Theme from "Tippi Thomas, Sociology Detective"

Younger viewers may not have seen a single episode of the social science drama "Tippi Thomas, Sociology Detective" that aired on American TV over 25 years ago. However, many have heard the iconic theme song countless times, although without knowing its origin. The show technically had two opening themes, one a guitar-based, LSD-influenced, acid folk version for the show's run during the Carter administration and one a more sedate, solo piano, Mike Post-ish treatment for the Reagan years. In both cases, the featured performer was shown during the opening theme without his face being visible, gaining immediate cult hero status as the _cognoscenti_ speculated on whom he might be. The production company revealed only that the same man was present in each version, and his identity is known even today only to a very few super-hip industry insiders.

New YouTube Channel

I have created a YouTube channel that fans of our videos might enjoy. Our Vimeo account will remain active.

http://www.youtube.com/user/carlwilkerson

12s Redux: Pattie Gave Me an MP3 Player

New Vanity clip for our videos

Adieu, 12seconds.tv

I've been posting videos to 12seconds.tv for over six months now. It is not where Pattie and I are heading with our creative/media careers, but it has been a lovely stopover. The site administrators are pulling the plug this Friday, and I for one am sad to see it go.

Video aficionados who want to know where to go next for their Pattie-and-Carl video needs might try our Vimeo account:

http://vimeo.com/carlandpattie/videos

Most of the content there is from 2002-2004, when we were living in Canada and shooting with a single Canon ZR40 [sic]. Thoughtful work nonetheless, I'd say, and not without scope and ambition. The footage from the Yukon and northern British Columbia in Free Way was beyond picturesque. The sociological bent in Cat's Eye is quite conscious of (and, indeed, addresses with delight) recent and promising methodologies in that field. And if the central principle of theater is that dying is easy but comedy hard, then the humor value of Lavelle and Ginny Visit Victoria, the two aureole-centric videos, and possibly the video for The Carl Wilkerson Fan Club Theme Song is at least preferable to dying.

The 730-Day Disabled List

I have an MBA from a school with a good reputation internationally. My wife and I moved to Las Vegas four years ago ready to begin a media business, a venture towards which we had accumulated significant experience and for which we were otherwise well-qualified. Before we could execute our plans, I became ill with what would turn out to be fibromyalgia, which put us in a financial hole from which we have been digging out slowly.


My illness has come under a little better control with a recent change in my meds, and I have begun planning how to live my life now that I am not forced to do so with one hand tied behind my back. While I was ill, I had a long time to think about how I wanted to live if I ever regained my former level of ability to function on a day-to-day basis, and I came up with some very specific ideas. The process has been rewarding, but it has of necessity been deliberate in its pacing, and I do not need to listen to long, boring lectures about how I became ill at exactly the wrong point in my life or what I ought to be doing now that it appears the worst of it is perhaps over.

I Am Not A Filmmaker

After a conversation w/P this morning, the proposition that “I am not a filmmaker” seems even more attractive. The beauty part of choosing video over film is that it works nicely if what you want to do is not spend 99% of your time worrying about how pretty it is, a hole with no bottom if there ever was one. I’m capable of better things. OTOH, the craft element of the craft is making itself manifest to me, and although I may know more than enough about, e.g., editing as it is, I feel strongly that if I continue to learn about it, it will broaden my creative palate. It isn’t so much that I’m going for a “happy medium” here, it’s that my initial impulse to say “Screw the film schoolers, I only care if it’s legible,” has been overridden by the fact that I actually know something about the subject now and want to delay making any pronouncements about the subject, or maybe even defining the subject, until I’ve learned more. So as pathetic as it would be to turn into just another “pretty picture person,” to be informed only by that narrative and no others, it is perhaps a naïve analysis to conclude that “therefore” I am going to have a totally nuts-and-bolts approach to the matter. I think that there are considerations that are present beyond and despite the film nerds’ approach to the matter, a multitude of perspectives on this very promising medium, and I don’t want to make the mistake they have made of boiling it down to the point that no really good corn can grow given what is left. I am informed in my film and video pursuits by a number of valid and rewarding narratives, and to pick one as supreme would be a loss of potential not so much in myself but, worse yet, in what I could create.