No One Wants This Story

I can't be the only one to have noticed the resemblance.

2012-02-05T22:30:00.001-05:00

Saul Williams in Paris Catacombs

2011-11-13T22:32:00.003-05:00

Saul Williams and his band were filmed exploring and playing music in the Paris Catacombs. It's one of the most inspiring things I've seen in a while.

Seen it comin', baby.

2011-11-09T21:03:00.003-05:00

David Lynch's album Crazy Clown Time came out yesterday. I've been pretty excited about it, and have a feeling I'm going to be listening to it a lot. I've listened to those two songs I posted a few months ago many, many times. Here's a little video that's sort of an ad for the album, featuring Lynch working in the studio.

SONOIO Red

2011-08-17T23:16:00.007-04:00

I'm pretty late posting it, but since I've been pretty obsessed with it lately and haven't written about it, I figured I should write about it. Alessandro Cortini (from Modwheelmood and formerly from Nine Inch Nails) started a new project last year called SONOIO. I never really got into SONOIO's debut album Blue, but this year, Cortini released a followup called Red, which is fantastic. And he released a video for the song "Enough". It's a very cool and simple video, and if you aren't in love with the song after one listen, you should probably check yourself in to a hospital as soon as possible, because there's something wrong with you.

You can listen to Red on the music player on the SONOIO website. You can also download the first four songs for free, or buy the full album in a variety of formats. If you scroll further down the page, you'll also find all of the same options for Blue.

David Lynch's Crazy Clown Time

2011-08-16T05:35:00.007-04:00

Did you know that filmmaker David Lynch is a musician? He sure is. And he's got an album coming out on November 8th this year called Crazy Clown Time.

Here's a track from the album called "I Know".

And another called "Good Day Today".

Crosses †††

2011-08-16T03:35:00.007-04:00

Chino Moreno from Deftones and Team Sleep has a new project with Shaun Lopez from Far. It is called Crosses (alternatively known as the symbols †††).

Their debut EP can be downloaded for free on their website. You can also pay $5 to receive all of the artwork and lyrics and get higher quality versions of the tracks in the format of your choice.

Here's "†his Is A †rick", the first track from the EP.

"Love And Riots" by Shawn Smith

2011-08-15T01:04:00.006-04:00

Shawn Smith from the bands Brad and Pigeonhed recorded a new song within the past few days. He almost didn't finish it, as he explains, "It started out good then a couple questionable moves made me almost bag it." But sure enough, he finished it and made it work. Although before releasing it Smith asked his fans if she should sell the song or release it for free, and almost every single comment on the post was telling him he should charge for it, he has released it for free on his website, where you can find it streaming if you'd like to hear it.

To download it, you must sign up for his mailing list.

If you like the song, you also might want to visit Smith's facebook page.

It is a dark time for the Rebellion.

2011-08-11T20:50:00.005-04:00

Last night I had a dream. I don't want to tell you the whole dream, but I really want to share with you my favorite part:

I went to a school play put on by kindergarteners that somehow combined the story of the founding fathers of the United States of America, and the Cloud City portion of The Empire Strikes Back. All of the characters were played by 5 year olds in full costume, except for Lando Calrissian, who was still played by actor Billy Dee Williams.

Volcanic Sunlight...

2011-04-29T15:30:00.004-04:00

...is the innermost part of something special.

Saul Williams' new album Volcanic Sunlight comes out on May 2nd (and I'm assuming May 3rd in the States), just a few days from now. I guess I'm a little late with this, but on April 21st, he posted four videos on youtube about the album.

na na nehnehnehneh

2011-04-29T05:16:00.001-04:00

I hate when I have a very small part of a song stuck in my head and I can't figure out what it is. It's like hearing a voice on a windy day and turning around to see who it is, and finding everyone you've ever met standing there.

Gerard Smith

2011-04-20T22:05:00.004-04:00

A member of one of my favorite bands, TV On The Radio died this morning. Gerard Smith was a pretty young guy (34 years old), and I wasn't even aware he was fighting lung cancer, so his death came as quite a shock to me. While he is mostly known for being the bass player with stage fright (I can relate to that), he also has been credited for many other instruments, including guitar, electric sitar, piano, organ, synthesizers, Rhodes, samples, and vocals.

I'm not sure if Gerard Smith is credited on the song "Will Do", since 4 of the 5 members of the band are credited for playing bass on their new album Nine Types Of Light (which was just released about a week ago), but I wanted to post it anyway.

Judgment Day

2011-04-19T20:16:00.000-04:00

According to The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Skynet goes online in less than a few hours. On Thursday it will become self-aware and attempt to destroy humanity. Just wanted to warn you guys.

haiku

2011-04-19T02:16:00.001-04:00

Jar of vampires
Sucking blood with the lights on
Fireflies with fangs

Werewolf balls, spaceman balls.

2011-04-04T16:40:00.006-04:00

Here's a little update since I haven't posted anything in a while.

I went to a St. Patrick's Day party at my cousin Megan's house. We ate food, talked, played board games, played Rock Band (including the wonderful LEGO version). Here's a photo of some of us playing Rock Band. I'm the tall guy standing up.

A week later, I went to the mall with Patrick and Caleb. It was Caleb's first malltrip with us, and I was worried that our malling style was boring him, because we generally just wander around aimlessly, but I think we all had a good time.

We went to a toy store in the mall, and played in there for quite a while. This toy store always has cheap, statuesque "action" figures that don't come in any packaging, so it was quite easy to play with them, or mostly just posing them. I put a man with a gun riding a white tiger, shooting at a triceratops. There was a werewolf figure that I noticed was so detailed that it was actually anatomically correct. While it was wearing torn blue shorts, they were very tight, and you could easily see the bulges where his penis and testicles were. Whoever designed that figure must have been such a perfectionist. I made the anatomically correct werewolf ride a horse.

When we went to the food court to eat dinner, there was a new Chinese restaurant right next door to the Chinese restaurant we usually get food at when we're at the mall. We were walking past the new restaurant to get to our usual place when we were intercepted by a young man giving out samples of chicken. Then we noticed our usual place also had a person out in front aggressively handing out chicken samples. The other restaurants in the food court must have felt that these two competing Chinese restaurants giving out samples were making them look bad, or maybe it just got them into the competitive spirit too, because several other restaurants were giving out free samples of their food too. If we had just walked one lap around the food court collecting free samples, we probably would have gotten the equivalent of an entire meal, and I'm not exaggerating at all.

The Borders Books at the mall went out of business. I had no idea until we got there and the store was almost completely empty. There would be an almost completely empty shelf except for one lonely book I'd never heard of sitting there. We didn't even go in because it looked so depressing. Borders was probably my favorite store at the mall. Besides the fact that it just had so many things I'm interested in, it also stayed open an hour later than every other store in the mall, so even after most of the mall was closing, you could go hang out at Borders for a while before going home. Now when all the other stores close, there's no where to go except home. We walked by Borders again later, and it was completely empty. No books on any shelf, and there was a sign on the door that said "Closed". I assume it meant for good, so we practically watched it die. I looked in the window of that empty store with empty shelves, and a sign on the bookshelf ten feet in front of me said "True Crime". Well said, sign. Well said.

We also saw the movie Paul. I'm kind of shocked I haven't heard anyone talk about this movie, even though it's been over a week now since I saw it. It's seriously the best new comedy I've seen in ages. I didn't know much about it going in, aside from who played the three main characters, and I was expecting to at least enjoy myself, but I couldn't have guessed I'd be nearly as entertained as I was. There were so many wonderful actors showing up throughout the movie, including Sigourney Weaver (whose voice I recognized immediately), and there was a "phoned-in" cameo by one of my favorite filmmakers. There were so many references to science fiction movies that I love, but they were always really clever references. There was a lot of swearing, but it all had to do with the story, and was really funny swearing that I can guarantee you've never heard anything like before. The movie was also surprisingly pretty deep and intelligent. Anyone who is a fan of comedies, or a fan of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (from Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead, and Hot Fuzz), and anyone who is into Science Fiction needs to go see the movie.

Also, I guess I should mention I finally took a driving test today and passed. I now have a license to drive.

The Nannan Morning News

2011-03-16T22:23:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite LEGO builders is Nannan Z. On The Dallas Morning News website, there is a video of Nannan talking about the LEGO hobby and showing off his massive collection and some of his creations.

If you want to get a closer look at that awesome space station he made, you can check it out here.

You are sort of listening to Los Angeles.

2011-03-10T14:37:00.001-05:00

Many times while I'm writing, I like to listen to music that fits the mood of whatever I'm writing, just to get my head in the right setting. It's often difficult to find something to fit the mood you want, but I usually listen to film scores.

I came across these "You are listening to..." pages which pair ambient music with police radio chatter from a city, complete with a beautiful photo of that city as the background to each page. The cities available are below:

Los Angeles
New York
San Fransisco
Chicago
Montréal

While it's a cool idea, I think it would be much better if the ambient music was actually from the city. While listening to the "You are listening to Los Angeles" page, I was clicking on the SoundCloud pages of each musician to find out where they were from. Thehe whole time, I only noticed one musician that was actually from Los Angeles, and that was probably a coincidence. It would feel a lot more like you're listening to Los Angeles if there's not music from Portland, Brooklyn, or even Sweden playing instead of just music from Los Angeles. I e-mailed the suggestion to the maker of the "You are listening to..." pages.

Moby explores empty cities with new album Destroyed

2011-03-10T13:37:00.006-05:00

I found out about another album to look forward to this year. On May 16th, Moby releases his new album Destroyed. Suffering from insomnia while on tour, Moby would write music at 2 AM when it felt like everyone else in the world was asleep. When he was done touring, he'd take the songs back to his studio to finish them. In an attempt to sum up the album, he described it as "broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 AM." Sounds like my kind of music!

The cover of the album is a photograph taken by Moby, who is releasing a photography book with the album. Wandering around LaGuardia airport after his flight was delayed, he came across an electronic sign that said "Unattended luggage will be destroyed." The small sign could only fit one word at a time, so when it just said the word "destroyed", he took a photograph. I love wandering around airports, so this just makes me want to listen to the album even more.

He has already released the Be The One EP, which features three songs, all of which will be on Destroyed. You can download the free EP below.

I'll, however, wait until the full album comes out to listen to any of it.

like omg who is arcade fire??!!?

2011-02-14T16:24:00.004-05:00

It would take me quite a while to explain all of the reasons why this is so damn funny.

Dynamite Steps by The Twilight Singers

2011-02-11T11:37:00.001-05:00

The Twilight Singers have a new album called Dynamite Steps coming out on the 15th. It's one of the albums being released in 2011 that I've really been looking forward to. The Twilight Singers is one of my favorite bands ever, and in my opinion, singer/songwriter Greg Dulli (previously from the band The Afghan Whigs) is one of the best songwriters I know of. I haven't gotten a chance to listen to it yet, but you can listen to Dynamite Steps on the music player below.

UPDATE: The music player is no longer available. At this point I have listened to the album many times, and can tell you that it's amazing and beautiful. I definitely recommend it.

"Hear Now My Tale"

2011-02-11T11:18:00.003-05:00

I spent over 7 straight hours yesterday (not counting the few short breaks I took to give my ears a rest and get some food and drinks) working on music. I've been listening to way too much sample-based music lately, and when that happens, I get such a big urge to sample weird stuff and make it into songs. All of the sounds in this track were sampled from a rather obscure children's record from the 80's.

Turn the page, close the book.

2011-02-08T07:09:00.005-05:00

Now that Cyberspace And Reds and Computers And Blues are out, all that's left is a tour before The Streets are no more. The final (but unfinished) Streets song was released on The Guardian. I assume it was originally intended to have vocals, but it has been released as an instrumental.

In a video on The Guardian website, Mike Skinner said:

'(This song) was created by me as the final song by The Streets. I intended on calling it "Close The Book" as the first song I ever wrote for The Streets was called "Turn The Page". On realizing that this would be shit, I decided to bin it.'

Right-click on the image and 'save link as' to download the song, or just left-click it to listen to the song in your browser.

I think Mike Skinner should have finished the song and put it on the final Streets album. It would have made a fitting end to Computers And Blues, even as an instrumental.

Computers And Blues

2011-02-05T13:45:00.005-05:00

The Streets have a new interactive branched narrative film that goes along with the new album, Computers And Blues. It's a pretty cool way to take advantage of the annotation boxes on youtube video players.

If you're interested in what you hear in the Computers And Blues film, you may be interested in listening to the Computers And Blues album, which will be released on Monday the 7th. But you don't have to wait that long, because you can listen to the whole album on the music player below!

I think my favorite song on the album is "OMG", even if it's about dramatic facebook relationship paranoia. It seems to me as though "OMG" is the new "Dry Your Eyes", even though "OMG" has a happier ending.

Low to release new album on April 12th

2011-02-02T19:46:00.003-05:00

Low's new album C'mon will be released on April 12th.

Download the first song "Try To Sleep" by signing up for the mailing list below, or just listen to the song by going to their website.

Endless Hallway unveil new album and video

2011-02-01T16:28:00.004-05:00

Endless Hallway released their new album today. Self-titled, seven songs. The album features a less polished approach than their previous album Autonomy Games, most likely due to them producing it themselves this time. In addition to the song "Brambles", there's a slightly different version of "Magneton" and a drastically different version of a demo they did a few years back that I loved called "Mercy". You can listen to the album on the player below, but it costs $5 to download. The song "Beachwood" is a free download.

The band also has a new video for the song "Beachwood".

Win a print of a Kelly McKernan painting.

2011-01-30T16:15:00.005-05:00

You might remember I wrote about a painting I bought back in July from the artist Kelly McKernan.

