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March 12, 2006

Who Needs Donuts?

THE HISTORY

Back in 1974, when I was nine years old, I bought a book titled Who Needs Donuts? from a book club. I still have the book (thanks Shelley for keeping it safe all those years!). I bought this book because my dad already had a photocopy of it given to him by a coworker and I loved it.

I contacted Mark Alan Stamaty, the author, by phone back in late 2002 with the intention of persuading him to reprint the book. My timing was apparently inspired because a publicity director for Random House children’s books told him the same thing.

Mark Alan Stamaty, 2006

THE BOOK

So what is this book all about and why am I raving about it? It’s about a boy named Sam who learns an important lesson about love. Below is a scanned image from the cover of my original (and tattered) 1974 edition just to give you a small taste. If you click on the picture, another window will open with a much higher quality version.

Copyright © 1973, renewed 2001 by Mark Alan Stamaty. Reprinted with permission.

MY REVIEW

When Mark told me that the book had finally been reprinted, I penned a review on Amazon.com, which I quote:

Intoxicating, mesmerising, insanely detailed and puns galore
October 2, 2003

You will never again find a book like this unless Mark is crazy enough to create a sequel. I find it amazing that he drew all the illustrations at the printed size — it must have given him quite a headache.

I was reading through it just now and found yet another very funny thing I don’t remember seeing before (and burst out laughing) even though I’ve spent many hours looking at this book since I was a kid.

Unbelievably and beautifully detailed, with a vibe and feel all its own, Sam’s world seems visually chaotic to us, the reader, yet Sam seems to fit right in as simply as can be. The story teaches against materialism and its pitfalls without being preachy or obvious, which made an impression on me at an early age.

This book is for adults as much as it is for children. My whole family competed for viewing time when I first bought it (at age nine) back in 1974. Now I get to share it with my daughters who seem to enjoy it as much as I have.

Now that Mark has gotten it reprinted, I have already purchased four new hardbound copies to add to my tattered perfectbound original, partly for friends, but also to just stick away somewhere should the book go mindlessly out of print again — it took me forever to find my old copy buried in boxes.

Thanks, Mark, for a delightful romp through a world full of horsebirds, stupid puns, witty social commentary, every kind of human charicature, and the absurdity of animals and inanimate objects with attached thought and speech bubbles. We need to come up with a website where people can list the minutiae found on those carefully crafted pages.

This is easily my favorite book of all time. Please, Mark, make a sequel.

AN INTERVIEW

Back in September of 2003, an interview with Mark Alan Stamaty appeared on a Blog titled Rands in Repose. In the interview, Mark explained his inspiration for the book and the way it all came about.

AUTOGRAPHED COPIES

Within two months of my Amazon.com review, because I was one of those who encouraged him to reprint the book, Mark was nice enough to autograph all four of those copies that I purchased. I gave three of them away for Christmas to my Dad, my sister Shelley and my late brother Daniel Trent. Shelley and Dad still have theirs, but I recovered Dan’s copy after he passed away in April of 2004. This is what Mark wrote — literally drew — inside Dan’s copy and my copy of the book:

SUPPORT MARK

Partly because Mark is such an innovative illustrator (heck, he probably inspired the entire Where’s Waldo series with the Donuts book), but also because the story is beautiful and simple and because Mark is such a great guy, you need to go to Amazon.com right now and buy this book. You will never regret the purchase. Well — you might regret it when everyone and his brother is fighting you to look at it.

On second thought, order more than one copy. That way you have a copy for yourself to savor and a copy for friends to spend countless hours finding hundreds and possibly thousands of hidden messages within the amazing drawings that fill every page.

DISCLAIMER

No donuts were harmed in the writing of this blog entry.

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 05:19 PM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2006

Lisa on Mix 97.1 Radio

My wife Lisa was on a local radio station last Sunday morning and will be again this Sunday morning. While interviewed by D.J. Dave James about her life story, Lisa presented current information about the Foster Care system in Ohio. The interview is presented here in two parts as MP3 audio files.

Lisa on Mix 97.1 Part 1

Lisa on Mix 97.1 Part 2

You can find out more about Lisa’s interest in the Foster Care system by checking out her website

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 07:04 PM | Comments (1)

Oh Look! Mom’s Camera!

My cousin Laura has two little boys -- twins actually. You can see them at their first birthday party. They are bright little boys. One of them got ahold of his mother’s digital camera and began experimenting. Laura’s actual description of the event goes like this:

The boys were making funny faces during snack time last night so I grabbed my digital camera. I turned it on only to discover “internal memory full.” Since I hadn't taken any pictures, I was puzzled.

Turns out Jack had gotten his hands on the camera and used it to take a number of photos and three mini videos. The videos are very Zapruder-esque featuring the carpet, a blurry flash of Sam’s hand, some mysterious Fisher Price farm animals and dark shadows. No grassy knoll, though. The photos, in time order, show Jack “teaching himself” to use the digital camera. I like the little smile where he starts to figure it out!

