In case you were waiting patiently to find out what happened to Strong Bad’s Compy 386 (it died a horrible death a few days ago) then you can rest easy.
alrighty… the funniest thing i read today would have to be matt nathanson talking about drummer matt chamberlain, who played on nathanson’s new deal. for the uninitiated, chamberlain has also lent (sold, actually) his freakishly good percussive skills to edie brickell (whose new album is awesome), old school pearl jam, fiona apple, keith urban, teitur, john mayer, etc. he’s really good. so, back to the original point (there was a point?), nathanson says, “the man owns the pocket and just rents it out to every other drummer.” if you don’t know what pocket he’s referring too… just give me a courtesy laugh and move on. nothing to see here.
tonight, my friend nick has organized the first EPIPHANY LOUNGE™. 12 artists/creative types getting together for a three course dinner and some fun Q & A about the arts (and faith.) i’m excited, though the invitation says “smart attire.” i’m wondering if most of my wardrobe is a little on the dumb side. hmm. i suppose ironing will have to occur prior to me leaving the house. how rare.
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’m available for freelance design work. Mainly print and identity, but I dabble in web stuff. Just click on the “For Hire” button on your right to send me an email detailing what you’re looking for. Hopefully we can work together to make something useful and pretty.
No job is too small, no check you write me is too big.
I’ve been saving up the browsing… just for you.
Short but sweet interview with one of my favorites, No Pattern’s Chuck Anderson. In the “it was bound to happen eventually” category, there’s a chain of restaurants that now serve… nothing but cereal. Heck… yeah. My kind of people. There are some swank shirts over at Mister Shape. (And they’re American Apparel shirts, so you know they’re super comfy. I wish all my shirts were as wonderful to wear as American Apparel stuff is.)
In software world, i’ve been increasingly annoyed with Fetch, the FTP program i’ve been using… crappy not only because it’s slow and it regularly crashes, but equally importantly because it has the ugliest icon EVER. Anyway, i’ve been trying out Panic’s Transmit FTP and it rocks me like Stryper. If you’re an OSX user and need a good ftp program… it’s almost perfect. The icon is awesome, too. These things are important. Also… I would like for someone to buy me this laptop bag soon. Preferably in the green color.
A new magazine that Tom Peters mentioned (when TP talks, I listen) a few weeks back called Worthwhile has my attention. “Work with Purpose, Passion, and Profit” is their tagline. A magazine for people who love what they do? Sign me up.
OK, pseudo-metal bands. I have officially had enough. Write some original music. I think Limp Bizkit got it started by butchering Faith a few years back… but lately it has just gotten out of hand. When I heard Korn’s take on Cameo’s classic Word Up… I admit I smiled and maybe turned the volume up a tad. But then they follow that up with yet another cover… and a Pink Floyd one at that? Another Brick in the Wall? You just don’t cover that song. Chalk up terrible covers of The Eurythmic’s Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, and Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus to Marilyn Manson. And Don Henley’s Boys of Summer was recently covered by some inane mall-emo band? (I can’t keep up… they all sound the same.) “…a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac?” No, sir.
Yesterday was the worst… the last straw. Nonpoint (and by “Nonpoint” I most likely mean “Nonpoint’s record label”) thought it was a good idea to cover In the Air Tonight. Can you blame them? They’re a nobody nu-metal band and, realizing that their own songs aren’t enough to get them noticed, they might as well sell-out, jump on the current cover bandwagon, and ride it for all its worth before their 15 minutes are over. But they seem to have forgotten a few things. 1. You just don’t mess with Phil Collins. 2. You don’t change up the melody to a song everyone knows unless you’re awesome. Nonpoint? You’re not awesome, therefor you may not play around with the melody. 3. Everyone knows that the only reason that song is great is the live drum fill at the end. It makes the song. So what do you do when you cover it? At no point, Nonpoint, should you remove any and all sense of dynamic change from a song that depends on dynamic change.
Yet another ruined song. Yet another nail in the coffin of modern metal.
I got a referral yesterday from someone who was searching for “lumberjacks link porn.” That’s disgusting. Specific… but still disgusting.
