September 2006 Archives

The aforpostedabout Jeffrey Brown also animated a video for Death Cab For Cutie. I remember hearing about this a while ago but I never looked it up. Until now.

My Omaha trip has come to an end, but I did not leave dissapointed. I left with a reenergized love of Studebakers and a burning passion for the Omaha Zoo. My adventures as told by Flickr after the click.

CLICK.

So now you can rock under the watchfull eye of microsoft...although this probably means that you'll be able to rock over the interweb with strangers. What it definitely means is there will be downloadable content for the 360 version.

I have discovered a treasure troph with the potential to take all jaded parts of my personality and wipe them clean. The hater in me could actually die. If I only I had a PC. (Curses Apple, your streamlined asthetics have foiled me again!) In2tv, Aol's little tv downloady site has a vintage section with episodes of my favorite shows as a kid. I'm serious, when Welcome Back Kotter first came on Nick at Night, it was shown at 4am, and I would go to sleep and have an alarm set for 4am so I could wake up and watch it. (I don't know why I didn't just tape it....) On In2tv, such delights as Welcome Back, Kotter, Perfect Strangers, Growing Pains, Our Gang, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Wonder Woman are ripe for the picking. Unfortunately, I missed this when I sold my soul to Apple. Will someone with a PC please enjoy Balki bailing Larry out after one of his hairbrained scemes goes awry for me? I promise it will be rich with slapstick and cultural misunderstandings.

If you, too, are a Mac user, you'll just have to settle for a page of Balki-isms, like this classic: "Well rub my chest and call me Vix"

I typed the name of a play about Muslim women living in Holland, a play called "The Veiled Monologues," into Google's Arabic Translator tool and hit "translate." The result was a tiny string of Arabic characters, followed (or preceded, reading the way we do) by two exclamation points. "Now," I said to myself, "why the hell does it have exclamation points? I didn't put those there... Maybe it's angry?"

I re-translated the Arabic into English and discovered that "The Veiled Monologues" (admittedly not the simplest title, but, still, only three words) had become, simply: "WORDS!!" While I would love to work on a play called "WORDS!!" with two exclamation points, I also think Google should keep coding... You'll get there eventually, guys.

Over at the comic news site Newsarama they have a long interview with indie comic creator Jeffrey Brown. He is the author of a bunch of sad books about relationships (See Clumsy, Unlikely) and conversely a few really funny books (See Be A Man, Bighead). I pick up everything this guy does, and would recommend it to all of you assholes who are tired of my superhero obsession.

Link (via Newsarama)

America loves my most hated "celebrity". Which is why I'm leaving the country.
The bubbly, perky cook (if you can call using a microwave "cooking") with the robotic smile, Rachael Ray, is Ameria's #2 most trusted person according to Forbes Website. In other news, Liam's most hated "celebrity" also made the list. Can you find him?

Here's the list:
1. Tom Hanks
2. Rachael Ray
3. Michael J Fox
4. Oprah
5. James Earl Jones
6. Denzel Washington
7. Ty Pennington
8. Ron Howard
9. Morgan Freeman
10. Reese Witherspoon

I trust Rachael Ray for one thing: to be the absolute most annoying person I have ever experienced. Actually, two things: to trigger my gag reflex everytime she calls a Sandwich a SAMMY.

Yo, me and the TKO boys just got our EP back from the producer...we put most of it up on the ole myspace. Check it out and let me know what think. Hard copies soon to follow as soon as we pick some album art. If you guys have any idea what kind of visual theme we should go with, hit me up.

I am quite excited to be featured on www.bedjump.com, a site dedicated to the art and thrills of jumping on hotel beds. The only downside is now millions of people can see my semi pregnant stomach. Six more months and I will have a darling baby boy. I'm going to name him Flubbles.

Well, I guess MTV is jumping on the video game bandwagon and has bought Harmonix. Expect to see MTVs logo slapped all over Guitar Heroes near you. They plan to put new songs for GH on their websites and virtual worlds (MTV has virtual worlds? Who knew?) so fans can play along with or even remix their favorite songs.

It's not such a shabby move for MTV. It also probably means that everyone and their mom will have Guitar Hero now. (Which means we won't be special anymore!) Harmonix also makes some karaoke game that MTV will be utilizing as well. It's kind of crappy that MTV can just be like, oh someone made something cool, let's buy it and litter it with our oh-so-stale name. But such is life, I guess. At least it means new songs. Even if they are by Evanescence and Beyonce.

