Sal Raciti and his guitar “Betsy” closed Friday’s open mic with a number of covers and original songs. Photo by Mike Gervais

By Mike Gervais
Register Staff

6-26-2008

Bishop’s favorite mom and pop sandwich shop, Raymond’s Deli, is cooking up a music scene and night life for residents.
Since receiving its beer and wine license last month, Raymond’s has begun opening its doors Friday and Saturday evenings, serving dinners and inviting local musicians to stop by and supply the mood music.
“It’s a glimmer of night life,” said owner Dennis Raymond during last Friday’s open mic session, which drew dozens of spectators and more than 10 musicians.

Western landscape helps sell products

Samsung credit card services films a scene depicting cavemen protecting their nest egg in an Alabama Hills cave. The company was one of about eight to use the local landscape for television commercial shoots in Inyo County during the last month alone. Photo by Chris Langley

6-19-2008

Commercials use various myths, buyer expectations and visual cues to sell their products. Analyzing commercials as artifacts of our time, for indicators of our culture and measures of our expectations and assumptions can tell us about how customers at home and across the world see us as a people, a history and a region. Learning how commercials manipulate us can help us be visually literate viewers, making us less susceptible to their manipulations.
While feature films like “Iron Man” are spectacular and lucrative in benefiting the local economy, commercial projects and production companies are our “bread and butter.” They are better funded. After all, their half-million to million-dollar budgets are basically focused on creating a 30-second image, and producing it in three days of filming.