afrojet

Skeleton’s and Skeletors
Target’s upcoming designs for Halloween 2003 are totally kick ass and actually a wee bit creepy. The patterns, the typography, the scary princess girl mask, all of it rocks. Target is like the Missy Elliot of retail design right now. They can’t be stopped.

I got an email reminding me that my cousin afropunk was in town. He’s a distant relative of afro-dite.

Did you see Skeletor’s reaction to Schwarzenegger being elected the next governor of California.

From The Believer’s Idea Share, I really like this idea:

“Someone should invent a kind of food that is designed to be mixed and heated in an hour or two by the friction generated by your pants’ pockets.”

Ladybug Invasion
Seriously. It’s not funny. My entire domicile is under attack from the Asian Lady Beetle. It’s like Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ only smaller and silent. The house, the yard, the air space between my garage and the back door, all look like I went Hyper-Halloween crazy. It looks like I bought 10 cans of orange spray paint at Michaels craft store and in a drunken fit painted everything.

After dressing in battle armor yesterday, I triumphantly cranked on the water and unleashed the hose on them all. This only seemed to irritated them. Then they breached my first line of defense and the little buggers started crawling under my shirt and nesting in my hair. I went nuts. The Asian Lady Beetle doesn’t bite and can’t harm you in any way but their resilience and sheer numbers are enough to drive you mad. All yard work has come to a grinding halt until these little orange torture devils die off or migrate south. Until then, I am a prisoner in my own home.

The New Responsibility
Another fine tour of Portland, Oregon has come to a close. Thanks to everyone for making it a blast. I feel I’m going to need this entire week to recover. Super congratulations to Liz and Dave on their wedding. And yes, if more people had a wedding party in a skate-park with good DJ music the world would be a whole lot brighter place. As for my skateboarding powers. . .there wasn’t much. I sprained my wrist on my first trick. Sweet. Now, I have to go contemplate mowing the lawn, which stands a full six inches taller than anyone else’s lawn. I fear my acceptance into the neighborhood association is very slim right now. The mowing bit is all part of my ‘New Responsibility’ plan, an attempt to right all the bad and carry forth with lofty grown up goals that scoff at all signs of regressive activities. It’s a bold proclamation of clean living and clean gutters. The sun will shine on me today!

Plaster Falling Around My Head
I just realized that it’s been almost ten years since I have been able to listen to music as loud as I want to. A product of living in apartments and duplexes for way too long. Let me just tell you that music doesn’t sound right unless the windows are shaking violently.

In The Quiet Hours of Minneapolis
It’s going to be a long, deeply distressing couple of weeks if yesterdays Twins victory is any indication of what’s to come. . .

Ahh. . . but what a fine victory it was. The look on the Yankees players faces gave me a great warm satisfaction. And that catch!?! Shannon Stewart I could kiss you. Now I just need to figure out how I’m going to listen/watch the game Thursday night as I’m cruising at 2000 feet on my way to Portland. I did not time that right at all.

The Papa M show was great. In a surprise bonus, Paz (formerly of Zwan and A Perfect Circle) was there supporting Pajo with some extremely active bass playing. She also played some mean picking banjo and rocked the entire concert on her tippy toes for some strange reason. While killing some time before the show, I wondered into Border’s books and happily discovered that they have a CD listening system in place where you can grab any CD off the shelf, scan it and listen to one minute snippets of every song. This proved rather addictive. I could have done that all night but I had some books I wanted to find. I’ve been obsessing as of late over books that detail some of the lost and forgotten architecture of Twin Cities and greater Minnesota. Picking up Lost Twin Cities at the library a few weeks ago started it all. The book details some of the great architectural sites that were built around the turn of the last century and profiles the architect (if they can figure out who it was) who designed them. They also give the street address of where the building used to sit, which sends your mind on a journey around town comparing what used to be and what now is. Inevitably, this sort of thing gets rather depressing, as you realize that all these amazing buildings built from Southern Minnesota limestone and crafted with great care and patience have all been blown away and are now parking garages and strip malls. Another good addition to this line of reading is the book The Quiet Hours. It’s a black and white snap book of industrial complexes and storefronts taken in the wee hours of the morning. There is a great picture of the kosher deli that my brother lives above on Randolph Ave. My favorite picture is of the Grain Belt Brewery. The photo is haunting. The book also features an appropriate essay from Bill Holm.

