Hurricane Sandy, Superman, Christos, and Return to Pennsic

"You are wearing a Superman shirt. You've gotta be strong, OK?"

That little statement by an on-site journalist made me cry.

The "biggest storm ever to hit New York" has devastated the region. Millions of people are without power in NY, NJ, and Connecticut. Over a hundred homes have burned down in Breezy Point, Queens, more elsewhere. Floodwaters have washed houses completely away. Piles of boats are resting in parking lots and front lawns. Lower Manhattan, with its residents, businesses, subways, etc, is completely shut down. Coney Island rides have been drowned. The Atlantic City Boardwalk is in pieces. Thousands and thousands of planes, trains, and busses have been cancelled and re-routed. Subway and commuter tunnels have been flooded. Scores of people have died. People are angrily crying for help in devastated neighborhoods. Lines of cars are waiting for gas like the 1970's.

And in other news, a friend of mine, who had become an exceptionally good friend of my girlfriend (in a good way) passed away this morning, a victim of lung cancer.

I got lucky several ways over. I was supposed to be coming home from Springfield, Illinois when the storm hit. After several means of coming home got cancelled, the kindness and generosity of my friends got me home about the same time I would have gotten home anyway. Neither my house nor my girlfriend's house were in any danger. Any trees that fell or flooding that occurred or power outages avoided us. My job is shut down, presumably until power comes back on, but I am OK. NYC is big enough that apart from the lack of gasoline, there are very large areas almost completely untouched by the storm, and I am currently in one of them.

So I have been sitting here, walking the dog, working on my "Return to Pennsic" video project, as the nonstop coverage of the catastrophe continues to play on almost every TV channel (we don't have cable; by choice, not by the storm).

Much like 9-11 and Katrina, I have been watching the damage with a detached fascination, wondering if it shows character failing. Don't bother helping me analyze this, there are people in much greater need of help than I. I suppose I could take the bus or walk home, grab my bicycle and pedal to a devastated neighborhood and start helping fetch and cary, dig people out and give moral support. But of course I would just get in the way, hurt myself, become another victim, or simply be prevented from getting to the affected area by police roadblocks and such. And I have a paycheck theoretically sitting in my mailbox waiting to be picked up and deposited so I can pay my rent and certain bills and debts.

But then I see the clip from CBS Morning News of an on-the-scene reporter talking to a small boy with a mother holding the ready-to-eat meal.

"Are you cold?"

"Yes."

"Are you tired?"

"Yes."

(awkward silence)

"You are wearing a Superman shirt, so you've gotta be strong, OK?"

The boy, in tears, nods silently.

That hits me. As a life-long fan and student of comic books and superheroes, Superman is more than a colorful figure on a page, he is a symbol. He represents the will to do what is right and the strength to back it up. To call forth this icon is a powerful mojo to me.

Then I change the channel and see Aerosmith perfuming in Rockefeller Center on the Today Show.

I know Steve Tyler and Steve Perry were on Letterman last night promoting their new album (Letterman is looking old these days, BTW), so they might just be doing this as a publicity stunt, but somehow it means more than that. Aerosmith is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band. They can fill a football stadium with fans, even if they only limit ticket sales to women. So being on the Today Show to perform in front of a few hundred people in Rockefeller Center, even with the national TV audience, is more than just an act of publicity for them, especially today.

Entertainments have long been used to raise morale and lift spirits after catastrophes. For a big name entertainer to perform today, in the middle of Manhattan, on national TV, is a big deal. Entertainers are not rescuers, first responders, firefighters, doctors. What they do is create and perform in order to affect people's moods and feelings. To do so now shows that they care about this city.

To see them on TV, singing and playing their hearts out, right after that touchingly tragic scene with the boy, got to me.

So now what do I do?

I am an artist, an entertainer, but I have let that work slip for a while. Last year I shot a documentary at the Pennsic War, and intended to have it done by Christmas. Technical issues, money issues, a SOB who still owes me about $1500 for work I did for him, another SOB who won't send me back my cell phone after I accidentally left it in his home after entertaining his son on his birthday, jobs that I have taken to pay bills, training and competing for the Battle of the Nations, all this have I let get in the way of finishing the project. And now there are other things I want to do that I have said I won't do until I finish this project. Yet the project is still undone.

