The TV pilot I was a part of has been edited down into a web preview. Check out the Underground preview here, but be warned that this page automatically starts loading a fairly large QuickTime film that if you are on a slow connection (i.e., a dialup modem) you probably don’t want to try. You can see the main site (with no Steve content) at http://www.ugtv.org. I’m the guy who sounds the horn for the annoying question, and am featured in the closing credits preparing my hand truck for future usage.

My screamy neighbor

There’s a screamy girl who lives nearby - probably not a directly adjacent neighbor, but one besides that. She’s home all day, all the time, and she screams. She goes outside and screams. Not a shout of “AUUUUGHHH!” or “ARRGGHHH!” or even the familiar scream in reaction to something of “AIIIIIEEEEEE!” — this is a straight, barking, shriek “EEEEEEEE!”

It is constant. Every day. Sometimes there is a barrage of “EEEE! EEEEEEEE! EEEEEEEE! EEEEE! EEEEEEEEE!” that may continue for a few minutes. Sometimes it’s just one every few minutes. There is never any change of emotion, inflection, and typically even duration. There are no other noises, no noises of other people, no other noises from her, or anything. There’s no real fear in the scream, it’s a mixture of excitement and self-expression.

I suspect that this shriek is the only noise she is capable of making, and I imagine her to be about 10-years old, sent outside to play by herself much of the time, with great pleasure coming from whatever captures her flitting imagination. As sweet as that may be, it’s freaking annoying and puzzling to me! For the love of God, stop screaming!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At the American Advertising Museum in Portland, OR, they have an exhibit about the best car commercial of all time, currently being created by for Thomason, a Portland-based dealership, by Santo, played by Kevin McDonald. The bits are pretty funny, and remind me of the temperamental architect he played on KitH (”screw you and screw you, I’m outa here!”)

I saw Master of the Flying Guillotine over the weekend. The trailer, sadly, doesn’t convey just how much of a B movie this thing is. Hilarious.

Check out the creepy, cool, and bizarre photos of bands documented (in more detail than I can stomach in one viewing) here.

Okay, I’m in Monterey attending IDSA’02 - it’s pretty cool so far - although it’s only the first full day and I’m already out of energy for sitting in auditoriums, so hopefully I’ll perk up tomorrow. Meanwhile I discover that one of the presenters is David Pescovitz of boingboing and other stuff like wired. Cool!

What the hell is a sesame? I know what a sesame seed is, but what does it come from? Have you ever seen a sesame? We’ve all seen poppies. What the hell is a caraway, for that matter. And anyone that says “Oh, about 1300 pounds” gets a smack in the face!

An update to http://www.portigal.com just went live!

I guess I’m just so amazed at what a cool place Portland is. Years ago I was shown Periodicals Paradise, a store with aisles and aisles of recent and not-so-recent issues of popular magazines - something that is hard to find anywhere. It’s got great bookstores (the world famous Powell’s, not to mention zine and other stores like Counter Media (and other places right nearby, on the 900 block of SW Oak), and finally I went to Hippo Hardware & Trading Company.

It’s a big old house or some kind of store from way back, many floors, little zones just filled with stuff - it’s like what Restoration Hardware promises to be - a dreamy junk store with knick-knacks, handles, drawer pulls, walls, windows, lights, jammed into little wooden rooms with old dirty stuffed toy hippos peering at you from unlikely places.

Technorati: Hippo, Hippo+Hardware, Portland, PDX

On a recent trip to Home Depot, the propane delivery guy stopped me and asked if I was on TV, that I looked just like that guy…he got very inarticulate at that point, but I did manage to extract that he meant Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller.

Hmm. Penn is many years older, many pounds heavier, and many inches (nay, feet!) taller than I. Well, it was better than the annoying Ozzy and Howard Stern crap I usually get.

Hell, I once got Jeff Goodby (the guy behind Goodby and Silverstein, the agency that did, among other things, Got Milk)

I was traveling last week and rented a car from Budget. I used hotwire, and did the usual thing of getting the cheapest car I could, in this case a compact. I arrived about midnight and the counter drone started chatting me up about why I was in Portland, and I explained it was for business. He looked at me and said “We do have Lincoln Town Cars available…” which was just so bizarre. What on earth would do I with that? What an inappropriate upsell! Anyway, I declined, but then was amused to see that my “compact” was actually an SUV, the Ford Escape. Nice!

End of an era (for me, at least)
Last weekend the local BestBuy had an electronics recylcing event. I brought in a bunch of stuff, including my Macintosh IIsi, and Performa 6300. The first one got me through graduate school back in the early 90s. The second was a stopgap computer. And after that I went to the Dark Side - buying first one, and then a second PCs. I have definitely been provoked by those Switch ads that Apple has been showing. But I’m on the PC path for now.

