[Tim Wilson]

Hi Stuart,

It turns out that you are not the only one who was looking for the particle illusion for him to be back on the front page of forums , so we moved it back soon after you wrote us the first time. Sorry to not alert you here, but hopefully you’ve found it since then. 🙂

Best,

Tim Wilson
Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW

[Tim Wilson]

[Jeremy Garchow] “what do Tuesday’s usually bring?”

Patches.

Microsoft had been informally releasing patches on Tuesdays since the days of Windows 98, but formalized Patch Tuesday as A Thing With A Name in 2003, the second Tuesday in the month.

More broadly, and for a much longer time, Tuesday has also been the official day of release for new albums, books, home video, and video games in the US for generations. In the case of books and music, a lot of generations.

It happens that US music has just recently switched over to the global standard of Friday releases….but otherwise, for most other stuff, it has been Tuesdays.

As a former bookseller (I managed stores for Barnes & Noble in Baltimore & DC in the late 80s, and my first job in high school was at a bookstore in the 70s), I can tell you WHY Tuesday has been the day…and because it’s me, I can do it at extreme and thoroughly documented length…including the bizarre and entirely true tale of the role played by Sonic the Hedgehog in cementing Tuesdays as THE release day for video games.

I’ll save those for when somebody asks. LOL

But what’s that you say? You DO want to hear the story of the David Bowie song “Love You Till Tuesday” from his 1967 debut album, the subsequent single-only version, and Bowie’s rare 1969 film of the same name that would only see US release on LASER DISK ONLY in 1990?

SO GLAD YOU ASKED!!!

“Love You Till Tuesday” was the third single released under the name David Bowie. Immediately prior, he had been recording under the name “David Bowie & The Lower Third” (!!!!), and before that “Davy Jones & The Lower Third” (what with his birth name being David Jones and all).

The version of “Love You Till Tuesday” on his eponymous debut album is pretty twee, even by the standards of that largely twee first album. “Twee” then and there was considered a bit of a pejorative — overly mannered, sentimental, pretty — although especially in the indie community of the UK in the late 80s and the US in the 90s, eagerly embraced as a consciously alternative aesthetic. Me, I always assume that EVERYTHING David Bowie did (including renaming himself after an American knife) as a consciously alternative aesthetic, and I imply nothing pejorative.

The version later released as a single was very different: new vocal, and a new arrangement that included the addition of strings. It was well-received, but on the back of the single sleeve, the label wanted to underscore that it’s a novelty tune, or, as they call it, “One of his own ‘Winky’ songs”:

My favorite version of the song is the one he performed on Top Gear in December that year. On one hand, very stripped down, focusing on Bowie’s live vocal, but also orchestrated in a way that sounds exactly like a live BBC radio broadcast orchestra.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMO3ruxyN6U

If you get all the way through it, congratulations! LOL It might be worth an effort to try, just to confirm that, yeah, it sounds like that all the way through.

Maybe just listen to part of it, because I don’t want you to wear yourself out before you hear THIS, which DEFINITELY needs to be heard all the way through.

The thing is that, in context, “Love You Till Tuesday” was very well received. Not well enough received to appear on the charts — as indeed, had none of Bowie’s singles, under various names. Even THIS single, as well-reviewed as it was, was released under the name of the musicians as a group: Dave, Derek, Dek & John. (What? No Oxford comma?!?)

(Worth noting: Bowie was coming to think that the only way he was going to make it was as part of a band, so he kept coming up with band names. As late as 1970, he was performing under the name The Hype, sometimes David Bowie & The Hype. He was right that his breakthrough would come as a member of a band: Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders from Mars.)

Meanwhile, back in 1969, his then-manager thought, well, the kid is developing some real flair , has a strong artistic vision– let’s do some promo films. So they scraped up the budget for 8 promos, to be released under the name of what was, now 2 years later, still the most famous, most highly-regarded one of them — you already know it — Love You Till Tuesday.

Right at the end, Dave says, let’s do one more. I have an idea for my follow-up single to “Love You Till Tuesday,” not quite finished but I promise, a good idea — and let’s put my girlfriend in it!

You know the song, “Space Oddity,” even if you only know it as “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Until Ziggy, this was the only song MOST people knew him for, and even for a while after.

BUT YOU’VE NEVER HEARD THIS VERSION BEFORE!!!

“Love You Till Tuesday” is a novelty tune, scored as if it were a particularly quaint cartoon — and this version of “Space Oddity” sounds just like that!!!

