afrojet

mcsweeneys vs. they might be giants
I got treated to a really great little show last night at the Fitzgerald. Dave Eggers and They Might Be Giants hosted a roof raising vaudeville show filled with talent and creation. Eggers read a colorfully wet story about going to a junior high dance that anyone who grew up in a mostly white suburb during the 80’s could identify with, especially the male leap frog dancing that occurred during Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”. Hilarious.

But the real highlight of the evening was neither Eggers reading nor the quirky interludes provided by they might be giants. The real stars of the show was the Trachtenburg Family Slide-Show Players. The Slide-Show Players, besides being a real family with an incredibly cute and talented nine year old drummer who sings backup too, travel around the country buying up other people’s old slide show carousels from estate sales. They then set pretty little ditty pop songs to stories they make up to go along with the slide show. I was so happy watching them, I will be smiling all day. They mentioned that they will be on the Conan O’brian show on election night. I hope they will have a good slide show featuring old elected officials. You should make time after you vote to watch them.

fly around my pretty little miss
I have been getting up at odd, wickedly early times these last few weeks. I get up when the sun hasn’t even thought about breaking the horizon. Sadly, I am coming to grips with the possibility that I may be a (shudder) morning person. Part of the reason could be the bed upgrade that was dialed in from slumberland not long ago and the subsequent cushy pillows, duvets and other sleep enhancers that have vastly improved my night-night sleepy time. With these low-tech sleep devises being enjoyed, I sleep so well that I actually wake up fully rested in less than the FDA approved eight hours of sleep. I guess this shouldn’t be startling information but It makes me really appreciate how poorly I kept my sleeping station before and how many hours I wasted recovering from poor sleeping. Oh the political crisis I could have solved, the books I could have read, the cigarettes I could have smoked. I have a lot of catching up to do.

Because I really do think things like this are funny (thanks babylon).

washington sniper theories and tributes
The biking season has ended with the arrival of the fresh slushy white stuff and now I am back to driving pavement city again. That means listening to the talk box, and getting that familiar queazy feeling in my stomach again from listening to the silent majority unleash their opinion on everything from the best DVD that features “breasts”, to differing theories on the D.C. Sniper. Frighteningly, sometimes these come from the same caller.

Wired has a fine article on the nutty “conspiracy theories delivered in typo-ridden remedial English” by people like me who sometimes get carried away with their own personal weblogs and stumble briefly onto the broken streets of pseudo-journalism It’s like we’ve been kicked out of the bar at closing time and we hit the pavement to yell at the moon; no one’s listening except for those that like to point and laugh. The best “theory” is the one about Jimmy Carter who is personally funding the sniper. There has also been a site set up that you can input your own theories and I guess they pass them along to the proper authorities.

CNN has some nice pedestrian tribute designs for the rebuilding of the Twin Towers. My favorite is surely the all red, white and blue towers. You can’t get anymore ‘tribute’ than that. None more tribute.

the campaign for better lamps

I was inspired to build a glowing tribute to a Minnesota political candidate this weekend based on the plans in Readymade Magazine for a “for sale” lamp. The basic material is a plastic corrugated yard sign. I wanted to make a Paul Wellstone lamp because then I would have a green lamp. But a quick call to the Wellstone headquarters reviled that their lawn signs are made out of cardboard with a waxy finish. That wouldn’t do. So I turned to the Tim Penny for Governor campaign and found what I needed. my lamp is orange. Unfortunately the blue lettering on the sign is very opaque and doesn’t allow much light through. Also, I had to do a lot of improvising from the Magazine’s design as they didn’t mention that the metal frames come in different sizes. That messed me up good. I plan to improve vastly on this design and find the premium piece of corrugated plastic to do so.

on my way to the impound lot
I’m perched up in the kitchen, sipping my morning coffee and nibbling the feet off the animal crackers I bought in bulk at the Babies R’ Us last night. The missis has another baby shower to attend today, which makes like 10 this year. Apparently making babies, especially the two at a time variety is all the rage in her circle. But when these winter months roll around and you can’t go outside really for five months, I can see where all these babies come from. We purchased a Sassy brand “Activity Arch”. And on my insistence, we got safety plugs, even though I was told that safety plugs do not make for good shower gifts. But I insisted anyway, because an open outlet is a deadly outlet.

After the baby buying, I dialed in my reward for the day by screaming over to REI for a new computer love bag that will now replace the old one that got screamed at and cursed upon with greater frequency this week.