She just reached 1,000 fans on facebook, a number that seems pretty crazy to me. Can you imagine having 1,000 people interested in what you do? Anyway, as a way to show her appreciation to her fans, she is generously giving away a print of her painting Coy.

Click on the image of the painting to find more information about the giveaway.

I hope she gets 1,000 more fans from people posting about this giveaway all over the internet, and I recommend you check out her artwork. If you like her stuff, you should become a fan on facebook and enter to win the print.

"Explain My Heart" music video

2011-01-28T19:55:00.003-05:00

There's a new music video for the Saul Williams song I posted about a few months ago.

It's from his new album Volcanic Sunlight, which will be released this year. There's also a new interview on Dazed Digital where I found the video.

You can still download the song "Explain My Heart" for free by clicking here.

New music by Endless Hallway

2011-01-27T23:00:00.004-05:00

According to ReviewRinseRepeat, Endless Hallway, one of my favorite newer bands, has a new album coming out tomorrow. It's the followup to their 2009 debut, Autonomy Games, which as I posted a while back, is a free download if you'd like to check that out. Apparently they've even been selling their new album at recent shows. When I find out how to go about getting the album, I will post about it.

Until then, here's a new song off of it to listen to called "Brambles"

In my opinion it is very reminiscent of Radiohead.

Castaway Piano

2011-01-26T16:31:00.004-05:00

A grand piano was discovered on a Biscayne Bay sandbar in Miami, Florida. Authorities have no plans to remove it.

I want to go record there.

The Streets logo is a lighter.

2011-01-25T21:41:00.005-05:00

I'm a big fan of interesting and creative band merchandise, from the perspective of being a fan and being a future creator and seller of my own band merchandise. Some band merch is wonderfully obvious...

The Streets logo is a lighter with "THE STREETS" printed on it.

Mike Skinner said in a recent video that "The Streets logo is a lighter 'cause we were sitting in Victoria station one afternoon trying to sum up my vibe, and my friend came back... with a Clipper and somehow it seemed to represent my whole life. We later went on to a party and that Clipper got used."

Although the design of the lighter logo has changed with each album, the logo always appeared on the cover of every album. From the second album on, it was always a Clipper lighter. What I didn't know is that on tour, they've been selling the lighters as merchandise. People who have been a fan of the band for a long time possibly have a whole collection, one lighter from each album. Skinner posted a photo today on The Streets website of lighters that are identical to the yellow and blue one on the cover of the new album Computers And Blues.

I think it's a brilliant merch idea. The lighter is sort of a big part of the mythology and aesthetic of The Streets. It's iconic. It's like owning a prop from a movie you love. Even though I don't smoke, I'd love one of those Clippers.

The Streets release Cyberspace And Reds

2011-01-24T23:00:00.001-05:00

The Streets released a mixtape album today called Cyberspace And Reds, which seems to sort of be a companion piece to the soon-to-be-released album Computers And Blues. The Streets mastermind Mike Skinner posted a barcode on his website today, along with instructions to download an iphone app called "mike scanner" to scan the barcode with, and further instructions to also scan the barcode on a "300g tin of tomato soup by a well known brand". Although it has been reported on various sites that the soup brand is Heinz, I assumed it was supposed to be a can of Campbell's tomato soup, as that is a very well known brand, and Mike Skinner has been seen multiple times wearing a t-shirt featuring an Andy Warhol silkscreen of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. After scanning both barcodes, you're able to download the album.

I'm all for games such as that, but not everyone has an iphone or a can of tomato soup handy, so we must get Cyberspace And Reds another way. After some digging I found the album on YouSendIt, where you can download it for free. Then I did a bit more digging and found this SoundCloud player where you can listen to the album without downloading it.

I really like Cyberspace And Reds. Some of the songs on the album are edited versions of ones Mike Skinner has posted on his site previously, and I even recognized one ("Robots Are Taking Over") as a Computers And Blues outtake that he posted on twitter quite a while back. There are several UK hiphop artists as guests on the album, emphasizing the mixtape aspect of the album. I recommend the album to everyone.

The Streets' final album Computers And Blues will be released on February 7th.

Malcolm Kirby Jr.'s Meta Crush EP

2011-01-24T09:55:00.017-05:00

Malcolm Kirby Jr. just released his Meta Crush EP, which contains the two tracks I posted previously and a couple extras, one being a title track, and the other being an extended mix of "Destructive Habits".
Give the EP a listen on the player down below.

This is what it looks like outside the house this morning.

2011-01-22T10:23:00.003-05:00

I love when the snow sticks to the trees like this.

That's the driveway in front, one of the hills that my siblings and I used to sled down when we were kids.

The snow on that tree to the right reminds me of when people make gingerbread houses with frosting as snow.

The railing you can see is about the top half foot of our deck railing sticking out above the snow.

Malcolm Kirby Jr.

2011-01-17T07:49:00.005-05:00

I studied music recording and music theory for three semesters at Finger Lakes Community College. One of the professors there, Malcolm Kirby Jr., gave me bass guitar lessons during all three semesters. He also instructed my jazz ensemble. And during my third semester, he was my audio recording professor, teaching me how to use Pro Tools. Although I could have been a much better student, he taught me a lot of valuable things during my time there, and I'm really glad he was my teacher.

It's somehow been about 5 years since I left school, and Malcolm isn't a teacher there anymore. He now produces for various artists, writes music for movies and television, and still plays bass.

He has a facebook page for his music now, and he's put some tracks on his bandcamp page. Here are two of my favorites. Notice you can download "Destructive Habits" for free.

I think now I need to get him to give me some electronic music lessons.

My Favorite Albums Of 2010

2010-12-31T15:35:00.005-05:00

It's the last day of 2010, and I'm an opinionated music fan with a blog, so it's probably the law that I have to make one of these lists, right?

While there are still plenty of albums I've been meaning to check out this year that I haven't gotten to yet (Massive Attack, the new Gorillaz album, etc.), these albums really stuck out to me in 2010:

I feel like I haven't stopped listening to Crystal Castles or Plastic Beach since the albums came out, so those easily get the top 2 spots on the list. Also honorable mention goes to Barking by Underworld. I also thought Tron: Legacy, Inception, and The Social Network had really great film scores.

The cocking of the rifles, the marching of the feet.

2010-12-28T16:26:00.009-05:00

Today I faintly overheard my big brother, who is visiting for the holidays, talking to my dad at the other side of the house about guns and the inevitable collapse of civilization. I think some degree of survivalism runs in our family. I wanted to experience that conversation, so I walked into the room they were in to find my dad showing my brother some of his rifles. They decided to go out and shoot his Weatherby rifle, which uses .270 Winchester cartridges, and I decided to go along.

As you might remember, this past fall, my dad and I went shooting with my cousin Patrick and his parents. This time was quite a bit different because there's snow and it's freezing out.

We shot at a target printed out on a sheet of computer printer paper, 8.5" by 11", a small image of which can be seen below.

The smaller colored circles on the target are the shots from a range of 100 yards. We each took 3 shots. My dad's shots are signified by yellow dots, my brother's are signified by blue dots, and mine are signified by red dots. My brother and I each missed the target with one of our shots, so you only see two of the small dots for each of us. I'm pretty proud of how close the ones that hit were to the center of the target.

Next we moved back to 200 yards, and my brother and I each took two shots, which are the larger colored circles on the target. Again, my brother's shots are signified in blue and mine in red. With my brother's and my shots, there seems to be a pattern in the relationship between our shots from 100 yards and 200 yards, but it's probably mostly a coincidence. Interesting nonetheless.

Good Old-Fashioned Family Christmas

2010-12-27T17:41:00.011-05:00

I haven't had internet access since Christmas eve, so this is a late Christmas post. I hope you all had happy holidays and also downloaded the new Gorillaz album that was released on Christmas.

I'd like to tell you about some new music-making gadgets I got...

Behringer Reverb Machine RV600

I've wanted this guitar pedal ever since I used the one my cousin Patrick has. I love the "Space" setting.

Now meet my new pocket-sized synthesizers, which I have named Flynn and Floyd.

Korg Monotron - "User Flynn"

Flynn was obviously named after Jeff Bridges' character in the movie Tron. I love the filter on the Monotron, and it's ridiculously fun to play with. Speaking of that new Gorillaz album I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I noticed on the site that the Korg Monotron is one of the instruments they listed as being used on the album.

Stylophone - "Uncle Floyd"

The Stylophone, which is played with a stylus, is probably best known for being used by David Bowie for his hit song "Space Oddity". I thought about naming my Stylophone Major Tom after that song, but I thought more about it and decided I actually don't love the Stylophone playing in the song. I do, however, love the Stylophone part at the end of his song "Slip Away", and so I named it after Uncle Floyd, one of the subjects of the song. I also like the alliteration in Flynn and Floyd. To show you just how much better this Stylophone part is, here's a video of a beautiful live performance of "Slip Away" where Bowie plays the Stylophone at the end of the song:

I wonder if the Stylophone will be one of the objects in David Bowie's new book. Anyway, I know I'll be getting a lot of use out of my new music-making gadgets.

To: Me, From: Me

2010-12-22T07:21:00.012-05:00

I went for a Christmas season mall trip yesterday with my sister and Patrick. On the way there we listened to the Low Christmas album. You should listen to one of the songs from the album while you read this blog entry. It's a cover of the traditional Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy". I love how it is noisy and distorted, yet beautiful.

Speaking of noisy and distorted, we first went to Toys "Я" Us, where I bought a First Act distortion pedal for my guitar. I don't have much guitar pedal experience, and before I bought this one, the only pedal I had was a First Act analog delay pedal, which I love. I think First Act is a really underrated company, and their analog delay pedal sounds so much better than any digital delay pedal I've heard from any other company. It has so much character to it, which is something I really love when it comes to music equipment. Seeing as how so many people use all the same stuff from Line 6, I think it's cool to have something a little different, to stand out a little from the crowd.

I found the Series 3 collectible LEGO minifigures at Toys "Я" Us too, which I was very happy about.

Before I got the Series 2 figures from Borders on Black Friday, I was beginning to think my search for these was a lost cause. I brought my "cheat sheets" that I printed out on Black Friday just in case I found any of the minifigures, but they didn't really help me any this time. My sister and I sat on the floor with a box of the minifigures and my cheat sheet and tried to match the new bumpy codes on the packages up to the dots on the sheet, but we realized most of them didn't match up. I know I printed out the American codes, but they didn't match. A lot of the packages had an extra bump, making it just about impossible to match them to the dots on the sheet. When we were picking out my Series 2 figures on Black Friday, I attempted to feel the figures through the bag, but that was much more difficult than I thought it would be, and I went back to just trying to match up the barcodes. This time since the codes weren't any help, we went back to trying to feel what each of the figures were. It took us over an hour to pick out all the ones I wanted. An hour of sitting on the floor groping little plastic bags of toys while customers and employees walking by gave us very confused looks. I got all of the figures I wanted though!

My favorite from Series 3 is the cyborg space villain, because he's an awesome minifigure and he reminds me so much of Lord Dread.

He's just missing his purple cape and cutlass, which are things I have in my LEGO collection. Old friends of mine in the internet LEGO community might remember that many years ago I made some LEGO Captain Power stuff.

So I'm doing quite well at catching up with the LEGO company on the release of these figures. Now I just need to get the ones I want from Series 1, and Series 4 still won't be out for a while.

Besides that, I bought some shirts. One from a store called All Around The World which had a section of shirts made from artists in Thailand I believe. I also bought some really nice quality blank shirts from H&M to work on the prototypes for my Jacob's Shadow t-shirts. I'm excited about finally getting around to doing that, and looking through the shirts in All Around The World was inspiring.

Since depending on how fast you can read, "The Little Drummer Boy" might be over now, listen to this other song from Low's Christmas album, called "Just Like Christmas". Now since you won't be reading, you can really pay attention to the lyrics of this one, which I think are clever and cute.

How do we refer to the last decade?

2010-12-20T16:52:00.007-05:00

Today a friend of mine posted a facebook status that said, "Has anybody figured out what to call the last decade yet? The Zeros?, 2000s? The '00s? I think this needs to be settled."

It reminded me of a Ian Svenonius interview I heard from 2006 after his book The Psychic Soviet was published. I'm paraphrasing here, but in the interview, Svenonius talked for a little bit about how the first decade of a century is generally forgotten by history because it is rarely referred to since no one knows what to call it. He said that in the late 20th century, he told people to get done what they needed to get done before the 21st century started, because until we figure out, universally, what to call this decade, everything you do during it will be forgotten in the long run.

He referred to the last decade as the oh's, and I like that. I guess that would make the first decade of this century in particular the twenty-oh's. It makes sense to me since people refer to the individual years with the word "oh". For example, '05 is pronounced oh-five and '08 is pronounced oh-eight. This is the only decade of a century where any year's pronunciation includes the word "oh". Just as 1925 is pronounced nineteen-twenty-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Nineteen-twenties. 2005 is pronounced twenty-oh-five. Drop the "five" and you get the name of the decade. Twenty-oh's. It's not perfect, since you can't refer to it with numbers, but it should be simple enough writing "the oh's".

"2000's" doesn't work in my opinion, because it makes it sound like you're talking about the entire century, much like saying "the 1900's" or "the 1800's".

So my vote goes for "the oh's" and more specifically "the twenty-oh's" for the universally accepted name of the last decade.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie

2010-12-18T06:38:00.004-05:00

I was just seeing if you were paying attention.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie

2010-12-18T05:56:00.004-05:00

I've been a fan of this video for years, but I totally copied Austin by putting it on my blog.

