tonight? we rock out with the very loud dirt rock stylings of gov’t mule. lucky for us…this is not one of the unfortunate shows on this tour where they’re playing with kid rock. just the mule…quite possibly the best live guitar tone i’ll hear anytime soon. joy.
last night i ruled the scrabble board (yeah, i’m bragging about it. and what?) while we watched a bit of the unc/tech b-ball game. i haven’t watched tv in so long…i just stare at it when i’m at someone’s house…like i’ve never seen it before. luckily, i kept my wits about me enough to leave all scrabble challengers in my wake. lee mcd also broke a glass light fixture during an impromptu pillow fight…how much fun are those? seriously? (pillow fights, not broken light fixtures)
two friends of mine, liz and ada, are doing an internship this semester at the focus on the family deal in colorado springs. just got an email from ada….they’re learning good stuff. questions like “what do you believe to be true?” “Why do you believe it to be true?” “How did you come to believe it to be true?” wow…i spent four years as a “religion” major and never got asked those questions. that really makes up how you see the world, that’s your worldview…and most of us never stop to think about it (or anything else for that matter.) they also had to study the roles of husbands and wives (as defined by scripture) in their marriage and family class…and then write out their wedding vows. ada put it best when she said, “a very interesting excercise…when you have no one in mind.”
true. true.
true.
Really, it’s just plain sick that Chuck Anderson is this good. He’s doing work for Absolut and he’s not even old enough to buy it legally. Freakish creativity.
And now I have a meeting to go to.
Well crap. Charlie beat us to it and filmed his writing spider doing some damage to a wasp. You snooze, you lose, eh? This video is not suitable for children under the age of 8 or those with an aversion to insect death (set to metal.)
I’m having motivation issues with a side of designer’s block. Someone kick my butt, please… and tell the creative ideas to come back home… I miss them.
In other news, my main annoyance with church signs is their lack of relelvance to anyone but Christians… but occasionally, I find myself in a heated debate with a church sign over it’s peculiar brand of pop theology, like I did this morning. “Seek not wealth or power.” Ok, they might be on to something with the “power” part, but apparently no one there has ever read A LITTLE BOOK CALLED PROVERBS. Things like “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops…” or “With me are riches and honor, enduring wealth and prosperity.” or “…bestowing wealth on those who love me and making their treasuries full.” And that’s just chapter 7 and 8.
Even better than those, how about “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth?” It’s a scriptural principle that working hard and honoring God in that work will bring you wealth; and while I think I understand the heart of their thought process (not seeking wealth in the American dream sense) I completely reject the way Christians can often deify poverty and demonize wealth and the wealthy (and vice versa… they’re both unbiblical extremes.) The “If you follow Jesus, you have to be poor and miserable… because only poor, miserable people really love Jesus” kind of mentality? Give me a freaking break. Now i’m all riled up over my interpretation of a church sign.
Then again, some church signs are just plain stupid. Like “Anger is only one letter away from danger.” 1. Who does this benefit? Is it really going to give a guy a moment of clarity before he starts dealing on someone? “I’m gonna keeeeeell yooooou…. wait… i’m only only letter away from danger. I should stop now. I apologize for my behavior.” Hmm… I think not. 2. What does this have to do with God? 3. Phonetically speaking, “anger” is actually only one letter away from “DANGer”… which doesn’t really make any sense at all.
Gilmore is correct in his assertion that this Kings Of Convenience video is the feel good video of the year. It just makes me smile. I’m shimmy-ing… in my office chair.
Another YCD@W redesign is in the works. The current one has lasted for a few weeks at least… which isn’t bad at all for me. The new one is pretty.
Coming soon to a browser near you.
Dear trusted friends, the next time Jonny Karate and I audition for ninja movie roles, please remind us not to do this. (And what’s that at the end… a Jedi?)
Ok… (yes, i’m still awake) highlights from the Mayer show.
Better arrangements and use of the band all around. He’s playing less and less acoustic… which is great. He’s only an average acoustic player anyway, and his acoustic tone is abrasively bad live. But vocals withstanding (no one is fooling anyone, he’s never going to have perfect vocals… we can deal with that and move on) this was the most flawless Mayer show i’ve ever seen… and his vocals actually weren’t that bad anyway. It was seriously 10 times better than the last few times i’ve seen him play.
But the icing… 1 amazing cover of Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues and 1 oh… my… dang… 10 minute freak-out-session cover of Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)… as a 3-piece… complete with throwing the guitar down a-la-Hendrix and playing it on the floor. I mean, seriously people… in the words of Jeremy, “That’s just stupid.”
I really don’t know what to make of a musician who can, in the space between first song and last song of his set, do singer-songwriter and radio rock… and then channel Hendrix and Stevie Ray. Who the heck would have ever thought the next guitar hero was going to be a skinny, dorky white kid from Connecticut? Believe the hype. He’s so freaking good. Naysayers? Can it. Until you see him live… you have zero to say to me. No, really… you got nothin’. Go listen to some emo and be glad you don’t wet your bed anymore.
