No Weapon, No Motive, No Body

Today's post could be accused of being a little macabre but I hope you will look beyond that to the potentially useful information contained within.

One week, I was staying at a friends' apartment in Chelsea while she was out of town. And, being bored, I went to a local bar and ordered a drink, and ended up in a conversation with someone who claimed to be a former officer in the NYPD. Now maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't, but the bartender who knew him did not contradict him, for what that may be worth. There are times when I can talk to anyone and get them to talk about themselves and their work and this was one of those nights.

Somehow we got on the subject of crime, whether the so-called mafia were as noble as that portrayed in The Godfather (1972), and finally on how to commit murder, or rather, what the attributes of a perfect murder are from the point of view of someone formerly of the NYPD.

The point of this post is to document what I learned that evening so that the information might not be forgotten but can instead be available to my loyal readers should the occasion present itself.  I suppose you never know when you might have to knock someone off, and this information would be good to have at that time.

On the subject of the mafia, nobility and idealism, the bartender, a youngish man, claimed some personal knowledge. I guess he was of appropriate descent, and had friends or possibly relatives who worked in that profession in one way or another. I told him the story from WW2 that when we invaded Sicily, that one of the American Don's was there on the beach to meet his old patron, one of the Sicilian Don's to help ease the way for the Americans. My friend the bartender, laughed at my naivete. Well, maybe, he said, if it was part of a plea bargain, but patriotism for their new country aside, he said, the right way to think of the mafia is as pure capitalists. What they care about is money. Beginning and ending with money.

On the subject of the perfect murder, the interesting person who may indeed have been a former NYPD police officer had this to say. “No weapon, No motive, No body”. He then went on to explain what this cute little saying meant.

The missing Jimmy Hoffa in happier days.

“No weapon” means that the murder weapon no longer exists, and can not be found, for one reason or another (like it is at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean). Thus no weapon can be introduced in court by the prosecution and without a murder weapon, establishing guilt in a murder case is very difficult, he said.

“No motive” means that the person or people who commit the crime are in fact not the people who had a reason to commit the crime. This is the big advantage, if you can swing it, of a larger organization of loyal and trustworthy people. In other words, you may hate Joe and want to kill him and have good reason to kill him, at least from your point of view. But on that evening you were home with your family eating a spaghetti dinner and had a foolproof and even legitimate alibi. On the other hand, Pete may barely know Joe or not know him at all, has no motive, and he commits the murder. But the police have no particular reason to suspect Pete, he has no motive for the crime. Nor would the prosecution be able to show why Pete should commit such a crime in court. Even if they know Pete did the deed, they would still have to establish motive, and being a distant friend of someone who hates Joe is not a strong connection.

“No body” means the body disappears. It may not even be certain that Joe was murdered (although I suppose a lot of blood on his apartment floor would be a clue). But if Joe simply disappears, and there is no sign of violence, then for all anyone knows, Joe may be in Rio de Janiero fucking little boys. Think Jimmy Hoffa. Now how do you reliably get rid of the body? Well, there are a variety of ways and again this is where having a larger organization comes in handy. But butchering Joe into component parts and depositing them on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean is one thought.  According to one informant, Mr. Hoffa was put into a trunk of a car, compressed, and sent to Japan as scrap.  Another thought is that nice new Javits Center where, it is said, Jimmy Hoffa rests in peace, or in pieces.

I hope you have found this post educational and useful in your work.

Cowardice, Network Television and the Affair of the Three Missing Words

Those of you youngsters who are reading this may never have heard of network television, so I will endeavor to explain it to you. Once upon a time, the new technology of broadcast television was invented, so the government decided to award a franchise to their friends so they could make a lot of money. Three different networks were created, the red network, the blue network and the eye network (NBC, ABC and CBS respectively). Ok, this is not exactly what happened, but it is close enough for our discussion.

The first thing that would happen if you became a television executive, apparently, is that, symbolically at least, your backbone was removed. Network executives became known the world over for lacking a spine, in other words, they regressed to invertebrates. Hundreds and then thousands of cowardly decisions were made to keep television lily-white and inoffensive.

