I’ve been exploring the macrobiotic diet since my friend Isis Masoud brought me to the Kushi Institute Summer conference in August 2007. I’ve recently been getting it down pretty good and making meals for friends.  As a result people have started to turn to me for advice about diet and health. Below is a correspondence on MySpace replying to a friend who was overwhelmed with macrobiotics.

Oh my goodness.

To be honest, I’ve not looked at or followed a single macrobiotic recipe yet. I’ve just read instructions on how to use the pressure cooker and read the general descriptions of what to eat and also I ate for two solid weeks on two different trips where ever meal was prepared by a macrobiotic chef. So from that I kind of figured out what was going on and have just tried to mimic it and have experimented a lot.

The challenge with a hard start date is stuff might not be perfect from day 1.

I think you should read the hip chicks guide to macrobiotics and as you read just make a list of ingredients you’ll need. Everything you find in the book can be found at Whole Foods. Also a lot can e found at Tops or Sunnac in Williamsburg. But you really have to go up and down every single isle to find all this random stuff. But once you’ve done it, it won’t seem random and you’ll go straight there the next time and it will become normal. Also you can always order stuff online from the kushi store.

The whole foods on Houston st in manhattan has a few more things I’ve noticed.

And a general rule is to get everything organic and everything local if possible.

Oh, and once you’ve bought things like sea vegetables, read the instructions on the back and they’ll tell you ways to prepare. Or some organic azuki beans and on the back they’ll say how long to soak for before pressure cooking.

But there are millions of ways to prepare things and it’s really kind of up to you and your own experimentation.

And in terms of quick breakfast. Brown Rice Miso can be used to make a quick soup with some boiled carrots, onions or other vegtable and left over from the night before grain (Millit or short/medium grain brown rice). Take the soup to work in a coffee mug and it will still be warm when you get there.

Hope that helps,
Arin

—————– Original Message —————–
From: Eugina- Joie de vivre!
Date: 30/01/2008

My macrobiotic book only have a few recipes in it! And they all list so many ingredients! I tried searching for recipes online but it seems like so many people are trying to get away with making macrobioitc versions of other things… i’m looking for well balanced recipes that doesn’t require alot of time or ingredients! i really want to keep things as simple as possible, which is the whole point right?? do you know any websites that have recipes? i’m looking for a meal plan. let me know please! our diet starts feb 8th and we are going food shopping soon so we need to know what to get ..especially since they are putting me in charge of cooking the food.

If you know any good, quick well balanced breakfast recipes please let me know , because i only have an hour to get ready for work and i plan on eating my breakfast at my job!

peace brother!

This evening I was asked by Thomas over at Williamsboard.com what I think about the WGA strike.

I shared a video I posted a month before the strike began about the opportunity creators have right now to make their own content. Then I gave him this answer as well:

We are in a time where writers can completely leave their positions if they want to. Then write their own content using small digital video crews to produce low cost shows to self-release online. Blip.tv, Brightcove, Revver and youtube’s content partner program all provide ad revenue and are looking for well written content. So thats the real strike in my mind. At that point a creator of a show can write what truly inspires them rather then being confined by the parameters of a mainstream TV Show. Plus instead of 4 percent they’ll be getting 100 percent.

Also it would be cool if then audiences jumped on board and could actually “boycott” mainstream media by simply not watching it and instead subscribing to independent shows they like and getting them free on what ever device they want to watch them on. Now and then there would be a thanks to a sponsor or some kind of ad model that gets the creators paid but it wouldn’t need to be nearly as obtrusive as annoying 30 second spots.

Even right now there is enough independent media out there to not have a TV and to do screenings of independent films at friends houses rather going to movie theaters. So I imagine this will only get more and more practical as things like the writers strike pull us into a new era.

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To track this case please subscribe to my video channel. To provide leads or turn in the goods, get in touch on my contact page or via arincrumley - at - gmail - dot - com.

STOLEN BIKE:

*NOTE: The bike is actually susan’s and I would borrow it from time to time. But she would ride her bike almost every day so it’s very important to me to either get this bike back or get her a new one.

STOLEN COAT:

Also missing is a standard US passport with the name Arin M Crumley inside (it’s new so might have an RFID Chip that can be used to track the perpatrators every move). In the coat was a beat up wallet with a lot of receipts and maxed out credit cards (don’t try to use them, they are full.) Also I had this video recorder in one of the pockets.

Please spread this video wide, blogs, email, facebook, etc…

And feel free to provide any leads or feedback in the comments below.

This panel was moderated by Ingrid Kopp of Shooting people as part of the Evil City Film festival back in October. Panelists include Leah Meyerhoff, JERRY RAPP, Arin Crumley and Susan Buice.

Three very short clips were taken from the above video and posted to the new From Here to Awesome Video Feed. Look for the video feed and subscribe on iTunes, Miro, YouTube, MySpace and Blip.TV and several other video sites. Thanks to TubeMogul and Mike Hedge for cross posting that video to so many sites.

Thank to taxiplasm.net for shooting this panel on the DVX-100.