This NY Times article will tell you all about it

Do you like:
-The Simpsons
-South Park
-Futurama
-Family Guy
-American Dad
Well, okay, no one likes American Dad. But now you can watch every episode of every season of every one of these cartoons to your hearts content (except American Dad, because, again, no one likes it. They were really reaching with the alien that leaks gross liguid and the German trapped in a goldfish's body, I mean, jesus. If you're going to do surreal avant gardy cartoons, at least employ nice character design! That show is just so ugly. And the family itself is thinly veiled copy of Family Guy, which is a weakly disguised reprint of the Simpons, except this time around, they are completely non-likable characters. Worse, it's not even funny!...but I digress).
Dailyepisodes.com

So, I'm here...at the worst hotel in Omaha, Nebraska. Its not so bad actually, I mean it has wireless. I have been looking like mad for something interesting to do in Nebraska, but the coolest thing I can find is Carhenge and thats 7 hours away...so, thats a no go. P.S. The Faint is from Omaha but then again so is Bright Eyes, so they kind of cancel each other out.

Just as I was losing hope of ever seeing this show in an enjoyable quality format, the first season of The State has just dropped to itunes! According to the official website, MTV will release subsequent seasons based on the first season's sales, so buy now! This is probably one of the funniest sketch comedy shows ever released and the show that spawned most of today's most hilarious entertainment like Wet Hot American Summer, Stella, Reno 911, and The Baxter. Highly recommended. (Thanks to Liam for pointing this out to me!)

Link (To The State on itunes Store. It will open itunes automatically. Sorry.)

I don't know if this will outrage anyone else, or kill their inner childhood magic like it did mine, but they've made myy favorite movie, Edward Scissorhands, into musical! They totally just jacked Danny Elfman's most beautiful music and put dancing to it. You can see clips on the website and let me tell you the worst part: Edward Scissorhands isn't even hot! Not even a little. Unless you think Christopher Lloyd in a shiny brown leotard is hot, because that's what he looks like.

Stupid taking good stuff and making it bad.

Check it out if you want to be sad: Dancing Scissorhands

Slate.com has a great editorial hating on Zach Braff. I would explain why I dislike Braff's particular type of smug, hipster celebrity but the article does it so much better. See also: Chuck Klosterman.

Link (via Slate)

But I thought I might point people toward the CIA written World Fact Book which is actually a very intersting overview of every country in the world, which they update every year. So the next time you want to know the elevation extremes of Serbia or the ruling government of Zambia head on over to the world fact book.

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/hu.html

I am currently live blogging (that is one of those made up tech phrases, I mean when are you not "live blogging", you're alive, you're blogging) from the woods of Wisconsin. 56K dialup baby! Pictures and tales from the Crystal Waters of Minnesota, to the Cheese Factories Wisconsin, and even of the worst hotel in Omaha Nebraska to follow.

For more information on the woods

I'm trying to quit smoking again, and it is really hard. What is strange is that although I don't want to smoke anymore, I don't regret having smoked up until now. Wish me luck.

I went to Amazon.com on completely work-related business, and then on the front page BAM! I felt inappropriate. I would resolve all of my intimacy issues for the woman that would wear this for me.

This is pretty sweet. the place i work is having a skillmovie contest and this guy submitted this. Not really videogame related but still sweet. Oh, Sam, my old boss has a bunch of John Carpentar CDs and i know we talked about how he was always credited with composer and some other guy got the synth credit, but it seems he actually was is a real musician, was even in a band and stuff.

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Modern humans started doing their thing about... 100,000 years ago, give or take a few millenia. The thing is Neanderthal were still kicking it until like 20,000 years ago, when they went extinct. Now, you have know that at some point Nargurk looked across the stream at Cargla "Homosapian Babe" Fraghk and thought, "Oh I would definitly hit that". Well, now we have science to prove it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/323657.stm

I saw John F Carpenter and the Pines a rockin and a rollin at Sin-é last night. Check out his super sexy vocals at http://www.ilistentojohn.com or go hear them live at Southpaw on October 14th

Everybody should be checking out The Perry Bible Fellowship. This comic has been around for a few years, and it is still one of the funniest webcomics on the 'nets. Author Nicholas Gurewitch's art is uncharactaristically skillful for a web comic, and the gags are varied enough that the strip never gets schticky. I hadn't checked the site in a few months, but I recently started again and they have changed the interface into a less imaginative, but more navigable format. So please pay this guy a visit.