I was due for a reward yesterday after having to visit both the Minnesota DMV and The Saint Paul Police Impound Lot. Yes, the Brougham was towed away. Very sad. I got caught in a reckless mess that all started when I went to renew my license a few months pack and got a letter from the Minnesota DMV informing me that instead of renewing my license they were going to withdraw it due to some ticket that I had failed to clear up in Portland, Oregon. Well I haven’t lived in Portland for at least five years and when I did I didn’t own a car, so I was baffled as to what the issue could be. After a month of emailing back and forth with the Oregon DMV, where they couldn’t find any violation on my driving record and required me to get proof from the Minnesota DMV that there was in fact a violation on my Oregon record. What?!? This part of the story I will never understand. Never. But I did just that, and after Oregon hunted through their off line files (violations after five years are no longer on the computer), they indeed found proof that I was a violator of Oregon Traffic Law, Section 15173: Failure to Obey a traffic signal while riding a muther fucking bicycle!

All of which brought back all the wonderful memories of that fateful night five years ago when, riding my bike through SE P-town, I heard vigilant screaming behind me and, looking over my shoulder I vaguely made out two people on bikes coming after me. I had no idea who they were so I decided to ditch ’em. I was proving myself very effective at that when I faintly heard one of them mention the word “police”. I came to a halt and after a while, sure enough two very angry and out of breath bike cops showed up. Man they were pissed. But so was I. I remember the girl cop wasn’t even able to speak she just put her hands on her knees and wheezed a lot while the boy cop wrote ferociously in a book and called me an “Anarchist”. Three minutes later, I was the proud owner of a red hot bike ticket. The ticket never made it home. I believe I ripped it up right there on the street and two weeks later I was on my way to S.A for eight months.

But you can’t escape the long arm of Johnny Law. His memory is sharp and tight and he didn’t smoke all that good clean mexican dope down in the Yucatan. He remembers everything.

So I wasn’t able to drive in Minnesota because of a long lost bike ticket in Oregon. Upon further inquiry I learned that if I waited another three weeks the ticket would reach its statute of limitations and I wouldn’t have to pay the thing at all. Weird system if you ask me. I decide to wait. I was riding my bike everywhere anyway and I got a MN I.D. so I could still swill booze. They coudn’t take that away from me. Although I did get in another oddly heated battle with one of the ugly underpaid workers at the DMV when I went to get my I.D. I told her I was still biking around and biking to work. She yelled at me in front of like 75 hmong patrons that “You don’t get it!! Your license is withdrawn, you can’t bike anywhere!” We went back and forth like this for a few minutes. I cursed her and gave the hmong bystanders some lesser lessons into the darker regions of the American vocab, “Impossible liar! beastly accident! swarthy pervert!” Lucky for everyone, everything was resolved when we untangled our linguistics knot and discovered that her definition of “Bike” was something that was motorized and required leathers to ride and my definition was chain powered and much slower. Fucking Language. What a mess.

In the time that it took for the Statute of Limitations to pass. My tabs expired, which I couldn’t renew since I had stopped my insurance and was still in “withdrawn” status on my license. So of course, between the time the limitations expire and before I could clear everything up with the Minnesota/Oregon DMV, they towed my sorry ass car to the Impound Lot for failure to display proper tags. I resolved everything thursday, and re-upped my insurance and then Friday got new tabs and went to get the Brougham out of the lot. And of course the battery was dead and they hd removed all the air from one of the tires (I think to prevent people from coming in and stealing their car back) so it took me at least an hour to recharge my car and put air back in the ailing tire. Hazah! Now everything is back as it was and I just have less money to buy CD’s with. Bastards.

The only bright side was that the guy at the Impound Lot, was hilarious and really nice. He made light of my plight by calling me a hardened criminal and a dangerous renegade. I think he felt sorry for me. He explained that I was a pretty minor offender. He also told an excellent story about a 79 year old John, who was arrested the night before and had his car impounded. The other bright side is Geico Insurance. The best damn company on the map today. In my five years of working with them, i have had the friendliest most amazing customer service ever. If only more companies could emulate. If only the people at the DMV could have a fifth of Geico’s understanding and patience.