And trust me, you’ve never seen this video. (The 1972 Mick Rock-directed remake starring Bowie as Ziggy was much more widely distributed.)

Here, our boy Dave acts out the parts of Ground Control (WEARING A HAT THAT SAYS GC, as in “Ground Control” in case you’re not following along) as well as Major Tom, with some Ed Wood-worthy VFX and the aforementioned girlfriend dolled up in late 30s-early 40s Hollywood starlet glamour and huge hair.

Dave’s hair here, it should be noted, is a wig. Despite being a founding member of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men — TRUE!!! — he’d just cut his hair for an audition that he didn’t win. From here of course, he’d grow his hair to glorious lengths rivaling my own LOL before scuplting it in spectacular fashion over the course of late 1971 to late 1972…but for now, there’s this pretty hideous wig.

BUT YOU HAVE TO CHECK THIS VIDEO OUT. With no further ado, here then is the Love You Till Tuesday version of “Space Oddity.” WATCH IT ALL.

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And THAT, my dear old friend Jeremy, is my answer to the question of what to expect from Tuesdays.

BUT WAIT

What’s that you say? Still not sure I’m not pulling your leg about the whole Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men thing? I assure you I am not. What on earth makes you think I would joke about hair, of all things?

Back in 1964, 17 year old Davy Jones laments on BBC Tonight that “for the past 2 years, we’ve had comments like ‘Darling’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?'” You will be STUNNED by this kid’s self-possession and charisma, and will smile bemusedly — as I’m sure he did later — when considering just how thoroughly he would embrace gender-upending just a few years later.

You can easily find the full-length clip (four minutes or so long), but this excerpt is the highest quality, and includes all the best bits in the first minute.

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Here’s wishing you all a Happy Tuesday, whatever day of the week it is!

[Tim Wilson]

Why do I feel like some of y’all are two clicks away from needing your accounts moderated or something? LOL

[Tim Wilson]

Charlie, I’m still waiting for you to do a Yak video. I haven’t seen much since Ren & Stimpy, Season 2, ep 18, The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen. Something not quite right about this….

[Tim Wilson]

This one’s tough. There are definitely youngsters coming up who’ve only ever worked with X, and who refer to it as FCP…but in the context of this particular forum, there’s a 15 year head of steam for “FCP” referring to a specific thing that is not-X.

I’m with Douglas, that for the most part, “X” is more descriptive of this forum than “FCP” is….but I’m not sure that we’re ready to name the forums “Apple X” and “Apple X Debates.”

More like “Ex-FCP Debates.” 🙂

[Tim Wilson]

[Scott Witthaus] “What is this “huge development” roll going to do right now? […] What is the goal in realistic terms?
“

The goal is to keep going, which they will either do or not do. I have no predictions about that, except to observe that people have been saying that Avid is done for most of this century, yet on Avid chugs. They’re not just talking about new stuff. They’re delivering it. On time, performing to expectations.

My specific point is also that people are saying “No no no, wait a minute — all those OTHER times I said that a new round of layoffs meant the end of Media Composer development and it didn’t happen? Forget it. THIS is the round of layoffs that means the imminent end of Avid.”

I have no way of knowing whether or not that’s true, but neither do they. But I do have historical and current evidence on my side that development continues, for Media Composer, NEXIS, and every product line I can think of. (Not that I know all of Avid’s product lines anymore. Does anyone?)

I’m going to go a step further. Given that this is the boldest we’ve seen Avid in years, and that they’re actually delivering on these ambitious plans — well, maybe, just maybe, the layoffs have been doing exactly what layoffs are intended to do: cut overhead, focus effort, and streamline efficient delivery of products to market.

[Scott Witthaus] “It’s gotta be a shitty place to work right now “

I can easily imagine a certain amount of whistling past empty desks right now, for sure. But if I were a product person, I’d also look at what’s been released in the past few months, and look at what’s coming and think, wow, I’m working on cool stuff that customers like, and is being used in some cool places. And if I was in marketing or PR, I’d be thinking, wow, I have some cool stories to tell. That’s rewarding.

Now, if C-level turmoil and lack of human resources were leading to slashed development, late, buggy releases, and customers at the gates with torches and pitchforks, that’s different.

But the question raised earlier in the thread was, how much longer will people keep using MC after the plug is pulled? My answer is at least as long as FCP 7 post-plug-pulling….and I should add as per Darren’s observation about ScriptSync etc, probably a lot longer than that….