Link

I just tried to link some film festivals to our page at work, and one of the links was wrong. Instead of simply saying, "404 error, you're wrong," the fucker proceeded to spout the following, which really offends me (and Sam--come on, Sam) because we're originally from the 404 area code, metro Atlanta:

"Ah, the ubiquitous 404 Error: you've tried to access something that isn't there. Statistically speaking, this would have to be about the most common of all errors on the Internet. In fact, the 404 Not Found error is something of an icon on the Net to the point where people register domains called 404error.com and musical groups called '404 Not Found'. It's likely that pretty soon many webmasters and web-enthusiasts who don't get enough sun will start describing real-world objects as '404' (that's 'four-oh-four') - it will become a newly-coined adjective for 'absent'. Strange, really. But the Internet is an especially strange place, as you either know already or are quickly learning from this friendly error message.

"Perhaps the link was mistyped, or perhaps you've tried to visit a page which was once here but isn't any longer because someone's moved. Or disappeared. Or maybe it's meant to be there one day but hasn't been put in place as yet. Check the spelling on the filename, delete the filename and start from the directory level perhaps."

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I love these little guys.

http://little-people.blogspot.com/

Via Neatorama

Tons of new tracks revealed, after the jump...

Did you guys know that New York City houses a Nintendo World? (I don't recommend this link...their site is infuriating). But wow, the store is fun. It's big and bright and looks like it's from the future. But more importantly, there are video games to play with everywhere you turn! They had about 30 DSs and GBAs scattered about, and a bunch of game cube setups on the second floor. Children were running around like headless chickens. Liam and I were by far the largest people there (besides the parents, who were NOT having fun). One inspiring conversation was overheard, a young boy telling his nanny that he felt guilty making his mom buy him a DS, a game, AND a case. Good for him, he should feel bad. The cost of that fun bundle could save like 500 African kids. The Nanny just told him not to feel bad.

I wish I was still a kid.

Like sexy cakes:

Also fancy cheeses, fresh fish, fresh meat, wine, fresh produce, a coffee shop, an art gallery, household goods, a clock store(?), a barber shop, a restaurant, a tailor, ethnic foods, and sexy cakes. Also spaghetti cakes. And most of it is pretty cheap (well, not the cakes).

The Essex Market has been around for 60 years. When it opened in the 30's, it was because there were so many pushcarts on the street that firetrucks and police cars couldn't do their policing and fire fighting in a timely fashion. So the mayor at the time (Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia) created indoor retail markets as a permanent home for street vendors. Essex Street is one of those original indoor markets.

Gay Firefighter cake after the jump

This is 100% personal opinion, but please allow me to Vice out for a second. Girls, you got to be careful with the ink. Easy does it. Unless you are a biker or actually metal, tattoos send out signals to the fellas. Here are some common occurances:

I predict Dogster is the new myspace...I mean, what's more punk rock than being part of the online dog social network? Check it out, I'm officially a dog! Please feel free to visit and leave me a bone, if you know what I mean. Heh heh heh. (I probably won't leave it up very long...I'd hate to have corrupting the minds of innocent children on my conscience).

UPDATE! My dogster profile has already been flagged by someone and is currently being reviewed by the board of Dogsters. Took about 15 minutes. Just so you know, it was funny. And gross.

So you're a multi-millionaire and you decide you want to show the world how much love you have for comics. Please don't. (I'm looking at you KISS, Public Enemy, LeBron James) You're not giving anything to comics, it just makes you look like a spoiled eight-year old whose daddy owns a printing press. (And if you insist on peeing in the creative pool, cool it with the ninja obsession. It just makes your cash-in vanity project reek even more of Shaq-Fu and the Insane Clown Posse.) Anyway, take a cue from Jay-Z, who is apparently just naming his comeback (if he ever left) album after a similarly themed comic series that he enjoys. Its called class.

Link (via Comic Book Resources)

I had to work tonight, which is ok normally, but it means that I missed 80-year-old Jimmy Scott playing in the city tonight. I'm not the biggest jazz fan in the world, but I love this guy's voice. He may in fact be the best. He was born with Kallmann's syndrome, a genetic defect that stunted his growth. But just like in the X-Men, his mutation has given him a super-human singing voice. He's been playing since World War II, but had a major comeback in the early ninties after an appearance on Twin Peaks. I could listen to this guy sing anything. Check out this clip from a PBS documentary, singing "Motherless Child", and dear god, check him out in The Black Lodge after the jump...

I just don't know what.

Locus Novus now features one of my prose poems, animated by a Turkish artist/writer who's written a manifesto on graphic design. High-five for manifestos!

