July 31, 2002

It's officially time to move to England. What a great show! DJ Vadim, Strictly Kev from DJ Food and Charlie Dark from Attica Blues. It would take 3 years and $100.00 to see all these guys pass through the arctic tundra of Minnesota. I still remember the DJ Vadim show at the Seventh Street Entry last year. Killa Kela, the whitest and most talented beat box alive today, stole the whole freaking show.

What really grabs me and makes me want to light dangerous firecrackers about the room is that Carhartt (a rugged outdoor work clothing company) sponsors this recurring show of European hip hop headz. Truly a marriage made in heaven and a tell tale sign that the Europeans are light years ahead of us in global cross marketing and, well, just everything in general. Looking at the US Carhartt site and then comparing it to its overseas Carhartt European companion, it's obvious that the global brand strategy is completely different, with a totally different demographic of consumer. If anyone knows of other companies that have this global brand schizophrenia I'd be very curious to know. I can't quite put my finger on why it's so interesting but I think when I see it show up so clearly in a flyer like the one above, I can only think that it's a good thing. Perhaps this is a special case though and not the norm. European Headz definitely embraced Carhartt and then someone at Carhartt got a clue and ran with it. It wasn't a clothing company trying to build their brand of the backs of a movement. So I suppose what's so appealing about the Carhartt case is definitely the bottom up kind of marketing where the found object (Carhartt) is taken by a populous, embraced, transformed, and then re-embraced by the company once again after the transformation. Hmmm...

Get your Skillers and head off to the lawn mower races.

July 30, 2002

A sammich just isn't a sammich if it isn't my peanut butter and jelly sammich. I have sat on the mountain, pondered a selfless otherness and found great strength in the design of the perfect PB&J. Lately, the lunch crowd gathers around the table and squeals with glee as I slowly remove my two breaded babies from their brown paper carrier or zip-lock love pouch. Those French foodies and in-cuisine fetish pundits, who labor over their Sushi and saffron dusted chicken, all strum the same chord and it rings: "that looks really good". And it's settled. Everyone would rather be eating a PB&J. At least today. But it's not fair. Ego aside, I make a mean Sammich. I've studied the products, the brands, preformed countless experiments both in density and viscosity. I read the latest trade journals and spend my Friday nights at Byerlys groceries waiting to see what the great inventors of our time have now allowed us to consume and what will be placed upon the "New Products" shelf. Oh man, as a kid that was it! I still remember the morning I came bouncing into Byerly's with my father, ran right up to the new products shelf and began to take stock of that weeks new inventory, when suddenly, I came face to face with my first childhood love - Marshmallow Fluff by Durkee-Mower, Inc. I'm still emotional about it and not enough time has passed to write about it yet. So, I'll get back to the PB&J.

Of the three ingredients, The bread is really the most essential product. It sets the foundation and serves as the canvas for your art. Like all things built, a strong foundation is the cornerstone to delivering a solid product. Fuck white bread. Wonderbread? The worst. Get yourself a strong wheat bread, but no nuts, no raisins or other foreign objects or unnecessary ingredients. Pre-sliced is best if you can get it. But get it thin. I'll have none of that Texas toast. It's all air. For best results I use "Nasty Bread" a super triple sourdough made locally here in the twin towns. The key thing to selecting your bread is making sure that it can take the peanut butter without crumbling or rolling up with the spread of your PB. I strongly suggest bringing your PB to your local grocer and holding some of your own experiments in the bread Isle. You can usually check out about 7-10 loaves before you start to draw attention to your actions. Plan carefully.

As for the PB, I'd like to say that the natural stuff from the Co-op or nature store is preferable but really it sucks. Sucks hard. They don't use stabilizers in their PB and therefore you always get the peanuts and the peanut oil separating in the jar, which frankly is O.K. if your making a Thai peanut sauce, but it's absolutely disastrous if your planning on having a sandwich hold its consistency between the morning when you make it and your lunch break when you actually eat it. Forget the natural stuff and go right to Jiffy or Skippy or one of the low end brands at the Mega food store. These brands I am quite sure make their PB for the express intent of being used in a PB&J sammich. And it's chunky baby. No smooth PB. That's just wrong.