There are people who have contributed money to the project. There are people whose time I have taken working on the project. My girlfriend helped me tremendously, both practically and financially because she believed in me and the project. "Simply the Best" G.A. West came to Pennsic, something he never throughout he would do in his life, so that he could be involved in this project.

There are people who have dedicated their lives to helping people, protecting them, serving them, saving them. They do a good job at it.

There are also people who have died whose lives we are no longer able to touch. After writing this essay I read the posts on my friend's FaceBook wall from his friends saying goodbye and have been crying my eyes out.

The best we can do to honor their duty and sacrifice and loss is to be the best people we can be and accomplish things that only humans can do, and for me that is to create things that lift people's feelings and help them grow in a positive way. I believe that this video project is one of these things.

This video project is a year overdue and I finally have the time to finish this thing, which I have been working on for so long and have promised so many people, and the best thing I think I can do is finish this and get on with my life.

Return to Pennsic webpage

The story of what's been delaying Retun to Pennsic

So here's the story: My first delay was in getting the video tapes converted to digital media. I had to wait until the money came in to do that. The money came from a new job I acquired. This proved to be a double-edged sword. The job got me money, but took my time.

I also came to discover that my computer has a hard time using Adobe Premiere when there are too many files being drawn from and when the project is too long. I got the idea that a laptop would resolve some of these issues, being as it would have a new OS, more memory, and be portable, allowing me to edit when away from home.

Santa Clause bequeathed me with a spanking new MacBook Pro, which then put me in the dilemma of wither learning a Mac-compatible editing program like Final Cut, or using Windows on a Mac so I could continue editing with Premiere. I chose the latter.

At first I was told to use Parallels to install Windows, so I bought the program and installed Windows, then Premier, then noticed that Premiere was running a little wonky. Someone then said the boot Camp was the way to go to install Windows on a Mac.

The trouble is that the latest version of Boot Camp only works with Windows 7, and I only had windows XP. So a friend provided me with a copy of Windows 7.

But when using Boot Camp, one should back up one’s files. The external hard drive I was using did not have enough space to hold all the files on my new MacBook, so I was burning disks to open up the space. Then one day the external hard drive failed.

The troubleshooting guides led me to research file recovery companies. After recovering form the cardiac event that the prices they were charging gave me, I head from a friend that it’s possible tat you don’t need “file recovery,” it could just be a simple hardware problem.

It turned out that the USB jack had broken off of the circuit board, the disk itself was fine, so the company that sold me the HD provided me with a dock. But the HD would not fit into the dock. They said they would provide me with a new casement, but forgot to get it to me until I called them a week or so later. Again, the HD did not fit, but I figured out that I needed to detach the little circuit board on which the USB input jack had been attached, and then everything fit just fine.

Then it seemed that I could no longer simply move the files from my MacBook to my HD, so I had to burn disks. It took me a while to figure out how to burn disks on a MacBook. In fact, I wound up using an XP program and doing the work in windows through Parallels. Then it looked like the disks were blank after burning.

Both of these things turned out to be false alarms. I figured out how to move the files, and that the disks were not really blank. In any event, I finally got all my files backed up and was ready to run Boot Camp and install Windows 7.

What followed was a continuation of the Kafka-esque nightmare that has been plaguing me. I shall spare you the minute details, but merely say that it involved having to burn and re-burn disks, load drivers onto one thing and then another, a search for some internet access that would not stall out during a download process, and two late nights at the Apple store.

Now it looks like I may have to plunk down about $300 one way or another; either to buy a new copy of Windows 7 so I can load it onto my MacBook so I can continue editing in Adobe Premiere, or to buy a copy of Final Cut, render what I have done in Premiere already, and learn how to use Final Cut as I go.

And I hope to have something to screen by the end of the month.

Captain Zorikh on NY Rocks TV!

Here it is folks, the lates appearance of Yours truly on Phil Fiumano's NY Rocks TV show! Skip ahead to 50:20 to get to my segment, although starting at 24:52 you can see my stuff on Phil's table.