Monday, November 15, 2004

High as a Kite...

There have been poor copies of it around the Internet for years...but IFilm is now offering a better video clip of perhaps the greatest TV musical moment of the seventies. That's right...William Shatner performing his version of Elton John's "Rocket Man" on a 1978 awards show. This link may bring it up on your screen (it's an ASF file, playable through Windows Media Player). If that link doesn't work, go here and look around for it. This is the number that was so odd that Chris Elliott did a parody of it on David Letterman's show by just coming out and doing it exactly the same way Shatner did it.

• Posted at 1:26 AM · LINK

Small Personal Matter

I have a little problem I'd like to share with you, not that I expect anyone to be able to solve it...

Recently, I've received an amazing number of e-mails from strangers who are trying to contact someone...usually an individual in the animation business or the field of comics who they think I may know. In some cases, they say they are old friends. In some cases, they say they're looking to discuss some project with the person. Sometimes, they don't say. It's just, "I'm trying to get in contact with So-and-so. Please send me their e-mail address or phone number."

If I don't know the person they seek, it's fine. It takes 20 seconds to write a reply that says, "Sorry, I have no contact info for him (or her)." Unfortunately, I usually do have what they seek. I just feel I shouldn't be giving it out to strangers. I've chosen to put my e-mail address and contact info all over the Internet but most folks don't do that. (I just realized there's another category of these messages. It's when someone writes me something like, "Can you send me Peter David's e-mail address?" If that person went to Google and typed in "Peter David," they could have found it in less time than it takes to write to me. This probably bothers me more than it should.)

Sometimes, I have an e-mail address for the person so I forward the message to them. Most of the time though, the person is writing me because they're trying to reach someone who doesn't have e-mail. Some human beings don't, you know. I don't want to pass on a private phone number or address so I have several options, all of which require more time than I can afford to devote to this. At the moment, I have forty or fifty of these messages in a folder...and I'm not even answering all the mail that people write to me about me, lately.

Like I said, I'm not expecting anyone to tell me how to handle this. Just thought I'd vent and perhaps discourage more of these messages. Please, people. I'd like to help you get in touch with the person you seek but it's just getting to be too big a drain on me.

• Posted at 1:11 AM · LINK