As for Jelly's...I think this is where you have the most freedom to play and create your own style of sammich. Always observe the equal parts rule: no more or less then the PB. The sandwich has to follow strict egalitarian codes. Two slices of bread and two tablespoons each of peanut butter and jelly. Also remember that jam is not jelly. Jellies are preserves. And be careful with seedy jellies. Those seeds can stay with you all day.

Lastly, and so often overlooked by the PB&J novice, cut diagonal or not at all.

If your looking for something to read now that your sitting there enjoy your own sammich. Might I suggest recommendations for airports of the future?

July 29, 2002

Man I wish I could have an intern. Just a daily life kinda intern. Someone to clip articles from papers and magazines, record televisions shows, listen to my phone messages and sort through my emails to weed out the riff raff. It's always a game of catch up. Someone like The Wolf (Harvey Keitel) from Pulp Fiction. He was super organized and could dial in huge complicated projects in just minutes. He would be a great personal intern. I really need to be spending all my time Ipod Turntableizing and can't be bothered with some of the mundane aspects of reality that interfere with the creation of my new log home and typographical studies.

July 26, 2002

Winner of the morning bachelor golfing: Me.

A case of beer later. Prairie fire shots. Wood Tip Swisher Sweets. Really good friends. Dented and dusted from the night before. Here are some of the pictures form Bachelor Party 2002 and some of the shots from the tee.

July 25, 2002

Madness grips early on today. Bill's Bachelor party starts in just hours. We hit the links at 9:30AM and I have elected to start things off right with a few Heineken's to round out my essential food groups of Golden Grams and toast this morning. Deutsche Welle - German News on the cable box. Large headed puppets broadcasting the news in German. It's like watching those two grumpy, jaded Muppets who sit in the balcony and berate the other Muppets but I can't understand a word they're saying. Perfect. I can't imagine this is any less informative than the Today Show.

I'm just glad to be here today. A cruel and mean bike commute last night. People, especially the automotive type, are just rotten. I can think of at least a dozen ways i was almost maimed or worse last night. The first of which was stopping in at the Washington Ave liquor store to pick up some spirits. Biking up to the establishment you enter a wide undisciplined parking lot that the careless owners have allowed to become a playground of depravity and drunken bullheads. They lay about, a dozen or so in total, shirtless with their bellies punching out to ask the sun for more of a burning. It was a freaking war zone in broad day light. I dodged one 40oz bottle that almost caromed off my melon and then got pissed as hell and ran over some other guys arm. Another intoxicated indigent attempts some retaliation and gets one leg up before he falls onto himself and lets out a heavy guttural "harrumfff". I fantasized for a second about kicking all their asses and being this guy standing on top of like twelve beaten bodies - pumping my fists in the air. Then more disgruntled noises from the parking lot beckoned me back to reality and I tore off cursing my luck. Do other people have these problems?

Not more than two blocks away from that Mayhem and a Passat goes screaming past me on River Road. Everyone in the car thinks it's cool to scream shit at me. Rotten bastards. That's just low. What has gotten into the masses? Are people not getting laid enough? Were they dropped as kids? Maybe their Rolling Stone subscription is ending or their EMINEM CD has a scratch in it.

Poor bastards are just pissed that they're trapped in their cars. They know they are dying one gallon at a time. Every hour they spend in their car locked into a horizontal negotiation of post work traffic brings them two steps closer to full blown shooting-up-the-turnpike insanity. Sweaty and working hard for momentum, I must represent some beacon of freedom on my Trek 830, a free and lackadaisical mockery of their well designed four door trap. Yeah!

