Thank you, Endeavour

After millions of miles flown, the Space Shuttle Endeavour took a victory lap around LA before landing at LAX. Fortunately, I had some time this morning to catch it, so I went out with a friend and shot it over Griffith Observatory.  Here are my shots (click here to see a slideshow):

the summer is winding down...

Soon, it's back to school time for me!  UCI starts classes late, so still have a few weeks left before I have to get back in the classroom mode.  In the meantime, I've been spending most of my time working from home on a couple of big projects:

• A new class, The Rock'n'Roll Spectacle Show, at UCI, which I'll be teaching in the Winter Term. The class tracks the design of rock and roll shows from the late '60s through to the present day.  We'll be looking at key players, key concepts, and key technological advances. It's a lot of work, and I've been trying to watch one concert DVD a day every Monday-Friday since late July. I started with The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and have gotten as current as Genesis in 2007. I'm backtracking a bit now - today I watched the Talking Heads in 1983. Along the way I've also conducted interviews, and I've been reading a LOT of back issues of Live Design and Lighting & Sound America magazines.
• Directing/Producing The Radio Plays at UCI. We're doing three plays in one night this year as an experiment in theatre without a visual element. All acting and sound design. I'm producing the whole event and directing two of the plays.
• BUILD at The Geffen Theatre and VENUS IN FUR at Theaterworks Hartford both started rehearsal this week.
• After a long period of planning and chasing paper tigers, I finally have a new professional website for work-related things. Check me out here.  The site also has a blog, which I'll be using for professional posts.  So, that makes three blogs: this one for my personal life, this one for my freelancer life, and this one for my UCI work (the entire UCI sound design program has access to this one).  It's a lot to keep track of, but it's important for me to keep these parts of my life somewhat separate.