While looking at my doc here I noticed I have a lot of crap that I’ve written and not even posted. Perhaps the ultimate personal reflection has come. I only write this stuff for one person, myself. It doesn’t make me happy, but it lets me explore my thoughts and mind in a general sense while throwing it down the tubes of the internet. Basically I’m dumping all of my material that is gathering digital dust. Since I’m at work now, I see myself drinking a nice 12 abv Dogfish Head Santo Palo Ale as I pollute blogger.com.

Cheers!!

Live a little!

After exploding out of college last year with my PHD in astro-physics I held off working for Nasa and decided to make the trek down to Bonnaroo with three close friends. After the experience (and a long shower) I really never expected to go again but was extremely glad I did. I figured life would have provided me a direction at this point. Unfortunately I’m still that smuck working a shitty job barely able to swing a vacation.

So it came around this year and it seemed like the right thing to do. Perhaps I’m decent at pulling people together (or everyone just wanted to go to Bonnaroo but never expressed their desire to me) and now we have 8 people confirmed. That’s pretty sweet. I’m totally stoked for this year. We may have three cars, if more people sign on.

I’m trying to be more prepared this year and I think it will promote a even better experience now that I know what I’m getting myself into. After the essentials all you need are a pair of shorts, comfortable sneakers and a straw hat. I’m opting to get a bandanna this year for the sand and smoke that pollutes the air on certain days.

I wish wilco was playing again this year, but there are still tons of great other bands I want to see. Jenny Lewis is going to be there, hopefully I can invite her back to out camp ground.

There are also tons of bands I don’t give two shits about, and knowing that I’ll probably be falling asleep to Widespread Panic jamming away into the wee hours of the morning on Sunday night. Oh and Metillica is totally going to be the Tool of last year. I just don’t get why they have to have metal bands at a festival like this.

This was ultimately more of a hippie fest. Jam bands dicking around on guitar. Thankfully they started to diversify the line-up. More indie bands got on the list, even more electronic and rap got on the bill. Kanye is playing this year, wtf? So is Talib Kwelli and that’s kind of cool. I missed DJ Shadow last year… but did get to enjoy some of it on the walk back. My only use of the main stage was for Wilco… and that was almost a religious experience.

Anyways, I can’t wait.

Facebook can be mean.

Part of the add campaign behind facebook’s adds are finding things in your profile to market towards you. Example : I love Wes Anderson films and often I see adds for products from films or t-shirts. Clever, eh? Originally I thought “Wow! They are advertising cool things!” then I realized it was only because I liked said cool things and noted so in my profile.

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of adds that target me and remind me that I suck at this entire dating game. Besides my sucking, I seem to fail even meeting people (see previous post). These adds seem to notice this trend and offers me a solution. “Hot 22 year olds!” with a picture of two girls with fake tits and 3 drinks too many down their gullets.

How wonderful… I don’t get enough of these bitches at bars and in everyday life now facebook seems to be trying to set me up with them. No thanks, oh and fuck you facebook for reminding me I’m single. Oh and maybe the meta tags are more screwed up then the girls in the adds, but sometimes I get offered to date men… thanks again facebook, my profile says interested in women…

I was much happy when you only offered me Team Zissou skull caps.

Hey buddy! / Meeting people ISN’T easy….

Dude, bro, buddy, pal, champ… etc… These are words that can make you smile, chuckle and sometimes contemplate bashing someone’s face in. I’d like to look at the third one with an example I just experienced.

This older gentleman walks in to the copy center. He’s sporting the very dashing balding monk haircut and a vintage ‘90s starter jacket. He goes “Hey dude…” He said it with as much enthusiasm as your old college roommate reveling in his accomplishment of smoking his 4th bong of the day.

He starts to fax while addressing me as dude. Eventually he picks up his cell and starts talking professionally until he calls the guy on the other end dude. Hell, I probably use man, or maybe even dude too much, but this sounded like this guys favorite word. The icing on the cake was his fax got canceled and he said “Fucking thing is too fucking slow dude” and walked out… a monkish guy in a starter jacket.. who talked like a angry stoner…

I wish I could relate to more people ultimately. Meeting people isn’t easy Thom Yorke! I have my friends in the area, and I love them all, but there is an obvious shortage of like-minded music obsessed individuals. I do also realize working my dead-end job doesn’t help much.

