{ Monthly Archives }
All I’ve had to eat today is a brownie and now some ice cream from the Ice Cream Social. That’s right, at my job we have ice cream socials. We know how to party like its 1910. 23 skidoo, motherfuckers, now I have the hiccups.
Party at The Girl’s house on June 3rd. If you’re close enough to attend you should attend. Here’s the flyers. And yes I know I misspelled cordially, that was the point that Paul was singing and I got distracted. Ch’uch.
Here is the flyer I made for our Party in August. Why did I make a flyer for a house party you may ask? Because we are doing new things in this house, breaking new ground, making the world a better place. We’ll have business cards, too. Just you wait and see.
Apparently Iraq loves Lionel Richie. This was brought to my attention by Chris “What I can Say” Hassiotis. Richie says that he doesn’t know why he’s so popular there, but I’ve figured it out. Iraqis love Lionel Richie for the same reason as we do here in the States: because it fills people with lusty desire, or more succinctly: it makes you want to fuck. If Lionel Richie doesn’t make your pants do a dance then you are probably a robot or a Utah Republican, so thank God you’re not breeding.
On mornings like this one I wake up with the alarm, but lay in bed for 15 more minutes in a half sleep, arguing with myself in my head about when I should actually get up, cuddling in various positions with The Girl, being warm and dreamy. Then the argument reaches whatever answer it was looking for and I make the move out of the bed, at which point The Girl pulls the covers back and opens her arms to try and lure me back. She has no idea how hard this is on me, and I love her more for it. My hair sticking out at angles, my eyes still half-closed I get dressed in the semi-dark because the light would wake Her up. I let the dog out, and he runs around me a couple thousand times while we head outside so he can run his errands. Stepping outside on these days is like plunging into life. The sky is cloudless, the air is still moist from the sunrise, and the temperature sits just on the fence between the 69 and 70 on days like today. The light is so bright but so clear like it’s shining through white wine, and it makes me drunk for just a moment. I am a morning person because of days like this, packed with potential and perfect for anything that I could ever want to do, calling me out from my safety into adventure. And know this above all else: I am an Adventurer.
I stand in the yard while the dog sniffs his p-mail, checks to make sure that everything still tastes the same on the ground. We usually share a moment when he starts to make and looks over at me to see if I notice, and I look at him and then we both look awkwardly away, like men at a urinal. We go back inside, he eats, I take care of the three S’s, and he drinks from the toilet. Before I leave I kiss The Girl on most of her face and back, and sometimes so does the dog. She gets up and gets dressed and gets ready while I make my lunch or check to make sure that I haven’t forgotten anything eventhough I only bring two to three things with me everyday. The dog goes back in his crate and we go out the door. Whether she’s with me or not the drive to work is something like meditation to me; I don’t talk much, I just breathe and think. And on days like this one I am reminded of all the things in my life that make me happy, that make me lucky, that make me keep moving forward to the next adventure, because above all else I am an Adventurer.
Holy hell!! Nike and Apple have teamed up to do something both amazing and superfluous.
Check out Nike Plus and tune your run.
Radiohead has said that there won’t be any new releases from their tribe this year, but they’re still coming out with the new tunes at shows.
Click here for Rewriteable Content’s buffet of new live Radiohead songs. Start spreading the news.
Just a little art roll call for ya.
First up: Getty Images goes arty with their interact 10 ways site. Check it. Beware, load time can be drastic.
Tiffany Bozic’s got the skill.
The Melbourne Stencil Festival is in full effect.
Ian Francis paints like burning.
Tomar Hanuka. You’ve probably seen his illustration somewheres.
Yumiko Kayukawa makes sexy art that makes you nervous.
In other news Jeremiah has to finish Stardust by midnight tonight or his entire list of 101 things comes crashing down on the first task. I’ve got my fingers crossed for ya, buddy.
If you’ve never heard the name Keith Yamashiro I wouldn’t be surprised, but he has been an influential and creative member of the California hip-hop scene for a minute now. A little bit ago he suffered a brain aneurysm. It goes to show you how much he means to everyone when a show like this one is set up. If you’re in the LA area Thursday (within 1000 miles or so) you have to be at this show. The only better thing to do is hang out with God, and truth be told, he’ll probably be at the show, too.
Get well, Keith.
Let me just preface this by saying: I fucking saw De La Soul and The Flaming Lips yesterday for free! Now that you know that we can move on from there.
