Bowie: Object

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 though 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 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.

First post ever!

Some people I think are awesome, like Collin and Austin, have blogs. I felt left out.

I feel like my first post should be something special, but I can't think of anything special, so it's just going to be ordinary. Speaking of ordinary, the word "extraordinary" never sat right with me. I know what it means, but it always seems to me like it should mean "more ordinary", describing something that is exceptionally ordinary. Something so ordinary that it couldn't simply be described as being ordinary. "That's so ordinary that it's extraordinary." You know how sometimes when you say a word a bunch of times it suddenly looks like it isn't even a word anymore, because it just sounds silly. That's happening with "ordinary" right now. Who would read this blog? Seriously.

I like making popsicles out of Jell-O. Jell-O popsicles. It started out with me just using Jell-O. I made some Jell-O, but instead of putting it in the fridge to chill and solidify that way, I poured the colorful liquid into a popsicle mold and put it into the freezer to freeze and solidify that way. It's slimy and delicious, and when it melts, it doesn't drip. It just becomes Jell-O. After a few successful batches, I decided to start getting really creative. Frozen Jell-O has a really interesting texture and consistency, which reminds me of frozen banana, so I got some strawberry banana flavored Jell-O, and cut up a banana, and put it all into the popsicle mold. It was amazing. The banana and Jell-O basically became one entity when they froze. Next I tried "melon fusion" flavored Jell-O and I cut up pieces of watermelon to put in it. When I cut up the watermelon, there was a lot of excess watermelon juice, so I actually used that in place of some of the water in the making of the Jell-O. The frozen watermelon had a really strange texture, but again, it was a total success. After that, I don't know what happened. I tried mixing grape Jell-O with grape Gatorade and freezing it. Terrible. Then the other day I tried this:


One of the worst ideas I've ever had. For some reason, the Jell-O mix didn't even dissolve in the sparkling iced tea. It's too bad too, because I bet it would have tasted amazing. I wasn't feeling very confident before starting either, so I consulted my Oblique Strategies cards.


Interestingly, that was randomly picked from the deck, and it was about recipes. Probably the only card in the deck about recipes. Of course, I still didn't really know how to interpret it, so I don't think it even helped me.

Anyway, in other news, my A Fire Inside tickets came in the mail yesterday. My cousin Patrick, and my friend Todd, and I are going to see AFI on October 16th, and it's going to be a good time. It will be my fourth time seeing AFI live. It will be Patrick's second time, and Todd's second time.


I saw AFI for the first time in 2003 after Sing The Sorrow came out, and then twice again in 2006 after DecemberUnderground came out. Of the two times I saw them in 2006, one time I went with Patrick, and the other time was with Todd.