Eric Page Jacobson passed away July 15, 2010.

Anyone reading this blog or seeing this on Facebook probably knows that Eric was part of Flapping Crane.  He was far and away the funniest and most talented of us.  I’m not saying that to be nice (and not to denigrate the other guys) — it’s demonstrably true.  He had been doing comedy for 2 decades.  Do yourself a favor and watch some of his standup.  His death is a tremendous loss.

Kelly and I went to his funeral today and the visitation yesterday.  We met his family, who are wonderful people and who showed remarkable strength in the face of this horrible event.  I know I could barely hold myself together.  I can only imagine how they are feeling.

I wish I or anyone could have helped him.  We were supposed to meet up this month to work on a skit we shot with him 2 years ago.  I had to cancel meeting with him a few weeks ago, and I feel terrible that I didn’t get to see him.  I’ve got notes from him about what to do with the footage.  Eric was always an easy-going guy when it came to edits, so I’m confident that what we end up putting together probably would have been approved by him.

Now, to lighten the mood a little, let me describe the skit in basic terms.  It’s called “X-Lax 2000″.  It’s a commercial for a souped-up laxative.  That’s right — Eric’s last skit with us will be a poop joke, and a pretty funny one at that.  We have footage of him sitting on a toilet and holding on for dear life.  At one point he straps on a safety belt to hold himself down.

He and I exchanged email about this recently and I know he was very excited to get it done.  I’ll be working with the other guys in the coming months to finish it.

Yeah, it’s a poop joke.  The thought of that almost cheers me up.  It’s damn silly.  So silly that it somehow feels like a fitting tribute to one aspect of the guy.

I don’t know when it will be ready, but I will let people know when it is.

I’ve been doing Johnny Two-Blades and Rory McGillicuddy impressions all weekend.

It still doesn’t feel real.  I will miss him, and so will a whole lot of other people.

You’ll notice that Pete mentions a new web site and says “2008″. Yup, been working on it for that long. Longer, even.

The site had stayed unchanged design-wise since at least December 2005. I was kicking ideas around for a new version at least since 2006.

In early 2008, I had a conversation with Shawn, who came up with this mock:

It’s had a lot of changes since then (Alex had some ideas for simplifying the interface), but that’s basically the same as what is live now.

Part of what took so long was that early on I tried to do way too much. I later decided to drop “buy” and “pics”. They may come back later; I haven’t decided. We also drop a lot of the video categories. There were just way too many.

I’ve changed the way that “Most Popular” is determined — the top six skits were listed as the most popular for about 3 years. So now it displays the most popular from the last 2 weeks. It’s kind of interesting that way. It changes up a lot.

Anyway, for anyone interested in the nitty-gritty, the site uses YUI 2.6.0. I considered updating it for 2.8.0 or even 3.0, but I’d already Duke Nukem’ Forever’d this thing long enough. It also makes minor use of Modernizr, mostly to detect whether the browser supports h264. Eventually the site will support ogg theora too. That’s a lot of skits to convert. At the moment, Safari and Chrome will display the videos natively, while all other browsers will use flash (JW Player).

I’ve only done minimal fixes for Internet Explorer. It works in IE 6-8, though it doesn’t look as pretty. I’ll mop that up later. Maybe. See the FAQ on the new site for my attitude towards IE in general (IE 6 in particular).

Also note that the videos are much larger, screen-wise. They are 640×360 for wide and 640×480 for standard. I re-encoded almost every single Flapping Crane video, not counting outtakes, which aren’t on the new site anyway (at least not yet).

Finally, if you were bored enough to make it this long: Yes, there will be new skits. I bought a house, got married, got a dog, etc. Haven’t had a lot of time to edit videos and get this new site up, so it may be a while before any truly new skits show up. There are, however, some skits that haven’t been put up yet that I may sneak in *COUGH*toofies*COUGH*.

And yes, there will be actual new, recently shot skits up soon. Well, eventually.

I had hoped to have the DVD set ready by now, but wrist pain prevented that. Instead, I’ve put up something about a squirrel.

Anyway, I guess I’ll just say what I’ve been up to.

