The newest video

There's a 13 year old kid that lives here in Salem named Evan Farris. He likes to mess around with stop-motion animation using bits of clay, scotch tape, old pizza boxes, etc. He makes the sets and props with his brother Sean and his sister Juliana, and they painstakingly shoot frame by frame with a digital still camera and then assemble the photos together on their computer. For those of you who don't know much about animation or video, they must take 30 individual pictures for each second of screen time. That's 5,400 separate pictures for a 3 minute video.

A few weeks ago we asked them if they would make a video for one of our songs. They chose "Perfect World" and we told them to go ahead and do whatever they wanted with no creative input from us. One month later they showed us what they had come up with, and we were astounded! They created a very cool storyline packed with detail, symbolism and very unique ideas. So for your viewing displeasure, here is the new Guards Of Metropolis video for "Perfect World" :





So there you have it. These kids are so creative, and we're honored that they took the time to do this video for us. Evan currently has one of his short films in a film festival in Italy. We wish him luck and know that these three siblings have a great futre ahead of them. Now, go ahead and watch the video again and check out those ladybug rollerskates!

The Musician's Alarm Clock

I am among those few people on the planet who are blessed and cursed with the ability to sleep anytime - anywhere. I've had security guards enter my hotel room after the maid's been in there three times with no luck getting any reaction from me, thinking I'm dead... So obviously waking up is not my strong suit... In fact, I have three alarm clocks strategically placed around my bedroom and still I'm able to turn them all off and go back to sleep with no recollection of having done so when I finally wake up hours after my wake up call. I've tried the old fashioned bell clocks which I've then easily incorporated in my dreams for half and hour or however long they ring. I've dreamt of construction sites, train rides, factories and action movies. I've tried waking up to music which has put me in many cool rock concerts in my sleep.

Then I had a brilliant idea... I'll set up an alarm clock with a headphone jack in the bathroom, and run cables to the stereo in my room, so that I'll have to actually get out of my room and into the bathroom in order to turn the damn thing off. And like a lot of musicians my stereo is nothing but a mesh mash of studio gear, so I used a 1/8" to 1/4" adapter from my radio clock in the bathroom and ran a 1/4" jack to one of the channels in my mixer and voila: I've got a sleeping-in-proof alarm clcok... Did you find the flaw in this theory? Exactly. Turning off my stereo which is located right above the head of my bed would also turn off the sound, right? Duh! But I thought, I must be on to something here... If I mount a set of passive speakers (with no on/off switch) on the wall of my bedroom  and run cable to the alarm clock in my bathroom, I'll either have to tear the speakers down off the wall or get my sleepy ass to the bathroom to turn it off. Hopefully I won't just lay down on the bathroom floor and go back to sleep... 

If you'd like your own "Musician's Alarm Clock" here's what you need:

• 2 passive speakers that can be powered simply by a headphone jack
(Unless you want to run the signal through an amplifier
that will have to be located in your bathroom.)

• x feet of stereo cable: 1/8" jack to rca
(depending of the speakers you use)

• 1 cable to go from speaker 1 to speaker 2
(which kind depends on your speakers)

• cable clips to attach cable to wall or ceiling

Patent pending. :o)

Anybody wanna make a bet on how many days till I sleep in again???

-sleeping silver