Tag: reviews

Fred Flintstone Calling

I’ve got this great idea, see. All’s ya gotsta do is get everybody in Uruguay to visit your site just once – they don’t even need to linger. That’s over 3.4 million views! Man, you are gonna rake in the dough!

So, the deal with Fred Flintstone – if you’re too young to know – was that he was a caveman, see, the head of a modern stone-age family. His wife, Wilma, and his neighbors Betty and Barney Rubble, lived in the town of Bedrock. A town just like yours and mine, except made out of rock.

It was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series made in the early 1960’s and it was dopey fun.

Fred was every man’s everyman. He was living the caveman equivalent of the American Dream – good job, house in the ‘burbs, picket fence, nice ped-powered car.

A regular Joe, except that he had a penchant for making outlandish, foolproof plans to make a million clams. He was gonna quit the quarry and live the life of a millionaire, just as soon as his ship sailed.

“Barney boy, by this time tomorrow, we are gonna be livin’ like kings!”

Of course he never quite succeeded – Dino the dinosaur dog ate the proceeds, it turned out the ptero-chickens were all ptero-roosters,  Ann Margarock had to be in Rock Vegas on the night of the big event, etc.

At the end of every episode, there was Wilma, reminding him that he already had everything he needed right there in his little family. And he always sheepishly admitted she was right. “Wilma, you are the greatest…”

If you’re reading this, and I imagine you are, you probably have an inner Fred Flintstone yourself.

You’re thinking there’s always a chance, a long shot maybe, but a chance that this one, this stupid crazy-ass scheme, this could be the one. One in a million chance, but, hey, somebody’s gonna make it… Ten bazillion books get published and read every year, why not mine?

So, I recently gave up on my inner Fred. I was a little depressed, maybe. A little tired. I dunno.

I decided that this is the dish, this life o’ mine: this is my someday. Someday I’ll have a nice house in the ‘burbs and a pretty wife and 2.5 kids and a good job with a decent salary. Hey, I have all of that, so this must be it.

All righty, then, Fred. It’s been fun. Good luck with your crazy schemes. I’m hanging up the bronto-phone now – I gotta go mow the lawn.

So, I go and tell my wife, the very love of my life, that I’m hanging up my bronto-spurs, and quote that line from All Things Great and Small where Herriot tells a fellow that someday he’ll be a millionaire, and the fellow replies with “Nah, it’s not in the cards. Was I to be a millionaire, well, I’d be one already, don’t you see?”

My darling wife replies “well, let’s not be too hasty about that.”

Whoa, whoa, hold on, there. That’s a Fred Flintstone line, not a Wilma line! YOU can’t say I’m gonna make a million clams, because YOU’RE the voice of REASON!

Like a bolt out of the blue, I was gobsmacked, thunderstruck, and over the moon in a tizzy of heaven for-fend, she, she, she believes in my crazy schemes!

To quote Goofy, “gorshk.”

So, I’m opening everything back up – Skippity Whistles, California Air Museums, even hauling The Book in for a rewrite.

Do I have a plan?

Heck no! I’m making it up as I go! Never quote me the odds!

My wonderful wife, she, she believes in me!

Wilma: “Oh, Fred.” (Sighs and exits)

Oh, uh, One More Thing

You probably remember Columbo’s trademark like “oh, and one more thing…”

It always came right near the end of the Columbo murder mystery series, back in the 1970’s. Peter Falk played this sort of bumbling detective who appeared to be misguided throughout the whole episode. But then, at the last, just as the murderer is about to get away with it, Columbo turns and says something like, “Oh, and one more thing. I thought maybe you could help me understand how, if the bedroom door was locked, your fingerprints are on the bedside lamp.”

Sometimes the murderer would say “Oh, you’re a clever one, Columbo,” or they’d stare at him, or they’d run. Sometimes they did all three. Of course, Columbo had all the exits covered.

So, I’ve been putting together a video review of the Estrella Warbirds Museum in Paso Robles for California Air Museums.

It’s a good video, featuring sections of our interview with author George J. Marrett, and looking at all kinds of stuff.

I got it all done, all buttoned up, and uploaded it to YouTube. If you haven’t done that, you have about four pages of questions to answer about the video, and you have to wait about 20 minutes for it to upload. You have to type in tags, and a description, and all kinds of stuff.

And then my daughter said: “You know, it should have subtitles.”

Ah. Subtitles. 

So, for a five-minute script with lots of voice-over and interview, it takes about an hour to add closed captions. YouTube presents you with a transcript of your video, and the AI is pretty good, although it couldn’t figure out the name Paso Robles. Pasa Rubbles. Pa saw rabbles. So you have to correct it, and you have to manage the timing so that the words show up as they are spoken in the video.

Now we’re in for a buck-and-a-half, timewise, at YouTube.

“I think you should refer to the author’s books,” my wife suggests.

In thinking about it, I realized she was right.

Back to DaVinci Resolve to edit the video. Dug up some graphics, added some voice-over, inserted 30 seconds devoted to the books, reworked the music at the end, rendered the video out again.

Went back to YouTube, downloaded the subtitles file so I could add it to the new video, deleted the video I’d just uploaded (it actually warns you that this video will be deleted forever – I’m kind of surprised it doesn’t go FOREVER-ever-ever-ver-er-r….), uploaded the new video, answered the four pages of questions, and was just about to push the PUBLISH button again, when my wife cleared her throat in that way that she does when she has an idea that she thinks is brilliant but you might not like but you should because it really is a good idea.

“One more thing…”

All right, Columbo, what is it?

“What if we cut the guy’s the clever comment that opens the video and put it at the end instead.”

As she explains it,  I’m nodding thoughtfully, although I’m thinking OMG you want me to shuffle the entire contents of the video ahead by, like, fifteen seconds? But my captions’ll be screwed! Don’t you ever want to get this published?

It took FOREVER to shift everything around in DaVinci. And I had to start all over again with the captions in YouTube.

But, it was a brilliant idea, and the video has a ton of charm that it wouldn’t have if she hadn’t played the role of Peter Falk.

All of this has a writer’s tale in it, as you can imagine. Even though we think of our writing as a closed-loop system: we sit in our cold stone garrets, frantically typing away, knowing they’ll never understand our sacrifice, in truth it can only ever be a system of give and take. Suggestions, comments, ideas come in, grudging changes go out, and the work is always, always better for it.

Oh, and, uh, one more thing… Thanks for reading!