Wash Out

People groan and moan about how terrible the Metrodome experience is, especially when baseball and the Twins are concerned. I’m one of those people. But I may becoming less of one of those people after traveling hundreds of miles and spending about the same to watch a Cubs game outdoors in Wrigley Field only to have the whole damn thing rained out. Tragic. Even more disturbing was the fact that the Cubs won the whole thing the next day. All those fans getting the chance I got denied by good old Mother Nature. Now I look at the Dome in a whole new light. Sure maybe it’s astroturf and it’s hideously ugly inside, but at least you get to watch baseball when you plan and pay for baseball.

Ever since getting back home from Chi-town Sunday night I have been on a 36 hour tear to get as much work done as possible to make room for the Twins playoff game that starts at noon today. Also Papa M is playing at First Avenue tonight, so pretty much my whole day is shot starting at noon.

Amazing Shushing Action
I want to get one of these Librarian Action Figures with hand operated shushing power. We need more real action figures for the unglamorous set. Action figures for community workers, prevention abuse councilors, ESL instructors, labor organizers, etc. Then you can play the special board-game,’Community’ (Please note: red tape not included with game).

If all goes well, I should be in the windy city tomorrow brazing the outdoors to experience all the mystery and magic that is Wrigley Field. The Cubbies play Pittsburgh in a must win game for them. Hopefully, I’ll bring some of the Twins winning energy into Chicago and the Cubs can pull it out.

The new Atmosphere record, ‘Seven’s Travels‘ got purchased just in time for the road trip to Chicago. But with Slug chanting about all the glories of South Minneapolis, I’m already homesick to get back. Here is an excerpt from a review in The Stranger:

“Damn, I’m from Minnesota, land of the cold air,” Slug constantly references Minneapolis’ punk pride and joy, Lifter Puller, namedrops First Avenue Records, and becomes possibly the first rapper ever to shout out Duluth. On a couple songs, his delivery even mimics that of Lifter Puller vocalist Craig Finn, all gruff-rapped and conversational.”

A Tale of Two Logos and a Need For a Name

Oh boy, the process and product that created the new VH1 and MoMA identities stretch the continuum of re-branding strategies to the point of of snapping it like a hardened piece of silly putty. The new logos have politicized me almost to the point of Bush (VH1) and Clark (MoMA). With the new VH1 logo, I’ve already begun experimenting with a little kick flip switch that will block out the bottom right hand corner of my television set whenever the dial ends up on VH1 which is rare except for the occasional back to the 70’s nostalgia. Meanwhile the Carterized treatment of the new MoMA logo, an attempt to breath more analog life into a digitally stale identity, has all the intellectual subtlety and sacred super nuisance that makes you fall in love hard. While one logo screams look at me. I’m so damn sexy! I’m Christina Aguilara all tied up in type and sporting a trucker hat with a backward irreverent “1” on it. The other says. . . well nothing at all really. The goal of the new MoMA design is to go completely unnoticed, to slowly seep deep into your veins without ever feeling the prick of the needle. The MoMA redesign is like that special record that takes you 10 listens before you realize what a monument of music you’ve been listening to.

