My friend Lyda Shioya passes along this offer:

“I have a teak veneer trundle bed I would like to give someone.  It is a single bed, the lower drawer can be used for storage or it can be pulled up to become another single bed.  I can also provide a mattress.  I’d like to get it out of my garage by September 11.”

Interested? Email Lynda at l_shioya@shaw.ca!

Here’s an original, 1-minute film that shows one possible result of my winning the Mad Men Casting Call contest. Watch, enjoy, and spread it around! And please keep voting for me at http://bit.ly/voteforadam — thanks!

Special thanks to Cassandra Freeman, Irwin Levine, my nephew Kevin McCartney and my lovely wife Christine for their assistance and input in making a reality out of this wacky idea of mine -- in less than 48 hours from idea to finished film!

The new season of “Mad Men” has begun, and there’s a big contest on, with the prize being a walk-on bit part on the show.

Now, I’m a retrophile from way back (with a ’63 Rambler, a closet full of vintage clothes, and a love of everything mid-century) who is crazy about “Mad Men”. I’m also an aspiring actor who’s done a couple of commercials… and this would be a dream opportunity.

In short, I was born to enter this contest. But to have a chance of winning, I need your help.

I ask for two things – hopefully they are both easy. The first, of course, is your vote. Just visit this link to register yours:

Click here to vote for me!

(You can also use this link: http://bit.ly/99bVfN)

Unfortunately, open voting means that this is really not about how good my photo is. It’s all about the votes. The top-ranked entrants so far have remarkably high numbers – and I’m guessing they don’t have 200,000 close, personal friends, they are working their social networks and connections. To have a chance, that’s what I have to do too. So I’m counting on you!

Please forward this message to as many friends as you feel comfortable sharing my quest with. Post it to your Facebook profile. Tweet about it on Twitter. Send it to your entire address book! As important as your vote is, the best way you can help me is to spread the word. Note that the voting ends on September 6, so we have only a little more than two weeks to get this as “viral” as possible.

Sure, the odds are against me. But I’m an optimist. With your help, I think I have a shot!

And when they tell me they’re ready for me on the set, and I stroll out to join Jon Hamm and the cast of “Mad Men”… I’ll be thanking each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

Thanks!
Adam

Have a look at this -- it’ll be five very well-spent minutes of your time. In it, the artistic director of Nanaimo’s Western Edge Theatre talks to his MLA, Ron Cantelon, about the ground-level reality of how the arts benefit the community -- and how the BC Liberals’ bowing out of the funding picture -- despite what they may say otherwise -- is going to imperil not just small theatre groups but the entire “arts ecosystem” we all enjoy.

More videos on the Western Edge Theatre blog.

Here’s a video I just completed for my friend Erna, who used to take her kids to Kiddyland in LA in the 60′s and early 70′s, and where her husband Ken shot lots of 16mm film of this fondly-remembered but long-gone attraction.

I think the images and music combine to make a very poignant little piece. I was never there and I get a little misty-eyed watching it!

This is the last of a series of four Kiddyland videos, all of which are available on the Kiddyland Facebook page.

I was editing a friend’s video yesterday, and when I uploaded it to YouTube I came across the strangest thing.

As I’ve done many times, I used one of the supposedly royalty-free, “use however you like” music tracks, provided by Apple as part of their iLife suite, for the background. I’ve done this before and uploaded to YouTube with no problems.

(When I’ve used commercial music in the past, the videos were either prevented from uploading until the music was changed, or had popup ads applied as a tradeoff for using copyrighted music. The first is a deal-breaker, and the second is still less than ideal, so I prefer to use either original music or the reliable Apple backing tracks when possible to ensure no ads get in the way.)

This was my first time using a particularly lovely piano theme called “Newborn” – it was perfect for the tone of nostalgia I wanted to evoke.

But when I watched my freshly-uploaded masterpiece on YouTube… an ad popped up. That couldn’t be right, could it? After all, I used royalty-free stock music, cleared for any use.

Then I noticed, below the video, there was something else new: the name of a song and artist, and a link to “Buy on iTunes”. It wasn’t “Newborn” – it was called “Lose You”, by Lazylectric.

Clearly a mistake by the tune-recognizing robots at YouTube, I assumed. This was not a commercial track. It must just sound very similar to something else.

I clicked through to iTunes to give “Lose You” a listen – and was startled.

This was the “Newborn” piano track… with a vocal added over top! And it was for sale at a standard iTunes price of 99 cents!

How could this happen? I didn’t think you even could make a commercial track out of an iLife song. (Isn’t that part of the terms of use?) Actually, I hadn’t had an opinion on this at all, as the thought never even occurred to me.

And now it’s causing my video to be cluttered with a popup ad banner. Ugh.

I’m going to try and contact YouTube and see if I can get some clarity on this – and maybe even a reversal of their decision. I seem to be caught in the middle of a “sampling” conflict that I never imagined possible. I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.