afrojet

Hell Yes!! You can’t keep a good man down. I am happy to be blogging again and rocking the Powerbook proudly. I don’t know how it happened but when I put it all back together with the new power/sound card, and pushed the power button, the damn thing actually started. Score one for the people. As my friend Ivan put it – I now OWN my computer – and it don’t own me. Now I have more time now to contemplate World Cup splash page designs, grab new wallpaper, ponder my next shirt purchase, and dedicate my life to finding the perfect pair of flip flops.

Interplanetary Designer Extraordinaire Brian Kriederman touched down long enough to peep the potentials and lecture the lemming on his new groundbreaking “Beyond Nano-funk Structural Proteomics”. He left us with his earthbound portfolio – subsonique. K. usually doesn’t do design work for humans or earthcentric schemas, but for a limited time, if you can catch him and pay for his return rocket fuel you might get some of the best damn graphics out of the deal.

I’m looking for a nice cabin retreat in the upper north woods of Minnesota for a July getaway. If anyone has any recommendation, please drop me a line.

Afrojet is experiencing technical difficulties.

Yup that’s afrojet there; a work in progress. It’s on life support awaiting a new DC power input/sound card. And until she’s back up and running at full power my reports from the front lines will be less frequent. If all goes well the transplant piece will arrive in the next 24 hours. If I’m able to put all the pieces back together we should be tearing it up again real soon.

The misses tripped over the power supply this weekend, completely tearing out the entire power supply, rendering the deck pretty much useless. We brought it into the Apple store to see what they could do, but they insisted that the part that was broken was connected to the logic board and any further repairs would run us up into the $800 dollar range. I thanked him and walked out. As a side note, I was very disappointed that the Apple store didn’t carry the new XServer – at least a floor model, something to gawk at.

Anyway, when I left the apple store I decided to see if I couldn’t repair the damage myself. I figured I had nothing to loose. When I took everything apart I found that the power input is in fact _NOT_ connected to the logic board and is attached to a small, much less expensive sound card. This was a great discovery, only trouble now was getting someone to sell me a replacement sound card. Multiple inquiries to Apple Support and Repair, left me angry and frustrated as they continued to tell me that the damn thing was attached to the logic board and I would have to send it in for repair. “But Damn it, I’m looking right at this fucking thing and it’s definitely NOT attached to the fucking logic board.”

“Well I’m sorry sir, your just going to have to send it in and have us take a look at it”…and…

“no we wont sell you that part.” Basically telling me to fuck off for trying to fix this myself and they strongly encourage people not to do that because then they don’t get to charge you a ton of money for repairs. Say what you want about the shadiness of Microsoft, but don’t think for two seconds that Apple is somehow a more righteous company. Think Different, my ass.

So long story short, I had to go to the black-market to track down the card. I think I might just hang out here in the back alleys for awhile…stay tuned.

Morning Bike Commute: North Coast Line

Hammock Report Volume One: I think I’ve finally found an adequate way to hang my hammock on my front patio. It’s a little iffy, but I think with structural reinforcements and some ball bearings it will hold. I seriously think my neighbors are using the hammock while I’m away at work, and at first I found this to be annoying but I figure if it’s not being used by me than they should enjoy it whilst I’m slaving away at work.

These summer nights are what I’m all about. You really have to come up with a strong offer to get me out of my hammock during the week. After the bike commute and staring at “the internet” all day, my return to the sanctuary has taken on an almost Mr. Rodgers like quality. I slowly remove the work/bike shoes and slide into the Flips, gently remove an icy cold beverage from the fridge, and retire to the hammock and dream about the next thing I’m going to build out of wood, or ponder whether or not I should scratch my new Mantovani record on the turntable or not. I’m not sure I want to ruin it and I don’t know if I’ll be able to find another one. I use to play guitar out here in my hammock but that really didn’t make the neighbors happy at all. And really the hammock is all about doing nothing at all. I wish I had a huge Turntable setup like that one guy in that French movie Hate. I would set it up right here on my patio and face the Double Cabs (Jon B. do you still have my P.A.?) out onto Holly Avenue and Rock some Big L or some Kool G Rap until people came out of their homes scratching their head and pumping their fists up at me.

I’ve bought a long enough telephone cable to reach all the way out here. Now I can have my lap top out here and blog on my belly. I can also watch Cable T.V. from here although the sound is a bit muffled.