This isn’t a plea for sympathy or anything… I just feel obligated to be honest. I’m tired. (Not in the “I need sleep” sort of way… I always manage to overdue resting when the holidays roll around.) More so, i’m tired of doing the day-to-day by myself. Tired of fighting. Tired of sizing-up every girl I meet and wondering and over-analyzing. Tired of the balancing act of being patient and “content” while still wanting someone to share your life with. I’m tired of going home, building a fire, cooking a total single guy dinner, and watching a movie. Poor me, right?
Granted, my friends are amazing… i’ve never been in such deep and purposeful community with people; I know they love me and appreciate me despite my multitude of blatant and obvious flaws. However, no matter how close and wonderful those friendships are… they’re not marriage… they’re not that level of knowing and sharing. There’s something else… something that I don’t know yet. I feel like everything is a little bit dark and i’m just waiting for light to enter the room.
It’s borderline ridiculous to me that I know so little about the thing I want so badly. Certainly I have my theories… but they’re just the theories of a 25 year old semi-adult who hasn’t been on a date in almost 4 years. Still… I think the past few days have only reinforced the wanting. I catch some flack from my (wonderful) friends sometimes about not dating… but the only thing worse than being tired is wasting time trying to fix it. I don’t want to waste my time… and I certainly don’t want to waste someone else’s time. But i’m still tired of it… of the waiting and the not knowing. I don’t think i’ve had this many conversations about such things with God ever… but it’s hit me hard lately. I’m sure I trust Him… it’s His timing that gets to me.
I’m thankful for the people that are around me that help shoulder the burden. I can’t imagine the day-to-day without the people that I get to share it with… the ups and the downs. But still… I’m tired of being alone (so hurry up and get here.)
For a brief second today, somewhere between 1:37 and 1:42pm, I was airborne… in a car. More specifically, I was airborne in my good friend Karla’s car. Even more specifically, I was airborne in my good friend Karla’s car… sailing calmly off a small cliff into a swamp. Now, if you know anything about automobiles, then you know that such vehicles are generally designed and intended to function at their peak when they are on the ground. You would also know that swamps and Mazda 929s do not play well together. The result? A car no longer functioning at its peak or playing well with others. Let’s elaborate, shall we?
I was on my way to Greenville for a late lunch at Coffee Underground with the awesome Chris White, all-around creative force to be reckoned with and really cool guy. Sadly… I stood him up. I apparently had an unscheduled lunch date with a house on wheels. Here, my faithful YourCreativityDollarsAtWork™ readers, is where we learn why SUVs were originally referred to as “off-road vehicles” prior to their American marketing makeover. Because it seems their sole purpose is to push other vehicles… off the road. Soccer moms driving vehicles that are larger than my living room is a bad, bad, bad idea. The 929? It didn’t stand a chance. It was like Thor picking a fight with your token neighborhood senior citizen. And so… tight curve… rainy conditions… 3 feet worth of SUV in my lane. I swerve. And you know the drill, once the tires kiss the shoulder… you get a science lesson in hydroplaning. Normally, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Of course, normally roads don’t have 12 foot embankments. So… airborne. In addition to our lesson in hydroplaning, we get a (bonus!) lesson in gravity. Off into the wild blue yonder. Most certainly a freeze-frame, Bo and Luke Duke, Hazard County, sticky situation-esque… moment.
And then? Ladies and gentlemen, aaaaahhhh… this is your captain speaking, aaaaaahhh… Mazda Flight 929 has arrived… at the bottom of the swamp. Sorry about the aaaahhh… bumpy landing. A quick glance out of the windows revealed that the car was in fact surrounded on all sides by water. Muddy, South Carolina red clay water. A quick analyzation of the situation using my superior reasoning skills revealed that this was not a good thing. Sitting in a vehicle that is not a boat and being surrounded by water is never really a winning situation. Especially when you’re 12 feet below the blacktop. I climbed up the embankment to the side of the road (never a good sign when you have to climb up onto the road post-accident), surveyed all that I had done, chased some wind, brandished my cell phone, called the parents, called AAA, and called a few friends. Then I stood in the rain and I laughed a lot.
