Chris Hadfield, King of Space.

As it turns out, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wasn't actually proclaimed King of Space in Kazakhstan, in spite of what Reddit would like you to think, but maybe he should have been.

Chris Hadfield has probably done more to raise the profile of space exploration than anyone since Neil Armstrong. (Or perhaps William Shatner.) His Twitter™ feed, loaded with incredible photos from his 146 day tour of duty on the International Space Station, has close to a million followers, and the video for his cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity has been viewed 13,479,763* times in the seven days since it was posted on YouTube™, making it the most popular video of the last week by about 12 million views.

Unfortunately, there's an odd dichotomy regarding space exploration.  On one hand, both NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency, for you international visitors) are facing reduced programs and budget cuts right across the board as governments struggle with widespread economic problems.  Up against that, there's an undeniable interest on the part of the general population:  early videos of the Curiosity Rover on Mars were so popular that the volume of viewers crashed the NASA server, and Chris Hadfield's musical efforts have pulled in more Twitter™ followers than Avril Lavigne's.

The interesting thing about the massive popularity of Hadfield's orbital updates is that there wasn't an engineered publicity process behind them. It wasn't the result of a structured media blitz, or orchestrated by some kind of agency, it was one guy talking it over with his family and taking it from there.**  On that basis, it has to be one of the greatest single-handed viral promotional events of all time.  Hopefully someone in a position of authority will take note of what he's accomplished, and realize what it means as an indicator of interest in outer space.

All hail King Christopher.

- Sid 

*And counting - up to 13,523,098 since I started writing this posting.  It's actually about 14 million - Larrivee, who made the guitar featured in the zero-g performance, has nabbed another 500,000 views of Hadfield's video on their own channel.

** Is it just me or does that sound like a really Canadian approach?


UPDATE: 14,103,113 views, Monday May 20th.

UPDATE: 15,036,588 views, Sunday May 26th. 

 
UPDATE: 50,764,341 views, Saturday January 23, 2022 - gosh, it's been a while since I've visited this post.
 

"For here am I sitting in a tin can..."

I very rarely just post linked content, but really, how cool is this?

- Sid 

(And we all know who Chris Hadfield is? Yes? Please? Everyone?)

A State of Mind, Part II: Tears in Rain.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...huh...attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those...moments...will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain.

Time... to die...

Roy Batty, Blade Runner

On my way back to the Austin Hilton after my bookstore trip, I passed a little South Congress store call Parts and Labour, specializing in clothing by Texas designers, which incorporated a little shop called Shark Attack, selling posters and prints.  A little voice in my head said: posters... prints... Austin... Alamo Drafthouse... TURN AROUND RIGHT NOW...

As I mentioned in my post about the Alamo Drafthouse, their custom movie posters are legendary.  Austin-based artist Tim Doyle, who both initiated the poster program at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and contributed poster artwork, has gained international recognition for his silkscreened designs.

As such, it was a pleasant surprise to find Tears in Rain, a marvellous 12 by 24 inch limited edition* Blade Runner inspired print signed by Mr. Doyle, for only thirty dollars.  The rain is wonderfully represented by a fine diagonal texture overprinted in silver.

Roy Batty's final speech from Blade Runner is one of the most evocative and moving pieces of cinema dialogue.  People are surprised to discover that it was partially improvised by Rutger Hauer, who felt that the scripted version was inappropriate, "opera talk" as he described it. He cut out several lines and added in the line about "tears in rain."

An enormously friendly and helpful employee offered to let me pick out a print of Tears in Rain that I liked, and as it turned out there was an version as low as number ten out of 190 available.  Traditionally, limited editions with lower numbers are more desirable than higher numbers, although for a run as low as 190 I doubt that there would be any sort of serious degradation to the screens.

The same helpful woman (who I would acknowledge by name if I'd had the foresight to check for a nametag) carefully placed the print in a sturdy tube after wrapping it in brown paper with an overly generous margin to (successfully) act as a shock absorber during the trip back to Vancouver.  Since then, I've had the print matted and framed by the good people at Kimprints in Gastown, and I picked up the excellent results this afternoon after work.

So there's the first step in adding some genre accents to my living space. Now I just have to figure out where to hang the damn thing...

- Sid

* It's a second edition, which does puzzle me a little.  New screens?  New artwork?