I picked up a turntable about a month ago. I went through my parents’ basement and found some good records (including some that were mine), so I figured I’d pick one up. It’s got a USB output, which is handy.

So I’ve been picking up vinyl here and there. I pre-ordered the vinyl remaster & cd of Nirvana’s Bleach (that should be here mid-November). I’ve grabbed a few John Lennon records, a Marvin Gaye and some 45s from Half Price Books in Apple Valley.

Vinyl doesn’t sound particularly better to me than CDs — a lot of them sound worse due to wear, in fact. They are fun, though. Keep in mind that I’ve got a fairly large iTunes library. I’ve ripped/digitized nearly all media under our roof. DVDs, VHS, CDs, cassette tapes, photos, you name it (except books — I’m not completely insane). I’m in the process of re-ripping my CDs in a lossless format (though I’m looking for a seamless way to transcode it when syncing to my iPhone or streaming to my Apple TV). I appreciate the convenience once this media is in my library. Still, it’s fun every now and then to put a record on. And I’m planning on digitizing at least some of them (my George Carlin records in particular).

We also finished mounting our plasma and installing speakers in the ceiling. My receiver can do 7.1, but the room was wired for 5.1. I may run some more wire eventually. But it’s otherwise great for now. Great, except when Kelly is trying to sleep upstairs in our room, conveniently located directly above the living room. So it’s loud as hell up there.

Not much news on the Flapping Crane front. I was furiously working on a DVD set, but it turned out to be too hard on my right wrist. I’ve had to do a wrist brace, painkillers, wrist exercises, all that. I wanted to have something ready for November 22nd, which is five years since we launched flappingcrane.com. That’s probably not going to happen though. We’ll see.

The new website is pretty much ready to launch, though. I’m just delaying it because I know that I’ll have to spend about 3 days fixing previously-missed bugs, and my aforementioned wrist is holding it up in committee.

Finally, I’ve been itching to do something. Not sure what. Some music, some Flapping Crane stuff, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just build some shelves.

It really only should be a two DVD set. So if you know anyone, let me know. Soon.

Anyway, I’m kind of inspired to do this because late November will mark 5 years since flappingcrane.com went live. To put that in perspective, Youtube did not exist then. I was still in my mid-twenties, and people still referred to me as “El Conquistador” (not true at all).

Granted, we’ve slowed down our pace in the past couple years, but we’ve still got skits in the works. Eventually I’ll edit X-Lax 2000, Lazy Time Traveller, etc. There’s talk of a new Reicher. And, to top it off, we plan to relaunch flappingcrane.com this year. A big-ass new design that will probably piss people off, much higher-quality (near DVD-quality) versions of every skit and even some new skits (secret hint: one involves a squirrel).

So it’s kind of a fun time. We’re doing the disc 1 commentaries this Friday.

I’ll probably start putting up unreleased material in the coming months. Some of it is pretty good. Two songs of note which I may link to: “Professor Willoughby” and “Half-Jew in Love”.

Dog vs. Kitty.

Shot with my new Kodak Zi6. Probably not the best showcase of the camera. I was pretty sloppy with it. I was really just going for the joke.

That said, this is technically the first FC skit shot in HD. Or at least in HD resolution. The vid on the site, of course, is not HD. Subscribe to the feed in iTunes or whatever to get it in HD.

Watch it.

Why did it take so long? Because I’m both anal and lazy. Tragic combination. Also, it’s only been relatively recently that I got my editing computer up and going again since the move. Insert other interesting and compelling excuses here.

Moved FC to the the host, by the way. Everything has been relatively smooth so far. Biggest problem was figuring out the various levels of insanity that have accumulated in the 4 years (!) that we’ve been doing this.

We’re finally moved in to the new place. 99.9%, anyway. Pretty much all that’s left is Kelly’s cats, which I’m trying to put off for the cats’ safety and for my own selfish desire not to die sneezing.

The main problem now is unpacking. Unfortunately, we don’t have the office or garage available to us right now, which complicates things. It’s a long story.

Anyway, I’m trying to get more acquainted with the area. I’ve spent a little time in St. Paul (at least the south and west parts), so I know where some places are, but I really don’t know much yet.

I’m pretty sure that I only really need to know where Rooster’s is, and I do, so I should be set.