Shortly after finishing work on his album "Heroes", David Bowie was invited to be a guest on Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, because Crosby's children were fans of Bowie. It was Crosby's last television appearance, as he died just a month after it was filmed, coincidentally on the very same day that "Heroes" was released. The special aired several weeks later on Christmas Eve 1977.

There's a rather interesting Washington Post article from a few years ago about how Bowie didn't even want to sing the song until the "Peace On Earth" bit was added.

I apologize. I didn't mean to be a downer with all that death stuff and "Bowie didn't even want to sing the song" stuff. I just wanted to give the video some context.

The Making Of Hell

2010-12-16T21:54:00.004-05:00

If you enjoyed that music video I posted the other day, and thought it was as clever as I thought it was, you may want to watch this "making of" video:

Like I said the other day, the new album by The Streets, Computers And Blues, will be out on February 7th, 2011.

"Going Through Hell" by The Streets

2010-12-14T21:08:00.004-05:00

The music video for The Streets' new single "Going Through Hell" is really creative.

The album Computers And Blues will be out on February 7th, 2011.

UPDATE: Watch the making of this video.

"In Ruins" featuring Brian Cox

2010-12-12T02:51:00.009-05:00

I remixed a Fol Chen song called "In Ruins". My remix features actor Brian Cox. You might know him from such movies as Braveheart, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, X2, Troy, and Manhunter. Click on the image of Mr. Cox below to visit my facebook music page and listen to the remix.

Or listen to and download the remix with the SoundCloud player below.

my m&m's - personalized chocolate candies

2010-12-11T19:25:00.003-05:00

It was only a matter of time before I became a sellout.

Free live EP from Low

2010-12-08T19:35:00.005-05:00

As a holiday gift to their fans, one of my favorite bands, Low, released a free EP today called Live At Eindhoven. Backed by an organist/keyaboardist, percussionists, and a full choir, the band recorded the EP in St. Catherina Church in the Netherlands on January 22, 2009.

The first two songs on the EP, "Monkey" and "Silver Rider" were almost definitely included because Robert Plant's new project Band Of Joy recently covered both of the songs for their self-titled album released earlier this fall. As great as Robert Plant is, I think the original Low versions of the songs are far superior.

Live At Eindhoven is a perfect example of the stripped down yet somehow lush arrangements, and beautiful vocal harmonies that Low is known for.

Low is also known for their holiday spirit, having recorded and released a Christmas album in 1999 and another Christmas themed vinyl single called Santa's Coming Over in 2008. The glittery cardboard sleeve of the Santa's Coming Over record even had a punch-out snowflake tree ornament. They go out on a Christmas tour next week to support the vinyl reissue of the 1999 Christmas album.

You can download the Live At Eindhoven EP at Pitchfork for absolutely free by clicking on the EP cover below.

Low's new studio album, C'mon, will be released in early 2011.

The drum sound of Jimmy Eat World's "Disintegration"

2010-12-08T16:15:00.007-05:00

My favorite Jimmy Eat World song is "Disintegration", which they released on their Stay On My Side Tonight EP. I always found the drum sound in the song to be fascinating.

I love when musicians get "outside the box" creative, either in the studio or on stage, and I love finding out what creative and experimental techniques they used to achieved certain sounds. It's inspiring.

Today on the band's twitter account, they posted a photo of when they recorded the the drums for the song five years ago.

As you can see, it's a pretty interesting setup, and there were 4 drum sets being played at the same time to get the huge drum sound in the song. The drummers from left to right in the photo are the producer Mark Trombino, Jimmy Eat World drummer Zach Lind, At The Drive-In and Sparta drummer Tony Hajjar, and Jimmy Eat World singer/guitarist Jim Adkins.

Free Download of "Not In Love"

2010-12-04T17:54:00.002-05:00

I wrote in my previous entry about Robert Smith singing on a new version of Crystal Castles' cover of "Not In Love".

You can download the mp3 for free at both Stereogum and Slicing Up Eyeballs.

Crystal Castles' "Not In Love" sung by Robert Smith

2010-12-01T19:33:00.005-05:00

The second Crystal Castles album has been one of my favorite albums from 2010. One of the songs on the album is a cover of the 1983 song "Not In Love" by the band Platinum Blonde. Although I'm not a fan of the original version of the song, I immediately loved the cover by Crystal Castles, sung by main songwriter Ethan Kath. I guess it's been around for about a month, but I only just found out the other day that there's an alternate version of the Crystal Castles version with lead vocals by Robert Smith, frontman of The Cure. I can't adequately communicate with words how much I love it. I'm a big fan of Robert Smith, and his voice fits so perfectly with this song that it gives me chills. I also love that it keeps bits of Ethan Kath's vocodered voice as background vocals. Take a listen to the song, you won't be disappointed.

The single is being officially released on December 6th.

UPDATE: If you want to download a free mp3 of this song, click here.

Mike Skinner And The Technological Void

2010-11-30T10:45:00.006-05:00

Over a year ago there was talk of a new album by The Streets, a British hiphop project started by Mike Skinner. You may have heard that David Bowie likes The Streets, but I'm not sure where you would have heard such a thing. It is slightly less known that I am also a fan of The Streets. Needless to say, The Streets' music is pretty awesome.

I had been following Skinner's updates on his site and on twitter for a while, hoping for news about the new album, titled Computers And Blues, but then he suddenly seemed to disappear completely from the internet on October 18th, 2009.

Exactly one year later he reappeared on twitter with a link to his newly designed website. There's a ticker on the top corner of the page, counting down to February 7th, 2011. That's the date Computers And Blues will finally be released. The site's basically in a blog format with written entries and video blogs which featured Skinner answering questions asked by his followers on twitter. It didn't take long before he started getting really creative and sometimes answering them in the form of songs and posting other songs as well. I've been really enjoying everything he's posted so far, and here's one of my favorites:

Autonomy Games by Endless Hallway, for free!

2010-11-30T09:49:00.009-05:00

I made an entry in August about Endless Hallway releasing a new song, with a link to a free download of it.

Today on twitter, they said that there's going to be a new album in Spring 2011 (another album on the list of music I'm looking forward to next year), and you can download their debut album Autonomy Games for free.

Click on the cover art to download the album.

If you want to hear one of the songs from the album first, here's one of my favorites, called "Shallows":

If you like the album and you want it on CD, you can get it for the ridiculously low price of $3.64 on Amazon.

The blackest Friday there ever was: The Revenge!

2010-11-27T11:51:00.003-05:00

I forgot a valuable part of the Black Friday story until just now. It has to be told.

Throughout the night, we witnessed a lot of shoppers that were very zombie-like, who were usually walking around aimlessly. Patrick and I are both amused by really simple things in life, and one thing that often seems to amuse us is mannequins with unintentionally funny poses. I'd say it wouldn't be uncommon, if you were stalking us at the mall, to see us walking through a store laughing at and doing impressions of funny mannequins. At one point during the night, we were in Old Navy, and Patrick pointed at a mannequin that was up against a column and said "That is the most depressing mannequin ever." Then the mannequin moved, revealing itself to be the most depressing live human being ever, and Patrick felt like a huge jerk. At least the depressing girl had a good enough sense of up to date style that she could pass as a mannequin.

The blackest Friday there ever was.

2010-11-26T22:21:00.008-05:00

I wasn't planning on going out shopping for Black Friday. I don't think I've ever experienced it. Thanks to a tip from my cousin Megan after Thanksgiving dinner, I knew that Borders had the collectible LEGO minifigures near the checkout. I really wanted to get them before they sold out, because I've been wanting those minifigures for a long time and I have not been able to find them anywhere. Most the sites on the internet that sell them give you them randomly so you don't have any idea what you're getting, and in some cases limit the number of them you can order to 5 or something. Since there are 16 in each series, that's ridiculous. Anyway, I knew my sister really wanted to go shopping on Black Friday because she's also never experienced it and loves shopping. We talked about it half-jokingly at first and then somehow it became a real plan where my cousin Patrick and his girlfriend and my sister and I were going shopping at 1 AM. I figured not going out on Black Friday is kind of like staying inside during the apocalypse or during a zombie outbreak. It's probably the smartest thing to do, but you're missing out on a unique experience. I wanted to have that experience at least once.

So we printed out a list of the special opening times for the stores in the mall, and I printed out the bardcode "cheat sheets" for the collectible minifigures, and we were on our way. First stop was Toys "Я" Us. We didn't have any problem on the drive there or with getting a parking space. We walked up to the entrance and noticed yellow caution tape that we could tell used to hold a line of people, but had long before been trampled over. I was using the apocalypse scenario as a metaphor, but at that point the look of the entrance of Toys "Я" Us looked kind of post-apocalyptic. Immediately upon entering the store, I felt extremely judgmental as I witnessed all of the people in the crowded store, before realizing that I was one of those people. Still, we seemed to have a different mindset than everyone else, almost like we were just witnessing the events of the night. I realized the worst thing about Black Friday is probably waiting in line for the checkout, because I'm serious when I say that the checkout line wrapped completely around the interior of the store, and that is a huge store. There wasn't anything any of us really wanted, at least not enough to wait in that leviathan of a line. As we were walking empty handed back to the car, I declared that some aspects of Black Friday seemed underwhelming, and other aspects seemed overwhelming. The rest of my fellowship agreed and we journeyed to Carousel Mall.

It was pretty strange to be in the mall in the middle of the night. I've talked with friends before about how it might be fun to be locked in the mall over night or something, but this wasn't anything like that would be. It was actually not too far off from being like any normal day at the mall because there were people everywhere, and except for the lack of sunlight coming through the skylights, there didn't seem to be any evidence of it actually being night time. We went to various stores throughout the night, going to each one we wanted to go to just after it opened to avoid having to wait in lines outside the stores. Since there wasn't any specific items or deals we were going for in the stores, it didn't matter if other people got to them first. Everything was surprisingly casual. Like I said, it just seemed like any other day at the mall. I didn't witness any fights, and no one was even pushy or rude. Is Black Friday not nearly as intense as the media makes it out to be, or do I somehow live in a place surrounded by some kind of enlightened beings that only consume in peace? We actually witnessed a few stores opening, and there weren't lines outside them! The employees just opened up the gate things at the entrances, and customers very casually walked in one at a time at the pace of rainwater dripping off leaves after a storm. The only stores that seemed to have lines and heightened security were the electronics stores. Most of the stores didn't even have very long checkout lines.

Most of what I bought wasn't even for sale, so it kind of was like a regular mall trip to me, just at night. I got some new long sleeve t-shirts that were for sale, a Darth Vader sweater that wasn't for sale, and of course...

Collectible LEGO minifigures. When we got into borders, which was our last stop in the mall, I went straight up to the checkout to check out the LEGO figures. A young woman at the cash register asked me if I was ready to checkout and I told her "No," and that I was looking at the LEGO figures. All they had were Series 2 out of the 3 series available, but that was much better than nothing.

Patrick noticed another box of them a little ways away from the checkout so I went over there to avoid feeling weird about the young ladies at the registers watching me match the barcodes on the packages to the barcodes on my "cheat sheet". I was making a pile of the figures I wanted next to the box, and a couple in their 20's walked up and the women picked up one of the figures I had already selected. I said "Oh, those are ones I already picked out for myself." and she set it down and apologized. I told her that she didn't have to apologize because I'm just a crazy person, and then I made an offer where if they wanted any specific figures, I could find them for them with the "cheat sheet." They immediately walked away, clearly weirded out by me and my weird display of weirdness. It was really kind of difficult to match up the barcodes, but after a while I was successful in finding all the figures I wanted. After hanging out and looking at stuff in Borders for a while, we decided to make our way back home.

I can say for certain, now that I've held it in my hand, that the tiny minifigure trophy the karate guy figure is holding is the cutest LEGO piece I have ever seen.

How to make some computer technologies of your own and become an internet celebrity.

2010-11-25T01:00:00.001-05:00

I'm very proud to announce that our special guest speakers today are the esteemed Dr. Steven Brule and the rakishly good looking Mr. Kristofer Straub.

Bowie: Object

2010-11-23T23:21:00.009-05:00

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of David Bowie. I love reading about his music-making process on my favorite albums of his, and two of my favorite books I own are The Complete David Bowie and Bowie In Berlin: A New Career In A New Town. While the authors of those books did an amazing job scouring resources for information (including from the mouth of Bowie himself in interviews) and presenting it in an organized, unbiased way, for a long time I've thought it would be interesting if David Bowie wrote a book about his music and his creative process. The 2008 compilation iSelect was accompanied by liner notes, written by Bowie, about the songs included. It was incredibly interesting, and I found myself wanting notes written by him like that about all of his other songs. I don't know if that will ever happen so I'll have to stick to using the books I linked to above.

While Bowie hasn't released any new music since his 2003 album Reality, and doesn't seem to be returning to music anytime in the near future, he's apparently been keeping himself very busy with painting, sculpture, writing, and of course spending time with his family.

A few months ago there was news of a book he's been working on called Bowie: Object. Even thought it's not a book specifically about his songs, it should be at least as interesting. It seems to be a picture book containing photographs of a collection of objects (100 of them) that give insight into his life and creative process. According to a news post on Bowie's website, the photographs in the book are "annotated with insightful, witty and personal text written by Bowie himself." The book is the first in a series written by Bowie, according to his literary agent Andrew Wylie. Bowie is to due to deliver the finished book to Wylie in December, but as far as I know, there is not yet a publication date.

That news post appeared after Publishers Weekly leaked the books existence. As soon as the confirmation hit the official Bowie website, the news spread fast. One article by a seemingly very judgmental Tim Adler condescendingly said, "That, apparently, qualifies as a book these days." I guess book journalists can be even bigger snobs than music journalists. Does it have to be a novel to qualify as a book? I, for one, think it sounds fascinating, and am looking forward to acquiring a copy.