Please feel free to sample and re-post any part of or all of this video. Please link to ArinCrumley.com as the original place the video posted.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

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Last week a film festival I co-founded called From Here to Awesome was introduced and got a lot of blogosphere attention. This is an interview that NewTeeVee conducted with Lance and I. After the interview they posted a raw .mp3 of the full conversation and wrote up a blog post on NewTeeVee.

I’ve you’ve made a film you think the world should there is a good chance you should really be a part of From Here to Awesome. Read the details on how to submit here.

You can also see photos documenting the creation of this film festival in this flickr set.

Please spread the word!!!!

FromHereToAwesome.com

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Forest Fire performes their song Fortune Teller at The Appartment in Brooklyn NY January 5th 2008. Due to seeing my videos of Sharon I was invited by Michael Leviton to his and Leah Hayes apartment where they have monthly open mic.People show up and get on a list and then perform a couple songs and there is tons of video and photography happening of it all. To get all of the performances coming out of the Appartment go to their YouTube page.And to get all of my videos go to my subscribe page.Tech Notes:This footage was shot in 720 24pn on the HVX-200 and color corrected in final cut studio with color correction filter lowering saturation and boosting mids and whites. I encoded the footage into the Apple TV codec using compressor and then changed the file name from a .m3v to a .mov and uploaded to Tubemogul.com where it was cross posted to my blip channel where I logged in and edited this HTML and then arincrumley.com and a few other sites got the cross post. Check my tutorial on this uploading and cross posting process.

I was hit up by an online friend for some questions about the notion of grad school. Here is the correspondence.

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I was at The Art Party at Galapagos in December 2007 and the concepts in Brook Goldbergs art jumped out at me so I decided to record some video. Then the organizer of the Party offered to introduce me to Brook and I recorded this audio clip.

*Update: Below is a correspondence demonstrating the need for artists to work together to understand a medium still in it’s growing pains, the internet. Based on Andrew’s and Dorians Comments I’ve re-edited the post to have no way that anyone could figure out who the artist is. Because there is no intention to break trust with the performer, I’m just posting this correspondence for educational purposes.  And it doesn’t matter who the artist is and if you go trying to find out who the artist is, your missing the point, the point is to have a discussion about protocol and for me to learn if I’m interfacing with people in a fair way.  Please add your thoughts in the comments below.

From: Arin
Date: 07/07/2008

Hearing you talk about lawyers really makes my stomach feel weird. Lawyers are like a disease. They have never helped my art, their need has only gotten in the way. The thing that has always pumped up my work has been fans. Fans I got showing my ugly side and beautiful side in tandem. Our true selves are not polished, reality is not polished, people know this and expect a live video to be completely different then an album and even expect each live show to be an evolution.

But you can be what ever kind of artist you’d like. You don’t have to accept offers from award winning filmmakers to help you make a video on a weekend to try to better capture your bands energy and have content to replace the top 10 google search results. Instead you can send emails threatening legal action about a video you don’t feel is polished enough. Thats fine. I still like the video, was just listening again as I typed this. I’m actually a fan. Thats why I bothered posting. This is what you want.

But in the interest in fighting the battles that are most important to me and not worrying about the ones that are someone elses problem, I’ve set the video to “private” for the time being. I removed your name from the tittle and tags of the main places causing the video to appear in search results for your name. Google is not an immediate thing so I don’t know how long it will take for these videos to simply not appear in the search results but for the time being, trying to watch them will likely fail but I can’t say with certainty since blip takes time to update too.

But I can’t stress enough, getting more out there that people like and link to is the best way to have your google search results reflect well. Trying to take down things you don’t feel reflect well is a waiste of energy as your music grows it will become impossible to manage. I used to worry about the same thing and then I learned it was out of my hands. I also learned that the reviews and clips people were posting that I thought reflected bad actually weren’t perceived that way by anyone who was going to be a fan in the end anyway.

Music, video, art, web, it’s all media and communication and connecting. Lets all try to learn and harness these languages and not be afraid of them. This will empower our connection to audiences. Not industry showcases, not lawyers, not record deals, all of that is dead.

Arin

—————– Original Message —————–
From:************
Date: 07/01/2008

please take them down as soon as you possibly can. every day they are up, it is worse… sxsw is going to be evaluating an application of mine any day… and those videos are damaging to me. i really would hate to sue a fellow artist, man… and this manager i’m working with and lawyer in new york are really serious about going after you. please, just take them down tomorrow if you have some time.
thanks arin,

—————– Original Message —————–
From: Arin Crumley
Date: Jan 3, 2008 1:46 AM

Okay

—————– Original Message —————–
From: ************
Date: 02/01/2008

The video that still pops up all over the google search results under my name has to be taken down. I have still been getting emails from fans saying that it either looks “weird” or “bad”. The footage, shooting the audience, etc. makes us look really bad… it is a defamation of character. It is not what our group is about.

THE VIDEOS HAVE TO BE REMOVED IN THE NEXT 7-10 DAYS.

I really hate to do this, but unless we are cut out of ALL those videos popping up all over the web within the next 7-10 days… I am going to have to take legal action.

I’m really happy you liked the show and everything, but the footage makes us look bad, and I never gave you any kind of permission to post it on the web.

Thanks for cooperating,
**********