The tow truck showed at 2:38pm and I got the tow truck driver by which all tow truck drivers from hence forth shall be measured. He did his best to hook the 929 up without physically getting in the water… and it actually worked. It took him almost an hour to fish the car out of the swamp, but he did so with precision and skill… and the funny. During the entire process, he sweet-talked his tow truck (I kid you not) with such great lines as, “come on girl, you know you don’t want to have to call for back-up” and “that’s it baby… you got it baby” and “you’re such a good girl.” Inside… I was having a laughter aneurysm and outside… I was soaking wet and trying to smile. The State Trooper showed at 3:45pm, I didn’t get a ticket (for once… in my life), and then we towed the 929 to the garage and headed to the hospital to see Karla… where I get the pleasure of saying, “by the way… um… you remember your car?” And then relating the whole play-by-play all over again.
The end.
Eat some turkey. Hug your family. Go fly a car.
As an avowed Apple-lover, I typically dig most of their products. However, lately i’ve been having issues with iPhoto. Not because it’s a bad product… on the contrary, for the average home computer user it’s great for organizing your cute little jpegs. However, for me, it was becoming a hassle to try to use it to manage 4000+ very large tiff files. (And I know this isn’t going to get any better with the hopeful purchase of a new camera soon that takes slightly bigger pictures than my Canon G5.)
So what do I do? I ask Jeremy, of course, because he is uber-photographer and fellow Apple-user. This leads me to iView MediaPro. I downloaded the demo. I am hooked. It’s freaking awesome. As J. pointed out, it makes iPhoto look like i’m storing pictures in shoeboxes. If you’re running into similar issues of trying to use iPhoto for large libraries of large photos, check it out.
One of the nice things about iView is “make html gallery” feature. It makes quick work of great looking web galleries like the one I did this morning of some random urban textures. (Please ignore the hideous “demo copy” blurb. I’ll get the real thing soon and fix that.)
At the lovely offices of New Spring, we have a main building that’s about 5000 sq. ft. and a trailer (”modular building”) behind the main building. I’m in the trailer. It’s not bad… ugly wallpaper, but it’s generally quiet. With some recent staff restructuring, Mcd is now the supervisor over a few of the creative-types (Ken and DJ… but not me… mwahahaha) and is moving into the trailer today.
Laughter will ensue.
There are currently 8 people on my buddy list who are actually online. All of them are “away.” Excuse me, is there something wrong with this picture? The “away” feature should just be changed to the “I want to talk to someone… that someone just isn’t you” feature. Because honestly? You’re not really away… you bunch of liars.
My mandolin sold for $1000+ on ebay. Between that, various freelance design jobs of late, and this little holiday they call “christmas” I should be able to purchase a truck at the end of December. Debt free. Sucka.
A few months back, some friends started laying the ground work for an online magazine. They enlisted my help to create an identity and splashpage for Circle Six Magazine. The splashpage is up, and the message boards as well. They’re planning on launching in January with lots of community submitted content and such. I’ll post the full identity profile when I get some time.
Tonight… 8:00… downtown Greenville. The TLC and I will see a million faces… and we’ll rock them all.
Anything resembling a proper schedule has been absent this week. This culminated with staying up until around 6:30am last night (…this morning? How do you say that?) and then sleeping in until noon. In between all that madness, I managed to watch Angels in America… which was remarkably unremarkable. It won how many Emmy’s? Are you kidding me? Pacino gets an Emmy for… playing Pacino. Again. Only this time there’s a twist… he’s dying. (Oh, wait… Scent of a Woman… never mind.) There was some interesting dialogue along the way… but essentially a waste of six perfectly good hours of my life.
No worries… it was a restful day off filled with Cinnamon Life and a roaring fire and my couch. And 23 emails waiting for me when I looked. (Which is a lot for me… back off, i’m not that popular.)
New work to show off soon. Promises, promises.
You should learn the wonder of the F11 button. Go ahead. Don’t be scared. F11. And… wow… no more scrolling for you to see the whole site layout. I do these things for you because I care.
Pardon our dust… the redesigned www.newspring.cc went live this afternoon and since we’re transferring servers, all my stored images and files went poof… floating somewhere in internet limbo… awaiting a new home. How does this affect you? The current work image typically found on the left side of this site went poof as well.
May King Gungar and his ale keep you company for now.