But there was one moment that symbolized for me the lack of backbone, one decision that was so cowardly that it seemed to encapsulate all the other cowardly moments and coalesce them into one brilliant and insane cowardly moment.

Once upon a time, when movies were first shown on broadcast television, this was considered to be an Event. But since just anyone could switch on the TV and watch, the networks felt that they had to protect the morality of Americans, that this was their responsibility. And so, the infamous warning “edited for television” came into existence, announcing to the world that the creative work about to be shown had been castrated for your safety. Artistic Integrity is not a term much used by television executives.

In the premiere that was the penultimate nadir of integrity that I refer to, in editing for television all that changed was to remove three words out of a full-length movie. Three little words, how bad could that be? I mean what could you lose with three words, for goodness sake?!

Well, in this case, it changed the meaning of the film, and its impact, significantly. The movie was Cabaret (1972) and the scene was as follows:

And the three words that were removed? It was Brian saying “So do I” ... in other words, confessing to a homosexual relationship with Lothar. This was considered so shocking that it was removed. But removing it changes everything.

I have a copy of this film online but I am brilliantly unable to find this scene no matter how I look. Of course, one way to look, to start at the beginning and go to the end, would not be possible.

I am still looking for the date of this Event and the network.  The Internet is great for research up to a point but at the end of the day it is not a reference library, exactly, but something more amorphous.  And so finding this information will take a little digging.   

Cabaret (1972) on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068327/

In Response to an Anonymous Comment on my Review of Android

I wrote a scathing review of Android many months ago, intentionally being sarcastic and demeaning to what is clearly a very successful operating system. I am resisting looking up the numbers of users of Android (not necessarily programmers, end users) because I am sure they will be stunning, however much they may have been inflated by marketing scum. The reality is that whatever the numbers are, this is a very successful operating system by any measure. But all the more reason therefore to have expectations regarding the quality and the way potential developers are treated.

You can read this review here: Toaster Oven or Computer? How Can We Tell the Difference?

The point of the current post is to reply to a comment, anonymous, that I just received that suggested, tersely, that I should revisit my review of Android. The implication being either that it has changed, which I doubt, or that I am stupid or that I am wrong.

But before I begin, let me respond to a potential criticism, that I simply want new technology to be the same as old technology which I already know. No, I don't, but thank you for insulting my intelligence and motivation.

I doubt very much if Android has changed. The kind of things I was responding to are fundamental to the system and could only be changed if the people at Google wanted to change them. But it is the nature of such things that they are not changed, at least not willingly. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one but the lightbulb must sincerely want to change. Either they do not give a fuck, or they think it is great, or they dont know any better, or it was a design goal to make Android completely incompatible with everything else and have not considered what is involved for a non-Google person to do development on the device.  It may be that they are only interested in the participation of organizations with a lot of resources, and the lone developer has only marginal value.  (1)

Second, I do not think I was being unfair. I think that I got a good sense of what the design philosophy behind Android was and what Google thinks of their users (which is that they are going to do things their way and spend the time and energy and money to get up to speed, no matter what that costs). Remember this project has essentially infinite money compared to most projects in this world. If they wanted to do a good job, they could, but to do so would require that they want to do a good job and that they hire someone with the aesthetic and design sense who was capable of doing so.

It is my opinion that computers are first and foremost about aesthetics. There is very little about computing that is not about aesthetics in one way or another. Yes, there are other criteria as well which are more mundane, some obvious, some not obvious. But generally speaking, the values of those who have written or designed (if there was a design) the hardware or software have been implicitly expressed in their design and implementation.

There is nothing new in the above paragraph. This insight has been common knowledge in computing since at least the 1970s and probably before and in the other arts for much longer, centuries at least.  It is one of the reasons, perhaps the primary one, that Macintosh consistantly has a good user interface and Microsoft does not.  The author of a work necessarily reveals who they are and what their values are in that creative work whether it be a sonnet, a novel, a short story or a computer program.  One of the scary things about doing creative work is that it always reveals something about you.   (2)

Like all creative works, one can work at many levels, and one can also employ irony, sarcasm and so forth. Thus one may have to have two neurons to rub together to realize when reading Jonathan Swift's “A Modest Proposal...” that he does not actually think that people should eat Irish babies to deal with the overpopulation problem. Similarly one may write bad software to make a point, or simply because the client wanted it to be bad, as they so often do.