I wonder if a deck of Oblique Strategies cards will be one of the objects or if that's too obvious.

Christmas, Consumerism, & CousinBand

2010-11-22T23:54:00.001-05:00

I haven't updated in quite a while. I've been trying to keep myself busy with my various creative endeavors.

I was at the mall recently, and it made me think about how I love the mall around Christmastime. Maybe I'm a stereotypical American consumer, but I realized a big part of the Christmas experience for me is going to the mall and just taking in that atmosphere. Thinking about it made me want to get out my favorite Christmas album and watch classic Christmas movies. I'm making myself wait until at least after Thanksgiving.

Today my uncle Adam was in the area on business. Some relatives went out to dinner with him. I couldn't make it to dinner, but I made it to my cousin Megan's for dessert afterward. We had a big birthday cake to celebrate the birthdays of Megan, Patrick, and Adam, because they all have birthdays this month. Adam asked me about my music and if I had anything close to being done, and I replied, "Nope! Not yet!" or something along those lines. We talked a little bit about CousinBand, which I told him about last year when he visited.

CousinBand is a music project between some of my cousins on my mom's side of the family and myself. We had always half-joked about starting a band together since we're all musically inclined in one way or another. We decided to really go for it, but it's really more of a collaborative music project between us rather than a band. No one has a specific role. So far I'm the only one who has contributed anything (only one song so far, with no vocals or lyrics), but Patrick and Megan have been working on some stuff. It seems like it's finally happening, and I'm excited about it. We have to get some of our other talented cousins in on the action, because I'd really love to work with them, and I think the more ideas thrown into the mix, the more interesting it will be.

My GERTY Halloween Costume 2010

2010-11-04T17:27:00.012-04:00

Every year for the past 3 or so years, my cousin Megan has had a Halloween party. Megan made a theme for this year's party: movie characters. I came up with the ideas for everyone in my family going to the party. My parents were Nurse Ratched and McMurphy from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. My sister was Ellen Ripley from Alien. Her costume was really cool. She borrowed a real flight suit, bought an actual Nostromo patch, and she and I (with the help of my dad and his tools) heavily modified an Iron Man 2 Nerf gun to make something resembling Ripley's flamethrower. Since I haven't gotten really into preparing a costume in many many years, I decided to get really into it this year. I had a few ideas, but after I had this idea, I couldn't not do it. I decided to be GERTY from the movie Moon, one of my favorite movies from the past few years.

Growing up, I was really into science fiction and robots. Building a robot or a robot costume out of cardboard seems like a pretty common experience for kids that were into science fiction. Although I remember spending a lot of time making things out of and playing with cardboard boxes when I was a kid, I don't recall ever making a robot. When I thought of the idea to be GERTY, I realized it was my chance to finally have that experience.

I spent several weeks brainstorming how I was going to make the costume, creating plans for it, and acquiring the materials needed. I wanted it to be a little more special than just a cardboard box strapped to my torso, so I decided I needed to make the screen and the camera "eye" light up.

Here's my sister and me as Ellen Ripley and GERTY.

Here's a view of just the costume without it strapped to me. I couldn't read one of the post-it notes, so I just amused myself by writing a grocery list with space and moon related items. Freeze-dried ice cream, half-moon cookies, and Tang. Notice the eye is lit up.

Here's a photo better showing that the screen is also lit up. It showed up much better in the dim lighting where the party was.

One of my favorite details on the actual GERTY is his cupholder with the cup. I made a stencil to put the Lunar Industries logo on the cup. The cup is held into the cupholder with magnets, so it can easily be taken out of the cupholder.

There was a costume contest. Of the three categories, my sister won "Best Overall", and I won "Most Original/Creative" and "Most Effort/Detail".

Gluten-Free Saul Pancake Williams

2010-10-27T01:08:00.004-04:00

I recently wrote about a new song by Saul Williams, one of my favorite creative people.

Saul was featured in a video on Soul Pancake, the philosophical website started by actor Rainn Wilson and friends. You can watch on the site by clicking here, or watching in the embedded player below:

Although I don't share all of the same beliefs as Saul, this video is quite interesting. I particularly found it interesting when he talked about deep breaths being the relaxing aspect of smoking cigarettes. When he was talking about an innermost power as opposed to a higher power, it reminded me of my own beliefs about many people maybe giving too much credit to God and not enough credit to people. I have faith in the potential of myself and the potential of others.

Pretty Hate Machine cover artwork reimagined.

2010-10-26T01:33:00.004-04:00

Nine Inch Nails' 1989 debut album, Pretty Hate Machine was remastered and is being reissued.

Although it's far from being my favorite Nine Inch Nails album, I really like the new cover of the album. Trent Reznor asked his creative director Rob Sheridan to reimagine the original Pretty Hate Machine cover, getting rid of the pink and changing the font. Here's what Mr. Sheridan came up with:

Bitchfork.

2010-10-24T00:17:00.005-04:00

After I get into an album for the first time, or after I get into an album again after not having listened to it in quite a while, I often like to read reviews of it. I generally don't have much respect for critics, but for whatever reason, I still like to read what they have to say. When it comes to reading reviews of albums I like, I usually disagree with just about everything the reviews say.

One website I have read many album reviews on is Pitchfork. They have a lot of pretentious reviews by writers who try way too hard to be clever. The reviewers often start with a metaphor of some kind that they loosely connect to how they feel about the album, and then go on to give their thoughts on the album before bringing the metaphor back for their conclusion. They also often use puns based on the band's name, the album's name, the song titles, or the song lyrics to try and get their points across. Sometimes though, they avoid actually coming out and clearly saying anything at all about the album and rely on other tricks to show you how incredibly clever they are...

Tonight I listened to Tool's album Lateralus for the first time in a few years, and afterward decided to read a few reviews. Upon visiting Pitchfork, which gave the album a 1.9 out of 10, I found probably the most pretentious thing I've ever read.

Man tries to kill spider, causes explosion in bathroom.

2010-10-23T12:23:00.006-04:00

This article is a few months old, but it amuses me seeing as how I regularly have to fend off spiders.

My favorite part is:
"We're not entirely sure whether the spider got away or not but there was no sign of it at the scene."

Random thoughts.

2010-10-21T18:20:00.006-04:00

Firstly, Bandcamp is hiring. If anyone is qualified and interested, maybe you should apply. I have only good things to say about that website, and their little job application "game" is an interesting idea.

Secondly, according to Yahoo! TV, Community is in danger of being canceled. Although I don't think the danger is that great at this point, the show could definitely use some more viewers. It's one of my favorite shows, and I definitely recommend it. Here's a trailer for it that NBC released before the show started.

This scene is one of my favorite clips, and the paintball episode was one of television's finest half hours. It's also worth mentioning that Ken Jeong from The Hangover plays one of the main characters, Señor Chang. He's hilarious every single second he's on screen.

Thirdly, although I'm not completely sold on the idea, I think the idea of Jon Hamm being cast as Superman/Clark Kent in the new Superman movie is an interesting one, and has the potential to be amazing. I certainly don't have any better ideas myself.

Creationism

2010-10-17T19:21:00.006-04:00

I bought LEGO Creationary today. I've been wanting to get the game for a while now, especially after the Penny Arcade comic and Gabe's news post about it. Todd and I played it for a few hours and it's a lot of fun. The different difficulty levels of the cards don't seem very accurate though. Even the "easy" cards were really difficult, and I've been building with LEGO for over two decades.

The booklet of rules instructed to photograph models you're particularly proud of before taking them apart, and so I took a photo of the lawnmower I built. As you can see, it was pretty heavily based on the image on the card.

The wheels and axels aren't actually attached but held in with friction. I didn't want to use the tires that came with the game. After building the lawnmower, I noticed there was an example of one on the box for the game, and my lawnmower was way better than the one on the box.

After we finished playing, I was fooling around with the pieces and made Wall-E from memory. Having looked at an image of him now, I'm quite impressed with how accurate my LEGO version is.

I definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes board games and LEGO.

The Cheesecake Factory

2010-10-16T16:15:00.002-04:00

Today I went there for the first time in my life.

I think I'm in need of medical attention.

Late Night, with Shawn Smith and Happy Chichester

2010-10-15T15:48:00.001-04:00

Shawn Smith made an announcement a month or so ago on facebook that his band Brad would be playing on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, and that if you're "flipping through the channels... and see a large bear fronting a band," that it would be him.

I know of Shawn Smith mostly from his work with Greg Dulli, in his bands The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers, which are two of my favorite bands. I am not that into Shawn Smith's own bands, except for a few Pigeonhed songs, like "The Full Sentence":

There's also a Pigeonhed song from over a decade ago that there's a really wellknown remix of, which I can guarantee you've heard before, even if you didn't know what the hell it was.

Regardless of me not really caring for his band Brad, I wanted to see that large bear on television. I waited patiently until the night of the performance, trying my best not to forget about it. Fifteen minutes or so before I figured the band would go on, I went to my television to tune in to the show and wait. I was having technical difficulties due to the satellite signal or something, and missed the performance.

I finally got around to watching the Late Night episode today. Since that episode is only up on the site until the 27th, and you might not want to watch the full episode anyway, here's a youtube video of just the performance:

I seem to have a talent for recognizing voices, and as soon as the chorus began on the words "stay low," I was thinking "Hey, that sounds like Happy Chichester singing backup vocals." Sure enough, a bit later they showed a closeup of him playing keyboard and singing backup. For being behind a keyboard at the back of the stage and just being a backup singer, he sure got a lot of camera time and closeups throughout the performance.

Harold "Happy" Chichester has also worked with The Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers. In fact, he and Shawn Smith were in the first Twilight Singers album, Twilight As Played By The Twilight Singers quite a bit, and sang together on some of the songs. Here's a song called "That's Just How That Bird Sings" where Greg Dulli, Shawn, and Happy all sing:

Shawn Smith's voice is the first you hear, off to the left, and Happy Chichester's voice is the second one you hear, off to the right. I'm sure you can hear why I love their voices. It was cool seeing them on a television show, even if it was actually on the computer.

Annual Halloween Party, Annual Todd

2010-10-14T16:39:00.006-04:00

I wrote an entry about being excited about Halloween this year and trying to make it special. My cousin Megan is having her annual family Halloween party on the 30th, and this year I'm actually putting some effort into my costume. I've been working pretty hard on it, and it should be pretty cool, but for now I'm keeping it a secret. Look forward to seeing it though, because after the party (maybe even the day of Halloween) I'll definitely be writing an entry all about it, with photos!

This weekend I'm going over to my good friend Todd's house. I realized the other day that I haven't hungout with him in a year. The last time we hungout was the weekend of the AFI concert last year. In fact, when we hangout this weekend, it will be exactly a year after that concert, as it was on October 16th 2009, and October 16th 2010 is this Saturday. Time goes by really fast.

The NBC Thursday night shows are on tonight. I'm looking forward to the live episode of 30 Rock. Now I'm going to go take a nap until the shows are on. :)

Options - 100 Different Spellings

2010-10-13T12:20:00.001-04:00

My friend Brian Asbury recently released the first album, 100 Different Spellings, from his latest music project, which he calls Options.

I met Brian almost 4 and a half years ago when Patrick and I were visiting some relatives in Cincinnati, Ohio. My aunt basically set up a "play date" between us and Brian. He came over for maybe a couple of hours and we talked about music the whole time. Over the years since then, we've stayed in somewhat sporadic contact through social networking sites and e-mail correspondence.

Brian has previously played with various bands and released a few solo albums, but he wanted to try something different this time. He described Options to me as "a networking tool for myself and the musicians I've worked with on many occasions." My cousin Kelly Klein has been a frequent collaborator of his, and she was one of the collaborators on 100 Different Spellings. Her voice can be heard on several songs. Her sister Caitlyn Klein (also my cousin) created the beautiful album cover seen above as well as the digital booklet that comes with the album when you download it.

The music on 100 Different Spellings flows from track to track and is meant to be listened from front to back. A lot of the music comes off as a collage rather than songs, with Brian being the collage artist with his role as producer. Although there are separate tracks, moods, and musical ideas that could be referred to as songs, the project effectively blurs the lines between easily definable endings and beginnings, aside from the obvious beginning of the album and obvious ending of the album 33 minutes and 41 seconds later. This concept doesn't sit well with all listeners, challenging beliefs as to what constitutes as music. The album was described to me by one listener as "just noise" since there was no beginnings or endings.

I enjoy the album quite a bit, having listened to it three times already, and I hope I get to collaborate with Brian sometime, maybe on a future Options album.

For the time being, Brian is offering the album for free, but you can pay what you want for it. He has it on Bandcamp. You can download 100 Different Spellings by clicking on the beautiful artwork above, or you can listen on the Bandcamp music player below.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://100options.bandcamp.com/album/100-different-spellings"&amp;amp;gt;100 Different Spellings by Options&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

ExplainMyHeart, a new song by Saul Williams

2010-10-12T12:03:00.011-04:00

Apparently, Saul Williams is releasing a new album in early 2011. I seemed to be one of the three people on the whole internet talking about it. That changed when Mr. Williams made a cryptic post on his facebook page with the phrase "De-code My Heart" along with a link called "Volcanic Sunlight".

For reasons unknown to me, I immediately went to youtube and searched for both phrases, and a video came up with one of the images from the Volcanic Sunlight website. It said the video was uploaded "one hour ago". I pressed play, and a song started playing. It was unmistakably the voice of Saul Williams in the song. When the song finished playing, I noticed there was one play on the video. I was possibly the first person on the entire internet to watch it. Here's the video, which is the still image accompanied by a wonderful new song.

