewed me about directing and playing the lead role in The Immortal Augustus Gladstone. We had a great conversation! The above video includes the first three minutes of the film.

Here's another short video about... Who is this Augustus guy anyway? And why is Boing Boing suddenly in the film biz?

 

The Immortal Augustus Gladstone Everything

 

 

Hi loyal tinselman readers (and members of the Republic)! I've been talking about it for awhile and now it's here... or virtually here! The Immortal Augustus Gladstone will be released, for your viewing pleasure, before Christmas! Because afterall, Augustus was born on Christmas... he wouldn't have wanted to miss the holiday!

Above is our latest trailer featuring the music of VAST! We call the trailer "Searching For Blood".

More news... our film is being released and presented by our favorite blog Boing Boing. Its initial release will be exclusively available only from their site! But you can can pre-order the movie now as a DRM-free download!

We'll be partnering with Boing Boing to bring you tons of fun stuff. Like contests, interviews with collaborators, related short films, and more... like the following first episode of "Augustus Speaks", created from footage we didn't use in the film..

Visit our channel at YouTube or Vimeo to subscribe.

You can also now pre-order the official soundtrack to the film - the first soundtrack I've written since Riven. Or maybe just listen to a few tracks...

Soundtrack is available here. It will be released Dec. 13th (just a few days from now).

You can find all this and more at our new website, here.

Augustus needs your help! (So do we.) Please help spread the word! Thanks!

Gallery

I've finally found a moment to reassemble my online gallery. I've culled away some of the works and thrown some other things into the mix (including the thumbnails above). The gallery is by no means comprehensive but I hope you enjoy it.

Close Friends With a Count

For the past month, I've been composing the soundtrack for The Immortal Augustus Gladstone. A few days ago, I shared the above piece, Close Friends with a Count, on twitter.

We've been pretty quiet about the film but we're now almost finished with the entire project. Which feels good!

Let me know if you have questions... about the film, about the music, about whatever you like (within reason of course). I'll answer whatever I can! 

The Immortal Augustus Gladstone

 

The above is one of the most recent youtube videos from Augustus Gladstone which, because of a posting on boingboing.net, has recieved a bit of attention.

My Tinselman blog has virtually silent for some time; the few of you who've paid close attention know why... I was beginning work on a documentary. I explain it this way on The Immortal Augustus Gladstone blog...

I began the early planning for this film about a year ago; we were looking for the right subject (meaning person) but had no luck. So we regrouped and changed our strategy and that’s when, through sheer happenstance, we discovered Augustus on YouTube.

We will continue to keep you abrest of our production at our blog. 

There's more at the Official Augustus Gladstone website.

Nixon... Confused and Mourning

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How delightful! A confused Nixon... talking to Spiro Agnew. Or below, Nixon (rapidly) mourns the death of the Hulk.

For more presidential cameos from Marvel comics, check out photontorpedoes' Marvel Presidents set.

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Cigar Boxes Galore

Ever since I became aware of my grandfather's habits, I discovered he would escaped the house at least once a day, taking long walks with cigar in hand. He allowed us to walk with him, however, at an early age it became apparent these walks were no time for frolic... for fun and games. Like him, we had to remain quiet. Contemplative. Introspective. Enveloped in the warm ceremonial scent of cigar smoke. This was fine by me. Somehow it made me feel a little more grown up... walking silently, side by side with this silver haired giant. Wrapped in his smokey halo.

There were cigar boxes galore scattered around Grampy's house; they were a mysterious and wonderful artifact of my grandfather smoking habit. I think my brother still has one.

Flickr user PopKulture has photographed dozens of similar cigar boxes... I recently stumbled across them; they're definetely worth checking out.

 

Thumbelina® Brand Mini-Miniatures™

Imagine a horse that fits inside a high school locker and still leaves room for your books. Imagine a horse that jumps hurdles beneath your legs without ever touching your crotch. Imagine a horse that sleeps under your bed in perfect comfort.

Imagine no more! Geneticists at the New Lindbald Centre for Genetic Research in Braunschweig, Germany have created Thumbelina® brand Mini-Miniature House Horse™. When released next summer (2009), the Thumbelinas will be sure to delight both children and adults! They will be released in either male or female sexes, will come in a variety of colors and patterns and, at adulthood, will rarely grow taller than 17 inches! It's only ashame they won't be breedable.

Says Helmut Hienzel Diztl, Ph.D., one of the inventors of the Thumbelina Mini-Miniatures, "In many ways they're more like dogs. Horses are far too spirited to make a decent indoor pet, so we were very careful with the Thumbelina's architecture. In appearance, they're exactly similar to a shrunken miniature horse, but mentality, psychologically speaking, we gave them a pack animal mentality. In fact, we took much of the genetic data straight from dogs. Though in truth, they really are a delicate cocktail of many animals."

Currently, the Lindbald Centre is incubating and growing the horses as they lock down U.S., European, and Asian distributors.

Child in the Sky

My dad's photograph of that unforgettable Air Haiti flight.

True, it's already pretty bad that the plane itself is practically falling apart. What makes it worse is that there's a foot high drop right in the middle of the Port-au-Prince runway. Will you take your chances?

Wait. Before you jump aboard, let me tell you more. Rules and regulations are a bit play-it-by-ear in Haiti. For example, during your flight, something like the following might just happen (let's picture it)...

Halfway from Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republican, the oh-so-friendly pilot calls an 11 year old kid and his father up to the cockpit and asks the boy if he'd like to sit down in the co-pilot's chair. This 11 year old, being an airplane fanatic (and having logged countless hours on an early Macintosh edition of Microsoft's Flight Simulator) can hardly believe his shit blind luck! Oh, to gaze out at the oncoming landscape; to stare at the buttons, the knobs, the countless gauges! This is paradise! And so, our sensitive pilot, suddenly acting on impulse (and perhaps recognizing the love for the sky in this young lad) leans over and turns off automatic pilot.

In a gesture, he flips it off and asks the boy if he'd like to fly.

If it's not already obvious, this is a true story. The 11 year old boy was my younger brother, Ryan, who, without hesitation, took hold of that small wheely-thingy (or whatever the hell you call it in a plane) and piloted a plane full of Air Haiti passengers over the brown wastelands of Haiti for well over five minutes (even single-handedly piloting the turn past an oncoming cloud).

So... would you still like to take a ride on Air Haiti? Keep in mind, you may end up with an 11 year old pilot! But also remember, the passengers on that Air Haiti flight experienced nothing out of the ordinary that day. My brother, Ryan, was a more than adequate pilot and, at 11 years old, it's quite possible he'd logged more hours (via Microsoft simulator) than the pilot himself!

Irrefutable Long Horse Evidence

On December 4th, 2006, Skeptic said,

Please provide a picture of a skeleton or some other irrefutable evidence. If you are doing this as a joke, grow up and shut up. Thank you.

Well, Mr. Skeptic, here's your picture, kindly provided by The National Long Horse Museum in Hauteives, France. We long horse believers are quite sure that if you continue to deny this irrefutable long horse proof, you simply don't want to believe.

Unfortunately the skeleton is not in the best of condition. When I asked the Director of the museum to comment on this, he replied, "Vous croyez vraiment ceci? Vous des Américains croire n'importe quoi." I don't really understand French, but I think this roughly translates to,

Is this not a grand and astounding work of nature? You bet it is... so we now share it with you, our dearest Americans; you will always be like brothers and sisters to us (and three cheers for the long horse)!

Note: New! Do all your long horse reading at the dedicated long horse category!