Now we have one more point to make. Those who are not lucky enough to have been rewarded for their work and have to get a new career in todays “great recession” have an overwhelming number of new, but not altogether well designed, frameworks, operating systems, languages and so forth to learn. When they get a job, the problem becomes much easier as long as they hold that job. Android is certainly one of those things one might learn to try and be employable. Thus when it is badly designed or deliberately difficult to use, it is particularly frustrating to those of us who are not being paid.

So my response to the anonymous commenter who tells me that I had better revisit the subject but doesn't have the guts to sign his opinion nor the time to explain why this might be so is that I would be happy to. My rate is $4K/day with a 10 day minimum due up front.

Let me know when you want to start.

________________________________________________

1. Which may, unfortunately, be the case.

2. There are two jokes related to this "the work reflects the personality of the author".  The first is a film school joke: everyone's first film is about sex, whether they know it or not.   The second is a joke from the field of industrial organization: that an organizations building (headquarters, usually) tells us something about the company.   Thus the Pentagon tells us something about how the DOD works, and the building of the American Museum of Natural History tells us something about how the museum organizes itself.  This is one of those jokes that has an awesome amount of truth to it.

An Experiment in Intellectual Property Theft

Warning: the following contains spoilers for Edge of Tomorrow (2014) although they are not terribly revealing ones and nothing that you could not guess from watching any trailer for the film.

The bold, new Internet paradigm has done an amazing thing. It has lifted millions and millions of people above the squalor and poverty of their lives and enabled them to achieve their hearts's desire. To achieve something they always wanted to do, but circumstances held them back. Now, with the power of the Internet they can achieve these lofty goals and become a petty thief, or a scam artist, or a subcontractor to organized crime, or a sexual exploiter of children or a pornographer.

I have often heard it said by leading figures of the glamourous motion picture industry that the Internet is the very center of the crime of intellectual property theft. It is said that no sooner than they release a film but it shows up on the Internet for downloading from Pirate Bay or similar organizations.

So I decided to run a test and see for myself.

The test was as follows. I would pick a specific film in recent release. It had to have been in the theatres for only a few weeks and not in Academy Award season so that there would be no screener DVDs around to make digital copying easier. The film had to be big enough to have normal precautions taken against theft, but would not be so large a hit as to be an incentive for thieves. Finally, it had to be a film I was willing to go see in the theatre so that I could in good conscience see a bootlegged version, comfortable in the knowledge that I would also go to the theatre and give the studios some money.

Although watchable, the bootlegged copy was obviously not as good as a 720P from DVD for example

The film I chose was Edge of Tomorrow (2014), starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt and directed by Doug Liman. This film was released just a few weeks ago and was not doing well by the standard of expectations that this would be the summer blockbuster movie. On the other hand, it sounded unexpectedly entertaining to me, and I loved the trailer.

NB: In the following narrative, I mention some technical details, but I hope I am not encouraging anyone to violate the law and I do not approve in general of violating copyright.

Because you see, to my surprise, it was trivial to get this film. The copy I got was not too great, but it was watchable, and it was easy.

1. I installed a torrent program on my designated victim Windows 7 machine. I expected this machine to possibly be the victim of malware, so if you are following along with me, be sure to make backups and possibly get anything of value off your computer.  The torrent client I chose was “uTorrent” as least likely to have malware installed.

2. I did a Google search for “Edge of Tomorrow Download” and it did not surprise me that I immediately got lots of possible hits.   This did not surprise me because I knew from experience that there is a lot of "cant cheat an honest man" malware sites ready to advantage of the wouldbe thief.  However, one of them seemed plausible to me.   About the fourth or fifth result was one from thepiratebay.se. It had a 1 GB 720p version and it even listed the source (from an Italian version) and the technical characteristics, e.g. CODEC, format profile, color space, stream size, color primaries and so forth.