Here are some more graf pictures from the street; sitting here in my hammock, I AM all about the streets. The <a href=”Latin show posters are the best art I can find in the city right now.

Deaf, Dumb & Blind @ The Babylon Gallery

I need to see more Art. Art being made. Art that makes you laugh. Art that is not so easily consumed. Art that hits you over the head. I want to bath in it and cover my walls, floors, and ceilings with it.

The current exhibition at the Babylon could keep me busy until next year. Some real good stuff here. The kicker was that a kid that used to be a camper of mine, when I was a Camp Counselor at Hidden Pines Ranch, is now one of the best Graf Artists in town and he’s now taking some of his stuff off the street and into the Galleries. Or does that happen the other way, I forget. When I first met Justin, he was a little suburban kid from Stillwater that ran around with a Florida Marlins Baseball hat on and asked me questions about Lollapalooza and his favorite band “Primus”. I can’t remember if Justin was older than the rest of the campers or whether he was just very advanced and liked hanging with the adults more than the other kids but he was on another level.

It wasn’t until a couple years ago, when I was working on the filming of Minneapolis Massive, that I ran into a 17 year old Justin again. He had left Stillwater far behind and was living for Graffiti and travel and Artistic elevation. It was great to see how much the Primus kid had developed. I guess this is what community and roots feels like. Feels good.

Everyone needs to buy more Art. Support local (and living) artists!

I’ve probably floated through Target stores more than a few hundred times in my lifetime. I didn’t think there was a piece of real estate at Target that I hadn’t contemplated a purchase or needless accessory at some point in my life but the other night Kelly had to pick up a gift for a baby shower she’s going to this weekend and it immediately hit me upon entering the newborn micro-human aisles that this was totaly new and uncharted Target territory for me. I discovered some wonderful things there and some downright frightening odd ones as well. On the wonderful tip, I found that they make a baby hooded towel, which I think is just too dope. It’s kinda like a robe but it’s defintely towel material and it’s got a hood!! Kinda of a Don Ho meets Muhammad Ali type of lounge wear for the little drooler. I think someone really dropped the ball not making a version of this gear for the post-diaper crowd. I would love, and would rock daily in my hammock, a hooded towel.

On a different vibe, was this crazy stuffed bear, that when you twisted this knob on it’s back would begin to make these terrible sounds like a dying Darth Vader, which I learned from reading the packaging is supposed to be an audio emmulation of sounds from the mother’s womb. I know. It’s bizarre. You gotta check it out for yourself. Now, I’m not sure why I find this slightly creepy, but I definitely remember something in my childhood psych class in college about not letting your child dwell in infantile stages. I thought the whole point was to move ’em on, like, OK your done with that whole womb thing now get ready to do some talking and walking and here’s some Jay-Z and Herbie Hancock to fall asleep to.

Well it’s obvious that I’ve got a heck of a lot to learn from the baby aisle at Target and so I will now make it part of my routine to pay a visit and see what new things are being pushed on the net-yet-ready-to-shop demographic.

(editorial and typographical corrections by k.d. 5/27/02)

Too much fast-forward thinking and rewind selekta music and movies all dropping around me and flooring my sensibilities that it’s hard to concentrate on what’s actually happening on planet earth. It just can’t be as interesting as what’s coming out of my headphones or what’s on that film. Catching this mornings stories and sniffing the evening news I look for the next rocket ship number nine out of here. What’s going down on Jupiter? Are they having budget troubles there too?

The Scratch Movie blazed a hyperbola over my cranium tonight and left me with a whole google of questions about innovation and ascension, property rights and soul. Why do people hide their gift from the world when to share it would mean that others would transform their gift into sweeter smelling flowers? I am “Proud” of the Scratch movie just watching it. The magnetic energy coming from the cats and their cosmonic devices create a future architecture for living sound structures that point to a place beyond the sun and elevate craft to something altogether astro-mystical.

The new space music coming from DJ Shadow on The Private Press, has been worth the seven year wait. A new recipe for soul music. Keep diggin the dusty galaxies. Always.

The new recipe for elastic alter-destiny future jazz music comes from the German co-op Jazzanova. The debut album In Between has more compelling textures than a French impressionistic gallery, and if Myth demanded another type of music, this is it.

My Florida pictures are finally up. It took me awhile. I thought I had lost them all to my ill fated #@$*!? Macintosh, but I found them hiding in the lost recesses of some bizarre corrupted file. I think my hard drive is planning a hostile take over. Where the hell is that iphoto program? I really must install it and catch up to the 21st Century.