In other branding news, there was a fine op-ed piece by Daniel Kantor in last Sunday’s Star Tribune called, We’ve got rail – but how shall we refer to it?. In a nutshell, the article laments the fact that the Twin Cities, unlike D.C., San Francisco and Portland who all have simple names that encompass the entire project of light rail (‘e.g’ METRO, BART, and MAX), is thinking too small and geographically specific in naming the light rail the “Hiawatha Line”. It’s fun to say I’ll take ‘MAX’ and not fun to say I’ll take the Hiawatha Line. Compounding the problem, Kantor points out in his article, The Hiawatha Line, as a name, would be very hard for non-native english speakers to pronounce, whereas something more monosyllabic and simpler might be a better suited to the region and its community. I think that MnDot (Minnesota Department of Transportation) should make a place on their website for citizens to suggest names for the Twin Cities light rail. I vote they call it the HAT (Hiawatha Area Transit).

My Vinyl Weighs a Ton
I spent the better part of yesterday moving 30 plus boxes of Vinyl recordings from distributed parts of the city into the new dwelling. Why couldn’t I have chosen to collect something more lightweight like dried flowers or butterflies? This addiction is going to be the death of me.


Today, I’m exhausted. It’s been a non-stop parade of priming, painting, ripping and throwing the last four days. Two nights ago I had a dream that Mariah Carey and I were playing baseball, and she was pitching paint chips to me and as much as I tried I couldn’t put my bat on any of the chips. I’m sure Freud would have a field day with that one but the dream was very indicative of the entire painting process. Deciding what colors to paint your walls and then actually getting the color on the paint chips to match what you throw up on the wall might just be the eighth wonder of the world. I certainly have no idea how it’s done. I seriously think someone at the hardware store was having a bad day and just decided to fuck with us. No matter what color was chosen, be it ‘sand storm’ or ‘wild wild west’ or mountain sands’ every goddamn color turned out baby pastel pink!! I’m not kidding at all. We now have a second bedroom that will elicit only one response from people who see it, “so when’s the baby due?” This is not good. Not good at all. A note when choosing paint colors. Stay away from anything with a red to pinkish hue, especially if you are looking for subtle shades of white or tan. Do not make the mistake I made.

Yesterday, while making repeated trips from van to house I noticed a loose band of kids starting to form around the edges of the ally. At first, it was just one or two of them, pushing their toy cars around on their driveway and stealing glances at my work. But with every trip back to the van I noticed that their numbers were growing and that they were moving ever so cautiously towards me. Finally, on about the seventh trip, one of them cleared his voice and asked politely, “so are you – like – moving in?”. The Spanish Inquisition of kindergarden and first graders had begun! After the preliminary small talk about ‘Us’ moving in and how tall I was, the hard questions started flying. A cute little girl who couldn’t have been more than four wanted to know “if I had any friends?”. Of course she didn’t mean do I have any friends, but more to the point, “do I have any friends her age that she could play with”. Or put another way, “Do you have any kids?”. Drat. They had me. There I was, standing in the ally with a box of old dusty records that didn’t amount to crap when the currency on the street is ‘friends’. You should have seen the disappointment in these kids faces. Strike one for the new guys on the block.

Bluing the Hard Business of Domestic Urgency
Life is a pastel wash of moving boxes, paint chips, freeze pops, and rug doctors. Last night I ate sushi on white plastic patio furniture that I had set up in the living room for a fine dining experience. Today I’m going to start painting what will eventually turn into a home office. I’ve chosen the color ‘wooden spoon’ after two long nights of staring at way too many paint chips. I’ve discovered that the new pad is just blocks away from an amazing Ace Hardware store. They got it all. Todays’ purchases will include masks, full body painters overalls, a painters hat, knee pads, and a bottle of turpentine that I’ll take occasional “Love Liza’ huffs from. Later after the turpentine goes to my head I’ll have the Twins game going on the 6 inch portable AM radio I found in the garage.

These two images are just a sampling of the old products and lost treasures that I have discovered around the house. I had never heard of Mrs Stewart’s Liquid Bluing, I guess it’s used as a laundry whitener. Which begs the question, how does ‘bluing’ make things white and not blue?

Stay tuned for images of some of the most hideous looking wallpaper you have ever seen. . . it’s enough to make you huff turpentine.