3. I pointed uTorrent at the “magnet” link on Pirate Bay, and permitted the browser to invoke uTorrent.

4. The transfer began and said it would take about 2.5 hours.

5. I went and did something else and came back in two hours and it was done.

6. I copied the 1 GB file to a Linux computer so that any malware lurking in the mpg would not do much damage.

7. I watched the movie

Although this was very easy and rather convenient to do, to my amazement, there was one downside that was obvious and ultimately bodes well for the studio. The quality was not very good. It reminded me of an Avid workprint. Although the nominal resolution was 720P, in fact the actual information that was presented was far less. And the color had been quantized. I have included some screengrabs courtesy of VLC and you can see for yourself.

Ironically, the deficiencies of the copy were most prevalent in scenes with lots of fast motion and which were dark.  Now it turns out that in this movie, some of the most interesting scenes, or at least climactic scenes, have fast action and a dark palette.   So the result was that this copy acted like a very long trailer for me.  On the one hand, I now know what will happen, but on the other hand I am genuinely motivated to go see a good version of the film in the theatre.  So the studios should not completely despair: there may be some sort of silver lining to this cloud.

One thing became very clear to me.   Emily Blunt doing pushups is the new sex icon as far as I am concerned.   With a great ethnic name for her character, Rita Vrataski, which is some sort of faux-Polish made up word, and a sexist nom-de-guerre of "Full Metal Bitch", there was genuine character development as the Cruise character fell in love with her after fighting the aliens with her and dying hundreds if not thousands of times.  Watching her die, bravely and heroically, each time.  Always to wake up in the morning and have to introduce himself to her while she is training for the next-day airborne assault.  Her first words are not very friendly because of course due to the time loop she does not know who he is. By the end of the film we realize that the Cruise character, a nebbish advertising guy in uniform, is relieved to be assaulted by her in the morning because it means she is still alive, in a time-loop sort of way.

So now I am a little perplexed.  How can the Pirate Bay site continue to exist?   How can these web sites just publicly say that they have this film and actually do?  I would be less surprised if they hid their activities a little better, e.g. maybe you had to know that Edge of Tomorrow had to be spelled EgDe fo TmOrOrw or something, but no.  Its just right there hanging and waiting to be harvested.

Emily doing her pushup / yoga mashup and displaying (a bird watching term)

I have become very fond of Emily Blunt because of this movie.

So in conclusion, however it is that people are able to make bad copies so early in release (I can guess but it is sheer speculation on my part), it is true at least in this case that a copy was available for download within a few weeks of release.   So the studios are not wrong in saying that there is an issue here.

Edge of Tomorrow on IMDB

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1631867/

Remembering the Ancient Celebration of the 4th of July in Santa Monica

How should Americans celebrate the Fourth of July? Should it be in comfortable, respectable, middle-class suburbs with tepid, but safe, fireworks shows? Or should it be an exuberant recreation of that famous artillery barrage from long ago when the enemy cannon fire illuminated the battlefield with explosions at night and revealed to all sides that we stood defiant? Should it be boring, safe, sane, and white, with only people like us participating, or should it be filled with immigrants of every type who have come to this country to try to have a better life in this uncaring and corrupt world?

Santa Monica, a notorious “beach city” as Raymond Chandler related in his various works of fiction [My friend Nick reminds me that it was called "Bay City" in the Chandler novels], and the City of Los Angeles participated for many years in what they planned to be a respectable Fourth of July show.  To their amazement, and with absolutely no intention or planning, the celebration took on a life of its own, and became a day at the beach for hundreds of thousands of people from all over the city, of all colors and financial means.  Although they could barely speak English, if they could speak English at all, they somehow found their way from East LA, South LA, the east and west ends of the valley, Pomona, Compton, and even Watts to celebrate America's birthday.   I suspect that this tradition built up over decades until when I witnessed it, in the late 1970s, it had become a phenomenal street festival.   The estimates for the number of people who attended each year are fairly mind-boggling, but lets just say that many hundreds of thousands would be an estimate on the low end.   Kids came with their friends, or parents brought their children, to spend the day at the beach and then, when darkness fell, to set off, ignite, explode, and hurl through the air vast numbers of legal but mostly illegal fireworks.