I used to put some effort into going out to be social. Bars seemed like the obvious first step. I like beer and people hang out at bars. Sounds like a winning combination. Well… it’s a winning combo if you like to be surrounded by d-bags and whores. Honestly, if a girl spends more then 1 hours TOTAL (shower et all) to go to a shitty bar and and also wears a really whorish outfit… count me out. I realize most guys would be all about it, cause generally these girls do look good, but ehhh so not my type.

This area is wealthier then I really like, so the people reflect it. I wish there was a cozy little brew pub that catered to a more artsy audience. I really want to get out of this town, or meet some new people....

Sex, Drugs & a Short Story?!?

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs is one of my favorite books. I’ve recommended it to many a friend all of whom have all enjoyed it. (One of my friends is borrowing it right now actually) Fargo Rock City was an enjoyable read, but really didn’t cater to my personal music taste. Regardless I love reading Klosterman as he is always witty and worth a read regardless of the subject matter.

When I heard about IV, I was very excited because it seemed to be in the same vein of SD&CC. I think this is where it falls short unfortunately. Some of the chapters are extensions or other articles that were left out of SD&CC… BUT the chapter on Wilco is INCREDIBLE! And radiohead is also great… basically I still absolutely love Klosterman, but he bored me at times during the first half. I sometimes struggle reading about sports or Guns ‘N Roses just to get that self-aware whit.

One of the funniest chapters was his old account of FM-Alt Rock in Fargo. He basically has to put foot notes on everything because he is not satisfied with it. I relate to this somewhat and still personally feel I’m not a good writer. I have good intentions and ideas, but fail to execute it as sharply as I would like. My grammar also could probably be edited by a first grader.

If you don’t want to trek through the entire book, and only read parts, I highly encourage you to read the last chapter. It’s a fiction short story about a drugged out journalist. It’s hysterical. He should write some full novels that aren’t just about pop-culture.

I need a camera to my eye

I love photography. I really want to get a job in the field and am currently pursuing a career shooting for a living. I use a Nikon d80 and absolutely love it. I’m a strong believer that the camera is only a tool for the equation of a great picture. I’d love to have a D3 but I’ve seen some amazing shots taken with point and shoots. Some of my portfolio shots are from my old Lumix.

The price of DSLRs has hit an amazing low. You can pick up a Nikon d40 or Canon Rebel XTI for under $600 with a basic lens. Typically they give you something like an 18-55mm f3.5-5.6. That gives you a nice wide to short tele after frame conversion. I believe its about 27-82mm compared to a full frame 35mm.

This opens the doors for anyone to have full control while shooting even on a smaller budget. The low-end DSLRs don’t have as easy access to control, but still offers the basics. You’ll find greater depth in range of things such as ISO, shutter speed, shutter lag and start up time in high end models.

Picture a family gathering where your aunt has a point and shoot. It takes her about 2 minutes before she is ready to shoot. The lens has to open… then the zoom needs to engage… then the autofocus and exposure come into play. These are virtually eliminated in DSLRs. The d80 starts in under a seconds to shoot. Goodbye frozen forced smiles.

Disposable products for a disposable public

After my i-pod purchase I started looking into speakers for it. I hate to say it but after watching Jack use it in the The Darjeeling Limited I started thinking about out handy it looks. Having a portable stereo with all my music available on it? That’s pretty fucking sweet. So I started looking around at different products. At first I found a nice Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere for about $85. It seemed to get good reviews across the board and had a rechargeable battery. I ended up passing due to the price. Staples doesn’t does not keep my wallet packed so I had to find something else for a quick fix. Basically I went to Bonaventure a few weeks back for BAM and I wanted something to use for tunes while we guzzle down PBRs in the DeSoto.

I looked around for something dirt cheap. I had previously owned some cheap speakers that I plugged into my discman for some outdoor relaxation at college. I looked for an under $10 price range. What I found was a $4 on amazon. Some company called DigiLife was selling them. I figured for $4 bucks who cares?

After reading the numerous positive and negative customer reviews one thing remained obvious, anyone with high expectations were disappointed, but those who took the price into account seemed happy. Comments like “you might as well get a few for when they break” and “if it lasts me 6 months I’m millions ahead of the game” were plentiful. Obviously I kind of jumped on this train with similar expectation.

As I thought more about it I realized the problem with this. It’s like shopping at the dollar store. Things like this shouldn’t cost so little. Obviously they are being made somewhere cheap that exploits someone. I think I have it bad, whoever Digilife out sources to must have it worse. It’s a sad fact of this world. We take things for granted. We can afford to buy 3 or four sets of speakers expecting them to break and to be replaced as we see fit. It’s kind of disgusting that we have such a lack of concern. The production and disposal of the products can’t be good for the environment.