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Moral of the story, for those of you who need one: if your trying to save the world by riding your bike and cutting down on the driving in the summer months when biking is possible, forget it. Give up!. Drive the biggest SUV on the market and drive alone everywhere and as often as possible. The system loves you and will take care of you forever.

where is all the good cinema?
I’m in a movie going rut. Everything I’ve seen on the big screen lately has been just short of mediocre. Last night I saw the Robin Williams sleeper One Hour Photo. I could barely stay awake. What banality of story and production! Also, recently I have seen Sweet Home Alabama and Signs. Both of which were not necessarily bad movies or good movies but were neither entertaining nor moving. The best thing about all these movies has been the jumbo Dr. Pepper and the Junior Mints consumed. I demand more for my eight bucks.

Hollywood has lost all respect for the viewer and has become a lazy beast on all fronts. The production designer for One Hour Photo must have been straight out of school. The SavMart that Robin Williams worked at was totally ill-conceived. Was it a Target? Wallmart? Why was the furniture for sale at SavMart IKEA furniture? I don’t think IKEA would allow their stuff to be sold at a SavMart. Also, Robin Williams’ make-up looked like a horrible bleachy Eminem dye job that did not go with his character. What gives? Am I being too picky? Am I supposed to not notice that kind of stuff or was I noticing that stuff cause the movie was so boring and slow that I concentrated on other things besides the plot – which anyone could have guessed at within the first five minutes.

I need some cinema that knocks me on the floor, makes me openly weep with joy or sorrow – something memorable.

Lucky for me when there is a drought of bad movies there seems to be an onslaught of wonderfully inspiring music. To wit, my top 10 in rotation these days are:

1. jets to brazil – perfecting loneliness
2. the cinematic orchestra – every day
3. various – superfunk3
4. atjazz – labfunk
5. nightmares on wax – mind elevation
6. dj vadim – art of listening
7. doug martsch – now you know
8. low – trust
9. all tomorrow’s parties 1.1: sonic youth curated
10. jawbreaker – etc

a bad start

Oh boy this is not how I wanted to start my day at all! Yuck what a fucking mess. The worst part is that the soup is under the volume keys on the keyboard and I have lost all ability to lower the volume on my machine.

But then I read, I am better than your kids for the tenth time, and now I feel much better. Don’t be fooled. These kinds of hilarious things that people post and email to one another to break up the monotony of the work day and turn otherwise “bad starts” around in a flash, is the reason the internet exists.

Another great combination of things embodied in one design. This time it’s Mexican wrestling and skateboarding.

afrobeat theology
I had one of those days yesterday, after many smiler days, where it seemed like I lived a week within a day. Meetings and projects accomplished in the morning felt ages old by noon and afternoon meetings, etc. where ancient history by supper. And just when things should have been winding down I got on the boogie bus and headed down to first avenue to catch the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, the best “get your freaky butt on the dance floor” live act going today. Within seconds of the first dirty blasts of the Fela-powered-pulse-phunk, my body was rebelling against its normal stayed manner. Stoic limbs that normally bounce lightly were galloping out of control. If this music doesn’t move you – you might be dead. Woof. The stylings of the busy work day disappeared by the end of the first song and brought everything back to puravida. But hell I still can’t believe that it’s only tuesday and not the week-end.

wired again
It’s a good day for web designers (are there any left?) everywhere. Wired magazine has given themselves a minor facelift and a slick code redux that brings them in line with the web standards project promoted by the World Wide Web Consortium. The more large (visible) companies embrace the standards project and change their code for the better, forgoing the totalitarian regime of early web browsers, the more freedom the developers will have to construct meaningful and wonderful sites.

irascible words for an incindiary time.
I think I may be a little late in catching the language bandwagon on this one but what the hell…I am in love with the word Snarky! After receiving an email that described David Sedaris as “Snarky”, I have become totally enamored with the word and have found myself repeating it over and over again just to hear the syllables fight it out to the death. Snark-eeee. Awesome! I try and to use it in daily banter around the office, “Are you getting snarky with me? Huh? Snark-minister are you?”

I learned later that snarky gets tossed around in the movie Kissing Jessica Stein, which I now have to see just to hear other people use the word.

But that wasn’t enough. I needed more snark. So I went hunting today. Poking around I was reminded of the brilliant snarky bitch site. Which quickly led to the snarky librarian site. Apparently, librarians are very prone to being a rather snarky bunch. And there is a comic strip named Snarky. A quick image search reveals a good cross section of snark, of which, this is my favorite.