As you probably know, we’re working (along with Smoking Video, who’s taking over operation of the site) hard on the relaunch of Smoking Flicks at the start of December. All 400-500 videos on the site have had to be re-encoded into the new format, which has taken months — and still isn’t quite finished.
So here’s the question: which material should get first priority for encoding before the site launches? Right now in the queue we have about half of the IRL Real Life videos, the IRL More videos, the IRL Holders videos, some of the “less popular” Second Hand Smoke and IRLX videos, and the old (from 1999-2000) Noémie videos. Which of those would you like to see available upon launch? (They’ll all be up within 30-45 days or so, but we basically can encode, upload and prep about three per day.) Let us know if you have a preference, either by email to smokesigs@aol.com or just leave a comment under this entry. Thanks!

While it seems (to us anyway) that we’re almost always chained to the desk and computers, we do get out every once in a while – and Saturday night, we were out, at a comedy show. (Lewis Black, for those interested.) Thankfully there was an intermission, and (not for the first time) we were struck by the sad fact that here on the West Coast, the mad rush is for the bathrooms and not for the sidewalk. Nevertheless, it was somewhat encouraging that many of the 20-ish to 40-ish women in the crowd did eventually meander out to the nasty smoking area; we’d guess that perhaps 5% of the women attending the show made it out there. We’d also guess that we could count the number of NON-Marlboro Lights smokers on one hand, and the same goes for smokers with much style. And as we’ve become accustomed to seeing, the really deep-dragging “god, I can’t believe I had to go 90 minutes without a cigarette” sightings were all of older women We also noticed (more than usual, it seemed) a lot of the younger women either asking someone for a light, or a cigarette – the “occasional, social smoker syndrome” in action. Thankfully, there were two sightings of note: the well-dressed blonde, about 25, in heels and full makeup, showily inhaling and blowing thick cones up into the air, and the cute auburn-haired girl talking animatedly with her friends, doing almost all talking exhales from her Marlboro 100. Not outstanding, but certainly better than sitting at our computer