So I get over that hump and then the clouds open up and a torrential downpour strikes. It feels good at first. A new beginning and a fresh baptism, a cleansing from the early leg's craziness. But then it comes down so hard that I'm almost blinded and it's getting cold. Cars are looking uneasy as they pass me and I know they wish they didn't really have to "share the road" as the sign says.

Just as it's letting up, I get passed by a fraternity of bike nazi's all wearing the same dorky spandex uniforms (man those things are ungodly stupid) and they start tossing shit too. Some righteous nazi shit about the fact that I'm not wearing a bike helmet. Oh man, wrong guy wrong time fella's. What a fucking waste of skin and organs. And good bike parts too.

So you see it's no minor miracle that I'm here now, washing the dirt out of my pitching wedge and nine iron, scurrying around in my bare feet looking like Ozzy trying to find my damn bathing suit, and contemplating what a whole day's bachelor party will bring...

July 24, 2002

They say the perfect thing to do during times of economic depravity and plundering budgets is to head back to school, so, I thought I'd give it a shot. O.K. So it's not exactly school and I'm still not going to be called Doctor Skelton, which I trust some eastern college with a Victorian heritage will rectify by awarding me with an honorary degree soon, but I am going to take a class at the magical and wondefully tactile, Open Book. It's a typography class that looks like it strikes a good balance between theory and practice. And really, the whole thing is an excuse just to hang out at Open Book amongst all the metal and wood typesets and old school printing press. Ancient to the Future.

The Royal Tenenbaums DVD Criterion Collection is a seven course meal of a DVD and one of the best uses of the medium I have seen yet. It reminds me of old vinyl records that had huge gatefolds, inserts, posters, literature and photos. This stuff was just never possible with VHS or at least no one ever took the trouble to package anything remotely interesting with VHS. The RT DVD is full of great illustrations and house schemas drawn by Wes Anderson's brother. The director's commentary is pure pedagogy and the extra footage and interviews, especially the stuff with Bill Murray is brilliant. Is there anyone better than Bill Murray? I can think of no one.

After seeing this Mike Myers video for the upcoming Austin Powers. I am excited to see the third installment of the trilogy. Bring it. High Art all the way. The best part of this Austin Powers will definitely be the infusion and the tipping the hat to the ultimate swinger Michael Caine, who will star as Austin's father. Caine's 60's - 70's spy action proves that he is the bawdiest British bad ass. The Ipcress File, Alfie, The Italian Job (featuring the new passion of the attention deficit American poseur, The Mini), Funeral in Berlin are all excellent Caine fodder.

July 23, 2002

Afternoon Bike Commute: Cloud Pods.

Gabriel passed me some great investing advice which he found on some board and I am now passing on to you and labeling the Heineken Investment Strategy.

Basically it goes like this:
If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1,000.00. With WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Heineken one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Now that's just a solid investment. I'm drinking one right now. In fact I may end up investing very heavily today. Perhaps I will wander down to the pub, or what I am now calling, "the trading floor" and ask the barkeep for some of his own homebrewed investment advice. I seriously doubt that it could be any better or worse than what's coming out of Morgan Stanley.

After I'm done investing I'll pause to look at the really nice pictures at the San Francisco Gate.

I worked heavily this weekend to build some new book/record/photo album shelves out of some recycled woods from a cannibalized structure. The end result was much better than I had anticipated. I learned much about the subtle art of planning, measuring twice - cutting once, and the subtleties of sanding. Lessons I hope to incorporate into any and all design projects on the work tip.

But the wood crafting pales in comparison to my new hobby - block stamp making. I got hooked up with this Martha Stewart Stamp Kit a couple month ago and now I can't stop. It's so damn Zen. It's very addictive, like booze. I'm a stamp making whore. Chances are, if you send me something nice. I'll send you a card with an original handcrafted piece of afrojet love.

July 22, 2002

Ani switched. You should too.