In the afterthought I feel bad about contributing to this… between that and all my spent Canon ink cartridges that I have laying around my room, I guess I’m an asshole that isn’t solving the problem at the moment.

p.s. Ironically the speakers sucked and broke 20 min after I started playing with them. Spending extra money on quality products makes all the difference.

Who's got the crack? ... best buy does!

So I didn't reserve a copy of GTA:IV... I kind of forgot all about it and then found myself low on money. So then game day came and I finally saw the in game footage... I broke my piggy bank and sold my body to science (something about testing the short term affects of swimming nuclear waste...) After putting my body on the line, I took all my pennies (yes, they paid me in pennies) and set out on to see just how hard it would be to find the game with out a reserve.

Here is my journey:

GameStop : Brewster (sold out) The girl gave me a sympathetic smile, but here eyes hinted at my stupidity. A grown man argued with another
associate about his reserve not being on file.

Danbury Fair Mall : There are 2 GameStops, a FYE, Saturday Matinee and another FYE in the parking lot. I was able to find a deluxe edition in FYE but refused it. I'm on a budget here!


As I was searching the newly renovated mall (probably old news, but I'm no mall rat.) I almost felt like a crack head looking for a fix. I set myself up for repeated situations where I fully expected to get shot down. I became more interested in peoples reactions to me asking for the game and the questions I'd follow with... such as "Why didn't you order extra?" "Where can I find it?" "How come there are like 100 unopened copies behind you?" The most friendly people at gamestop engaged me in conversation and basically said that it would be useless to try any gamestop. Gamestop ONLY sells video games and they didn't prepare for the launch? Is there sales manager a fucking retard? (I visited three individual stores and got the same reaction basically)

My next plan was Best Buy, Circuit City, then swing back to Walmart before throwing in the towel. Best Buy had it... and I had a less then enthused employee sell me my copy. He didn't care about my epic journey. He was probably more concerned with my sweaty hands and jolty eyes.

On the way back I felt like Indiana Jones. My holy grail was next to me, but I was unable to enjoy it until I got back home. What would Indy have done with the grail anyways?

During my travels I thought about making this a story about our shitty economy. I don't have the figures but it was estimated to make over $400 million on yesterday alone. This game requires a system that costs at least $450... I kind of void my own point when put into the statistics. I wonder if I have enough in my bank account for a coffee tomorrow... hmm, guess I'll just go back to cruising around breaking the law in my own little virtual world. I wonder if Harison Ford is playing right now...

Sad Sappy Sucker

Yeah, so I guess that's me... I just finished watching Wristcutters : A Love Story. I've been dying to see this movie ever since I heard about it. It was very limited showing, and I never caught it... but now it's on DVD and I finally saw it. (I actually rented it, a HUGE mistake.. I need to own it)

Without ruining it... basically it's about this alternate reality where suicide victims go to live the afterlife. It's done in a very dark-comedy meets cute romance at first, then the best thing happens. Tom fucking Waits joins the crew. Waits is the shit, honestly he's one of the coolest mother fuckers ever.

His quotes are soo great. He carries all the insight the movie has. The last scene before the ending with Kneller is a tear-jerker.

Another great perk to the movie is Will Arnett as the Messiah. Fans of Arrested Development (probably anyone reading this... as 99% of my friends love that show... if anyone reads this...) will get a kick out of the role he plays. It's got all the style of GOB's magician act.

Basically, please check this movie out. If you hate it, I'd love to have a heated debate over it. I'm also currently enjoying heated debates over the new DCFC song, so bring it... that song kicks ass.

p.s. Dahl got me probably the best (very early) birthday present I've got in a while... Smoking Loon wine and a Moose wine stopper. I dare you to trump that.... in like a month... yeah, so I want to do something interesting for my birthday... Beer Garden??

... the aftermath

So this years art and media fair went without a hitch. The bands all played to their full caliber. The usual artists came by and always were welcome faces in the crowd. A few people at times looked offended... and everyone who ran it seemed to have the fun, manic satisfaction that the fair is all about.

It's great to have people who care about art and media. We had probably one of the best crowds that actually sticked around all day. I felt no speaker or band wasn't given respect and a chance.

I hope to see BAM keep chugging along. We had some great new faces involved and I hope they keep sticking it out. Providing people a safe haven for artist expression is very important especially in a community that often close minded community.

Thanks everyone who was involved, who showed up, who played, who read, who performed, who partied with me, and who were there for me when I needed it.

