No Subject

>But I want people to know what's really going on here, because what's
>really going on is Chris is having a big tantrum and powertripping
>everybody in sight, and blaming me in the most immature manner imaginable,
>all because he feels he deserves the best copy of every video in the world--
>and if we *reward* him to the extent of giving in to his demands, where
>does that leave the future of the rec.music.gaffa 'community'?

   Bite me.

>When, first of all, has anyone heard Chris offer free distribution of *any*
>video?  Chris and Vickie used to claim they have a standing offer that
>anyone could come stay with them and copy anything they want... but how
>many people have found that practical?  Doesn't this offer automatically
>exclude everyone that Chris has already alienated?  Why is it that, six
>months after getting Rocketman, Chris hasn't given a copy to *anybody* that
>I know of?

   Um...Vickie and I have probably made hundreds of dubs. For free. The
usual arrangment was, send us two blank tapes and we'll return one, the
other one to cover postage and handling. That's the usual arrangment in
the TV trading world. When we lived in Kansas City, Kansas I would mail
one or two video packs *a day*. We no longer do that, simply because we
have more than paid our dues. Also, anyone who has seen our rather cluttered
home can see that tapes sent to us can sink into the general clutter and
disappear. We had a couple of unhappy trades and dropped out of the trading
business, except during visits. Vickie still dubs bunches of audio tapes
for Ecto.

   Anyone *is* welcome to visit us, and many have - we have hosted Steve
Vandevener, Larry Hernandez, Ed Suyrani, Steve Fagg and a number of other
people (apologies to all I have forgotton). Chicago isn't exactly hard to 
get to. 

   To my knowledge, I have only alienated two people - Jorn and Richard
Caldwell. Richard and Vickie met at the Tori Amos record signing (I was
out of town) and reconciled. At the height of our e-mail flames about
LL/AATHP I invited Richard and Missy here to work it out. They declined
but I don't believe that we have any serious lingering animosity.
I aired my reasons to distrust Intergalactic Garage. Allan never 
responded, and seems content to mail flyers to every address he can
find. Fair enough. His interest In Kate is commercial.

> Realize, too, that this was all clearly in the context of a RUSH job... if
> Chris mentioned a three week delay, how could Mike have overlooked that?

> Add to this that Paul told me last Tuesday that the dub was *done* and he
> just had to pick it up, and that it included Rocketman *and* the Dutch
> videos (prompting my optimistic message last week), and then Paul's later
> report that Chris said the dub turned out so poor that Paul shouldn't even
> bother to pick it up... how did Chris imagine that it would turn out any
> better, given that he has only a PAL player, not a PAL converter?  Chris
> has always told *me* he knew you can't make a dub with such a setup.

   *Paul* made a PAL to NTSC dub on an AWIA converter. It did a poor job
compared to the Panasonic NS-W1 that I plan to use, the quality of which
Jorn is familier with. The Rocketman video is on VHS, and my only other
working VHS machine is the multi-standard one. I tried to play the NTSC
tape in it's NTSC mode, but the sync was weak as the tape was *already*
a conversion, and the NTSC encoder in the multi-standard machine is
kind of marginal. I was able to dub _The Christmas Show_ and the _Dutch
Video_ to VHS as they are on 3/4". *That* is what I told Paul was done.

> So Chris is asking us to sweep these deceptions under the rug, and blame
> the delay entirely on Jorn (since, of course, Jorn is to blame for every
> damn thing), and let him do it his way, since the three week delay is now,
> conveniently, a mere one-week delay.

   I have been busily at work on a project that has involved many 30-hour
days. The deadline is today. 

> (In fact, it seems to me, Chris wants so badly to see it "in the best
> possible quality" that he was willing to *hijack* the tapetree to achieve
> this.)

   Members of the tape tree have contacted me to get the tape directly.

I am still wondering at Jorn's desire to get involved in video tape distribution
as he does not own a TV or VCR. Jorn has the original PAL tape simply because
he wrote to the person offering the tape quicker than I did.

   Jorn would be a very good person to arrange to make T-Shirts, from the
excellent job he did on the Katemas hats.

> The question to be debated is, if this is how Chris collects video, do we
> want to even deal with him?

   Bite me. Again.


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)
                                   katefans@chinet.chinet.com (ours)