I must have something delicious in my kitchen. Two uninvited gray squirrels are hopelessly climbing on the screens of my kitchen window with a manic passion to get in. They continue to dance around looking for the opening that's just not there. As they move they form letters. Perpendicular, they make the letter "T" until one moves a bit and now they are the letter "L". Are they trying to communicate. T...L...ok, ok, what's next? TLC? The Learning Channel? Is Trading Spaces on? No, it's Monday morning. Drat. Damn squirrels got my hopes up there for a second.

It was too hot in my apartment to do anything last night (who wrote: "there are climates for writing and climates for sweating?") so I walked over to the pub to see if Ichiro could work his magic against the Angels. He couldn't. And I shouldn't. My pub is unfortunately too frequented by the Politicos. Junior assistants, researchers, and 26 year old aspiring city council members and such. A boring lot for sure. Not a high risk player among the set. Someone could have taken me for good money last night as I was betting Mariners all the way. I was in a good mood too which is temporally destructive when the wagers are real. The only thing the politicos are good for, especially the aspiring kids who look to hold office in my district, are free drinks. Simple bribery, "How can I vote for you or support your line when you wont even buy a man a fucking beer to hear you talk." For some reason I find myself in my element around these folks. Maybe it's because they are trained to be good listeners or perhaps they just enjoy being taken. I figure it's good practice for them and hey - I'm a citizen.

Saw a great little animated short on Public Television yesterday. I only caught the end of it and didn't catch the title. It was by Paj Pindal. The style was very early eighties, School House Rock animation. The kind of thing where each frame looked like it would have made a dope T-shirt in itself. The theme of the short was about automobiles taking over the planet. The narrator kept referring to automobiles as the dominant species and to humans as pest, and rodents, who should be eliminated from the landscape to make room for more automobiles. And it was the job of the working class to do this. The working class of course were Bulldozers, Tractors, Crain's, etc. Very clever. There was a great sequence on "how automobiles reproduce", which was an elaborate and inventive setup that was reminiscent of the old game mouse trap. From looking at Paj Pindal's past work it looks like he's always had a little bit of a bent to his writing. I'd love to see more of it.

July 20, 2002

Saturday morning. Lot's of rain. A huge day of power tools and book case building ahead of me today.

I'm so bummed that Amazon Light had to get rid of their serendipity button. I was having a lot of fun playing with that over the last couple of days. Regardless, it's still a great app. It's too bad that the kings over at google put a Cease and Desist order on their blatant google UI. But man for a day there, we saw the best of both worlds colliding into a great app.

Amazon in general has been a lot of fun lately. 'My Recommendations' has gotten to a point where it's frightening how well they know me. Especially for music. I've always relied on friends and magazines for music recommendations, lots of tapes and burned CD's have passed through the mail to enlighten different parties and I've always appreciated and will always appreciate the musical dialog between friends. I mean Amazon may be on point with a lot of rec's but it's no fun to say, "Wow, Amazon thanks for the hook-up on that rare Middle Eastern Polk Dance Classics reissue, I had no idea that was out yet." But lately, Amazon's recommendation have been truly of a different sort. The powerful algorithms that match D.C. punk with 70's funk and then off the cuff throw in a trip to brazil for serendipity sake - well I'm hooked.

Another app that boasts superior brain power is Synapse. An Mp3 player with a brain. For now they've only developed a PC version for download. But I got an email from one of the developers who said they were 'thinking' about a version for the Macintosh OS. Let's hope. Or perhaps Apple will just steal it from them. But a music app that claims to "know what you want and how you want it"?? Sounds enticing.

July 19, 2002

Larger than life snaps like this of Tony Hawk, make it hard to sit and and concentrate on the indoor activities of work today. I should be stealing someone's skateboard, putting on the clae's, rocking a new hat, or an old hat, pumping some suicidal and crushing the habitat.