Why do I like bizarre design-related things like this? Better question; why do you keep reading the various design-related musings on this site? Even better question; why am I still up considering I must rise at the hour of 6:00am? Hmm… I think we’ll leave the pondering to those better suited to it. Is that you? If so… ponder away.
Nashville was a nice little trip. The abridged version goes something like this: 1 drastic haircut, 936 miles of driving, $67.00 spent on gas, $73.78 spent on food, 1 iPod full of music (put to good use), 2 mostly-asleep yet still fun travel companions, 1 stop by the famed Pancake Pantry (it’s a Nashville tradition), 1 or 2 “deep” conversations, uncalculatable laughter and mocking, 64 kept photos, almost 16 hours in a vehicle, 2 meals partaking of country ham (?), 1 ridiculously enjoyable show from John Mayer and Maroon 5 (I don’t recall the last time a band impressed me enough live that I wanted to buy their album afterward, but the M5 boys have done well in that regard), 1 random byrd sighting at that show, 1 North Carolina Arby’s employee with gross dirty fingernails, 1 more step towards making a slightly awkward internet friendship with Jeremy feel a bit more like a real friendship, 1 all-natural and all-awesome strawberries & cream popsicle at Las Paletas, 3 or 4 are we going the right way?’s, 5 different stores/eateries (in one day) playing ’80’s music…
1 pause for effect…
2 trendy shoe store employees who actually had personalities and weren’t trying too hard, 1 surreal sighting of Bocephus’ ex-wife and daughter, 1 fairly unimpressive stop by the supposed “it coffee hang” Fido (whose wifi was broken), 1 Saturday morning spent with TLC eating, laughing, catching up, and getting 1 explanantion that Fido was no longer the “it coffee hang” and has apparently been recently dethroned by The Frothy Monkey (which is one of the better coffeeshop names ever… and we saw Toby Mac there today, so it must be cool), 1 scheming Wertz fan who overheard mention of his name from TLC and started chatting with us, and 2 restless nights spent sleeping in a free, yet still wretchedly uncomfortable grandma bed with canary yellow sheets. Top that. Sucka.
Or something.
I think I might fly to Orlando for vacation in October. I’m all drived-out.
And before I go… Commonwealth Stacks has new t-shirts up. Eagle & Hyena in olive? Yes, please.
Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.
The most entertaining things always come from everyday life. McSweeny’s has Dispatches from a Public Librarian… you couldn’t make up stories this good if you tried.
In keeping with yesterday’s spider story, I found a large writing spider in the backyard last night. I figure we should transport him (or her) over to Jon and Gizz’s and let the spiders fight it out for territory and glory. More on that later.
This weekend, Nashville. Next weekend, Ruddell and (hopefully) Summer will be coming up to visit. The next week? Monte Montgomery at the Handlebar and Eddie’s Attic. My life is amazing.
Church sign on the way to work: “Prevent truth decay, brush up on your Bible.” What? Who does this benefit? Seriously? Keep on bridging that culture gap, church sign changer-outers of America.
Last night we watched the horribley-named, yet mildly entertaining Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Bonus points for Robert John Burke’s facial expressions and Julia Roberts’ best make-out scene ever (you just have to see it). Weird movie, though… weird movie.
But more entertaining than the flick was standing on Gizz and Jon’s back porch for a good 45 minutes watching the two massive spiders of unknown origin spin their webs. We then got impatient waiting for nature to take its course, so we caught a few moths and tossed them in the web to watch the killer at work. Scary fast. Scary. Jonny then proceeded to find a motha-big spiny caterpillar on the front porch… what transpired for the next 30 minutes was a semi-epic battle between these tiny titans. The spider moving with a quickness to wrap up the caterpillar with webbing, the caterpillar partially breaking out, the spider unable to get in a good bite, repeat steps 1 through 3, etc.
It was completely fascinating.
The boys at Asterik Studio (someone buy me a ticket to Seattle to go see them. Pretty please?) just put together a nice, clean site for photographer Jeff Gros… nice work all around. His band photography is good… but the environmental and polaroid sections are what get me… the man knows how to capture a vibe and a moment.
I’ve been waiting for the Shawn McDonald site to go live for awhile now, simply based on how much I liked the photoshoot that Jeremy did for the album packaging. Jeremy does great work… and next Friday, it will be nice to see him again in Nashville. John Mayer, Maroon 5, DJ Logic, two hot women (namely Karl and LB), and the Nashville crew… fun times lay ahead.
Speaking of music… in a strange twist of funny, i’m opening up for one of my old FSU roommates on September 2 at Jammin Java. We have that following Friday off… Charleston anyone? Less than two hours after the show, you could be sitting on the beach. How can you turn that down?
A couple of videos for you…
1. The one and only swimming pool moron. Ouch… Just ouch. Link via the (also one and only) Mike Cina.
2. As promised, our lovely IT Assistant Jeff Gilden giving an impromptu one minute speech on the importance of punctuality… while yelling. Scooter, you’re famous now.
People are strange (and wonderful.) More on that later. For now, all you need to know is that the Justin Timberlake: Live From London dvd is greatness… especially if you have a thing for repeated close-up camera shots of JT’s crotch. (Which, I mean… who doesn’t?)
Today is my day off… in theory at least.