Re: Fruitopia

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

|>oug \/\/rites:
>This past Saturday I set my VCR on EP and recorded six hours of
>Empty-V in the hopes of catching some of those Furitopia commercials.
>Within the first hour I got three of the the nine ads!  Unfortunately,
>in the remaining five hours, though, I got not one.  So three will
>have to tide me over.  As an extra added bonus, I got every episode of
>the second season of *Eon Flux*.  What more could a guy ask for?  I am
>very happy.  (I'm still dizzy though from watching six hours of
>Emtpy-V on fast forward.)
>
>The music from all three of the ads that I caught were rather
>new-agey.  They were definitely Kate though!  Especially number 2.  I
>think one of the ads I saw a couple weeks ago was a bit more techno,
>but my memory is vague.
>
>Here's a brief description of the music from the ads
>I caught:
>
>(1) Mellow echoey piano with a heart-beat drum pattern.
>
>(2) Kate does drum-talk on national TV!  This one was described in the
>published article posted here a few days ago as sounding like a
>bunch of Japanese school kids.  I guess the author has never heard
>drum talk, but this is a dead give-away that these commercials were
>done by Kate (or Sheila Chandra, but they don't sound like Sheila).
>
>(3) Mellow band and piano sound with bongos instead of a drum-kit.
>Kate sings "la la la" in the background.
>
>Of course, the music for all three is complete genius (for music that
>sounds like it was thrown together in a couple of days for a TV
>commercial, that is).

   A couple of things: I was putting on a t-shirt this morning. The _Eat
The Music_ "field'o'fruit" shirt from the convention, with only the
fruit and not a single word about Kate. Pretty subliminal. As soon as I
had pulled it over my head and saw the image in the mirror (the first
time I had done so since learning about the Fruitopia music) I flashed
on the resemblance between this shirt and those commercials. Am I
actually wearing a Frutopia advert, rather than the Kate Bush t-shirt
that I thought I bought? I mean, I bought it at a Kate Bush fan
convention, along with hundreds of other Kate Bush fans, so I kind
of assumed that it was a Kate shirt. So the obvious question...
was Kate having one of her mind-bogglingly obscure joking hidden
references? "I've got a secret. See if you can find it..."

   (As soon as I finished typing that last sentence, the "Japanese
Childern Singing" 30 second spot played during the second break of
the Tonight Show. It sounds like Japanese Childern Singing, *not*
drum talk, so this must be one of the other ones. Actually it strikes
me as kind of Steve Reich-like, if he had more of a sense of fun.)

   I had an intimate experience with a giant kaleidoscope at the St.
Louis Science Museum. It had a big rear-screen TV at the end of a
trianglular tunnel of mirrors, with a TV camera below the set. I was
wearing the other shirt that I picked up at the convention, the one
with the image from _The Red Shoes_ on the front, and "It's Really
Happening To Ya" on the back (again with not a word about Kate.)
I was having loads of fun playing around in front of the camera,
doing hextuple dancing pairs of red shoes, and making colored trails
with my hands. The next day I heard about Kate and the Fruitopia spots.

   The early Kate Bush Club Newsletters used to have a section on
synchronicities. I had a doozy, although I'm not sure if it was 
technically a synchronicity, or just a really, really odd occurance.
I'm not sure. Any way...

   I was standing in a very short line in front of the bus information
booth at Disney/MGM studios. There was a party, but I wasn't going.
I'd just caught the convention center to MGM bus to get in the vicinity
of my hotel, not on any of the official bus routes. The people in the
booth had to make a phone call to find out about a shuttle to my motel,
and I turned around to catch the name tag of my fellow line-standee.
The only other person in the line was a woman named Chris Williams,
*also* from Chicago, and *also* an animator. The last was not that odd
outside a SIGGRAPH party, but the combination of all three was
astonishingly unlikely. No whales appeared, or petunias, but I do feel
that there is a huge load of improbability to be balanced out. I haven't
the faintest idea what the odds are, nor do I really want to. I might 
do something dumb, like start playing the Lottery.


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