But nay, instead I am sitting behind the wheel of this power book, counting the number of companies and developers that Apple is cannibalizing into its brand new iapps. Now I'm pretending to talk like Corky St. Clair from Waiting for Guffman when he's being laughed at by the city council members of Blain, "shame on you people, your just bastard people". Well, it's like that, except I'm saying it to Apple for some less than cool business tactics. The Watson v. Sherlock 3 incident is only one. Man the developers at Watson should go grab their boards and go shred all over up those Apple heads.

And when they are done with that they should go celebrate the first use of vinyl for software distribution. It was only a matter of time till people learned that vinyl was a technology very ahead of its time.

I wish we had a remote lounge in Minneapolis. It's like a little play toy lounge bar room for grown ups with a strong geeky side. Check out the consol pictures. Especially the scandalous ones. A lot of the people in the consol photos look like moby. The designers of the lounge, Jordan Parnass Digital Architectures have some very nice stuff too.

My favorite part about running this site is being able to say stuff like: The White Stripes are intensely over rated and make really bad music. Don't be fooled.

July 18, 2002

Morning Bike Commute: Loring Park

Fuck what a morning. Waking up to cat barf. Blew a power circuit twice. Then it's time to force feed the sick cat with a syringe the size of my arm. 30 cc's of the stinkiest cat food you ever smelt. Most of it ends up on my shorts my shirt the slip cover, etc. etc. he hates it and claws at me for freedom. Whilst trying to feed the cat and clean the goop off myself, I watch a little news and find out that more people got blowed up in Israel and there is a serial killer loose in California. The news people interview the friend of the latest victim. Her simple child understanding and recounting of this horribly chickenshit act brings tears too my eyes and now I'm crying trying to force feed a cat. It's not even 8:30AM. It's enough to make you want to go right back to bed.

July 17, 2002

Excellent. Everything's clean. Back on the horse. Thanks to the PC junkies for your feedback. Much appreciated. And thanks to Sara for sending me the link that dives into the conspiracy theory about Macintoshes new Darwin Operating System and the unholy crusade behind its worldwide implementation. In short, Darwin is to Anti-God as Open Source is to...ummm...Communisms? Who knew?

Large amounts of yelling outside on my street last night. Kids having arguments at two in the morning walking home from the pub. So much yelling. What's the deal? It seems to me that everybody's looking to be heard. Everyone is raising their voice and jabbering on and on at top volume. Every time I turn on Fox News they have these huge screaming headlines that take up a third of the screen. The first word of the title is almost always "Crisis". Jesus, I hit that channel and jump right our of my seat. The world is ending. More attacks. What? What? But more often than not it's "Crisis: Martha Stewart may or may not be going to jail and may or may not be making crafts anymore". Huh? Or, "Crisis: gallop polls indicate that more and more people are switching to decaffeinated coffee, and switching their interior design schema from Feng Shui to Indian Vastu.

And it's not just Fox News. There's one station with some bald headed guy whose name I think is Chris and he literally just shouts headlines and yells at guests. I can take about one minute of that before I feel my brain start to protest and pound double fisted against my skull. I've even noticed it on the weather channel, where the forecaster stops just short of a full blown Armageddon like tone to introduce the hazy skies that will "darken Minneapolis" as a result of the galactic fires burning out west.

The yelling phenomenon is starting to poison print too. The use of the exclamation mark, something that was once used with caution and temperance, is now used as often as the comma and the period. My personal favorite is the multiple exclamation mark!!!!! Oh, so you really mean it huh? And that's to say nothing of the emails that I get where for some reason the sender has elected to lean in hard on the caps lock key. As part of my work I used to get a lot of email from lawyers where every word was capitalized. That was tough. Maybe lawyers are professional yellers?

Man, I'm starting to sound like an old man with this post. Am I telling? Naw, there's nothing wrong with a little curmudgeon complaining now and again as long as it's kept to a nice conversation (inside voices now Johnny) level.