Things move at a fantastic pace. Stop. A full weekend. First things first. A new section on afrojet that I’m experimenting with is called “on the hi fi”. It’s an apple script called i tunes track info and it harnesses the power of Mac OSX and itunes. It grabs whatever song is currently being played on my itunes and uploads for all to see. Clicking on the “artist” opens up a google search. It wont change the world but it’s kinda fun. It’s still pretty buggy. If there isn’t anything in the “on the hi-fi” box it means that i’m not listening to anything and/or it has crashed.

I can’t believe how hooked I have become on reality TV as of late. I seriously watched the full three hours of the Survivor season finale and enjoyed the whole thing. The bible thumper Vecepia won I was not pleased. Actually hell I didn’t want either of them to win. I am already excited for the season five in Thailand. The location looks beautiful.

I enjoyed “About a Boy” very much and found the Soundtrack to be even better. Jodi lent me The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky on Saturday. Which is also about a boy, Charlie, and his tale of growing up in the ninth grade. It’s one of the best books i’ve ever read. It reminded me of high school in a way that was like being right back in the mix again. I am bummed Mr. Chbosky hasn’t written anything else. He needs to. The combination of seeing About A boy and reading Charlie’s tale put a nice old school tint on the whole weekend.

Found great things at garage sales and Kelly bought her first ever garage sale purchase. Old Fine Young Cannibals and Modern English Tapes. The high school nostalgia just kept creeping into the weekend. I bought some great records and a space age atlas put out by Rand McNally in the 60’s. It’s filled with micro graphics of the moon and and a map of our solar system.

Built a garden bed box with Jodi last night after spending $240.00 to give the Brougham a new Muffler. It was sounding like a drag racer. We employed some avant-guard wood working techniques, but in the end it all looked pretty damn good. The sun was setting and we enjoyed a smoke and a beer and looked at the completed project and talked about the Wallflower book. Very nice. I need to buy a house. soon.

Morning Bike Commute: The Concrete Donut.

My morning bike commute was a bit cold this morning but it gave me pause to realize that this must be the opening of the Garage Sale season. There were dozens of signs along the frayed electrical post and other street-side homegrown concoctions. I can’t wait. I want to make one great score this weekend. Since I can’t go see the new Micheal Moore movie yet, I think I will be listening to the sounds of Badly Drawn Boy and taking in the new Nick Hornby movie, About a Boy.

Lo-fi solutions to high tech problems rate up there with Beautiful Art and Fruit Loops on a Sunday morning. Love it. Looooove it. In a postscript to yesterdays post about bad music killing iMacs and other PC’s, it looks like the cleaver ones have found ways around this bit of Corporate bullheadedness by using two of the best inventions of the last century: Sharpie Pens and Duct Tape. With a quick modification of your encrypted Celine Dion CD it’s once again ready to rip. Here is a list of the known CD’s encrypted with this garbage, Just in case you might own them.

I don’t consider myself a sci-fi movie buff in the slightest, but the movie Gattaca delivered a great story, was well conceived with gorgeous cinematography. A real smart movie that didn’t fall into the trappings of most Sci-fi flix. I also love the movie because the future described in the movie, one where humans are categorized and comodified from their first breath, seems all so very close. To wit, Gregory Stock, a Germ line Engineer, was pimping his book, Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future on the Early Show this morning, Bryant Gumble of course was asking the really hard questions. Stock’s vision, nay, hope, is that one day we will all be able to fix and select everything from the moment we are conceived in test tubes. In his book he claims that, “Never before have we had the power to manipulate human genetics to alter our biology in meaningful, predictable ways”. — Jigga what? Predictability in humans is a good thing? Sure I would love it if my friends and colleagues were a bit more predictable in their behavior sometimes, but nestled in the crevices of the human condition, where the unpredictability of the human spirit lives, are the irrational thoughts and behaviors that make this whole game interesting and worth playing. Frankly, it’s what makes us different from water coolers or my palm pilot (although my palm has been acting quite irrational recently). I am excited to see how the art and film community explores this question or this topic. I for one submit someone put together a futuristic gallery exhibition where all the pieces are done by artists posing as new genetically modified super artists. What would it look like? Would there be any art on the walls at all or would all the parents take out the art genes in their test tube babys and replace them with doctor, stockbroker, or germ line engineer genes? When someone puts this exhibition together please invite me.