NOLAN'S POP CULTURE REVIEW # 40.    Page 2.
Renee Carrick and Ray Koehler. Co-stars of "The Horror Writer" put up with a blazingly hot, unairconditioned apartment set in the dead of summer completing their terrific scenes. Also guested on TWON's "filmmaker special" part one (TWON # 3). Showed admirable patience in the year it took to edit RadTV.
Steve Beasley, who I nearly killed from exhaustion in the "Lone Mutant" segment of Radioactive Television, and for his help in production assistance and stunts for same.
Corey Castellano, for his exemplary guest appearance on the first TWON special, where he displayed props from "The Patriot", the successful Mel Gibson movie he worked on.
Tom Lech, acting coach who eventually learned to be a tech-director on Malcolm's, then my, show. A guest on the first TWON special, Tom was a lifesaver when it came to rescuing the series last summer.
"Diamond" Dave Andrews, originally Malcolm's cameraman for only a couple episodes, stuck it out with me and was the best cameraman/floor director/tech-director and cool guy I ever worked with on the show. If I ever do another show, he's the first one I'll call--if he's not available, I'll panic.
Lee Rossman and his mother Kristin. Another two people held over from "the fall" with Mal. An engagingly bright 13-year-old eagle scout and budding producer, Lee was a terrific cameraman and even got his mother into the act. I owe them both a debt of gratitude.
The staff and crew of The Tampa Bay Community Network. If any of you decide to explore public access TV in your area, I hope you're as lucky as I was in finding an experienced, supportive, wonderful group of people as I was privileged to work with.
FINAL NOTES ABOUT PUBLIC ACCESS AND VIDEO PRODUCTION IN GENERAL.
        You can see by now that my two biggest influences in life this past year were television and computers. For those with a scorecard, yes, I'm aware the two areas overlap more and more. Not so much two years ago, but more now and predictably more--and faster--in the future. With Corey's help I've configured the computer I'm writing on right now to edit video. As the web matures, bandwidth permits and my education progresses, I'm definitely seeing the web as a potentially more practical outlet for my video shenanigans. That being said, video streaming for phone line connections--and let's face it, most of the country is still on phone modems--has a looooooong way to go to catch up to where TV has been. WebTV and Shockplayers notwithstanding, I can see on the horizon an inevitable move toward the goal of integrating the two systems seamlessly, likely for viewing everything on the high-defintion computer screen. A lot of roadblocks ahead with that, but with a wary eye on technology, I think regular NTSC "normal" television has a few years of life left in it. It comes down to if the whole entertainment infrastructure can take a sudden--or even gradual-- change to digital TV. The next few years hold exciting challenges.
ABOUT NOLAN'S POP CULTURE REVIEW.
        Some behind-the-scenes stuff: This "fan-to-fan newsletter and magazine" has been an unexpected source of satisfaction, communication, self-discovery, and computer literacy. I frequently wonder week-to-week where I'm going to find the time to screw with it, then I sit down to write and BANG, it starts flowing. I've been lucky about that for the most part. Oh, sure, there were some obvious clunkers where I just didn't have much to say some weeks. And then other times I could barely fit it all in the space alotted!  Many times the background tiles on a page were created by me in just the few minutes before I sat down to do an issue. I'm very proud of those. After Corey stuck the video capture card in this computer, I was able to snag pix off videotape that helped tremendously with "production values". I got better with the tag team of Microsoft Paint/Photo editor as a sort of poor man's Photoshop with editing JPEGs, GIFs, and the aforementioned video stills, not to mention the banners I made to rest at the top of each page. (I only recently aquired Photoshop--still practicing with it. Complicated.) Didn't have as much time to practice GIF animations (outside of the two I did publish), but there's always next year. Learning HTML, Javascript, CSS and such really helped jazz up the pages. The difference between the look of the first issue from last March and the last few issues has been surprising even to me, if I do say so myself. (That first issue was an experiment and mistakenly saved with an index address. That's why for the rest of the year, the actual, real index's address ends in "page 2.html")
My personal highlights: the story of the new roof on my house. The movie reviews. Reviews of Viddywell's and my productions for Public Access. The documentation of same and notes on my other PA experiences. The tracking of good friend Corey's career, especially pertaining to "The Patriot". All the different Top 10 lists we ever had, particularly The Albums and The Horror Movies. Inserting comments in Mike and Matt's and sometimes Terence's columns. Finally, discovering how many people actually "tune in" week to week.
      Now, I want to thank some individuals who made so much of Nolan's PCR such a memorable experience and contributed to its quality:
Michael A. Smith.  My star writer for the Commentary page, columnist for "Mike's Rant". Mike has never missed an issue. From rants about politics and justice to the latest movie gossip, news and reviews, Mike has always been a professional from the get-go. Of course, after he reads this, he'll want a raise. HAHA--(gulp).  We share a past as cohorts in the kitchen band, The Hats. His highlights are too numerous to mention, but among them are: The Hats biography, his opinions on movies and ratings, his experiences as a parent/baseball coach, moving reminiscences of his childhood.
