The Truth is Up Here

I'm in Vancouver rather suddenly, pretending to be a nurse on an upcoming movie. Not allowed to take photos, sadly.

Why? Well it has to do with who I met in DJ class back in April of '07, the creator of the 90's sci-fi paranormal activity TV show, The X-Files.

UPDATE: Saw Mr. Carter at an X-Files panel at the Arclight. He told me "You're in the movieee..." as he signed my autograph book. Whohoo!

Shanghai Overview

In the last 15 years or so, Shanghai has grown up to become a brightly-lit beacon of Chinese potential. Its signature cityscape viewable in Pudong is right out of a science fiction movie with Disneyland Electric Light Parade treatment:

Yet some of its traditional architecture can still be found in touristy areas like Nanking Road:

Walking at night along modern, cosmopolitan streets aglow with neon and LEDs aglow with striking colors...

Even its food is colorful...

Shanghai was definitely a favorite place on my Asian journey.

Coming up soon, a closer look at the food, the architecture, and the Shanghai Zoo.

Dr. Who Theme Making-Of Video

Permanently etched into my inner ear is the tune from the Dr. Who theme. Dr. Who is a very long-running (20+ years?) British sci-fi television show meant for kids, though it's tone is deadly serious and at least until recently, its special FX laughably (charmingly?) awful.

The show's original theme by Ron Grainer was arranged using elaborate electronic equipment not meant for making music, manually adjusted and spliced together using magnetic tape by the late Delia Derbyshire. I grew up with this version, hearing it on the episodes with the fourth incarnation of the Doctor, played by Tom Baker.

The version demonstrated in the video is for the fifth season with Peter Davison as the Doctor. It's still quite good and I love seeing the old Yamaha CS-80 and ARP Odyssey (1970s era) synthesizers, which are pre-MIDI (hence the need to record them directly to magnetic tape). But it's not quite as mysterious and other-wordly as the original.