A picture of the Santa Monica Pier with lots of people.

Packed nearly shoulder to shoulder on the Promenade in the darkness, barefooted and in shorts, an observer would hear languages and laughter in all the world's languages as he or she tried to navigate the masses of apparently very happy people who threw exploding and illegal M80s and cherry bombs, Picolo Petes and roman candles at and around each other. One friend of mine from the RAND Corporation described it as similar to being in Vietnam in which one moved in darkness and smoke while the native populations jabbered in languages you did not understand while throwing or firing munitions in all directions in some sort of wild frenzy.  The smell, not of napalm, but of black snakes and expended roman candles filled the air. Sparklers were lit, waved around, and thrown at random into the air or through the crowd.  Broken glass and the expended munitions, used sparklers and any other type of portable, hand held, fireworks and some firearms littered the beach and yet barefoot participants of all ages seemed to navigate the broken glass and expended sparkler field without concern or apparent harm.

At 9 PM the main fireworks show was detonated from the Santa Monica pier and presented the usual community fireworks show as one might see in many places in this country, with the added value of having a nice Pacific Ocean to reflect off of when, that is, the evil Santa Monica fog did not obscure everything which it usually did about half the time.  When that was over, the crowd gradually dispersed, many of them having been there all day, and being out of ammunition, went to their homes in every part of the city, somehow.

This is the new-style Santa Monica Pier.  The pier in the 1970s was much more tacky and authentic.

The next day the City of Santa Monica would awaken to the unenviable task of trying to clean the beach of massive amounts of broken glass, unbroken glass, sparklers, expended cartridges and generic trash of all possible types.   Recall that when walking barefoot on the beach, a former sparkler resembles nothing so much as a nearly invisible spike of dirty metal ready to puncture the unwary foot.  It would take all the next day and often the day after that to clean the sand and beach of dangerous, sharp objects.

Every year would come reports of wounds, burns, broken bones and unhappy and damaged children of all ages, some of whom had been actively hurling fireworks at each other at the time, and some of whom were just hanging with the family and became collateral damage.   Of course, every year, there was a call for someone to arrange a Fourth of July celebration that did not have so many injuries involved.

Finally the Cities of Los Angeles and Santa Monica decided to put a stop to this very unhealthy but entertaining situation and made fireworks of any type illegal on the beach.  They encouraged people to attend fireworks shows in their own neighborhoods and told everyone that if they were found with fireworks on their person that they would go to jail.

Some of us, more conspiracy minded, wondered if they woke up to the realization that they had created the potential for a serious civil disturbance.  Lets say on a very hot Fourth of July some Latino got hassled by the incredibly racist and violent LAPD and did not fall to his knees in abject submission as all minority groups are supposed to do.  The LAPD would naturally beat the miscreant into bloody unconsciousness which is their standard procedure in such circumstances (see, for example, Rodney King).    And suddenly you might have a riot on your hands with the minority groups already in the wealthy parts of the city and armed with M80s and other minor explosives.

But probably those who mismanage LA are actually not smart enough to come up with a reason like that, and simply wanted to lower their costs and minimize the injuries to try and prevent the otherwise inevitable lawsuit.

I am glad that I was able to observe this celebration on several years running and regret that it no longer exists in spite of the undeniable fact that it was insanely dangerous and out of control.  It was, in retrospect, a lot of fun for everyone involved.

_______________________________________

Wikipedia Page on M80s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-80_(explosive)

SIGGRAPH, Suggestions and Misunderstandings

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood.  (1)

I have had some useful feedback from two different people with impeccable credentials at the national level of SIGGRAPH and they both had a similar message: many of the things I “propose” (or seem to be proposing) in my writings about SIGGRAPH are just not possible for an educational institution. End of discussion.

I have no doubt that they are in part completely correct (although I do not know the details I am willing to believe that those details are there) but I have also been misunderstood. Terribly misunderstood. You see, I have made no recommendations. None whatsoever.