It was a sweltering 90 degrees with a hint of breeze trying its best to cool me off as I sat with a couple thousand others in Atlanta’s Centennial Park downtown yesterday. It’s an odd feeling to be in a treeless park in a city that size; like sitting in the mouth of a sleeping Titan whose teeth are skyscrapers surrounding me. But the grass was comfortable and I was miles from home so that was enough adventure for a Sunday.
We arrived a couple hours early to beat the rush and lounged on the lawn near the main stage with the middle aged groovers who came out for the southern rock of American Princes and The Gourds. A guy covered by a blanket sat down next to us, behind a couple on a picnic blanket. He then stuck his hand in the woman’s purse which was quickly noticed but only eliceted a “Hey!” from her husband who then went back to dozing. Is it really that commonplace or was that an underreaction? The dude wearing the blanket moved off and the rock continued for a while, with me mostly ignoring it, but being really impressed with the ripping mandolin solo.
As soon as The Gourds finished their set the stage DJ kicked in with some Notorious B.I.G. and the peak age of the crowd was cut in half. It was a mass exodus of fledgling AARP members. The hip hop continued for a half hour while De La set up and a few hundred more people trickled in, though the crowd was still pretty thin (about 2K people). De a Soul, fucking De La Soul!, came out on stage and had more fun than any hip hop act that I have ever seen, laughing and joking with each other and the crowd, giving the event cameraman a nickname (Beretta Brett). It was at this point that I noticed a guy carrying a small painting that said To The Flaming Lips on the back, but he comes in later.
My sunburned arms bounced to the beat, and I laughed along with the crowd at the MC’s antics. They finished cool and most of us went to get water or something stronger (the event was sponsored by Southern Comfort), and resumed our positions horizontal on the lawn. I ignored Big Star because they just don’t do it for me, and used the time to people watch with Jason and Jeremiah. We saw some faeries, a Philip Seymour Hoffman look-alike, a Bono look-alike, some Athenians, and Wayne Coyne himself who came out to chat with some folks, and in fact took the faeries with him backstage. None of us got up because we don’t like to hassle people and because we were sunburnt and tired and could see Wayne perfectly fine from five feet away.
Then Big Star made the greatest move of their show that night: they finished. The three of us finally pulled ourselves upright and moved back over in front of the mainstage where there were probably a couple hundred people more or less, a sparse crowd to say the least. But as the Lips crew started to set up more people began to flow in, until I was in the middle rather than on the outside of the crowd (I was about five rows of people back just left of the center). The set up took forever because they were having some technical difficulties, but Wayne came out a few times and shot streamers out over us and threw some confetti so we were all pretty entertained. I saw the guy with the painting up at the front but he wasn’t having any luck getting Wayne’s attention. I was really pulling for him since I had seen him walk by at least a hundred times throughout the day.
Finally Wayne emerged way over on the left side of the crowd in his giant plastic bubble followed by an army of Santas, aliens, and some kind of giant smiling butterfly. I was packed into the crowd by that point and since he was walking around the edges I couldn’t really see (they showed it on the big screen). More people came into the crowd and set-up was almost done. Wayne came out onto the stage and asked us if we would rather he came out into the crowd in the bubble since a lot of us didn’t get to see him the first time. I almost went deaf with the response. Right before he went back to get the bubble I saw the painting shoot up out of the crowd into Wayne’s hands, he looked at it carefully, smiled and pointed at himself in question then smiled again. He held it up for everyone to see. I almost cried I was so happy for that guy. I’d seen these people for so long during the festival that I started to think of them as acquaintances in my head, like I wanted to just up say “Hey, did you guys see Wayne” to these people who were in fact complete strangers.
The sun had set and the golden light washed over the thousands of windows staring down on us from the buildings all around. I could feel the magic and anticipation in the air. The whole band was on stage now and so were the Santas and aliens, as well as the two faeries from earlier(women have all the luck) and a plethora of Marvel superheroes, my favorite was Captain America who was chain smoking Marlboro Reds. Everyone up there had giant spot flashlights and they were shining them out over the crowd as Wayne stepped into the bubble and it filled with air. The projector screen behind him was flashing a giant message of welcome and telling us that we were part of something great, a celebration of life and happiness, which climaxed with the words FUCK YEAH just as Wayne rolled off the stage onto the outstretched hands of a roaring crowd. I got to touch the bubble and I’m pretty sure that that moment might still supercede the birth of my children whenever that does happen. It was sort of a loud blur until he rolled back onto the stage and got out, then the revelation began. Confetti canons went off, giant blue balloons flew out over the crowd, strobes fired and the Santas and aliens and superheroes all started dancing and the band opened with a song from the Soft Bulletin which we all sang along to (I don’t think there was a song I didn’t sing). He asked the people in the front to give some love and we did, and I heard ringing for 5 minutes after, then he asked the people in the back and I think I had underestimated the sheer volume of people that had arrived since the Lips began setting up because the roar came from way back (there were close to 10K people there). Halfway in they covered Bohemian Rhapsody and the crowd went mad, and Wayne brandished a fog machine like it was a giant automatic weapon.
