Remembering Anne Rice

Amid a bunch of other things I had to do, I've finally gotten to this very important task.  A Celebration of Life for Anne Rice is still in the planning stages.  When you go to Anne's official website, though, it will look a little different.

Click the Image to go to Anne's new landing page

Anne Rice's official website is still online as an archival site while it is being redesigned.  It has a new landing page, where you can sign up for updates on Anne's Celebration of Life to be held in New Orleans, date TBD.  The updates will be in an email newsletter.  

Click the Image to go to The Dinner Party Show website

You can also sign up for the newsletter of The Dinner Party Show podcast by Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn at the same time.  If you are interested in discussions about true crime, this might just be for you.

The podcast has discussed the murder of William Arnold "Billy" Newton, Charles Starkweather, Al Capone, David Berkowitz, and the Boston Marathon bombing, among others.  

The Parlor has made use of the Wayback Machine on Internet Archive to get an archival snapshot of the site before it was overhauled earlier this year.  I was never in a position to be able to subscribe to print newsletters Anne Rice had for her fans before things were done online.  I wish I had been able to, but wasn't.

If people still have copies of these newsletters, scanning them for upload to the Internet Archive would be an excellent way of continuing to make them available to fans across the world.  Now that Anne is gone, these newsletters can provide an excellent source of research, especially since they provide the perspective of Anne herself.

To be honest, I haven't looked at Wayback Machine specifically since archiving the Parlor pages before overhauling the entire website.  I do love Internet Archive, though, as there are so many things you can find on any number of subjects in multiple formats that can't be found anywhere else.  Once I'm finished here, I think I'll go on over there and have a look, see what I can find.  

But I need to make sure to finish up here, first, because once I get there, I know I won't surface again for...mmmm...several hours...

Mayfair Witches Fan Art and the Strikes

One thing I have been meaning to do for a long time is to provide some more information about the original sources of the Parlor's Mayfair Witches animations.  Since this is an attribution for creations already made, I do want to get the information on the site.

If you look on the Mayfair Witches page, you will see, right above the Mayfair Emerald graphic, a link.  This link will take you straight to the Idle Rogue Productions section on the Mayfair Links page.  There is an image of all of the Mayfair Witches in the 2015 Second Life production "MAYFAIR - Stories of the Mayfair Witches" grouped together.  You'll see a few links to give some background on this rather unique show.

You will also find a link to the Pinterest album by Jennifer Harris, who created the original artwork that the Parlor's Mayfair Witches animations derive from.  The only Mayfair Witch not there is Jeanne-Louise Mayfair.  So in my series, Harris' Deborah Mayfair became my Jeanne-Louise Mayfair, and the image of Deborah Mayfair derives from artwork by Javi Trulove Sims.

As you can no doubt tell, this production on Second Life makes use of what is generally and collectively referred to by many as "AI".  However, even AI is impossible without real people to model it on.  What those characters wear, think, say, or do as their stories are told come from writers.  Anne Rice wrote novels (and some screenplays), and those who write for the screen are the ones who put these stories together.

If those writers did not exist, neither would the performing arts.  Writers, actors who are real people who can portray characters, and all the people involved in producing even one movie, one TV show episode, one play, one anything, are, in fact, the ones who make that product possible.  They are the ones who bring stories to life.

Let me say that again.

Stories to life.

Unless that is done by real people--writers, actors, a mind boggling amount of people who contribute to the making of a movie, a TV show, music video, play...there are no stories to bring to life.  

I hope I made some sense as I'm pretty sure my coffee hasn't kicked in quite yet.  Despite that, I still wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts on one of the biggest issues that, in part, led to the strikes.  This seems to be quite a complex set of issues that has finally come to a head when it was time to go to the bargaining table for contracts.

Tom Hanks made some really good points regarding the strikes and the issues at hand in an interview he did that aired on PBS News Hour.  I've shared it on the community tab of the Parlor's YouTube channel, and I want to share it here as well:

And Now, Instagram

I admit, I don't have too much experience with Instagram, but it is something I decided to set up because I prefer my eggs to NOT all be in the same basket.  I'm as fond of bundling services as the next person, but I do want to see what makes each platform different from the next.

Like everything else, setting up the Parlor on Instagram took a lot longer than anything like that should, I think.  Everything to do with social media usually does take a long time and is often so tedious that it's frustrating.  Hopefully, it will be worth the effort.

There is not really much content on in at the moment, but I am looking around at what I'd like to share on the Parlor on Instagram.  Redundancy is no fun.  To illustrate what I mean, I'll use Immortal Universe as an example.

If you go to their Twitter feed and Facebook page, and you watch some of the very short clips made to promote the Mayfair Witches series, you'll notice they have basically the same aspect ratio.  But on Instagram, those same videos have a 9:16 aspect ratio.  That just means it's meant to be viewed on a mobile device like a smartphone.

Which means this is probably how I will start the process of making the site more friendly towards these little bitty pocket computers with phones in 'em.  Here, as an example of 9:16 aspect ratio, is the exactly ONE piece of Mayfair Witches content on the Parlor's Instagram to start off with:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kimberly Hill (@comeintomyparlor)

WGA and SAG-AFTRA Strike Resource Page

The Parlor has put together a page of resources regarding the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that have basically brought Hollywood to a grinding halt.  

The Garden District on Project Gutenberg

I discovered that a book published at least as long ago as 1972 that shows 1239 First Street can be read on Project Gutenberg.  It is The Great Days of the Garden District by Martha Ann Brett Samuel.

The WGA and SAG Strike

Patterns in Chaos

To give a better idea of what a restoration of a house like 1239 First Street would have been like, I've created a new kind of image gallery, a slideshow.  The images came from Estately.com, and are of recent restoration work on the Morris-Israel house at 1331 First Street.  Both houses, while not identical, are similar in a lot of ways.

House of Patterns

When you look at the House of Patterns page, it will look...slightly different.  The thumbnails are a tiny bit larger.  But when you click on those thumbnails, the full size images are now quite a bit larger.  With the exception of this one:

Have a Look at Mona Mayfair

On the Mayfair Witches page, only two of the portraits were still images.  Now, there is only one.  This is Mona Mayfair's portrait as its been up until now...

Back to the Soria Creel House

I went back to take a look at the Soria Creel House page, and I realized the image sizes for the first two of the house weren't set up the way I wanted.  So I've gone in and made adjustments so you can look at the detail of the house during filming of the series.

Witches In History--Salem and the Mayfair Witches

I've begun the process of researching for a new special page to add.  This new special page will be about the Salem Witch Trials.