What I have done, though, is to say that SIGGRAPH needs to consider what, if anything, needs to change to avoid contributing to the disaster which is employment in computer animation in this country and the unthinking boosterism of the entertainment uses of computer animation that I have witnessed over the last few decades and where possible change their behavior and see what can be done to improve the situation. If the answer is “Nothing can be done”, then at least we will have understood the situation and turned over every stone. But I am quite sure that there are things that can be done.

But let me for the record reassure everyone of the following points:

1. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a bomb throwing anarchist.

2. I do not expect nor would I encourage SIGGRAPH to do anything that would violate ACM or other rules of behavior and endanger their not-for-profit status or good standing with ACM.

3. Were the membership of SIGGRAPH to agree with my program points (2) and see fit to elect me to the executive committee, they should know that I would be a voice for these points at the committee but would expect to act in consensus with the wishes of the committee and never act unilaterally.

4. I am very confident that very reasonable changes could be made at the national SIGGRAPH level that would address many of the issues I have brought up in other essays to my satisfaction at least. Remember, I am not arguing that SIGGRAPH should stop encouraging people to take risks involving their future employment, I am arguing that SIGGRAPH should stop the unthinking boosterism and temper the rah-rah glamourization (sic) of the entertainment industry with some basic facts about the nature of that industry and the likelihood of serious long-term employment.

5. I am quite aware that organizations such as SIGGRAPH have constraints on them that are different from those on private corporations or individuals, although some of the specific details of the constraints in the case of SIGGRAPH may be a surprise to me. I am however an adult with serious and relevant experience, e.g. running a laboratory at the RAND Corporation, and I know something about these matters.

6. All that we are discussing here is whether I can be allowed to be considered for memebership to the EC, to put my name before the membership of SIGGRAPH and let them decide whether they want someone such as me to represent them.

7. Frankly I am concerned that I might be biting off more than I can chew.  I am one person, unaffiliated, mostly unemployed and without resources.  Perhaps the people on the EC need to have a large corporation or University behind them to support them?   Stranger things have occurred.  No one has mentioned this to me however.

Keep in mind that I have had serious trouble getting in touch with the committee in a way that leads me to believe that they understand the issues and are taking steps to correct them.   Whoever runs national SIGGRAPH seems oddly distant and abstract.  My self-nomination for the EC is in response to that.

I hope that I have addressed any concerns that anyone might have about my suitability for nomination, and that if they need any more details about my qualifications and agenda that by all means they send me an email so that we can address their concerns. (3)

I appreciate very much the time and diligence that people have put into this matter and I am hopeful that they are easily resolved.

For all I know, no one else at SIGGRAPH is concerned about these matters and thus would not be elected to the EC, which would be fine.

Its probably the red hair. I have noticed over the years that it really does seem to freak some people out.

___________________________________________________

1. Lyrics for the first stanza are:

Baby, do you understand me now?

Sometimes I seem a little mad.

Dont you know that no one alive can always be an angel?

When things go wrong, I seem a little bad.

But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:

Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood.

Wrjitten by Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Sol Marcus

Original cover by Nina Simone

Most famous cover by The Animals.

Live performance of the song by the Animals is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MR7h-4yvd-o

Particularly noteworthy here is that the drummer wears a very narrow black tie. Lets return to the days when our rock & roll musicians showed a little respect for their audience by dressing more formally.

2. Program points are: A. Be realistic about the state of employment in computer animation, whether internationally or this country, B. Avoid the boosterism that has occurred regarding the entertainment industry and deal with that industry more realistically (e.g. the industry has no long term employment a priori and does not finance research except in the most extreme circumstances), C. Broaden SIGGRAPH to include other application areas beyond entertainment such as the two session panel on cultural heritiage of a few years ago (I note in passing that cultural heritage has employment issues of its own) and D, See what can be done to increase employment in the areas covered by computer animation and/or see what programs can be developed to help people who have made the commitment to computer animation and are now suffering hardship because of it make a transition to other industries, and finally E. See what can be done to make it easier for people to connect to the formal programs and individuals in computer science at SIGGRAPH, something I have found very difficult to do in the last decade or more.

3. Send email to michael.wahrman at gmail dot com.

Journal of Information Warfare

Cryptome has put on their site an NSA journal that is unclassified with the fabulous name of “Journal of Information Warfare”.