BAM 2009! here we come!!

Qu'est-ce que tu as aujourd'hui?

During my summer in NYC interning at AAM promo a co-intern was raving about a band called Beirut. After argument with the other minds on the validity of this claim I kind of had a headache. I heard a little bit and was satisfied with it. The first thing that kept coming to mind when hearing it was Andrew Bird. While my opinion upon this has changed, I still would use that as a comparison to the work. I received the Lon Gisland EP and really never gave it enough time. The song Elephant Gun was very good, so I never put him off, I just never got around to bothering to engage it.

This seems to have been a mistake. After a music-colleague of mine ranked gave the album a prominent place in her Top 20 of 2007. (Something that I fucked up by failing to notice a 06 band in my list… one of the many signs I need to get my head back in the game.) So I got my hands on the latest album.

The first thing that really comes out with the album is the elaborate orchestration. It hasn’t been since Ys that I was so engrossed in non-typical folk orchestration. The heavy French undertones really never go out of style. Think about it… Stereolab has always been totally awesome, the Arcade Fire is one of the single greatest bands of our time to touch on a small portion.

It’s accessible at a level that is typically hard to convey. At first the listener might be a little taken aback by the vocals and lush orchestration but soon it becomes very inviting. Typically I throw on a cd for background music while eating dinner with my mother. She always enjoyed Ryan Adams for some reason, I guess the universal appeal of some of his work especially off Cold Roses appeals to her. When I put The Flying Club Cub on at one point she asked me if it was Mexican music. While I found it odd, I do always enjoy it when she engages my music. This is where I think the accessibility comes into play. It’s such an interesting album that you can’t help but become somewhat engaged in it regardless of how much you are actually listening to it.

the Coal Mines

Currently I’m sitting on a shitty stool in the corner of West Danbury’s Staples writing this to keep my brain from becoming complete mush. It’s about 8:20 a.m. and the first hour and a half of my shift has been utterly pointless. Currently people are congregating in the self serve to make copies of god knows what. It’s almost sad because as someone approaches me, I keep closing this document as to not get caught. We lost our internet and are basically told we should be standing or cleaning in any downtime. I clean at night (if I close) and refuse to stand for my pitiful hourly wage. Basically my job is a pathetic joke. Ironically I do know that staples can log right into this computer RIGHT now and see exactly what I am typing. I assume if they read this they might fire me, but considering the lack of good employees who stay around, I feel pretty secure.

Some more smucks keep coming into the self yet none ask me for help, hilarious. They fail to realize the high prices they are paying for copies is letting me write a rant about their uselessness. I often wonder what they think of me, especially considering how harshly my mind thinks about their existence most of the time. I think one thing I have over all these people is they I know how to plan in advance. I think I fucking learned that in kindergarten. So many people save things for the last minute and expect miracles from me. Sorry, I’m not Jesus of the Copy Land, d-bag. Have fun listening to your boss rip you a new one.

Currently there is a lady in the self serve… she has basically set up her own little cute office. She has a cup of coffee, a laptop, she has been blabbing on her phone for about hmm… 30 minutes… and she is driving me absolutely crazy…. Where is my cover, I need fresh air and a coffee.

So moving on… I purchased some paper and ink so I can keep sending out my portfolio in the hopes of landing a job. It got me thinking about the dynamics of it all. There is a substantial amount of money that has to keep going into this process for printing, binding and sending them out, yet nothing seems to be working out, so partially my shitty job is fueling my failure to get a better job. Thankfully my mother helps me out with some of the cost to keep printing.

It's annoying because I still seem to be week to week, regardless of what I do. Honestly how do they expect people to live off this amount of money? If I didn’t have student loans, left for work 4 hours early to bike there, had no need for any sort of food, didn’t pay for insurance, ditched my cell, worked 40 hours a week …. I still wouldn’t be able to afford to move out and remain in this area. HOW PATHETIC IS THAT?! What is wrong with this area, or what the fuck is wrong with the economy? I’m making slightly above minimum wage yet the possibility of being independent is impossible… in my no-cost scenario then I could probably just swing it with a roommate. Too bad we need food to survive, eh?

I’m organizing a much more ambitious portfolio sending early next week. Expect to see my shots on the cover of Spin in the next month. I personally feel I’ve been incredibly pessimistic and harsh about things lately (I kind of feel bad)… must be the environment I’m surrounded in… Ha, yeahhh…. If anyone actually reads this… and if they actually got this far, I’m impressed, send me and e-mail and I’ll buy ya a beer next time I see ya.