In elementary school I used to think it was cool to have a name that begins with two A’s. Back then it was more common for a teacher to organize things based on your first name as opposed to your last. That meant that often I was first for a lot of things, games, checking roll, or sometimes we would be asked to get in alphabetical order line to go somewhere.
After grade school those perks wore off, but with the emergence of cell phones an interesting side effect began taking place. I was on the receiving end of everyone’s accidental cell phone calls. Because my name is first in everyone’s phone directory I get called if someone accidentally hits one or two buttons on their phone. It often tends to happen when people are in transition. When I answer the phone I may hear a car door open, footsteps, knock on a door, maybe a little snip of conversation. I will usually, “Hello, Hello!” listen for a minute, and hang up.
At first there was my good friend during college that lived in another city and partied hard! I would get calls from him all the time. I could hear him in the bar screaming and saying ridiculous things. It was kind of funny. I guess you could say that was another type of “drunk dialing.” I eventually had to tell him to change my name to Zaron.
I have been getting a bunch of calls lately. Got one from an old friend who now has two babies, not surprisingly I could hear were babies crying. Got on from my brother who has a baby. Now that I am writing this… I’m thinking the babies probably made those accidental calls.
It’s kind of interesting, it’s like I’m a spy that has secretly placed a bug on someone. I don’t usually listen long, but I will often call them back and say, “did you call me?” It’s a good way to chat with people you have not talked to in a long time.
When I was working for the Demopolis Times a few years ago I made a couple of great friends by the name of Guy and Charlie. They’re both in their early 60s, single, and salesmen at the Times.
Charlie has a great eye for photography and he can be found all over west Alabama early in the morning taking wildlife photography. Charlie is not great with a computer so I’ve been essential in showing him how to store, color correct, and share his photos.
Guy is also a very creative person. For many of his younger years he was a photographer for the MIami Herald. He has a great collection of photos to prove it such as some backstage shots of Johnny Cash in 1969. He’s also an am amazing guitarist. Often he’ll teach me some things on the guitar and I’ll teach him some tricks on Photoshop.
Both of these guys are not in the best of health. Charlie has had Cancer and Guy is always in and out of the hospital. They get around just fine, but sometimes I get the impression they are thinking about what they have to leave when they’re gone. I built Charlie a website for him to upload and share his photos. (Still don’t think he has got the hang of uploading them.) Guy has an old recording of songs that he has written that we are trying to digitize and get copyright protected.
This weekend Guy played a song that he had written about a little girl he knew with leukemia. I had never heard it before, but it was very beautiful. He wanted me to help him record it and share it on the internet. I got a pretty good recording of it and some photos to go with it. Here is a quick video I put together of the song.
This week I noticed that YouTube had removed all the audio from some of my videos because they have music in them that I am not licensed to distribute. Media protection is a very complicated issue nowadays. Makes you wonder where to draw the line. What if I was performing the song myself? What if my video simply had music playing in the background, does that mean I can’t share it on the internet?
I clearly am not profiting from my videos of a family vacation that are up on YouTube. Second of all, some of the music used in my videos was purchased by myself; does that not give me the right to play it for my friends and family to enjoy?
I respect an artist’ ownership of his or her music, but if someone is sharing that song without profiting from it, that should be allowed. After all, shouldn’t a talented musician want to share their songs with as many people as possible?
Here is my latest video from my trip to Europe. And my first edit in High Definition! This time I’m uploading to Vimeo. Thanks to The Beatles, Sufjan Stevens, MGMT and The Books for the songs! If I could personally ask you for permission I would.
UPDATE: September 3rd
So I decided to upload the above video to YouTube anyway, just to see what kind of problem they have with it. Shortly after, they send me an email saying content was identified as being owned by Sony Music Entertainment, and I need do nothing. I checked the video to see if YouTube has yanked the audio yet, and surprisingly they didn’t! I scrolled to a song by MGMT that I used in the video and noticed a small ad pops up in the bottom identifying the artist, song name, and giving the viewer the opportunity to buy it. That’s great!!! I would love to support the artist. I can deal with a little ad. Technology and creative marketing win over pirate killers!!!
Just returned from a two week trek across central Europe! My brother Ben and I went to Budapest where my brother Connor is teaching English with his girlfriend Heli. The four of us and another girl named Eva set out to make it to the southern coast and back up to the top again.
This was my first time in Europe and it was quite amazing. We also stayed with Eva’s parents in Hungry and Heli’s parents in Slovakia. They were very graceful and excited to see us. They filled us up on some amazing traditional dishes and Eva’s parents gave us two massive jugs of homemade wine for the trip!
Budapest is a beautiful city, practically carved out of stone. Vienna has massive extravagant palaces that seem to match the very fashionable and trendy lifestyle. Bosnia has huge winding mountains, and in it, Sarajevo though quaint and friendly bears many scars form the Bosnian war of the early 90s. The concrete walls of our hostel was still riddled with bullet holes.
The Adriatic sea on the coast of Croatia has crystal clear water spotted with Islands. On the island of Korcula we found a beautiful condo on a mountainside that overlooked the ocean. It even had turtles in the balcony garden!
To see all the photos click my Flickr stream to the right.