I'm just going to try and and figure out strategies for a simpler, minimal, less noisy existence. Take pleasure in minimal html and the silence of cats, the quietness of wood and the joy of headphones. Shhh....

July 16, 2002

Bear with me. I'm doing a bit of a html scrubbing up in this piece. afrojets done got a little dusty. So excuse any mess you see here over the next day. PC users let me know if you see any problems here. I threw all my grey box towers off the the eighth floor of my Washington Ave office building (it's part of my new "break therapy" routine), so all my PC test machines are now lying maimed on the sidewalk.

July 15, 2002

Well it's official. Mac users are smarter than PC users. That's right. We went to better schools, we dress better, listen to our mothers better, and shave our beards better than your typical dark-circles-under-the-eyes-hasn't-changed-his-clothes-in-four-days joe(jane) shmoe PC user.

To wit, we watch much better MTV than PC users do. I am so please by two, stand out golden nuggets of pop cinema on the vid box right now, that as a Macintosh user I must share them with you. First is Weezer's video for Keep Fishin with red hot muppet action that features leagandry skin man, Aminal, working his chops behind the drum kit. He's still got it. The second is by P.O.D. the group that sings that song "Alive" and the video for their new single, BOOM which features all the members engaged in stylish Ping Pong action, asain grips, and butterfly mallets abound. What a great concept. The video works really well with the song.

July 14, 2002

Coming Home: Lake Michigan [enlarge photo]

Ohhh the glories of business travel. Yuck! Business travel is just not glamorous. Not anymore anyway. Was it ever? Yes I was signaled out for a "random" security check at MPLS airport. Fewer things are as embarrassing as removing your belt and having people grope you while only a few feet away the security lottery winners gaze askew and wonder what kind of detonation device is built into the hard drive of your power book. For the rest of the flight, I'm now a marked man. I have some sort of security born plague. Tinny forgotten coins lurking deep in my pockets give off alarming beeps and twerps when passed under the sweeping detection devices. I can only think of Spinal Tap, let out a hint of laughter, and get probed and groped more forcefully as a result. Denver.

An hour and a half later still bruised and malignant, we touch down in Chicago. Whoooaaa!! Not once, but twice, three times, the plane now leaning heavily left. The pilot corrects and we bounce again. Four in total. Holy Shit the pilot literally bounced the plane on landing. I've done my fair share of airtime. This was beyond amateur. It was a ghetto landing. Worse yet, the pilot comes over the intercom and says his usual bit about "I hope you enjoy your stay in Chicago...etc, etc," and then says, "No charge for the extra couple of landing". Jigga what? Jokes? I'm still in shock and scribing a letter to ATA airlines the minute this missive is brought to a close.

But enough negativity. Philly was incredible. From what I saw. For many reasons, everything pretty much looked like this. The train system was super. fast. It made me realize how much we need that sorta thing in the Twin Cities. The Downtown was very cosmopolitan. Lots of street activity at night, very pedestrian friendly. People actually stay in the city at night and it's easy to walk from pub to ice cream shop, to the really well named record store, Funk-O-Matic. The train stop Market East has a really wonderful mosaic mural too.

Upstate Pennsylvania was really lush and rolling. I'd love to go back and do some hiking and camping in those hills. But maybe I'll take the train out there next time. The flying thing has lost all its romanticism.

July 10, 2002

Futebol 2002: Available at DustyGroove

Yeah I still got the World Cup heavily on my mind and am coping with withdraw armed with this Brazilian soundtrack to life and futebol.

Heading to Philadelphia tomorrow. My flight leaves way too early. I went to the OkayPlayer site to try and track down some good record stores to visit while I am in the Liberty City and found OkayBaby week. A great collection of childhood pictures sent in by their readership. Hilarious snaps.

I wish I was going to Istanbul for the Istanbul Jazzfest instead of Philly. They have an amazing line-up this year. All the heavy hitters.

The readers of these pages know I have a small addiction for flip flops and these little gems available at IKEA push the boundaries of the Avant Garde but they would definitely leave some great prints in the sand.