It sounds very different from his older music, but I like it a lot.

The percussion in the song made me immediately remember an old Wired magazine interview from November 2008 (almost two years ago now) which was a year after he released his last album. He mostly reflected on that album, but he also talked about some of the newer material that he was working on.

"The focus of the new album is percussion. For all intents and purposes, it’s a discussion of percusson. If I have to label some of the songs, maybe some are dance punk, dicso-y, or prog-rockish, but I really don’t know how to categorize it. Some of it makes me think of De-Loused in the Comatorium, The Mars Volta’s first album — there’s a lot of live instrumentation with a hip hop filter. I lived for a year in Brazil as a teenager, and percussion was always present in my appreciation for music, but not necessarily in my music. So that’s where my head is at."

I imagine he was talking about the album Volcanic Sunlight.

You can download the song "ExplainMyHeart" for free by clicking here. I recommend it. As I said, it's a wonderful song.

UPDATE #1:
It turns out one of the images was a code that needed to be decoded by some fancy device apparently known as a "smartphone" to give you the url to download the song. I have never owned a cellphone, so that all sounds like another language to me.

I also found out that the song or a previous version of the song was featured in a video from over a year and a half ago that I've never seen called Saul Williams: Writer In Residence on Current TV. It's kind of shocking how something can exist for so long right under our noses without us knowing about it.

Update #2:
Saul Williams retweeted one of my tweets regarding my excitement about his new album. :)

Turtle Eclipse Of The Heart

2010-10-12T07:20:00.004-04:00

Being a lifelong fan of awesome LEGO stuff and robotic turtles, naturally I loved Peter Reid's and Simon Burfield's turtle factory.

It gets better. The machinery and conveyor belt move! Watch this video:

Columbus Gay.

2010-10-11T12:10:00.001-04:00

Today is Columbus Day.

About 518 years ago, three ships mistakenly sailed to the wrong continent, the passengers therefor discovering a completely new continent, which just so happened to be already inhabited by various thriving societies of native people (who are still, after all these centuries, commonly incorrectly referred to as "Indians"). As a result of all this, I don't have to go to work today, and apparently I can buy furniture interest-free.

Today is also National Coming Out Day.

I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that wearing these little Speedos and grinding against each other is an equally valid and successful option.

Iron Maiden & Vexillum

2010-09-30T02:05:00.008-04:00

Two of my favorite LEGO builders are Nannan and Tyler. As if their work wasn't amazing enough when they built solo, they have been known to collaborate on conceptual projects where each of them contribute a series of models with storylines that weave together. Every day, they'd each post at the same time a model from their part of the storyline. I wanted to share their latest collaborative project. Nannan's models are on the left and Tyler's are on the right. Click on the thumbnails to see bigger images and to read their captions, which have some really interesting details themselves.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby

2010-09-28T21:15:00.007-04:00

Ben Folds' new album Lonely Avenue is a collaboration between he and novelist Nick Hornby. Hornby wrote the lyrics, e-mailing them to Folds, who made them into songs.

I've read several articles about the album, but I was surprised that none of the articles mentioned a past collaboration of theirs, because it seems pretty obvious to me to mention that. There's a song from William Shatner's album Has Been called "That's Me Trying".

Ben Folds was the producer and arranger of Shatner's album, which was written in a similar way to how most of Lonely Avenue was written. For most of the songs, Shatner wrote prose poetry and Ben Folds made songs out of it, however, for "That's Me Trying", Nick Hornby wrote the lyrics.

Has Been is an amazing album, and I really love Nick Hornby's lyrics in "That's Me Trying". If that song is any indication of how Lonely Avenue is, I think I'm going to need to check it out.

Was losing all my friends, but I got 'em back.

2010-09-27T01:13:00.007-04:00

Although I think people pay far too much attention to lyrics in music compared to how much attention they pay to the actual music, I love lyrics and the art of lyric writing. I love interpreting the meaning behind lyrics.

I'm a few years late with this one, but I was just thinking about it again today. I've been a fan of the band Brand New for about 9 years. Fans of the band often cite Jesse Lacey's lyrics as their favorite aspect of their music. I've heard many people say that he's their favorite lyricist. I think the lyrics in Brand New's second and third albums are particularly good.

When their third album, The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me came out, I was struck by the first few lines of the very first song, "Sowing Season (Yeah)". The reason I said I'm a few years late is because the album came out in 2006. Here's the song:

Was losing all my friends.
Was losing them to drinking and to driving.
Was losing all my friends, but I got 'em back.

They made me think "Ah, that's clever." because I thought I saw something he did, which I still believe is a possibility, despite the fact that I've never heard anyone else mention it.

Ignore the fact that the second line makes it sound like "drinking" and "driving" are separate actions, because I do believe he is talking about drunk driving. It is probably just worded that way to fit the melody he created. Stuff like that happens in songwriting all the time.

Now, most people who hear the lyrics seem to think he's talking about literally losing friends to drunk driving, which doesn't really make sense if he got his friends back. I, however, think there is a rather clever double meaning which references an older song of theirs called "Seventy Times 7". Here's the song:

"Seventy Times 7" is about betrayal, Jesse Lacey's reaction to the betrayal, and his message to the person that betrayed him. The lyrics in one particular section of the song say,

Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads,
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
And again when your head goes through the windshield.

It seems to me that in "Sowing Season (Yeah)", the friends he lost to drinking and to driving aren't people he literally lost to drunk driving. He's talking about friendships that were ended over betrayal. Not only does the line "but I got 'em back" make much more sense that way, but it then acquires two different possible meanings. The first is that he and the friends made up, so he gained his friends back. The second is that he got them back, meaning got revenge on them. I think the first one is more likely. It's a sign of maturity, getting rid of grudges. It's kind of a way of saying "Remember that first album we made, and that song where I was really pissed off? Well I've grown up since then." That's an especially fitting statement for the first lines of the first song of a more mature album.

That's the way I interpreted the lyrics the first time I listened to the song. I don't know if that's what Jesse Lacey had in mind, but I think it's possible. I like that it's ambiguous that way, so the listener doesn't know if he's speaking literally or if he's talking about betrayal. I'm just surprised I've never heard anyone else interpret the lyrics that way, especially considering the popularity of the song "Seventy Times 7" and people's love for over-thinking lyrics.

I'm quite curious to know if there's anyone else who has interpreted the lyrics the same way that I did.

The Patience And Productions Of Alan Moulder

2010-09-25T18:02:00.008-04:00

Maybe about a year ago now I came across a great little biography about Alan Moulder on triple j. I just listened to it again, and I decided I wanted to post it.

A while back I posted an entry about Steve Albini, and mentioned that I'd love to work with him someday. There's kind of a long list of people I'd like to work with. One of them is Alan Moulder.

Alan Moulder is kind of known for being able to work with musicians that have difficult personalities. He must be really easygoing. Apparently, I like several musicians with difficult personalities, because Moulder has worked on some of my favorite albums.

He produced and engineered The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails. Here's a song from The Fragile called "Just Like You Imagined".

He engineered Loveless by My Bloody Valentine. Here's a song from Loveless called "Sometimes".

And though it's not one of my favorite albums, I think it's worth mentioning he co-produced Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins with his semi-frequent collaborator Flood (another producer I really like). Here's a song from Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness called "Tonight, Tonight".

The first nineteen minutes of the biography or whatever you want to call it is really good because he talks about all three of those albums. Some of the most interesting parts are where Moulder talks about working with Kevin Shields, Billy Corgan, and Trent Reznor, all of whom are known to have rather difficult personalities. There's a lot of great little bits about the making of The Fragile and having to deal with Reznor, and there are little clips of Reznor talking about working with Moulder. I loved hearing about how Reznor had issues when it came to his singing voice, because I do too. It's motivating in a weird way learning that someone you're inspired by has struggled with the same things you struggle with. Anyway, it's a really cool listen if you like any of those albums.

Justify My Bloody Valentine.

2010-09-21T14:55:00.005-04:00

"Justify My Love" by Madonna and "Instrumental B" by My Bloody Valentine both contain a sample taken from a song called "Security Of The First World" by Public Enemy.

I wanted to hear what the Madonna and My Bloody Valentine songs would sound like mixed together, so I made a quick mashup.

I think it sounds pretty cool.

Firearms & Frozen Treats

2010-09-21T12:08:00.006-04:00

I have been sick the past several days with a sore throat. I really wanted popsicles, but we didn't have any, so I had to make some Jell-O popsicles. That entry is from a little over a year ago. Anyway, I made strawberry banana ones with chunks of banana.

On the 12th my dad and I went to a shooting range with Patrick and his parents (my aunt and uncle). I've shot guns only a few times in my life. Although I very much hate the idea of hunting in this day and age, and am generally kind of weirded out by gun nuts, I am really quite interested in guns. Maybe it's the survivalist in me, but I think it's probably a good idea to know how to use a gun, just in case you ever need to use one. You never know when there's going to be a zombie outbreak, or when Skynet is going to attack, or when a group of cowboys or a biker gang is going to ride into town and start causing trouble.

I started with a .22 caliber rifle, which is the only gun I've ever shot in the past. I spent most of the time shooting .22 caliber and .357 caliber revolvers. I loved those. They made me feel like Doc Holliday or something. My dad kept saying I looked like Clint Eastwood. I was hesitant to shoot any of the semi-automatics, but I ended up shooting a 9mm Hi-Point, an AR-15, and an AK-47. I didn't really enjoy shooting the AR-15 or the AK-47 because of the recoil, but I actually liked the 9mm Hi-Point quite a bit. I wasn't a bad shot either. I was no Deadshot or Martin Riggs or anything, but I wasn't bad.

My aunt took some photos of us, but I haven't seen them yet. If and when I do, and if I like them, I'll post some here.

So this is my...

2010-09-12T23:32:00.012-04:00

Spooky, isn't it?

This year's X-Entertainment Halloween Countdown started yesterday. Sometimes I go for long periods of time where I seem to completely forget that X-Entertainment exists, but I've been a fan of the site for probably a decade. It's not necessarily hard to believe, but it's a little bit crazy that it's been over a decade since Matt ate Nad's hair removal gel. That remains, in my mind, one of the highlights of internet culture.

Even before Matt started doing Halloween Countdowns, the holiday was celebrated extravagantly on the site. Sometimes he wouldn't even wait until the month of October to start the extravagance, so it seemed like the countdowns were created as a way to rationalize starting to celebrate early every year. I used to love Madd Matt.

He is not afraid of the dark. He is the dark.

The Halloween Countdown has just started, but it already seems more exciting than the past several years' countdowns did. It seems like Matt's putting more enthusiasm into it than he previously did. Witnessing it is probably not unlike a new parent witnessing their young children experiencing their first few Halloweens and Christmas's. It makes visiting the X-Entertainment site feel like it felt years ago. It's fun. It's making me in the mood for Halloween.

The past few years I had plans for Halloween, but I was let down at the last minute each time, and ended up sitting in my room, watching John Carpenter's Halloween (I'm forced to make that distinction now since Rob Zombie decided to make a terrible remake a few years ago) or Ghostbusters.

I have no plans this year, so I can't be let down. Suddenly the idea of sitting around that night and watching movies by myself sounds fun, when it's not in the context of broken plans. I'm going to go buy some exquisitely delicious Halloween candy, and watch movies, and have a wonderful time. And I'll be counting down the days until that night with X-Entertainment.

Reformatting the planet, and going overboard with links.

2010-09-07T18:13:00.005-04:00

The first season of Penny Arcade: The Series is over, and they haven't started the new season yet, so they've been putting up other programs on PATV.

2 Player Productions (actually comprised of four people. Weird, I know.), the production company that produced the first season of Penny Arcade, produced a documentary about chip music called Reformat The Planet. I originally saw it on Pitchfork TV a while back, but now it's on PATV.

I talked about Tristan Perich in my last entry. He has a few scenes in Reformat The Planet.

Jesse Novak is also in Reformat The Planet. I know of him from the comedy group Olde English. His brother is BJ Novak, the writer of, producer of, and actor that plays Ryan Howard on the U.S. version of The Office. I believe Jesse has written music for The Office at least once. One of the Dunder Mifflin jingles in that episode where the office makes a commercial for the company.

I love the concept of chip music, but I rarely hear any I like. Reformat The Planet is an interesting movie, but I didn't really hear any music that interested me in it. There's a very gimmicky aspect to chip music where regardless of how well composed a piece of music is, as long as someone uses that medium to make music, it's automatically considered as valid as any other chip music. I rarely hear what I consider to be interesting compositions and textures in the medium of chip music. I'm not saying any music is invalid, but I wish people would be more daring. I think that the reason old video game music is so memorable and moving has more to do with the interesting compositions rather than the 8-bit sound.

Tristan Perich's 1-Bit Symphony

2010-08-25T20:14:00.008-04:00

I've thought a lot about ways of presenting music, but usually my ideas are based on new or interesting ways of presenting widely-used, existing formats, such as CD, vinyl, or MP3's.

One of the most interesting ideas I've come across (Tyler from my previous entry linked to it from his facebook page) is this:

"A complete electronic circuit - programmed by the artist and assembled by hand - plays the music through a headphone jack mounted into the case itself."

It's not a recording in the traditional sense of the word. I think it's probably more accurate to think of it as an electronic music box, and I'm fascinated by music boxes.

Another interesting way of looking at it is that it is not a stretch to see the mounted circuit itself as minimalist album art when it's in the context of a CD jewel case like that. I love the idea of physical objects being used in album art rather than just images. This is not only a physical object, but it's what plays the music. The album art plays the album.