This guy does amazingly small sculpture work. It is so painstakingly precise that he can often only work between heartbeats. Nuts.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp

I know that Tim Hawkins has done some really small sculpture, like a bird skeleton out of his fingernails, does anyone else know of any other prodigous micro artists?

These are some of the artists whose work is appearing in the festival I'm producing. (Well, assisting in the production of, technically...) Anyway, I'm a fan. Check em out.

www.harrellfletcher.com/theamericanwar
johnmovius.com
ethanrafal.com
www.wyattgallery.com

I went frame by frame. No privates. I'm not quite sure why my tshirt was tucked into my unda-pants in the first shot. How candid. Not very Voltaire. Need to work on my jumping.

Robert Edwards' Land of the Blind...

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6157545.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6157545
Bang. And two isn't even out yet. Also, head's up: 4 song GH2 demo in the next Official Playstation Magazine demo disc with
• Shout at the Devil - Motley Crue
• Strutter - Kiss
• YYZ - Rush
• You Really Got Me - Van Halen

Rush.

Well I don't know about you guys, but I think the new iTunes looks tacky. TACKY. Everything looks bubbly and colorful and stupid. And the new shuffle? Who would want that ugly peice of clip-on rubbish clipped to their shirt? It is neither sleek nor innovative. Is Apple getting crappy?

Evolution is an awesome science and curiousities store in SOHO. I picked myself up a Beaver tooth and a real Freshwater Pearl there just yesterday. In the words of the times "If you were that little kid who wasn’t afraid to play with bugs, then check out this natural-history store packed to the rafters (which are hung with snakes, anatomical charts, and prehistoric shark jaws) with softball-size ostrich eggs, Venus flytraps, and the skulls of skunks, minks, and muskrats. Those with less eclectic tastes might want to try on a 535- million-year-old fossil pendant". So if you find yourself down at 120 Spring St., New York, NY near Mercer St. I suggest you check it out.

Sick of those four Apes and Androids songs breaking up while myspace buffers them? Because I know I am. Well soon, the 3 million unsigned bands on myspace like them can sell their music right on myspace. They can charge whatever they like, with a small percent going to myspace. This is excpected to go into effect by the end of this year.

The idea of using Myspace and sort of manipulating it to your advantage is a really interesting phenomenon, which has been especially apparent to me with Four Eyed Monsters, who are using myspace to generate interest in their self distributed film. They have a series of podcasts about the film, as we all know and love, which are about the creative process of the film, the problems that they had, the things that were exciting. Watching this process is especially inpiring for young artist types who are trying to do the same thing (and who all, naturally, have Myspace accounts). And through the fans of these podcasts, they've gotten screenings four screenings in six major cities (Thursdays in September), completely on their own.

I went to go see Reverend Billy and his church of stop shopping last night for a little 9/11 sermon. His enthousiastic choir sang out against consumerism and current American politics with enough zeal to make this jaded New Yorker blush. Reverend Billy is a New York Icon and a performance artist who carries on like a televangelist. Last night in additiopn to the counter culture fight songs, we heard from senatorial candidate, Jonathan Tasini, and Governor candidate, Malachy McCourt. both giving us their alternative views about how to veer this political disaster off course. and of course, reminding us to VOTE

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

The terrific Bill Plympton animated a video for Weird Al about downloading music and then my ten-year old self came over to my house and we screamed "AWESOME!" until his throat totally melted!

The first thing I ever posted on this site was a poorly-worded indictment of comics legend Frank Miller's sudden flag waving lunacy. And now, in what I'm sure is a direct rebuttal to that rant, Frank Miller has gone on the NPR program This I Believe and presented a short essay explaining (sort of) his regained patriotism. In honor of the 9/11 anniversary I will refrain from snarky criticism and just allow you to judge for yourself.

A Link for Freedom!

The double tusked narwhal and the thickly mustachioed hick.

James Kolchalka may be a media super star. He's from Vermont and has great comics about elves and monkies'n'robots (which had a video I saw on the SciFi Channel one summer) and recently did a music video on a Game Boy Camera which has got some press and goddamn kotaku.

Well, nothing against Mr. Superstar and his Twinkle Twinkle Ringo Star but to drink from the cup of hubris, world (who doesn't have expanded basic cable) feast your eyes on my year old opus from Cinematech: Game Boy Camera DJ BATTLE.