Last week I mentioned the amazing new plastic that decomposes when exposed to water. Now the Glass manufactures at Pilkington have invented self cleaning glass. How could the economy be in the toilet with products like these breaking on a weekly basis? I don't get it.

Sweet t-shirts for the Mason layer or Concrete lover in your family. Ohh and a great one for the ladies too - brick chick.

July 09, 2002

I had to throw this soap as far off my patio as I could this morning. It's green and shaped like a thin hockey puck so it flew for a long time, caught the sun just for an instant and all the glycerin sparkled as it came to rest in the front lawn of a neighbor three doors down. It startled a squirrel who went over to identify the UFO, it wasn't too impressed. I don't usually make a habit of launching things off my patio just to amuse myself at its trajectory and sun play but I've had it with this stuff. I picked it up as one of the complimentary soaps at the lodge over the weekend. It's actually not soap but a "Glycerin Completion Bar". And damn it, every time I go to use it and see the word glycerin embedded into it I start singing a few bars of that terribly annoying song by the band Bush. I think the song is actually called Glycerin - Like Nirvana's Lithium, but that's another story.

So there I am, with a clean face, coffee, paper, quietly singing a Bush song for the rest of the morning. How is it that I even know the words to the song? I reach for my guitar to try and find my own melody to pry the steel grip that Bush has on my gray matter. A few chords into it the cats appear. Because of the weather all the windows and doors are kept open in the hopes of moving this stale air around. The air hasn't moved in this town in two weeks. So now the neighbors cats think they own the place. Just waltz right in whenever they want. I don't really mind. They're my entire fan base for personal late night/early morning jam sessions on the six stringer. They really dig you know? The dumb big fat gray cat is called Burt. He's a chiller. and the little skinny black one's gota name I can never remember. I know she's had hip surgery and had to roll around in one of those gladiator carts for kittens where their hind legs are all bunched up and they look like half animal part machine, errr, ahhh.

I was never really a cat guy. I never got them. But I think i've come around and now enjoy their company very much. Their Rhythm. Their Timing. It's odd but we expect conversation from people almost all the time. It's uncomfortable dining out with friends when sitting amongst the tofu teriyaki and spring roles a big fat uninvited pregnant pause that inflates with every passing second until you can't squeeze it with your chop sticks and toss it onto someone else's table. "Waiter could you please get this huge cancer of an uncomfortable silence off my table, or hell, could you just give us another topic to toss around so heads can start nodding and I can concentrate on eating again".

But cats don't say nothing and we don't expect them too. Which is just fine. 98% of talking leads to some sort of trouble or worse yet boredom.

So the cats teach me to slow it down. Sit and stare at the wall. Watch the two stupid summer flies try and figure their way out of my living room and back into the still night air. Puravida.

July 08, 2002

Fine north shore getaway. I barely even remember how to use this computer thingy. Lazy times. Highlights include; Nordic Scandinavian architecture, simple analog living, lakes that seem like oceans, a full twenty degree temperature difference that is perfect for hoodie sweatshirt living come supper time, evergreen smells, vistas, super rare Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Sarah Vaughn records for $1.00 at local flee market, wood carvings, not hearing or seeing one firework on the forth of July, walleye over wild rice, that one part, about 4 minutes into track 10 of Wilco's new record-wow!, and the whole darn town of Grand Marais.

Also I shouldn't forget - losing myself in the Canal Park Antique Mall and then emerging victorious with a 1905 second printing of The Sea-Wolf by Jack London (with dope illustrations) and Jack Karouac's letters to Carol Cassady. An archavist never sleeps.

At the Sivertson gallery in Grand Marais I fell in love with the photography of Minnesotan, Lonnie Dupre. The photos he took while attempting to circumnavigate Greenland in a kayak and using sled dogs, tell me, i need to do some traveling in Greenland: Earth's Largest Island. The book Where Ice is Born captures the best of these images. Also his wife writes children's books with an Inuit and Greenland pride flavor. The Illustrations for The Raven's Gift are terrific. What a team.