Of course, I think one downside to a presentation like this is that it's such an interesting idea that it is in danger of becoming a gimmick and overshadowing the music itself. Although that doesn't decrease the validity or quality of the music, people like me are only talking about the album because of the presentation and not because of the music. Maybe that's alright though, because maybe the music isn't the only part of the art as a whole. Maybe the circuit idea isn't there to compliment the music, but the other way around, and the music is there to compliment the idea of the circuit. That doesn't mean that the music is any less important. It's more like a film score complimenting a film. The music is very important and enhances the film, but the film itself, as a whole, is the most important thing.

You can download a free recording (provided by The Rambler) of the first movement in the 1-Bit Symphony by clicking here.

Free music you could check out, if you were so inclined.

2010-08-21T23:10:00.008-04:00

A band I really love called Endless Hallway released a new song yesterday. They recorded it a few months ago. It's called "Magneton"

The link to download it is here.

I've been into them since there were only two guys in the band and they had only a 30-second teaser of a song on their myspace site. Since then they've released several demos and a great album.

I went with Patrick and his friend Aaron to see Endless Hallway live last year when they were on tour, opening for Gavin Rossdale. They were amazing. It was the best show I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot of shows.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

My friend Tyler is a musician. His music project is called Clamour. I met him on the internet a while back, and since then I have released nothing, and he has released several EP's, making me feel like I'm lazy. He just released his latest EP, which was planned to be a full album. The EP is called "Tower"

The link to download it is here.

To be honest, his music isn't something I'd regularly listen to, but it's interesting. I get the impression he does it for himself anyway rather than for an audience, much like how I approach my own music, even if our respective approaches also differ in many ways.

A document within the download explains that it is his final Clamour release, and that Clamour is now "asleep". He just has a different path in life to go down.

I don't know Tyler very well, but I'm glad to know him at all, and I hope we continue to talk at least once in a while, and that we'll maybe work together on something in the future.

"That guy will do anything for attention."

2010-08-21T23:01:00.006-04:00

I watched one of the new Shark Week shows, and this man let a Remora attach itself to his stomach. I've definitely never seen anything like that before. I thought he should have swam around in the water, to impress all his friends.

"Hey guys, look at me! I'm a shark!"

Everyone's known at least one person who would do just about anything for attention. The least they could do is be creative enough to attach Remoras to their stomach.

Superstition and Astronomy.

2010-08-21T22:32:00.005-04:00

I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious.

Early in the morning on Friday, the 13th, a black cat walked in front of our van. I'm just glad it wasn't Jason Vorhees.

After that, we watched the Perseid meteor shower. It was beautiful. I've always been interested in astronomy, but my terrible vision and refusal to get glasses or contact lenses makes it difficult to take on as a hobby. My fellow meteor-gazers and I witnessed some strange things. At one point we saw a flash in the sky that lasted a couple of seconds. We believe it was a meteor heading straight in our direction, but obviously burning up in the atmosphere before it got to us. At another point we saw a very bright flash of light below the treeline. I have no idea what that could have been, and I have no idea if it was related to the meteor shower. It couldn't have been a meteor hitting the Earth, right? At another point I saw what I believe was a satellite moving slowly across the sky. It was a very faint light.

I'm not actually superstitious.

Disassociate The Art From The Artist

2010-07-19T23:59:00.004-04:00

In response to finding out about the latest morally reprehensible actions Mel Gibson has been accused of, people have stated that they can no longer enjoy any of his movies. One person I know even suggested to her friends that they have a DVD burning in protest of Gibson's behavior.

The concept of a DVD burning is something I find offensive. There are obvious parallels to book burning, which, I was under the impression, was opposed by any person of intellect. I know it's a very common technique in arguments and debates for ignorant people to compare other people to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis, but the parallel actually exists here, doesn't it? It seems to be very common in dystopian literature and films for the oppressive rulers of society to burn books. How can any intelligent person think it's a good idea? In my mind, DVD burning is exactly the same as book burning, if you subtract the romanticism of book burning.

The notion of no longer being able to enjoy Mel Gibson's movies is ridiculous to me, especially considering that, in my opinion, Braveheart is one of the best movies ever made. When talking to this aforementioned person I know, trying to convince her to disassociate the art from the artist, I referenced Phil Spector. Phil Spector was a record producer and songwriter before he was found guilty of the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. I said that even though Phil Spector was convicted of murder, I am very inspired by his recordings. I realize this reference of him might have been lost on this person I know because she might not be aware of what recordings Phil Spector produced or co-wrote. I can guarantee she enjoys at least some of them though, because who the hell doesn't?

If you can no longer enjoy Mel Gibson's movies because of the morally reprehensible things he's done, then I don't see how you could enjoy the recordings of songs produced or written by a man convicted of murder either. That being said, here's a short list of some songs you can no longer enjoy:

You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' by The Righteous Brothers

Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers

Be My Baby by The Ronettes

Try Some, Buy Some by Ronnie Spector

Then He Kissed Me by The Crystals

(Today I Met) The Boy I’m Gonna Marry by Darlene Love

Imagine by John Lennon

Let It Be by The Beatles

Across The Universe by The Beatles

Remora (and her Ornate Eagle Rays)

2010-07-13T13:03:00.004-04:00

I purchased a painting today. I've found various artists on the internet whose work I love. This specific one, Kelly McKernan, I found on flickr when looking at artwork and I fell in love with her work. It's very inspiring. I told myself that one day I'd buy something from her. Yesterday on facebook she posted that she was selling one of her paintings.

It was one I saw a while back and really loved. So I decided to buy it!

I had a delightful conversation with her over e-mail about supporting artists and the importance of a sense of community among artists. I agree with her thoughts on the importance of a sense of community. I used to be a part of various music scenes, and with most of them it seemed more like bands and musicians were competing with each other rather than helping each other out in any way. I didn't understand it.

I was talking about how with a lot of people, their greed creates this double standard where they want people to support them monetarily but they don't want to give their money to anyone else to support them. I, on the other hand, feel that I can't expect anyone to pay for my work if I'm not willing to pay for anyone else's.

I told my mother about my purchase. I knew she wasn't going to approve. She didn't say so, but she obviously thought it was a waste of money. I could tell by the way she was acting. She asked me what the painting was of, as if that would be a factor in making up her mind about whether or not it was worth purchasing. It confuses me how she can think it's a waste of money considering the fact that all three of her children are artists. How are my siblings and I going to make a living if people aren't paying for the work we do? I suppose she thinks it's okay for people to pay us for the work we do, but that we shouldn't pay other people for the work they do. She probably hasn't thought of it like that though. It really devalues parental support when it's so biased. If my parents had another set of children and my siblings and I had a different set of parents, they wouldn't approve of their children paying for the art my siblings and I create.

Anyway, I feel really good about my purchase and am looking forward to being able to hang that beautiful painting on my wall and look at it any time I want. I've been interested in starting a modest art collection, and this will be the first piece in my collection. :)

The Social Network

2010-07-01T23:09:00.003-04:00

I've known for a while now that David Fincher was making a movie about the creation of Facebook, and that Justin Timberlake would play a main character in it. I just found out today though that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are doing the score for the movie.

How is this not one of those weird dreams I have from time to time?

It seems like all of that information should be preceded by the phrase "Last night I had a dream where..."

"Last night I had a dream where David Fincher was making a movie about Facebook, and Justin Timberlake was in it, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross were composing the film score."

Doesn't it make more sense that way?

I really want to see this movie.

Today is my birthday.

2010-06-27T00:45:00.004-04:00

June 27th. I am 25 years old. I know it's a quarter of a century and that's supposed to be significant, but it's not like I've achieved anything in the past few years besides simply not dying. I've been productive, writing my music mostly, but also working on a few other creative projects. Although I'm very proud of a lot of the stuff I've been working on, I haven't really finished anything, and I have a long way to go before I am finished.

I know birthdays are supposed to be a celebration of your life, but it's difficult to care about birthdays when I put so much into not caring about age. When I think about how old I am, I start thinking about how old other people are and comparing myself to them. By the time so and so was my age, they had written and released 3 albums. That kind of thing. And of course that makes me think of all the negative points of my life. The fact that I'm a college dropout who still lives with his parents, hasn't had a girlfriend in years (and I've tried), and I haven't released any music. These comparisons aren't healthy or productive at all, and I'm not any of those people I've compared myself to, and they're not me. That's why I've decided to stop caring about how old I am and about how old other people are. It's just this made up measurement that doesn't really correlate with achievements. It only seems like it does because many people achieve many things at the same ages. They graduate from high school around the same age, and they go to college around the same age, and many of them graduate from college around the same age and get career jobs around the same age. Many of them get married and have children when they're around the same age. And many of these people only do these things because they're looking around thinking "Almost everyone my age is doing this, so I probably should too." Although those generally aren't the people I compare myself to, my point stands.

It doesn't matter how old I am now. I'll achieve something when I'm good and ready. It will take as long as it takes me to finish an album and release it, and although I'm anxious to release something, I'm generally fine with having it take a while for me to do it right.

I scanned a few baby pictures from when I turned 1 year old. I had two parties.

For one of the parties, the neighbor kids all came over. The curly-haired boy next to me is my big brother. I still talk to the two girls to the left side of the photo. They both have husbands and the one on the far left has two children of her own.

For the other party, some of my relatives visited. Between my brother and I in this photo is my cousin Amberly. She loved clowns, and she was the one to pick out the cake. It was revealed years later that I was terrified of clowns. I don't know why it was a surprise, given my facial expression in this photo and the fact that I was being held down at the table by my mother.

I think I was the most adorable baby I've seen. I've decided that if I ever got the chance to use a time machine, what I'd want to do is hang out with myself as a baby. There are plenty of fascinating people throughout history, but there's always a big possibility that if I ever got to know them I might not actually like them as people, but I can't imagine being disappointed by baby Daniel. Even if baby Daniel was boring, absolutely everything he did would be fascinating to me, because he's me, and I'm who he turned out to be.

I can't imagine any person not wanting to spend time with themselves as a baby. I think it's sad we'll never have that chance. If we have children, our children aren't us. Even if we were cloned and we had little clone baby versions of ourselves, they wouldn't be the same. Even just forgetting about the fact that they'd have different experiences than we had, they'd be physically different, including their brain and everything, which would mean they even had a different thought process, because so much of who a baby is depends on their development in the womb. Even if they start with the exact same DNA, there are so many factors that go into a child's development in the womb that there's absolutely no way they could be a perfect reproduction of us.

I had a heart defect when I was a baby, and I think it affected me significantly through the experiences I gained because of it, although I'm not sure how. It must have though. Would a clone of me even have a heart defect? It most likely wouldn't since it was a congenital disorder.

I wonder how a clone of me would turn out to be when he's 25 years old. Where would he be in his life? Would we have anything in common?

Music is a product of its environment.

2010-06-21T23:21:00.002-04:00

Today when I was having my lunch, I needed something to watch, because I have a weird habit where I can't eat unless I'm watching something. Anyway, it needed to be short because I had to start getting ready for work soon afterwords. I found out the TED website had a David Byrne TED talk called "How Architecture Helped Music Evolve". As soon as I saw that title I thought it was going to be along the same lines as the essay "Rock 'N' Roll As Real Estate" in Ian Svenonius' book, The Psychic Soviet.

I've been a big fan of Ian Svenonius for a long time, as the frontman in The Make-Up and his other bands Weird War and Nation Of Ulysses, and as host of the internet music talk show Soft Focus, and for his book, The Psychic Soviet. "Rock 'N' Roll As Real Estate" is probably my favorite essay in The Psychic Soviet. In it, Svenonius argues that there is a direct link from real estate to music. He says that the Punk movement was started when cheap lofts became abundant in New York City. In the early 2000's, real estate was more expensive, so people who started bands couldn't rehearse anywhere. He says that two movements were born out of that inflation: Folk and Electro-clash. More musicians started writing and recording in their bedroom studios, without the use of drum sets taking up their very limited space. There are even a few terms that have places in their names. Arena rock, bar bands, garage bands. Anyway, he explains it all much better than I do, and I definitely recommend his book The Psychic Soviet for this essay and everything else in it as well.

I've never really gotten into David Byrne's music. Obviously he was in Talking Heads, but I've never really been that into anything I've heard by them. And he's worked with Brian Eno, but for some reason I've never gotten around to listening to that stuff. I still find him to be very interesting though. I've seen interviews with him, back from his days in Talking Heads, and more recently. And his Playing The Building project is absolutely fascinating. If you weren't going to click on any of the links in this blog entry, at least click on this one. But really you should click on them all. Haha.

So anyway, I watched Byrne's TED talk, "How Architecture Helped Music Evolve", and expected it to be along the same lines as what I already read in The Psychic Soviet, but it was quite a bit different. Although he was linking kinds of music to places, it was more about how the places' architectural characteristics affected the music and made it what it is, due to acoustics and the aesthetics. Music is a product of its environment and wouldn't make sense taken out of that environment. Polyrhythmic African music wouldn't make sense if you heard it in a gothic cathedral, and the music traditionally heard in a gothic cathedral wouldn't make sense if you heard it in a punk club.

Although he wasn't rehashing what Svenonius already said, the two subjects are most definitely related. What Byrne was talking about was making me think about things I've thought about many times before. About how when I perform live, I'd try to adapt to whatever environment I'm playing in so that my music makes sense there. If I'm playing some punk club, I can play noisier, louder songs and it would fit. If I was playing a coffee shop or open mic night or something, I'd play something more stripped down. I've already thought about all that stuff, but seeing Byrne talk about it made me more excited to try playing many different kinds of environments, and dealing with the challenge of adapting to them. I've decided I'm not going to be limited by the affects of my environment on my music. Not only will I seek out a variety of venues, but I will also try to write and record my music in different environments.