It was wild to turn the machines on and make sure all my stuff was off and somehow preserved. I had to dig out my old Zip100 peripheral, and actually found the floppy and CD, in order to reinstall and back stuff up. Lord knows how I’ll ever the stuff off of the Zip disc and onto my PC - some of it is in old formats (Quark - which I haven’t used in years), there’s some sound files which I don’t think copied properly (isn’t that one of those data fork versus resource fork issues), and I found the long-gone icons for the Simpsons characters that someone created a long long time ago and then was given one of the first cease-and-desist orders that Fox handed out for Simpsons stuff online. I found copies of old letters, speeches, and other stuff.

I hope I can find a way to retrieve it from that media. I haven’t investigated. Any ideas, email me.

If you are a Time Traveler from Dimension D1263GT10, year 2008 or Dimension D2044GT5, year 2432 and or in possession of the Dimensional Warp Generator wrist watch, the Carbon Copy Replica model #52 4350 series or similar technology I need your help! My entire life and health has been messed with by evil beings! I simply need the safest method of transferring my
consciousness or returning to my younger self with my current mind/memory. I need an advanced time traveler to work with who can help me, I’d would prefer someone with access to teleportation as well as a variety different types of time travel. This is not a joke! I am serious! Please send a separate email to me at: Robbyyy1@aol.com if you can help! Thanks

Okay, whoo-hoo - my article got written up on boing-boing!

I’ve just had a new article about an interesting Japanese product published.

Is your Modem / Computer Safe during this monsoon ?

Is your Computer / Modem Safe ? Email us at microsafepo@yahoo.co.in to get more details.

Know about a product which I. T. Giants like Satyam & DAX bundle with their Internet Packs / Modems for quite some time now !

Have you had instances when your Modem silently died without you knowing the reason ?

Have you experienced Hard Disk Crashes, Failed Components etc. in the System where you couldn’t locate the source of the problem ?

What about your Cordless Phone / Answering Machines / EPABX Systems which crashed just like that ?

This happens as our Systems are exposed to Transients, Spikes, Surges & Lightning Attacks that leak thru’ the Telephone Line, even when the System’s power is off !

At least 3 to 4 times a day, Transients leak thru’ the Telephone Line producing a Spike, which can be potentially damaging to the Modem / Computer & even the Cordless Phone / Fax / Answering Machine / EPABX.

At Rs.499/- ‘MICROSAFE’ costs only a fraction of the price of the Computer that you will be protecting.

“MICROSAFE” would install itself between the telephone line and the precious equipment and it gives you complete protection from :

1. Spikes & Surges.
2. EMI - Electro Magnetic Interference.
3. ESI - Electro Static Interference.
4. Lightning Strikes - Both Direct & Induced.

Sounds Interesting ? Just Email to microsafepo@yahoo.co.in with complete shipping details and we shall send you the piece by VPP to your place at no extra charge. A Guaranteed Savings of Rs.75/- on this must have product ! You can also send us an email requesting “More Info on Microsafe” and we shall send you the same.

For those who like the smell of money, this is a huge business opportunity. Yes. We are looking for Business Partners to take this product to places and make lots of money in the process !

Unsubscribe Instructions : We respect your privacy. There is no need to unsubscribe as this is an one time email only.

A nice play to stay in Monterey.

“to invite and allow the Dissolving of individuality or egoity, is to invite and allow the Dissolving of suffering.”
Yeah.
Lots more here.

Tickets are now on sale for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (which plays in SF and elsewhere in the Bay Area) coming up shortly. Always been a really interesting/moving/entertaining experience every time I’ve gone.

Hey, I just got an email from Verisign letting me know that my domain has been disabled. A little late…

Looks like portigal.com is back up! Whoo!

My friend Chris Vert used to call this a “non-finding” - a survey reveals that Silicon Valley is a cultural wasteland.

I’m an idiot. I let portigal.com expire. It should be back up…soon…it should be back up now but you can’t rely on that to happen, right? Anyway, steve.portigal@mindspring.com always reaches me as well…okay, now customer service tells me it could be up to 48 hours from the time I renewed it. That’s going to mean a lot of bounces from my correspondents…nice.

Some fireworks pictures here. The prints are much more vivid, of course, than what I’ve got online. Ah well.

I’ve got some photos up at streetmattresses. My pics are here, here, and here. Cool site, anyway, and happy I could contribute…

Saw a lot of these in the Sunset district in SF yesterday.

A gallery of Fisher Price Little People that were created by hand to represent characters from various TV shows, etc. I like the Sesame Street ones!

I’ll be attending the upcoming IDSA conference in Monterey later this month.

A catalog of famous monkeys.