Chris Paine Gets a Mention In This Week’s Time

Chris Paine gets a mention in the opener of a new Time Magazine article about GM’s
Green Motors.

No one would mistake Chris Paine for a General Motors shill. In his 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, the filmmaker laid out a damning case against GM for unplugging the EV1, the electric vehicle it manufactured in the 1990s and then discontinued in 2003, preferring instead to produce high-margin but gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. “They were a technological leader, and they fumbled that leadership away,” Paine says. Ask him about the U.S. carmaker now, though, and Paine sounds almost admiring. “Their new hybrids are making a difference, and their plug-in technology is a real advance,” he says. “GM is making some really good moves now.”


Flying Around And Exploring the Long Now’s Alice In Wonderland Exhibit In Second Life

So I’ve been sitting on these second life movies for months now and I just have to start putting them up!
Here’s one from July, that I actually edited when I was in Vancouver, of me flying around for a while, ending up at the Long Now Foundation’s Alice Wonderland Exhibit, and walking around a bit.


The music’s cool because it’s a Dr. GoldKlang remix of my acapella track on cc mixter that rocks too… (And it mixes me with death metal vocals, which I totally dig 🙂
This whole thing is now available under an Attribution Non-Commercial 2.5 License…(per the cc mixter song’s terms)
ok it’s late…but I just *could not believe that i spent like days working on this thing and then just, didn’t put it up. (Except on Facebook. And that doesn’t count…walled garden and such 🙂
ok hope ya like it…

The Trees Are Saved For At Least Three Weeks!

Update 10/07/07 – here’s the article in the LA Times:

Court bars removal of Santa Monica trees
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer.
Right on! Chris and the gang called me up last night to let me know that all of our hard work paid off and they have a restraining order to protect the trees for three weeks while everything is re-investigated.
I’ll have more up on all this soon — but I must swim before I start working every day – my new rule! 🙂
Okay I just wanted to let everyone know — those of you who’ve been asking or following this for the last few weeks — thanks so much for your concern. It’s been a great experience…and whaddaya know…
This time we saved some trees!

Continue reading →

March In Santa Monica Tuesday at 6pm to Save The Trees

Hey LA-based tree hugger peeps!
Time to come out in full force tomorrow evening in Santa Monica for a
March to Save The Trees in memory of Gandhi’s Birthday.
Chris Paine, and old friend of mine, and Director of the awesome film, Who Killed The Electric Car, has been helping to organize a series of Tree Saver meetings that have been going on over the past few weeks to save over 50 Ficus trees scheduled for removal under the guise of being diseased (extreme disagreement over this point by experts in the community).
There’s a Tree Saver Blog where you can get more information about it all.

Below: The Tree Savers Crew

This is a few weeks ago. We’re a much larger group now, with over 70 100 people on our mailing list!

Here’s more about Who Killed The Electric Car too! Lots to talk about on this front in the days – and years, to come:

Press/Reviews of Film
Why Electric Cars Are Better
Cool Scenes From The Film I found on YouTube
Trailer
Buy The DVD

Preparing for My SFSU BECA Lecture On Facebook – What do you like/not like about it?

Hey in the great tradition of my readers helping me make everything I do better, I thought I’d let you know ahead of time that I’m working on a lecture for this Thursday and I would really love some input from Facebook users about what they feel is most important to them about it.
Or, if you’re a Facebook user that isn’t particularly impressed, that’s important too.
I’m going to focus on my own experiences in the lecture, but it’s always nice to counter them with input from others – especially when others may feel very differently than I do about something. I like to let the students know about as many sides of everything as I can about the topics that I discuss. (Especially if I feel really strongly about something, but everyone disagrees with me. I still get to say my piece cause it’s my lecture 🙂 but then, more than ever, I need to make it clear to the students that, well, everyone else disagrees with me…
well you get the picture…. long story short: chime in! 🙂 send me email…or friend me on facebook and send data that way 🙂

So Happy To Be Playing Music Again

This is just a catch up note from last weekend on how much fun it’s getting to be playing parties and events and things again…
I guess I used to get nervous and couldn’t allow myself to enjoy the moment as much as I can now, now that my groove has become a second nature.
Now I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. I just go into some kind of trance or something…
But what a rush last weekend to notice that everybody in the building I was playing in was smiling and digging it. They had my music piped in throughout the building (it was kind of an office/client party type thing) — and everyone was moving their heads back and forth…and smiling.
And they’d walk in and out of the room I was actually in and look over at me, and smile, and kinda say “thanks” and “hey what’ssup?” at the same time with a nod of their heads as they were walking through.
It was a peak experience for sure.
Ready for more of those!
link to info on upcoming shows