"How being too picky can keep you single"

2010-06-19T08:41:00.000-04:00

That's a headline I just saw on the front page of Yahoo! The line under it says "A dating expert says people are looking for the wrong things, like attractiveness." That's a terrible thing to be telling people. To be fair, the article is really talking about those people who have "types" that they're attracted to. For example, someone who won't date someone who is too short because they like tall guys, or someone who won't date a blond because they like redheads. That is being far too picky, and I've never really understood people that have types they're attracted to. I honestly don't think any height or haircolor is better than another on a girl. I've been attracted to shorter girls and I've been attracted to girls almost as tall as I am, and I'm 6'3". I don't think any haircolor is more appealing than another, it just has to look good on the girl. I guess if someone's attracted to tall guys or redheads, they can't really help it though, and I can't really blame them for wanting to be with a tall guy or a redhead.

None of that is the same thing as attractiveness though. I don't want people getting confused and being convinced they should lower their standards to actually date people they aren't attracted to. The article says that looks are "only skin deep". The headline itself makes it sound as if not being single is more important than being attracted to who you're with. I happen to think looks are very important. If you're in a romantic relationship with them, you need to be attracted to them. If you're going to be marrying them and spending the rest of your life with them, you damn well better be attracted to them. Otherwise there's just going to be problems stemming from the fact that you aren't attracted to them. For example, you finding someone else more attractive, or your spouse feeling insecure because you don't find them attractive enough. Those could lead to cheating on both sides, and just general unhappiness.

I have no idea what the numbers actually are, because how would you ever conduct a poll or a study about it, but I believe there are far more people lowering their standards already (or simply having the wrong standards) than there are people who are always single because they're too picky. There are so many people who just seem terrified of being single that they'll not only date, but be in an extended relationship with just anyone. It's mostly females too that do this. All around I see girls in relationships with total douchebags. I don't like using that term, but what it's come to mean is really the best way to describe the type of guys I'm talking about. And it doesn't stop with just being in a relationship with them. They're marrying douchebags, and having children with douchebags. If they break up with the douchebag, they're so uncomfortable being single that within a week they're with another total douchebag, and they think they're in love. By doing that, they're just making themselves unavailable to better people. The problem here is that they are so desperate to not be single that they aren't picky enough. That seems to me like much more of a pandemic than single 20-somethings walking around, who are mostly only single not through being too picky, but because they actually have standards, and everyone they meet worth wanting to be in a relationship with is already in a relationship with a douchebag.

Gainesville Game Night

2010-06-01T20:53:00.000-04:00

Spent my last night in Gainesville over at the aunt's playing boardgames and eating spinach and artichoke pizza with my brother and Patrick. The pizza was amazing. The games we played were Apples To Apples, Pictionary, and Boggle. It was my first time playing Apples To Apples, which is a fun game, and my first time playing Boggle. I am awesome at Boggle apparently.

My Aunt told me a story about when I was a little kid and she was playing Boggle with my parents and I was sitting with her. When she was trying to write down words on her pad of paper, I was drawing pictures on my pad of paper and I kept nudging her with my elbow, impatiently. She kept saying "Yeah, that's good." but not paying much attention because she was in the middle of a round of Boggle. After they finished playing, one of them suggested that they play Pictionary next, and I said "Noooo!" My aunt explained to me that I'd like it, because it's the game where one person on the team draws a picture and the other person on the team guesses what it is, and I said "I thought that's what we were playing!" I was nudging her with my elbow so she'd guess what I was drawing.

A playground and a lucky purple ball.

2010-05-30T21:37:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we had another lazy day, and I felt like I was wasting this trip, but I couldn't think of anything to do. At one point I just left the apartment, and walked and walked until Patrick called me and asked if I wanted to go get something to eat. We ate at this place that has pressed sandwiches and I got a Ham & Swiss sandwich.

Then we just walked for a while, and came across a park with a playground. The playground was strange. It had a fake rock wall for kids to climb, like the ones they have in sporting good stores sometimes, but it was really short, and I could see over it in places since I'm 6'3". The playground also had strange... ride things I guess you'd call them. I guess they were supposed to be like one-sided seesaws or something, which the whole concept of is incredibly sad. They also reminded me of strange workout machines, and one of them put your body in this sort of thrusting motion. We were playing on them and we looked ridiculous.

Then we walked back, and it looked beautiful out, walking through the neighborhood in the dark. It looked like a whole different country or something.

That night we went minigolfing with my brother. At the counter where you exchange your tickets for a golf club and golf ball, the girl working there had grabbed an orange ball and a red ball, and then she hesitated before picking up a purple ball and stating that it was because it's her favorite color. I picked up the purple ball. The course was pretty run down, and it made it pretty difficult. I got 3 hole in ones though. I was trying to figure out what the plural of "hole in one" was, but I decided on that one because "3 holes in one" sounds like I hit the ball once and made it into 3 holes with that one hit. Also, that's 3 hole in ones out of 17 holes. We skipped one because it was flooded. I guess the purple ball served me well.

On the way back into my brother's apartment, some of the neighbor girls (or maybe only one was a neighbor and the others were her friends or something) who live in the same building were sitting outside on the porch, and they all said hi. Jonathan introduced me to them, and they asked me if I wanted any food because they had tons extra. I wasn't really hungry, but I'm shy, and I for some reason felt like this was an opportunity to meet some people, plus one of the girls was really pushing the food idea on me. So I said yes, and followed her into her apartment where she gave me a plate. After talking with her a bit about music (since she had a keyboard in her living room), the other girls came in and my brother and cousin came in, and we all stood there talking for quite some time. Nice girls.

Movie, Migraine, & Mall, but no Minifigures.

2010-05-27T23:42:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was our lazy day it seems, because Patrick and I didn't really do anything. Today we decided to go to a mall, so we took the bus. Somewhere between when we got there and when I got my delicious lunch (orange chicken, fried rice, and lo mein) I got a pretty bad migraine. I should have seen it coming this morning when my ears were hurting. I haven't had a migraine this bad in quite some time. My sense of sight was really messed up, and my sense of smell was really over-sensitive. My hearing was weird too. Every sound seemed to meld together into one noise that sounded like it was coming from everywhere. So if someone said something to me, it just combined with every other sound I could hear. I try not to let stuff like migraines ruin my day though.

We decided to go to see Ridley Scott's Robin Hood at the theater next to the mall, but it we had about an hour before it started, so we went into the Toys "Я" Us next to the theater to kill time. I was disappointed by the fact that they had none of the collectible LEGO minifigures. There were plenty of awesome action figures though, like for some reason there was a 2-pack of Lex Luthor from the Superman comics and Skeletor from Masters Of The Universe. They looked really cool, but I didn't feel like blowing $30 on a couple of action figures. Patrick and I talked about how one of the main draws of having children is that you'd have an excuse to buy more toys. It would be terrible if your kid wasn't interested in cool toys though. Whereas most parents in toy stores try to convince their kids that they don't really want the toy they're asking for, I'd probably be doing the same except trying to convince them they wanted some way cooler toy. I also don't know how any of that would work realistically since I probably wouldn't want to share my toys with my children. "These are daddy's LEGO pieces, you play with your own." Let's face it, kids don't take the best care of their toys. My LEGO stuff from when I was a kid is in way worse shape than the stuff I've gotten in the past 5 years.

We bought candy at Toys "Я" Us so we didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for candy at the theater. I was disappointed with my choices though, except for the chewy Runtz. Those were delicious and much easier on my teeth than regular Runtz. I snuck the candy in the theater in the elastic waistband of my boxerbriefs. You're welcome for that imagery. When I lived in Canandaigua I used to go to Taco Bell before going to the movie theater, and I'd sneak whole meals in.

Robin Hood wasn't really that great of a movie. It's not like it was bad, but it was pretty ordinary. I honestly think the Kevin Costner version is way better. I wasn't expecting to leave the theater with that opinion. I love the Errol Flynn version and the Disney animated version where all the characters are animals. The new one just didn't seem very much like Robin Hood to me. It's like it had Robin Hood character names, but it could have just been any of those ordinary medieval warfare movies but with some Robin Hood names slapped onto the characters. I hope the sequel is much more Robin-Hood-like.

After that we had frozen yogurt and then took the bus back to my brother's place.

Made my first Gainesville friend.

2010-05-26T10:28:00.000-04:00

Patrick and I wanted to check out the music scene here in Gainesville, so we asked my brother about it. He recommended a few venues to us, and one was a place called Common Grounds. I spent an afternoon the other day looking up the myspace pages of bands playing at Common Grounds this week, and there was one I really liked called Dizzy Arcade. I noticed under their "Influences" section they had some good stuff listed, like David Bowie, The Pixies, and the first band listed was The Twilight Singers. What!? I don't even know anyone else who not only likes them, but who even knows of them. That is, besides Patrick, but I'm the one who got Patrick into them. So it was interesting to find someone who not only knows who they are, but also likes them and is influenced by them. Though it could be argued that you couldn't like a band like The Twilight Singers without being influenced by them.

So anyway, that night we went to Common Grounds, and they were having a karaoke night. Patrick and I didn't perform, and I'm not sure I could have if I wanted to because there is not a smoking ban in Florida, and I am allergic to cigarette smoke. We did watch a bunch of other people perform for a couple of hours though. There were some really great singers. I get the feeling that most of those people aren't in bands either. Rather than be in a band they just go to karaoke night. What a waste.

We went back to Common Grounds last night for the Dizzy Arcade show. We saw a guy who we recognized as one of the band members walking around, and we wanted to talk to him, but we were both secretly worried we wouldn't like him. Haha. But if Risky Business is good for anything (besides the great scene on the train with the Tangerine Dream music) it's teaching you that sometimes you just have to say "What the fuck?" I went over to the guy and he was talking to some other guys, but there was kind of a break in the conversation so I said "Excuse me." And he thought I meant that he was in my way, and I said "Oh no, I wanted to ask you a question." I find that I'm the root of many slightly awkward misunderstandings.

Anyway, after asking him if he was in fact in the band Dizzy Arcade, I told him about how we were visiting from New York, and thinking about moving down here, and about how we wanted to check out the music scene, so I looked up bands playing at Common Grounds and liked his band. He told us he's actually from Rochester. Then we talked about Greg Dulli and The Twilight Singers.

The first act to perform was this guy with an acoustic guitar. I liked the reverb or slight echo he had on his guitar, but acoustic singer/songwriter kind of stuff usually doesn't interest me that much. There are definitely exceptions, but this guy wasn't really one of them. He was good though.

Then Dizzy Arcade performed. I really enjoyed them. I recognized the three songs from their myspace page, and they played a few other songs as well, including a cover of "Darling Nikki" by Prince. Not one of my favorite songs from Purple Rain, but it was great.

Patrick and I weren't really enjoying the next band much, so we decided to go talk to the guy again and then take off. He told us if we move down that maybe we'll play together sometime or hang out, and he'll show us around the area. Nice guy.

Shower window.

2010-05-24T10:24:00.000-04:00

The shower in my brother's apartment has a window, looking out into the living room. Patrick is taking a shower and I'm in the living room. He just waved to me.

Kailee and Gainesville, in that order

2010-05-23T22:37:00.002-04:00

The other day I kind of randomly wrote a poorly put together sentence in French on an old friend's facebook wall, expressing my love for her. Her name is Kailee. She was my neighbor for a long time, and I've known her since she was 4 and I was 6 I think. We spent a lot of time together as children, relating to each other through the shared torment bestowed upon us by our older siblings who were also friends with each other and related to each other through their mutual enjoyment of tormenting their younger siblings. Kailee and I became even better friends when we were in high school, even though we went to different schools for most of that time. Since high school we didn't see much of each other and talked less and less.

Anyway, Kailee doesn't know any French, so she didn't have any idea what the facebook message said. I hadn't seen her in about 4 years (that's insane to think about), but the posting of the sentence that she couldn't even read lead to us hanging out on Friday night. We decided to have a movie night, which was an old tradition of ours that we both missed. We hadn't even had a conversation about movies in years, so as movie fans, I felt like we didn't even know each other anymore, but we spent a while in front of my DVD shelves where we played the "Have you seen this one?" game and the ever popular expansion game "What did you think of it?" I could play that game for hours. We went to her house with a stack of DVD's.

We watched Don Hertzfeldt's "The Meaning Of Life" as she was already familiar with "Rejected" and "Billy's Balloon" and then we watched one of my favorite comedies, "Big Trouble". She seemed to enjoy them both.

After that we went to Wal-Mart and she bought some kind of random items, like a toy alligator or crocodile, some beads, and sharpies. We talked about music, and I brought a Twilight Singers album for us to listen to on the ride. We discussed working on music together in the future. I remember her being an amazing singer, so that should be fun. I always wanted to have a band with her, but I didn't know how to write music back then. Now, it could be argued, I do know how to write music.

We ended the evening with a hug, and a declaration that we'd try to have each other in each others lives more than we have been in recent years.

This morning, Patrick and I met at the airport for the first step of our Gainesville trip. We had a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. The flights were pretty terrible as the seats were uncomfortable, which made our backs hurt, and the changes in atmospheric pressure or whatever got extremely violent with our precious ears. It was extremely painful. Air travel always messes with my ears, but this was by far the worst time. It felt like my head was going to explode. Ever since the first flight this morning, I haven't been able to hear out of my right ear. We spent the majority of the layover eating food. We spent a lot of time sitting in rocking chairs looking out a window overlooking an area that reminded us both of Jurassic Park. We didn't see any dinosaurs, but for the first part of the tour in that movie, the guests didn't see any dinosaurs either. We also spent time watching people as they walked by us, and making fun of some of them without their knowledge. That's always a good time.