…with a follow-up question whose answer I haven’t seen yet: what’s the evidence that THIS is the fatal blow? Or the one that leads more directly to the end of things than any previous blows?

Sure, there’s new unpleasantness. This isn’t the first time, though. I think it’s remarkable that no matter what has happened with the stock, the corner offices, moving the offices to cheaper digs, on and on and on, there haven’t been any significant deviations from a pretty cool march of fresh, timely development.

At what point do we get to call it a pattern that bad stuff happens to Avid, or that Avid does bad stuff to itself or whatever, yet they keep delivering the goods? Maybe there’s more than one ball to keep one’s eye on, but this IS one of the balls to keep an eye on. This is a different conversation when the products themselves start turning ugly.

In the meantime, what better does any of us have to do with our days than keep our eyes on both of Avid’s balls? LOL

Maybe this will be THE unpleasantness that zombies them out. At some point, pretty much every doomsday scenario comes to pass. I’m just waiting to hear from somebody whose doomsaying has a record even close to Avid’s record of delivering under dire business circumstances. So far, everyone who said that each of those other times was THE time is exactly oh-fer.

I’ll note here what can easily be discerned by the most casual look at previous posts of mine: my prognostication track record is mixed at best. If anything is going to put Avid under, it’s going to be my prediction that they’re not done yet.

[Tim Wilson]

[Shawn Miller] “I think their products started getting better after they went back to being a private company. “

That has worked for a number of companies. Heck, I think it’d work for Avid, but nobody asked me.

Speaking of Avid and Dell, when I was at Avid, I remember one round of QA where Dell machines kept burning out. Turns out that a batch of bad glue was causing fans to fall off, so they were winding up at the bottom of the box, blowing at nothing in particular, not really cooling anything. COMING UNGLUED. That’s weak, man.

Nowadays, who knows? If I had an mbp with the price-performance, finish, display quality and overall feature completeness of my Dell, I might still be using the mbp. LOL Okay, probably not. LOL

BUT STILL. Yes, Dell quality is a new thing that I personally was never expecting, but it’s an actual thing.

[Walter Soyka] “My MBP has fingerprints all over the screen from where I’ve tried to interact with it.”

I have some Mac folks in my life and one of ’em was sitting next to me when I touched my screen to scroll through an online takeout menu. They’re all “Ooo, that’s cool!” and touching my screen to scroll, zoom in, etc. — then turned back to their mbp to keep working…and reflexively touched their own screen to do the pinch-zoom thing after they’d just done it on my Dell. D’oh!

I wasn’t even going to say anything, but they laughed and fessed up: once you know you can do this, you WANT to. It’s how you’re used to interacting with Apple stuff.

Apple is surely working on this, right? RIGHT?

And somebody is already working on their comment to add to the review of Apple’s latest innovation coup, about how touchscreens on computers are just the latest example of Windo$e ripping off Apple. LOL

I’m obviously kidding, but it really is crazy to me that Apple hasn’t put ’em on laptops at the very, very least.

[Tim Wilson]

[Charlie Austin] “lol… no need to switch, just use whatever works. 🙂 And while you can of course have a default transitions in X, the only way to save “custom” transitions is to create them in Motion. “

U ppl need to check out Boris FX, which comes in a big ol’ pile of plugz or nifty little cheap slices, works great in scazillions of host applications including FCPX, Motion, After Effects, Premiere, Media Composer, and OFX applications like Resolve…and many others.

Which means that, Herb, the presets you make in Premiere will also work when you switch to FCPX, and Charlie, the presets you make in Motion will carry over to your work in Media Composer. LOL

[Tim Wilson]

Wait, what’s jumbled?

[Tim Wilson]

[Lance Bachelder] “The Dell monitors were one of the highlights for me at NAB this year. “

I used to laugh at Dell for many, many years. Not anymore. My die-hard Apple days extend back to 1979, but I gotta tell ya, my Dell XPS 15 laptop is by far my all-time favorite piece of computing hardware. I find it very easy to believe that a lot of Dell monitors will be making their way into studios that previously never would have considered Dell for nuthin’…even if for folks not me, a the Windows-ness of a Dell computer remains out of the running forever.

[Lance Bachelder] “Mac Pro’s thus ending the support and interest in anything “pro””

Do you not consider iMacs doable for pro work? I’m not arguing with you. I’m just asking because, unlike me, you actually work for a living. 🙂

And I’m sure seeing a bunch of ’em on the What is your work computer / home computer? thread.