I edited together two of the videos and the three photos to create a final piece which I have titled “Oh Look! Mom’s Camera!” I submit it for your viewing pleasure. As you watch it, remember that this little kid is only 21 months old -- and apparently brilliant! Thanks, Laura!

Below are links to three digital formats for this video: Windows Media 9, Quicktime 6 and a form which is playable on the Apple Video iPods.

Windows Media 9 Format
Moms-Camera.wmv (Right-click and save the linked file to your hard disk.)

Apple Video iPod Format
Moms-Camera.m4v (Right-click and save the linked file to your hard disk. You may need to remove a ".txt" ending from the file name for the video to work properly.)

Quicktime 6 (or higher) Format

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)

March 10, 2006

Adobe Illustrator CS2 Tutorial

I recently put the finishing touches on my latest tutorial with The Virtual Training Company. That makes a total of five over the past two and a half years, or one every six months. Here is a list of the first four tutorials that I have created with direct links to them:

Adobe Illustrator CS
Adobe After Effects 6
Digidesign Protools LE 6.7
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Advanced

If you watch just a few movies from each tutorial, in order, you might notice that the later ones have quite a bit more polish than, say, Illustrator CS. You can chalk that up to authoring experience. I probably put in about 1500 hours making these things since November of 2003. Unless one is as dumb as a post, one must learn something along the way.

If you or anyone you know would like to learn any of these applications, you should check out a tutorial. They make learning these challenging programs much easier.

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 04:41 AM | Comments (0)

March 09, 2006

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away

My daughters Rachel and Carly stay with me and my wife Lisa every other weekend. Back when the girls were younger, I used to play guitar and sing them to sleep. They had many requests and one of them was this classic by The Beatles.

In early 2000, I had just converted one of my bedrooms into a recording room and convinced Rachel and Carly to sing this song with me while I played my Martin guitar. What you hear in this recording is essentially how I sounded to them when they were falling asleep. The only difference is that they are singing along with me; well, Rachel is singing and Carly is just humming.

The results are quite charming.

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away.mp3

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 12:36 PM | Comments (0)

Polymath

My wife tells me that I am a Renaissance Man because I have varied interests and I tend to throw myself into all of them, one after another. I was looking up various things on Wikipedia when I came across the term Polymath. I quote the wiki:

A polymath (also known as a polyhistor) is a person who excels in multiple fields, particularly in both arts and sciences. The most common other term for this phenomenon is Renaissance Man....

It goes on:

Many notable polymaths lived during the European Renaissance period, and a rounded approach to education was typical of the ideals of the humanists of the time. A gentleman or coutier of that era was expected to speak several languages, play a musical instrument, write poetry and so on, thus fulfilling the Renaissance ideal…

Later:

Although it is generally considered a compliment to be called well-rounded, or a Renaissance Man, there is a potentially negative connotation as well: that by sacrificing depth for breadth, one becomes the jack of all trades, but the master of none.

It also lists some famous Polymaths throughout history:

Aristotle, Caesar, Plato, Ptolemy, Francis Bacon (didn't he invent the BLT?), Copernicus, Erasmus, da Vinci, Darwin, Descartes, Edison, Ben Franklin, Gauss, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton, Pascal, Asimov, Alexander Graham Bell, Buckminster Fuller, Howard Hughes, von Neumann, Steve Martin, Sartre, Ben Stein and Frank Zappa.

I would not mind being lumped into that group, in spite of a lack of depth in any one area.

In actuality, I do have a wide range of interests in both the arts and sciences. In some ways, I think of myself as an anomaly because, although I could have gone to a prestigious university and become a famous academic, I did not. I could have gone into music professionally, but did not. I could have gone into the visual arts, becoming a famous filmmaker, videographer, illustrator or cartoonist, but did not. What is my deal?

What is your I.Q.? you may ask. I don't really know. I've taken some of those cheesy online I.Q. tests and they place me anywhere between 136 and 140, just shy of genius. Of course, I.Q. does not translate to good common sense. I have blind spots. In fact, my ability to spell almost any word properly, a skill that I highly prize, has been declining over the past year. I chalk it up to being 41 with a brain that is continually rotting.

Every time I watch The Beatles' animated feature Yellow Submarine, I get a kick out of watching the Nowhere Man because I think of myself as another one of him. He can do all these amazing things, but he's just stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway, enough about me.

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 11:58 AM | Comments (0)

March 02, 2006

SNL’s Don't Buy Stuff

Saturday Night Live will always hold a special place in my heart, even though it has seen its share of ups and downs. This is most definitely an "up" moment, with Steve Martin, Amy Poehler and Chris Parnell in a very funny fake commercial. I will write nothing else except that, in this adolescent culture, we all need this very obvious advice.

Below are links to three digital formats for this video: Windows Media 9, Quicktime 7 (h.264) and a form which is playable on the Apple Video iPods.

Windows Media 9 Format
SNL Don’t Buy Stuff.wmv

Apple Video iPod Format
SNL Don’t Buy Stuff.m4v (right-click and save the linked file to your hard disk)

Quicktime 7 Format

Posted by Nathan Dickson at 08:41 PM | Comments (0)