Matthew Drinnenberg.  Singer of The Hats and Blade, and a prolific songwriter, Matt is equally at home writing "Matt's Rail" the usually on-time column located next to Mike's, most of the time. When Matt gets on a rail, he really flies. Highlights: Elian Gonzalez, the election, The Hats biography. His "Top 10 Albums of all time challenge" was inarguably the most successful "list challenge" gimmick we ever had.
Terence Nuzum. Controversial hot-head columnist/video producer, introduced to these pages via the Top 10 album challenge, Terence has managed to offend just about everybody with his occasional columns and I couldn't be more pleased. (He got his shots off to me too, believe me.) He helped fester the Top 10 album challenge into the meltdown it wound up being. He followed that with his "Top 10 Horror Movies of all time" challenge, which nearly eclipsed the success of the album challenge.
OTHER CONTRIBUTORS:
Lisa Zubek.  An old friend, who had been following PCR for months, began writing "Lisa's Lambast" during the summer. Featured mostly movie/TV gossip and opinion. Around the end of August, she stopped sending her column and disappeared!
John and Ashley Lewis. Father-and-daughter team, you might say. Ashley wrote about rock groups and entertainment gossip/opinion mostly, while John concentrated more on comics and movies. It was while I had all these columns going at once--mid-to-late summer--that I consider it PCR's "peak period" of fan involvement. Unfortunately, due to email complications on their end, the columns stopped coming.
Scott A. Gilbert. Apeshot Studios' own head honcho has indeed graced us once or twice with his unique brand of  commentary and witicism. Once for sure, with his Top 10 albums list and responding to Mike's and Matt's Plant High School reveries. Scott's an amazing graphic artist and web designer, now living in Texas.
Brandon Herring. Wrote a terrific response to the Top 10 Horror Movie challenge. Very passionate and detailed. Eventually, partially based on this experience, Brandon changed the focus of his own movie-review website to reflect only horror movies. I was and am extremely honored.
Lauré. The only writer listed who wishes only her screen name be used for privacy. Responded to the Top 10 album challenge with a distinctly feminine air and 21 titles!
Scott van Sickle, rock bassist extraordinaire for his Top 20 albums list.
Steve Beasley. In an early issue, Steve wrote about the passing of Larry Linville. He wrote once more after that.
Dawn Scire, reporter from the Sarasota-Herald Tribune. She found me thru a Google search engine to ask about an obscure reference in an early Nolan's Newsstand. She was so nice and I was thrilled. We exchanged a few emails, I helped as best I could, and I became more aware of the power of the net than ever.
I'm writing this list from memory; if I've left anyone out, I apologize. You know who you are and I thank you, too.
THE FUTURE.
     At the start of the new year--2001 (feels funny writing or saying that...so futuristic a number, you know?), expect a new look for Pop Culture Review. In order to conserve webspace, I MAY or MAY NOT have to start deleting pages from the Archives. I always planned on keeping a few "best of" issues no matter what, but those issues haven't been decided on yet. So please, if there are any issues you want to keep, make copies now. You have about a week to 10 days. After that, the only hard copies of back issues will be available from me via mail-order for a yet-to-be-announced price, depending on what it costs to xerox them, color or B&W, that sort of thing. Hopefully, they may be moved to a new webspace.
AND FINALLY, NOLAN'S TOP 7 NEWS STORIES OF THE YEAR. More-or-less in order, they are:
1.) The presidential election fiasco
2.) Elian Gonzalez
3.) The Microsoft monopoly trial
4.) The Time Warner/AOL merger
5.) The Firestone tire recall
6.) Scientists successfully map the human genome
7.) Y2K fizzles.
NOLAN'S TOP 20 NEWS STORIES/DEVELOPMENTS OF THE 20th CENTURY: in no particular order, they are:
1.) Man lands on the moon
2.) The assasination of President Kennedy
3.)  WWI and WWII
4.) Albert Einstein's discovery of E=mc2
5.) The development of the atomic bomb
6.) The development of vaccines and antibiotics that extend life to unprecedented levels
7.) The development of television and mass media
8.) The kidnappings of the Lindberg baby/Patty Hearst
9.) The 1960s and everything about them
10.) The trial of O.J. Simpson
11.) The development of computers
12.) AIDS
13.) Roe vs Wade
14.) President Nixon's resignation
15.) President Clinton's impeachment
16.) The re-established state of Israel
17.) The explosion of the Hindenberg
18.) The explosion of Flight 800 off New Jersey
19.) The Cold War                                                             The World of Nolan homepage
20.)The fact that we didn't blow ourselves up.                  Back to Front Page |  Back to Index |  Letters and Commentary

 

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