A New Leaf

Combining my love of info-graphics (especially hand-drawn) and Star Wars, xkcd has produced what it calls “movie narrative charts,” partially represented below. From the chart, “The horizontal axis is time. The vertical grouping of the lines indicates which characters are together at a given time.” Click for the full version, which also includes The Lord of the Rings, Primer, and Twelve Angry Men.

Star Wars narrative diagram from xkcd.com

Just the first video I could get my hands on of our roving Cantina Band in the Mission last night. I’m on glockenspiel, C is playing the gourd-adorned whistle. Other instruments included: clarinet, fiddle-phone (my own word for it), bass guitar, tuba, flute, and toy accordion.

We roamed the streets, playing street corners and random Halloween crowds, performing in all manner of bars and restaurants – fancy, dive, crystal stemware, pint glasses – to rousing ovations. Most people recognized us on sight – “Hey look! It’s the Star Wars cantina band!” – but it blew their minds when we actually played the music. A great effect.

See some pictures here, including the Cantina Band “Alderaan Road” photo shoot.

UPDATE: for facebook users, more pictures here and here.

UPDATE 2: I swapped out the youtube video above to a higher-quality version. We also have a flickr groups page set up – http://www.flickr.com/groups/1228151@N25/ – and there are other videos here, here, and here.

UPDATE 3: Found on Laughing Squid and Current.com (which seems to have scraped it wholesale from Laughing Squid… tut tut).