Craig Giffen is not your average weirdly cool human being. He is the probably the most diverse, creative, weirdly cool human being Portland has the honor to call their own.
Yet, in all probability (and we don’t think it’s problematic… wink wink), Giffen is someone you don’t know by name, but the minute you hear terms like “Human Clock” and “Problematic TV,” you’ll jump out of your seat and say, “Hey, I know that! He’s great!”
For those who don’t know, Problematic.TV is actually National Problematic Radio, derived, as Giffen explains, “from available transcripts and audio sourced from National Public Radio, a hand-curated auditory and visually stimulating parody tribute to the avocado toast of words, problematic.” Funny stuff.
Giffen’s The Human Clock was one of Time magazine’s 50 “coolest” websites of 2006. It’s a clock photo for every minute of the day in 2001. And it still works 20 years later. As does his Human Calendar (a calendar set up like the Brady Bunch which has well over 3 million visitors each month.
Most people would be proud to have created just one of those sites, but Giffen’s mind is on fire. He’s also the brains behind the pctplanner.com – a popular Pacific Crest Trail planning program, because, as you know, planning for a PCT hike is a lot of work and the actual planning of a PCT hiking schedule can be time consuming. (So thanks to Giffen, you can determine how many days of food are needed between resupply points, figure out your arrival dates at each resupply location, adjust your hiking time based on terrain, and look at detailed hiking statistics.)
And some of his sites go to the dogs, literally. Portlanders leave free stuff they don’t want in front of their abodes all the time, so Giffen decided to have his dog, Ms. Freddie, pose next to discarded basketball hoops, end tables, a CRT television, an abandoned toaster, carpet remnants, Expired Monster truck tickets, free baking pans, a kiddie pool and more on his Portland Free Crap. (We love Ms. Freddie!)
He’s also dedicated a site to 4,267 photos of almost every sign along the Pacific Crest Trail.
But even that’s not nearly enough interesting in one person for Giffen. He’s also filmed rehearsal and stage videos of Star Anna, Justin Davis, Mike McCready at Sonic Boom records Red Fang, Two Cow Garage, Sean Croghan of The Mistons, just to name a few.
And then there are the holiday lights. The ones he has put all over his house and yard and set up so you can turn them on and off from your own computer. Yep, Giffen created deee-lights four years ago, and he keeps adding more lights. Head on over to his website and you can make the lights on his tree throb, you can turn on disco lights, or turn off red lights and leave on only the white fence. He’s made his holiday your holiday because Giffen is just that interesting.
See. This guy is cool Portland weird.