We went to dinner with my brother when we got to Gainesville and conversed about various subjects, like stand-up comedy, the evolution involved in the production of a movie, and downloading music. Then when we got back to the apartment, we watched some television.

I don't know what we're doing tomorrow.

What happened to the world?

2010-05-21T16:49:00.000-04:00

I don't think there are any music magazines I really like in general, besides the ones aimed at creators of music, especially engineer and programmer types; magazines like like Keyboard, Remix, EQ. Although I've read plenty of them and admit they do have interesting content sometimes, I dislike magazines like Rolling Stone and Blender. And I dislike Spin.

I noticed that it's the 25th anniversary of Spin, and on their website they have a readers poll about the past 25 years of music. As I was reading the first category "Best Band", I was trying to think about how long ago 25 years actually was, and that's when I realized it was 1985 25 years ago, the year I was born, and that next month is my 25th birthday.

All of the choices available in this poll are ridiculously mainstream, and many of them are choices I don't think belong if we're talking about the best in music from the past 25 years. Choices like the recent Jay-Z hit "Empire State Of Mind" in the category of "Best Song". And there are so many things I think are missing. I'm not even talking about slightly less mainstream bands, songs, and albums either, even though there are plenty I can think of that are better than most of the choices on this poll. What I'm talking about is very popular and amazing things missing, like the album "Disintegration" by The Cure and "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine.

What's even more baffling is the results of the poll so far. According to the readers who voted in this poll, The Killers are the best band from the past 25 years. How does that even happen!? Apparently "American Idiot" by Green Day is the best album of the past 25 years. And I thought the hype surrounding that album 5 years ago had died. So far, the results had me wondering what kind of people read Spin. When I came to the "Best Rap or Hip-Hop Artists" results, I think it might have painted at least a vague picture of what kind of people. I say that because in first place is The Beastie Boys and second place is Eminem. Unless I'm mistaken they're the only two white hiphop artists on the list of choices. I'm not saying either are bad... but the best? In the past 25 years? That's pretty much as long as hiphop has been popular. Do these Spin readers only or mostly just listen to white rappers? Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and Notorious B.I.G. didn't even make it in the top 5. Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy weren't even choices in the poll.

I'm just confused about these results. I think it's probably mostly just a result of people not really putting any thought into their answers, and just picking their favorites. And those favorites being a result of bad taste and limited exposure to music. If there was really no better band than The Killers and no better album than American Idiot in the past 25 years, this would be a pretty terrible era to live in.

I've been really into this band lately.

2010-05-19T07:53:00.000-04:00

"Fuck What You Like" by A.R.E. Weapons.

Although I dislike labeling things, especially music, I think this is a great example of modern punk. While it doesn't have the cliche punk sound, style, or fashion, I think it definitely has a punk sound and style. Despite the simple sound of the song, it really makes me think. It has a wonderful, yet simple message, which I think people could really benefit from. Just do what you do for your own reasons without being controlled by what other people will think of you or what you think other people will think of you. Don't do things based on what you think other people will like; a concept that's definitely important when it comes to any creative endeavors.

I think the lines "Fuck what you like, I don't care what you like. Fuck what you like, I'm living my life" stick out to me especially in the context of the vocabulary used in things I've been noticing lately on the internet. There was a recent change on Facebook that I really don't approve of, where pages no longer have a button you can click to become a fan of whatever the page represents, and instead have a button for you to click to "like" whatever the page represents. It makes things much too black and white in my opinion. I think people already think in terms of everything being black and white, and this just makes it easier for them. Everything is now easily organized into two groups. Things they like, and things they don't like.

Obviously the song is not about that, after all, it has been around for a few years now, but I think it applies to the meaning of the song. Look at the top right corner of the Vimeo video player I embedded at the beginning of this entry. It has a button with a heart symbol on it, labeled "LIKE". If you like the video, you're supposed to press that button to let people know what you like. If that's not irony, I don't know what is.

I was disappointed recently when a few people decided they no longer "liked" my music page on Facebook, because I feel it's like finding out people who you thought once supported you suddenly no longer do. Going from someone who supports you to someone who doesn't is quite a significant change for an action involving one mouse click. Although their actions still upset me, it's really not a big deal. It's not for them, so I don't really care if they like it or not. To them it's not about support. It's about what they like or don't like. I don't care what they like, and what they like doesn't affect how I do things, because I'm doing it for me. It's my life.

David Bowie likes cool music.

2010-05-10T02:25:00.000-04:00

I was just watching a David Bowie interview I've never seen before where he's mostly talking about my favorite album of his, Heathen. At one point he's talking about how it's important to listen to old music as well as new music. He was saying it's okay to listen to The Beatles, but that it's also important to listen to The Streets, which he practically pulled out of the air as an example of an important modern band. I love The Streets, and it's pretty cool knowing David Bowie thinks so highly of The Streets too. It made me smile.

Here's a really good song by The Streets that was around back when the Bowie interview took place:

nnenn

2010-04-14T18:27:00.000-04:00

One of the most creative, prolific, inspiring, and controversial builders in the LEGO community passed away in an automobile accident recently. I didn't really know him, at least not personally, besides knowing he has a wife and two young sons. That's obviously tragic, but since I didn't know him personally, I don't feel like it's appropriate for me to talk about that side of things.

I've been a friend of his on flickr probably for as long as I've had a flickr account (late 2007), which I acquired to share my LEGO creations with members of the community and to look at the creations of the other members that inspire me. I rarely post anything to my photostream, but almost every day I go into my "contacts" section and see what everyone else has uploaded to their photostreams. I've enjoyed nnenn's space ship models for ages, and he seemed to build and upload pictures of them quite often, so I really got to know his work as a LEGO builder. I knew the art, not the artist. He has a lot of fans for obvious reasons, but he also seemed to have a lot of critics due to his controversial techniques like modifying LEGO pieces and using other brands of building blocks. I think even the critics would probably admit the final products of those techniques usually looked great. Being a bit of a purist myself, even I would sometimes cringe when I saw what he did to certain pieces, but then I'd relax and appreciate the model the piece was used in.

It often seemed like the main reason he uploaded pictures of his creations wasn't to show off, but to inspire other people to build, and in that way, more than just his building techniques were inspiring. The attitude was less "Look what I built!" and more "Look at what you can build! Now stop sitting at your computer and go build something too!" And he inspired many people to do just that.

Here's one of my favorite things he's built. I love the combination of colors (something nnenn was really good at) and how he made those rather complicated brick-built designs on the wings instead of sticking on decals.

My flickr "contacts" section will seem much more empty from here on.

"The Problem With Music" by Steve Albini

2010-04-14T00:55:00.001-04:00

I just read the essay "The Problem With Music" by Steve Albini right now. If you don't know, Steve Albini is well known for being the producer (or "recording engineer" since he hates being associated with self-proclaimed producers who don't know anything about recording) of albums like In Utero by Nirvana, Surfer Rosa by Pixies, and Razorblade Suitcase by Bush. Anyway, it's the first time in a few years that I've read the essay, and I still enjoy it. He's a bit cynical in a few parts, but I think he's right about a lot of stuff in there. I recommend it to anyone interested in music, especially if you're a musician.

I don't really have a lot of experience in the "industry" or anything, but the way he describes people in this essay reminds me so much of a handful of people I've met in different places that are in the industry. Even some of my professors in college. Their constant usage of the words "punchy" and "warm" and their obsession with Neumann microphones and of course every way The Beatles did anything.

I think Steve Albini is a pretty interesting guy, and I love his work on Razorblade Suitcase and Surfer Rosa. I mean, come on, the guy engineered "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies! And I love the way the drums and guitars sound on Razorblade Suitcase. Albini has a studio in Chicago, and I plan at some point in the next ten years to go to Chicago and record something at his studio and have him engineer it, just for the experience (and because I'm sure it would sound great). Maybe some drum tracks or something. I'm sure many people would see it as a big waste of money, but it just seems like such a great life experience since I care about music so much. Besides having him engineer the recording of my music, and obviously learning some stuff from him in the process, I'd love to have a conversation with the guy about music and recording.

Reflections in the Mirror Piano

2010-03-24T11:50:00.001-04:00

When I was at my aunt Nancy's house in Cincinnati, I spent a lot of time in her living room. I might have been spending so much time in that room because it had a nice warm fireplace and the rest of the house was cold, but it also probably helped that there was a piano in there, as well as my uncle Greg's acoustic guitar.

I love playing that guitar. It's difficult or impossible to play a lot of my songs on it because it has a lot less frets on it than my guitar has, and it also has no cutout, so it's hard to reach the high up frets it does have. He has nylon strings though, and I really love them for some reason. I think some of my songs sound great played on nylon strings, so I'd love to get an acoustic guitar with nylon strings to record a few of the songs for my album.

I also found myself sitting at their piano a lot. It might just be the acoustics of the room, or maybe the piano, but I love the sound of that piano. It's a bit out of tune, I can tell when I play some chords on it, but it didn't make it sound bad. It had a beautiful tone. The piano has a mirror on it. I found the inclusion of a mirror to be quite odd, but at various times when sitting at the piano, I'd stop playing and just sit there, thinking, looking into the mirror at myself. There was a lot of self-analysis going on, but not about my appearance obviously. I did a lot of thinking there, while looking into my own blue eyes. That sounds so dramatic. Haha.

At one point I decided I wanted to take a photo of myself sitting at the piano, looking into the mirror, and my face reflected in the mirror would be what draws the eye in the photo, but it's not necessarily the most important part. I think it's a very interesting twist on the cliche mirror shot you usually see on people's social network profiles. I set the camera on a chair that was at the perfect angle to capture all of the elements I wanted; the keyboard, my reflected face, and myself with my back to the camera. I love the photo. Click on it to see it bigger.

Later that night, I took a few more, when I realized what I could achieve with the lighting in the room and other partially reflective, partially transparent surfaces.

At one point I also used my digital camera to record some audio. The little melody I'm playing on the piano here is actually based on the guitar solo from the end of one of my newer songs (which is going to go on my EP). When I got home I added some of the synthesizer pads to it that I used in the EP version of the song. I think the synth goes quite nicely with the lo-fi recording of the haunting melody played on the mirror piano.

I've been thinking a lot about moving.

2010-03-24T10:34:00.001-04:00

I went on a trip with my family. It was about like any other family trip. A vacation that's not really a vacation. You're somewhere else, and you're doing various things you don't usually spend your time doing, seeing people you don't often see, but there's not a whole lot of relaxation going on. It doesn't feel like you're getting away from anything. Not only is there a lot of drama on these trips, but you take a lot with you. The phrase "emotional baggage" feels strangely literal when you're upset about something and going on a trip. You're not leaving it behind, you're taking it with you on the trip. It felt like I was packing up all my problems, and putting them in my duffel bag between my t-shirts and socks.

I got to see a bunch of my cousins on my mom's side. All of Dani and Roger's kids. A few of Nancy and Greg's kids. It was the first time in about 4 and a half years that I got to see my cousin Kelly, who I used to consider myself to be rather of close to. Having wonderful cousins makes it a lot easier to enjoy yourself, even if little Ireland keeps pinching you on the arms and laughing. I can't believe how much Spencer has grown. He's 15 now. 15 was the age that I joined my first band and had my first girlfriend. It makes me wonder how Spencer's life now compares to mine when I was that age. Caitlyn and Kelly both want me to visit Cincinnati sometime this summer, and I was planning to, but now I don't know where I'll be by this summer, both in location and in terms of my life.

I've talked to my cousin Patrick before about the idea of moving to Gainesville, Florida. Our aunt Connie lives there and my brother lives there (he's a video game designer working for Ignition Entertainment: Florida), and Dani and Roger used to live there, so I've been there many times. I've always thought it was beautiful there, even though when I was a kid I associated it with sun burns and fire ants. I am more careful about being in the sun now, and I've been to Gainesville a handful of times in the past 4 years without being bitten by a single fire ant. Now I associate Gainesville with its great restaurants, gorgeous trees, and pleasant atmosphere (especially at night time).

As I get older, I seem to have real life connections with less and less people, and although I have love for many people, at this point I don't really have connections to many people anymore. The only two people from this area I'd really feel like I was leaving if I did leave are Todd and Patrick. I'd be moving to Gainesville with Patrick, so I'd only be leaving Todd in this case. I feel sad about the fact that I have real life connections to so few people, but I realize it really keeps me from feeling anchored down. I don't feel like I'd be burning any bridges by uprooting myself, since just about all of my bridges burned already. If there was ever a convenient time in my life to move across the country, it's now.

Patrick and I have been doing "research", just reading about Gainesville, starting with wikipedia. I already figured it would be a great music scene to be in, since Patrick and I are both aspiring to get our names out there as musicians, or rather our music out there. It's a college town, so there are plenty of people around our age there, and I think the kind of hippie vibe is appealing and think it might cater to us and embrace us. Much better than the straight edge and hardcore, sorry excuse for a scene up here. In our wikipedia research of Gainesville, we both read that it was named the "Best Place to Start a Band in the United States" by Blender Magazine in March 2008. As much as I dislike Blender Magazine, that's pretty cool.

Anyway, right before leaving on the trip, I told him I think I'm ready to start seriously thinking about moving there, mentally preparing and all that. He's ready too. On the trip I asked my brother about the idea of Patrick and I going to Gainesville for a visit and staying with him so we can check out the area, and he seemed to think it was a good idea. I suspect we'll take that trip sometime in the coming months.

As soon as I left Gainesville on this trip, I found myself wanting to go back. As soon as I got back to New York, I was already discussing the trip with Patrick.