Also scored a great record called, "Convoy: 20 of Today's Hits", which I guess is like the top songs that truckers were listening to during the whole Convoy movement of the late Seventies. See the great Sam Peckinpah directed Film Convoy starring Kris Kristofferson and the ever lovely Ali MacGraw if your not familiar with this epic period of tragic American History. The back of the record sleeve comes with a full C.B. Directory (Instant Messaging is really just a modern day versions of the C.B., with much debate on the fad like quality of the medium). Here are some highlights. Don't be surprised if they start showing up more frequently in these pages after I get a handle on 'em. Haaa! Get it? Handle? C.B.'s? Oh man that's rich.

GoGo Girls = Load of Pigs Headed for Market
Ten-One-Hundred = I Gotta Go Potty
Bear = State Highway Patrol
Tijuana Taxi = Full Dressed Bear
Roller Skate = Small Car
Pregnant Roller Skate = VW
Seat Covers = Girls in Cars
Ratchet Jaw = Never Stops Talking
Suicide Jockey = Driver Hauling Dangerous Goods
Shakyside = California, Becasue of Earthquakes
Threes and Eights = Heavy Regards

July 03, 2002

Wood. The next few days are all about wood. I'm off to the north shore to enjoy the knotty pine styling and Scandinavian design of the Cove Point Lodge in Beaver Bay. Day tripping in wooden canoes and gentle reading.

See you in a few.

July 02, 2002

Has anyone tried the new vanilla coke? I admit I was curious and foolish and purchased one last night. Holy gods is it awful. Dare I say even worse than new coke. Out of all the cool brands they have why not give the public something halfway consumable to drink.

Some crazy plastic designers in Australia have finally created a plastic made from corn starch that will actually dissolve when exposed to water. Excellent. I wonder if it dissolves when exposed to vanilla coke?

I'd like to see the DVD format branch out and create some best of collections. Best Car Chases from the 70's. Best scenes of Sidney Poitier Kicking Peoples Asses. Whole DVD's devoted to the little people; the designers, typographers, musicians and still photographers. There definitely needs to be a Best Opening Title Sequences DVD. To which I suggest the inclusion of:

1. The Man with the Golden Arm with titles by the legendary Saul Bass. An incredible performance by Frank Sinatra too.
   
2. Blow Up where the titles are enhanced by a funky lo-fi Herbie Hancock soundtrack.
   
3. The Pink Panther is just a classic. Clueless panthers, animated type, Harry Mancini soundtrack. Great start to a solid movie.
   
4. Bullitt with titles designed by Pablo Ferro and scored by Lalo Schifrin's blazing instrumental, make this gritty beginning nothing short of galactic. This is my favorite. Nothing has come close to this in 34 years.
   
5. Seven is probably my favorite of recent titles today. The titles, designed by Kyle Cooper, instantly draw you into this movie and buck the trend of current Hollywood fodder where the opening titles seem more like an afterthought.
   

What's your favorite opening title sequence to a movie? Let me know.

I found this little piece of software over at KStudio that automatically resizes all digital photos within a given folder. It makes creating thumbnails a snap. It's a good addition if your like me and haven't fully upgraded to iphoto yet.

Loving the new Blue Note release Mantis by Eric Truffaz. Dusty analog hip hop beats mixed under some great Miles influenced cold Trumpet lines. Thick Double Bass. Also, enjoying Suba's posthumous release Tributo. A Brazilian journey by the producer of Bebel Gilberto's "Tanto Tempo" and other modern Brazilian super stars. A good disc to celebrate Brazils crushing victory over Germany.

The comb storage table is being dialed in as soon as I can rustle up 823 British pounds. Maybe Philip Stark will design a cheaper version and sell it at Target.