Shooting this required a DVCam deck and a hacked original GBA with video out and needing an external powersource, meaning the GBA was very very tethered. Some things in order of apperance:

Locus Novus is publishing/animating a story/prose poem of mine pretty soon, which is primarily exciting for me and for people who enjoy animated stories/prose poems. I like the site; maybe you will, too.

(Also, my Lord is cooler than yours, so you pretty much have to do what I say, or else I will utter a single word in my native tongue and melt all your pots and pans, and you will be unable to fashion elbow pasta and cheese for yourself when you are very drunk.)

As it turns out, the mysterious mansion that is located on my old block on Gates Avenue in Bed-Stuy is called Gibbs Mansion. Probably owned by someone wealthy named Gibb in the 1850's, "the once-dilapidated mansion has been transformed into service-enriched housing for low-income community residents living with HIV/AIDS." Mystery solved!

Ah, reminiscing about Bed-Stuy architecture always brings me back to Broken Angel, featured in Dave Chappelle's Block Party for those of you who have never had the pleasure of living in Bed-Stuy. I've always wanted to see the documentary Broken Angel (1991) by Margot Niederland. Has anyone seen this?

When I was a teenager, practically no one outside of the garment industry and/or downtown LA knew about American Apparel. As I was interested in starting my own clothing line, my internet research landed me at the American Apparel website (it looked far different then than it does today). They produced sweatshop-free comfy cotton clothing in nice cuts. It was the first time that I saw a basic t-shirt that was really designed for a woman's body. I was thrilled and I wanted to try their products but it was for a wholesale market only at the time. Sure, you could find printed shirts in stores that used t-shirts manufactured by American Apparel, but I wasn't really into cotton baby tees with sassy sayings written across the chest in pink glittery letters such as, "I'm hotter than your girlfriend." Those shirts ruined the very things that I liked so much about the American Apparel garments in the first place: the lack of advertising (whether for the brand or for one's own ridiculous self image).

A few years ago American Apparel became a retail establishment. I remember when people first noticed the store and wondered what it was. I already knew. And I was really excited.

Simultaneously, American Apparel started to run advertisements in newspapers and magazines. The ads involved predominantly young women dressed in 1970's style cotton outfits (tube socks, terry cloth, running shorts, etc.) in what appeared to be polaroid snapshots taken in someone's home. I loved their advertising campaign. It didn't reek of the contrived overpolished content that I was used to seeing in advertisements. They felt unstaged and carefree.

As American Apparel has expanded and grown in popularity, their advertisements have become more prevalent and more racy. On their website they even have a section called Recent & Provocative Ads, which is hilarious because all of their ads are provocative. There is also a Models of American Apparel page where you can watch slideshows of all of their scantily clad models. (These are a must see.)

Am I the only one who wonders if all this T&A is really necessary? I thought their ad campaign was sexy to begin with. It seems to me that they are leaning toward the raunchy side at this point.

For the last five months, I have been working 60 to 80 hour weeks with one exceptional 100 hour monstrosity that left me ragged and punch-drunk for days. I have never worked so much in my entire life. There have been dark times in my life when I did nothing but play video games, peeing in to bottles so that I wouldn't have to get up or leave the room. Even then I did not devote as much time to gaming as I have devoted to working in the last five months.

For a while, it felt good. I felt productive. I had never been needed so badly and I loved the thrill of being part of something so epic. I was proud of myself for being so dedicated, so relentless with my work ethic. Gradually, it started to hurt. I was at work more than I wasn't. Recently, I've started to lose myself. I've felt my personaltiy fading. When friends and family ask what I've been up to, all I can say is 'work.' My mind, which for all of my life has been teeming with stories, playfulness, and observations from the rich world I live in, is deserted. I'm empty, worn out, gutted and deadened. This is not the person I want to be.

I can tell you right now that you can wait to netflix it later. It's good, don't get me wrong, but it is by no means "amazing", which everyone seems to say about it. I mean, jeez! I looked on Rotten Tomatoes and 93% of the critics on there loved it! Sure, Steve Carroll was great and the teenage boy was great, well, okay, everyone was great, but it just came off as a movie I've seen before. Lots of times before. The indie story of the off-beat family of misfits who pull together in the end because, damnit, they're a family, has been done so many times. Little Miss Sunshine is well acted and well written, but it doesn't really say anything too original. It's funny, but sometimes the kookiness of the characters is a little forced. I thought the Squid and the Whale was a much more interesting story, and came off as much more human, personally.

In conclusion, it was good, but I wish I had waited to rent it. I'm so surprised that everyone keeps falling for quirky family stories as original.