It has a variety of entertaining articles, and I have put the table of contents below. I think that most normal people will find it a little difficult to read as it seems to be written with a very turgid government style. One can get used to it but it is certainly not very evocative prose. I suspect that if one were to work in the NSA that one would have to learn to read and write such things effortlessly.

See for yourself.

The Journal of Information Warfare volume 13, issue 2

http://cryptome.org/2014/06/nsa-jiw-2014.pdf

Kate Mantillini Memorabilia

Many readers may wonder why anyone would care that Kate Mantillini's closed suddenly after many years of service.    Kate's became a standard for many of us who had the misfortune of living and working in Los Angeles for the last three decades.   It was close enough to the West Side and to Hollywood to make it possible to meet people there for lunch without driving all day.  It was right next door to the Academy La Peer screening room where the VFX bake off was held and became the traditional meeting place for our VFX clan to meet before or after the screenings. I must have had 100 meetings at Kate's over the years, if not more. There was almost always legal parking on side streets if you knew where to look and if all else failed there was reasonably priced valet parking.  You could tell someone to meet you at Kate Mantillini's later that night and know for certain that it would be open and that you would get a table.

But its gone.

I was able to pass by Kate Mantillini's about two weeks before it was closed and managed to take a few photographs and two (jerky) walkthrough's of the restaurant.  It seems silly, even to me, but I guess I am a sentimental guy.

In chatting with the employees there I learned that Kate's was owned by the family who runs Hamburger Hamlet, and this was, I guess, their more high-end, themed restaurant.

Many of the employees I talked to had been there for years and were then thinking about looking for new jobs in about two weeks when the restaurant closed (about June 15).

If you listen to the dialogue track at the end of the B walkthrough, you will hear me talking to the manager of the restaurant who wanted to know what I thought I was doing. I told him that I had been told that the manager had approved it.... he replied that he was the manager.

Ooops.


I apologize for the jerkiness of the two walkthroughs below.  It was all very ad hoc and spontaneous. I had my cheap digital camera with me and so I just held the camera about chest high, tried to be discreet, and walked purposefully towards the bathrooms thanking everyone I came across.  You can see me in my dissolute and degenerate form reflected in the mirror at the end of take A.   Yes, that is me whistling in the background, trying to be nonchalant.

Kate Mantillini Walkthrough A

Kate Mantillini Walkthrough B

Coming Soon: A Solution to the Problem of Getting Researchers to do Practical Work

Coming soon on Global Wahrman !

Underbidding in Visual Effects: Conclusions and Recommendations

In three previous posts we discussed the practice and mythology of underbidding a project in visual effects, something that is alleged to happen quite often and is commonly believed to be a major cause of instability in the visual effects industry.   You can read these posts here, here and here, or you can just read the next paragraph.

In these posts I argue that (a) there are some legitimate reasons for underbidding,  (b) it rarely happens by mistake except in the case of a new production company,  that (c) sometimes when a project is underbid it was done so because of politics or because a grave misunderstanding or breach of trust between the client and the visual effects facility occurred, and finally (d) when we hear retroactively that a project was underbid, it is often just spin on the part of the client to pin the blame for whatever occurred on the visual effects company and cover their own ass.

In fact, very few people realize that the origins of the word "underbid" contains this meaning of "under appreciated".  "To underbid" comes from the German compound verb unterbitte: unter meaning under- or sub- and bitte meaning "please".  Thus "under please" which we might say in English as "under appreciated" or "no good deed goes unpunished".   

If a production company were to stupidly give a client a deal and got screwed for it, then we might say that they have unterbitte the project.

If you are a potential worker, artist, supervisor, or facility owner in visual effects, I think you should keep the following in mind:

1. Do not throw your pearls before swine.

2. Be sure to charge a lot of money.   In Hollywood, getting paid is the most important sign of respect.  If they pay you a lot of money, they respect you.    Its the only way you can tell what they think.   So charge the studios a lot of money and at the end of the day, you will probably say to yourself that you still did not charge enough for the work given what your time is really worth and how stupid the project really is and unpleasant the people really are.

Otherwise you may become the next victim of the unterbitte.