At this point the girl behind me kept saying “I’m trippin’ out” over and over, so finally I turned around to her and said “You are trippin’ out. Happy Birthday.” and gave her a smile, she beamed back at me like I had done most perfect thing in the world. Wayne was waving a megaphone that was spewing multi-colored smoke and wearing strobes around his neck at this point and a humongous white balloon was bouncing around the crowd. My throat was sore and my skin was aflame but I was filled with joy and comraderie and if I could’ve flown at that moment I would have soared onto the stage and given the band a giant hug. The nun puppet came out to lead the crowd through Yoshimi and then after what seemed like far too short a time the band was leaving the stage. We screamed and clapped and stamped and they came back out for their last song: a cover of War Pigs, which showed everyone that Jesus Christ those guys can still rock harder than anyone ever.
The whole day was a pinnacle experience in my time here on the planet Earth, and the fact that it was free just makes it about perfect. I saw fucking De La Soul and The Flaming Lips yesterday for free, and it was like clouds reverse dripping into a giant pool of water that was hanging in the sky, that kind of amazing.
I recently had a long and winding discussion with a co-worker about corporate sponsorship of the arts. It started with us talking about Scion and their new King of the Beats competition which is basically a corporation putting a lot of money behind a competition to make a name for yourself as a hip-hop producer in order to hock cars. Yes, I know that it’s advertising targeted exactly at my socioeconomic group. Yes, I know that Scion’s ultimate goal is to sell cars. But are the artists selling out? My co-worker says yes, I say no. He thinks that any sort of sponsorship or aide from anyone other than the artistic community is ultimately going to lead to censorship, and censorship destroys art. I can agree with the bit about censorship destroying art, but I’m just not jaded enough to think that any corporate sponsorship will eventually just end in censorship. Sure, there are guidelines set out by the corporation when an artist creates for them, this has been a factor of art and its patrons for centuries. But, and this is really where my co-worker was driving, when a record company signs a group because their sound is relatively close to the sound the mass-market swallows the easiest and the band’s image can be molded just as easily, that is where censorship destroys art. If you’re making a type of music or art based entirely on the image that someone has told you to, then where is the self-expression that is intrinsic to the nature of art?
Scion, for instance, also sponsors art gallery events curated by other artists (I think the last one was curated by Bigfoot), as well as live concert events, and all of their events showcase artists, bands, and groups that haven’t broken into their respective world’s mainstreams. The artists in the shows get national recognition of their work simply because of the ad power behind them, and scion gets to show that it cares about the culture its trying to sell cars to thus effectively selling more cars. The artists are not censored or even told what subject matter to focus their painting on. And I for one think this is pehnomenal. The patron/artist relationship has always been a symbiotic one, and I don’t feel like any guidelines to the artists work hinder their expression in the slightest. Art will be made whether someone tells you to or not, that’s the nature of art, but with a little help your art can spread its emotional message to others, in the case of the Scion shows: lots of others.
So, for the most part I’m a pragmatist on this issue. As long as the art/music/literature are good (good in my mind anyway) then I will enjoy them regardless of their origins or stories. In fact, I tend to separate the art and the artist anyway. I couldn’t tell you the names of most of the people in the bands that I listen to, unless they go by their own names, because I don’t care about their lives directly (I mean I want them to be happy as much as I want everyone to be happy) I just care about their art. Once they’ve made it it’s no longer theirs.
What spawned this little diatribe was the Adidas Adicolor spots, which are some of the best commercials ever. Thanks to corporate sponsorship there is a design renaissance going on, and I’m thankful for it. I’ll buy some shit if it keeps the creative world afloat. I can always use some new shoes.
Click here to watch the Adicolor campaign commercials, starting with White. You won’t regret it.