To those of you who missed tonight’s AV Geeks show in NYC, which is most of you, you missed a good time. There are two more area shows (with different films) on Monday and Tuesday which probably won’t see capper gatherings either, but are probably worth going to if you can make it. If you don’t live in the area, keep your eyes peeled at their website for shows in your area.

If you do live in the area, don’t forget about the proposed capperfest on the 28th mentioned in my last post.

Most of the shorts in tonight’s show aren’t amongst the ones AV-Geeks guru Skip Elsheimer has made available at archive.org, so they haven’t shown up on IS (yet). That’s a pity, since most of these were right in the average capper’s wheelhouse. Despite a fairly interactive show – starting off with audience members taking turns reading frames in a slideshow and occasional sing-a-longs with the film (the theme of the show was musical shorts), I’m pretty sure if there were more than one capper there, we’d have been thrown out for talking back.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must excorcise my soul of the horror that was the evening’s last film, Telezonia:

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We’ve got some events of interest in the New York City in the coming weeks that may see more than one capper in attendance.

Author of novels, comics, and other things Neil Gaiman will be will be interviewed live by author, Daily Show cast member and PC-portrayer John Hodgman, followed by a book signing of Gaiman book, Fragile Things on Thursday, September 28, 2006 at 7:00pm at The Fashion Institute of Technology’s Great Hall, 227 West 27th Street New York, New York.

It’s free, you’ve got two weeks notice and at least one capper should be in attendance. Contact UnReality (trust me, the form on that link will go to him) for more info.

For those of you with more flexible schedules, this Sunday through Monday brings us three area screenings from the AV Geeks archive, source of some of Inventing Situations’ primest material, hosted by the head geek Skip Elsheimer.

I for one will be attending Sunday the 17th’s 7 PM screening, “AV Geeks Greatest Hits” at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue (at Second Street) which will include that classic claymation dental horrror morality tale, Munchers.

If there’s enough interest in one of the two other screenings, we might get a gathering going with or without me. We already have one vote for the screening in Huntington, NY at 7:30 on Tuesday the 19th and none yet for the showing on Monday night near the South Street Seaport at 10 PM.

If you’re interested in going to any of these screenings, contact me and maybe a gathering will occur.

In order to serve you better (or maybe just mix things up) I’m moving around the ‘programming blocks’ at Inventing Situations. There’s still going to be five hours a day of ‘Non-Ephemeral’ films (e.g. feature films and tv shows), they’ll just be playing at different hours. Here’s the new schedule. It can also be found on the info page.

I’ve decreased the Library of Congress images to one hour a day since they’re repeating a lot faster than either of the larger collections.

In the coming weeks and months I’ll be tinkering with the schedule a little more:

• Adding another hour of “Non-Ephemeral” films.
• After Thanksgiving, I’ll be adding all of this year’s new to IS turkey-day movies to the regular rotation. There should be at least five this year. I’ll proceed to drop in the rest at some steady rate.
• Bonanza: Six new to IS episodes should start showing up in a month or two. Once those have premiered, the 18 episodes I’ve already run will start appearing.
• Plus, I’m toying with yet another programming block. It’s material that technically could go in with the feature films, but that I think will work better on their own.

While I’m discussing picture sources, thought I’d offer an update on how my campaign to add grabs has been going since I last discussed it:

Without considering the 1,500+ images I’ve tossed from the ephemeral collection, that’s around 75 grabs a day.

One last thought: Can anybody suggest a better phrase than “Non-Ephemeral Films”. I’m looking for a term that differentiates them from the “ephemeral films”, acknowledges the fact that they conist of more than just feature films (there’s cartoons, tv shows, movie trailers, Three Stooges shorts, and drive in ads in there too), and is less awkward and obscure than “Non-Ephemeral”.