Of Marvin Gaye and Humphrey Bogart…

Today was a pretty productive workday, we had a pre-Valentine’s day potluck at the office so we all ate ourselves stupid. I saw this via Gizmodo earlier today, it seems that today and tomorrow Amazon is celebrating Valentine’s Day by giving away Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” on MP3. If you’re a fan of cliche’ mood music, have at it.

In other news, I came across this article (again, via Gizmodo) about Mythbusters’ Adam Savage and his fascination with replicating things like dodo skeletons and replica movie props. If you watch the video, you will see that he is/was utterly obsessed with the Maltese Falcon. Toward the end of the slide deck, he mentions that he belongs to a group of like minded prop folks on the Internet, and up flashes a screenshot of the prop forum that I frequent.

I was so impressed by his replica I logged on and sent him an email telling him so, and he replied! He answered a few questions about where he collected his reference material from and his sculpting process, and it was pretty cool. I’ve always wanted a replica of that prop, however the only commonly available replicas are crappy recasts from a 1975 parody called “The Black Bird“. You can tell by the fat head, improperly large base, and overly defined feathers. The real Maltese Falcon prop looks like this. There are some passable versions around, but they tend to be $300-$500 and that’s a bit more than I am happy spending at the moment. Maybe someday!